cxxxix. 15, and may be properly taken for Christ's incarnation and

conception in the womb of the Virgin.--1. Because other expositions may be shown to be unnatural, forced, or impertinent, and there is no other besides this assignable. 2. Since Paul here uses David's words it is most probable he used them in David's sense. 3. The words descending and ascending are so put together in the text that they seem to intend a summary of Christ's whole transaction in man's redemption, begun in His conception and consummated in His ascension.

+II. Christ's glorious advancement and exaltation.+--"He ascended far above all heavens" to the most eminent place in dignity and glory in the highest heaven.

+III. The qualification and state of Christ's person in reference to both conditions.+--He was the same, showing the unity of the two natures in the same person.

+IV. The end of Christ's ascension.+--"That He might fill all things." _All things_ may refer--1. To the Scripture prophecies and predictions. 2. To the Church as He might fill that with His gifts and graces. 3. To all things in the world. This latter interpretation preferred. He may be said to fill all things--1. By the omnipresence of His nature and universal diffusion of His Godhead. 2. By the universal rule and government of all things committed to Him as Mediator upon His ascension.--_South._

Vers. 11, 12. _The Work of the Ministry._

+I. It is evident that public teachers in the Church are to be a distinct order of men.+--Christ has given some pastors and teachers. None has a right publicly to teach in the Church but those who are called, sent, authorised to the work in the Gospel way. All Christians are to exhort, reprove, and comfort one another as there is occasion; but public teaching in the Church belongs peculiarly to some--to those who are given to be pastors and teachers.

+II. Public teachers are here called Christ's gifts.+--"He _gave_ some pastors and teachers." The first apostles were commissioned immediately by Christ. They who were thus commissioned of Heaven to preach the Gospel were authorised to ordain others. Christ gave pastors and teachers, not only to preach His Gospel, but to train up and prepare holy men for the same work.

+III. Ministers are to be men endued with gifts suitable to the work to which they are called.+--As in the early days of the Gospel public teachers were called to extraordinary services, so they were endued with extraordinary gifts; but these gifts were only for a season. As the business of a minister is to teach men the things which Christ has commanded in the Scriptures, so it is necessary he himself should be fully instructed in them. In the early days, as there were evangelists who went forth to preach the Gospel where Christ had not been named, so there were pastors and teachers who had the immediate care of Churches already established.

+IV. The great object of the ministry is the building up of the Church of Christ.+--The ministry is intended for the improvement of saints, as well as for the conversion of sinners. The apostle mentions also the unity of the knowledge of Christ. We must not rest in attainments already made, but continually aspire to the character of a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.--_Lathrop._

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 13-16.

_True Christian Manhood_--

+I. Attained by the unity of an intelligent faith in Christ.+--1. _This faith must be based on knowledge._ "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God" (ver. 13). A faith, so called, not based on knowledge is fanaticism. True faith is the result of conviction--a profound consciousness of the truth. Many reach this stage. They have heard the evidence, examined it, and are clearly persuaded of its truth; but they never get beyond that. They are like the neap tide that comes rolling in as if it would sweep everything before it; but when it arrives at a certain point, it stops, and with all the ocean at its back it never passes the mark where it is accustomed to pause. It is well to get to the neap-tide mark of conviction; but there is no salvation till the soul is carried by the full spring tide of conviction into a voluntary and complete surrender to Christ. It is weak, it is cowardly, when convinced of the right, not to do it promptly and heartily. Faith acquires its full-rounded unity when it is exercised, not on any abstract truth, but on a Person who is the living embodiment of all truth. The final object of faith is "the Son of God," and any truth is valuable only as it helps us to Him. Christ has Himself revealed the truth essential to be believed in order to salvation: He is Himself that truth.

2. _Perfect manhood is a complete Christ-likeness._--"Unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (ver. 13). Man is so great that he is perpetually striving after a loftier ideal; nothing that has limits can satisfy him. "It is because there is an infinite in him which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the finite. Will the whole finance ministers and upholsterers and confectioners of modern Europe undertake in joint-stock company to make one shoeblack happy? They cannot accomplish it above an hour or two; for the shoeblack also has a soul quite other than his stomach, and would require, if you consider it for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more and no less--God's infinite universe altogether to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely and fill every wish as fast as it arose. Try him with half a universe of an omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half and declares himself the most maltreated of men" (_Carlyle_). True manhood does not consist in the development of a fine physique, or a brilliant mentality, or in the pursuit of heroic ambitions. It lies in the nobleness of the soul at peace with God, seeking in all things to please Him, and to possess and exhibit the mind of Christ. The pagan hero is the warrior, the ruler, the poet, the philosopher; the Christian hero is the Christ-like man. The supreme type of manhood is Christ-likeness. The ideal is conceived by faith, and the actual is attained only by the exercise of the same grace.

+II. Superior to the childish vacillation induced by deceptive teaching+ (ver. 14).--The false teachers played with truth, as men play with dice, with the reckless indifference of gamblers, and they and their victims were swayed to and fro, with ruin for the ultimate goal. Like a rudderless ship they were tossed about at the caprice of every current, with the inevitable result of wreckage among the rocks and quicksands. Professing a zeal for truth, they deceived themselves and others by ever changing their point of view, and craftily avoiding the practical bearing of truth in the aims to change the heart and reform the life. The moment the application of truth pressing upon the conscience made them uncomfortable, they tacked about and sailed off under another issue. As the restless seaweed, waving to and fro in the ever-changing tide, can never grow to the dignity of a tree, so those who were swayed by every changing phase of error can never grow up to the strength and stability of true Christian manhood. We can sympathise with the doubts and perplexities of an earnest seeker after truth; but our sympathy changes into impatience when we discover that the seeker is more in search of novelty than truth, of variety rather than certainty. To be for ever in doubt is to be in the fickle stage of mental and moral infancy. It is the worst phase of childishness.

