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m Rom, xvi. 25, 26. Eph. iii. 5, 9. Col.

i. 26. 2 Tim.

i. 9.

UNTO OUR GLORY.

m

[I. COR. hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory :

8 "Which none of the princes of this world Matt. xi. 25. knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

John vii. 48.

Acts xiii. 27.

2 Cor. iii. 14.

• Luke xxiii.

"The hidden wisdom," that is, hidden in the Divine foreknow. ledge which God ordained before the world, i.e., before the ages— from all eternity.

"Unto our glory." This is an astonishing assertion: it seems at first sight to say that the one object of the revelation of these mysteries was for the glory of certain human beings. Now we know that these mysteries were revealed for the salvation of all men, and not only for the glory of the Apostles (Ephes. iii.). But one of the objects of this revelation assuredly was the glory of the Apostles and of those who believed in Christ through their word: and it is an astonishing honour put upon human beings that they should be able to apprehend in any degree the Trinity in Unity, and the wisdom and love of God in the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son of God. (See my notes on Rom. viii. 30.) 8. "Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had

the Lord of glory." Such a title could not have been cannot of itself discover, but which it apprehends as soon as God gives the revelation of it. Thus Jesus says, Luke viii. 10, It is given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom;' and Paul applies the word mystery to things which we can perfectly comprehend; for example, Rom, xvi. 25." But is this true? When the Lord says, 'To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom,' what does He proceed to make known? Why, the absolutely unsearchable mystery of the difference between souls which causes some to accept the truth and others to reject it. Some of these souls are compared to the roadside, some to stony ground, some to good ground, but how came it to pass that souls should have these inherent differences? The great body of the Jews did not realize that there were such differences. The Apostles were told it as a fact, and accepted it because He told them, but in their case the mystery was only removed one step back. The state of particular souls so different, and yet all loved by the Creator, is as much a mystery as Then in Rom. xvi. 25, the mystery which was hid is now made manifest, but surely the mystery of God, giving divine knowledge to one small nation only, and letting all the rest walk in blindness and ignorance, is as great a mystery as can well be presented to man. When St. Paul says, 'Behold I show you a mystery,' he proceeds to assert the reality of the spiritual body; for the mystery in the words "we shall be changed" is a mystery which human reason cannot fathom.' The reason why some good men thus repudiate mystery in the New Testament is transparent-they desire to be rid of the Eucharistic mystery.

ever.

P

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9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the p Is. lxiv. 4. things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

accorded to the Lord by a sincere Israelite like St. Paul, unless he believed in the Lord's Godhead. "Who is the King of glory? asks the Psalmist: "The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory." 9. "But as it is written," &c. I have considered in a footnote1 (the substance of which comes from Neale) the difficulty attached to this quotation—as to the exact place from which it was taken. The Apostle quotes the passage according to his version of it as expressing the three great means of acquiring natural knowledge, sight, hearing, and reflection or imagination; and none of them have enabled men to attain to the knowledge of the things which the wisdom of God in a mystery-the hidden wisdom-has given the knowledge of to the regenerate. The description, as it most frequently is, may be applied to the joys of the unseen and eternal world, of which the Lord will put the faithful into possession at His coming: but the Apostle quotes the passage as referring to what God gives us to know and realize, not hereafter, but here.

* The Greek is ἀλλὰ καθὼς γέγραπται· ἃ ὀφθαλμὸς οὐκ εἶδε, καὶ οὖς ουκ ἤκουσε, καὶ ἐπὶ καρδίαν ἀνθρώπου οὐκ ἀνέβη, ἃ ἡτοίμασεν ὁ Θεὸς τοῖς ἀγαπῶσιν αὐτόν. Now, on comparing this with the Septuagint version of Isaiah lxiv. 4 (ἀπὸ τοῦ αἰῶνος οὐκ ἠκούσαμεν, οὐδὲ οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ ἡμῶν εἶδον Θεὸν πλὴν σοῦ, και τὰ ἔργα σου, ἃ ποιήσεις τοῖς ὑπομένουσιν ἔλεον), which St. Paul is supposed to have quoted, it will be found that there is not one word the same in the two clauses, and yet this present passage is plainly meant to be a textual quotation: further, the relative 2, with which it opens, has no antecedent. It is remarkable that these difficulties are solved by a reference to the Liturgies of SS. James and Mark, in which occur prayers containing words exactly identical, mutatis mutandis, with the present verse, and giving also the antecedent (Supμara in St. James, and ayalà in St. Mark) which St. Paul omits. It must therefore be concluded, either that St. Paul may have intended to quote Isaiah, and fell into the form of words as generally used in the Church, or else that he meant to quote directly from the Liturgies; and that we are to infer that the Liturgies were so generally accepted that he does not hesitate to quote from them as from the Scriptures themselves. Neale adopts the latter view, and I agree with him; and it is remarkable, too, that Clement of Rome (Ep. ii. 11) uses exactly the same form of words as SS. Paul, James, and Mark, only he puts the ear before the eye (" which ear hath not heard nor eye seen "), & variation to be readily expected, when he is quoting from a Liturgy probably learnt by heart in the first instance.

If the reader wishes to pursue the matter further, he must refer to Neale's "Essays on Liturgiology," p. 414, sq.

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q Matt. xiii.

q

THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD.

[I. COR.

10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

11. & xvi. 17.

John xiv, 26. & xvi. 13.

1 John ii. 27.

10. "But God." So N, A., C., D., E., F., G., L., P., most Cursives, d, e, f, g, Vulg., Syriac, Arm., Eth.; but B., with eight Cursives, Sah., Copt., read, "for God."

