12. Have To Have More

Have to Have More "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath'."—Matthew 13:12.

"A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels"—Proverbs 1:5.

The" Times" May 8th, speaking of the Exhibition of the Royal Academy says, "No doubt people ought to bring to a collection of pictures, or other works of art, as much knowledge as possible, according to the old saying that if we expect to bring back the wealth of the Indies, we must take the wealth of the Indies out with us. Learning and progress are continual accretions." This witness is true. He who studies the works of art in an exhibition of paintings, being himself already educated in such matters, adds greatly to his knowledge, and derives the utmost pleasure from the genius displayed. On the other hand, he who knows nothing at all about the matter, and yet pretends to be a critic, simply exhibits his own ignorance and self-conceit, and misses that measure of enjoyment which an entirely unsophisticated and unpretending spectator would have received. We must bring taste and information to art, or she will not deign to reveal her choicest charms.

It is so with all the higher forms of knowledge. We were once in the fine museum of geology and mineralogy in Paris, and we noticed two or three enthusiastic gentlemen in perfect rapture over the specimens preserved in the cases; they paused lovingly here and there, used their glasses and discoursed with delighted gesticulations concerning the various objects of interest; they were evidently increasing their stores of information. They had, and to them more was given. Money makes money, and knowledge increases knowledge. A few minutes after, we noticed one of our own countrymen, who appeared to be a man of more wealth than education. He looked around him for a minute or two, walked along a line of cases, and then expressed the utmost disgust with the whole concern: "There was nothing there," he said, "except a lot of old bones and stones, and bits of marble." He was persuaded to look a little further, at a fine collection of fossil fishes, but the total result was a fuller manifestation of his ignorance upon the subjects so abundantly illustrated, and a declaration of his desire to remain in ignorance, for he remarked that "He did not care a rap for such rubbish, and would not give three half-crowns for a wagon-load of it." Truly, in the matter of knowledge, "Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." The same principle holds good in matters of religion: he who has love to Christ, and a spiritual appetite, enjoys the word of God, and finds it to be marrow and fatness; but he who has no spiritual perception turns away from the most instructive doctrine, rejecting it, even as the full soul loatheth the honeycomb. Such a hearer is no gainer by the gospel, and though it may seem to be a contradiction that he who had nothing should have something taken away from him, yet so it is: the unspiritual man is frequently a loser by the gospel which he hears, he loses that curiosity which at first induced him to listen, that measure of interest which in some degree aroused his attention, and that slender sense of ignorance which remained in him so long as he did not even know what the gospel was. Henceforth he has heard all that the preacher has to say, he thinks he knows all that the Bible can teach him, and any little hope that there may have been for him is greatly diminished. There must be life in us, or we cannot feed on the food around us; there must be an eye in the body, or light will be in vain; there must be some grace within the soul, or else all the grace in means and ordinances cannot enrich us. When the soil is made good the good seed yields a harvest; but often the barren soil devours all that the husbandman can put into it and is none the better. We ought to go to public worship with an earnest desire to obtain a messing, a willing heart to receive it, and a sense of our need of it, and then we shall not hear in vain. If, beyond this, our soul is in actual fellowship with our Lord already, we shall find that his paths drop fatness. "To him that hath shall be given."

Remember, too, that a religious profession requires grace to sustain it. A company which begins business without cash will soon lose even its nominal capital, will in fact lose what it never had; thus thoroughly illustrating the words of our Lord, and, as in a parable, setting before us the result of pretending to be Christians if we have no grace. If we have no oil in our vessels with our lamps, the lamps themselves will go out and leave us in total darkness. On the other hand, where there is grace already more grace will be given. As riches make riches, and knowledge acquires knowledge, so doth spiritual life grow, and add to itself gifts and virtue by which it is greatly enriched.