+III. It is a continual growth in the truth and love of Christ+ (vers. 15, 16).--It is the high distinction of man that he is susceptible of almost unlimited growth in mental and moral attainments. One of the greatest distances between animalism and man is seen in the unbridged gulf of _progress._ The animal remains where he was, but man has been progressing in every department of life from the very first. There is between them all the breadth of history. The animal builds its nest as it ever did, the bee by the same marvellous instinct constructs its geometrical cells now as at the first; but man is a genius--he creates. His first rude efforts in shaping his dwellings have gone on progressing and improving until we have the architectural development of to-day. In every kind of art it is the same--rude flint knives, lance heads, needles, were his first weapons and implements; to them succeeded bronze, and then iron--each marking stages in that history of progress up to the beautiful cutlery, stores, and arsenals of the present day. The animal roars or chatters to-day as it has done all along. It has made no progress towards intelligent speech--a Rubicon the animal will never cross. But man, who began with one speech, and a very limited vocabulary of words, has developed speech into the great languages of ancient and modern literature. A wider gulf than this is hardly conceivable. But the moral growth of man is more remarkable. The era of the Gospel is a revelation of the power of love. With the ancients a mere sentiment, Christianity teaches that love is the essence of religion; and that nature is the manliest and noblest that advances in the knowledge of Divine truth and in the self-sacrificing love of Christ. The whole fabric of the Christian character is built up in the ever-increasing exercise of Christ-like love.

+Lessons.+--_Christian manhood is_--1. _Acquired by an intelligent faith in Christ._ 2. _Developed by an imitation of Christ._ 3. _Maintained and strengthened by constant fidelity to Christ._

_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._

Vers. 13-16. _The Growth of the Church._

+I. The goal of the Church's life+ (ver. 13).--The mark at which the Church is to arrive is set forth in a two-fold way--_in its collective and its individual aspects._ We must all unitedly attain the oneness of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God; and we must attain, each of us, a perfect manhood, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. All our defects are, at the bottom, deficiencies of faith. We fail to apprehend and appropriate the fulness of God in Christ. The goal of the regenerate life is never absolutely won; it is hid with Christ in God. But there is to be a constant approximation to it, both in the individual believer and in the body of Christ's people. And a time is coming when that goal will be practically attained, so far as earthly conditions allow. The Church after long strife will be reunited, after long trial will be perfected. Then this world will have had its use, and will give place to the new heavens and earth.

+II. The malady which arrests its development+ (ver. 14).--The childishness of so many Christian believers exposed them to the seductions of error, and ready to be driven this way and that by the evil influences active in the world of thought around them. So long as the Church contains a number of unstable souls, so long she will remain subject to strife and corruption. At every crisis in human thought there emerges some prevailing method of truth, or of error, the resultant of current tendencies, which unites the suffrages of a large body of thinkers, and claims to embody the spirit of the age. Such a method of error our own age has produced as the outcome of the anti-Christian speculation of modern times, in the doctrines current under the names of Positivism, Secularism, or Agnosticism. Modern Agnosticism removes God farther from us, beyond the reach of thought, and leaves us with material nature as the one positive and accessible reality, as the basis of life and law. Faith and knowledge of the Son of God it banishes as dreams of our childhood. This materialistic philosophy gathers to a head the unbelief of the century. It is the living antagonist of Divine revelation.

+III. The means and conditions of its growth+ (vers. 15, 16).--To the craft of false teachers St. Paul would have his Churches oppose the weapons only of truth and love. Sincere believers, heartily devoted to Christ, will not fall into fatal error. A healthy life instinctively repels disease. Next to the moral condition lies the spiritual condition of advancement--the full recognition of the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ. He is the perfect ideal for each, the common source of life and progress for all. He is the Head of the Church and the heart of the world. Another practical condition of Church growth is organization--"all the body fitly framed and knit together." A building or a machine is fitted together by the adjustment of its parts. A body needs, besides this mechanical construction, a pervasive life, a sympathetic force, knitting it together. And so it is in love that this body of the Church builds up itself. The perfect Christian and the perfect Church are taking shape at once. Each of them requires the other for its due realisation. The primary condition of Church health and progress is that there shall be an unobstructed flow of the life of grace from point to point through the tissues and substance of the entire frame.--_Findlay._

Vers. 13-15. _Christian Manhood._

+I. Christian manhood is a growth.+--1. A growth having its inception in the simple fact of becoming a Christian. This is a decided advance upon the most moral and cultivated state otherwise attainable. It involves the quickening into a new life which is to grow. 2. A growth marking a continual advancement till we all come in the unity--the respect in which one grows--the union, conjunction of faith and of knowledge. 3. A growth resulting from culture under Divinely appointed agencies. The most splendid growth, other things being equal, is the result of the highest culture. The highest culture is possible only through the most rigid conformity to the laws of development and the appliance of the best agencies. 4. A growth the standard of whose completeness is the fulness of Christ. The stature--the adultness, the full-grown manhood of Christ--is the standard of growth, whose attainment is the Christian's noblest zeal.

+II. The elements of Christian manhood.+--1. _Largeness_--in the Christian's views of truth, of man's need, of Christ's work, of schemes and plans for its greater furtherance.

2. _Dignity._--That deep, inwrought sense of the true worth and greatness of his nature, as a renewed man, and of his position as a child of God and joint-heir with Christ. Christian ethics are the best ethics; highest, purest, noblest, safest. He lives by these naturally who has a well-developed Christian manhood.

3. _Courageousness and strength._--Courage makes a man put forth his best strength, while strength enables courage to achieve its best deeds.

+III. The outworking of Christian manhood.+--It gives:--

1. _Steadfastness._--No more children. No more carried about--borne round and round as in the swiftly whirling eddy of the sea--by every wind of doctrine.

2. _Sincerity._--"Speaking the truth in love" refers both to the sincerity of life and our relation to the truth.

3. _A further growth._--As the full-grown tree, leaves and blossoms and bears; as fruit, after it is full-grown, mellows, matures, sweetens; ripening as wheat for the garner.--_J. M. Frost._

Vers. 14-16. _Christian Maturity._

+I. The negative part of this description.+--1. _Christians must not remain children._--In humility, meekness, and teachableness, let them be children; but in understanding, constancy, and fortitude they should be men. Children have but little knowledge and a weak judgment. They believe hastily and act implicitly. They are governed by passion more than reason, by feeling more than judgment.

