When a gifted man stores his mind with truth, and at the same time strives his utmost to attain purity of heart, his Christian experience must needs be widened, and his whole soul elevated, in proportion to the number of distinct kinds of truth which combine with each other, and with the ruling passion of his life, to form one grand result, many systems of truth all threaded on that one cord, “the love of Christ constraining;” much differentiation, but perfect unity; many members, yet but one body; in short, a state of mind similar in kind to the Son of Man’s. For is there anything in the whole range of the sciences, physical, biological, political, social, and moral; anything connected with the theory and the practice of art; anything relating to the history of the past, even eternity _ab ante_; in short, is there anything which is _not_ perfectly open to the mind of Jesus? And is He not our elder _Brother_, _and divine_ Pattern in all things heavenly? Is not the realization, in so far as that privilege is extended to us of His mind, to be the grand object of our life here and for evermore? To be possessed of talents and of facilities for obtaining for them the highest cultivation, what do these gifts involve? That they should be diligently used in promoting the glory of God who gave them. Can the savage mind know much of God? Can he who knows no more of the infinite ocean of truth than he has explored of it, so to speak, in his rude canoe, know as much as is really essential for you and for me of the redeeming love of Christ? The true answer to this question evidently is, that in a babe’s mind you can expect no more to exist than a babe’s knowledge; it has “need of milk, and not of strong meat;” but “unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required.” The Christian life then is not a fixed quantity, the same in the child, the savage, the barbarian, and the Welsh peasant, as in the saintly scholars of the Christian Church; but answering to every advance in pure knowledge, there is, in the man after God’s own heart, a corresponding advance in moral and spiritual excellence. For emotions are manifested only in proportion as ideas form the branches round which emotions twine. No well-defined emotion can exist without its related ideas. True, ideas are countless, while emotions are comparatively few, and from age to age retain their identity and freshness, while ideas change and change. Still, however, emotion must enter into union with ideas in order to have any definite existence. The more, therefore, the intellect is stored with knowledge, the greater also must be the number of instances in which ideas and sentiments become associated together.