Taste

“Love maketh faith more operative; there is a knowledge by sight, and a knowledge by taste. A man may guess at the goodness of wine by the colour, but more by the taste; that is a more 7’efreshing apprehensioft. Atigustine prayeth, Lord, make me taste by love what I perceive by Surely, we are never sotmd in Christianity till all the light that we 7’eceive be turned into love” It is so. Love comes to close dealings with truth, and gets a truer knowledge of it than any other grace. A hot iron, even though blunt, will penetrate further into a board than a cold tool, though it be sharp; and so love enters further into truth than mere thought or study can do. David would have us “taste and see “; for the palate sees more into the ’ essence of things than the eye can do; love discovers more than reason can ever know. That which love learns is also more useful than the cold notions of the brain, for it sets men working for Jesus, and leads them to follow him, and makes ’ them willing to suffer for him. We have heard of some who could not dispute for their Lord, and yet they died for him, and were not such among the best of his followers? He who only knows truth in the light of it, is not worthy to be compared with the believer who receives truth in the love of it.

O Lord, let me never use thy gospel as a pillow for my head, but as a medicine for my heart. Do not suffer me to be content with mere knowing; cause me always to be deeply in love with thy word.