EVER LEARNING, NEVER KNOWING.

The Proposition. Truth is that which is. But all that the man of nature can see, or find, is that which seems: the ground, therefore, of all his reasoning is that which seems. Only God can affirm what is. Apart from Revelation, therefore, strictly speaking, man knows nothing. He has Opinions : Truth he has not. And Revelation being given, it can only be understood on the conditions which Revelation itself affirms, and not on the conditions that accord with man's own will or judgment.

Never in any previous age of the world were there so many men devoted to literature as now. Their name is Legion. But though always learning, many of them get no nearer to the first plane of Truth's own kingdom. Not a few, through

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their very knowledge, are actually getting farther and farther off from Truth. It seems, not rather hard, but very hard, to be ever learning, and never coming at the end of learning;-which is, "the knowledge of the Truth." But how should it be otherwise with those who proudly defend fallacy against Truth, and resist Truth as fallacy? To them "the True Light" is darkness, while they retain boundless assurance in their darkness, because it is the darkness of light. When the light is darkness, how great is the darkness! The soul, prepossessed with its own "light of nature," comes not to the Light of God.

II. The knowledge even of facts, may be but a blind, doggedly keeping out the Truth. The veil which hung before the holy of holies was very curious, covered with varied and sublime hieroglyphics

those who saw it, saw hints of things wonderful, but the veil hid much more than it revealed. In like manner, varied and immense knowledge is often a splendid veil. Those who in ancient times saw the Cherubic veil, knew that its express purpose was to hide from them the too bright Presence, the Presence of Truth; but in this iron age, which in some respects, is the most wonderful of all the ages, many admire, with great

admiration, and study with intense interest and application, the universal veil, without knowing that it is a veil. They are "ever learning and

never able to come to the knowledge of the Truth." And worse," As Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these resist the Truth." They resist the Truth by truth, the Truth of the inner and superior kingdom by the quasi truth of the outer and inferior kingdom. Their light constitutes an inveterate repugnance to the True Light. Nothing is so blinding as light. One sun blinds our eyes to all the constellations of the firmament. Had the sun never set, it would have been to us the sole glory of the heavens; but now we know that it is but as a single speck of light, which, were it extinguished, would scarcely be missed. beyond the solar system. Thanks to sunset, for the withdrawment of the specious blind. But the light of man's natural intellect, of which nature is the great object, will not so quietly and easily give place to those far more glorious revelations, which can only be given to the spiritual understanding. It is with light, or knowledge, that the god of this world blinds the souls of men to true knowledge.

III.-" Facts are stubborn things," and they make stubborn souls. Nothing is more common

than for men, on the strength of facts, to fight against the Truth. Dear outer men, and their outer facts how proud and confident they are, how stiff and sturdy their opposition! What hope is there for their blindness, when they are so sure that they see? They do see indeed. What do they see? A few facts. But what are the facts that they know, compared with those which they do not know? The facts pertaining to the physical universe, do not comprehend all facts. There are facts innumerable, which do not come under any physical law. I will not say that it is pitiable that men should spend their half century in studying the objects, in reading the laws, and in gathering the facts of this outer creation; but it is pitiable that they should dream that there is no other sphere of objects and laws,— no higher order of facts. They are absorbed, to stupefaction, in their subject. The apology to be made for them is, that their subject is very great. But it is unhappy that it should blind them to one so much greater. They calmly settle down in their partial knowledge, as though it were all knowledge. They assume that this visible, outer creation, is the kingdom of God, and luminous with absolute Truth. They are as men in some wonderful cave, who take their cave for God's high creation, their

candle for the sun, and their conclusions for God's Truth. The whole web and tissue of their knowledge is but the specious means of excluding the Light of Eternal Truth from their eyes. They have sense, but not faith, opinions, but not "the Truth." The wisdom which the soul getteth by the harlot, Sense, is bastard-wisdom, not wisdom.

IV. I was lately reading a volume of sermons by one of the ablest of all the Egyptians.* He is a fine specimen of a mighty nature-spirit, whose forces are not divided, (like those of twice-born men,) between nature and the kingdom of heaven, but, Egyptian-like, all united in one direction, and devoted to the wonders of nature. He cannot endure his world-wisdom to be called "foolish," nor his natural reason to be called carnal. Mizraim is really a narrow thing, a straitness, yet will it maintain, with much pertinacity, that it embodies all mysteries. if you allow its own priests to lead you through the introductory halls, and temples of gods and mysteries, to the very inmost, there you find-an animal. It may be a very wonder of an animal 1; but it is an animal and nothing more. Likewise, I find nothing in these sermons, beyond

*Theodore Parker.

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