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THE MYSTERY.

EPHESIANS iii.

THERE were two objects embraced in Paul's ministry. He has expressed them in verses 8 and 9 of this chapter, where he states in brief and plain terms the character of his commission as an apostle or evangelizer.

First, the grace was bestowed upon him of his being sent to preach among the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ.

The emphasis here is on the fact of the Gentiles being those to whom he was specially commissioned. The publishing or unfolding of the riches of God's grace in Christ Jesus was in itself no special charge to Paul. Others before him had been sent forth to preach these precious truths, but their labours were in the main, if not exclusively, directed towards the Jew. A richer and fuller exhibition of these unsearchable riches there certainly was in Paul's ministry; but otherwise the specialty of the grace given unto him lay in his being selected to preach them " among the Gentiles."

The second branch of the apostle's commission, was that expressed in the words, "To make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery."

There is here, I apprehend, an intended contrast between the "all" and the "Gentiles" of the preceding verse. Jew and Gentile were alike indebted to Paul's ministry for the knowledge and intelligence of a "mystery" unveiled through him, and which he was specially commissioned to make all see. My occupation is not now with the former, but with this latter branch of his charge.

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To many it will seem a bold or even a rash assertion, that to the vast majority of Christians, learned and unlearned, this side of the apostle's commission has remained to this hour without effect. The Reformation (great and blessed work of God as it was, for which we cannot be too grateful), while it brought once more into light much of "the unsearchable riches of Christ" that had become encrusted with the corrosions of Popish error, left this side of truth wholly in darkness; and it has been reserved, in God's inscrutable wisdom, to a later day, and to feeble folk," to exhume from the word the long-buried treasure. As a sovereign, in the dispensing of His grace, God is pleased to revive or restore at the moment, and in the ways and measure that please Him. When men, because they did not like to retain God or His truth in their knowledge, have been given over of Him to a reprobate mind, and suffered for a season to reap the fruit of their doings, He is under no obligation to restore to them the knowledge and appreciation of truths they have forfeited. When, in the loving compassion and grace of His tender heart, He is pleased in any measure to do so, He chooses His own time and His own instruments; the latter, generally "the weak things of the world"-"earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God."

It is no disparagement of the Reformation, to say that it brought back only a part of the long-lost truths of the Word. It was pure sovereign grace that led men so far into truth as they did then go; as it is pure sovereign grace that has in these latter times, through other instrumentality, directed the minds of numbers of God's children to other truths in the Word not then discerned. The investigation of the subject before us will make it sufficiently clear that we have to do with a matter concerning

which, in the writings of the Reformers, as in those of all subsequent theologians, entire obscurity prevails.

The first point to be looked at is one of criticism, in reference to the text of the passage.

If the reader has access to the little hand-book of Textual Criticism published by Bagsters (p. 56), he will see, on reference to this text, that the unanimous voice of criticism reads “dispensation or administration" (oikovoμía) instead of "fellowship" (kowovia);* and so will he find "dispensation" given in the translations of Alford, Boothroyd, Ellicott, Davidson, and Darby; "stewardship," Green; administration," Kelly.

"To make all see what is the dispensation (or administration) of the mystery," is then the language of the apostle and of the Holy Ghost, which it becomes our task to weigh and search into the meaning of.

At first sight the change will probably seem to many to render the text less rather than more intelligible, and this feeling it probably was, that, at the hands of some man more confident in his own understanding, than imbued with a sense of the inviolable sacredness of the word of God, led first to the substitution.

To many readers "dispensational truth" may be sufficiently strange, to render not unfitting nor unwelcome a few words in explanation.

The word before us, oikovouía-occurring also in verse 2 of the chapter, and translated "dispensation" there—is a compound word uniting two, which mean respectively "house" and "law;" so that to give its exact counterpart in English, it would stand thus-"house-law;" and its

* "Dispensation," Alford, Griesbach, Lachman, Scholtz, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Wordsworth, Bloomfield, Burton, Webster, and Wilkinson, with all the uncial manuscripts that have that portion of the text.

obvious and primary meaning would be the law, rules, regulations or administration, of a household. The word itself is quite familiar to our English ears and tongues, in an Anglicised form-"economy." This term (correctly used in such phrases as "political economy "), in current usage is mainly taken in the sense of carefulness in expenditure, or in the dispensing of means or substance; a portion undoubtedly, though far from being all, that pertains to proper household rule.

In Scripture we have it translated "stewardship," in Luke xvi. 2-4; the kindred word, oikovóμos (literally, an economist), being translated "steward" in Luke xii. 42; xvi. 1, 3, 8; 1 Cor. iv. 1, 2; Titus i. 7; 1 Peter iv. 10; "governors" in Gal. iv. 2, and "chamberlain" in Rom. xvi. 23—while in 1 Cor. ix. 17, Eph. i. 10, and Col. i. 25 we have it, as in the chapter under review, "dispensation." As employed in these passages, and in the phrase “dispensational truth," it looks at the world as a great household or stewardy, in which God is dispensing, or administering, according to rule of His own establishing, and in whose order He has from time to time introduced certain changes, the understanding of which is consequently needful, both to the intelligent interpretation of His word and to intelligent action under Him.

If we suppose a couple of households in any city, conducted on very different principles-the one, the household of a godly man, of regular and orderly habits, who rules his house in the fear of God, ordering everything as under His eye and for Him; the other, that of a godless, dissipated man, in which everything is at sixes and sevens; and then imagine a domestic to pass from the latter into the former, and to proceed to regulate her conduct in her new place by the order or disorder with which she was

familiar in the old, one can at once discern what a source of confusion she would be in the family. In order to her becoming a faithful and profitable servant in the godly household, she must first acquaint herself with its order or "economy," and then conform herself to that. Although there are certain general duties that may pertain alike to all households, the points of detail, even in well-ordered families, will of necessity vary with the varying circumstances, position in life, occupation, &c., of the inmates; so that, the "domestic economy" being different-as meal hours and the like-a servant has always to change or modify her action in each case as required. Even a change in the circumstances of the same household will necessitate sometimes a change in its rule, and demand therefore a corresponding change in the conduct of its servants.

Now surely it is just as simple and plain, that if God has, from time to time, introduced changes into the order of His dealing with the world, and dispensing its affairs, the nature of these changes must be studied, understood, and acted on by His servants, if they would prove profitable servants, and co-operate intelligently in His plans. To import into one dispensation the directions or conduct prescribed for another must entail confusion and disorder, whether in the interpretation of the Scriptures relating to them, or in the regulation of action, individual or corporate, under them. Hence the necessity of what the apostle (2 Tim. ii. 15) calls "rightly dividing the word of truth," the neglect of which has ever been and ever must be the source of unutterable confusion; in short, of most of the confusion we see around.

When man, beguiled by Satan, with the prospect of being "as gods," tasted the forbidden fruit, and acquired the coveted knowledge of good and evil-conscience