II. But if it be undiscoverable by man, how does Paul come to know it?

To the Corinthian intelligence there seemed but these three ways of

learning anything: seeing, hearing, or thinking; and if God's wisdom

was attainable by none of these, how was it reached? Paul proceeds to

show how he was enabled to "speak" this wisdom. He does this in vers.

10-13, in which his chief affirmations are that the Spirit of God

alone knows the mind of God, that this Spirit has been given to him

to reveal to him God's mind and to enable him to divulge that mind to

others in suitable words.

1. The Spirit of God alone knows the mind of God and searches its deep

things, just as none but the spirit of man which is in him knows the

things of man. "There is in every man a life hidden from all eyes, a

world of impressions, anxieties, aspirations, and struggles, of which

he alone, in so far as he is a spirit--that is to say, a conscious and

personal being--gives account to himself. This inner world is unknown

to others, except in so far as he reveals it to them by speech."[3]

And if we are baffled often and deceived regarding human character and

find ourselves unable to penetrate to the "deep things" of man, to his

inmost thoughts and motives, much more is it true that "the deep

things" of God are wholly beyond our ken and are only known by the

Spirit of God which is in Him. A vague and uncertain guess, possibly

not altogether wrong, probably altogether wrong, is all we can attain

to.

[3] Godet.

And still more certainly true is this of God's _purposes_. Even though

you flatter yourself you know a man's nature, you cannot certainly

predict his intentions. You cannot anticipate the thoughts of an able

man whom you see designing a machine, or planning a building, or

conceiving a literary work; you cannot say in what form a vindictive

man will wreak his vengeance; nor can you penetrate through the

abstracted look of the charitable and read the precise form his bounty

will take. Every great work even of man comes upon us by surprise; the

various inventions that facilitate business, the new poems, the new

books, the new works of art, have never been conceived before. They

were hidden mysteries until the originating mind disclosed them. And

much more were God's intentions and His method of accomplishing

inconceivable by any but Himself. What God's purpose was in creating

man, what He designed to accomplish through the death of Christ, what

was to be the outcome of all human life, and temptation, and

struggle--these things were God's secret, known only to the Spirit of

God that was in Him.

2. This Spirit, Paul declares, was given to him, and revealed to him

God's purposes, "the things which are freely given to us of God." He

had received "not the spirit of the world," which would have enabled

him only to theorize, and speculate, and create another "wisdom of

this world;" but he had received "the Spirit which is of God," and

this Spirit had revealed to him "the things which God hath prepared

for them that love Him."

We may think of revelation either as the act of God or as it is

received by man. God reveals Himself in all He does, as man discloses

his character in all he does. With God's first act therefore in the

remotest past revelation began. As yet there was none to receive the

knowledge of God, but God showed His nature and His purpose as soon as

He began to do anything. And this revelation of Himself has continued

ever since. In the world around us and the earth on which we live God

reveals Himself; "the things which are made," as Paul says, "give us

clearly to see and understand the invisible things of God, His unseen

nature, from the creation of the world." Still more fully is God's

nature revealed in man: in conscience, distinguishing between right

and wrong; in the spirit craving fellowship with the Eternal. In the

history of nations, and especially in the history of that nation

which founded itself upon its idea of God, He revealed Himself. By

guiding it, by delivering it from Egypt, by punishing it, God made

Himself known to Israel. And at length in Jesus Christ God gave the

fullest possible manifestation of Himself. The veil was entirely

lifted, and God came as much as possible into free intercourse with

His creatures. He put Himself within reach of our knowledge.

But it was not enough that God be revealed objectively in Christ;

there must also be a subjective revelation within the soul of the

beholder. It was not enough that God be manifested in the flesh and

men be allowed to draw such inferences as they could from that

manifestation; but, in addition to this, God gave His Spirit to Paul

and others that they might see the full significance of that

manifestation. It was quite possible for men to be witnesses of the

objective revelation without understanding it. The open eye is needed

as well as outward light. And Paul everywhere insists upon this: that

he had received his knowledge of Divine truth _by revelation_, not by

the mere exercise of his own unaided thought, but by a spiritual

enlightenment through the gift of God's Spirit.

The presence of God's Spirit in any man can of course only be verified

by the results. God's Spirit working in and by means of man's nature

cannot be known in separation from the man's spirit and the work done

in that spirit. This inward revelation which Paul refers to is

accomplished by the action of the Divine Spirit on the human

faculties, quickening and elevating these faculties. The revelation or

new knowledge acquired by Paul was given by God, but at the same time

was acquired by Paul's own faculties, so that it remained with him

always, just as the knowledge we naturally acquire remains with us and

can be freely used by us. An inward revelation can come to a man only

in the form of impressions, convictions, thoughts arising in his own

mind. Paul knew that his knowledge was a revelation of God, not by the

suddenness with which it was imparted, not by supernatural appearances

accompanying it, not by any sense or consciousness of another Spirit

working with his own, but by the results. It is always the substance

or contents of any revelation which proves its origin. Paul knew he

had the mind of Christ because he found that he could understand

Christ's words and work, could perfectly sympathize with His aims and

look at things from Christ's point of view.

In their humility, many persons shrink from making this affirmation

here made by Paul; they cannot ever unhesitatingly affirm that the

Spirit of God is given them or that they have the mind of Christ. Such

persons should recognise that it was the very humility of Paul which

enabled him so confidently to affirm these things of himself. He knew

that the knowledge of Christ's purposes he had and the sympathy with

them were the evidence of God's Spirit working in him. He knew that

without God's Spirit he himself could never have had these thoughts.

And it is when we recognise our own insufficiency most that we are

readiest to confess the presence of God's Spirit.

3. But Paul makes a further affirmation. Not only is the knowledge he

has of Divine things a revelation made by God's Spirit to him, but the

words in which he declares this revelation to others are taught him by

the same Spirit: "which things we also speak, not in the words which

man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing

spiritual things with spiritual." The meaning of these last words is

doubtful. They either mean "fitting spiritual words to spiritual

truths," or "applying spiritual truths to spiritual people." The sense

of the passage is not materially altered whichever meaning is adopted.

