discernment. It is the Spirit of God alone that can supply us with those qualities of mind which will rectify the defects of our visual organs: but when he does supply them, then, in proportion as they are communicated, will be the clearness of our sight. We again say, that we do not bring this as a 2)erfect illustration, and much less as a proof, of the truth we are considering : but we apprehend, that it is such an illustra- tion as the word of God sanctions. Our blessed Lord tells us, that, " if our eye be evil, the body will be dark; but that, if our eye be single, our whole body will be full of light :" and St. Paul says, that " by reason of use our senses are exercised to discern both good and evil^;" by which two passages we learn, that the rectification of our visual organs, and the due application of them to their proper objects, are the appointed means of communicating to us a spiritual discernment.]
This truth, we now proceed, II. To confirm —
The natural man, under all circumstances, is Wind to the things of God —
It was so in our Lord's day — [Never was there any light comparable to that which was diffused by the Sun of Righteousness : yet the darkness com- prehended it not. Our liOrd came to his own, and his own received him not*". The very people who, from their acquaint- ance with the Holy Scriptures, and their opportunities of knowing the character of our blessed Lord, and the proofs of his divine mission, had the best means of ascertaining the truth of his Messiahship, could see " no beauty or comeliness in him for which he was to be desired*^." The great mass of the .Jewish people accounted him an impostor: and when his own Disciple, Peter, confessed him to be the Christ, the Son of tlie living God, our Lord said to him, " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona : for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven'^." Whence it is evident, that none can truly receive Christ in all his characters and offices, unless a spiritual discernment be given unto them by the Spirit of God. Clear as our Lord's discourses were, they were not understood fully even by the Disciples themselves. " To them indeed it was given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven" more clearly than to others; but even they could not enter fully into the nature of his kingdom, no, not after he had risen from the dead, till " he opened their understandings to understand the Scriptures®."]
a llcb. V. \4. ^ John i. 5, 10, 11. ^ jgai. Hii. 2.
d Matt. xvi. 17. '^ Luke xxiv. 45.
1942.1 "^^^ NATURAL man's IGNORANCE. 97
It was so under the ministry of the Apostles — [Paul himself, so far from being convinced by the wonders of the day of Pentecost, was the most determined enemy of the Christian Church, till Christ himself arrested him in his mad career, and revealed himself to him by an immediate vision, and a special revelation from heaven. In like manner the ministry of Paul was as offensive to some, as it was delightful and in- structive to others. Those " whose hearts the Lord opened," as he did Lydia's, " to attend to the things spoken by Paul," received the word with all gladness ; but the great majority of his hearers rejected it with abhorrence. The very same words spoken before Festus and Agrippa, made one to cry out, " Paul, thou art beside thyself:" and the other to say, " Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."]
And thus it is also at this day —
[The work of conversion does not go forward among " the wise, the mighty, the noble :" on the contrary, the Gospel is very generally esteemed as " foolishness" among them. We still find occasion for the same acknowledgment as our Lord himself made : " I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes ; even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight *"." To this source we must trace all the difference that we still observe amongst the hearers of the Gospel : " the Spirit of God worketh all in all; and divideth to every man severally as he will ^." If we know Christ, it is because " he hath given us an understanding that we might know him*'," and "an unction of the Holy One," whereby our faculties were enabled to apprehend him^: and, if we have come to Christ, it is because " we have heard and learned of the Father '^."]