“And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of Us,
to know good and evil.”—Gen. iii. 22.
It is plain that the temptation under which man fell in paradise was
this, an ambitious curiosity after knowledge which was not allowed him:
next came the desire of the eyes and the flesh, but the forbidden tree
was called the tree of knowledge; the Tempter promised
knowledge; and after the fall Almighty God pronounced, as in the text,
that man had gained it. “Behold, the man is become as one of Us, to
know good and evil.”
You see it is said, “man is become as one of Us, to know good
and evil,” because God does know evil as well as good. This is His
wonderful incommunicable attribute; and man sought to share in what God
was, but he could not without ceasing to be what God was also, holy and
perfect. It is the incommunicable attribute of God to know evil without
experiencing it. But man, when he would be as God, could only attain
the shadow of a likeness which as yet he had not, by losing the
substance which he had already. He shared in God's knowledge by losing
His image. God knows evil and is pure from it—man plunged into evil
and so knew it.
Our happiness as well as duty lies in not going beyond our
measure—in being contented with what we are—with what God makes us.
They who seek after forbidden knowledge, of whatever kind, will find
they have lost their place in the scale of beings in so doing, and are
cast out of the great circle of God's family.
It is, I say, God's incommunicable attribute, as He did not create,
so not to experience sin—and as He permits it, so also to know it; to
permit it without creating it, to know it without experiencing it—a
wonderful and incomprehensible attribute truly, yet involved, perhaps,
in the very circumstance that He permits it. For He is every where and
in all, and nothing exists except in and through Him. Mysterious as it
is, the very prison beneath the earth, its chains and fires and
impenitent inmates, the very author of evil himself, is sustained in
existence by God, and without God would fall into nothing. God is in
hell as well as in heaven, a thought which almost distracts the mind to
think of. The awful God! “Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, or
whither shall I go from Thy Presence? If I climb up into heaven, Thou
art there; if I go down to hell, Thou art there also.” Where life is,
there is He; and though it be but the life of death—the living death
of eternal torment—He is the principle of it. And being thus
intimately present with the very springs of thought, and the first
elements of all being, being the sustaining cause of all spirits,
whether they be good or evil, He is intimately present with evil, being
pure from it—and knows what it is, as being with and in the wretched
atoms which originate it.
If there be this sort of connexion between God's knowledge and
sufferance of evil, see what an ambition it was in our first parents to
desire to know it without experiencing it; it was, indeed, to desire to
be as gods,—to know the secrets of the prison-house, and to see the
worm that dieth not, yet remain innocent and happy.
This they understood not; they desired something which they knew not
that they could not have, remaining as they were; they did not see how
knowledge and experience went together in the case of human nature; and
Satan did not undeceive them. They ate of the tree which was to make
them wise, and, alas! they saw clearly what sin was, what shame, what
death, what hell, what despair. They lost God's presence, and they
gained the knowledge of evil. They lost Eden, and they gained a
conscience.
This, in fact, is the knowledge of good and evil. Lost spirits do
not know good. Angels do not know evil. Beings like ourselves, fallen
beings, fallen yet not cast away, know good and evil; evil not external
to them, nor yet one with them; but in them, yet not simply of them.
Such was the fruit of the forbidden tree, as it remains in us to this
day.
We do not know in what the duty and happiness of other beings
consist; but at least this seems to have been man's happiness in
Paradise, not to think about himself or to be conscious of himself.
Such, too, to recur to the parallel especially suggested on this day,
seems to be the state of children. They do not reflect upon themselves.
Such, too, seems to be the state of those orders of Angels whose life
is said to consist in contemplation—for what is contemplation but a
resting in the thought of God to the forgetfulness of self? Hence the
Saints are described as “Virgins who follow the Lamb whithersoever
He goeth.” But Adam, discontented with what he was, pined after a
knowledge which he could not obtain from without—which he could only
have from miserable experience within—from moral disorders within him,
and from having his mind drawn to the contemplation of himself in
consequence of those disorders. He obtained the wished for knowledge;
and his first recorded act afterwards was one of reflection upon self,
and he hid himself among the trees of the garden. He was no longer
fitted for contemplating glories without him; his attention was
arrested to the shame that was upon him.
What is so miserably seen in the history of our first parents has
been the temptation and sin of their posterity ever since,—indulgence
in forbidden, unlawful, hurtful, unprofitable knowledge; as some
instances will show.
1. I ought to notice in the first place that evil curiosity which
stimulates young persons to intrude into things of which it is their
blessedness to be ignorant. Satan gains our souls step by step; and his
first allurement is the knowledge of what is wrong. He first tempts
them to the knowledge, and then to the commission of sin. Depend on it
that our happiness and our glory, in these matters, is to be ignorant,
as well as to be guiltless. St. Paul says that “it is a shame even to
speak” of those things which are done by the sons of Belial in secret.
