education without religion is worse than useless. By secular education is meant instruction in such branches as arithmetic, geography, grammar, and history, and by religious education, instruction in the Bible and the catechism. But you will see at once that the Knowledge, of which St. Paul spoke slightingly, was much higher than any, or all of these. He spoke of instruction not merely in history, geography, or grammar, but instruction in the Bible, the catechism, and the articles, as worthless, without training in Humility and Charity. This was the secular knowledge he speaks of, for you will perceive that he treats knowledge of very important religious matters as secular, and rates it very low indeed. He said mere knowledge is worth little; but then by knowledge, he meant not merely knowledge without Christian doctrine, but knowledge without Love. Many a person now zealous on this point of education would be content if only the Bible, without note or comment, were taught. But St. Paul would not have been content, he would have calmly looked on and said, This is also secular knowledge. This, too, is the knowledge which puffeth up; but Christian knowledge is the Charity which alone buildeth up an heavenly spirit.

Let me try to describe more fully this secular knowledge.

It is Knowledge without Humility. For it is not so much the department of knowledge, as it is the spirit in which it is acquired, which makes the difference between secular and Christian knowledge. It is not so much the thing known, as the way of knowing it. "If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." "As he he ought to know." That single word "as" is the point of the sentence; for it is not what to know, but how to know, which includes all real knowledge. The greatest of modern philosophers, and the greatest of modern historians, Humboldt and Niebuhr, were both eminently humble men. So, too, you will find the real talent among mechanics is generally united to great

humility. Whereas the persons you would select as puffed up by knowledge are those who have a few religious maxims, and a few shallow religious doctrines. There are two ways, therefore, of knowing all things. One is, that of the man who loves to calculate how far he is advanced beyond others; the other, that of the man who feels how infinite knowledge is, how little he knows, and how deep the darkness of those who know even less than he who says, not as a cant phrase, but in unaffected sincerity, "I know nothing, and do go into the grave." That knowledge will never puff up.

Again, it is Liberty without Reverence. These men, to whom the Apostle writes in rebuke, were free from many superstitions. An idol, they said, was nothing in the world. But although freed from the worship of false gods, they had not therefore adored the true God. For it is not merely freedom from superstition which is worship of God, but it is loving dependence on Him; the surrender of self. "If any man love God, the same is known of Him." Observe

it is not said, "he shall know God," but "shall be known of Him;" that is, God shall acknowledge the likeness and the identity of spirit, and "will come unto him and make His abode with him." There is much of the spirit of these Corinthians existing now. Men throw off what they call the trammels of education, false systems, and superstitions, and then call themselves free: they think it a grand thing to reverence nothing; all seems to them either kingcraft or priestcraft, and to some it is a matter of rejoicing that they have nothing left either to respect or worship. There is a recent work in which the writer has tried to overthrow belief in God, the soul, and immortality, and proclaims this liberty as if it were a gospel for the race! My brother men, this is not high knowledge. It is a great thing to be free from mental slavery, but suppose you are still a slave to your passions? It is a great thing to be emancipated from superstition, but suppose you have no religion? From all these bonds. of the spirit Christianity has freed us, says St. Paul,

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but then it has not left us merely free from these, it has bound us to God. Though there be gods many, yet to us there is but one God." The true freedom from superstition is free service to religion: the real emancipation from false gods is reverence for the true God. For high knowledge is not negative, but positive; it is to be freed from the fear of the Many, in order to adore and love the One. And not merely is this the only real knowledge, but no other knowledge "buildeth up "the soul. It is all well so long as elasticity of youth and health remain. Then the pride of intellect sustains us strongly; but a time comes when we feel terribly that the Tree of Knowledge is not the Tree of Life. Our souls without God and Christ enter deeper and deeper into the fearful sense of the hollowness and darkness, the coldness, and the death, of a spirit separate from love. "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." Separate from love, the more we know, the profounder the mystery of life becomes; the more dreary and the more horrible becomes existence. I can conceive of no dying hour more awful than that of one who has aspired to know instead of to love, and finds himself at last amidst a world of barren facts and lifeless theories, loving none and adoring nothing.

Again, it is Comprehension without Love to man. You will observe, these Corinthians had got a most clear conception of what Christianity was. "An idol," said they, is "nothing in the world." There is none other God but One, and there is "but one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him." Well, said the Apostle Paul, and what signifies your profession of that, if you look down with supreme contempt on your ignorant brothers, who cannot reach to these sublime contemplations? What reality is there in your religion, if you look at men struggling in darkness, and are content to congratulate yourselves, that you are in the light? When heathen, they had loved these men; now that they were Christians they despised them! Was their Christianity, then, gain or loss? Did they rise in the scale of manhood or fall?

"Slaves - idolaters - superstitious"-alas! is that all they, or we, have learnt to say? Is that all our Christianity has given us?

Some of us have been taught that knowledge such as this is not advance, but retrogression. We have looked on our shelves laden with theology or philosophy, and have enumerated the systems which have been mastered; and we have felt how immeasurably superior in the sight of God is some benighted Romanist, who believes in transubstantiation and purgatory, but who has gone about doing good, or some ignorant, narrow religionist, who has sacrificed time and property to Christ, to the most correct theologian in whose heart there is no love for his fellow-men. For breadth of view is not breadth of heart; and hence the substance of Christianity is love to God and love to man. Hence, too, the last of the Apostles, when too weak to walk to the assemblies of the Church, was borne there, a feeble old man, by his disciples, and addressing the people as he spread abroad his hands, repeated again and again"Love one another;" and when asked why he said ever the same thing, replied, "Because there is nothing else; attain that, and you have enough." Hence, too, it is a precious fact, that St. Paul, the Apostle of Liberty, whose burning intellect expounded the whole philosophy of Christianity, should have been the one to say that Knowledge is nothing compared to Charity, nay, worse than nothing without it: should have been the one to declare that "Knowledge shall vanish away, but Love never faileth.”

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LECTURE XVII.

NOVEMBER 30, 1851.

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CORINTHIANS, viii. 8-13. But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse. But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak. For if any man see thee which hast knowledge, sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols; - And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died? But when ye sin so against the brethren and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. - Wherefore if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."

WE have already divided this chapter into two branches the former portion of it containing the difference between Christian knowledge and secular knowledge, and the second portion containing the apostolic exposition of the law of Christian conscience. The first of these we endeavored to expound last Sunday, but it may be well briefly to recapitulate the principles of that discourse in a somewhat different form. Corinth, as we all know and remember, was a city built on the sea coast, having a large and free communication with all foreign nations; and there was also within it, and going on amongst its inhabitants, a free interchange of thought, and a vivid power of communicating the philosophy and truths of those days to each other. Now it is plain that to a society in sucli a state, and to minds so educated, the Gospel of Christ must have presented a peculiar attraction, presenting itself to them as it did, as a law of Christian liberty. And so, in Corinth the gospel had "free course and was glorified," and was received with great joy by almost all men, and by minds of all classes and all sects; and a large num