2. _The apostle cautions that we be not tossed to and fro like a ship rolling on the waves._--The man without principle, knowledge, and judgment is at the mercy of every rude gust. He is driven in any direction, as the wind happens to blow. He makes no port, but is every moment in danger of shipwreck.

3. _We must not be carried about with every wind of doctrine._--False doctrines, like winds, are blustering and unsteady. They blow from no certain point, but in all directions, and frequently shift their course. The light and chaffy Christian, the hypocritical and unprincipled professor, is easily carried about by divers and strange doctrines. He shifts his course and changes his direction, as the wind of popular opinion happens to drive.

4. _We are in danger from the cunning craftiness of men._--True ministers use plainness of speech, and by manifestation of the truth commend themselves to the consciences of men. Corrupt teachers use sleight and craft, that they may ensnare the simple, decoy the unsuspecting, and thus make proselytes to their party. They pretend to superior sanctity. They are watchful to take advantage of an unhappy circumstance in a Church. They unsettle men's minds from the established order of the Gospel, and prejudice them against the regular maintenance of the ministry, representing all order in Churches as tyranny and all stated provision for the ministry as oppression. They promise men liberty, but are themselves the servants of corruption.

+II. The positive part.+--1. _The mature Christian must speak the truth in love._ Be sincere in love. We should acquire a good doctrinal knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. We should be well established in the truth. We should see that our hearts are conformed to the truth. We must walk in the truth.

2. _We must grow up in all things into Christ._--A partial religion is not that which the Gospel teaches. We must have respect to the whole character of Christ, to the whole compass of duty, to every known doctrine and precept of Scripture. All the graces of the Gospel unite in forming the Christian's temper. They all operate in harmony. His religion is one continued, uniform, consistent work.

+III. How Christian maturity is attained.+--From the growth of the human body the apostle borrows a similitude to illustrate the spiritual growth of the Christian Church. It is as absurd to expect growth in knowledge and holiness without the means instituted for the edifying of the body of Christ as it would be to expect the growth of a natural body without supplies of food.

+Lessons.+--1. _There is no Christian growth where love is wanting._ 2. _Christians are bound to seek the peace in order to the edification of the Church.--Lathrop._

Ver. 14. _The Case of Deceivers and Deceived considered._

+I. Consider the case of deceivers or seducers such as by their sleight and cunning craftiness lie in wait to deceive.+--The particular motives by which men may be led to beguile others are reducible to three--pride, avarice, and voluptuousness: love of honour, or profit, or pleasure. 1. There is often a great deal of pride and vanity in starting old notions and broaching new doctrines. It is pretending to be wiser than the rest of the world, and is thought to be an argument of uncommon sagacity. Upon this footing some are perpetually in quest of new discoveries. Nothing pleases them, if they have not the honour of inventing it or of receiving it in their times. When once a man has thus far given loose to his vanity and thinks himself significant enough to be head of a sect, then he begins first to whisper out his choice discoveries to a few admirers and confidants, who will be sure to flatter him in it; and next to tell aloud to all the world how great a secret he had found out, with the inestimable value of it. And now at length comes in the use of sleight and cunning craftiness and all imaginable artifices; first to find out proper agents to commend and cry up the conceit, next to spread it in the most artful manner among the simple and least suspecting, and after that to form interests and make parties; and so, if possible, to have a public sanction set to it or a majority at least contending for it. Love of fame and glory is a very strong passion, and operates marvellously in persons of a warm complexion. 2. Observe how avarice or love of profit may sometimes do the same thing. There is a gain to be made in some junctures by perverting the truth and deceiving the populace. Men who are not worthy to teach in the Church, or who have been set aside for their insufficiency or immorality, may bring up new doctrines and draw disciples after them, for the sake of protection and maintenance or for filthy lucre. With such the vending of false doctrines is a trade and preaching a merchandise. Thus has avarice been the mother of heresies and has brought many deceivers into the Church of Christ; but they have contrived generally to give some plausible turn and colour to their inventions through their "sleight" and "cunning craftiness," in order to deceive the hearts of the simple and to beguile unwary and unstable souls. 3. One motive more--voluptuousness, or love of pleasure. As religious restraints set not easy upon flesh and blood, but bear hard upon corrupt nature, so men of corrupt minds will be ever labouring to invent and publish smooth and softening doctrines, such as may either qualify the strictness of the Gospel rule or sap the belief of a future reckoning. Many ancient heretics had such views as these in the first broaching of their heresies. Their design was to take off the awe and dread of a future judgment, and thereby to open a door to all licentiousness of life and dissoluteness of manners.

+II. Consider the case of the deceived who suffer themselves to be "tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine."+--They are supposed to be ignorantly, and in a manner blindly, led on by others, otherwise they would be rather confederates and confidants in managing the deceit, and so would be more deceivers than deceived. 1. Now as to those who are so ignorantly imposed upon. They are more or less to blame, according as their ignorance is more or less blamable; and that, again, will be more or less blamable, according as it is more or less affected or wilful. There are, I think, three cases which will take in all sorts of men who suffer themselves to be deceived in things of this kind. The first is of those who have no opportunity, no moral possibility of informing themselves better; the second is of those who might inform themselves better, but do not; the third of those who might also be better informed, but will not. If they be "like children tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine," yet if they are really children in understanding and are overborne by others in such a way as is morally irresistible considering their circumstances, then it seems to be their misfortune to be so imposed upon rather than their fault, and so is not imputable. 2. A second case is of those who may inform themselves better but neglect to do it. I suppose it to be merely neglect in them, not design. Perhaps they have little or no leisure for inquiries; they are taken up with worldly cares and business. They have a very great esteem and value for the man who so misleads them, and they know no better, but swallow everything he says without considering; or they are not aware of any ill consequences of the doctrine, see or suspect no harm in it. They are much to blame in this affair, because God has given them the faculty of reason, which ought not to be thus left to lie dormant and useless. Men who can be sharp enough in secular affairs to prevent being imposed upon may and ought to have some guard upon themselves with respect also to their spiritual concernments. 3. There is yet a third sort of men, worse than the former, who suffer themselves to be deceived and might know better, but will not; that is to say, their ignorance is affected and wilful, they "love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil." These are such as readily run in with "every wind of doctrine" which hits their taste and chimes in with their favourite inclinations. They admit the doctrine because they like it, and they easily believe it true because they would have it so. It is with this kind of men that deceivers prevail most and make their harvest.