Paul distinctly affirms that as his knowledge is gained by God's

revealing it to him, so his utterance of this knowledge is by the

inspiration of God. The spirit of the world produces its philosophies

and clothes them in appropriate language. The philosophies with which

the Corinthians were familiar taught how the world was made and what

man's nature is, and they did so in language full of technicalities

and adorned with rhetorical devices. Paul disclaimed this; both his

knowledge and the form in which he taught it were dictated, not by the

spirit of this world, but by the Spirit of God. The same truths which

Paul declared might have been declared in better Greek than he used,

and they might have been embellished with illustrative matter and

references to their own authors. This style of presenting Divine truth

may have been urged upon Paul by some of his Corinthian hearers as far

more likely to find entrance into the Greek mind. But Paul refused to

allow his style to be formed by human wisdom and the literary methods

of secular authors, and thought it more suitable to proclaim spiritual

truth in spiritual language and in words which were taught him by the

Holy Ghost.

This statement of Paul may be construed into a guarantee of the

general accuracy of his teaching; but it was not intended to be that.

Paul did not express himself in this way in order to convince men of

his accuracy, still less to convince them that every word he uttered

was infallibly correct; what he intended was to justify his use of a

certain _kind_ of language and a certain _style_ of teaching. The

spirit of this world adopts one method of insinuating knowledge into

the mind; the Spirit of God uses another method. It is the latter Paul

adopts. That is what he means to say, and it is obvious that from this

statement of his we can gather nothing regarding verbal inspiration or

the infallibility of every word he spoke.

It might indeed seem a very simple and sound argument were we to say

that Paul affirms that the words in which he embodies his teaching are

taught him by the Holy Ghost, and that therefore there can be no error

in them. But to interpret the words of any writer with no regard to

his intention in writing them is voluntarily to blind ourselves to

their true meaning. And Paul's intention in this passage is to

contrast two methods of teaching, two styles of language, the worldly

or secular and the spiritual, and to affirm that the style he adopted

was that which the Holy Ghost taught him. An artist whose work was

criticised might defend himself by saying, "I have been trained in the

Impressionist school," or "I use the principles taught me by Ruskin,"

or "I am a pupil of this or the other great teacher;" but these

replies, while quite relevant as a defence and explanation of the

particular style of painting he has adopted, are not intended to

identify the work of the scholar with that of the master, or to

insinuate that the master is responsible for all the pupil does.

Similarly Paul's reply is relevant as an explanation of his reason for

refusing to use the methods of professional rhetoricians in teaching

his spiritual truths. "Spiritual modes of presenting truth and an

avoidance of rhetorical artifice and embellishment accord better with

what I have to say." Whoever gathers from this that every individual

word Paul spoke or wrote is absolutely the best does so at his own

risk and without Paul's authority. Certainly it was not Paul's

intention to make any such statement. And it is quite as dangerous to

put too much into Paul's words as to put too little.

III. Having shown that the wisdom he teaches is spiritual, and that

his method of teaching it is spiritual, he proceeds finally to show

that it can be taught only to spiritual persons. "The spiritual man

judgeth all things;" he can discern whether he is "among the perfect"

or among the carnal, whether he may speak wisdom or must confine

himself to elementary truth. But, on the other hand, he himself cannot

be judged by the carnal man. It is in vain that rudimentary believers

find fault with Paul's method of teaching; they cannot judge him,

because they cannot understand the mind of the Lord which guides him.

It would have served no purpose to teach spiritual wisdom in Corinth,

for the members of that Church were as yet only babes in Christ,

carnal, and not spiritual. Their carnality was proved by their

factiousness. They were still governed by the passions which rule the

natural man. And therefore Paul fed them with milk, and not with

strong meat; with the simple and affecting Gospel of the Cross, and

not with those high and far-reaching deductions from it which he

divulged among prepared and sympathetic spirits.

In the distinctions of men into natural, carnal, and spiritual Paul

here shows how untrammelled he was by theological technicalities, and

how straight he looked at facts. He does not divide men summarily into

believers and unbelievers, classing all believers as spiritual, all

unbelievers as carnal. He does not unchurch all who are not spiritual.

He may be disappointed that certain members of the Church are carnal

and are very slow in growing up to the maturity of Christian manhood,

but he does not deny such carnal persons a place in the Church. He

gives them time. He does not flatter them or deceive them as to their

condition. He neither counts them as perfect nor repudiates them as

unregenerate. He allows they are born again; but as the babe is

apparently a mere animal, exhibiting no qualities of mind or heart,

but only animal instincts, and yet by care and suitable nourishment

develops into adult man, so the Christian babe may as yet be carnal,

with very little to differentiate him from the natural man, yet the

germ of the spiritual Christian may be there, and with care and

suitable nourishment will grow.

The confidence which Paul here expresses regarding his superiority to

the judgment of carnal men is a superiority inseparable from knowledge

in any department. Truth carries with it always a self-evidencing

power, and whoever attains a clear perception of truth in any branch

of knowledge is aware that it is the truth he has attained. When the

mind has been long puzzling over a difficulty and at last sees the

solution, it is as if the sun had risen. The mind is at once

convinced.

No one had ever greater right than Paul to say, "I have the mind of

Christ." Every day of his life said the same thing. He at once entered

into Christ's mind and more than any other man carried it out. It was

by his moral sympathy with Christ's aims that he entered so completely

into the knowledge of His person and work. He lived his way into the

truth. And all our best knowledge is reached in the same way. The

truths we see most clearly and have deepest assurance of are those

which our own experience has taught us. Spiritual truth is of a kind

which only spiritual men can understand.

Spiritual men are those who can say, with Paul, "We have received, not

the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might

know the things that are freely given to us of God." What men's eyes

need especially to be opened to is the bounty of God and the

consequent wealth and hopefulness of human life. Paul's wondering

delight in God's grace and loving adaptation of Himself to human needs

continually finds utterance in his writings. His own sense of

unworthiness magnified the forgiving mercy of God. He rejoiced in a

Divine love which was passing knowledge, but which he knew could be

relied upon to the utmost. The vision of this love opened to his hope

a vista of happiness. There is a natural joy in living that all men

can understand. This life in many ways appeals to our thirst for

happiness, and often it seems as if we needed nothing more. But, in

one way or other, most of us learn that what is naturally presented to

us in this world is not enough, indeed only brings in the long run

anxiety and grief. And then it is that, by God's grace, men come to

find that this life is but a small lagoon leading to, and fed by, the

boundless ocean of God's love beyond. They learn that there is a hope

that cannot be blighted, a joy that is uninterrupted, a fulness of

life that meets and satisfies every instinct, and affection, and

purpose. They begin to see the things which God hath prepared for them

that love Him, the things that are freely given to us of God--"freely

given," given without desert of ours, given to make us happy, given

by a love that must find expression.

