There are two reasons given in Scripture for the notable delay of Christ's coming into the world. The one, you will find in Romans 5:6; the other, in this chapter. The one is developed in connection with the Jews, the other has its development in connection with the Gentiles; but the lesson in both cases is for men in general,-a lesson of world-wide significance; of so much importance that God devoted four thousand years to make it plain, while now for nearly half that time men have slighted or refused it. And yet there is no blessing for man which does not depend upon the reception of it.

These four thousand years were needed to prepare the world for Christ; but how different a preparation from that which is ordinarily thought of as necessary. If education be, as it is rightly insisted that the term implies, the drawing out of the natural powers and qualities of the soul, then we may, if we will, call these ages the period of the world's education. It ended with a cross, which Jews and Gentiles combined to give their Creator and Saviour!

But that cross had its "due time" fixed in the wisdom and grace of God; "for when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." The moral question as to man was solved. What was he ? What had his education under law proved him to be? "Ungodly" and " without strength:" "yet"-after centuries of patient trial and long-suffering goodness,-"yet without strength."

And this was not Israel's merely, but mans trial. If Israel only had the law, yet who could contend that what it had demonstrated as to them was not as fully proved for every other people? "As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." And thus says the apostle, " We know that what things soever the law saith it saith to those that are under the law,"-but for what purpose? "that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God."

But the Gentiles too had their own special proving. If God had given up those who when they knew God, glorified Him not as God, but abased Him to the likeness of the lowest of His creatures, -and if for ages they had remained without revelation or open intervention on His part,-even in this silence there was not indifference. It was "in the wisdom of God " to prove that " the world by wisdom knew not God." Those to whom the apostle is here writing were familiar with all that culture, science, and philosophy had achieved in Greece; and where else had it achieved so much? It was their well-known characteristic that "the Greeks seek after wisdom." Yet in Athens, to believers in an " unknown God," could Paul declare Him whom thus in ignorance they worshiped. "For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe."

Mentally and morally, thus man's need was exposed. And indeed his mental defect is a moral defect, as his inspired history (the only competent one) shows. The world got its wisdom by the fall, and while it values highly what it bought so dearly, it necessarily cannot revoke nor remedy the judgment of sin. It cannot escape the sentence of "vanity" written now upon the fallen creature.

This double lesson as to a need met only by God's word and Christ's work is given us in two books of Scripture-not of the New Testament, but of the Old; for God has title to speak as to the issue of the experiment He was making, before it was in fact made, thus enabling faith to anticipate the result, and learn before hand the dispensational lesson. These two books are, of course, Job and Ecclesiastes. And here, remarkably enough, and as if to make us realize the universality of these conditions, the Gentile is taken up to preach to us of righteousness, the Jew to descant upon human wisdom.

The book of Job is that of "the penitent." So competent scholars interpret his name; and it is with his repentance that God's controversy with him closes, and the story finds morally its end. But who is this penitent one? Some chief of sinners ? No. When God is teaching us the greatness of His grace, He may and will take up the chief of sinners to emphasize it. But here His design is to teach us what man is, and for this He takes up "man in his best estate,"-a saint, not a sinner, -nay, the very chief even of saints. He does not leave us to form our estimate of Job; He carefully gives us His own estimate. " There is not a man like him upon earth," He says:"one that feareth God and escheweth evil." It is this man who in the presence of God is brought to say, " Behold, I am vile;" " I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

Who then can expect to stand before God, sinner or saint, upon the ground of any mere human righteousness? And this book of Job is not only outside of law, but antidates it altogether. Yet it is bound up among the books of the law, for the instruction of those under it, abiding, side by side with the vail that with one exception, typical in its meaning, no foot of man could pass, the witness of universal judgment upon all that is born of flesh.

In Ecclesiastes we find, by no means the most perfect, but the wisest of men. Just as God has taken care to pronounce upon Job's goodness, so (with an evidently parallel purpose) has He pronounced upon Solomon's wisdom. For " Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men, . . . and his fame was in all nations round about." (i Kings 4:30, 31.)

