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I. THEIR REALITY. It is remarkable how often the word "things" occurs in this chapter. This gives reality and something like shape and touchableness to the spiritual world. Thing is a wide word; it is the short way of saying thinking; thinkings are the true things; things visible are valuable only as they express thought. Thus the universe is the thinking (or thing) of God; every star is an expression of His mind. We must indeed stand back, nor come too near. When I was a child I thought as a child, foolishly supposing that he who gave me a penny gave me something real, and that he who gave me a thought had simply given me nothing. But now I am a man I see that to think is to have. Had I known it properly the penny actually was a thought, a thought of love or care. The picture was a thought before it was a mystery of colour. The cathedral was a thought before it rose to heaven in tower or pinnacle or swelling dome. The book was a thought before it was embodied in paper or ink and binding. Go back from shapes and colours and find your way into things, thinkings — in the beginning was the Word! When you are told that this is practical and that is metaphysical or even sentimental, what is meant by the definition? It is equal to saying, this is the outside and that is the inside — no more! It is unhappily quite possible for a man to be satisfied with the outside, and, indeed, to contend there is nothing but outside. He forgets that the tabernacle was built for the ark; that the outward exists for the sake of the inward. Suppose a child so demented as to be satisfied with the outside of his father's house, to say, "When I have discussed every mystery connected with the stone, the wood, the glass which I do see, it will be time enough to open the door and pry into the unknown and the unthinkable. They tell me that is my father's face at the window, but let me settle the mystery of the window before troubling myself with the mystery of the face. They say he wants me; when I have settled the geology of the doorstep, I may pay some attention to the fanatics who suppose that my father is so idling away his time." We should see the lunacy and impiety of this, and it is possible to repeat this substantially in the concerns which lie between God and the soul of man.

II. THEIR FREENESS. They are given lavishly, abundantly, and without price or tax, so that the poorest may have equal chances with the rich. Every man may find a hundred ways leading straight into the King's presence; the grassy way, open to humblest men; the starry way, trodden by loftier minds; the providential way, studied by the patient in their retirement and suffering, so that neither the blind nor the weak shall be lost for want of an open road to heaven. This is Godlike. "He that spared not His own Son," &c. "Not as the world giveth, give I unto you." God giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not. But here is a peculiar temptation. The very largeness of the inheritance is a temptation to neglect or extravagance. Let us watch ourselves, or we may turn the bounty of God into an occasion of sin.

III. THEIR REVELATION (ver. 10). Even the things that are seen require to be made clear by revelation. How much more the testimony which is addressed to an understanding perverted and a heart poisoned by sin? The Bible is revelation, ,but the revelation itself needs to be revealed. "Open Thou mine eyes, that I may ,behold wondrous things out of Thy law." "Then opened He their understandings that they might understand the scriptures." The inspiring Spirit must make plain She book He hath inspired or it will be a letter hard, cold, friendless: but with the Spirit it will show you its beauty, its unsearchable riches. Is it enough to snatch it up and hastily peruse the dead print? Not so did the saints of old study the lively oracles. "O how I love Thy law, it is my meditation all the day."

IV. THE DISADVANTAGE OF HAVING TO PUT THEM INTO HUMAN WORDS (ver. 13). To show our own cleverness in the use of words has been at once the temptation and the curse of Christendom. Fewer words, plainer words, the better; more thought, more feeling, more devotion, that is what we want (ver. 1). All the Christian preachers whose fame is immortal in England at least have been, from a scholastic point of view, more or less rude in expression, so that in their case it was not by might nor by power, but by God's Spirit, that the great victories for Christ were won. Worldly wisdom is the curse of preaching.

(J. Parker, D. D.)

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KJV: For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

WEB: For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God, except God's Spirit.