manifold wisdom of God." Eph. iii. 10. Such is its relation to the Angels. Again to lost spirits: "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness in this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places." Eph. vi. 12. In like manner our Lord says, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against" the Church, Matt, xvi. 18. implying thereby a contest. Again in writing the following text, had not St. Paul thoughts in his mind, suggested by the unutterable sights of the third heaven, but to us unrevealed and unintelligible? "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us" (that is the Church,) "from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Rom. viii. 38, 39.
The practical inference to be drawn from this view is, first, that we should be very reverent in dealing with revealed truth; next, that we should avoid all theorising and systematising as relates to it, which is pretty much what looking into the ark was under the Law: further, that we should be solicitous to hold it safely and entirely; moreover, that we should be zealous and pertinacious in guarding it; and lastly, which is implied in all these, that we should religiously adhere to the form of words and the ordinances under which it comes to us, through which it is revealed to us, and apart from which the revelation does not exist, there being nothing else given us by which to ascertain or enter into it.
Striking indeed is the contrast presented to this view of the Gospel, by the popular theology of the day! That theology is as follows;—that the Atonement is the chief doctrine of the Gospel;—again, that it is chiefly to be regarded, not as a wonder in heaven, and in its relation to the attributes of God and the unseen world, but in its experienced effects on our minds, in the change it effects where it is believed. On this, as on the horizontal line in a picture, all the portions of the Gospel system are placed and made to converge; as if it might fearlessly be used to regulate, adjust, correct, complete, every thing else. Thus, the doctrine of the Incarnation is viewed as necessary and important