Into the hands of one thus qualified God put resources otherwise as abundant that he might find, if possible to be found, " what was that good for the sons of men which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life."

We know well how this wisdom was baffled,- what he saw who looked upon the earth with these discerning eyes. A wheel of events ever passing, ever returning, but generations passing that did not return; a time for every thing, and every thing but for a time, and man, with his heart revolving the question of eternity,* driven back by the mystery of death, which levels the wise and the fool, man and beast together, and beyond which one may indeed speculate, but cannot know. *"The world" in chap. 3:11 should be "eternity."* Even as to things here, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happening to them all. " Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun; because though a man labor to seek it out, yet shall he not find it; yea, farther, though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he riot be able to find it."

" What hope or answer of redress?
Behind the vail, behind the vail."

So says the modern prophet amid the open glory of Christianity, alas! Yet the vail is done away in Christ. But now as ever, for mere science or philosophy, God is inscrutable, life beyond death a possibility for hope; the wisdom of man is forced "ever to put questions of infinite moment for which it can find no answer. Eternity is the problem in his heart; his knowledge is all of time; his conscience only prophesies of judgment to come.

The wisdom of man is thus wholly incompetent, confessedly so, to settle one of those questions, which are of the deepest importance,-nay, we may say, of the only real moment. It is incompetent to deliver from the stamp of vanity a life which comes out of darkness and returns to darkness again, burdened the meanwhile with infinite care and sorrow and perplexity. The apprehension of sin, and of judgment because of sin, will explain it, but brings in itself no hope. In turning thus to God there may be hope indeed; but then it must be from Him, and man's wisdom own itself the wrecked and ruined thing it is, and that in God, and not in itself, deliverance is.

Nowadays the world vaunts its progress; but as to removing death, or the sting of it, which is sin, or any of the most real shadows which darken man's few years of life, no one believes in his heart there has been progress at all. Bring all that art or science has produced or discovered, and who supposes that in it all there is one whit of real advance beyond the preacher-king? Men have sought out, indeed, many inventions; and "necessity," say they, " is the mother of invention:" but how then did man get into necessity ? Scripture answers, for those that will heed the answer, that in eating of the forbidden tree of knowledge, his first attainment in it was to know that he was naked, his first invention an apron to cover his nakedness,-a conventional covering, not really one,-and these are but the types of his wisdom and inventions ever since. He has decorated the apron, if you like.

Is it any wonder, then, that the revelation of God seeks and finds no help from mere human wisdom? that, with its Author, it should say, " I receive not testimony from man " (Jno. 5:34) ? Is it not the natural and necessary consequence that the wise, and the scribe, and the disputer of this world should be set aside; that " not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble" should be called; but that God should choose "the foolish things of the world to confound the wise"? Nothing is more simple, nothing more inevitable, than what so many cavil at. By what right do the proud assertors of the value of this world's wisdom cry up, as they do, their article ? Every one knows that intellect and genius argue nothing as to the possession of qualities which we are compelled after all to value more. Brilliancy is not goodness. Cleverness and knowledge may be only the equipment of consummate knavery; but "the knowledge of the holy," as Scripture says, alone "is understanding." (Prov. 9:ii) How, then, can God put honor upon a wisdom gotten by the fall?

But we can go further. We can rejoice with Him who in the day of His rejection could answer and say, " I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes." Had it been otherwise,-had revelation addressed itself to the wise as such, and the babes been compelled to wait for their sanction of it before they could receive it, how fatal would have been the consequence! how helpless the dependence upon those whose intellect is, as I have said, no guarantee for their integrity! how would the conscience be taken out of its true place before God and made subject to the guidance of His infirm and sinful creatures! But not only so:the lower level is the broader-the common-level. There is no hindrance, save the pride of knowledge, to the wise receiving upon its own sufficient evidence what equally commends itself to the merest babe, while the babe could not acquire (if that were necessary) the intellect of the other.