+III. Some advices proper to prevent our falling in with either.+--The best preservative in this case is an honest and good heart, well disposed towards truth and godliness, having no by-ends to serve, no favourite lust or passion to indulge. If any man is but willing to know and to do God's commandments, he will easily discern in most cases whether a doctrine be of God or whether it be of men. The evidences of the true religion and of its main doctrines are so bright and strong when carefully attended to, that common sense and reason are sufficient to lead us, when there is no bias to mislead us. For several years last past rude and bold attacks have been made against the important doctrines of Christianity and against all revealed religion, and this is what they are still carrying on with exquisite subtlety and craftiness many ways and with a great deal of fruitless pains and labour. For I may have leave to suppose that no man can in this case be deceived who has not first a desire to be so, and is not the dupe and bubble to his own lust and vices.--_Dr. Waterland._

Ver. 15. _Speaking the Truth in Love._--1. A different thing from the irritating candour of the professed friend. 2. Implies an experimental knowledge of the truth and its spiritual mission. 3. Is the most effectual way of winning a hearing and gaining adherents. 4. A method conspicuously exemplified in the teaching of Christ.

_Growth into Christ in Love and Truth._

+I. The standard of Christian excellence--Christ's headship.+--1. The prominent notion suggested is His rank in the universe. He rules as God in creation. But evidently the apostle does not mean this in the text. We are to grow into Him as Head. Growth into Christ's Godhead is impossible. God-like we may, God we cannot even by truth and love, become. 2. He is the Head as being the Source of spiritual life. This is implied in metaphor. The highest life-powers--sensation, feeling, thought--come from the brain. To one who has read the history of those times, there is an emphatic truth in Christ's being the life of the world. The world was like a raft becalmed in the tropics--some of its freight dead and baking in the sun, some sucking as if for moisture from dried casks, and some sadly, faintly looking for a sail. Christ's coming to the world was as life to the dead, imparting new impulse to human heart and human nature. It was like rain and wind coming to that bark--once more it cuts the sea, guided by a living hand. So also with each man who drinks Christ's Spirit. He becomes a living character. Not sustained on dogmas or taken-up opinions, but alive with Christ. 3. He is Head as chief of the human race. Never had the world seen, never again will it see, such a character. Humanity found in Him a genial soil, and realised God's idea of what man was meant to be. He is chief. Nothing comes near Him.

+II. Progress towards the standard of Christian excellence.+--"We grow up into Him in all things."

1. _Growth in likeness to Him._--The human soul was formed for growth, and that growth is infinite. The acorn grows into the oak, the child into the philosopher. And at death the soul is not declining; it is as vigorous as ever. Hence nothing but an infinite standard will measure the growth of the soul of man.

2. _Growth in comprehension of Him._--Christ is not comprehensible at first. Words cannot express the awe with which a man contemplates that character when it is understood. This is the true heroic, this the only God-like, this the real Divine. From all types of human excellence I have made my choice for life and death--Christ.

+III. The approved means of growth the mode of progress.+--"Speaking the truth in love." Truth and love--and these joined. To "grow into Christ" we must have both traits of character. Would you be like Christ? Cultivate love of beauty and tenderness. His soul was alive to beauty. He noted the rising and setting sun, the waving corn, the lily of the field. His was love which insult could not ruffle nor ribaldry embitter, and which only grew sweeter and sweeter. Would you be like Christ? Be true! He never swerved. He was a martyr to truth. Would He soften down truth for the young man whom He loved, or make it palatable? No; not for friendship, not for love, not for all the lovely things this world has to show. "One thing thou lackest: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow Me" (Mark x. 17-22; Luke xviii. 17-23). That was "speaking the truth in love." There is no good to be got out from Christ, except by being made like him. There is no pardon, no blessing, separate from inward improvement. Sanctity of character alone blesses. Each man is his own hell and his own heaven. God Himself cannot bless you unless He gives you His own character.--_F. W. Robertson._

Ver. 16. _The Law of Mutual Dependence._

I. This text admonishes us of +the manifold instruments and agencies on whose concurrence and harmonious action the prosperity and the perfection of the Christian Church depend.+--It likens the Church to that most complicated, admirable machine, the human body, which only produces its proper results, the preservation and comfort of human life, by the healthful tone and right performance of its various powers and functions. We live, and are at ease, in virtue of the sound condition and regular operation of all the multitude of parts and organs which compose our corporeal frame. Should the heart refuse to circulate the blood, and to diffuse through all the various channels of inter-communication with the members of the body its life-sustaining pulses, death ensues in a moment.

II. +The same law of mutual dependence reigns in improved civilised society.+--In man, social as well as individual, the body politic and social must prosper, or its members suffer. The individual too cannot suffer without inflicting, by so much, an injury on the community. The ruler and the subject, the capitalist and the operative, the merchant, the farmer, the scholar and the artisan, the manufacturer and the sailor, perform functions alike indispensable to the great result aimed at or desired by all communities. They are mutually dependent, are indissolubly united in interest by ties not always visible, but yet real and essential to the well-being of all parties.

III. I hasten to +apply my subject to the Church,+ where the text finds illustration yet more pertinent and affecting. The Church is a community, organised, with special ends to be accomplished, and endowed with special capabilities and adaptations, yet having many points of resemblance to human society in general. All the members and all the officers of the Church are appointed and honoured of God to be co-workers with Himself, co-agents with the Holy Ghost, in the edification of the body of Christ. The pastor, not less in the study, when he gathers things new and old from holy books and common, than in the pulpit or in breaking the bread of the sacrament at the altar, or in the sick-chamber--all the subordinate lay ministries devoted to godly counsel, to faithful admonition, or to the management and conversation of the material interests of the Church--the pious mother nurturing up her children in God's love--the sufferer on a bed of languishing, giving forth blessed examples of patience and resignation and faith--the teacher of the Sabbath school--they who, in the Spirit, lift up our joyous songs of praise in the sanctuary--all who pray in the closet or in the congregation, are, and should be deemed, essential parts of that good, great system through whose wondrous, harmonious working God is pleased to renew and sanctify souls and train them up to be heirs of glory. Who, in this great co-partnership for honouring Christ, has any ground of complaint?--the foot, that it is not the head? the eye, that it is too feeble to do the functions of the brawny arm? the ears, that they cannot do the office of locomotion? Every part is indispensable. None can say which is most important in God's plan; and achievements, ascribed hastily to the eloquence of the preacher, often stand credited in the record kept above to the prayer of faith.--_Dr. Olin._

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 17-24.

