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,"

says Neander, "instead of endeavoring to prove the existence of God by logical inference, appealed to that which is most immediate in the human spirit, and is antecedent to all proof. They appealed to the originally implanted consciousness of God which human nature cannot deny. They appealed to an original revelation of the One God, made to the human spirit, on which every other revelation of God is founded. Clement appealed to the fact, that every scientific proof presupposes something which is not proved, which can be conceived only through an immediate agency on the spirit of man. To the Supreme Being the Being elevated above all matter faith alone can raise itself. There can be any knowledge or perception of God, only in as far as he himself has revealed himself to man. God cannot be conceived by means of demonstrative knowledge, for this proceeds only from things previously acknowledged, and from the more known to other things that are less known; but nothing in this way can be a prior premise in which the Eternal is included; and it is only by Divine grace, and by the revelation of his eternal Word, that we can recognize the unknown God." There is another passage from one of the Fathers, given by Neander, which illustrates what St. Paul here intended by immediate revelations to the spiritual element in man:

*

“Just as the tarnished mirror will not receive an image, so the unclean soul cannot receive the image

* "The Training and Planting of the Christian Church." Cabinet Library.

of God. But God has created all things in order that he may be known by his works, just as the invisible soul is known by its operations. All life reveals him; his breath animates all things; without him all would again sink back into nothingness; man cannot speak without revealing him, and only in the darkening of his own soul lies the cause of his being unable to perceive this revelation. He says, therefore, to man, Give thyself to the physician who is able to heal the eyes of thy soul; give thyself to God."

Again, to show the connection of all this with that subject of which St. Paul never for a moment loses sight: how can Christian unity be violated in relation to things which are only spiritually discerned? With these things the discursive and speculative faculties, which present various views, and create divisions, are not concerned; only the holy heart that is kept pure for God, only the divine eye of the mind, perceives them; and since it is God's spirit in us that makes us capable of discerning God, a moral sentiment of the Godlike in Christ must be the same in all souls, and the Divine Image in our Lord can leave but one impression on the hearts that are capable of taking the imprint.

And so, when we reach to any personal communion with God and Christ, to the deep utterances of the spiritual nature, controversy disappears. Our differences all arise out of our logical and argumentative faculties; but the revelations of the Spirit, that which the diviner mind approves, are in fact not ours as individuals, — they are derived from the spirit