From one learn all.
I. THIS IS A PRINCIPLE NOT TO BE UNIVERSALLY ACTED UPON IN EARTHLY THINGS. Because of:
1. Limitation of human powers.
2. Obscurity, complexity, and occasional discontinuity and non-uniformity of nature and human life.
II. TO THOSE WHO ARE ILLUMINATED IT IS ABSOLUTELY VALID IN DIVINE THINGS.
1. Not because the forms and successive stooges of the truth are mere repetitions of one another.
2. But they are all centred and interpreted in one Person.
3. They all require the exercise of the same spiritual faculty.—M.
Revelation and not concealment the final purpose of the truth.
I. THIS APPEARS FROM:
1. Its very nature. That which reveals (e.g. light) is not to be itself hidden. Its whole tendency is and has been towards greater manifestation. Each revelation of God has been grandee than that which preceded.
2. Its central significance in the Divine economy. It has evidently a practical relation to the whole, just as "the lamp" had to the peasant's room, as the general means of illumination. Everything in the world, in human lives, and in the constitution of the human soul answers to its interpreting light, which is the only true light by which they can be understood.
3. The existence in man of a faculty for its discernment. This may have been overlaid or perverted; but it really exists, and will answer to the believing effort to exercise it. It is Satan, not God, who has blinded the minds of those who are lost.
II. HOW STRONG MUST HAVE BEEN THE REASONS FOR TEMPORARY CONCEALMENT!
1. The fearful wickedness of the contemporaries of Jesus. A last time with reference to many preceding stages of darkening spiritual consciousness.
2. The revelation of that wickedness in convicting it of ignorance of Divine things.
3. The preservation of the Personal Truth in human/Grin until his manifestation should be complete.—M.
"Measure for measure;" or, the law of equity in its relation to Divine knowledge.
A wider law (Matthew 7:2) with special application to spiritual learning. One of the phases of the exactitude of relation between God and man, which yet admits of grace and blessing.
I. THE WORD OF GOD MUST BE RIGHTLY ATTENDED TO IN ORDER TO ITS BEING UNDERSTOOD. There is no process of mere mechanical transfer of truth into the nature of man. Experience and progress in truth are subject to the conditions of all intellectual inquiry, and also to special moral ones.
II. ACCORDING TO THE PROPORTION OF HEARING WILL BE THE SPIRITUAL BENEFIT.
1. It is to the use of faculties, and not to their mere possession, the reward attaches.
2. The communication of truth is therefore a spiritual discipline. "Quicquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis." Obedience is the gateway of knowledge. "Holding the truth in unrighteousness," we shall sooner or later lose it; holding it "in a pure conscience" and a willing spirit, we shall advance to the fullness of truth.—M.