of mature age, a child. I spake as a child. This does not refer to the gift of tongues as something childish, but simply to the mode of speaking characteristic of children. I under- stood as a child, rather, I felt and acted as a child ; otherwise too little distinction is made between this and the next clause. I thought as a child. My language, feelings and thoughts w^ere all childish. The words {^povita and Aoyi^o/xat), however, are so comprehensive that the two clauses may be rendered, * I had the opinions of a child and I reasoned as a child.' The former word, however, is so often used to express feeling, Matt. 16, 23. Rom. 8, 5. Phil. 3, 19. Col. 3, 2, that the jfirst mentioned interpretation is to be preferred. When I became a man, or having become a man, I have put away childish things, i. e. my former childish mode of speaking, feeling and thinking. The feelings and thoughts of a child are true and just, in so far as they are the natural impression of the objects to which they relate. They are neither irrational nor false, but inadequate. The impression which the sight of the heavens makes on the mind of the child, is for the child a just and true impression. The conception which it forms of what it sees is correct in one aspect of the great object contemplated. Yet that impression is very different from that which is made on the mind of the astronomer. In like manner our views of divme things will hereafter be very different from those which we now have. But it does not thence follow that our present views are false. They are just as far as they go, they are only inadequate. It is no part of the apostle's object to unsettle our confidence in what God now communicates by his word and Spirit to his children, but simply to prevent our being satisfied with the partial and imperfect.
12. For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face : now I know in part ; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
This is a confirmation of what precedes. Our present knowledge is imperfect, for we now see through a glass. These words admit of three interpretations. 1. The preposi- tion (Sta) may have its ordinary instrumental sense, we see by means of a glass ; or, 2. It may have its local sense, through. Then, assuming glass {k(r6iTTpov) to mean a window, the mean- ing is, we see as through a window; and as the windows were commonly made of mica, and therefore imperfectly 12*