Preparation For Learning

( Originally Published 1891 )

BEFORE an artist can do anything the instrument must be tuned. Our astronomers at this moment are preparing for an event which happens only once or twice in a lifetime: the total eclipse of the sun in the month of August. They have begun already. They are making preparations. At chosen stations in different parts of the world they are spending all the skill that science can suggest upon the construction of their instruments; and up to the last moment they will be busy adjusting them; and the last day will be the busiest of all, because then they must have the glasses and the mirrors polished to the last degree. They have to have the lenses in place and focussed upon this spot before the event itself takes place.

Everything will depend upon the instruments which you bring to this experiment. Everything will depend upon it; and therefore fifteen minutes will not be Iost if we each put our instrument into the best working order we can. I have spoken of lenses, and that re-minds me that the instrument which we bring to bear upon truth is a compound thing. It consists of many parts. Truth is not a product of the intellect alone; it is a product of the whole nature. The body is engaged in it, and the mind, and the soul.

The body is engaged in it. Of course, a man who has his body run down, or who is dyspeptic, or melancholy, sees everything black, and distorted, and untrue. But I am not going to dwell upon that. Most of you seem in pretty fair working order so far as your bodies are concerned; only it is well to remember that we are to give our bodies a living sacrifice—not a half-dead sacrifice, as some people seem to imagine. There is no virtue in emaciation. I don't know if you have any tendency in that direction in America, but certainly we are in danger of dropping into it now and then in England, and it is just as well to bear in mind our part of the lens—a very compound and delicate lens—with which we have to take in truth.

Then comes a very important part: the intellect—which is one of the most useful servants of truth ; and I need not tell you as students, that the intellect will have a great deal to do with your reception of truth. I was told that it was said at these conferences last year, that a man must crucify his intellect. I venture to contradict the gentleman who made that statement. I am quite sure no such statement could ever have been made in your hearing—that we were to crucify our intellects. We can make no progress without the full use of all the intellectual powers that God has endowed us with.

But more important than either of these is the moral nature—the moral and spiritual nature. Some of you remember a sermon of Robertson of Brighton, entitled " Obedience the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge." A very startling title ! Obedience the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge." The Pharisees asked about Christ : " How knoweth this man letters, never having learned? " How knoweth this man, never having learned? The organ of knowledge is not nearly so much mind, as the organ that Christ used, namely, obedience ; and that was the organ which He Himself insisted upon when He said : " He that willeth to do His will shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." You have all noticed, of course, that the words in the original are : If any man will to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine." It doesn't read, " If any do His will," which no man can do perfectly ; but if any man be simply willing to do His will—if he has an absolutely undivided mind about it—that man will know what truth is and know what falsehood is ; a stranger will he not follow. And that is by far the best source of spiritual knowledge on every account—obedience to God—absolute sincerity and loyalty in following Christ. " If any man do His will he shall know "—a very remarkable association of knowledge, a thing which is usually considered quite intellectual with obedience, which is moral and spiritual.

But even although we use all these three different parts of the instrument, we have not at all got at the complete method of learning. There is a little preliminary that the astronomer has to do before he can make his observation. He has to take the cap off his telescope. Many a man thinks he is looking at truth when he is only looking at the cap. Many a time I have [looked down my microscope and thought I was looking at the diatom for which I had long been searching, and found I had simply been looking at a speck of dust upon the lens itself. Many a man thinks he is looking at truth when he is only looking at the spectacles he has put on to see it with. He is looking at his own spectacles. Now, the common spectacles that a man puts on—I suppose the creed in which he has been brought up—if a man looks at that, let him remember that he is not looking at truth : he is looking at his own spectacles. There is no more important lesson that we have to carry with us than that truth is not to be found in what I have been taught. That is not truth. Truth is not what 1 have been taught. If it were so, that would apply to the Mormon, it would apply to the Brahmin, it would apply to the Buddhist. Truth would be to every-body just what he had been taught. Therefore let us dismiss from our minds the predisposition to regard that which we have been brought up in as being necessarily the truth. I must say it is very hard to shake oneself free altogether from that. I suppose it is impossible.

