is not to be
resented as if it were a dishonour.

(2) The spirit of 'wisdom and revelation' vouchsafed to us is to enable
us to apprehend in a measure the divine 'wisdom and prudence[1]'
manifested in God's work of creation and redemption. The humility
which is content to correspond patiently and teachably with the method
of God is, as Francis Bacon was at pains to teach, of the essence of
all fruitful human science.

(3) The expression 'the fulness' or 'the fulness of the Godhead[2]'
means the sum total of the divine attributes, which, instead of being
spread over different angelic mediators, as the Colossians were
disposed to imagine, are, by the divine will, all concentrated and
combined in the glorified Christ. And here St. Paul teaches the
Ephesian Christians that all that belongs to the glorified Christ is to
belong also to the Church, which is His body. It is Christ who gives
to all creatures whatever various gifts of life they have. He 'filleth
all in all'; that is, 'He filleth the whole universe with all variety
of {81} gifts.' But something much more than various gifts--the sum
total of all He is--He pours, or intends to pour, into the Church, so
that the Church as well as the Christ shall embody, and thus be
identified with, the fulness of the divine attributes. At present the
Church is this only ideally, or in the divine intention: the actually
existing Church has still much need of growth that her members 'may be
filled (as they are not at present) up to the measure of the divine
fulness'; or, in other words, up to 'the measure of the stature of the
fulness of the Christ[3].'

The fulness, according to St. Paul's doctrine, is to be sought first in
the eternal God; then in the glorified Christ; then, through Him, in
the fully developed Church; and, finally, through the Church, in a
sense in the universe as a whole, when the work of redemption is done
and God is at last 'all in all' throughout His creation.

It may be noticed that St. Paul, in this doctrine of 'the fulness,' is
thinking rather of the divine attributes as manifested, than as they
are in themselves: and of Christ, not as the eternal {82} Son of God,
but, more particularly, as incarnate and glorified. It was the 'good
pleasure' of the Father to fill the exalted Christ, the first-begotten
from the dead, with the fulness of divine glory and power as the reward
of the humility and love which He showed when He 'emptied himself in
taking