dition of their
acceptance with him. They delay setting their foot on the stair which
alone can lead them to the house of wisdom, until they shall have
determined the material and mode of its construction. For the sake of
knowing, they postpone that which alone can enable them to know, and
substitute for the true understanding which lies beyond, a false
persuasion that they already understand. They will not accept, that is,
act upon, their highest privilege, that of obeying the Son of God. It is
on them that do his will, that the day dawns; to them the day-star
arises in their hearts. Obedience is the soul of knowledge.

By obedience, I intend no kind of obedience to man, or submission to
authority claimed by man or community of men. I mean obedience to the
will of the Father, however revealed in our conscience.

God forbid I should seem to despise understanding. The New Testament is
full of urgings to understand. Our whole life, to be life at all, must
be a growth in understanding. What I cry out upon is the
misunderstanding that comes of man's endeavour to understand while not
obeying. Upon obedience our energy must be spent; understanding will
follow. Not anxious to know our duty, or knowing it and not doing it,
how shall we understand that which only a true heart and a clean soul
can ever understand? The power in us that would understand were it free,
lies in the bonds of imperfection and impurity, and is therefore
incapable of judging the divine. It cannot see the truth. If it could
see it, it would not know it, and would not have it. Until a man begins
to obey, the light that is in him is darkness.

Any honest soul may understand this much, however--for it is a thing we
may of ourselves judge to be right--that the Lord cannot save a man from
his sins while he holds to his sins. An omnipotence that could do and
not do the same thing at the same moment, were an idea too absurd for
mockery; an omnipotence that could at once make a man a free man, and
leave him a self-degraded slave--make him the very likeness of God, and
good only because he could not help being good, would be an idea of the
same character--equally absurd, equally self-contradictory.

But the Lord is not unreasonable; he requires no high motives where
such could not yet exist. He does not say, 'You must be sorry for your
sins, or you need not come to me:' to be sorry for his sins a man must
love God and man, and love is the very thing that has to