But what evidence, then, it will be asked, can Scripture furnish on which to base its claim to be believed ? The evidence that it can transcend the limits of mere human wisdom, relieve the conscience from its guilt, satisfy and purify the heart, and set man free from the stamp of vanity by bringing him to God, and transforming and trans-figuring the shadows of time in the light of a holy and blessed eternity. " Light," indeed, is the term used by Scripture itself for what in Christ has come into the world." The entrance of Thy word giveth light."And light is for the many, not for the few, nor needs outside evidence, nor aught but its own shining to declare it. All other things are seen by means of it, not it by means of other things. Christ is thus light for all,-light for the mind, conscience, and heart alike, witnessing to every man, independently of all other men. Faith in Him is the entire opposite to all credulity, while faith in the wisdom of the wisest else is but credulity and nothing more.

Think of One, of whom they wondered, " How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" -a Galilean peasant merely in the eyes of men, venturing to say, in the midst of a world of restless and unsatisfied hearts, " Come unto Me, and I will give you rest"! Think, still more, of One who could propose as a remedy for all the trouble and care that makes this life a burden, only increased by the thought of another, to believe in Himself as they believed in God! Yet every generation since has had its millions of rejoicing witnesses to the truth of these wonderful promises. The conscience has found rest in His blood as atonement for sin; the heart, in His love who in Himself has revealed the Father; sinful men have bowed their necks to His yoke, and found the path of obedience to His commandments the path of unfailing pleasantness and peace; in every tongue that man has spoken, new words have had to be found to give voice to the new blessedness wherewith He has filled men's hearts and lives. As the apostle says, who in his own person had proved it well, " to them who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ" has become " the power of God and the wisdom of God."

And it is of Him as the wisdom of God that this thirtieth verse speaks to which now I want to invite your attention. It is evident that " wisdom " is the apostle's subject both here and in the following chapter; and the language used puts an emphasis upon this which our common version, and indeed every version that I know, fails to bring out, but upon which the point of the passage largely depends. I read it very much as the margin of the Revised Version puts it, which is good sense, but bad English:"But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who is made unto us wisdom from God, not only* righteousness, but also sanctification and redemption. *"This is plainly the force of διχαιoσύvη Γε χα, άγιασμός etc. τε χα after διχαιoδύvη disconnects "righteousness" from "wis-dom," and binds it to the following words. The margin of the Revised Version has "both," which can only connect two things-not three. There is no peculiar difficulty in the Greek.* "It is not four things which are given us side by side, but one which includes three others. Christ is made to us wisdom from God in that we find in Him the full meeting, and more than meeting, of man's need as a fallen and ruined creature. Human wisdom is lost and shows itself the merest folly in presence of sin and death and judgment; but the true wisdom, which is from God, and which we have in Christ, demonstrates itself as such by being able to deal with all, arid to bring men out of their ruin and guilt into greater blessing than was his unfallen, thus glorifying God in the place where He had been dishonored:- " that, according as it is written,' He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.' "

If we look, then, at these three things, we shall find that they meet, and in divine order, the threefold need of man:he is guilty, he is depraved, he is ignorant of and away from God; righteousness ministered to him meets his guilt, sanctification his depravity; redemption claims him for God and brings him to God. In Christ all this is found, and in Him therefore divine wisdom is displayed and glorified.

Let us ponder these things a little, and may God give us hearts to praise,-us who are yet to lead the angels' praises for a grace of which we are the subjects and shall be monuments forever.

Righteousness is the first need; for except guilt can be removed, God cannot interfere except in judgment. In the Scripture-statement, generally, indeed, sanctification comes before justification, and not in the order in which evangelical Christians ordinarily put them. In the order of application, sanctification must begin first; for only as believing are we justified, and where there is this faith, the work of sanctification has in fact begun. Nevertheless in another sense righteousness must be the foundation of all. " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Thus the Lord speaks of the necessity of His death, for only in death-atoning death-could He lay hold upon us for blessing. Our life itself comes to us out of death, and only so,-out of righteousness accomplished for us. Thus only could God find way for His love.

Guilty, then, as we all are, God must minister righteousness; He must justify freely, justify the ungodly,-He, and He alone. Who else could do it ? what but His wisdom find any way?

