^ Many of the fathers of the Church connect these verses with what they consider a saying of Jesus, one of the few which are reasonably attested, though it has failed to find a place in the written gospels. The saying is, " Show yourselves approved money-changers." The fathers believed that the Apostle uses a metaphor from coinage. To prove is really to assay, to put to the test as a banker tests a piece of money; the word rendered " good " is often the equivalent of our " sterling " ; " evil," of our base or forged ; and the word which in our old Bibles is rendered " appearance " — " Abstain from all appearance of evil " — and in the Eevised Version " form " — " Abstain from every form of evil " — has, at least in some connexions, the signification of mint or die. If we bring out this faded metaphor in its original freshness, it will run something like this : " Show yourselves skilful money-
I THESSALONIANS v. 21 S3
changers ; do not accept in blind trust all the spiritual currency which you find in circulation ; put it all to the test ; rub it on the touchstone ; keep hold of what is genuine and of sterling value, but every spurious coin decline." ^
Pkovb.
1. Why must we prove ? Because faculties have been given us for that very purpose. The possession of faculties for thinking and reasoning tells us that we have the duty as well as the right of exerting them, just as truly as to have been born with eyes confers upon the individual the right to see. The eye has to be trained and so to become adjusted to objects about it. In many cases it is defective. We do not, therefore, bandage every man's eyes or put spectacles upon him, because these are required by certain persons. The maxim, Usitin non tollit ahusus, obtains here. Persons have grievously abused their right of private judgment ; it does not follow that they should be deprived of it. It would be safer to infer that the faculty for forming such judgments imposes upon them the duty of using it.
^ The question you put is by no means an easy one to answer : whether, namely, it be right and wise for you to read on both sides of the question — or rather, I should say, questions ? for on this subject they are endless, and grow up like Hydra's heads. I could not reply. No: for that is the very advice given by the Eomish Church, which we so much blame ; and it is very inconsistent in us to condemn their prohibitions of heretical or Protestant books to the laity, if we, tractarian or evangelical clergy, forbid, as is constantly done, the perusal of books which we judge heretical. Now, first of all, the questions of religious truth are interminable, and a lifetime would scarcely suffice to pass even the outworks of them all. Next, very few minds are in possession of the means or of the severe mental training which qualifies a man to set out as an original discoverer of truth ; so that if we cannot begin with a large number of truths, which must be considered as first principles and settled, life must be one perpetual state of Pyrrhonism and uncertainty. On the other
^ J. Denney, T}ie Epistles to the Thessalmiatis, 244, I THESS.-HEB, — 3
34 PROVING AND HOLDING FAST
hand, to refuse to examine when doubts arise is spiritual suicide ; and I do not see how, on this principle, any progress in truth could ever have been made. Why should the Pharisees have been blamed for the views so long stereotyped or the Jews for re- maining in Judaism ? ^
2. This duty is not dropped whetf a man accepts the obedience of Christ. The Christian life is necessarily a struggle with intellectual as well as with moral difficulties, with ignorance as well as with sin. Let no one enter upon it with the thought that his days of perplexity are over, that henceforth he is to be within the calm shelter of the haven, where no breath of wind or stormy wave can reach him from the open sea. There may be those who are thus blessed, but most are called to the battle. But the battle is itself a blessing when it graces, strengthens, confirms. The great German thinker may have been guilty of an exaggeration, but it was the exaggeration of a truth, when he said, " Did the Almighty, holding in His right hand 'Truth,' and in His left ' Search after Truth,' deign to tender me the one I might prefer, in all humility, and without hesitation, I should request ' Search after Truth.' " There are, indeed, some who, wearied of searching after truth, have bowed their reason to some external authority, some infallible Church, admitting all its assertions as equally true; while others have found refuge in a universal scepticism denouncing all as equally false. The one goes against the precept, "Prove all things," the other against its natural and necessary counterpart, " Hold fast that which is good " ; and both evade one of the most potent means of moral training for this ceaseless con- flict, this patient endurance, this quiet hope, this earnest longing, this immovable confidence in what is right and good, when they do not use it as one of the ways in which God has chosen to educate us for Himself.