I. We should possess childlike simplicity of character. To preserve the freshness of childhood in the moral world is the object of the gospel.
II. With this we are to unite manliness of understanding. Our childlikeness is to be confined to the moral nature; beyond that, in the reign of the intellect, will andactivities, we are commanded as Christians to be men. (Christian Age.)
The manliness of the gospel
1. “Did it ever strike you that St. Paul was mad?” was a question asked once, not by a scoffer, but by a man of powerful intellect, who felt that the question between Christianity and unbelief turned upon the case of Paul. For if the charge of Festus could be substantiated, one of the most powerful chapters of Christian evidence would be cancelled.
2. But we commend to the honest inquirer the study of this one chapter. St. Paul is correcting an exaggerated idea of the value of a particular gift. In all times human nature has been inclined to put display above profiting; and it required a sound and well-balanced judgment to keep gift in its place. And who can doubt that the true estimate was that taken here by St. Paul? (see 1Co_12:31; 1Co_14:1). It required a very sound and a very sober judgment to subordinate the gift of tongues to the far less brilliant gift of “prophesying” in which only edification was aimed at. The maxims interspersed among the exhortations of this chapter are eminently illustrative of the plain andpractical character of the man whom it is necessary for infidelity to represent as an enthusiast, or to hint into a madman (1Co_14:14-15; 1Co_14:19; 1Co_14:26; 1Co_14:32-33; 1Co_14:40).
3. The subject thus introduced is larger and wider than the mere question of the sanity of St. Paul. The charge, “In understanding be men,” warns us very seriously of a danger, peculiarly pressing in these times, that, namely, of divorcing religion from manliness. If this is the gospel voice, then one offence, at least, is rolled out of the way. St. Paul says that there may be a childishness in the use of Divine gifts. He boldly declares even spiritual influences to be subordinate to considerations of propriety, of expediency, of common sense. No man is to say, I am no longer a free agent; the hand of God is upon me. This is to bring God’s own gift into dishonour. It is just because it fits into His other gifts, because, while it elevates, it also sobers, that I see it to be an evidence of His interposition.
4. Now if miracle itself is not to be so treated as to make it childish, what shall we say of the excusesmade in our day for the utter repudiation of every such criterion in reference to matters which can certainly plead no inspired authority? There are two higher classes of subjects upon the treatment of which St. Paul throws a guiding and comforting light in the weighty maxim before us.
I. Revelation of course must be above reason. What intellect could discover, God would not reveal. If therefore on any topic revelation exists, that is proof sufficient that on that topic reason was silent.
1. When once the Divine origin of a revelation is attested by evidences of its being worthy of its Divine author, then it speaks, on each point which it touches, with authority.
2. But the office of the understanding in the first weighing of evidences, does not end here. The trying and testing of professed books of Scripture by the early Church was felt to be a heavy responsibility of the reason. Nor was the one settlement absolutely final. Particular clauses are found, on more modern and searching scrutinies, to be no part of the original text. And it is true reverence, as well as true wisdom, to exercise, upon all such matters, a large-minded and a manly judgment. God will guard His word written, and the God of truth is never honoured by a disingenuous treatment of the truth itself.
3. But there remains the weightiest matter of all, which is the interpretation of doctrine by the comparison of Scripture with Scripture. And here the mind must be employed if edification is to come to the student. Yet there are men who seem almost to think the contradiction of reason a sign of truth, and the mortification of the intellect a Christian duty.
II. Practical duty. Sin makes great havoc of human happiness; but next to it stands folly.
1. Could you but know, e.g., the utter foolishness of many parents and teachers on the great subject of education you would not wonder at the results, whether in the wilfulness of the youth or the misery of the manhood. Or again, would we but look back upon our own life’s history, and mark the giddy thoughtlessness or the perverse infatuation which has characterised it, we could not but become conscious of the force of St. Paul’s caution.
2. But how large is the action of this unintelligent childishness inside the Church, in the counsels and examples of Christian men! The whole theory of monasticism, the whole system of “direction,” whether Romanist or Anglican, all that subjects my conscience to another man’s rule, all that encourages a grovelling spirit in the worship and service of God in place of that honest, free, courageous bearing which finds the love of God life, and His service perfect freedom, is a contravention of Paul’s rule.
