wherein the heart
is to take comfort, how to seek help in distress and how to conduct
one's self in one's own station. If, though provided with spiritual
riches on all sides, you are not sufficient of yourself at all times
to grasp them, you can, nevertheless, always reach and appropriate
them by means of the ordinary ministry and office of the Church, yes,
by the aid of your fellow-Christians. Again, it is productive of the
greatest happiness to know that when living aright in the ordinary
walks of life established by God, you are more acceptable and
pleasing to him than you would be to purchase the works and merits of
all the monks and hermits.

17. What Paul terms being "enriched," first, "in all utterance," or
knowledge--which, in the exalted spiritual meaning of the words,
bears on life everlasting--is having the comfort of faith in Christ
and of invocation and prayer. And enriched in "all knowledge," means
having true conception and right judgment in all things of our
physical life and in all our earthly relations. All things that a
Christian should know and should possess are comprehended in these
two terms. These blessings are gifts and treasures indescribably
great. He who will contrast them with the destitution of our former
condition cannot but be joyful and thankful. I remember the time when
I, engaged in earnest study of Holy Writ, would have given a great
deal for the right exposition of a psalm; and when had I but begun to
understand a verse aright, I would have been as rejoiced as if born
to life anew.

18. Truly, then, we should now render to God heartfelt thanks for the
great favor and blessing of restored light and understanding in
Scripture, and the right conception of doctrinal matters. But, alas!
it is likely to be with us as with the Corinthians, who had received
most abundantly from Paul but by way of return had made ill use of it
and proved shamefully unthankful. And they met with retribution, the
worst of it being false doctrine and seductions, until at last that
grand congregation was wholly ruined and destroyed. A similar
retribution threatens us, yes, is before the door with appalling
knock, in the instance of the Turks and in other distress and
calamity. For this reason we should, with a thankful heart and
serious mind, pray, as Paul here does for his Corinthians, that God
would keep us steadfast in the possession of his gifts and blameless
in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

19. Pa