Oh, thoughtless, and worse, oh, cruel to your own selves, all ye who
read what ye should not read, and hear what ye should not hear! Oh, how
will you repent of your folly afterwards! Oh, what bitter feelings, oh,
what keen pangs, will shoot through your souls hereafter, at the
memory, when you look back, of what has come of that baneful curiosity!
Oh, how will you despise yourselves, oh, how weep at what you have
brought on you! At this day surely there is a special need of this
warning; for this is a day when nothing is not pried into, nothing is
not published, nothing is not laid before all men.
2. In the next place I would observe, that the pursuit of science,
which characterizes these times, is very likely to draw us aside into a
sin of a particular kind, if we are not on our guard. We read, in the
book of Acts, of many who used curious arts burning their books; that
is, there are kinds of knowledge which are forbidden to the Christian.
Now this seems strange to the world in this day. The only forbidden
subjects which they can fancy, are such as are not true
—fictions, impostures, superstitions, and the like. Falsehood they
think wrong; false religions, for instance, because false. But
they are perplexed when told that there may be branches of real
knowledge, yet forbidden. Yet it has ever been considered in the
Church, as in Scripture, that soothsaying, consulting the stars, magic,
and similar arts, are unlawful—unlawful, even though not false; and
Scripture certainly speaks as if at least some of them were more than
merely a pretended knowledge and a pretended power; whereas men
now-a-days have got to think that they are wrong, merely because
frauds and impostures; and if they found them not so, they
would be very slow to understand how still they are unlawful. They have
not mastered the idea that real knowledge may be forbidden us.
3. Next it is obvious to speak of those melancholy persons who boast
themselves on what they call their knowledge of the world and of life.
There are men, alas not a few, who look upon acquaintance with evil as
if a part of their education. Instead of shunning vice and sin, they
try it, if for no other reason, simply for this—that they may have
knowledge of it. They mix with various classes of men, and they throw
themselves into the manners and opinions of all in turn. They are
ready-witted perhaps, prompt and versatile, and easily adapt themselves
so as to please and get acquainted with those they fall in with. They
have no scruples of conscience hindering them from complying with
whatever is proposed; they are of any form of religion, have lax or
correct morals, according to the occasion. They can revel with those
that revel, and they can speak serious things when their society is
serious. They travel up and down the country perhaps, or they are of
professions or pursuits which introduce them to men of various
languages, or which take them abroad, and they see persons of opposite
creeds and principles, and whatever they fall in with they take as so
many facts, merely as facts of human nature, not as things right or
wrong according to a certain fixed standard independent of themselves.
Now whatever of religion or truth remains in our fallen nature is not
on the surface: these men, then, studying what is uppermost, are in
fact but studying all that is evil in man, and in consequence they have
very low notions of man. They are very sceptical about the existence of
principle and virtue; they think all men equally swayed by worldly,
selfish, or sensual motives, though some hide their motives better than
others, or have feelings and likings of a more refined character. And
having given in to sin themselves, they have no higher principle within
them to counteract the effect of what they see without; all their
notions of man's nature, capabilities, and destinies, are derived from,
and are measured by, what goes on in the world, and accordingly they
apply all their knowledge to bad purposes. They think they know, and
they do know too truly on the whole, the motives and inducements which
will prevail with men; and they use their knowledge to overreach,
deceive, seduce, corrupt, or sway those with whom they have to do.
4. Another very different class of persons who study evil, and pride
themselves upon it, and are degraded by it, are those who indulge
themselves in contemplating and dwelling on the struggle between right
and wrong in their own minds. There have been from time to time men of
morbid imaginations, of any or no religious creed, who have so
exercised themselves. Indeed there has been a large school of writers
in very various departments, for years, I may say centuries past,
though happily they are diminishing now, who delight in bringing out
into open day all the weaknesses and inconsistencies of human nature;
nay worse, take pains to describe bad men, and how they feel, and what
they say; who interest the mind in bad men, nay in bad Angels, as if
Satan might be thought of otherwise than with shuddering. And there are
others, men of mistaken religious views, who think that religion
consists in dwelling on and describing the struggle between grace and
corrupt nature in the soul. Christ has brought us light and life, and
would have us put off what we are, and follow Him, who knew no sin. But
these men, far from rising even to the aspiration after perfection, do
not advance in their notion of spiritual religion beyond the idea of
declaring and lamenting their want of it. Confession is with them
perfection; nay, it is almost the test of a Christian, to be able to
discourse upon his inward corruption. It is well to confess sin in
detail with shame as an act of penitence; it is a snare to speak of it
vaguely and in public.