3. How childish are half the biographies, diaries, devotions, of Christian saints! How little calculated to draw after them into God’s service the strong inquiring intellect, the warm wholesome heart, the young enterprising life! Conclusion: Each one of us is in some real measure responsible for the look and tone of Christianity to our age. It is ours to make it great or to make it little, noble or contemptible. (Dean Vaughan.)
Men in understanding
Inverse 19 the word “understanding” stands for the intellectual faculty itself; here it refers to its state of development, to the mature condition of mind, heart, and general character. The word “children,” which occurs twice in the text, first stands for boys, then for babes. The word “malice” may also be taken more generally as designating all evil dispositions and affections. Lastly, the word “men” signifies “perfect,” and refers to maturity of age, fulness of mental development, fitness for the manly discharge of the duties of life. Thus looked at the text would seem to say, “Don’t feel and act like a set of ignorant, conceited boys--with respect to all that is bad, indeed, be the veriest babes; but as to all that is good, be like those who, having gone through a long course of discipline, are at once ripe in years, and perfectly equipped as to knowledge and accomplishments, thorough “men.”
I. In the text then we have the infant, the boy, and the man, and something belonging to each used for moral and religious ends. A human being comes into the world as a combination of capabilities--so much raw material. By taking “malice” and “understanding” as representative terms we have the two great departments of human nature--the intellectual and the emotional.
1. A little infant, then, has wrapped up within it the capacities of the intellect and the forces of the passions. Without referring to the undeveloped state of an infant’s understanding, the apostle fixes attention on the undeveloped condition of the passions--the one idea that he wanted, and which, therefore, he exclusively refers to. Looking at a little sweet babe the apostle seems to says, “Whatever capacity there may be here for what is bad, it is not manifested yet. How free from all that deforms society and degrades men! True, all the men in the world were once babes; would to God that, in one sense, they were babes again! But Christians, by the expulsion of corruption through the influences of the regenerating Spirit, ought “in malice to be children.”
2. Next we have the picture of a number of youths, who have advanced beyond childhood, but who have not yet acquired the knowledge, dispositions, and habits belonging to riper years. They are necessarily inexperienced; they think a great deal of any small acquirement or advantage by which they are distinguished; there are often among them envyings and animosities; they like pleasure and excitement; they can hardly understand what is meant by self-sacrifice, and know little of the greatness and beautifulness of duty as duty. However promising they may be they cannot but be defective in those things which belong to disciplined virtue andmanly worth. In infants the reason and the feelings are alike undeveloped; in youth both have unfolded to a certain extent, and the apostle directs attention to the want of proportion between the development of the understanding and that of the passions. The understanding needs to be opened and cultivated--the passions grow of themselves. If the intellect be let alone, it will not expand; if the feelings be let alone, they will expand the more. The one requires to be encouraged and stimulated; the others to be repressed and restrained. The consequence is, that in early life the inferior parts are strong and active, as by the force of an internal impulse. Hence we have the phenomena that so often distinguish immaturity of character, folly, vanity, selfishness, ignorance, the want of all those things which make up that moral “understanding” in which the apostle wished the Corinthians to be men, but which is seldom found to be the characteristic of boys.
3. The image of full-grown men, mature in character as.well as in years. The apostle supposes a number of human beings to have passed through a thorough course of culture and discipline, and to have acquired an intellectual equipment, and attained a moral fitness for what they are to be and to do in life.
II. The appropriateness of this mode of illustration to the condition of the Corinthian Church.
1. The Corinthians were ambitious of personal distinction; they each wished to have the highest gifts conferred upon them; and those who were entrusted with any, especially with the power of unknown, or eloquent speech, were utterly regardless of order and propriety in their use and exhibition. The Christian Church became a theatre of display; and the Christian life, instead of being something serious and earnest, put on the appearance of a boisterous holiday, and was as little dignified as a plaything or a song. But, worse than this, with the immaturity, vanity, and folly of boys, there mingled at Corinth the passions of men. They could not all be first; some must listen if others speak; where some lead, others must follow. But this is difficult where all are ambitious; and hence the society was torn by dissensions, developed bad feelings, was combined with a narrow and childish intellect and heart.
