It is quite evident that the sins spoken of here are not our own sins, but the sins of other persons, and that the intention is to say that as hatred brings causes of quarrel to the surface, so love puts the faults of other people down out of sight.
I. Love shall cover multitudes of sins from. God and from man. Love by silence and by veiling hides from man, and by prayer and by converting hides from God. And yet, in all ages of the Church, men have built from my text the fallacy that a man's charities are, in some way, a set-off against his sins. Love covers sins. Love learnt her office where she learnt everything: upon the bosom of Jesus Christ. It is a good and pleasant exercise to substitute for the word "charity," wherever you find it in the Bible, the word "Christ." And see how accurately and how exquisitely true the sentence runs respecting all that charity is and charity does when charity is Christ. And this is Christ's blessed work: He covers the multitude of sins.
II. Your mission as a Christian is to be a coverer of sins. If you know of anything to any one's detriment, hold it as a sacred deposit, to be used religiously. Never think that you can make yourself great by making another less. Let it be your characteristic, the point by which you are known in society, that, like your Master, you always cover everybody's sins. It will be true religion.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,1865.
References: 1 Peter 4:8. G. Dawson, The Authentic Gospel,p. 86; J. Keble, Sermons from Ascension to Trinity,p. 93; F. VV. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 353; E. H. Plumptre, Ibid.,vol. xix., p. 392. 1 Peter 4:9; 1 Peter 4:10. H. D. B. Rawnsley, Ibid.,vol. xxxii., p. 93.