1. This knowledge covers the three great relations of life — God, self, and fellow-man. As surely as faith is translated into character will character result in richer and fuller accessions to our knowledge of God. Over against our spiritual faculties, and answering to them, is a world of spiritual being — a world with sights more beautiful, harmonies more sweet, relationships more enduring, and joys more deep and full than those of earth and time. With the growth and development of the spiritual life there will come a fuller and more accurate knowledge, not only of the spiritual world without, but also of that within. A deeper knowledge of God will result in a fuller knowledge of self, and a clearer perception of duty ; for all duty springs necessarily out of the relations subsisting between the human and the Divine. And this knowledge of God and duty is not merely an intellectual acquisition to be enjoyed, but a moral dynamic to be expressed in life and turned to practical ends. If we are taken up into this Mount of Transfiguration, it is not that we may abide there in rapt contemplation, but that we may descend with increased power to dispossess the demons of the plain.
^ Two ordination candidates, on one occasion at the Fulham dinner-table, were evidently anxious to impress him with the fact that they were total abstainers, and took occasion to boast of their profound ignorance of wines and spirituous liquors of every kind ; whereupon, to their astonishment, the Bishop entered upon an exhaustive disquisition on Vintages of Fort, mentioning the various years in which the grape harvest had failed or succeeded and other factors that determined the quality and quantity of the yield of wine. The youths were overheard exclaiming to each other in pious horror, as they left the hall, " Who'd have thought it from him ! He talked like a wine merchant." ^
But it was his knowledge that gave Dr. Temple's enthusiasm in the cause of temperance its power.
2. Again, knowledge here does not so much mean enlarged apprehensions of spiritual truth; the reason — exalted and purified by
^ B. Wilberforce, Sandification by the Truth, 138. * Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, ii. 86.
I70 THE UNFOLDING OF CHARACTER
the light flowing and falling upon it from revealed objective realities — " comprehending " more and more the meaning of the " mystery " " in which are hid," or deposited, " all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." It does not mean this, but rather the instruction and culture of the understanding, which has to do with terrene and tangible matters ; the proper apprehension of the possible and the right ; and the wise adaptation of means to ends. Strength and force, resolute purpose and daring energy, are to be presided over and directed by large knowledge. Without this, with the best intentions a man may blunder in all he does ; may waste his powers in attempting the impossible, and be distinguished for nothing but for indiscreet and undiscriminating zeal. Ignorance is neither the mother of devotion, nor a skilful and effective doer of work. As contemplation and action must go together, so also must action and intelligence. " With all thy getting, therefore, get understanding."
^ Any zeal is proper for religion, but the zeal of the sword and the zeal of anger ; this is tlie litterness of zeal, and it is a certain temptation to every man against his duty; for if the sword turns preacher, and dictates propositions by empire instead of arguments, and engraves them in men's hearts with a poignard, that it shall be death to believe what I innocently and ignorantly am persuaded of, it must needs be unsafe to try the spirits, to try all things_ to make inquiry ; and yet, without this liberty, no man can justify himself before God or man, nor confidently say that his religion is best. This is inordination of zeal ; for Christ, by reproving St. Peter drawing his sword even in the cause of Christ, for His sacred and yet injured person, teaches us not to use the sword, though in the cause of God or for God Himself.
When Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man, stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travail, coming towards him, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man prayed not nor begged a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God. At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded con- dition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham and asked him where the stranger was ? He replied, I thrust him
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away because he did not worship Thee. God answered him, " I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonoured me : and couldst not thou endure him one night ? " ^