_A Thorough Moral Transformation_--

+I. Contrasted with a former life of sin.+--1. _A state of self-induced mental darkness._ "Having the understanding darkened, . . . because of the blindness of their heart" (ver. 18). Infidelity is more a moral than a mental obliquity. The mind is darkened because the heart is bad. Men do not see the truth because they do not want to see it. The light that would lead to righteousness and to God is persistently shut out.

2. _A state of moral insensibility that abandoned the soul to the reckless commission of all kinds of sin._--"Who being past feeling have given themselves over . . . to work all uncleanness with greediness" (ver. 19). Sin is made difficult to the beginner. The barriers set up by a tender conscience, the warnings of nature, the teachings of providence, the light of revelation, the living examples of the good, have all to be broken down. Early transgressions are arrested by the remorse they occasion; but gradually the safeguards are neglected and despised, until the habit is acquired of sinning for the love of sin. A spirit of recklessness ensues, the reins are relaxed and then thrown upon the neck of the passions, and the soul is abandoned to the indulgence of all kinds of iniquity.

"We are not worst at once. The course of evil Is of such slight source an infant's hand Might close its breach with clay; But let the stream get deeper, and we strive in vain To stem the headlong torrent."

3. _A state that rendered all mental activities worthless._--"Walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind" (ver. 17). The art of right thinking was lost. For the man that will not think, think clearly and justly, the calamities and the raptures of life, the blessing and the curse, have no meaning. They evoke neither gratitude nor fear. The beauties of nature, as they sparkle in the stars, or shine in the flowers, or gleam in the coloured radiance of the firmament, are unheeded. The voice of God that speaks in the events of daily life has no lesson for him. The senses, which are intended as the avenues of light and teaching to the soul, are dulled by inaction, clogged by supine indifference, and polluted and damaged by inveterate sin. When the reason is poisoned at its source, all its deductions are aimless and worthless.

+II. Effected by the personal knowledge of the truth in Christ.+--"But ye have not so learned Christ, . . . as the truth is in Jesus" (vers. 20, 21). The Gospel has introduced to the world the principles of a great moral change. It announces Christ as the light of the world--a light that shines through all the realms of human life. The diseased reason is restored to health, the intellectual faculties have now a theme worthy of their noblest exercise, and are made stronger and more reliable by being employed on such a theme, and the moral nature is lifted into a purer region of thought and experience. The world is to be transformed by the moral transformation of the individual, and that transformation is effected only by the truth and a personal faith in Christ.

+III. Involves the renunciation of the corrupting elements of the former life.+--"That ye put off . . . the old man, which is corrupt" (ver. 22). The inward change is evidenced by the outward life. The old man dies, being conquered by the new. Corruption and decay marked every feature of the old Gentile life. It was gangrened with vice. It was a life of fleshly pleasure, and could end in only one way--in disappointment and misery. The new moral order inaugurated by the Gospel of Christ effected a revolution in human affairs, and the corrupting elements of the old order must be weeded out and put away. An excellent man in London kept an institution near the Seven Dials at his own expense. He spent his nights in bringing the homeless boys from the streets into it. When they came in he photographed them, and then they were washed, clothed, and educated. When he sent one out, having taught him a trade, he photographed him again. The change was marvellous, and was a constant reminder of what had been done for him. The change effected in us by the grace of God not only contrasts with our former life, but should teach us to hate and put away its corrupting sins.

+IV. Evidenced in investing the soul with the new life Divinely created and constantly receiving progressive renewal by the Spirit+ (vers. 23, 24).--It is a continual rejuvenation the apostle describes; the verb is present in tense, and the newness implied is that of recency and youth, newness in point of age. But the new man to be put on is of a new kind and order. It is put on when the Christian way of life is adopted, when we enter personally into the new humanity founded in Christ. Thus two distinct conceptions of the life of faith are placed before our minds. It consists, on the one hand, of a quickening constantly renewed in the springs of our individual thought and will; and it is at the same time the assumption of another nature, the investiture of the soul with the Divine character and form of its being. The inward reception of Christ's Spirit is attended by the outward assumption of His character as our calling amongst men. The man of the coming times will not be atheistic or agnostic; he will be devout; not practising the world's ethics with the Christian's creed; he will be upright and generous, manly and God-like (_Findlay_).

+Lessons.+--1. _Religion is a complete renewal of the soul._ 2. _The soul is renewed by the instrumentality of the truth._ 3. _The renewal of the soul is the renewal of the outward life._

_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._

Vers. 17-19. _The Gentile Life--a Warning._

+I. The Gentiles walked in the vanity of their minds.+--The false deities the Gentiles worshipped are called vanities. The prevalence of idolatry is a melancholy proof of the depravity of human nature. Atheism and idolatry proceed not from the want of sufficient evidence that there is one eternal, all-perfect Being, but from that corruption of heart which blinds the understanding and perverts the judgment.

+II. The heathens were darkened in their understanding.+--Not in respect of natural things, for in useful arts and liberal sciences many of them greatly excelled; but in respect of moral truth and obligation. Their darkness was owing, not solely to the want of revelation, but to the want of an honest and good heart. Religion consists not merely in a knowledge of and assent to Divine truths, but in such conformity of heart to their nature and design, and in such a view of their reality and importance as will bring the whole man under their government.

+III. They were alienated from the life of God.+--They walked according to the course of the world, not according to the will of God. Their alienation was through ignorance. Particular wrong actions may be excused on the ground of unavoidable ignorance. This ignorance had its foundation in the obstinacy and perverseness of the mind. Such a kind of ignorance, being in itself criminal, will not excuse the sins which follow from it.

