Expositions of Holy Scripture : St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIIIMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture : St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible -- Commentaries; Bible. Matthew IX-XXVIII -- Commentaries
These qualifications are all moral. The organ for reception of the
Gospel is the heart, not the head. To receive it by faith is a
spiritual, not an intellectual process. Ignorance is no
qualification nor no disqualification. Ignorance or knowledge is
immaterial. The one condition is to be willing to accept.
III. The disqualification of the wise as necessarily resulting from
the qualification.
The organ for the reception is not the head but the heart.
Therefore, wisdom is a barrier only in this way, that it has nothing
to do in the matter. Its presence or its absence is quite
indifferent here as in many other spheres of experience. The joys of
the affections, the joys of common emotions, the joys of bodily
life--all these are utterly independent of the culture of the
understanding.
Hence 'wisdom' becomes a barrier, because its possessors are
accustomed to think it the master key. Not intellect, but the pride
of intellect, trusting in it, glorying in wisdom is the
disqualification.
It is not true that there is any discord between religion and
cultivated thought. The loftier the soul, the loftier all its
attributes, the nobler should be, may be, its religion. It is not
true that there is any natural affinity between ignorance and
religion, between narrow understandings and deep faith. That is not
the Bible truth. The religion of Christ is not like owls that love
the twilight, but like eagles that 'purge their sight at the very
fountain itself of heavenly radiance.'
Take history: the great names--an Augustine and a Luther, a Dante
and a Milton, a Bacon and a Pascal--are enough to show that there is
no antagonism. On the other hand, names enough rise to show that
there is no alliance. The inference is that the intellect has little
to do with a man's attitude towards the Revelation of God in Christ,
but that the moral is all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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