It is very true, and should be acknowledged in the fullest manner, that for the study of the highest moral and spiritual questions another faculty than the understanding is wanting; and that without this faculty the understanding alone cannot arrive at truth.  But it is no less true, that while there is, on the one side, a faculty higher than the understanding, which is entitled to pronounce upon its defects; “for he that is spiritual judgeth all things,” ([Greek:  auachriuei];) so there is a clamour often raised against it, not from above, but from below,—­the clamour of mere shallowness and ignorance, and passion.  Of this sort is some of the outcry which is raised against rationalism.  Men do not leap, per saltum mortalem, from ordinary folly to divine wisdom:  and the foolish have no right to think that they are angels, because they are not humanly wise.  There is a deep and universal truth in St. Paul’s words, where he says, that Christians wish “not to be unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life.”  Wisdom is gained, not by renouncing or despising the understanding, but by adding to its perfect work the perfect work of reason, and of reason’s perfection, faith.

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NOTE I. P. 331.

“A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of St. John," &c.—­The interpretation of this chapter, and particularly of the part alluded to in the text, is of no small importance; for it is remarkable, that the highest notions with respect to the presence of our Lord in the Holy Communion are often grounded upon this passage in St. John’s Gospel, which yet, in the judgment of others, most decisively repels them.

The whole question resolves itself into this—­Are our Lord’s words in this place co-ordinate with the Holy Communion, or subordinate to it?  That is, do they and the communion alike point to some great truth superior to them both:  or do our Lord’s words, in St. John, point to the communion itself as their highest meaning?

The communion itself expresses a truth above itself by a symbolical action; the words of our Lord, in St. John, are exactly the same with that symbolic action; it is natural, therefore, to understand them not as referring to it, but to the same[14] higher truth to which it refers also:  and the more so as the communion is not once mentioned by St. John either in his Gospel or in his Epistles; but the idea which the communion expresses appears to have been familiar to his mind; at least, if we suppose that his mention of the blood and water flowing from our Lord’s side in his Gospel, and his allusion again to the same fact in his Epistle, have reference in any degree to it, which seems to me most probable.