+IV. They were become past feeling.+--This is elsewhere expressed by a conscience seared with a hot iron. By a course of iniquity the sinner acquires strong habits of vice. As vicious habits gain strength, fear, shame, and remorse abate. Repeated violations of conscience blunt its sensibility and break its power.

+V. They gave themselves over to lasciviousness.+--If we break over the restraints the Gospel lays upon is, and mock the terrors it holds up to our view, we not only discover a great vitiosity of mind, but run to greater lengths in the practice of iniquity. As water, when it has broken through its mounds, rushes on with more impetuous force than the natural stream, so the corruptions of the human heart, when they have borne down the restraints of religion, press forward with more violent rapidity, and make more awful devastation in the soul than where these restraints had never been known.

+Reflections.+--1. _How extremely dangerous it is to continue in sin under the Gospel._ 2. _You have need to guard against the beginnings of sin._ 3. _Christians must be watchful lest they be led away by the influence of corrupt example._ 4. _Religion lies much in the temper of the mind.--Lathrop._

Vers. 17, 18. _The Life of God._

+I. There is but one righteousness, the life of God; there is but one sin, and that is being alienated from the life of God.+--One man may commit different sorts of sins from another--one may lie, another may steal; one may be proud, another may be covetous; but all these different sins come from the same root of sin, they are all flowers off the same plant. And St. Paul tells us what that one root of sin, what that same devil's plant, is, which produces all sin in Christian brethren. It is that we are every one of us worse than we ought to be, worse than we know how to be, and, strangest of all, worse that we wish or like to be. Just as far as we are like the heathen of old, we shall be worse than we know how to be. For we are all ready enough to turn heathens again, at any moment. They were alienated from the life of God--that is, they became strangers to God's life; they forgot what God's life and character was like; or if they even did awake a moment, and recollect dimly what God was like, they hated that thought. They hated to think that God was what He was, and shut their eyes and stopped their ears as fast as possible. And what happened to them in the meantime? What was the fruit of their wilfully forgetting what God's life was? St. Paul tells us that they fell into the most horrible sins--sins too dreadful and shameful to be spoken of; and that their common life, even when they did not run into such fearful evils, was profligate, fierce, and miserable. And yet St. Paul tells us all the while they knew the judgment of God, that those who do such things are worthy of death.

+II. These men saw that man ought to be like God; they saw that God was righteous and good; and they saw, therefore, that unrighteousness and sin must end in ruin and everlasting misery.+--So much God had taught them, but not much more; but to St. Paul He had taught more. Those wise and righteous heathen could show their sinful neighbours that sin was death, and that God was righteous; but they could not tell them how to rise out of the death of sin into God's life of righteousness. They could preach the terrors of the law, but they did not know the good news of the Gospel, and therefore they did not succeed; they did not convert their neighbours to God. Then came St. Paul and preached to the very same people, and he did convert them to God; for he had good news for them, of things which prophets and kings had desired to see, and had not seen themselves, and to hear, and had not heard them. And so God, and the life of God, was manifested in the flesh and reasonable soul of a man; and from that time there is no doubt what the life of God is, for the life of God is the life of Christ. There is no doubt now what God is like, for God is like Jesus Christ.

+III. Now what is the everlasting life of God, which the Lord Jesus Christ lived perfectly,+ and which He can and will make every one of us live, in proportion as we give up our hearts and wills to Him, and ask Him to take charge of us and shape us and teach us? And God is perfect love, because He is perfect righteousness; for His love and His justice are not two different things, two different parts of God, as some say, who fancy that God's justice had to be satisfied in one way and His love in another, and talk of God as if His justice fought against His love, and desired the death of a sinner, and then His love fought against His justice, and desired to save a sinner. The old heathen did not like such a life, therefore they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They knew that man ought to be like God; and St. Paul says they ought to have known what God was like--that He was love; for St. Paul told them He left not Himself without witness, in that He sent rain and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. That was, in St. Paul's eyes, God's plainest witness of Himself--the sign that God was love, making His sun shine on the just and on the unjust, and good to the unthankful and the evil--in one word, perfect, because He is perfect love. But they preferred to be selfish, covetous, envious, revengeful, delighting to indulge themselves in filthy pleasures, to oppress and defraud each other.

+IV. God is love.+--As I told you just now, the heathen of old might have known that, if they chose to open their eyes and see. But they would not see. They were dark, cruel, and unloving, and therefore they fancied that God was dark, cruel, and unloving also. They did not love love, and therefore they did not love God, for God is love. And therefore they did not love each other, but lived in hatred and suspicion and selfishness and darkness. They were but heathen. But if even they ought to have known that God was love, how much more we? For we know of a deed of God's love, such as those poor heathen never dreamed of. And then, if we have God abiding with us, and filling us with His eternal life, what more do we need for life, or death, or eternity, or eternities of eternities? For we shall live in and with and by God, who can never die or change, an everlasting life of love.--_C. Kingsley._

Ver. 19. _Past Feeling._--1. Though original sin has seized upon the whole soul, yet the Lord has kept so much knowledge of Himself and of right and wrong in the understanding of men as they may know when they sin, and so much of conscience as to accuse or excuse according to the nature of the fact, whereupon follows grief or joy in their affections. Wicked men may arrive at such a height of sin as to have no sense of sin, no grief, nor check, nor challenge from conscience from it. 2. A watchful conscience doing its duty is the strongest restraint from sin; and where that is not, all other restraints will serve for little purpose. For a man to be given over to lasciviousness without check or challenge argues a great height of impiety. 3. As upon senseless stupidity of conscience there follows an unsatiableness in sinning especially in the sin of uncleanness, so when a man comes to this, he is then arrived at the greatest height of sin unto which the heathens, destitute of the knowledge of God, ever attained.--_Fergusson._

Vers. 20-24. _Putting off the Old Nature and putting on the New._

+I. The change here spoken of is radically seated in the mind.+--These terms do not import the creation of new powers and faculties, but the introduction of new tempers and qualities. The renovation enlightens the eyes of the understanding, and gives new apprehensions of Divine things. It purifies the affections and directs them to their proper objects. There are new purposes and resolutions.

