t is noble. And all this is meant to be the result of
God's speech to us.

So, then, two very plain practical principles may be deduced and
enforced from this first thought. First, the purpose of all revelation
and the test of all religion is--character and conduct.

It is all very well to know about God, to have our minds filled with
true thoughts about Him, His nature, and dealings with us. Orthodoxy is
good, but orthodoxy is a means to an end. There should be nothing in a
man's creed which does not act upon his life. Or, if I may put it into
technical words, all a man's _credenda_ should be his _agenda_; and
whatsoever he believes should come straight into his life to influence
it, and to shape character. Here, then, is the warning against a mere
notional orthodoxy, and against regarding Christian truth as being
intended mainly to illuminate the understanding, or to be a subject of
speculation and discussion. There are people in all generations, and
there are plenty of them to-day, who seem to think that the great
verities of the Gospel are mainly meant to provide material for
controversy--

'As if religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended';

and that they have done all that can be expected when they have tried to
apprehend the true bearing of this revelation, and to contend against
misinterpretations. This is the curse of religious controversy, that it
blinds men to the practical importance of the truths for which they are
fighting. It is as if one were to take some fertile wheat-land, and sand
it all over, and roll it down, and make it smooth for a gymnasium, where
nothing would grow. So the temper which finds in Christian truth simply
a 'ministration of questions,' as my text says, mars its purpose, and
robs itself of all the power and nourishment that it might find there.

No less to be guarded against is the other misconception which the clear
grasp of our text would dismiss at once, that the great purpose for
which God speaks to us men, in the revelation of Jesus Christ, is that
we may, as we say, be 'forgiven,' and escape any of the temporal or
eternal consequences of our wrongdoing. That _is_ a purpose, no doubt,
and men will never rise to the apprehension of the loftiest purposes,
nor penetrate to a sympathetic perception of the inmost sweetness of the
Gospel, unless they begin with its redemptive aspect, even in the
narrowest sense of that word. But there are a miser