"That your faith might not stand in the wisdom of men; but in the power of God." 1 Cor. II. 5.
The labor of establishing a universal religion, founded on faith in a spiritual kingdom absolutely distinct from the kingdom of this world, and by a faith which must be imparted from that Kingdom by a Teacher who came from it, brought forth the utterance of this text. To attain it was a sort of passover from the red sea,— the Christ leading the children of the Kingdom of God out of the Egyptian darkness of material forms of worship to the shore of spiritual discernment, where men "apprehend that of which they are also apprehended."
This border, reached by the "strait and narrow way," and the gate passed, they enjoy the liberty of the Sons of God in his eternal Kingdom. The darkness in which man worked is seen to-day in history. The kingdom of Israel through ignorance, or wilful disobedience of their own prophet's teaching had been scattered. A form of Judaistic worship existed led by the scribes and Pharisees, with the priests officiating in the temple, and a form of teaching Scripture in the public synagogue; and with all the prejudice that leaders have toward men who bring new methods which have a tendency to destroy the old.
