Σοφία, γνῶσις, πίστις,—these, then, are the first three gifts by which the ministry of the Church was accredited to the people of Corinth as miraculous and divine: by these they might know that those who preached to them Jesus and the Resurrection were indeed endued with power from on high and we dare not look for less in the grace of Holy Orders than the spiritual substance and reality of these same endowments. Although in regard to the first and second it is the faculty of expression, the λóyos σοφίας, the λόγος γνώσεως, which is especially mentioned, yet clearly all the three gifts of this first class differ from all those which follow, in that they mark a miraculous enabling and enrichment of the man's true and eternal self: they are not powers accidentally attached to his natural strength, powers which may transform the world while he who wields them remains unchanged; but they are stages, or moments brought about by God in the development and self-realization of the undying spirit: they are energies inseparable from the being to whom they are granted, and by whom they are exerted and expressed. It is conceivable that the vicious, or unloving, or insincere, might work miracles of healing, or speak with diverse and mysterious tongues: it is inconceivable that any save the pure in heart should ever be blessed with the gifts of wisdom, of knowledge, and of faith. And therefore, it may well be, St. Paul has placed these first among all the nine spiritual gifts, to mark the essential priority of that cleansing and illumination of one's own true self, without which we may not hope to wield aright the other and more external powers of our ministry. But He Who in Ordination comes to us, He Who can, through the merit of Christ's atonement, enable with perpetual light the dulness of our blinded sight: He is ready to prepare us, in spite of all our folly and all our reluctance, for the wealth of His indwelling and when, by the grace of pardon, our sins are scattered as the morning cloud, to bring into the central fount, the very home and heart of our most secret self, the only life and light of His all-renewing gift, of wisdom and knowledge and faith. And first He brings into the soul the wisdom that is from above: the wisdom that is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. He makes us wise in regard to all the hopes and fears, the changes and chances, the interests and issues of this world; He grants us the higher views of its history and movement, as divinely ordered for the achievement of the kingdom of God. He can teach us to see things not as they seem, but as they are, as God sees them to be: He will make us sensitive to the true nature and bearing of the things which lie about us, so that we shall never, while we obey His Voice, reject or spurn what God holds choiceworthy, nor choose what He would have us spurn. We have, it may be, grown up under, and are still in bondage to, a strong code of conventional tastes and rules; we have never learnt to look with hope for the revelation of God in that which has, to the eyes of fallen man, no form or comeliness, no beauty that we should desire it but the Spirit of wisdom can lead us into all truth. He will take us by the hand and shew us, in the sick-room or in the hospital, the glory of patience, the sacrament of suffering, the light of hope that breaks through death itself:-He will bring us into the wretchSt. James iii. 17. : ed, squalid home, and in His wisdom we shall know that love is enough, that poverty, too, may be the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace: He may teach us, through pain and anguish of our own, to know the depths and heights of human life; till, by the merciful constraint of truth, He forces us to tear away the last rag of unreality wherewith we have blinded our eyes to the world, the work, the will of God Almighty; till we see that there is no true glory upon earth, save in the Cross of Jesus Christ our Lord. And then, for many souls at least, He adds the gift of knowledge; the calmer, and more fully conscious apprehension of all the truths that we have seen with Him, as meeting and mutually completed in the true philosophy of life. It is surely so, that those who have lived long and faithfully in His power and service, do attain a yvŵoɩs, a scientific understanding and mastery of the subject-matter of philosophy, which makes them utterly fearless in the presence of criticism or positivism;-they have reached a certain relation and stand-point in regard to the mysteries of existence, from which they know that they can never be dislodged. They know Whom they have believed, and this knowledge they have gained by trustful communion and co-operation with Him Who came to them in all His fulness on the day of their Ordination. The philosophy which He has given them may not be always ready for debate, it will never be effective for display, or minister to vanity: but it is, perhaps, the only system that has ever kept its promise of a fearless life, and a hope that is stronger than death. It is not uncommon for those who have had much experience of parish-work, to wonder, almost impatiently, at the laborious and anxious efforts with which they see others toiling to build or to defend a Christian theory of ethics or metaphysics. They cannot see the use or wisdom of these elaborate outworks about that which seems to them itself impregnable: surely it is a waste of time and strength to argue with those who will not see that the sun is risen in a cloudless sky. But those who thus wonder, forget, perhaps, how their own knowledge of the truth has come: they forget that Christianity has to be, for the sake of all, defended against those who have never worked for a single hour in the strength and |