Do not misunderstand me. Ignorance is no more a virtue than is wisdom. We must not forget the speaker at a church conference who began a tirade against the universities and education, expressing thankfulness that he had never been corrupted by contact with a college. After he had proceeded a few minutes, the chairman interrupted with the question:
"Do I understand that the speaker is thankful for his ignorance?"
"Well, yes," was the answer, "you may put it that way."
"Well, all I have to say," said the chairman, in gentle tones—"all I have to say is that he has much to be thankful for." Both ignorance and wisdom may be bars to the understanding of God's will. It is a question of the heart.
Suppose we put the problem to ourselves in the form of questions which will bring out some of the current conceptions of religion. Is religion a form of belief? Is it a form of experience? Is it the corporate life in an institution? Is it a relationship to God? They all lead us to speculation and to abstractions. Or if we ask similarly does religion depend on knowledge, on emotion, on sacramental connection with God, or on mystical detachment from the world, again we are led to try to find religion off by itself, where it may be weighed and measured and nurtured as if in a vacuum. They are interesting questions, but the only answer I have for them is that they suggest in no way the gracious words that came from the lips of Jesus, speaking to the hearts of babes.
His words were not of theological abstractions, however true or illuminating. He declared not the "must" of arbitrary authority nor the "ought" of impersonal law; but rather revealed in simple story or expression the things which were true to the world of men in which He lived, the harmonies which unite, the relationships which grow, the truths which were self-convincing.
John Drinkwater's Trojan soldier says it to his comrade:
"Capys, it is so little that is needed
For righteousness; we are so truly made,
If only to our making we were true."
In the days before we began to question the generally accepted standards, a judge always stood for the epitome of wisdom, and it is worth noting that the recognized function of a judge is to consider all questions in the light of the precedents of the past. That fact sufficiently explains the difference in receptivity to a new and liberating truth on the part of the wise and prudent as compared with babes unhampered by a judicial attitude or a collection of time-honored shibboleths.
Is it possible for us sufficiently to divest ourselves of our inherited and acquired prejudices, our theology, our thought-forms and the accepted standards of conduct, to enter into an appreciation of the experience of those to whom the words and presence of Jesus came as a new experience? It is doubtful whether we can very thoroughly, and yet I would ask you to make that attempt, that we may together examine anew the revealing simplicity of the message which Jesus brought to His generation nineteen hundred years ago, a message which is still valid in spite of all the checks and distortions which we have placed upon it.