2. It is to this state of things that the admonition in the text refers. The apostle endeavours to instruct them by laying down important general principles, and to reprove them by severe and appropriate censure; aiming thus at once to open their understandings, and to subdue their passions. “Be not mere boys, without deep and comprehensive views of duty. In malice, indeed, I wish you were even like babes, but in wisdom and knowledge, in mastery of yourselves, and in calm devotedness to the great business of the Christian life, I wish you to be men.”
III. The advantages which attend the possession of a character like this.
1. It is favourable to stability both of opinion and conduct. One who is really a spiritual man, may be depended on. His intelligence is large; his views are matured; his principles are established; his habits are fixed; he is not likely to become marked by the levity and inconstancy which are often seen in the ignorant and immature, the young and the superficial (see Eph_4:8-15).
2. It capacitates for entering into the profounder truths and for enjoying the higher forms of instruction. In some parts of the Church there is the constant reiteration of just the three or four truths which make up what we call the gospel. The people are thus always kept at the alphabet, or in the spelling-book, or in the shortest and easiest reading lessons, and are never introduced to the high arguments which lie beyond. Now without the culture of their own minds, the full development of their spiritual faculties, a congregation will listen to the higher forms of Christian teaching, not only without benefit, but with weariness and wonder. That it is not right for people to continue in this stale, you learn from Heb_5:1-14; Heb_6:1-20, and 1Co_3:1-2, i.e.,let me have hearers who “in understanding are men,” and instead of their being fatigued by the demand upon them, or offended by the form in which I convey my thoughts, they shall feel refreshed and strengthened by the exercise, and find themselves wiser, better, and happier men.
3. It will correct religious taste, and elevate and improve the general character. The Corinthians preferred the showy to the substantial. Their character was flashy, superficial. The apostle wished them to be “men in understanding,” that all this might be thoroughly corrected. And so it will be still if we, too, rise into the character that has been set before us. Christian men, who in some degree answer to this, are superior to dependence on flash and rhetoric, or any of the many and mean arts by which Christian teaching is often disfigured. Having got rid of the craving for distinction, learnt the more excellent way of being great, the extinction of selfishness, and the service of love, they will be free from those evil tempers in which small and contracted souls indulge. They will delight in the cultivation of all that is noble and dignified in the Christian character, and be distinguished and known alike for the strength and the beauties of holiness.
4. Those who are “men in understanding” will best know how to receive the kingdom of heaven like little children. But does not the New Testament demand the understanding of a child in order to the simple reception of the faith? No; it is not the childish, undeveloped understanding that is required, but the feeling in the child that is the effect of this--a readiness to rely on authority, and to receive the testimony of those whom it looks up to, without questioning. But this spirit is not, in a man, the consequence of ignorance, but the fruit of knowledge. Those who know nothing, and those who know a little, are often the most conceited. It requires the cultivated understanding of the man to know when he has arrived at an ultimate fact--where it is necessary to pause or stop in curious inquiries, and when it is proper to welcome the positive utterances of authority, and to rely upon them like a little child. The most mature Christian will live in the exercise of the most simple faith. He who knows most of God will know most of himself; he will, therefore, believe when others doubt, and will distrust when others presume. (T. Binney.)
Christian manliness
1. The scholar alludes here to the teaching of his Master, and defines it (Mat_18:3; Mat_11:25). It was notably the manner of the Great Teacher to fling out thoughts in a round unguarded axiom which He trusted the good sense of His sympathetic disciples to define and limit. His very doing so is of itself conclusive proof that He meant His pupils to be no children, but men, in understanding. He might have addressed us as Moses addressed the Israelites, and given us details instead of principles, and an example in the room of an axiom. It pleased Him, on the contrary, to inaugurate an adult dispensation.
