We hardly realize what a dreadful thing it is to have a will. To have none will not make us the less decided. On the contrary, it is when we see a thing to be the Lord's will that there is true and thorough decision. But we are often weak when it is a question of the Lord's glory, and strong when it concerns ourselves.
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In itself learning is a hindrance to the knowledge of God, though His grace does as it pleases. It hinders the knowledge of Scripture and of God's mind in it, because it leads the mind to another access of approach to these things, not the conscience, which is God's way. Learning may meet learning, and if one man give false, another may meet it by the true; but it cannot meet Scripture, and there is no learning in the conscience but that we are sinners. The mind is the subject of the Scripture, not the Scripture the subject of the mind. In God's way only have the Scripture to itself, and it meets all learning and needs none. God may give power to apprehend it to one more than another; but it meets everything the proud heart of man can desire, and wants nothing else, but in spirit judges and divides all things to the thoughts and intents of the heart. This is applicable thoroughly and everywhere. What, for instance, has impeded the intelligence of prophecy so much as mixing up human history with it?