ABOUNDING LOVE Part 8

The wisdom of the fathers

ABOUNDING LOVE Part 8

The next phrase is, " That ye may approve things that are excellent"; more properly it should be, That ye may " discriminate the things which differ."

When the spiritual senses are purified and strengthened, the soul is then able to discriminate the differences in the moral realm, corresponding to the physical senses discriminating the sights and sounds, the colors and magnitudes, the bitters and sweets of the physical world.

We are living in a world where everything is mixed, where good and evil, truth and error, love and hatred, questions of conscience and casuistry, in a thousand forms and shades, are so blended that we can never make our way through such a tangled forest of moral problems unless we are endowed with a spiritual instinct or intuitive perception of the difference between the one and the other.

We need a mighty divine love-sense, by which we can detect the difference between things which to the outward would seem alike but in reality are opposite to each other.

To cite only sample instances. There is a difference between temptation and sin, the one being an appeal or persuasion to evil, the other being the consent of the will to evil. The pure heart, like the pure Jesus, may be tempted and even suffer under it, and yet maintain perfect loyalty and love. There is a difference between evil thoughts and thoughts of evil. An evil thought is a guest in the heart: a thought of evil is a tramp knocking at the door of the mind.

(from "Abounding Love" by George D. Watson)