2. The Church, however, has not entered into this purpose of its Founder. Others besides the Galatians desire to turn back again to be in bondage to “beggarly elements.” But if men will be childish in their religion, they shall not shelter themselves under Christ’s injunctions if St. Paul can hinder it. To be children in malice towards one another, and in humility towards God, is that state to which alone the Father reveals His grace. But to be children in understanding; to be credulous without reflection, obedient without intelligence;--this could not appear to the noblest intellect of his age worthy of that gospel which reveals the wisdom of God, and educates man into perfect manhood, into the stature of the fulness of Jesus Christ.
3. The right use of the understanding in regard to Christianity is, of course, determined by the special nature of the Christian faith. Christianity rests upon facts which are wholly supernatural. It reveals mysteries of which reason can say nothing, either to confirm or to dispute. At the same time, a Divine system which is to recover man must be fitted to men. It cannot override one part of man, his reason, in reaching another, his spirit. Consider the manly use of the understanding--
I. In reference to Divine truth. The revelation of God in His Son’s gospel asks of our understanding--
1. To estimate its credentials with a candid mind and a pure heart.
(1) Suppose that I have been educated within the bosom of Christ’s Church, and have thus, by the happy experience of a religious life, put the faith of Jesus to frequent proof. In that ease I only use my understanding, as a man should, if I decline to reopen without cause the question of Christian evidences. A man may know whom he has trusted, and be no fool.
(2) Others, however, have had an educational belief in Christianity, which personal experience never verified. Before the understanding of such men the gospel pleads. It asks no more than a full hearing and an honest verdict. Their duty is to be, in malice, indeed, children, but in understanding, men; asking fair proof, and taking no less; grappling with a robust, not finical, intellect the question of questions. There is a reason which can be given for the faith that is in us.
2. The intelligent interpretation of its records. A child’s open heart may drink in so much of God’s light from a text or two as will quicken it into holy life; but God means grown Christians to be at pains, by manly research and the use of reason, to ascertain the sense of His book. It is childish to dip into its pages with a pin, as if it were a book of fate; it is hardly less childish to cite texts at random, out of their connection, without asking when they were written, or with what design.
3. To grasp its truths as a whole. There is no intellectual manliness in shunning all dogmatic statements of theological truth, as if, in the haze of revelation, nothing could confidently be made out. It is true that few propositions in theology have escaped contradiction, and that at particular periods a rage for defining and systematising has been carried too far. But when all this has been conceded, the fact remains that the Church, from the second century to the nineteenth, has exercised its understanding on the materials of revelation with such substantial harmony that all its main doctrines have survived and commanded the assent of the most opposite schools. But were theology a chaos of conflicting opinions, still it would be manly to grapple with the teaching of Scripture, and endeavour to digest it into a system. Shall the facts of nature be classified and not the results of revelation?
4. An attitude towards all truth of fearless and open-minded candour, so long as it is unproved; so soon as it is proved true, one of rejoicing welcome. The crude and hasty theories of the day, whose value is chiefly to stimulate and guide further research, will make no man uneasy who has studied the history of past discovery. The shadows which coming truths cast before them are often mis-shapen, after the manner of shadows, and they startle the timorous; but the truth itself is always reassuring, a cheerful thing to healthy souls. No man ought to be so eager in the search for truth as the friend of Christ, nor can any man afford to meet it with a manlier greeting.
II. In reference to human practice.
1. It was in connection with a practical question--the profitable conduct of congregational worship--that St. Paul gave this injunction. When people are possessed by a very high ideal of duty, or ruled by their faith in what is Divine, they come easily in danger of despising common sense. Once let men imagine that God can possibly be pleased with a thing which offends reason, and there is nothing too irrational for them to do in His service. Or, let them only suppose that He cares for external form, apart from the inner spirit of an act, and the door is opened at once to childish trifling in worship and a painful casuistry in morals.
2. Two principles rationally applied will solve many knots of casuistry.
(1) That we are no longer children, who please our Father by an unintelligent observance of mere external rules, but men, whose service, to be worth anything, must proceed from intelligent sympathy with His mind. To do, or abstain from doing, this, that, or the other petty act, because you are told you ought to, without knowing why, is to be a child. Be men.
