place as the full confidante of God and the wonderful counsellor, as having the mind of Christ, and narrows the glory and the counsel to the feebleness of that state with which the Church's position is expressly contrasted (1 Cor. ii. 9, 10; see that whole passage). We may indeed know in part and prophesy in part, and so learn from time to time; but, in another sense, we have an unction from the Holy One, and we know all things, because we have the Spirit of God who formed, ordered, and reveals them. We are of one counsel with Him, and not merely the objects of that counsel, as they of old. Being children, the family interests are ours as well as His, though we may be but feeble in the detailed apprehension of them. Now the Revelations have particularly this character, because they were left for the Church (not a communication between living apostles and living men, but left for the Church), as having the Spirit, and dependent on the Spirit, and so, as having that Spirit, to use it in time to come; and so only.
Consistently herewith, the address is not an address of personal relationship, but the presenting of that which is the subject of knowledge. The most blessed truths of redemption may shine forth throughout it, yet it is not the address simply of the
