_The mystery hidden since the ages began, in God who created all things_: so the last paragraph concluded. The added phrase “through Jesus Christ” is a comment of the pious reader, that has been incorporated in the received text; but it is wanting in the oldest copies, and is out of place. The apostle is not concerned with the prerogatives of Christ, but with the scope of the Christian economy. He is displaying the breadth and grandeur of the dispensation of grace, the infinite range of the Divine plans and operations of which it forms the centre. Its secret was cherished in the Eternal Mind. Its foundations are laid in the very basis of the world. And the disclosure of it now being made brings new light and wisdom to the powers of the celestial realms. “There is nothing covered,” said Jesus, “which shall not be revealed, and hidden which shall not be known.” The mysteries which God sets before His intelligent creatures, are promises of knowledge; they are drafts, to be honoured in due time, upon the treasures of wisdom hidden in Christ. So this great secret of the destiny of the Gentile world was “from all ages hidden, in order that now through the Church it might be made known,” and by its means God’s wisdom, to these sublime intelligences. This intention was a part of the “plan of the ages” formed in Christ (ver. 11). God designed by our redemption to bless higher races along with our own. The elder sons of God, those “morning stars” of creation, are schooled and instructed by what is transpiring here upon earth. To some this will appear to be mere extravagance. They see in such expressions the marks of an unrestrained enthusiasm, of theological speculation pushed beyond its limits and unchecked by any just knowledge of the physical universe. This censure would be plausible and it might seem that the apostle had extended the mission of the gospel beyond its province, were it not for what he says in verse 11: This “purpose of the ages” God “made in _the Christ_, even _Jesus our Lord_.” Jesus Christ links together angels and men. He draws after Him to earth the eyes of heaven. Christ’s coming to this world and identification with it unite to it enduringly the great worlds above us. The scenes enacted upon this planet and the events of its religious history have sent their shock through the universe. The incarnation of the Son of God gives to human life a boundless interest and significance. It is idle to oppose to this conviction the fact of the littleness of the terrestrial globe. Spiritual and physical magnitudes are incommensurable. You cannot measure a man’s soul by the size of his dwelling-house. Science teaches us that the most powerful forces may exist and operate within the narrowest space. A microscopic cell may contain the potential life of a world. If our earth is but a grain of sand to the astronomer, it has been the home of Godhead. It is the world for which God spared not to give His own Son!