The Natural and the Spiritual

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Cor 2:14 KJV).

In 1 Cor. 2:14 St. Paul describes the natural man as utterly devoid of spiritual perception. Spiritual realities "are foolishness unto him"; and "he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged or examined" (R. V.). Christ foretold this state of things when he declared that "the world," the aggregate of natural men, "cannot receive the Spirit of truth, because they see him not." They have in exercise only sense-perception and reason, neither of which apprehends God and spiritual things. Spiritual intuition is an attribute of spiritual life; and spiritual life is absent, because unbelief bars out the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life. Hence, St. Jude describes "natural or sensual [animal, R. V. margin] men as having not the Spirit."

Just the opposite is the characteristic of spiritual men, "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." While the natural man is, by the perverse attitude of his will, an agnostic, the spiritual man is an epignostic, having a clear perception of divine realities, which he is enabled to speak of, not in the terms of groveling human philosophy, but in the words which the Spirit teacheth (1 Cor. 2:13, R. V., margin), "interpreting spiritual things to spiritual men."

— Half-Hours With St. Paul and Other Bible Readings Chapter 14.

On Being a Mystic

A Christian friend writes to me asking me whether I am not a Mystic. I reply, Yes. All men are religious Mystics who know God through spiritual intuition, a gift of the Holy Ghost far transcending the Reason and the Understanding. I have a warm side for the Christian Mystics, so utterly misunderstood by that blind generation in which they lived. They dwelt on the mountain-tops in a dark age, and never lost sight of the vision of a glorified Christ. Such a Mystic I would be as Rudolf E. Etier professed to be, when a company at an inn hinted that this reproachful epithet belonged to him, by asking his definition of the term. He replied: "The Mystics were preachers who lived as they preached." Perfect love has worn many an opprobrious name without receiving any detriment. This Rose of Sharon blooming in my heart is just as sweet under any other name. My feeling towards the Mystics is much like that of Wesley towards the Montanists. He is their only modern defender, because his mind was sufficiently large and catholic to look beneath certain exaggerated excesses and to discover that these vilified people were really filled with the Holy Ghost, and that amid a formal and worldly church they preserved a spiritual type of Christianity.

It seems to me that I never knew what it is to grow in grace till I plunged into the shoreless and fathomless sea of Love divine in 1870. Since that date each new height gained has shown above me Alps on Alps arising, betokening an endless career of progress in the ceaseless cycles of eternity.

"The fullness of His blessing encourageth my way;

The fullness of His promises crowns every brightening day;

The fullness of His glory is beaming from above,

While more and more I realize the fullness of His love." 

— From Mile-Stone Papers (1878) Part 2, Chapter 8.

The Growth of the Child Jesus

QUESTION: Explain Luke 2:40: "And the child grew, and waxed strong, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him."

ANSWER: Jesus had a normal bodily and mental  growth. He learned from his mother and Joseph to speak Aramaic, his mother tongue. The rabbi taught him to read Hebrew, then a dead language. His knowledge of the Holy Scriptures came from hearing them read every sabbath in the synagogue. Dr. Stalker suggests that through the kindness of the sacristan, or sexton, this model boy whom everybody admired had access on week days to the sacred scrolls kept in the synagogue and that he diligently studied them. But at twelve his knowledge that God, not Joseph, was his Father, was a supernatural, spiritual intuition. Such intuitions continued to unfold as long as he lived on the earth.

— Steele's Answers pp. 24, 25.