But to know and appreciate the things which are freely given to us of

God a man must have the Spirit of God. For God's gifts are spiritual;

they attach to character, to what is eternally ours. They cannot be

received by those who refuse the severity of God's training and are

not alive to the reality of spiritual growth, of passing from a carnal

to a spiritual manhood. The path to these eternal, all-satisfying joys

may be hard; Christ's path was not easy, and they who follow Him must

in one form or other have their faith in the unseen tested. They must

really, and not only in word, pass from dependence on this present

world to dependence on God; they must somehow come to believe that

underneath and in all we here see and experience lies God's

unalterable, unmingled love, that ultimately it is this they have to

do with, this that explains all.

How soon do men think they have exhausted the one inexhaustible, the

love and resources of God; how quickly do men weary of life, and think

they have seen all and known all; how ready are men to conclude that

for them existence is a failure and can yield no perfect joy, while as

yet they know as little of the things God has prepared for them that

love Him as the new-born babe knows of the life and experiences that

lie before it. You have but touched the hem of His garment; what must

it be to be clasped to His heart? Happy they to whom the darkness of

this world reveals the boundless distances of the starry heaven, and

who find that the blows which have shattered their earthly happiness

have merely broken the shell which confined their true life and have

given them entrance into a world infinite and eternal.

_GOD'S HUSBANDRY AND BUILDING._

"Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye

believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted,

Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he

that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that

giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth

are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to

his own labour. For we are labourers together with God: ye are

God's husbandry, ye are God's building. According to the grace of

God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid

the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man

take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no

man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man

build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood,

hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the

day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and

the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any

man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive

a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer

loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. Know ye

not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God

dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall

God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be

wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is

written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again,

The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.

Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are your's:

whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or

death, or things present, or things to come; all are your's; and

ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's."--1 COR. iii. 5-23.

VI.

_GOD'S HUSBANDRY AND BUILDING._

Paul, having abundantly justified his method of preaching to the

Corinthians, and having shown why he contented himself with the simple

presentation of the Cross, resumes his direct rebuke of their party

spirit. He has told them that they were as yet unfit to hear the

"wisdom" which he taught in some Churches, and the very proof of their

immaturity is to be found in their partisanship. "While one saith, I

am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal? Who then

is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed?" The

teachers by whose names they were proud to be known were not founders

of schools nor heads of parties, who sought recognition and supremacy;

they were "ministers," servants who were used by a common Lord to

rouse faith, not in themselves, but in Him. Each had his own gifts and

his own task. "I have planted." To me it was given to found the Church

at Corinth. Apollos came after me, and helped my plant to grow. But it

was God Himself who gave the vital influence requisite to make our

work efficacious. Apollos and I are but one instrument in God's hand,

as the man who sets the sails and he who holds the helm are one

instrument used by the master of the ship, or as the mason who hews

and the builder who sets the stones in their places are one

instrument for the carrying out of the masterbuilder's design. "We are

fellow-labourers used by God; ye are _God's_ husbandry, _God's_

building."

Throughout this paragraph it is this thought that Paul dwells upon:

that the Church is originated and maintained, not by men, but by God.

Teachers are but God's instruments; and yet, being human instruments,

they have each his own responsibility, as each has his own part of the

one work.

From this truth that God alone is the Giver of spiritual life and that

the Church is His building several inferences may be drawn.

1. Our praise for any good we have received of a spiritual kind should

be given, not solely to men, but mainly to God. The Corinthians were

conscious that in receiving Christianity they had received a very

great boon. They felt that gratitude was due somewhere. The new

thoughts they had of God, the consciousness of Christ's eternal love,

the hope of immortality, the sustaining influence of the friendship of

Christ, the new world they seemed to live in--all this made them think

of those who had brought them this new happiness. But Paul was afraid

lest their acknowledgment of himself and Apollos should eclipse their

gratitude to God. People sometimes congratulate themselves on having

adopted a good style of religion, not too sentimental, not sensational

and spasmodic, not childishly external, not coldly doctrinal; they are

thankful they lit upon the books they read at a critical time of their

spiritual and mental growth; they can clearly trace to certain persons

an influence which they know strengthened their character; and they

think with gratitude and sometimes with excessive admiration of such

books and persons. Paul would say to them, It is not culpable to think

with gratitude of those who have been instrumental in furthering your

knowledge of the truth or your Christian life; but always remember

that you are God's husbandry and God's building, and that it is to Him

all your praise must ultimately go.

2. It is to God we must look for all further growth. We must use the

best books; we must put ourselves under influences which we know are

good for us, whatever they are for others; we must conscientiously

employ such means of grace as our circumstances permit; but, above

all, we must ask God to give the increase. No doubt the use of the

means God uses to increase our life is a silent but constant prayer;

still we are not mere trees planted to wait for such influences as

come to us, but have wills to choose the life these influences bring

and to open our being to the living God who imparts Himself to us in

and through them.

3. If we are God's husbandry and building, let us reverence God's work

in ourselves. It may seem a very ricketty and insecure structure that

is rising within us, a very sickly and unpromising plant; and we are

tempted to mock the beginnings of good in ourselves and be

disappointed at the slow progress the new man makes in us. Vexed at

our small attainment, at the poor show among Christians our character

makes, at the stunted appearance the plant of grace in us presents, we

are tempted to trample it once for all out of sight. Grace sometimes

seems to do so little for us in emergencies, and the transformation of

our character seems so unutterably slow and shallow, that we are

disposed to think the radical change we need can never be

accomplished. But different thoughts possess us when we remember that

this transformation of character is not a thing to be accomplished

only by ourselves through a judicious choice and a persevering use of

fit means, but is God's work. There may be little appearance or

promise of good in you; but underneath the little there is lies what

is infinitely great, even the purpose and love of God Himself. "Ye are

God's husbandry;" therefore hope becomes you. The deliverance of the

human soul from evil, its redemption to purity and nobility--this is

what engages all God's care and energy.

4. For the same reason we must hope for others as for ourselves. It is

the foundation of all hope to know that God has always been inclining

men to righteousness and will always do so. So often we look sadly at

the godlessness, and frivolity, and deep degradation and misery that

abound, and feel as if the burden of lifting men to a higher condition

lay all upon us; the ceaseless flow of human life into and out of the

world, the hopeless conditions in which many are born, the frightful

influences to which they are exposed, the extreme difficulty of

winning even one man to good, the possibility that no more may be won

and that the Christian stock may die out--these considerations oppress

the spirit, and cause men to despair of ever seeing a kingdom of God

on earth. But Paul could never despair, because he was at all times

convinced that the whole energy that ceaselessly goes forth from God

goes forth to accomplish good, and nothing but good, and that among

the good ends God is accomplishing there is nothing for which He has

sacrificed so much and at which He so determinedly aims as the

restoration of men to purity, love, and goodness.

5. But the chief inference Paul draws from the truth that the Church

is God's building is the grave responsibility of those who labour for

God in this work. As for Paul's own part in the work, the laying of

the foundation, he says that was comparatively easy. There was no

chance of his making a mistake there. "Other foundation can no man lay

than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Any teacher who professes

to lay another foundation thereby gives up his claim to be a Christian

teacher. If any one proceeds to lay another foundation than Christ, it

is not a Christian Church he is meaning to build. He who does not

proceed upon the facts of Christ's life and death, he whose

instruction does not presuppose Christ as its foundation, may be

useful for some purposes of life, but not as a builder of the

Christian temple. He who teaches morality without ever hinting that

apart from Christ it cannot be attained in its highest form may have

his use, but not as a Christian teacher. He who uses the Christian

pulpit for the propagation of political or socialist ideas may be a

sound and useful teacher; but his proper place is the platform or the

House of Commons or some such institution, and not the Christian

Church. And the question at present, says Paul, is not what other

institutions you may profitably found in the world, but how this

institution of the Church, already founded, is to be completed. Other

_foundation_ no Christian teacher is proposing to lay; but on this

foundation very various and questionable material is being built, in

some instances gold, silver, and stones of value, in others wood, hay,

stubble.

When Corinth rose from its ruins, it was no uncommon sight to see a

miserable hovel reared against the marble wall of a temple or the

splendid portico of some deserted palace rendered habitable by a

patchwork of mud and straw. What a recent visitor saw at Luxor may be

accepted as to some extent true of Corinth: "Mud hovels, mud

pigeon-towers, mud yards, and a mud mosque cluster like wasps' nests

in and about the ruins. Architraves sculptured with royal titles

support the roofs of squalid cabins. Stately capitals peep out from

the midst of sheds in which buffaloes, camels, donkeys, dogs, and

human beings herd together in unsavoury fellowship." So in Corinth the

huge slabs of costly and carefully chiselled stone lay stable as the

rock on which they rested, but now the glory of such foundations was

dishonoured by squalid superstructures. And the picture in Paul's

mind's eye of the Corinthian Church vividly suggested what he had seen

while walking among those heterogeneous buildings. He sees the Church

rising with a strange mixture of design and material. The foundation,

he knows, is the same; but on the solid marble is reared a crazy

structure of second-hand and ill-adapted material, here a wall propped

up with rotten planking, there a hole stopped with straw, on one side

a richly decorated gateway, with gold and silver profusely wrought

into its design, on the other side a clay partition or loose boarding.

It grieves him to see the incongruous structure. He sees the teachers

bringing, with great appearance of diligence, the merest rubbish,

wood, hay, stubble, apparently unconscious of the incongruity of their

material with the foundation they build upon. He sees them taken with

every passing fancy--the lifeless stubble that has lost its living

seed of truth, the mud of the common highway, the readiest thoughts

that come to hand--and setting these in the temple wall.

What would Paul say did he now see the super-structure which eighteen

hundred years have raised on the one foundation? Is any more

heterogeneous structure anywhere to be seen than the Church of Christ?

How obviously unworthy of the foundation is much that has been built

upon it; how many teachers have laboured all their days at erecting

what has already been proved a mere house of cards; and how many

persons have been built into the living temple who have brought no

stability or beauty to the building. How careless often have the

builders been, anxious only to have quantity to show, regardless of

quality, ambitious to be credited with largely extending the size of

the Church apart from any consideration of the worth or worthlessness

of the material added. As in any building, so in the Church,

additional size is additional danger if the material be not sound.

The soundness of the material which has been built upon the foundation

of Christ will, like all things else, be tested. "The day shall

declare it;" that light of Christ's presence and dominance over all

things, that light which shall penetrate all human things when our

true life is entered on--_that_ shall declare it. "The fire shall try

every man's work, of what sort it is. If any man's work abide, he

shall receive a reward. If any man's work be burned, he shall suffer

loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire." The

Corinthians knew what a trial by fire meant. They knew how the flames

had travelled over their own city, consuming all that fire could

kindle on, and leaving of the slightly built houses nothing but a

charred and useless timber here and there, while the massive marbles

stood erect among the ruins; and the precious metals, even though

molten, were prized by the conqueror. Against the fire no prayer, no

appeal, prevailed. Its judgment and decisions were irreversible;

wood, hay, stubble, disappeared: only what was solid and valuable

remained. By such irreversible judgment are we and our work to be

judged. We are to enter into a life in which the nature and character

of the work we have done in this world shall bring upon it utter

destruction or a rewarding and growing utility. Fire simply burns up

all that will burn and leaves what will not. So shall the new life we

are to pass into absolutely annihilate what is not in keeping with it,

and leave only what is useful and congruous. There is no question here

of admitting explanations, of adducing extenuating circumstances, of

appealing to compassion, and so forth. It is a judgment, and a

judgment of absolute truth, which takes things as they actually are.

The work that has been well and wisely done will stand; foolish, vain,

and selfish work will go. We are to pass through the fire.

