miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked %" we never can " know any other truth as we ought to know it." On this the whole Scripture turns. It is because of our guilt and misery, that we need the atoning blood, and unspotted righteousness, of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is because of our blindness and pollution, that we need the enlightening and sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit. It is because we are altogether destitute of any thing that is good, that we must be be saved wholly by grace, and that we must receive '' Christ as our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanc- tification, and our complete redemption ^" We may indeed obtain a head-knowledge of these things from books, while yet we remain as proud and unsanctified as the most ignorant heathen. But a real, spiritual, and saving knowledge of these things can be learned only by divine teaching, and must always be preceded by a knowledge of our own hearts : indeed, it will akmys be exactly jiroportioned to our self-knozoledge : the more we feel ourselves destitute of wisdom, good- ness, and strength, the more insight shall we have into " the deep things of God," and the more precious will every Scripture truth be to our souls.
We repeat the question then. Why should it be thought unreasonable to adopt this method of attain- ing heavenly wisdom, when it is the method we invariably pursue in the investigation of human sciences ? Is it not reasonable that we should pay as much deference to God as to man ? Or is religion alone, of all subjects, so easy to men's apprehension, that they who have never paid attention to its first principles, are yet competent to sit in judgment on its most mysterious truths ? Surely, if a submission to any given process be judged reasonable in the prosecution of human knowledge, much more must it be so in the pursuit of that which is divine.
We must not be satisfied however with shewing the reasonableness of the direction before us ; we must go on to state, in the last place,
^ Rev. iii. 17. ^ i Cor. i. 30.