10 them that love Him.” * But God has revealed them to us through his † spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all 11 things, even the deeps of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save 12 the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit that is of God, that we might know the things that have been graciously given to us by 13 God which things we publish, not in words [discourse] taught by human wisdom, but in words [discourse] taught by the spirit, explaining the spiritual by the spiritual.‡ 14 But the animal man receiveth not the things of the : spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to know them, because spiritually are they dis15 cerned. But he who is spiritual discerneth all things, yet himself is discerned by no one. For, "Who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct 16 Him?" || But we have the mind of Christ. WHAT is Christianity? It is a practical power, a living energy, for the purpose of drawing the soul of man into connection with the spirit of God. And this it does, by awakening the spiritual affections of the mind through the impulse of sympathy with that heavenly model of humanity, who exhibited all the mixed elements of our nature in a state of harmony with the will of God. Whenever it is the medium of this divine attraction, * Isaiah lxiv. 4. † Or more probably, "through the spirit." Or, "to those who are spiritual." whenever it brings Griesbach. Isaiah xl. 13, 14. a soul into practical communion with the fountain of love and holiness, Christianity has accomplished its highest object; it has drawn a new member into the Church of God, a new subject into the kingdom. of Heaven. And if it has really connected a soul with God, it matters not what was the particular feature of the full and perfect Christ that found a point of sympathy in the human heart, through which it was enabled to introduce itself into the affections, and imprint a divine image on the moral nature. Christ is a mediator between man and God, when, by some feeling of union with himself, some recognition communicated from him of that Heavenly Father of whom he is the image, he leads any heart, through this excitement of its spiritual nature, to unite itself in its inward life to the Father of spirits. This attraction to God through the power of his Christ is the essential spirit of Christianity, what St. Paul calls "the energy of God in the Gospel."* Christianity is an instrument for effecting this purpose. Christ is the means that the wisdom of God, and the power of God, devised for this end. The infinite Father, removed by their sins, and outward superstitions, and speculative philosophies, from all spiritual communion with the hearts of his children, prepared a practical method for reuniting with himself these broken bonds of the human soul. He manifested himself in Christ, — he showed in his Son the image of his own love and holiness, that all his other children, drawn by * Rom. i. 16. this living appeal to that divine spirit which is in us all, might recognize in Christ the perfection of their nature, and through him be led upwards to the common source of goodness, to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God "This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." All those whom this love of Christ led to the love of God were the partakers of a common spirit;- a divine principle of life operated within their souls, in virtue of which they were the Church Universal-the family of the Heavenly Father, the branches in connection with the living vine, the body of Christ. There are but two ways, not ways of sin, in which this Christian unity can be broken. This inward communication of the heart with God, through the spiritual attraction of Christ, may be represented as so intimately connected with certain outward forms of devotion, or with certain systems of thought, that independently of them it can have no effective existence. The inward reality, the state of the affections in regard to God and Christ, may be represented as absolutely dependent on the outward methods which certain men have found effectual in their own cases, or through some intellectual peculiarities have imagined to be necessary. This is to violate the unity of the Christian spirit, this is, in the language of St. Paul, "to preach another Gospel," to set aside as insufficient God's instrument of salvation. God has set forth his Christ as the means of drawing souls to himself, through moral sympathy with his Image; and all who are so at tracted become his spiritual children, and through that principle in their souls which unites them with Christ they are endowed with power to become sons of God, after the likeness of him who attracted them, of the Lord who moved and won the better spirit in their hearts. But there have always been two classes of men who have not been contented with the moral power of God's Christ, as the medium of divine attraction and the instrument of salvation. These are, first, the superstitious, whose states of soul are excited only by states of sense, and who cannot conceive the Divine Spirit communicating itself to man except through the observances with which in their own case they have exclusively associated the operations of His grace; — and, secondly, that class of minds in whom the speculative is the predominating element, and who, from some cold bias, or stern enthusiasm, of the speculative reason, connect the saving agencies of God, not with the spiritual affections of the believer's heart, but with the theological system that recommends itself to his states of thought. The Roman Catholic, and the members of the Anglican Church, the sacerdotal part of the Church of England, are, amongst us, the representatives of the superstitious Christian,— of the Jewish Christians of the days of St Paul. They say that a soul cannot be led into communion with God through the love of Christ alone. They say that though Christ is the only mediator, or means of attraction, between man and God, yet that there is a necessity for other mediators between man and Christ, and that there is no true sympathy with Jesus, except in those who have received the rite of baptism from a consecrated Priest in the direct line of the Apostolical succession, and who have partaken of the Lord's Supper from legitimate hands. These are the counterparts of those Corinthian opponents of St. Paul, the Jewish Christians, who maintained that Christ drew to God only the circumcised, and that the Holy Spirit disregarded the state of the affections and their moral oneness with Jesus, unless they were found keeping the Jewish law. The dogmatical Christians of this day, under all their varieties, are the counterparts of the speculative Christianity that prevailed among the Gentile converts of Corinth. They deny that Christ touches a soul with the spirit of God through the power of his character, and the overflowing fulness of that spirit in himself. They deny this direct spiritual attraction. They affirm that Christ touches a soul with the love of God, and sanctifies it by a divine affection, only when it adopts certain views of the metaphysical essence of the Deity,- only when it receives a certain theory of the nature of Evil, and of God's connection with it, and, in the spirit of the Gnostic Emanations, breaks the unity of God into three personalities, the Father absolute and selfexistent, the Son, the first Emanation, eternally proceeding from the Father, and the Holy Spirit, the second Emanation, eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. Of these dogmatical Christians of our day, who make Salvation depend on an orthodoxy, and moral sympathy with God and with his Christ inseparable from certain |