+II. He who is renewed puts off the old man.+--The new spirit is opposite to sin and strives against it. The Christian mortifies the affections and lusts of the flesh because he has found them deceitful. He in deliberate and hearty purpose renounces all sin. He abstains from the appearance of evil.

+III. He puts on the new man.+--As the former signifies a corrupt temper and conversation, so the latter must intend a holy and virtuous disposition and character. The new man is renewed in righteousness and true holiness. He not only ceases to do evil, but learns to do well.

+IV. The pattern according to which the new man is formed is the image of God.+--The likeness must be understood with limitations. The image of God in us bears no resemblance to the perfections in the Divine nature, such as immensity, immutability, and independence. There are some essential properties of the new man to which there is nothing analogous in the Deity. Reverence, obedience, trust, and resignation are excellencies in rational creatures; but cannot be ascribed to the Creator. In those moral perfections in which the new man is made like God there is only a faint resemblance, not an equality. The new man resembles God in mercy and goodness, in holiness, in truth.

+V. This great change is effected by the Gospel.+--It was the consequence of their having learned Christ. The first production and improvement of this change is the work of Divine grace, and the Spirit of God works on the soul by means of the Word. To this change the use of means and the grace of God are both necessary.

+VI. The change is great.+--Let none imagine he is a subject of this change merely because he entertains some new sentiments, feels transient emotions, or has renounced some of his former guilty practices. The real nature and essence of conversion is the same in all.--_Lathrop._

_Religious Affections are attended with a Change of Nature._

+I. What is conversion?+--1. A change of nature. 2. A permanent change. 3. A universal change. 4. A union of God's spirit with the faculties of the soul. 5. Christ by His grace savingly lives in the soul.

+II. Its connection with sanctification.+--1. All the affections and discoveries subsequent to the first conversion are transforming. 2. This transformation of nature is continuous until the end of life, when it is brought to perfection in glory.

+III. Reflections.+--1. Allowance must be made for the natural temper. 2. Affections which have no abiding effect are not spiritual and gracious. 3. In some way it will be evident, even to others, that the true disciple has been with Jesus.--_Lewis O. Thompson._

Ver. 23. _The Christian Spirit, a New Spirit._

+I. There are some changes in men which come not up to the renewed spirit, and yet are too often rested in.+--1. The assuming of a new name and profession is a very different thing from a saving change in the temper of the mind. We may be of any profession, and yet be unrenewed. People value themselves upon wearing the Christian name, instead of that of Pagan, or Jew, or Mahometan; or upon being styled Papists or Protestants; or upon their attaching themselves to one or another noted party, into which these are subdivided, and upon such a new appellation they are too ready to imagine that they are new men: whereas we may go the round of all professions, and still have the old nature remaining in full force. 2. A bare restraint upon the corrupt spirit and temper will not come up to this renovation, though the one may sometimes be mistaken for the other. The light of nature may possess conscience against many evils, or a sober education lay such a bridle upon the corrupt inclination as will keep it in for a season, the fear of punishment or of shame and reproach may suppress the outward criminal act, while the heart is full of ravening and wickedness. Therefore, though it is a plain sign of an unrenewed mind if a man live in any course of gross sin, yet it is not safe to conclude merely from restraints that a man is truly renewed. 3. A partial change in the temper itself will not amount to such a renovation as makes a true Christian. Indeed, in one sense the change is but partial in any in this life; there will be remains of disorder in all the powers of the soul, so as to exclude a pretence to absolute perfection. It is not enough to have the mind filled with sound knowledge and useful notions, nor barely to give a dead assent to the doctrines of the Gospel, unless we believe with the heart, and the will and affections be brought under the power of those truths; and even here there may be some alteration, and yet a man not be renewed. Nor is it sufficient that we should find ourselves disposed to some parts of goodness, while our hearts are utterly averse to others which are equally plain. And therefore, though we should be of a courteous, peaceable, and kind temper towards men; though we should be inclined to practise justice, liberality, truth, and honesty in our transactions with them, and to temperance and chastity in our personal conduct; though these are excellent branches of the Christian spirit; yet if there be not a right temper towards God also, if the fear and love of God are not the ruling principles of the soul, there is an essential defect in the Christian spirit.

+II. A particular view of this renovation in some principal acts of the mind.+--1. The mind comes to have different apprehensions of things, such as it had not before. The new creation begins with light, as the old is represented to do. Light bearing in, and the mind being fixed in attention, man discerns the great corruption of his heart, and the badness of the principles and ends which governed him in the appearances of goodness, upon which he valued himself before. And so the excellency and suitableness of Christ, in all His offices, and the necessity of real, inward holiness, appear in quite another manner to his soul than hitherto. 2. The practical judgment is altered. This light, shining with clearness and strength into the mind, unsettles and changes the whole practical judgment by which a man suffered himself to be governed before in the matters of his soul. He judges those truths of religion to be real which once had no more force with him than doubtful conclusions, and accordingly he cannot satisfy himself any longer barely not to disbelieve them, but gives a firm and lively assent to them. 3. A new turn is given to the reasoning faculty, and a new use made of it. When the Word of God is mighty it casts down imaginations; so we render the original word (2 Cor. x. 5). It properly signifies "reasonings." Not that the faculty itself is altered, or that when men begin to be religious they lay aside reasoning; then in truth they act with the highest reason; they reason most justly and most worthy of their natures. But now the wrong bias, which was upon the reasoning faculty from old prejudices and headstrong inclinations, is in a good measure taken off; so that instead of its being pressed at all adventures into the service of sin, it is employed a better way, and concludes with more truth and impartiality. 4. There is an alteration in man's governing aim, or chief end. This is like the centre, to which all inferior aims and particular pursuits tend. The original end of a reasonable creature must be to enjoy the favour of God as his supreme happiness, to be acceptable and pleasing to Him. By the disposition of depraved nature we are gone off from this centre, and have changed our bias, from God to created good, to the pleasing of the flesh, to the gratification of our own humour, or to the obtaining of some present satisfaction, according to the prevailing dictate of fancy or appetite. This makes the greatest turn that can be in the spirit of the mind; all must be out of course till this be set right. Now it is the most essential part of the new nature to bring a sinner in this respect to himself, that is, to bring him back to God. All the light he receives, all the rectification of his judgment, is in order to this; and when this is well settled, everything else, which was out of course before, will return to its right channel. 5. There is hereupon a new determination to such a course of acting as will most effectually secure this end. As long as this world is the chief good which a man has in view, he contrives the best ways he can think of to promote his particular ends in it. But when the favour of God comes to have the principal share in his esteem, he carefully examines and heartily consents to the prescribed terms of making that sure. Now he is desirous to be found in Christ upon any terms. 6. The exercise of the affections becomes very different. A change will appear in this respect, through the different turns of his condition as well as in the prevailing tenor of his practice. While a man is a stranger to God and blind to the interests of his soul, he is little concerned how matters lie between God and him. But a sinner come to himself is most tenderly concerned at anything that renders his interests in God doubtful or brings his covenant-relation into question; and nothing sets the springs of godly sorrow flowing so much as the consciousness of guilt, or of any unworthy behaviour to God.

