Father that the soul can either discern or realise

its true destiny.

There are many other precious truths set before us in the Gospel which we might in like manner show to be at once most necessary for human guid ance, and inaccessible to unaided human research. We shall not, however, dwell on them, or even enumerate them. The entire problem of our present and future salvation is beyond our powers of solution. The light of nature and the works of creation and providence cannot show man a way of reconciliation to God. No man by mere human wisdom, by any searching into the secrets of nature or providence, can find that out. Mere human wisdom is utter folly here; and if man may be wise at all in this connection, he must confess his natural folly, the powerlessness of his own reason, and must consent to be guided by the wisdom of God—or, in other words, to accept Christ, who is the wisdom of God to us for salvation, who is God's solution of the problem of our salvation. The only real wisdom possible to man must, from the very nature and necessity of the case, be the wisdom of renouncing his own wisdom. If he say, I shall solve this awful problem for myself, without help from any one, then he in his wisdom is a most manifest fool, whose folly will ruin him; but if he have the candour to confess his own folly, to admit his own intellect powerless here, and to acknowledge the

wisdom of God and acquiesce in His plan of salvation, then, in the very act of confessing himself foolish he is made wise, for Christ is made wisdom unto him.

The oracle at Delphi pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Socrates could not understand it, and yet he was unwilling to disbelieve the oracle, so he went about from one person reputed wise to another, in order to be able to say, "here is a wiser man than I am," or at least to find out what the oracle meant. He went to many, but he found that, while they in reality knew almost nothing that was worth knowing, they thought they knew a great deal, and were angry with one who tried to convince them of their ignorance. So that at last Socrates came to recognise that there was a truth in what had been said about him; to use nearly his own words,-" He left them, saying to himself, I am wiser than these men; for neither they nor I, it would seem, know anything valuable: but they, not knowing, fancy that they do know; I, as I really do not know, so I do not think that I know. I seem, therefore, to be in one small matter wiser than they." Now it is only the kind of spirit which in its degree and about less important matters was in Socrates—it is precisely that kind of spirit about the things which concern eternal life and peace, that can alone make a man wise unto salvation. The most ignorant person, provided he

only know that he must renounce his own wisdom as foolishness-which on subjects pertaining to salvation it really is—and accept what is disclosed in Christ as to salvation, is infinitely wiser than the most able or learned man who trusts solely to his own wisdom apart from Christ's revealed work and will. Both of them are foolish and ignorant ; but the one knows it, and, in consequence of knowing it, accepts Christ's plan of salvation, and is made a partaker of infinite wisdom-the other does not know it, and, thinking that he is wise while he is a fool, remains in his folly, and must bear its punishment.

And now I bring this course of lectures to a close. I trust that they may not have been found wholly without profit, through the blessing of Him who despises not even the smallest and most imperfect service, if humbly rendered to Him. I should rejoice to think that I had helped any one to hold, in such a time as the present, with a firmer and more intelligent grasp, the fundamental truth on which all religious faith must rest. Amen.1

1 See Appendix XL.

X

APPENDIX.

NOTE I., page 6.

NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION.

THE Hindus regard the Vedas, the Parsees the ZendAvesta, and the Mohammedans the Koran, as having been immediately and specially inspired. This means that they believe the spiritual truth contained in these books to belong to revealed religion, although it, in reality, is merely a portion of natural religion. The Greeks and Romans could not distinguish between nature and revelation, reason and faith, because ignorant of what we call revelation and faith. Without special revelation or inspiration the oriental and classical mind attained, however, to the possession of a very considerable amount of most precious religious truth. In all ages of the Christian Church there have been theologians who have traced at least the germinal principles of such truth to written or unwritten revelation; and probably few patristic or scholastic divines would have admitted that there was a knowledge of God and of His attributes and of His relations to the world which