(2) After such knowledge comes an outward life of service. Active obedience is the expression of inward communion, love, and trust. The spring that moves the hands on the dial is love, and, if the hands do not move, there is something wrong with the spring. Morality is the garment of religion ; religion is the animating principle of morality. Faith without works is dead, and works without faith are dead too.
I.
Knowledge.
"Know thou the God of thy father,"
1. Knowledge of any kind requires thought and effort. It does not come by chance, in a momentary flash. We must " dig for wisdom as for hid treasure," and digging implies toil. It is said that even Professor Palmer, who was one of our greatest linguists, with a perfect genius for languages, " took advantage of every help offered, and made the most of it." This is equally necessary in the sphere of religious knowledge. True, there is a great difference between the intellectual and the spiritual. No man by mere searching can find out God, for it requires moral and spiritual capacity. As we do not know what love is by reading jabout it, but only when the feeling itself is awakened within us, jso is it with the knowledge of Divine things. Yet this knowledge has its laws and methods, and those will fail to gain it who learn nothing of the Bible, and neglect prayer. Plato had a glimpse of this truth when he distinguished between "knowledge" and " wisdom." In one of his dialogues he describes a young Athenian who sought desperately for some one to teach him wisdom. Poets and philosophers failed him. It was not in them to teach, because it v/as not in him to Icaru. We also need a spiritual appetite,
I CHRONICLES xxviii. 9 499
and a spiritual capacity, which God alone can give, before we understand how He " fills the hungry with good things."
^ Let all our business be to know God : the more one knows Him, the more one desires to know Him. And as knowledge is commonly the measure of love, the deeper and more extensive our knowledge shall be, the greater will be our love ; and if our love of God be great, we shall love Him equally in grief and in joy.^
2. Knowledge of God has its steps of progress.
(1) It is knowledge of God as holy. — Some men regard God in such a way as to believe that however they live, and whatever they believe, all will come right with them in the long-run. But these do not " know " God, in whose presence no evil can stay. The Only-begotten of the Father has revealed Him as He really is, for " God was in Christ." And Christ never made light of sin. He told us more of the power and dreadfulness of evil than the world ever knew before, and He declared that all would appear before the judgment-seat, whether they were good or bad, to receive every man according as his works should be. God would not have said all He did say through the King of Truth, unless sin and its consequences had been dreadful beyond our dreams.
^ The conception of God, august, majestic, awe-inspiring, is found in the Hebrew prophets as it is found in no other literature in the world. Did Jesus of Nazareth revolt from it ? No. He ratified it. He spoke of God as a God of absolute righteousness. It is true His thought of God was always the thought of God as a Father. And in this respect He passed beyond the prophets. While the prophets em^phasized our responsibility to God, He drew out the other side and made known God's responsibility for us. But if God is responsible for us as a father is responsible for his children, does that lessen our responsibility to Him ? If the judgment on sin is the judgment of a Father, does that make sin less sinful ? In that word " Father " everything is contained that is needed to feed and exercise the faculty and instinct of awe. " If ye call on him as Father," said St. Peter, " pass the time of your sojourning here in awe."
0 tell me whence that joy doth spring,
Whose diet is divine and fair, Which wears heaven like a bridal ring, And tramples on doubts and despair? ^ Brother Lawreuce, The Practice of the Presence of God.
500 KNOWLEDGE AND SERVICE
Whose Eastern traffique deals in bright
And boundless empyrean themes, Mountains of spice, day-stars and light,
Green trees of life and living streams ?
Sure Holyness the magnet is,
And love the lure that woos thee down :
Which makes the high transcendent bliss Of knowing thee, so rarely known ! ^
(2) It is knowledge of God as a forgiving God. — Some think of God as a stern avenger, who cares nothing for our love or our longing. They believe that immutable laws will land one in heaven and another in hell, much as a train whirls passengers up the line, or down it, with no thought or care on their part. If that were true, perhaps the Epicurean maxim would be the wisest to follow : " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." But Jesus made an atonement for our sins, and came here to save us from them, so that every one who repents may have the blessed- ness of the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity.