4. What wonderful light the words of our Lord cast on the true channel through which spiritual knowledge enters man, and how they rebuke the pride and arrogance of that reason which presumes to have the power to master all things. Eeason has its sphere assigned to it by its Maker, and within that sphere it is " a vision and a faculty Divine " ; but there are realms in which it plays, and was designed to play, a subordinate part, and in which its discovering power is very small. Even apart from religion, how many departments of truth there are in which reason is but an incompetent authority. How many men of the highest intellectual powers are shut out of the beauties created by the genius of the artist, the poet, the painter, the sculptor, and the musician. Their reason is blind and deaf before forms and sounds of the most transcendent loveliness. Many a mathe- matician, peerless in his power of calculation, stands in blank and unsympathetic mood before the loveliest forms that ever breathed on the canvas ; and many a logician, whom no sophistry * Tolstoy, My Confession {Complete Works, xiii. 62).
3i8 THE WILL TO KNOW
could elude, hears nothing but a succession of incoherent and confused noises in some marvellous creation of music which enthrals the appreciative soul. And yet the truth of art is as true as that of such matters as are within the province of reason itself, and can no more be justly discarded or despised by the merely intellectual philosopher than the radiant glories of the external universe can be denied by the man who is blind. So also, but in still higher degree, religion has its truths, which, though not contrary to reason, lie beyond its power to discover or, it may be, for the present, to harmonize. Shall reason, shut out of so many realms of truth even in the natural world, claim a sovereignty over the world in which infinite love and infinite wisdom are displaying their resources to redeem man from sin ? Reason by itself has almost as little to do with the deeper experiences of the soul as affection has to do with the questions of arithmetic or the problems of geometry; for these deeper experiences are those of repentance, remorse, faith, hope, tempta- tion, and struggle and heavenward aspiration. Love is ever the key to the deepest mysteries. Though shut to the scrutiny of the keenest reason, they open to the knocking of an affectionate and reverent heart. Hidden from those who regard themselves as the wise and prudent, they are revealed unto babes. They that seek to do the will of God shall indeed be taught of Him.
If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, I heard a voice " believe no more '* And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part. And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer'd "I have felt."^
^ I've seen pretty clear ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides notions. It isn't notions sets people doing the right thing — it's feelings. It's the same with the notions in religion as it is with math'matics, — a man may be able to work problems straight off in's head as he sits by the fire and smokes his pipe; but if he has to make a machine or
* Tennyson, In Memoriam,
ST. JOHN VII. 17 319
a building, he must have a will and a resolution, and love some- thing else better than his own ease.^
5. There are two types of men to whom Jesus' words ought to be a warning.
(1) The first is the man who supposes that he knows the doctrine, but is not doing the will. Is he sure that he knows anything which counts when his knowledge is so absolutely divorced from life? He has a very strong theory about the inspiration of the Bible, but what good is his devotion to the letter when the spirit of the Book has not affected his heart? He believes that he knows God, but how can he ? — for God is love, and this man is not loving his brother. He is very keen about the Deity of Christ, but what right has he to speak of Christ since he will not carry Christ's cross in mercy and humility? He is convinced that his sins are forgiven, and prates about assurance, but can they be loosed if he will not give quittance to his brother man ? He has an unfaltering con- fidence that he will reach heaven when he dies, but what place can he have in heaven who to-day is carrying a hell of unclean or malignant passions in his heart ?
(2) The other is the man who is proud of his scepticism, and complains that he cannot know, while all the time he is refusing to obey. Granted that the Holy Trinity and the sacri- fice of Christ are mysteries, and that God Himself is the chief mystery of all, he ought to remember that everything in life is not a mystery. It is open to us all to do our daily work with a single mind, to be patient amid the reverses of life, to be thought- ful in the discharge of our family duties, and to be self-denying in the management of our souls. Duty at any rate is no mystery, and it is grotesque that a man should proclaim that he cannot believe the most profound truths when he is making no honest effort to keep the plainest commandments.