And similarly science
emphasizes that the chief end of all knowledge is that we should
know the environment to which we are to conform. Knowledge is useful
to strengthen and clarify the mind, that it may see and conform to
truth and God: and if it fails to become a means to conformity, it
has failed of the chief, and practically the only, end for which it
was intended. We are to come "in the unity of the faith and of the
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of
the stature of the fulness of Christ." But knowledge which only
puffs up and distracts the mind from the great aims and ends which
it should serve is rebuked with equal emphasis by the Bible and by
science.
I would not claim that we have set too high a value upon knowledge,
perhaps we cannot; but there is something far higher on which we are
inclined to set far too low a value. This is righteousness and love;
and true wisdom is knowledge permeated, vivified, and transfigured
by devotion to these higher ends. And in this highest realm of the
mind feeling and will rule conjointly. Love is a feeling which
always will and must find its way to activity through the will, and
it is an activity of the will roused by the very deepest feeling,
inspired by a worthy object. If you try to divorce them, both die.
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