But you see the reasonableness of giving up that as your view of truth when you come to apply it all around. If that were the definition of truth, truth would be just what one's parents-were--it would be a thing of hereditary trans-mission, and not a thing absolute in it-self. Now, let me venture to ask you to take that cap off. Take that cap off now, and make up your minds you are going to look at truth naked—in its reality as it is, not as it is reflected through other minds, or through any theology, however venerable.

Then, there is one thing I think we must be careful about, and that is be-sides having the cap off, and having all the lenses clean and in position—to have the instrument rightly focussed. Every-thing may be right, and yet when you go and look at the object, you see things altogether falsely. You see things not only blurred, but you see things out of proportion. And there is nothing more important we have to bear in mind in running our eye over successive theological truths, or religious truths, than that there is a proportion in those truths, and that we must see them in their pro-portion, or we see them falsely. A man may take a dollar or a half-dollar and hold it to his eye so closely that, he will hide the sun from him. Or he may so focus his telescope that a fly or a boulder may be as large as a mountain. A man may hold a certain doctrine, very intensely—a doctrine which has been looming upon his horizon for the last six months, let us say, and which has thrown every-thing else out of proportion, it has be-come so big itself. Now, let us beware of distortion in the arrangement of the religious truths which we hold. It is almost impossible to get things in their true proportion and symmetry, but this is the thing we must be constantly aiming at. We are told in the. Bible to " add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge balance," as the word literally means—balance. It is a word taken from the orchestra, where all the parts—the sopranos, the basses, the altos, and the tenors, and-all the rest of them—must be regulated.

If you have too much of the bass, or too much of the soprano, there is want of harmony. That is what I mean by the want of proper focus—by the want of proper balance—in the truths which we all hold. It will never do to exaggerate one truth at the expense of an-other, and a truth may be turned into a falsehood very, very easily, by simply being either too much enlarged or too much diminished. I once heard of some blind men who were taken to see a menagerie. They had gone around the animals, and four of them were allowed to touch an elephant as they went past. They were discussing afterward what kind of a creature the elephant was. One man, who had touched its tail, said the elephant was like a rope. Another of the blind men, who had touched his hind limb, said, " No such thing 1 the elephant is like the trunk of a tree." Another, who had felt its sides, said, " That is all rubbish. An elephant is a thing like a wall." And the fourth, who had felt its ear, said that an elephant was like none of those things; it was like a leather bag. Now, men look at truth at different bits of it, and they see different things of course, and they are very apt to imagine that the thing which they have seen is the whole affair—the whole thing. In reality, we can only see a very little bit at a time; and we must, I think, learn to believe that other men can see bits of truth as well as ourselves. Your views are just what you see with your own eyes; and my views are just what I see; and what I see depends on just where I stand, and what you see depends on just where you stand; and truth is very much bigger than an elephant, and we are very much blinder than any of those blind men as we come to look at it.

Christ has made us aware that it is quite possible for a man to have ears and hear nothing, and to have eyes and see not. One of the disciples saw a great deal of Christ, and he never knew Him. " Have I been so long time with. you, Philip, and yet hast thou not known Me ? " He that hath seen Me bath seen the Father also." Philip had never seen Him. He had been looking at his own spectacles, perhaps, or at something else, and had never seen Him. If the instrument had been in order, he would have seen Christ. And I would just add this one thing more: the test of value of the different verities of truth depends upon one thing: whether they have or have not a sanctifying power. . That is another remarkable association in the mind of Christ—of sanctification with truth—thinking and holiness—not to be found in any of the sciences or in any of the philosophies. It is peculiar to the Bible. Christ said" Sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy Word is truth." Now, the value of any question—the value of any theological question—depends upon whether it has a sanctifying influence. If it has not, don't bother about it. Don't let it disturb your minds until you have exhausted all truths that have sanctification within them. If a truth makes a man a better man, then let him focus his instrument upon it and get all the acquaintance with it he can. If it is the profane babbling of science, falsely so called, or anything that has an injurious effect upon the moral and spiritual nature of a man, it is better let alone. And above all, let us remember to hold the truth in love. That is the most sanctifying influence of all. And if we can carry away the mere lessons of toleration, and leave behind us our censoriousness, and criticalness, and harsh judgments upon one another, and excommunicating of everybody except those who think exactly as we do, the time we shall spend here will not be the least useful parts of our lives.