Paul, with his unfailing discernment, accepts it as a very possible

contingency that a Christian man may do poor work. In that case, Paul

says, the man will be saved as by fire; his work shall be burned, but

himself be scatheless. He shall be in the position of a man whose

house has been burnt; the man is saved, but his property, all that he

has slowly gathered round him and valued as the fruit of his labour,

is gone. He may have received no bodily injury, but he is so stripped

that he scarcely knows himself, and the whole thought and toil of his

life seem to have gone for nothing. So, says Paul, shall this and that

man pass into the heavenly state, hearing behind him as he barely

enters the crash of all he has been building up as it falls and leaves

for the result of a laborious life a ghastly, charred ruin and a cloud

of dust. To have been useless, to have advanced Christ's kingdom not

at all, to have spent our life building up a pretentious erection

which at last falls about our ears, to come to the end and find that

not one solid brick in the whole fabric is of our laying, and that the

world would have been quite as well without us--this must be

humiliating indeed; but it is a humiliation which all selfish,

worldly, and foolishly fussy Christians are preparing for themselves.

To many Christians it seems enough that they be doing _something_. If

only they are decently active, it concerns them little that their work

is really effecting no good, as if they were active rather for the

sake of keeping themselves warm in a chilling atmosphere than to

accomplish any good purpose. Work done for this world must be such as

will stand inspection and actually do the thing required. Christian

work should not be less, but more, thorough.

There is a degree of carelessness or malignity sometimes to be found

in those who profess to be Christian teachers which Paul does not

hesitate unconditionally to doom. "If any man destroy the temple of

God, him shall God destroy." A teacher may in various ways incur this

doom. He may in guiding some one to Christ fit him obliquely to the

foundation, so that firm rest in Christ is never attained; but the man

remains like a loose stone in a wall, unsettled himself and unsettling

all around him. Any doctrine which turns the grace of God into licence

incurs this doom. To lift stones from the mire they have been lying in

and fit them into the temple is good and right, but to leave them

uncleansed and unpolished is to disfigure the temple. Any teaching

that does not recognise in Christianity the means of becoming holy,

and encourages men to believe themselves Christians though they

neither have nor wish to have the Spirit of Christ, destroys the

temple.

But we are responsible as well as our teachers for the appearance we

present in God's temple. The stone that is to occupy a permanent place

in a building is carefully squared and beaten into its place, and its

level adjusted with the utmost nicety. Would it not make a very

obvious change in the appearance and in the strength of the Church if

every member of it were at pains to set himself absolutely true to

Christ? There is no doubt a good deal of anxiety about our relation to

Christ, frequent examining and measuring of our actual position; but

does not this too often merely reveal that conscience is uneasy? Some

persons are prevented from resting satisfactorily on Christ because of

some erroneous opinion about faith or about the manner in which the

connection is formed, or some pet theory or crotchet has possessed the

mind and keeps them unsettled. Some will not rest on Christ until they

have such repentance as they judge sufficient; others so rest on Him

that they have no repentance. Strange that men will so complicate the

simplicity of Christ, who is the hand of our heavenly Father,

stretched out to lift us out of our sin and draw us to Himself! If you

wish God's love, accept it; if you long for holiness, take Christ as

your Friend; if you see no greater joy than to serve in His great

cause, do His will and follow Him.

But, alas! with some it is no misunderstanding that prevents a close

connection between the soul and Christ, but some worldly purpose or

some entangling and deeply cherished sin. The foundation stone is as a

polished slab of marble, having its upper surface smooth as a mirror,

whereas we are like stones that have been lying on the seashore,

encrusted with shells and lichens, drilled with holes, grown all round

and round with unsightly inequalities; and if we are to rest with

entire stability on the foundation, these excrescences must be

removed. Even a small one at one point is enough to prevent close

adhesion. One sin consciously retained, one command or expression of

Christ's will unresponded to, makes our whole connection with Him

unsettled and insecure, our confessions and repentances untrue and

hardening, our prayers hesitating and insincere, our love for Christ

hollow, our life inconsistent, vacillating, and unprofitable.

And more must be done even after we are securely fitted into our

place. Stones often look well enough when first built in, but soon

lose their colour; and their surface and fine edges crumble and shale

off, so that they need to be constantly looked to. So do the stones in

God's temple get tarnished and discoloured by exposure. One sin after

another is allowed to stain the conscience; one little corruption

after another settles on the character, and eats out its fineness, and

when once the fair, clean stone is no longer unsullied, we think it of

little consequence to be scrupulous. Then the weather tells upon us:

the ordinary atmosphere of this life, with its constant damp of

worldly care and its occasional storms of loss, and disappointment,

and social collisions, and domestic embroilment, eats out the heavenly

temper from our character, and leaves its edges ragged; and the man

becomes soured and irritable, and the surface of him, all that meets

the casual eye, is rough and broken.

Above all, do not many Christian persons seem to think it enough to

have attained a place in the building, and, after spending a little

thought and trouble on entering the Christian life, take no step

onwards during the whole remainder of their lives? But it is in God's

building as in highly ornamented buildings generally. The stones are

not all sculptured before they are fitted into their places; but they

are built in rough-hewn, so that the building may proceed: and then at

leisure the device proper to each is carved upon it. This is the

manner of God's building. Long after a man has been set in the Church

of Christ, God hews and carves him to the shape He designs; but we,

being not dead, but living, stones, have it in our power to mar the

beauty of God's design, and indeed so distort it that the result is a

grotesque and hideous monster, belonging to no world, neither of God

nor of man. If we let a thousand other influences mould and fashion

us, God's design must necessarily be spoiled.

The folly of partisanship and sectarianism is finally exhibited in the

words "Let no man glory in men. For all things are yours, whether

Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas." The man who held to Paul and would learn

nothing from Apollos or Peter was defrauding himself of his rights. It

has been the weakness of Christians in all ages, and never more than

in our own, to see good in only one aspect of truth and listen to no

form of teaching but one. The Broad Churchman despises the

traditionalist; the Evangelical gathers up his skirts at the approach

of a Broad Churchman. Calvinist and Arminian stand at daggers drawn.

