The general principle affirmed in the text is, that there is an unalterable connection between the perceptions of the mind and the moral state of the heart between the understanding of truth and the practice of godliness. In other words, that spiritual intelligence grows as proficiency in spiritual practice grows; and that, other things being equal, nay, even under circumstances of the most unfavourable intellectual disparity, that man will have the clearest, fullest, richest, deepest insight into Divine things, whose will is most obediently and deeply fashioned after the will of God. The text holds good:
I. Because a life of true obedience to the Divine precepts is most favourable to the operation of those thinking and feeling faculties, in and through which the knowledge of God reaches the soul. Religion, we must remember, addresses itself to the whole nature of man that is, to all the parts of his intellectual, moral, and spiritual being. No man could know the doctrine, whose whole life was consciously opposed to the will of God, for he has determined not to know it; has raised as many obstacles as he can in the way of knowing it; used his reason, as far as he has used it, to sustain a false and foregone conclusion; putting out his own eyes, in order that he may be in a position to say, "I cannot see."
II. But the principle of our text goes much farther than this. Not only will a life opposed to the will of God raise up influences unfavourable to the reception of Divine truth, but a life which is according to that will, or which tries to be according to it, shall be blessed with a peculiar and special measure of religious knowledge an understanding hid from the wise and prudent of the deep things of God. Obedience strengthens love, and love induces likeness, and likeness is that which leads to the most perfect knowledge; nay, is the very means by which, in our glorified state, we are to have a true vision of God. The steps, or processes, of knowledge are unbroken; we pass from light to light, from glory to glory; from a comprehending with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, to a state in which, with the strong eagle gaze of our resurrection faculties, we see God face to face.
D. Moore, Penny Pulpit,No. 3412.
References: John 7:17. J. N. Norton, Every Sunday,p. 150; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines of Sermons,p. 399; Church of England Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 187; A. W. Hare, The Alton Sermons,p. 42; W. Thomson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 193; S. G. Matthews, Ibid.,vol. xxiv., p. 37; G. Dawson, Sermons on Disputed Points,p. 249; F. W. Robertson, Sermons,2nd series, p. 94; H. Melville, Penny Pulpit,No. 2992; J. Clifford, The Dawn of Manhood,p. 83. Joh 7:19-35. H. W. Beecher, Plymouth Pulpit Sermons,5th series, p. 417.