---

I. HERE ARE TWO OBJECTS SET BEFORE US.

1. The natural man in contrast with the spiritual man. Note Paul's classification.

(1) The carnal man "lives after the flesh." His whole nature is the servant of sin.

(2) In the natural man the ethical element may be predominant. He may be a man of culture, sympathy, and a believer in the objective facts and formal sanctities of religion; and yet so long as he is only all that, he "cannot discern the things of the spirit."(3) The spiritual man is such by virtue of a new creation. He has "put off the old man and his deeds."

2. "The things of the spirit."(1) They are spiritual things. Religion deals with supernatural objects — God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, &c. These are spiritually discerned. There are windows in the soul of the spiritual man through which he looks into the mystery of invisible worlds. "The Spirit searched," &c. "God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit."(2) They are revealed to faith. They occupy a sphere and deal with realities which "eye hath not seen," &c. They are emphasised as "the things of God," they are the product and expression of His thought. We have no faculties by which to apprehend a Being whose attributes are infinity and eternity. But what cannot be discerned may be revealed. That is what has taken place, and the verifying power of this revelation is a spiritual discernment, a faculty of faith, inwrought by the Spirit in the soul; and "the eyes of the understanding being enlightened," we "know what is," &c.

(3) They become real in the consciousness of the believing man, who is translated into a new order of being, is born again. God and the soul touch.

II. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE APOSTLE'S TEACHING.

1. There is a class of outward things which we can only know by the senses. There is no rainbow to the blind man, no music to the deaf. So it is with the things of the spirit.

2. The senses bring in their report of things, but they know nothing of the science or philosophy of things. This is the work of trained intellect.

(1) To the ordinary man nature looks like a jumble of accidents; to the scientific there is a place for everything and everything is in its place, from the atom to the sun. To ninety men out of a hundred the pebble, or bit of coal or chalk, is merely a thing for use; to the trained eye it is a revelation of cycles of duration, in which now vanished dynasties of animated beings sported. Nature is a book of hieroglyphics which only science can interpret — it is scientifically discerned.

(2) Look at the Bible, at the seemingly discordant but really concatenated departments of revealed truth. But the Bible as a harmonious whole only yields itself up to the discipline and culture of the student.

3. Another class of realities we can know only as they come through experience. They are, in the strictest sense, "spiritual things(ver. 11).

(1) The things of a man — his joys, hopes, fears, griefs, &c. — what man can know these, save the spirit of a man that is in him? Language is a system of signs for the expression of "unknown things"; but there are things of which it can be neither the sign nor the expression Thoughts lie deeper than speech, feelings than thoughts: consciousness the deepest of all, is the only witness of what passes in the mysterious world of mind. Sin, remorse, &c., have no sign and can never be interpreted but by the reality which calls them forth.

(2) So the things of God can be known only by the consciousness created by the Spirit of God. Coleridge speaks of a philosophical consciousness lying behind the ordinary consciousness before he can be a philosopher. To know what the reality of life is, we must live, not dissect it. To feel the bitterness of sin we must repent, not speculate about it. To taste the sweetness and power of Christ's forgiveness we must believe in Christ, not just catalogue or canonise His virtues. These things belong to the "new name written, which no man knoweth," &c.

(3) Hence the reason why so many unspiritual though gifted minds miss the entrance to the kingdom of God. They are "natural men" and "cannot discern," &c. They are as blind men groping in the dark. Let us be consistent. I, as a non-scientific Christian, am warned off the ground of scientific induction as a territory on which I have no factor of investigation. My religion is not the organ of physical discovery. Very well: the scientist is warned off the ground of spiritual consciousness as a territory on which he is equally at fault. Conclusion: Note —

1. The limit which these considerations set to the possibilities of mental culture, and the rebuke which they administer to the audacity and irreverence of the unsanctified intellect.

2. The need of regeneration.

3. "If any man will do God's will he shall know of the doctrine.(J. Burton.)

---

---

KJV: Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

WEB: Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things.