10. "But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit," &c. The Spirit here, of course, can be no other than the Third Person in the Godhead-the Holy Spirit. Rationalistic commentators either deny this, or pass it over as if the organ of communication on God's part was the spirit in man. But this is impossible, for the Christian Revelation did not rise up spontaneously, as it were, in the breasts of a number of good men, but spread from a local centre, and was propagated by preaching, which was witnessed to by marvellous works, which clearly proved that the Revelation was from the Lord of the whole universe, spiritual and natural.

....

This was in accordance with the word of prophecy, as Joel ii. 28, and, above all, with the word of Christ: "The Comforter.. shall teach you all things." "He will guide you into all truth (John xiv. 26; xvi. 13).

"For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." The reader will notice a remarkable antithesis between this passage and Romans viii. 27. There we read, "He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit." Here, on the contrary, the Spirit searcheth the deep things of God. Chrysostom remarks well upon this: "The word to search is here indicative, not of ignorance, but of accurate knowledge; at least if we may judge from the fact that this is the same mode of speaking which he hath used even of God, saying, 'He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit.'

"Searcheth all things." He searches in the sense of knowing accurately all the works of God, especially His work in the creation and continued existence of spiritual beings, such as angels and men but above all, He knows accurately the deepest things of Him from Whom He proceeds-His being and attributes, the generation of that Eternal Word or Son from Whom also He proceeds, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and Intercession, as things in the Godhead between the Father and the Son, than which we can imagine nothing deeper or higher.

8

& xxvii. 19.

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11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, "save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the

Prov. xx. 27. Jer. xvii. 9.

s Rom. xi. 33, 34.

11. "For what man knoweth the things of a man, save Spirit of God." The human subject has that within him, viz., his highest part, his self-consciousness, which he can, as it were, at times project out of himself, so that it can look into him as from without, and examine into the whole state of his interior, his animal soul, and his mind, understanding, and will; and so the Spirit of God, proceeding from God, yet in God searcheth (or accurately knoweth) all that is in God.

I need hardly remark that nothing can go beyond this in proving the true and eternal Godhead of the Holy Spirit. "It is clear that the Spirit which searcheth the deep things of God, cannot be a creature or less than God" (Athanasius ad Serapion, i. sect. 22), quoted in Wordsworth, who also quotes a passage from Waterland, in which occurs: "He is in God, and knows the mind of God as perfectly as a man knows his own mind, and that in respect of all things, yea the deep things of God."

12. "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know," &c. "Now we have received." This "we " is emphatic, and may refer either to St. Paul and his brother Apostles, or to St. Paul and his fellowteachers, most probably the latter, because the Corinthian Chris

1 Principal Edwards has an admirable note. He asks, "Does 'Spirit of God' here mean more than the self-consciousness of God? is not the force of the Apostle's argument in the analogy between the self-consciousness of man, knowing what is in man, and the self-consciousness of God, as it knows what is in God? Yes, say Osiander, Meyer, Kling after Baur (New Test. Theol.,' p. 207). But it would be palpably absurd to say that God reveals anything to man through His own self-consciousness, unless the self-consciousness of God is identical with the Holy Spirit. This, again, would involve that the procession of the Spirit is prior in idea to God's self-consciousness-whereas His selfconsciousness as Deus must be prior, in order of ideas, to His self-consciousness as fons deitatis. We must not, therefore, press the analogy. If we admit that the Holy Spirit knows the things of God, it is not necessary to the validity of the Apostle's reasoning that He should know them as man knows the things of man, by self-consciousness. Both are knowledge through introspection, and this is enough. If the Spirit is neither the human spirit, nor the Divine self-consciousness, & more decisive declaration of His Personality cannot be."

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world, but Rom. viii. 15.

u 2 Pet. i. 16. See ch. i. 17. ver. 4.

THE THINGS FREELY GIVEN.

[I. COR. the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

13 "Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

13. "Which the Holy Ghost teacheth." So E., L., P., and most Cursives; but N, A., B., C., D., F., G., seven Cursives, d, e, f, g, r, Vulg., Syriac, &c., omit "Holy."

tians were brought more into contact with them than with the Apostles of the Circumcision.

"Not the spirit of the world." "This has been taken to mean Satan, the god of this world, or the principle of evil which binds together the kingdom of darkness, and makes it not a chaos, but a cosmos, an organization contrived to subvert the kingdom of Christ" (Edwards). But is it likely that the Apostle would feel it necessary to disclaim having received his inspiration from such a source? I think we must rather look to some spirit or spiritual influence which was not so absolutely opposed to the Spirit of God, but that it might be supposed to be the fountain of some Divine knowledge, and this we might take to be what Dean Stanley interprets it as being, "the spirit of mere human wisdom." This would be the highest form which the spirit of the world could take, but that was not the spirit which St. Paul and his fellows had received, for they had received

"The spirit which is of God; that we might know the things," &c. Might not "freely given to us of God" be translated "given by grace," not by knowledge or human endeavour, but by grace? For the whole system of the Gospel, or the Church, or Christianity, or by whatever name it is called, is a system of grace freely given on God's part, and received without human science or education or merit by us. The things thus given to us freely are, first of all, Christ Himself to the world; then Christ to each member of the Church, His mind, His will, His righteousness, His truth, His very human nature through His Body and Blood.

13. "Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth," &c. Not only are the things freely given to us—the things of grace, themselves taught by the Holy Spirit, but the same Spirit has taught us words wherein to give them fitting expression. "Comparing spiritual things with spiritual." Great difficulties: