Here, however, let me say, lest I should be misunderstood, that I surely know there are rules of right and wrong, which are essentially so, by moral necessity so; and we are not to question their authority. Conscience is ever to be respected, though it must consent to be instructed. Nature itself has a voice at times, which we are to listen to. Surely I grant all this, though I speak of dispensational truth as I do. For I again say, it is not the only rule and measure of holiness. And I will say more. I grant that all dispensations have certain common qualities, certain features which mark each and all of them. Let me dwell on this for a little.
In this world, which has departed from God through pride, and desire of self-exaltation, where a man would have been as God, if God appear and act at all, surely He will come in a way to stain the pride of all flesh, and bring back His revolted creature to glory only in Him.
And we see, accordingly, that it is thus, or on such a principle as this, that He has always acted in the midst of us, ever choosing the weak thing to confound the strong, that no flesh might glory in His presence, but that he who gloried, might glory only in Him. Let dispensations change as they may, or the scene shift as it may, this is always seen.
The Patriarchs were few, very few, in the land, and strangers there. They had not so much as to set their foot on, going from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people; yet did He suffer no man to do them wrong, reproving even kings for their sakes, and saying, “Touch not mine anointed,” and “do my prophets no harm.”
When His elect became a nation, they were the fewest of all people, not worthy of a memorial or place in the records of the world; but they multiplied in spite of Egyptian task-masters, and then flourished into a kingdom, and became the center of the earth and its nations, in spite of all the enmity that surrounded them. Their victories were gained by instruments of the most perfect weakness; lamps and pitchers, ox goads, jawbones, and slings, doing the work of the army and the war-horse, the sword and the shield; while two would put ten thousand to flight, and trumpets of rams’ horns pull down the walls of hostile cities.
And so, when times change altogether, when the nation is broken up because of its sin, and a ministry of grace and salvation goes forth, it is fishermen of Galilee, with their divine Lord, the son of a carpenter, at their head, that bear it abroad to the cities and villages of the land.
And so again, when the Apostle of the Gentiles comes to speak of ministry in his day, he tells us of the weakness and foolishness of God proving stronger and wiser than man, and points to the Church at Corinth as the witness of this same principle which we have traced from the beginning; that God was humbling the flesh or man, and making Himself our glory and boast (1 Cor. 3). And he then lets us know, that he was acting on this same principle himself, as in company with God—for that he was among the Corinthians in weakness and in fear, as a minister of Christ, not using excellency of speech or of wisdom; but that, in the midst of this his weakness, he carried a secret with him, a glorious, wondrous secret, beyond the reach of the eye or the ear or the heart of the princes of this world. Gideon and Samson and David knew the victory, that was before them in their day, though they went forth to the battle with lamps and pitchers, with the jawbone of an ass, or with a sling and a stone; and such an one was Paul with his treasures of light in the Spirit, though he was in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.