to us our supplications,' &c. The necessity for this aid arises from 3ur ignorance, we know not what to pray for. We cannot tell what is really best for us. Heathen philosophers gave this as a reason why men ought not to pray ! How miserable their condition when compared to ours. Instead of our ignorance putting a seal upon our lips and leaving our hearts to break, the Spirit gives our desires a language heard and under- stood of God. As we do not know how to pray, the Spirit teaches us. This idea the apostle expresses by saying the Spirit itself maketh inter- cession for us. The simple verb rendered he maketh intercession, properly means to meet, then to approach any one to make supplication, Acts 25 : 24. This supplication may be against any one, Rom. 11 : 2, or for him, V. 34. Heb. 7 : 25. Hence, to intercede for is to act the part of advo- cate in behalf of any one. This Christ is said to do for us in the last two passages cited, as well as in Heb. 9 : 24. 1 John 2 : 1, and John 14 : IG, for Christ calls the Holy Spirit " another advocate," i. e. another than himself. This office is ascribed to the Spirit in the last passage quoted in John 14 : 26.'M5 : 26, and 16 : 7, as well as in the passage before us. As the Spirit is thus said, in the general, to do for us what an advocate did for his client, so he does also what it was the special duty of the advocate to perform, i. e. to dictate to his clients what they ought to say, how they should present their cause. In this sense the present passage is to be understood. ' We do not know how to pray, but the Spirit teaches. He excites in us those desires which, though never uttered except in sighs, or which, though too big for utterance, are known and heard of God.' It is doubtful whether Paul means to say these groanings cannot be uttered, or simply, that they are not uttered ; desires which vent themselves only in sighs. The Greek word admits of either sense, and either is suited to the context.
(27) Though these desires are not or cannot be clothed in words, the eye of him who searches the heart can read and understand them there. Jlnd he who searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spi- rit. The conjunction ought to be rendered disjunctively. * The groan- ings cannot be uttered, hut they are neither unintelligible nor neglected.' He who searcheth the hearts is a common paraphrase for God, and here most appropriate. As no man knoweth the thoughts of a man, save the spirit of man that is in him ; to read those unexpressed emotions of the soul is the prerogative of that Being to whose eyes all things are naked and opened. " I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins," Jer. 17 : 10 ; see Ps. 7 : 9. Rev. 2 : 23, &c. &c.
Knoweth the mind of the Spirit. Not simply understands, but recog- nises and approves, as he knows " the ways of the righteous," Ps. 1:6. The former idea, that of understanding, though the more prominent, does not exclude the other. The mind of the Spirit, i. e. those feelings or that state of mind of which the Spirit is the author, the desires which the Spirit calls forth in our souls. The Spirit must necessarily be thai Spirit which intercedes for the saints ; and which, in the preceding verso,