INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

The good pleasure of the Godhead was that all its fulness should dwell and manifest itself in Christ. Such was the purpose of God, a purpose full of blessing. The way in which God is about to manifest that purpose, and in which we are associated with its blessings, is infinitely interesting to us.

In the following pages only a small part of that purpose has been treated of, the outward part, so to speak, a part which nevertheless is none the less interesting.

It was designedly that God was pleased to accomplish it in a visible way, in order that that purpose might be revealed to us by means of positive truths, which, while bringing the Christian into fellowship with God, who is their source, preserve him — weak creature that he is — from substituting the wanderings of his own imagination for the holy manifestations which God has given unto us of Himself. The subject we are treating is contained in the prayer of the apostle Paul, which we find at the end of Ephesians 1. This subject finds a still deeper source (to which we have alluded) in what is announced to us at the end of Ephesians 3, and we cannot truly enjoy the subject treated in Ephesians 1, without having felt in some measure the power of Ephesians 3.

For the rest, in communicating what follows, I only respond in weakness to the desires of a few persons, and I am confident that God will deign to make up for what is lacking.