Chapter vii, concluded.
iii. Now we turn from St Peter to St Paul, and hear him speak of what is manifold also; “the manifold wisdom of God.”
The words have a special reference, as will be seen, of special and beautiful significance. The Apostle speaks of his manifold wisdom, not in the abstract, but as illustrated and in action in the true Church, that is to say in “the blessed company of all faithful people”;* and in the view of very important spectators. “The principalities and powers,” the spirits of the heavenly world, “angels and archangels and the company of heaven,”* are seen in this wonderful verse studying the wisdom of God as shown in the believing company. To take the simplest aspects of this disclosure of God’s word; we have it indicated here that Christians, of every grade, and character, and situation, and age, and name, are capable of thus being viewed from above, to the glory of the wisdom of their God. The poorest, humblest, most forgotten and neglected saint of Christ in whose manifold trials manifold grace is doing its work, may at this moment be affording to our “elder brethren of the sky” discoveries of what the Lord is and what He can do, most precious to themselves. In us they see what they cannot see in their own bright ranks; the victory of grace over the infinitely complicated problem of the recovery, the acceptance, the sanctification, the glory, of beings fallen, rebellious, justly condemned, and under all the conditions of the flesh.
Very different are the specimens they study; the Christian martyr, the Christian leader and master of men, the Christian thinker and student, the missionary and evangelist, the Christian mother, the friend of the needy and the outcast, the little believing child, the lonely aged one, the dying one, sinking into what to us looks like “utter destruction.”** but what by them is seen as the triumphant issue of divine wisdom, turning death into the gate of life.
Are we part of the subject-matter of God’s lessons to these heavenly learners in the study of His manifold wisdom? Is there anything in our lives from which an angel might learn more of God? If there is an ambition lawful in the life of penitent sinners, can there be a purer aspiration than that we may be used as illustrations to the minds of the Blessed, not of what man can be but of what He whom we love can do?
* The Communion Service.
** See the noble passage, Wisdom iii. 1-4.
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