The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Corinthians — Section 98

would be accepted and acted on by some, while it would be opposed and disobeyed by many. But who were the rejecters? "If our gospel be.hid, it is hid to them that are lost" (who are no_w perishingJ, not finally lost, but at pr':58nt unsaved, their day of grace not over, salvation yet possible. The state spoken of 1s one of mental blindness which includes the want of spiritual perceptions and the darkness of the understandincr'. Conscience is instructed, but the intellect overpowers conscience. Conscience is o~ the side of truth ; intellect on the side of the senses. Conscience entreats warns, condemns, in the name of God ; intellect is sophistical and imperious in behalf of the carnal man. And the intellect is thus alienated from its rational subordination to a ruling conscience by a usurper who is Satan, "the god of this world." Men have allowed him to assert 80vereignty over them, have made him "a god," and have yielded to his wicked agency what belongs to the one God. They havo robbed God to give him power over their bodies and souls, \Vithout this clear and vivid recognition of the personality, the activity, the prodigious energy of Satan, the theology of St. Paul would have no consiste!lcy, no logical coheronce, uo adaptiveness to the convicting and renewing work with which be associates it. With him, human depravity is not an abstract thing, an isolated thing, but part and parcel of a vast system of evil, an immense empire of untruth, deception, fraud, cruelty, of which Satan is head and front. Is unbelief powerful? Satan is behind it. Are the lusts and appetites of the flesh tyrannic? Satan is the tyrant. Are men blinded to their interest and well-being? By him, "god of this world," are they blinded. One who estimates human depravity solely by what it is in itself will have a very different view of its actual character in experience and outworking from one who looks at it as an instru- mentality in such hands as Satan's. In the former case it is the man iudulging in depravity for his own gratification-he personally and individually and directly is its motive, impulse, and end; in the latter there is a kingdom and a despotic ruler, whose objects are furthered by widening his dominion and enhancing his sway. St. Paul is explicit. Satan is the blinder, and he is the blinder as "the god of this world." And he blinds the minds of men, "lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the Image of God, should shine unto them." Tnrn to the close of the previous chapter and read of the "open face," of the reflected" glory of the Lord," of the assimilating power of the "image,'' of its transforming wonder in changing "from glory to glory." And now take this awful contrast-a fo.llen angel, a dethroned principality and power, the "god" among his hierarchies, the "god'' of a world whoro men are on probation for an immortality of good or evil, and this "god" of darkness busy every- where to hide the only light that reveals Christ o.s tht1 Image of God. Hero is tllis light in t.he history of Christ'd lifo, death, resurrection, exaltation. It is glorious. It is preached as a "glorious gospel;" it is preached by men who h11vo "renounced the hidden things of dishonesty," and who themselves, by tboir candour, intogrity, purity, commend thoruselves to every man's conscience under the oye of God. But So.tan oxert.s all his skill o.ud influence, controls myriad agencies, works continually and works so succes11fully that the minds of many 11re blinded by uubolicf. Destroy boliof and you destroy the soul. And this is the Satanic might of ovil, the climo.x of all his influence, that the blindnllSS with which he shrouds the soul is the blindness of uuboliof. Can he think of" the glorious gospel of Christ" and not be humbled? " We pronch not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Je,ms' s1\ko." And now the idea which has occupied so much of bis atteution-tho veiled foco ot Moses, the open viHion of Christ, tho irua;;e of the ~'ather in him, the glory that oxcelloth, the ministry as a manifestation of glory, Christian growth o.s an expansion from one degree of resplendency to another till it reaches" the perf~ct_ day," and the_ contras~cd blindness of unbelievers who are under Satan's power,-th1e idea., so suggestive, attains its final expression in the sixth ven;e. God had once said, "Let there ho light, and there we.a light." It was the opening grandeur of creation; but was this all? This was to be the permanent symbol of God, the source and centre of more associations and suggestions than any other object in the material uni verse, a creative force to the imagination of metaphor, image, and illustration that cannot be mea:iured. -'\nd, as such, St. Paul uses it when he says that "God, who comma.nd_ed tho hght to shmo out of darkness hath shine<l in our hearts." What fuller embod1m~nt could the thought take than ,: the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ"'/ II, COBINTBIANB, B  98 THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. [cn.1v. l-l8.