Sinners, and already-condemned sinners, we find in Christ One who has gone into death for us be-cause we were that, taken our condemnation and our curse, and by His own perfect obedience, glorifying God in the awful place of sin, has risen up out of all,-raised of necessity by the glory of the Father, by His resurrection manifestly accepted of God; but O joy, then, accepted for us, and we in Him, "who was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification."

If we ask for our title to account this ours, it is for sinners,-our sins are our title, if in this day of grace we bring them and put them down before God-a title that He assuredly never will deny. Every sinner as such has thus a title to the Saviour of sinners, but a title forfeited if not claimed in time, and which so forfeited will be the deepest agony of the soul forever. " If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

In Christ's blood, then, we find what justifies us; in His resurrection, our sentence of justification pronounced by God, under which, when we believe, we come, so as to be justified by faith. It is one justification only, not three, which we find; by faith, in Christ risen from the dead. But He is not merely risen, He is gone up to God, and gone up in the value which He has for God, and as Man for men for whom He suffered and died. It is there that He is our righteousness, as risen and gone up to God. Thus, not merely are we justified, (which is negative righteousness-cleared of all charge of guilt,) but, much more than this, the best robe in the Father's house is put upon us- upon returned prodigals bringing merely rags and wretchedness in the hope of-"Some lone place within the door."

How blessed, how wonderful, this matchless grace! How is it possible that it can ever be mentioned without stirring the whole depths of our being to go out in praise? How manifest and perfect the divine wisdom and power in Christ toward us!
Yet however wondrous the righteousness, more is needed. God could not merely cover the nakedness of a sinner while leaving him still the sinner that he was before. Man's guilt was plainly only the first need that had to be provided for; he was depraved no less than guilty, and here was a second need, no less impossible for any invention of man to meet, no less needing divine wisdom. This too in Christ is met, and more than met. Not only is He made righteousness for us, but also sanctification.

Now sanctification is spoken of in two special ways in Scripture. We are sanctified by the blood of Christ, and we are sanctified by the Spirit of Christ; we are sanctified positionally, and we are sanctified practically.

Positionally, the blood of Christ has set us apart to God:that is the meaning of sanctification- setting apart to God. The Lord speaks thus of sanctifying Himself when He is going to take a new position as Man with God:" For their sakes," He says, " I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth." (Jno. 17:19.) It is plain that this was no spiritual change in the Lord, which it were blasphemy to think:it was simply a new place He was taking for us Godward. And upon this our sanctification, positionally and practically, depends.

We have followed Him in our thoughts already up to that blessed place where now He sits in glory, and we have seen that He has taken it, not simply by virtue of His divine nature. He is gone there as man. " By His own blood He has entered in once into the holy place, [that is, of course, heaven,]having obtained eternal redemption." (Heb. 9:12.)This blood that He has shed for us then sets us apart to God, or sanctifies us in the power of this "eternal redemption." This is brought out in the epistle from which I just quoted:" By the which will [of God, which He came to do,] we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." (10:10.) We are thus "saints," holy ones, separated to God from all impurity and self-service, by this perfect sacrifice. How far our character and ways correspond to this is another question, which presently the word of God will raise; but it raises none until it has set us in the place itself, separated to God, separate from all iniquity according to the power of the blood that has been shed for our redemption.

From thence results, as the apostle shows, the purification of the conscience:" For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve [or better, worship] the living God" (9:13, 14).And how complete the purification he urges from the completeness of the work itself, never to be, and never needing to be, (as the legal sacrifices were,) renewed! " Worshipers once purged" according to God, should have "no more conscience of sins " (10:2), for " by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified" 5:14).Thus the exhortation follows for us, " Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the vail, that is to say, His flesh, and having a High-Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith; having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water."(10:19-22.)

How absolutely necessary for practical sanctification this purifying of the conscience by the knowledge of a perfect and abiding work! And then for us this open sanctuary, henceforth the place where with joyful and free hearts we draw near to worship God. This is indeed the spring of holiness, to be at home with God, worshipers necessarily, as all are there. Alas! how little do we realize the blessedness! There is no possible place of distance from sin but in nearness to God.

