Paul answers, 'prophecies, tongues, knowledge.' Now these three were
all extraordinary gifts belonging to the present phase of the
Christian life. But inasmuch as these gifts were the heightening of
natural capacities and faculties, it is perfectly legitimate to
enlarge the declaration and to use these three words in their widest
signification. So understood, they come to this, that all our present
modes of apprehension and of utterance are transient, and will be
left behind.
'Knowledge, it shall cease,' and as the Apostle goes on to explain,
in the verses which I have passed over for my present purpose, it
shall cease because the perfect will absorb into itself the
imperfect, as the inrushing tide will obliterate the little pools in
the rocks on the seashore. For another reason, the knowledge, the
mode of apprehension belonging to the present, will pass--because
here it is indirect, and there it will be immediate. 'We shall know
face to face,' which is what philosophers mean by intuition. Here our
knowledge 'creeps from point to point,' painfully amassing facts, and
thence, with many hesitations and errors, groping its way towards
principles and laws. Here it is imperfect, with many a gap in the
circumference; or like the thin red line on a map which shows the
traveller's route across a prairie, or like the spider's thread in
the telescope, stretched athwart the blazing disc of the sun--'but
then face to face.' Incomplete knowledge shall be done away; and many
of its objects will drop, and much of what makes the science of earth
will be antiquated and effete. What would the hand-loom weaver's
knowledge of how to throw his shuttle be worth in a weaving-shed with
a thousand looms? Just so much will the knowledges of earth be when
we get yonder.
Modes of utterance will cease. With new experiences will come new
methods of communication. As a man can speak, and a beast can only
growl or bark, so a man in heaven, with new experiences, will have
new methods of communication. The comparison between that mode of
utterance which we now have, and that which we shall then possess,
will be like the difference between the old-fashioned semaphore, that
used to wave about clumsy wooden arms in order to convey
intelligence, and the telegraph.
Think, then, of a man going into that future life, and saying 'I knew
more about Sanscrit than anybody that ever lived in Europe'; 'I sang
sweet songs'; 'I was a past master in philology, grammars, and
lexicons'; 'I was a great orator.' 'Tongues shall cease'; and the
modes of utterance that belonged to earth, and all that holds of
them, will drop away, and be of no more use.
If these things are true, brethren, with regard even to the highest
form of these high and noble things, how much more and more solemnly
true are they with regard to the aims and objects which most of us
have in view? They will all drop away, and we shall be left, stripped
of what, for most of us, has made the whole interest and activity of
our lives.