Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 1.pdf/312

 others not left undone. From an ardent love to, and a faith in God, spring charity, justice, mercy, integrity, and truth. When these direct the life, our judgment is sincere, our mercy tender, and our faith strong. Those who make religion to consist in mere observances, in faith void of spiritual life, are indeed blind guides who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.

There is something very remarkable in this saying, for the camel, a large but gentle beast of burden, is said to be swallowed, while the gnat, one of the smallest of the insect tribe, is said to be strained at. Here, however, we may remark that the Greek word, rendered 'strain at, would be more correctly expressed by strain out; for the word signifies to separate by filtering, to strain off from dregs, and not to swallow or receive inwardly. The gnat is a genus of insects belonging to the order of diptera. The mouth is formed by a flexible sheath, enclosing bristles pointed like stings. The sting is a tube containing five or six spicula of exquisite minuteness, the bite of which occasions pain and a disagreeable itching; yet as the bite is not fatal, but only unpleasant and annoying, so these insects are named in Scripture to denote those trifling errors, which annoy and perplex us in our inquiries after truth. The camel, a large ponderous animal, is the emblem of that mass of scientific knowledge in the complex, which, as the beast of burden, is to carry us onward to the attainment of that more perfect truth which relates to heaven and life eternal. To swallow a camel, in a spiritual or religious sense, is to allow knowledge to pass uninvestigated and unimproved. To strain out a gnat, is to be over scrupulous and exact about small or trifling errors, while the