In plain words
There are so many who have reached Him in this way. Tulasīdās, Rāmadāsu, Sūradāsu, Kabīrdāsu: all of them were of this kind! However great, not one of those who gained Jñāna from the Vedas, śāstras, Purāṇas and Itihāsas is seen in history to have reached God. This is how it is: wearing merely the principle of Jñāna as a crown, they are thereby unable to recognise the value of divinity. They try only to know the value of Jñāna; they do not try to know the value of God.
Without Bhakti, however much Jñāna there is, it is of no use
A small example. In Gokula the cowherd boys would all gather and take the sheep and goats along with the cows. Then a heavy rain fell on the Govardhana hill. After streams had run down from the Govardhana hill, a brightly shining stone caught the eye of one cowherd boy. It looked very fine. He hoped it would look lovely tied round the neck of his black goat. He did not want it for himself. Thinking how nice it would look tied on his kid, he showed the Prema he had for that creature. Thinking that one day Kṛṣṇa too might see it when it was tied on, he tied a thread neatly round the stone, took it and put it on the goat's neck. One day, as the sun was very hot, he sat under a tree and grazed the goats. He was resting. Along that very road a jewel merchant, on his journey, also sat down in the shade of the tree to rest. At that moment the cowherd boy had seated the kid in his lap and was stroking it, singing ‘Beauty is joy, joy is the honey of life’, and saying, ‘How lovely you are!’ The diamond merchant saw it. ‘What is this stone?’ he wondered, and looked at it closely. He thought the stone was worth lakhs. ‘Boy! Why have you tied this stone on it?’ he asked the herdsman. ‘When this stone shines, its light makes my goat look very lovely. It looks very bright.