rejects with distrust and contempt.[74] External revelation cannot make a man religious.  It can put nothing new into him.  If there is nothing answering to it in his mind, it will profit him nothing.  Nor can philosophy make a man religious.  “Man’s wisdom,” “the wisdom of the world,” is of no avail to find spiritual truth.  “God chose the foolish things of the world, to put to shame them that are wise.”  “The word of the Cross is, to them that are perishing, foolishness.”  By this language he, of course, does not mean that Christianity is irrational, and therefore to be believed on authority.  That would be to lay its foundation upon external evidences, and nothing could be further from the whole bent of his teaching.  What he does mean, and say very clearly, is that the carnal mind is disqualified from understanding Divine truths; “it cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”  He who has not raised himself above “the world,” that is, the interests and ideals of human society as it organises itself apart from God, and above “the flesh,” that is, the things which seem desirable to the “average sensual man,” does not possess in himself that element which can be assimilated by Divine grace.  The “mystery” of the wisdom of God is necessarily hidden from him.  St. Paul uses the word “mystery” in very much the same sense which St. Chrysostom[75] gives to it in the following careful definition:  “A mystery is that which is everywhere proclaimed, but which is not understood by those who have not right judgment.  It is revealed, not by cleverness, but by the Holy Ghost, as we are able to receive it.  And so we may call a mystery a secret ([Greek:  aporreton]), for even to the faithful it is not committed in all its fulness and clearness.”  In St. Paul the word is nearly always found in connexion with words denoting revelation or publication[76].  The preacher of the Gospel is a hierophant, but the Christian mysteries are freely communicated to all who can receive them.  For many ages these truths were “hid in God,[77]” but now all men may be “illuminated,[78]” if they will fulfil the necessary conditions of initiation.  These are to “cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit,[79]” and to have love, without which all else will be unavailing.  But there are degrees of initiation.  “We speak wisdom among the perfect,” he says (the [Greek:  teleioi] are the fully initiated); but the carnal must still be fed with milk.  Growth in knowledge, growth in grace, and growth in love, are so frequently mentioned together, that we must understand the apostle to mean that they are almost inseparable.  But this knowledge, grace, and love is itself the work of the indwelling God, who is thus in a sense the organ as well as the object of the spiritual life.  “The Spirit searcheth all things,” he says, “yea, the deep things of God.”  The man who has the Spirit dwelling in him “has the mind of Christ.”  “He that is spiritual judgeth all things,” and is himself