The Book of the Holy Rosary: General Introduction, § 1. The Duty of Taking Pains to Acquire the Knowledge of God
Nothing can more nearly concern us in the business of “working out our salvation,” which St Paul exhorts us to do “in fear and trembling” (Phil. ii. 12), than to be sure (1.) that we have the clear warranty of the holy Apostles’ words for what we do; and (2.) that we are not living in the habitual disregard of any of their great precepts, of which we cannot but very well know, from the great earnestness with which they are again and again repeated, that there can be no indifference to them on our part without the greatest detriment to our souls.
It should, then, by no means escape our vigilance, that St Peter most distinctly preaches the labour of acquiring the knowledge of God as a duty of religion incumbent upon all. St Peter’s words are, “And do you, brethren, using all diligence, minister in your faith virtue, and in your virtue knowledge” (2 Peter i. 5). St Paul also says in substance exactly the same, “Let your charity abound more and more in all knowledge and in all understanding” (Phil. i. 9). Again, “See that you walk worthy of God, pleasing Him in all things, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. i. 10). Again, “Let us exhibit ourselves in all things as ministers of God, in chastity, in knowledge, and in long suffering” (2 Cor. vi. 6). No one will deny here that the knowledge which, according to the one Apostle, is to be the companion of charity, and, according to the other, the associate of virtue, is the “knowledge of God.”
That the Apostles are not here insisting on anything that could have a new or strange sound to the people of God, but only on old and perfectly familiar truth, is plain the moment we refer to the words of one of the prophets. Osee, the prophet of Israel, bitterly complains of the neglect and unworthy conduct of the degenerate priests of Israel, and says, “There is no knowledge of God in the land” (Osee iv. 1). And again, he complains, “My people are silent because they have no knowledge,” and then, addressing himself to the priests through whose neglect it had come to pass that the people were without knowledge, he says to that priesthood, in the name of God, “Because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will reject thee, that thou mayest no longer perform the functions of the priesthood to me: thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, and I will forget thee and thy children” (Osee iv. 6).
To take pains, then, according to the means which it may please God to place within our reach to store the mind with the “knowledge of God,” is thus, according to the doctrine of both St Peter and St Paul, a clear and plain duty of religion, and in enforcing this duty they are not enforcing any other except old and familiar truth.
But for every clear and plain duty of religion, it must be possible to bring forward good and intelligible reasons. For the Apostle never seeks for any servile compliance with his precepts, but is at all times careful to call only for our reasonable compliance, rationabile obsequium vestrum (Rom. xii. 1). And as nothing is better fitted to encourage and animate to the careful discharge of a duty than to see good and convincing reasons brought forward in its favour, we may properly pause here for a while to review some of the grounds on which the labour of acquiring a knowledge of God claims to be ranked as a plain duty of our religion.
It is St Paul, then, who assures us that to labour to acquire this knowledge is one of the ways by which God is to be pleased; and what can a Christian desire better than to please God? Again, it may be easily perceived how very necessary for the encouragement and direction of Christian life is the knowledge of God, from the following consideration.
St Paul, at the end of his career, says, “I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith.” Can we understand how St Paul could have been able to do this without an adequate knowledge of the religion of which he was the preacher, and, apart from a corresponding clear perception of the motives which it placed before him, to induce him to continue faithful to his calling? Doubtless, it is perfectly true that there will be incomparably higher toils and dangers proper to the life and career of an Apostle of the Faith, than can, in the ordinary course of God’s providence, be expected to become the lot of Christian life in general; but if there is one truth more clearly marked out for our guidance than another, it is, that a Christian way of life is in such permanent opposition to the ways of a fallen world, that every one who at the last may be able to say with St Paul, “I have kept the faith,” will have also to say with the Apostle, “I have (in my degree also) fought my fight.” The world at the present hour is well known to be full of those who make a mock of faith, and laugh at all the restraints of virtue; we are surrounded also by the world’s literature, which in every page insinuates the folly of faith and the pleasures of a life free from restraints; and what sort of safety can there be for the keeping the faith in the case of those who, weak and feeble as they undoubtedly will be if they are mere children of nature, and unprotected by the knowledge proper to their calling, have still to take their chance all the same, such as it may be, in the arena of life?
The knowledge of God may be thus easily perceived to be not less than a real necessity of Christian life, and the homely poet who has said, “They are most firmly good, who best know why,” has expressed a very great and valuable truth.
Again, our Lord says to us, “Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt. v. 48). But it is part of the perfection of God that He knows His own work. “Known unto the Lord,” says St James, in the council in Jerusalem, “from the beginning is His own work” (Acts xv. 18); and as God is an object of knowledge to Himself in His own works, it must plainly be, to say the very least, a great privilege to us to be admitted to share in the knowledge of God and of His works. And if the Scripture truly says that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, how shall this fear of God come into existence without a knowledge of the works of God, of which the Wise Man says, “I have learned that all the works of God shall last for ever, the works which He has done, that He may be feared” (Eccles. iii. 14).
Again, the Wise Man says, “It is not good where the soul is without knowledge” (Prov. xix. 2); and St Paul speaks of the condition of the nations, as having their understanding obscured by darkness, and as alienated from “the life of God, by the ignorance that is in them” (Eph. iv. 18). It is thus perfectly intelligible why the apostles should so earnestly insist on the truth, that a becoming measure of knowledge indispensably belongs to the dignity of the Christian calling, and that it is impossible for those who omit to improve the talent confided to their keeping, and to profit by the opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of God, which the providence of God puts in their way, to have the praise of “walking worthy of their calling.” On the contrary, of such as these it must be said, that it is unhappily they who bring a very real scandal upon their calling, and who are in perpetual danger of losing their faith, and of falling back into a worse state than that of the heathen, “becoming alienated from the life of God, by the ignorance that is in them,” and this frequently past the power of recovery.
Again, if omniscience is an attribute of the Godhead itself, it would be out of harmony with the order of the creation if the duty of acquiring knowledge, or, to use the language of the apostle, “of increasing in knowledge,” had not been made an integral part of the Christian redemption, to those who, being created in the image of God, are consequently fitted by nature for the acquisition of knowledge. God is the Author of human society, which is ordered after His image and likeness, and in whatever degree the inroads made by human sin and perversity may have deformed its likeness to the divine original, this is never wholly effaced. Now, we invariably find that in civil life ignorance is branded with a note of disgrace. It not only justly passes, in the right-minded estimate of all sensible persons, for that which is culpable and hateful in itself, but also justly operates to the prejudice of the person guilty of the ignorance, by its being the bar to his admission to all the more honourable and eligible employments, whether of public or private life. The analogy, therefore, of the divine government undoubtedly requires that ignorance in religion should not only be held to be, in like manner, a thing hateful and culpable in itself, but also that serious positive forfeits and penalties should be incurred by it in the religious and spiritual life, corresponding to those which ignorance is well known to bring with it in the walks of civil life. That whole populations, as well as particular individuals, may most calamitously and largely forfeit the favour and blessing of God, through their culpable indifference to the duty of increasing in knowledge, is unhappily a sad truth of experience, showing how much of human sin and imperfection still remains in the world; but we must in justice entirely acquit the holy apostles St Peter and St Paul from all share in the responsibility of this. For what can be plainer than that no such culpable ignorance could exist anywhere, if we were all as solicitous as we ought to be to give due heed to the words of the one apostle, who says to us, “Brethren, I would not have you ignorant,” and of the other, who says, “Using all diligence, minister in your virtue knowledge.”