Each limits himself to his own fortress, which he thinks he can

defend, and starves himself on siege rations while the fields wave

white with grain outside. The eye is constructed to sweep round a wide

range of vision; but men put on blinkers, and decline even to look at

anything which does not lie directly in the line of sight. We know

that to confine ourselves to one form of food induces poverty of blood

and disease, and yet we fancy a healthy spiritual life can be

maintained only by confining ourselves to one form of doctrine and one

way of looking at universal truth. To the Evangelical who shrinks with

horror from liberal teaching, and to the advanced thinker who turns

with contempt from the Evangelical, Paul would say, Ye do yourselves a

wrong by listening to one form of the truth only; every teacher who

declares what he himself lives on has something to teach you; to

despise or neglect any form of Christian teaching is so far to

impoverish yourselves. "All things are yours," not this teacher or

that, in whom you glory, but all teachers of Christ.

His own expression, "all things are yours," suggests to Paul the whole

wealth of the Christian, for whom exist not only all those who have

striven to unfold the significance of the Christian revelation, but

all things else, whether "the world, or life, or death, or things

present, or things to come." As it is true of all teachers, of however

commanding genius, that the Church does not exist for them that they

may have a field for their genius, and followers to applaud and

represent them, but that they exist for the Church, their genius being

used for the advancement of the spiritual life of this and that

unknown and hidden soul; so is it true of all things,--of life and all

its laws, of death and all it leads to,--that these are ordained of

God to minister to the growth of His children. This was the regal

attitude which Paul himself assumed and maintained towards all events

and the whole world of created things. He was incapable of defeat. The

outrages and deaths he endured, he bore as proofs of the truth of his

gospel. The storms of ill-will and persecution he everywhere

encountered, he knew were only bringing him and his gospel more

rapidly to all the world. And when he looked at last on the sword of

the Roman executioner, he recognised it with joy as the instrument

which by one sharp blow was to burst his fetters and set him free to

boundless life and the full knowledge of his Lord. The same

inheritance belongs to every one who has faith to take it. "All things

are yours." The whole course of this world and all its particular

incidents, the complete range of human experience from first to last,

including all we shrink from and fear,--all are for the good of

Christ's people. What thoughts flash from this man's mind. How his

words still entrance and lift and animate the soul. "All things are

ours." The catastrophes of life that seem finally to blot out hope,

the wild elemental forces in whose presence frail man is as the moth,

the unknown future of the physical world, the certain death that

awaits every man and listens to no appeal, all things that naturally

discourage and compel us to feel our weakness,--yes, says Paul, all

these things are yours, serving your highest good, bringing you on

towards your eternal joy, more certainly than the things you select

and buy, or win, and cherish as your own. You are free men, supreme

over all created things, for "ye are Christ's," you belong to Him who

rules all, and loves you as His own; and above Christ and His rule

there is no adverse will that can rob you of any good, for as ye are

Christ's, cherished by Him, so is Christ God's, and the supreme will

that governs all, governs all in the interests of Christ.

_THE MINISTRY._

"Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and

stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required in

stewards, that a man be found faithful. But with me it is a very

small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment:

yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing by myself; yet

am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord.

Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who

both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will

make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every

man have praise of God. And these things, brethren, I have in a

figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that

ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is

written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another.

For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou

that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why

dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it? Now ye are

full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us: and I

would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you. For

I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were

appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world,

and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye

are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are

honourable, but we are despised. Even unto this present hour we

both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and

have no certain dwellingplace: and labour, working with our own

hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it:

being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the earth,

and are the offscouring of all things unto this day. I write not

these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you. For

though ye have ten thousand instructers in Christ, yet have ye

not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through

the gospel. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me."--1

COR. iv. 1-16.

VII.

_THE MINISTRY._

So keenly alive is Paul to the danger and folly of party-spirit in the

Church, that he has still one more word of rebuke to utter. He has

shown the Corinthians that to give their faith to one teacher, and

shut their ears to every other form of truth than that which he

delivers, is to impoverish and defraud themselves. All teachers are

theirs, and are sent, not to win disciples to themselves, who may

spread their fame and reflect credit on their talents, but to serve

the people, and be merged in self-obliterating toil. The preachers,

Paul tells them, exist for the Church: not the Church for the

preachers. The people are the primary consideration, the main end to

which the preachers are subordinate. The mistake often made in things

civil, that the people exist for the king, not the king for the

people, is made also in things ecclesiastical, and has, in some

instances, attained such dimensions that the "Church" means the

clergy, not the laity, and that when a man enters the ministry he is

said to enter the Church,--as if already he were not in it as a

layman.

Paul now proceeds to demonstrate the futility of the judgment passed

upon their teachers by the Corinthians. Paul and the rest were

servants of Christ, stewards sent by Him to dispense to others what he

had entrusted to them. The question therefore was, were they faithful,

did they dispense what they had received in conformity with Christ's

purpose? The question was not, were they eloquent, were they

philosophical, were they learned? Criticism no preacher need expect to

escape. Sometimes one might suppose sermons were of no other use than

to furnish material for a little discussion and pleasant exercise of

the critical faculty. Every one considers himself capable of this form

of criticism, and once a sermon has been sorted and labelled as of

this, that, or the other quality, it is too often put permanently

aside. In such criticism, Paul reminds us, it is a great matter to

bear in mind that what has no great attraction for us may yet serve

some good purpose. The gifts dispensed by Christ are various. The

influence of some ministers is most felt in private, while others are

shy and stiff, and can only utter themselves freely in the pulpit. In

the pulpit again various gifts appear, some having good nerve and a

ready and felicitous address which reaches the multitude; while others

have more power of thought, and a finer literary gift, or a

sympathetic manner of handling peculiarities of spiritual experience.

Who shall say which of these styles is most edifying to the Church?

And who shall say which teacher is most faithfully serving his Master?

Who shall determine whether this preacher or that is the better

steward, most truly seeking his Lord's glory, and careless of his own?

May it not be expected that when the things at present hidden in

darkness, the motives and thoughts of the heart, are brought to light

in Christ's judgment, many that are first shall be last, and the last

first?

