HINDRANCES TO KNOWLEDGE
‘My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.’
What is it which keeps a generation apparently possessed of advantages so largely increased for gaining knowledge, from the acquisition of true knowledge, whether in things earthly or heavenly?
I. The multiplication of outward helps and facilities for learning has a direct tendency to counteract true knowledge.
II. A second impediment to knowledge is, a misuse of stimulus in its pursuit.
III. A third is, the attractiveness of a sort of reading which does not tend to knowledge at all.
IV. The knowledge, the lack of which destroys, is the knowledge not of things but of persons: the acquaintance of soul with soul, of spirit with spirit. The contact of the inmost unseen self of man with the inmost unseen essence of Him in Whom man loves, and Whom to know truly is eternal life.
—Dean Vaughan.