(2) The subordination of the morally small to the morally great. All right things are not equally important. Seek therefore to make sure of “the weightier matters of the law.” For if our eye is set on the doing of these, the “mint, anise, and cummin,” which are apt to give us so much trouble, will not be left undone. Conclusion: The understanding holds the function in Christian life of a regulator, nowise that of a moving power. A Christian who is only one intellectually is simply no Christian at all; for, till the heart is converted and become that of a little child, the man cannot see, cannot, by force of intellect, discern, the kingdom of heaven. Let us seek to retain the heart of childhood, but let us guide it by the understanding of a man. (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.)
Christianity and manhood
I. The distinction between childishness and childlikeness. “Be not children in mind: howbeit in malice be ye babes.”
1. These two ideas are frequently confounded, especially by young Christians. At first awaking to the Divine life wonder largely takes the place of understanding, and feeling that of thought. Being simple in motives is easily mistaken for being simple in ideas and rudimentary in knowledge. In the newly converted the two simplicities are engagingly combined, and they may thus appear to be essentially connected. But this is not the case. The experience which does not strengthen and enrich itself by sanctified thinking and meditation will soon become unreal, unwholesome, and unsafe.
2. The childhood which is the ideal of Christian character is a moral and not an intellectual childhood. We are to “put away childish things” according to the general law of a healthy intellectual growth. “Leaving the first principles” we are to “go on unto perfection.”
II. The summons to perfect our nature. This applies to every faculty we possess, in its relative and normally harmonious development.
1. “Muscular Christianity” has still its gospel to preach. The body has claims which are too much ignored. Flabbiness and effeminacy are not proofs of holiness. The qualities and accomplishments, too, by which men are enabled to fulfil their role as business men, members of society, citizens, etc., are well within the “calling” of the Christian, and demand his attention. They may be a “sign” to many who would fail to appreciate more esoteric doctrines or practices.
2. And so of knowledge, this most characteristic and ennobling faculty of man. Science, art, philosophy, and literature have all their place in providing us with a true understanding of life, and perfecting the mind for higher things. The true goal of all these studies is “Divine knowledge” or “wisdom,” but they lead only to the threshold. Christ calls us to a higher school, and even identifies the knowledge of God and Himself with “eternal life.”
Conclusion: The following considerations may help to prove that Christianity, so far from stunting or stereotyping the thought of man, has a real need for its exercise, and makes the greatest demands upon it.
1. Christianity introduces its subjects to a great, suggestive, and stimulating experience.
2. It reveals the profoundest principles of life, and trains us in their application.
3. It demands the wisest and most skillful service.
4. It declares it asits purpose to perfect man’s nature and character.
5. It proclaims every faculty sacred, and of the nature of a Divine stewardship. (St. John A. Frere.)
The right use of the understanding in matters of religion
It may be of use to premise an observation or two, the truth of which must be presupposed in all directions given to men about the exercise of their understandings in religion.
1. Religion is in itself an intelligible and rational thing, of which a clear and consistent account may be conveyed to the mind, and which may be shown to have a foundation in reason and argument, and not in the ignorance and folly of mankind.
2. Religion is a thing not only barely intelligible and rational, but apparently and obviously so, which may be easily understood and comprehended by mankind. Thus it must be, if religion be indeed the subject of the inquiry and discussion of all men; because it is certain that the faculties of the greatest part of men will never allow them to penetrate into things that are any way abstruse or difficult. Besides, we must conclude from the goodness of God that He would never make anything upon which the happiness of man depends, as it plainly does upon religion, either impossible or hard to be known or comprehended by them.
I. I shall now proceed to consider what this exercise of the understanding which is required from us with respect to religion implies.
1. It implies fairness and candour and care and diligence in our religious inquiries and disquisitions; that we keep our intellectual eye pure and unprejudiced, and withal lively and vigorous, in which state alone it is capable of discerning and tracing out the truths of religion.
