Brethren, be not children in understanding:  howbeit, in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.

It would be going a great deal too far to say, that they who fulfilled the latter part of this command, were sure also to fulfil the former; that they who were men in understanding, were, therefore, likely to be children in malice.  But the converse holds good, with remarkable certainty, that they who are children in understanding, are proportionally apt to be men in malice:  that is, in proportion as men neglect that which should be the guide of their lives, so are they left to the mastery of their passions; and as nature and outward circumstances do not allow these passions to remain as quiet and as little grown as they are in childhood,—­for they are sure to ripen without any trouble of ours,—­so men are left with nothing but the evils of both ages, the vices of the man, and the unripeness and ignorance of the child.

It is indeed a strange and almost incredible thing, that any should ever have united in their minds the notions of innocence and ignorance as applied to any but literal children:  nor is it less strange, that any should ever have been afraid of their understanding, and should have sought goodness through prejudice, and blindness, and folly.  Compared with this, their conduct was infinitely reasonable who weakened and tormented their bodies in order to strengthen, as they thought, their spiritual nature.  Such conduct was, by comparison, reasonable because there is a great deal of bodily weakness and discomfort, which really does not interfere with the strength and purity of our character in itself, although, by abridging our activity, it may lessen our means of usefulness.  But what should we say of a man who directed his ill usage of his body to that part of our system which is most closely connected with the brain; who were purposely to impair his nervous system, and subject himself to those delusions and diseased views of things which are the well-known result of any disorder there?  Yet this is precisely what they do who seek to mortify and lower their understanding.  It is as impossible that they should become better men by such a process, as if they were literally to take medicines to affect their nerves or their brain, in the hope of becoming idiotic or delirious.  It is, in fact, the worst kind of self-murder; for it is a presumptuous destroying of that which is our best life, because we dread to undergo those trials which God has appointed for the perfecting both of it and of us.

But from the wilful blindness of these men, let us turn to the Christian wisdom of the Apostle:  “In malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.”  Let us turn to what is recorded of our Lord in his early life, at that age when, as man, the cultivation of his understanding was his particular duty—­that he was found in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions:  not asking