He who is conscious that he is the servant of Christ and must give

account to Him, can always say with Paul, "It is a very small thing

that I should be judged of man's judgment," whether for acquittal and

applause or condemnation and abuse. He who utters what is peculiar to

himself must expect to be misjudged by those who do not look at things

from his point of view. A teacher who thinks for himself and is not a

mere echo of other men, finds himself compelled to utter truths which

he knows will be misunderstood by many; but so long as he is conscious

that he is faithfully delivering what has been made known to himself,

the condemnation of the many can trouble him very little or not at

all. It is to his own Master he stands or falls; and if he feels sure

that he is doing his Master's will, he may regret the opposition of

men, but he can neither be greatly astonished nor greatly perturbed by

it. And, on the other hand, the approval and applause of men come to

him only as a reminder that there is no finality in man's judgment,

and that it is only Christ's approval which avails to give permanent

satisfaction. A sympathetic audience every teacher needs, but general

approval will be his in the inverse ratio of the individuality of his

teaching.

In his whole discussion of this subject Paul has named only himself

and Apollos, but he means that what he has said of them should be

applied to all. "These things I have in a figure transferred to myself

and to Apollos for your sakes; that in us ye might learn not to think

of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up

for one against another." But great difficulty has always been

experienced in tracing the similarities and distinctions which exist

between the Apostles and the ordinary ministry of the Church, and had

Paul been writing this epistle in our own day he would have felt

himself compelled to speak more definitely on these points. For what

makes union hopeless in Christendom at present is not that parties are

formed round individual leaders, but that Churches are based on

diametrically opposed opinions regarding the ministry itself. The

Church of Rome unchurches all the rest, and defends her action by the

simplest process of reasoning. There can be no true Church, she says,

where there is no forgiveness of sins and no sacraments, and there can

be no forgiveness and no sacraments where there are no true ministers

to administer them, and there are no true ministers save those who can

trace their orders to the Apostles. This theory of the ministry

proceeds on the idea that the Apostles received from Christ a

commission to exercise the apostolic office, and along with it a

deposit of grace, with powers to communicate this to those who should

succeed them. This deposit of grace derived from Christ Himself has

been handed down from generation to generation, through a line of

consecrated persons, each member of the series receiving at his

ordination, and irrespective of his moral character, both the

commission and the powers which belonged to his predecessor in office.

This theory of the efficacy of ministration in the Church, with its

entirely external account of its transmission, is but one

manifestation of the old superstition that confounds the outward

symbol of Christian grace with that grace itself. It is a survival

from a time in which religion was treated as a kind of magic, in which

it was only needful to observe the right words of incantation and the

right outward order. Even supposing that any priest now alive could

trace his orders back to the Apostles, which no priest can, is it

credible that the mere observance of an outward form should secure the

transmission of the highest spiritual functions to those who may or

may not have any spirituality of mind? However much grace the

ordaining bishop may himself possess, however many of the

qualifications of a good minister of Christ he may have, he can

transmit none of these by the laying on of his hands. He can confer

the external authority in the Church which belongs to the office to

which he ordains, but he cannot communicate that which fits a man to

use this authority. The laying on of hands is the outward symbol of

the bestowal of the Holy Spirit, but it does not confer that Spirit,

which is given, not by man, but by Christ alone. The laying on of

hands is a fit symbol to use at ordination when those who use it have

satisfied themselves that the ordained person is in possession of the

Spirit. It is the expression of their reasonable belief that the

Spirit is given.

In some Churches reaction against the theory of apostolical succession

has led men to distrust and repudiate ordination altogether, and to

maintain that any man may preach who can get people to listen to him,

and may administer the sacraments to any who apply for them. No

outward recognition by the Church is deemed necessary. The middle

course is safer, which acknowledges not only the supreme necessity of

an inward call, but also the expediency of an outward call by the

Church. By an inward call it is meant that it is the inward and

spiritual fitness of any person which constitutes his main right of

entrance to the ministry. There are certain mental and moral

endowments, certain circumstances, and educational advantages,

personal inclinations and leanings, which, when they meet in a boy or

young man, point him out as suited for the work of the ministry. The

evidence that Christ means that any one should take office in His

Church,--in other words, calls him to office,--is the fact that He

bestows on that person the gifts which fit him for it.

But besides this inward persuasion wrought in the mind of the

individual, and which constitutes the inward call, there must be an

outward call also by the Church's recognition of fitness and

communication of authority. Any man who at his own instance and on his

own authority gathers a congregation and dispenses the sacraments is

guilty of schism. Even Barnabas and Paul were ordained by the Church.

As in the State a prince though legitimate does not succeed to the

throne without formal consecration and coronation, so in the Church

there is needed a formal recognition of the title which any one claims

to office. It is not the consecration which constitutes the prince's

right; that he already possesses by birth: so, neither is it the

Church's ordination which qualifies and entitles the minister to his

office; this he already has by the gift of Christ; but recognition by

the Church is needed to give him due authority to exercise the

functions of his office. It is a matter of expediency and of order. It

is calculated to maintain the unity of the Church. Admission to the

ministry being regulated by those already in office, schisms are less

likely to occur. Ordination has been a bulwark against fanaticism,

against foolish private opinions and doctrines, against divisive

courses in worship and in organization. If the Church was to be kept

together and to grow as a consistent whole, it was necessary that

those already in office should be allowed to scrutinize the claims of

aspirants to office, and should not have their order invaded, their

work thwarted and obstructed, their doctrine denied and contradicted

by every one who might profess to have an inward call to the ministry.

It would therefore seem to be every one's duty to inquire, before he

gives himself to another profession or business, whether Christ is not

claiming him to serve in His Church. The qualifications which

constitute a call to the ministry are such as these: an interest in

men, in their ways, and habits, and character; a social disposition,

inclining you to mix with other people, to take pleasure in their

thoughts and feelings, to be of service to them, to talk frankly with

them; a liking for reading, if not for hard study; some capacity for

thinking and arranging your thoughts and expressing them, which,

however, is to so great an extent the result of study and practice

that you may find it impossible to say whether you have it or not.

There are negative qualifications equally important, such as an

indifference to money-making, a shrinking from the eager competition

and hurry of a business life. And, above all, there are the deeper and

essential qualifications which are the fruit of the Spirit's

sanctifying energy: some genuine sense of your indebtedness to Christ;

a strong desire to serve Him; an ambition to preach Him, to proclaim

His worth, to invite men to appreciate and love Him. If you have these

desires, and if you would fain be of use in things spiritual to your

fellow-men, then it would seem that you are called by Christ to the

ministry. I do not say that all ministers are so qualified, but only

that any one who is so qualified should be careful how he chooses

some other calling in preference to the ministry.

