on the law by Adam's infraction of it, has led to a greater honouring and magnifying of that law. Sin, which entered into the world, has given occasion to a yet greater holiness; and the incidental success of Satan is being overruled more and more to his own terrible destruction, and the exaltation of Christ as all and in all. If creation, when the morning stars sang together over our new-born orb, gave glory to God, redemp-. tion gives glory to God in the highest. And when redemption's story shall be told, and redemption's triumphs shall all be grouped together in one magnificent cluster, when there shall be no more sin nor sorrow, the strain that rose so beautifully when the earth was made, the strain that was sung from heaven and echoed from the earth when Christ was born, shall finally swell into a majestic and glorious anthem peal: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and wisdom, and riches, and honour, and blessing. And every creature in heaven and in earth, and under the earth, and all in the sea, shall say, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever." And the result of all will be the creature abased, but happy in his abasement; God exalted, and glorified in his exaltation.

Let us then glory only in Christ; for in him there is no condemnation. Let us glory in him; for the revelation of him is the richest wisdom. Let us glory in him; for service to Christ is the greatest joy. Let us glory in him; for his name is above every name that is named in heaven and in earth. In the words of the ancient prophet, which are the original of the inference of the more recent apostle, "Let not the wise man

glory in his wisdom; neither let the mighty man glory in his might; nor let the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things do I delight." Let us glory not in our wisdom, for it is folly; prone to gaze at the lamps of the street, and to mistake them for the stars of the sky. Let us not glory in our power, in comparison of his who rules the tides of the sea, who reigns in the storms of the air, who maintains the planets in their orbits. Let us not glory in riches; for "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." But let us glory in Him who is wisdom and power, and throned on the riches of the universe itself.

To Him be praise, and honour, and glory. Amen.

CHAPTER II.

PAUL'S PREACHING-PHILOSOPHY, AND PAUL'S DISCLAIMER OF ADOPTING IT-TRUE WISDOM-CORINTHIAN WORDS-THINGS PREPARED BY GOD FOR HIS PEOPLE-COMPARING SCRIPTURE.

In the previous chapter, we had the statement of Paul that "God hath chosen base things of the world, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence;" that the inadequate means used for the spread and triumph of the everlasting Gospel among mankind are evidences that a divine or a supernatural presence was continually with the preacher, and that a divine power was manifested in the effects produced by the preacher of these glad tidings of great joy; and that the result of such triumphant effects produced by such apparently inadequate means is calculated, as he concludes in the previous chapter, to put an end to the glorying of any human being in the sight of God, and to lead every one that glorieth to glory only in the Lord.

Paul then proceeds to show that, as far as he was personally concerned, he was a precedent for all preachers of the Gospel in this respect; for he tells us, first of all, what was the subject of his sermons. "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." It does not mean that he always preached as the only theme the Atone

ment, or that every sermon was an exposition of justification by faith in Christ alone; but what he means is, that Christ crucified was the dominating thought, was the governing truth, the key-note, around which all he said besides clustered and revolved, and from which every precept he pressed, every promise he unfolded, every prospect he delineated, drew its vitality, its virtue, and its colouring.

Having thus told them what was the dominating theme of every sermon, and appealed to the people that heard him preach, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, he tells them next the style in which he preached; and he says first it was negative. "My speech was not with enticing words of man's wisdom." And again he says, "And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God." I have already mentioned that Corinth was the last retreat in point of time of Greek philosophy and oratory. I noticed, too, the moral degeneracy of that place, notwithstanding the eloquence of its orators, the excellence of its painters, and the fame of its sculptors. I noticed, too, the love of philosophy that prevailed over all Greece; their learned men and distinguished men were called pɩλóσopoɩ, that is, lovers of wisdom; a philosopher meaning literally a lover of wisdom. It is easy to see that throughout this chapter the apostle has the philosophers of Athens, and of Sparta, and of Corinth, continually in his mind; and the constant allusion to "the wisdom of this world," " the wisdom of words," is just a quiet rebuke to them for the vanity and worthlessness of all the systems of philosophy they taught; and by implication a charge that all their fruits were

vanity and vexation of spirit. He says, therefore, “I did not come to you as Demosthenes would have come, with eloquence that rolled through the halls in which he spoke like thunder. I did not come to you like Eschines, with penetrating and subtle arguments, fitted to persuade by their force that the worse was the better cause. I did not come to you with any of those technical terms, captivating phrases, which tickle the ear, please the taste, gratify the fancy, but leave the heart unimpressed, unsanctified, and cold, and comfortless, and dead. I did not wish to do so; I could not do so probably; if I could, I designedly did not do so; because I felt that if I had spoken to you with the eloquence of your great rhetoricians, the little flocks I gathered in Athens and in Corinth would have instantly thought, and others certainly would have said, that they were convinced, not from the excellence of the subject, but from the unprecedented eloquence of the speaker; and they would have attributed the triumphs of Christianity, not to its intrinsic excellence and the blessing of God, but to the persuasive and masterly oratory in which it was embosomed; and therefore our faith would have stood, as reported, in the wisdom of man, and not in the power of God. Human wisdom, human talent, would have got all the praise, and God would have got no glory, and you would have felt you were standing in jeopardy every hour.

He then says, "Howbeit we speak wisdom." Whilst we do not speak your philosophy, we do speak a wisdom among them that are instructed to understand it, "yet not the wisdom of this world," of which you are lovers, nor of the princes of this world," your chief philosophers, that come absolutely to nought. So popular

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