Jews ask for signs (miracles), and the Greeks seek wisdom (philosophy); but we preach Christ crucified, who is to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles foolishness; but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” And the cause of this difference of interpretation is shown to lie in the various interior dispositions of the hearers: “The animal man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is incapable of understanding them, because they are spiritually discerned; but the spiritual man discerneth all things.”[18] And yet this mystery of religion has to be externally offered, to be preached to us, and is preached to all men; it is intended by God to be known by all, and hence it is He who stimulates men to external preaching and external hearing, as to one of the pre-requisites of its acceptance: “The mystery which was hidden from the ages has now been made manifest”; he desires the Colossians to be strengthened in “the knowledge of the mystery of God and Christ”; and has to “speak the mystery of the Christ,” to “make it manifest.”[19] And since this preaching, to be effective, absolutely requires, as we have seen, interior dispositions and interior illumination of the hearers, and since these things are different in different men, the degrees of initiation into this identical mystery are to be carefully adapted to the interior state of those addressed. “We preach wisdom amongst the perfect τέλειοι,” the technical term in the heathen Greek Mysteries for those who had received the higher grades of initiation. “I was not able to speak unto you as unto spiritual men, but (only) as unto fleshly ones, as unto infants in Christ. I have fed you with milk, not strong food, for you were not yet able.”[20] And since all good, hence also the external preaching, comes from God, still more must this all-important interior apprehension of it come from Him. In a certain real sense the Spirit is thus organ as well as object of this interior light. “God has revealed unto us the wisdom of God through the Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, unless the spirit of man that is in him? even so no man knoweth the things of God, except the Spirit of God.”[21]