2. Another thing implied in the exercise of our understandings with respect to religion is our acquiescing in the principles of it upon sufficient evidence being laid before us of their truth. As credulity, or an implicit belief, is altogether unbecoming, so likewise is a sceptical humour, which puts us upon evading evidence, which makes us doubt where there is no occasion to hesitate, where there is light enough to guide us, and to determine our judgment, according to the established rules of reasoning, and of giving our assent.
3. There is one thing more implied in the due exercise and cultivation of our understandings with respect to religion, which is our improving and increasing our knowledge of it in proportion to our abilities. If men would but faithfully endeavour to become acquainted with the entire system of religion, many of them, at least, would in a little time find that they were able to penetrate much farther into it than, before their making the experiment, they were apt to think they could do. The case of our mental and bodily powers is in general the same: both are greatly strengthened by use, whereas without it they run to rust, and contract a weakness and ineptitude for effecting things of which, through practice and custom, they would have been very capable.
II. I shall show for what reasons we should thus exercise and employ our understandings about religion.
1. Both our dignity and happiness depend upon our doing so.
(1) What a shining figure does that man make who, by means of a well-tutored and refined understanding and a large stock of true knowledge, can speak pertinently upon any important subject that occurs in conversation and instruct others in the useful or entertaining sciences or arts of life!
(2) And as our dignity depends so much upon our exercising our understandings in the subjects of religion, So likewise does our happiness. For as we are formed with a love of truth and a desire of knowledge, so every discovery of truth is attended with a most sensible delight. And the more important and certain the truth which is discovered is, the greater is the pleasure which results from the knowledge of it. Now, as the great truths of religion must to every ingenious man appear to be above all others momentous, and likewise very clear and certain, the mind which inquires into them and gradually traces them out must be entertained with a most pure and continually increasing pleasure.
2. We should exercise our intelligent powers about religion, because without this there can be no merit or virtue in our religion, nor can it ever be pleasing and acceptable to God. Religion, according to the most obvious notion of it, is a reasonable, voluntary, and liberal service, flowing from principles of light and knowledge, the calm approbation of our minds, and the generous affections of our hearts.
Instructions and inferences:
1. We may see the ingenuous spirit of our religion which, disdaining to take advantage of the ignorance, credulity, and inattention of mankind, lays itself open to the examination of all men, and even invites and requires them carefully to try and prove it.
2. We may see that the ignorance of the true nature and grounds of religion, or, which is very nearly related to it, the implicit belief of religion which so commonly prevails among professed Christians, even in places of the greatest liberty, is very faulty and inexcusable.
3. We may infer the iniquity of all those methods which areused to deter or discourage men in inquiring freely into religion and increasing as far as they are able their knowledge of it.
4. We may see how much it concerns every man to raise and cultivate in himself a serious, honest, and diligent, temper of searching into religion, and to propagate the same among others as far as it is in his power to do it; because in this temper the very essence of the duty of exercising our understandings about religion consists, and because it is the seedplot of truth and virtue in men, the root from whence the most generous improvements both in the knowledge and practice of our duty shoot and grow.
5. Let the knowledge which we attain to in consequence of the exercise of our understandings about religion be always substituted by us as the foundation of a good conduct and virtuous conversation in the world, Religion is, above all other sciences and institutions, practical. (J. Orr, D. D.)
The mind the standard of the man
Dr. Watts once overheard a stranger say, “What! is that the great Dr. Watts?” The Doctor, who was of low stature, turning to the gentleman, promptly said--
“Were I so tall to reach the poles,
Or mete the ocean with my span,
I must be measured by my soul--
The mind’s the standard of the man.”
The true test
The true test of any Church or ministry is not so much the knowledge which it gives or the order which it secures, as its productiveness of new men in Christ Jesus; and it is an awful test. When I see where there is the least disturbance among you, where there is the slightest disagreement in a Sunday school matter, that the old worthy members of my Church act like anybody else, and squabble, and full of answerings, call back and carry away hard feelings, I say to myself, “I have not made any men yet,” my preaching has been as poor as any other minister’s. One fails for one reason and another for another. When I judge from what you are, I feel that I am about as poor a minister as I know of, (H. W. Beecher.)
