The incident illustrates the truth here contended for--achievement in divine things, progress in the knowledge of them, comes only with hard striving, earnest endeavor, determined seeking. IV. THE PLEA OF "THUS FAR, BUT NO FURTHER." Mental laziness is the vice of men, especially with reference to divine things. Men seem to think that because inspiration and revelation are factors in connection with the things of God, therefore the pain and stress of mental effort are not required; that by some means these elements act somewhat as Elijah's ravens and feed us without effort on our part. To escape this effort, this mental stress to know the things that are, men raise all too readily the ancient bar--"Thus far shalt thou come, but no farther." Man cannot hope to understand the things of God, they plead, or penetrate those things which he has left shrouded in mystery. "Be thou content with the simple faith that accepts without question. To believe, and accept the ordinances, and then live the moral law will doubtless bring men unto salvation; why then should man strive and trouble himself to understand? Much study is still a weariness of the flesh." So men reason; and just now it is much in fashion to laud "the simple faith;" which is content to believe without understanding, or even without much effort to understand. And doubtless many good people regard this course as indicative of reverence--this plea in bar of effort--"thus far and no farther." "There is often a great deal of intellectual sin concealed under this old aphorism," remarks Henry Drummond. "When men do not really wish to go farther they find it an honorable convenience sometimes to sit down on the outmost edge of the 'holy ground' on the pretext of taking off their shoes." "Yet," he continues, "we must be certain that, making a virtue of reverence, we are not merely excusing ignorance; or under the plea of 'mystery' evading a truth which has been stated in the New Testament a hundred times, in the most literal form, and with all but monotonous repetition." (Spiritual Law, pp. 89, 90.) This sort of "reverence" is easily simulated, and is of such flattering unction, and so pleasant to follow--"soul take thine ease"--that without question it is very often simulated; and falls into the same category as the simulated humility couched in "I don't know," which so often really means "I don't care, and do not intend to trouble myself to find out." V. THE PRAISE OF SIMPLE FAITH.