Practical sanctification has its two factors in new birth, and the operation of the Holy Ghost, through the word, upon the believer, taking of the things of Christ to show them to him. Of new birth I shall only say that here Christ it is who is our life, and that this new life is as really such, as that communicated naturally. It is thus we have a nature capable of responding to the word ministered to it, although still and ever the Spirit's work is necessary to make the word good in the hearts of the children of God.

But being born again, it is Christ as apprehended by the soul, in what He personally is, and in the place in which He is, who is the power of sanctification for us. And herein is the wisdom of God in Him fully and wonderfully displayed. By His blessed work He has not only put away our sins, and set our consciences at rest in the presence of God, but He has thus laid hold upon our hearts, and won us for Himself forever. His love to us has begotten love in us; and he who knows that he has had much forgiven will love much. Christian life,-what only can be called so,-is thus love's free and happy offering to Him who has loved us." He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for us and rose again."

But then if our hearts are thus Christ's, where is Christ? In heaven, And where then are our hearts? If it be reality with us, then in heaven too. And that is the power of practical holiness, an object-the object–for our hearts outside the world, outside the whole scene of temptation and evil. We have not to look about in this world to see what of good we can perchance find in it. Christ is in heaven. Holiness is for us by heavenliness; and how simply, and in what perfect wis-dom, has God provided for us by the power of an absorbing affection, the object of it withdrawn from us, outside the world, and becoming thus the goal of a pilgrim's heart and a pilgrim's steps!

Are you a pilgrim, reader ? It is a day of sad declension, in which even God's own children are, how many of them become blind, and cannot see afar off, and have forgotten they were purged from their old sins! But Christ has all the power and attraction yet He ever had, and if our feet are slow upon the road, it is not because He is less fitted to fill and satisfy and energize the heart than ever He was; it is because our eyes are too little fixed on Him. But thus if we are become dull and lethargic, He abides, with unchanged affection soliciting our hearts. If it be so, let us turn to Him, and own it, and pray Him so to reveal Himself that we shall yet know what it is, in calm and sober estimate, to count, with the apostle, all things but loss and dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.

Surely Christ as sanctification is Christ the wis-dom of God ; but we must pass on to the last point yet in which according to the apostle He is shown to be so:-this is " redemption."

And what is redemption ? It is God's love acting from itself, to satisfy itself, and at personal cost. It is more than purchase, for I may purchase, not because I care myself for what I get, but to give away, or for some other reason. But redemption is for myself, for what my own heart values, the getting back of something the worth of which to me is known by the price I am willing to give for it. Redemption brings out thus the heart of the redeemer.
And in Eden, amid all the goodness with which he was surrounded, man, taught of Satan, had learnt to suspect the heart of God. There and then he had lost God, for He is nothing if He be not good. Since then, "there is none [naturally] that seeketh " Him, that believes that there is any thing in Him for which to seek Him. Natural religions are religions of fear and of self-interest only, and men's gods the image of their own corruptions. God must reveal Himself; and He has, how gloriously! Not goodness merely for man innocent in Eden, but infinite love to those who in Christ could see and hate Him." God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." Christ is the redemption-price which shows the heart of the Redeemer, and in His wondrous work, the Father's love and the Father's heart.

Thus in the wisdom of God man's need is completely met. His conscience and heart are effectually provided for, and Christ is this wisdom and this power of God. How blessed beyond measure thus to know Him! Human wisdom, humbled in the dust, finds alone its own gracious restoration in owning God's. Has it any evidence? men ask. He who finds it enter as light into his soul need be none of earth's wise ones to give the answer. There is but one Christ any where for a soul that has realized its need. The word is the revelation; and if man be abased by it, and no flesh able to glory in the presence of God, He is made known so that in Him, and in Him alone, they shall henceforth glory. And this, for those who know it, is the happiness and the holiness of eternity begun.

For such, redemption shall soon display its power over the body itself, that in the image of Christ fully they may enjoy the blessedness which is theirs in Him forever.