which human eye hath
not seen, nor ear heard, things which have not entered into the heart of
man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. It is
evident from the context that this does not refer solely to heaven, or the
things to come in the life hereafter. The Holy Spirit takes the deep
things of God which God hath prepared for us, even in the life that now
is, and reveals them to us.

IV. _The Holy Spirit interprets His own revelation. He imparts power to
discern, know and appreciate what He has taught._

In the next verse to those just quoted we read, "But the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness
unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned" (1 Cor. iii. 14). Not only is the Holy Spirit the Author of
revelation, the written Word of God: He is also the Interpreter of what He
has revealed. Any profound book is immeasurably more interesting and
helpful when we have the author of the book right at hand to interpret it
to us, and it is always our privilege to have the author of the Bible
right at hand when we study it. The Holy Spirit is the Author of the Bible
and He stands ready to interpret its meaning to every believer every time
he opens the Book. To understand the Book, we must look to Him, then the
darkest places become clear. We often need to pray with the Psalmist of
old, "Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy
law" (Ps. cxix. 18). It is not enough that we have the revelation of God
before us in the written Word to study, we must also have the inward
illumination of the Holy Spirit to enable us to apprehend it as we study.
It is a common mistake, but a most palpable mistake, to try to comprehend
a spiritual revelation with the natural understanding. It is the foolish
attempt to do this that has landed so many in the bog of so-called "Higher
Criticism." In order to understand art a man must have aesthetic sense as
well as the knowledge of colours and of paint, and a man to understand a
spiritual revelation must be taught of the Spirit. A mere knowledge of the
languages in which the Bible was written is not enough. A man with no
aesthetic sense might as well expect to appreciate the Sistine Madonna,
because he is not colour blind, as a man who is not filled with the Spirit
to understand the Bible, simply because he understands the vocabulary and
the laws of grammar of the languages in which th