1 COR. viii. 1.
“Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.”

I. THE error of the party of knowledge in the Corinthian
Church was not in giving its full value to knowledge, or in
bringing it to bear on practical life and daily conduct, but
it lay in bringing knowledge alone to bear on these things.
It lay in supposing that knowledge was the one only and
sufficing guide of the conduct of human life. The apostle
told them that if this knowledge was to guide them aright,
it must be sanctified knowledge, it must be knowledge
instructed and enlightened by the Divine grace of love.
II. Wherein and why is it that knowledge alone is
imperfect in teaching us how to govern ourselves, whether
as regards our own life or as regards that of others? The
apostle tells us it is because it puffeth up; that is to say,
tends to generate pride, and, if so, generates and fosters
those two faults which most unfit us to judge of the affairs
of life. One is selfishness, and the other short-sighted
ignorance. Pride is never without a mixture of cruelty.
You see it most clearly in the pride of race; but it is to be
seen in all kinds of pride. Not only is pride selfish and
unjust; it is short-sightedly ignorant. That which we
despise we cannot understand, and when we despise, in the
pride of our knowledge, any thing or any person, be sure
of this, that we are profoundly ignorant of that language
or that person.
III. Love edifies; that is, it builds up perfectly the
whole man—secures an entire and harmonious and propor-
tionate development of his nature. It does so by casting
out that selfishness in man which always leads to a diseased
and one-sided growth of his nature.
W. C. Magee, D.D.