As there is nothing on which men may not make a controversy, so there has been a question raised whether the meaning be, “in Whom,” viz. in Christ, or, “in which,” viz. in the mystery of God, and the Father, and Christ, “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge?” But we may well be excused if we do not desire on such a day as this to run into criticism of this kind; and I shall therefore take it at once for granted that the plain and natural sense of the words is the true one, and that we have here the Apostle’s declaration of and concerning Him of Whom he says just afterwards unmistakeably, that “in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” { 136} that He is the same “in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” And if they be so in Christ, as He is, at the right hand of God, (for He was there undoubtedly when the Apostle wrote this of Him,) so, being ever one and the same Eternal God, “the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever,” they were equally in Him in the days of His humiliation, “when for us men and for our salvation” He took upon Him man’s nature. As the Second of our Articles of Religion, in the strictest theological language, expresses it: “The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man;” whereof, too, be it well observed, the just and immediate consequence is, that He—“Who truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men,”—was this same one Person, very God, and very Man. So that we speak simple truth (though a mystery beyond even angelic powers fully to understand or appreciate) when we say that God Himself was born of the Virgin Mary; God Himself lay in that manger at Bethlehem; God Himself grew up from infancy to manhood before men’s eyes; God Himself shed His Blood, and died upon the Cross, to save the lost and guilty race of Adam, whom by His Incarnation He made His brethren: even as the Apostle declares to the disciples at Miletus, that God had “purchased His Church with His own Blood;” { 137a} and again, tells the Ephesians, that through Christ “we have redemption through His Blood;” { 137b} and again, the Hebrews, that “by His own Blood entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” { 137c}