the indignity he had suffered in the rebellion of his children; that, to meet this moral necessity of God's nature, there were in his essence three Infinite Persons, and that one of thes: Persons was willing to suffer in the place of men; that an infinite indemnity being thus provided for the immeasurable insult of sin, the Austerity of God no longer restrained his Love, and his sanctifying Spirit might now operate upon those who, by thankfully recognizing the substituted expiation, paid this tribute to his violated Authority. And, Is this to know nothing but Christ the crucified? Is not this to leave practical religion, and the moral spirit of the Gospel, for the sake of that very speculative theosophy, those theories about God and the origin of Evil, against which St. Paul so earnestly contends as destructive of the simplicity of the Gospel sentiment, "the renewed union of the heart with God through the moral attraction of his Christ"? And mark how, in the third and in the following verses to the sixth, St. Paul indicates that it was a moral conviction, a spiritual sentiment, which he had labored to implant in the deeper heart of this speculative and light-minded people. Philosophy has no moral anxiety about its reception in the world, it produces its favorite system, or supposed demonstration, with undisturbed complacency. The Rhetorician has no tremors of the heart, no moral solicitude as to whether he shall touch the springs of life in the soul,- for his address is to the fancy and to the passions. But St. Paul, with something of the agony of his Master in Gethsemane, speaks of the solicitudes of a ministry ad

dressed to the hearts and moral affections of men: "And I was with you with none of the confident pretensions of a party leader, but in the consciousness of weakness, in holy fear and trembling, and my preaching was not directed towards speculative wisdom, but to excite within you the workings of that better spirit which is akin to the spirit of God, that your moral acceptance of the Christ-your faith might not depend on the wisdom or ihetorical power of man, but, proceeding from the divine affections of your nature, should be founded on the persuasive power of God's spirit within you."

The remainder of the chapter, from the sixth verse, is a demonstration that Christianity, as a purely spiritual sentiment, is addressed only to the spiritual affections of man, is understood only by that man who has in him some portion of God's spirit, and that, being thus addressed to the divinest element of the soul, to that spiritual conscience which knows no reasonings, but is the immediate voice of God, it can be made a source of Divisions only when it is seized upon, as it were, from without, by the faculties that are not spiritual, — by the speculative ones that lead to System-building, or by the imaginative and sensuous ones that lead to the exaltation of outward Forms. I will attempt to convey the meaning that is contained in the passage from the sixth to the end of the tenth verse. "Although Christianity is not of the nature of speculative knowledge, yet to those who are spiritual it is the divinest wisdom, not, indeed, the wisdom of men of the world, nor of the intellectual Leaders of

the world, whose rule will be swept away before its power, but a wisdom hitherto unknown to the world, and now, in the fulness of time, revealed by God to those who are of a spiritual mind,—a divine wisdom which the Leaders of the world had no perception of, for had they anticipated or sympathized with it, they would not have rejected the Lord who brought it; as it is written, Eye did not see, and ear did not hear, and it did not enter into the heart of man to preconceive the revelations that God designed for all who love him.' But these revelations God has now made to our spiritual nature,—for it is only through that portion of his Spirit which he has communicated to ours, that we are enabled to enter into these deeps of God." The argument of St. Paul in this passage is simply this:- that Christianity, as not addressed to the speculative faculties, - but as an immediate revelation to the diviner element in man, cannot be the subject of argumentative divisions, for that it is accepted only by that portion of the Spirit of God which is in a man, recognizing the same spirit dwelling without measure in Christ. Our translation in the tenth verse says, that God has revealed Christianity unto us by his Spirit. But this, though true, may not give the true import, which is, that God has made the revelation to the spirit; not to the discursive or argumentative faculties, but to that higher principle in man which receives Jesus as from God, and rests in the sublime faith of a moral certainty, because the immediate oracles of God within the soul are found. in harmony with, and bear witness to, the oracles

of God in Christianity. This is the true source of Christian faith, when the heavenly spirit that is in a man is thrilled and exalted by the greater fulness of the same spirit which is in Christ. No man who has not felt this is in any deep sense a Christian. His Faith stands not in the spirit and the power of God. And no man who has felt it can be in any doubt as to what constitutes Christianity.

No man, proceeds St. Paul, can know God, except so far as he has some portion of God's spirit in him; for as no man knoweth the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, that is in him, so no man knoweth the things of God, except so far as he has something of the spirit of God: "Now we Christians, in so far as we are morally united with Christ, do not look with the dubious sight of worldly wisdom, but have received of the spirit of God, that we might know, not speculatively, but by spiritual discernment, his free gifts in Christ; and we speak of these things not in words borrowed from speculative philosophy, but in words borrowed from the spiritual nature,― explaining spiritual things in a spiritual way"; or, possibly, "interpreting spiritual things to the spiritual." Our English version renders the last clause of the 13th verse, "comparing spiritual things with spiritual," which is not only of very doubtful meaning, but suggests no meaning at all that seems suited to the context. St. Paul meant to express, that neither in the discernment of spiritual things, which is the immediate act of a spiritual nature," the pure in heart see God," nor in the method of communicating them, which

is simply by presenting them for the spontaneous attraction of the spiritual faculty, could faction or schism find a place. The doctrine that pervades this whole argument of St. Paul, and of which every religious man must have had experience, is, that there is a divine element in the human soul, an intuitive spirit, which, when kept pure and exercised, and not clogged or dimmed by sinful passions, recognizes kindred goodness by a divine affinity, and is the immediate revealer of God. You will observe how, in the 14th and 15th verses, he speaks of the “animal man" and of the "spiritual man";-by the one, meaning the worldly understanding,—the earthly mind, taste, sensibilities, and passions, and by the other, the estimates and discernments of the diviner mind, of the spirit that reveals God. Among the writers and philosophers of St. Paul's age there was a well-known division of the whole nature of man into the flesh, the soul, and the spirit. The Flesh was the bodily nature with all the desires and tendencies that arise out of it; the Soul was the common understanding, the judgment, the aesthetical and the logical faculties, applied to the various subjects with which mere Sense and Intellect are conversant; the Spirit was transcendental,- that portion of man's nature properly divine; — it had an inward intuition of God. The spirit was the voice and prompting of God within us. It could have no connection with evil, and nothing evil could proceed from it; but by the predominance of the senses, and of the lower powers of the soul, its activity could be depressed, or altogether suspended. "The Fathers,"