The natural endowments of fallen man are very extensive. He has a love of truth, great powers of investigation, and he is able to recognize the Author of nature as God and ascertain some of His perfections. Still this natural knowledge is limited. It is true to say now, no less than formerly: "Man can find no reason of all those works of God that are done under the sun: and the more he shall labour to seek so much the less shall he find; yea, though the wise man should say that he knoweth it, he shall not be able to find" (Eccle. viii. 17). The natural intelligence falls still further short of the great system of truths that belong to the higher state which God calls man to enter. Those truths are the basis on which our supernatural life must be built up. We cannot arrive at them by our power of natural penetration; and even when they are propounded to us by God through human teaching, we are still unable to assimilate them without an infusion of grace and the faculty of faith from God. Every one is capable of hearing of Our Lord and knowing Him historically; yet "no man can say, The Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Ghost" (1 Cor. xii. 3). We may have natural knowledge, but it is not sufficient; for all that, "No man can come to Me except the Father who hath sent Me draw him" (John vi. 44). You stand in absolute need of actual graces to enable your intelligence and will to grasp the truths of the supernatural order. Prayer is necessary rather than critical analysis. Those who fall from the state of grace are very likely to lose their intellectual grasp of certain higher truths which previously seemed incontrovertible.
