Now this faculty and habit of really apprehending things, even in its lower and not uncommon degree, is an immeasurable advantage; but it has its drawback. Those who possess it are singularly capable of committing the unpardonable sin, the sin against knowledge. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” is a petition which He who spoke these words could not have offered for deeds or denials in clear opposition to what a man knows to be true and good. “My name is in him and He will not pardon.” All men agree in calling the spirit of truth--which is the spirit by which truth is really apprehended--holy; and to deny this spirit in deliberate action may, without any appeal to Christian doctrine, be proved to be unpardonable by the way such action is known to influence a man’s character. A single act of such denial, if it be in some great and vital matter, often seems to destroy the soul. History affords more than one example of a statesman who has begun life with an eagle eye for truth, a strong and tender love of honour, and everything that makes a man among men. At some crisis of temptation he chooses personal ambition before some clearly apprehended duty of patriotism; and his whole nature seems thenceforward changed: he drops like a scorched fly from the flame-- Then takes his doom, to limp and crawl, Blind and despised, from fall to fall. But the least practical denial of real apprehension of the truth is, to such as have ever had a conscience and have observed themselves, demonstrably unpardonable, inasmuch as it destroys a portion of the capacity of the soul. “The remnant” may, indeed, “become a great nation,” but it will be still and for ever a remnant of what it would have been, had it preserved the integrity of its fidelity. If we knew the secrets of the lives of those--alas! innumerable--who seem to have no real apprehension of anything, none of the light which it is said lighteth every man that cometh into the world, it would probably be found that they have not been born without, but have forfeited their noblest human heritage, by repeated practical denials of the things which they have seen. III SEERS, THINKERS, AND TALKERS I The intellect, the understanding or discursive reason, and the memory, it need scarcely be said, are three distinct faculties; yet in their exercise and the character they acquire for their possessors, they are apt to be confused, and that not without damage to the public and private interests of those who make the mistake. Intellect, though it is constantly spoken of as synonymous with understanding, is really an incomparably rarer quality, the difference being that which subsists between “genius” and “talent”; and to ignorant persons a ready and well-stored memory, which is consistent with the almost total defect of either of the nobler faculties, is often regarded as a combination of both.