God. He is satisfied with a speculative knowledge : and, if he possess that which may be apprehended by reason, and which may be attained by his own personal exertions, he has all that he desires. All beyond that is, in his estimation, a vain conceit. But a person who possesses the disposition spoken of in our text, desires to be taught of God, and to be guided into all truth. He is not contented with abiding in the outer court of the temple ; but longs to be introduced within the vail, even into the sanctuary of the Most High, in order that he may be- hold God shining forth in all his glory, and receive from him the richest possible communications of his grace and love. For this end, whenever he opens the inspired volume, he lifts up his heart to God, and prays, " Open thou mine eyes, that 1 may behold wondrous things out of thy Law ! " In relation to the whole work of redemption, whether as revealed in the word, or as experienced in the soul, he desires to hear God himself, and be "taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus^:" and he pleads with God that most encouraging promise, " Call upon me, and I will shew thee great and mighty (hidden) things, which thou knowest not^."]
Such are the dispositions which characterize the people whom God will instruct.
We are next to shew, II. Whence arises the necessity for them —
There is, in the whole scope and tenor of the Gospel,
1. A contrariety to our carnal reason —
[The substitution of God's co-equal, co-eternal Son in the place of sinners, his vicarious sacrifice, his bringing in a right- eousness by the imputation of which sinners may be justified before God, and his imparting all the blessings of redemption to them, through the exercise of faith, and without any respect whatever to their works ; these are truths to which carnal reason is extremely averse. They are among " those things of the Spirit which the natural man neither does, nor can, receive." A man may, indeed, adopt these things as his creed, and may account an opposition to them heresy ; whilst yet he has no spiritual acquaintance with them in his own sovd : but to see the excellency of them, to love them, to delight in them, to " account all things but dung for the knowledge of them," is an attainment which the natural man has no idea of, and which, instead of desiring, he hates. They form altogether a mysteiy. Hence, till he is humbled before God, he cannot possibly
* Eph. iv. 20, 21. g Jer. xxxiii. 3.