In second point, St Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence: on the contrary. He told us to be not only `as harmless as doves', but also `as wise as serpents'. He wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but he also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim. The fact that you are giving money to a charity does not mean that you need not try to find out whether that charity is a fraud or not. The fact that what you are thinking about is God himself (for example, when you are praying) does not mean that you can be content with the same babyish ideas which you had when you were a five-years-old.
It is, of course, quite true that God will not love you any the less, or have less use for you, if you happen to have been born with a very second-rate brain. He has room for people with very little sense, but he wants every one to use what sense they have. The proper motto is not `Be good, sweet maid and let who can be clever,' but `Be good, sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can.' God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all. But, fortunately, it works the other way round. Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened; one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world.
The temperance is, unfortunately, one of those words that have changed its meaning. It now usually means teetotalism. But in the days when the second cardinal virtue was christened `Temperance', it meant nothing of the sort. Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant
not abstaining, but going the right length and no further. It is a mistake to think that Christians ought all to be teetotallers; Mohammedanism, not Christianity, is the teetotal religion. Of course it may be the duty of a particular Christian, or of any Christian, at a particular time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or because he is with people who are incline to drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself. But the whole point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying.
One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reason - marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he start saying that the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning. (Oxford Professor, CS Lewis, Mere Christianity. Page 77-79)
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