n of intelligence. It is so for two reasons.

_First_, the word spoken by God in His Son has for its primary object,
not speculation, but "righteousness."[95] Theology is essentially a
practical, not a merely theoretical, science. Its purpose is to create
righteous men; that is, to produce a certain character. When produced,
this lofty character is sustained by the truths of the Gospel as by a
spiritual "food," milk or strong meat. Christianity is the art of holy
living, and the art is mastered only as every other art is learned: by
practice or experience. But experience will suggest rules, and rules
will lead to principles. The art itself creates a faculty to transform
it into a science. Religion will produce a theology. The doctrine will
be understood only by the possessor of that goodness to which it has
itself given birth.

_Second_, the Apostle introduces the personal action of God into the
question. Understanding of the higher truths is God's blessing on
goodness,[96] and destruction of the faculty of spiritual discernment is
His way of punishing moral depravity.[97] This is the general sense and
purport of an extremely difficult passage. The threatened billow is
still far away. But before it rolls over us, we seem to be already
submerged under the waves. Our only hope lies in the Apostle's
illustration of the earth that bears here thorns and there good grain.

Expositors go quite astray when they explain the simile as if it were
intended to describe the effect on moral character of rightly or wrongly
using our faculty of knowledge. The meaning is the reverse. The Apostle
is showing the effect of character on our power to understand truth.
Neither soil is barren. Both lands drink in the rain that often comes
upon them. But the fatness of the one field brings forth thorns and
thistles, and this can only mean that the man's vigour of soul is itself
an occasion of moral evil. The richness of the other land produces
plants fit for use by men, who are the sole reason for its tillage.[98]
This, again, must mean that, in the case of some men, God blesses that
natural strength which itself is neither good nor evil, and it becomes a
source of goodness. We come now to the result in each case. The soil
that brings forth useful herbs has its share of the Creator's first
blessing. What the blessing consists in we are not here told, and it is
not necessary to pursue this side of the illustration further. But the
other soil, w