out becoming the child of the kingdom.

The object, therefore, which now engages us is less one of elucidation
than of self-examination. Let us discern ourselves. Let us see
whether we be in the faith. Let us expose soul and spirit to the
discrimination of the Word of God, which is a discerner of the thoughts
and intents of the heart.

I. THERE ARE TWO AVENUES OF KNOWLEDGE.--"Whom the world cannot receive,
because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him." Three things are
specified as beyond the range of the world's power: it does not
receive, it does not know, it does not see, the things of the unseen
and eternal world. It cannot see them, therefore it does not know
them, and therefore does not receive them, and this is especially true
of its attitude toward the Holy Ghost.

When the world hears talk of the Holy Spirit it brings to bear upon Him
those organs of cognition which it has been accustomed to apply to the
objects of the natural world, and even to the human life of Christ.
But, as might have been expected, these are altogether useless. It is
as absurd to endeavor to detect the presence of the spiritual and
eternal by the faculties with which we discern what is seen and
temporal, as it would be to attempt to receive the impression of a
noble painting by the sense of taste, or to deal with the problems of
astronomy by the tests that are employed in chemical analysis. The
world, however, does not realize its mistake. It persists in applying
tests to the Spirit of God which may be well enough in other regions of
discovery, but which are worse than useless here. "The natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know
them, because they are spiritually discerned." "Whom the world cannot
receive, for it beholdeth Him not, neither knoweth Him."

There was a touch of this worldly spirit even in Thomas, when he said,
"Except I see in His hand the print of the nails, and thrust my hand
into His side, I will not believe"; and in so far as the world-spirit
is permitted to hold sway within us, our powers of spiritual perception
will be blunted, and become infected with the tendency to make our
intellect or imagination our sole means of apprehending Divine truth.

There is a better way than this; and our Lord indicates it when He
says, "Ye know Him, for He abideth with you, and shall be in you."
Pascal said, "The world knows in order to love: the Christian loves, in
order to know."