5. Lastly, even when used rightly, the knowledge of sin is not
without its danger. As mediciners would not exist were there no illness
or disease, so it is mental disease which gives rise to casuists. Pain
leads us to think of our bodies, and sin of our souls. Were our souls
in perfect harmony, they would act like an instrument in tune; we
should with difficulty divide the sounds, even if we would; but it is
the discordance, the jar within us, which leads us to a serious
contemplation of what we are. The same remark obviously applies to a
great deal of theological knowledge, on which men who have it are
tempted to pride themselves; I mean exact knowledge of heresies and the
like. The love of God alone can give such knowledge its right
direction. There is the danger lest men so informed find themselves
scrutinizing when they should be adoring, reasoning when they should be
believing, comparing when they should be choosing, and proving when
they should be acting. We know two things of the Angels—that they cry
Holy, Holy, Holy, and that they do God's bidding. Worship and service
make up their blessedness; and such is our blessedness in proportion as
we approach them. But all exercises of mind which lead us to reflect
upon and ascertain our state; to know what worship is, and why we
worship; what service is, and why we serve; what our feelings imply,
and what our words mean, tend to divert our minds from the one thing
needful, unless we are practised and expert in using them. All proofs
of religion, evidences, proofs of particular doctrines, scripture
proofs, and the like,—these certainly furnish scope for the exercise
of great and admirable powers of mind, and it would be fanatical to
disparage or disown them; but it requires a mind rooted and grounded in
love not to be dissipated by them. As for truly religious minds, they,
when so engaged, instead of mere disputing, are sure to turn inquiry
into meditation, exhortation into worship, and argument into teaching.
Reflections such as these, followed up, show us how different is our
state from that for which God made us. He meant us to be simple, and we
are unreal; He meant us to think no evil, and a thousand associations,
bad, trifling, or unworthy, attend our every thought. He meant us to be
drawn on to the glories without us, and we are drawn back and (as it
were) fascinated by the miseries within us. And hence it is that the
whole structure of society is so artificial; no one trusts another, if
he can help it; safeguards, checks, and securities are ever sought
after. No one means exactly what he says, for our words have lost their
natural meaning, and even an Angel could not use them naturally, for
every mind being different from every other, they have no distinct
meaning. What, indeed, is the very function of society, as it is at
present, but a rude attempt to cover the degradation of the fall, and
to make men feel respect for themselves, and enjoy it in the eyes of
others, without returning to God. This is what we should especially
guard against, because there is so much of it in the world. I mean, not
an abandonment of evil, not a sweeping away and cleansing out of the
corruption which sin has bred within us, but a smoothing it over, an
outside delicacy and polish, an ornamenting the surface of things while
“within are dead men's bones and all uncleanness;” making the garments,
which at first were given for decency, a means of pride and vanity. Men
give good names to what is evil, they sanctify bad principles and
feelings; and, knowing that there is vice and error, selfishness,
pride, and ambition, in the world, they attempt, not to root out these
evils, not to withstand these errors;—that they think a dream, the
dream of theorists who do not know the world;—but to cherish and form
alliance with them, to use them, to make a science of selfishness, to
flatter and indulge error, and to bribe vice with the promise of
bearing with it, so that it does but keep in the shade.
But let us, finding ourselves in the state in which we are, take
those means which alone are really left us, which alone become us.
Adam, when he had sinned, and felt himself fallen, instead of honestly
abandoning what he had become, would fain have hid himself. He went a
step further. He did not give up what he now was, partly from dread of
God, partly from dislike of what he had been. He had learnt to love sin
and to fear God's justice. But Christ has purchased for us what we lost
in Adam, our garment of innocence. He has bid us and enabled us to
become as little children; He has purchased for us the grace of
simplicity, which, though one of the highest, is very little
thought about, is very little sought after. We have, indeed, a general
idea what love is, and hope, and faith, and truth, and purity, though a
poor idea; but we are almost blind to what is one of the first elements
of Christian perfection, that simple-mindedness which springs from the
heart's being whole with God, entire, undivided. And those who
think they have an idea of it, commonly rise no higher than to mistake
for it a mere weakness and softness of mind, which is but its
counterfeit. To be simple is to be like the Apostles and first
Christians. Our Saviour says, “Be ye harmless,” or simple, “as doves.”
And St. Paul, “I would have you wise unto that which is good, and
simple concerning evil[2].” Again, “That ye may be blameless
and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a
crooked and perverse nation[3].” And he speaks of the “testimony of”
his own “conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not
with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God,” he had his conversation
in the world and towards his disciples. Let us pray God to give us this
great and precious gift; that we may blot out from our memory all that
offends Him; unlearn all that knowledge which sin has taught us; rid
ourselves of selfish motives, self-conceit, and vanity, littlenesses,
envying, grudgings, meannesses; turn from all cowardly, low, miserable
ways; and escape from servile fears, the fear of man, vague anxieties
of conscience, and superstitions. So that we may have the boldness and
frankness of those who are as if they had no sin, from having been
cleansed from it; the uncontaminated hearts, open countenances, and
untroubled eyes of those who neither suspect, nor conceal, nor shun,
nor are jealous; in a word, so that we may have confidence in Him, that
we may stay on Him, and rest in the thoughts of Him, instead of
plunging amid the thickets of this world; that we may bear His eye and
His voice, and know no knowledge but the knowledge of Him and Jesus
Christ crucified, and desire no objects but what He has blessed and bid
us pursue.
[1] for Innocents' Day.
[2] Rom. xvi. 19.
[3] Phil. ii. 16.
END OF VOL. VIII.