1 Corinthians 13:3

And though I bestow all my goods to feedthe poor] It will be observed that the words -the poor" are not in the original. Coleridge (see Dean Stanley's note) says, "the true and most significant sense is - though I dole away in mouthfuls all my property or estates." " So Olshausen, Meyer, to feed any one by putting morsels into his mouth. Cf. St Matthew 6:1-2. The word here used is akin to ψωμίον, a morsel; see St John 13:26. Were we to take the word charityin its ordinary English sense of liberality to the poor, the passage would contradict itself. It is quite possible to have charitywithout love.

and though I give my body to be burned There is such a thing even as martyrdom in a hard, defiant spirit; not prompted by love of Christ, but by love of oneself; not springing from the impossibility of denying Him to Whom we owe all (compare Polycarp's noble words, "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and what has He done that I should deny Him?"), but from the resolution not to allow that we have been in the wrong. Such a martyrdom would profit neither him who suffered it, nor any one else.