+Lessons.+--1. _Let us seriously examine our own minds, whether we can discern such an alteration made in our spirit._ 2. _If we must answer in the negative, or have just ground to fear it, yet let us not despair of a change still, but apply ourselves speedily in the appointed way to seek after it._ 3. _Let the best retain a sense of the imperfection of the new nature in them, and of their obligation still to cultivate it, till it arrive at perfection.--Dr. Evans._

_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 25-32.

_Christian Principles applied to Common Life._

Let us put these principles into the form of concrete precepts.

+I. Be truthful.+--"Putting away lying, speak every man truth, . . . for we are members one of another" (ver. 25). Society is so clearly welded together and interdependent that the evil effects of a falsehood not only damage others but rebound ultimately towards the man who uttered it. A lie is a breach of promise; for whosoever seriously addresses his discourse to another tacitly promises to speak the truth, because he knows the truth is expected. Truth never was indebted to a lie. "In the records of all human affairs," writes Froude, "it cannot be too often insisted on that two kinds of truths run for ever side by side, or rather crossing in and out with each other form the warp and woof of the coloured web we call history: the one the literal and eternal truths corresponding to the eternal and as yet undiscovered laws of fact; the other the truths of feeling and thought, which embody themselves either in distorted pictures of outward things or in some entirely new creation--sometimes moulding and shaping history; sometimes taking the form of heroic biography, tradition, or popular legend."

+II. Avoid sinful anger.+--"Be ye angry, and sin not: . . . neither give place to the devil" (vers. 26, 27). Anger is not forbidden. A nature ardent for truth and justice burns with indignation against cruelty and wrong. But it is a dangerous passion even for the best of men, and is apt to exceed the limits of prudence and affection. To nurse our wrath and brood over our imagined wrongs is to give place to the devil, who is ever near to blow up the dying embers of our anger. Plutarch tells us it was an ancient rule of the Pythagoreans that, if at any time they happened to be provoked by anger to abusive language, before the sun set they would take each other's hands, and embracing make up their quarrel. The Christian must not be behind the pagan in placability and forgiveness.

+III. Be honest.+--"Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour" (ver. 28). Laziness is a fruitful source of dishonesty, and is itself dishonest. There are sensitive natures to whom it is very difficult to be dishonest. In Abraham Lincoln's youthful days he was a storekeeper's clerk. Once, after he had sold a woman a little bill of goods and received the money, he found on looking over the account again that she had given him six and a quarter cents too much. The money burned in his hands until he had locked the shop and started on a walk of several miles in the night to make restitution before he slept. On another occasion, after weighing and delivering a pound of tea, he found a small weight upon the scales. He immediately weighed out the quantity of tea which he had innocently defrauded the customer, and went in search for her, his sensitive conscience not permitting any delay. The thief is not reformed and made an industrious worker by simply showing him the advantages of honesty. The apostle appeals to a higher motive--sympathy for the needy--"That he may have to give to him that needeth." Let the spirit of love and brotherhood be aroused, and the indolent become diligent, the pilferer honest.

+IV. Be circumspect in speech.+--"Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth" (ver. 29). The possession of a human tongue is an immense responsibility. Infinite good or mischief lies in its power. The apostle does not simply forbid injurious words; he puts an embargo on all that is not positively useful. Not that he requires all Christian speech to be grave and serious. It is the mere talk, whether frivolous or pompous--spoken from the pulpit or the easy-chair--the incontinence of tongue, the flux of senseless, graceless, unprofitable utterance, that he desires to arrest (_Findlay_).

+V. Grieve not the Holy Spirit+ (ver. 30).--Perhaps in nothing do we grieve the Spirit more than by foolish and unprofitable speech, or by listening willingly and without protest to idle gossip and uncharitable backbiting. His sealing of our hearts becomes fainter, and our spiritual life declines, as we become indiscreet and vain in speech.

+VI. Guard against a malicious disposition.+--"Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, and evil speaking be put away, with all malice" (ver. 31). _Malice_ is badness of disposition, the aptness to envy and hatred, which apart from any special occasion is always ready to break out in bitterness and wrath. _Bitterness_ is malice sharpened to a point and directed against the exasperating object. _Wrath_ and _anger_ are synonymous, the former being the passionate outburst of resentment in rage, the latter the settled indignation of the aggrieved soul. _Clamour_ and _railing_ give audible expression to these and their kindred tempers. Clamour is a loud self-assertion of the angry man who will make every one hear his grievance; while the railer carries the war of the tongue into his enemy's camp and vents his displeasure in abuse and insult. Never to return evil for evil and railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing--this is one of the lessons most difficult to flesh and blood (_Findlay_).

+VII. Cherish a forgiving spirit.+--"Be ye kind, . . . forgiving one another, even as God hath forgiven you" (ver. 32). It is man-like to resent an injury; it is Christ-like to forgive it. It is a triumph of Divine grace when the man who has suffered the injury is the most eager to effect a reconciliation. Dean Hook relates he was once asked to see a gentleman who had ill-treated him. Found him very thin and