1. This gift of God illumines and perfects the intelligence. The
purpose of the gifts, it has been already explained, is to make
the soul more alive to, and more appreciative of, the whispered
instinct of God; not to create new faculties, but to increase the
power of those already existing. My mind, then, has to be
supernaturalized and refined to that pitch of perception which
will enable it to grasp and to understand God's message. Now the
mind itself works upon a great variety of subjects. It has whole
worlds to conquer, planes of thought which are very clearly
distinguishable; yet in its every activity it needs this divine
refinement, so that in all four gifts are allotted to perform this
complete enlightenment of the mind. Knowledge overcomes ignorance
and is concerned with the facts, visible and sense-perceived, in
creation; for by the council of the Vatican it is laid down as
part of the deposit of faith that human reason can prove the
existence of God altogether apart from the supernatural motives
which grace supplies. The visible world is held to contain ample
proofs which in themselves are adequate logically to convince
human understanding of the existence of God. Individual reason may
fail to satisfy itself. People may declare truthfully that they
are not convinced; the Church insists only that it can be done.
2. Knowledge, however, in this sense is a gift of God whereby we
discover Him in His own creation and in the works of man. It is
here no mere task set to reason for detecting the Creator in His
handiwork, but an actual vision by which the soul is
supernaturalized and sees Him patently everywhere. The beauteous
face of nature is merely seen as a veil, hiding a beauty more
sublime. Things of dread as well as things of loveliness come into
the scheme, things trivial and things tremendous, things majestic
and things homely, all that God has made. Even man's work, who is
himself only one of the greater masterpieces of the Great
Artificer, is affected by this new light with which the world is
flooded. The delicate pieces of machinery constructed by human
ingenuity, that gain in wonder and in power, are themselves still
God's work at one remove; they are the fruits of a mind that He
has constructed, and they do not exhaust the capacity of that
mind. They reveal hidden potentialities as well as express actual
achievements. Weapons of destruction, with all the horror they
rightly inspire, are yet witnesses again to that
parent-intelligence whence was begotten man himself. All this, of
course, as soon as considered, is admitted by every believer in
God, but the gift of knowledge makes it realized and seen
steadfastly.
3. Life, then, of itself is full of illusion. That is the cry,
desolating and pitiful, which arises from the higher followers of
every religious faith. Man is bound to the wheel, his mind is
compassed with infirmity, he is born into ignorance. Desire
tumultuously hustles all his days. He needs, therefore, some light
whereby he may find the true inner meaning of all with which he
comes in contact. Here, then, in the gift of Knowledge is such a
true vision, understanding, vouchsafed him of the visible things
of creation. He will realize as much, perhaps, even more than
before the attraction of beauty, only it will be no snare, but a
beckoning light. He will find in it now no illusion, but the
perfect image of a greater beauty. The charm of the world about
him will become greater, the wonders of nature, the intricate
pattern of mechanical appliances, the fury of storms, the tumult
of the wind, the terrific force of pestilence, the psychological
facts of man's mind, the construction of his frame, the grouping
of his social instincts, all now will be alive with God, shot
through with the divine splendor, elevated to His order of life,
eloquent of His name--a deepening knowledge of God achieved through
a knowledge of His creatures.