Among the poor, he quotes, "generosity ranks far
before justice, sympathy before truth, love before chastity, a pliant
and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one. In brief, the less
admixture of intellect required for the practice of any virtue, the
higher it stands in popular estimation."
But we are to love God with all our _mind_, as well as with all our
heart.
Does he, then, shut out the humble and the poor from the Kingdom of God?
Not for a moment. "Ultimately, we are what we love and care for, and no
limit has been set to what we may become without ceasing to be
ourselves." The door of love stands open, and through that doorway the
poor and the ignorant may pass to find the satisfaction of the saint.
But they must be careful to love the right things--to love truth,
goodness, and beauty. They must not be encouraged to sentimentalise;
they must be bidden to decide. The poor can be debauched as easily as
the rich. Many are called, but few chosen.
His main protest is against _the rule_ of the ignorant, the democratic
principle applied to the _amor intellectualis Dei_. Rich and poor,
learned and ignorant, all must accept, with humility, the teaching of
the Master. Plotinus, he points out, was the schoolmaster who brought
Augustine to Christ. The greatest of us has to learn. He who would teach
should be a learner all his life.
In everything he says and writes I find this desire to exalt Truth above
the fervours of emotionalism and the dangerous drill of the formalist.
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