Paul concludes this portion of his Epistle with a pathetic comparison

of his condition as an Apostle with the condition of those in Corinth

who were glorying in this or that teacher. They spoke as if they

needed his instructions no more, and as if already they had attained

the highest Christian advantages. "Already ye are full; already ye are

rich: ye have reigned as kings without us." They behave as if all the

trial of the Christian life were over. With the frothy spirit of young

converts, they are full of a triumph which they despise Paul for not

inculcating. By one leap they had attained, or thought they had

attained, a superiority to all disturbance, and to all trial, and to

all need of teaching, which, in fact, as Paul's own experience taught

him, could only be attained in another life. While they thus

triumphed, he who had begotten them in Christ was being treated as the

offscouring and filth of the world.

Paul can only compare himself and the other Apostles to those

gladiators who were condemned to die, and who came into the arena

last, after the spectators had been sated with other exhibitions and

bloodless performances. "I think that God hath set forth us the

Apostles last, as it were appointed to death. For we are made a

spectacle unto the world, and to angels and to men." They came into

the arena knowing they should never leave it alive, that they were

there for the purpose of enduring the worst their enemies could do to

them. It was no fight with buttoned foils Paul and the rest were

engaged in. While others sat comfortably looking on, with curtains to

shade them from the heat and refreshments to save them from

exhaustion or from faintness at the sight of blood, they were in the

arena, exposed to wounds, ill-usage, and death. They had as little

hope of retiring to live a quiet life as the gladiators who had said

farewell to their friends and saluted the Emperor as those about to

die. Life became no easier, the world no kinder, to Paul as time went

on. "Even unto this present hour of writing," he says, "we both hunger

and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain

dwelling-place." Here is the finest mind, the noblest spirit, on

earth; and this is how he is treated: driven from place to place,

thrust aside as interrupting the proper work of men, passed by with a

sneer at his rags, refused the commonest charity, paid for his loving

words in blows and insolence. And yet he goes on with his work, and

lets nothing interrupt that. "Being reviled, we bless; being

persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat." Nay, it is a

life which he is so far from giving up himself, that he will call to

it the easy-going Christians of Corinth. "I beseech you," he says, "be

ye followers of me."

And if the contrast between Paul's precarious and self-sacrificing

life and the luxurious and self-complacent life of the Corinthians

might be expected to shame them into some vigorous Christian service,

a similar contrast candidly considered may accomplish some good

results in us. Already the Corinthians were accepting that pernicious

conception of Christianity which looks upon it as merely a new luxury,

that they who are already comfortable in all outward respects may be

comforted in spirit as well and purge their minds from all anxieties,

questionings, and strivings. They recognised how happy a thing it is

to be forgiven, to be at peace with God, to have a sure hope of life

everlasting. For them the battle was over, the conquest won, the

throne ascended. As yet they had not caught a glimpse of what is

involved in becoming holy as Christ is holy, nor had steadily

conceived in their minds the profound inward change which must pass

upon them. As yet it was enough for them that they were called to be

God's children, provided for by a heavenly Father; and Christ's own

view of life and of men had not yet possessed or even dawned upon

their soul, causing them to feel that until they could live for others

they had no true life.

Are there none still who listen to Christianity rather as a voice

soothing their fears than as a bugle summoning them to conflict, who

are satisfied if through the Gospel they are enabled to comfort their

own soul, and who do not yet respond to Christ's call to live under

the power of that Spirit of His which prompted Him to all sacrifice?

Paul does not summon the whole Church to be homeless, destitute,

comfortless, outcast from all joy; and yet there is meaning in his

words when he says, "Be ye followers of me." He means that there is

not one standard of duty for him and another for us. All is wrong with

us until we be made somehow to recognise, and make room in our life

for the recognition, that we have no right to be lapping ourselves

round with all manner of selfish aggrandizement while Paul is driven

through life with scarcely one day's bread provided, that in some way

intelligible to our own conscience we must approve ourselves to be his

followers, and that no right is secured to any class of Christians to

stand selfishly aloof from the common Christian cause. If we be

Christ's, as Paul was, it must inevitably come to this with us: that

we cordially yield to Him all we are and have; our very selves, with

all our tastes and aptitudes and with all we have made by our toil;

our life, with all its fruits, we gladly yield to Him. If our hearts

be His, this is inevitable and delightful; unless they be so, it is

impossible, and seems extravagant. It is vain to say to a man, Serve

only yourself in life, seek only to make a reputation for yourself and

gather comforts round yourself, and make it the aim of your life to be

comfortable and respectable--it is vain to bid a man thus limit and

impoverish his life if at the same time you show him a person so

attracting human allegiance as Christ does, and so opening to men

wider and eternal aims as He does, and if you show him a cause so

kindling every right ambition as Christ's cause does.

It was Christ's own self-sacrifice that threw such a spell over the

Apostles and gave them so new a feeling towards their fellow-men and

so new an estimate of their deepest needs. After seeing how Christ

lived, they could never again justify themselves in living for self.

After seeing His regardlessness of bodily comfort, His superiority to

traditional necessities and customary luxuries, after witnessing how

veritably He was but passing through this world, and used it as the

stage on which He might serve God and men, and counted His life best

spent in giving it for others, they could not settle down into the old

life and aim only at passing comfortably, reputably, and religiously

through it. That view of life was made for ever impossible to them.

The life of Christ had made a new way for itself into a new region,

and the horizon rent by the passage never again closed to them. That

life became the only spiritual reality to them. And it is because we

are so sunk in self-seeking and worldliness, and so blinded by the

customs and traditional ideas about spending life, about acquitting

ourselves well and making a name, about earning a competence, about

everything which turns the regard in upon self instead of outwards

upon objects worthy of our exertion--it is therefore that we continue

so unapostolic, so unprofitable, so unchanged.

It might encourage us to bring our life more nearly into the line of

Paul's were we to see clearly that the cause he served is really

inclusive of all that is worth working for. We can scarcely apprehend

this with any clearness without feeling some enthusiasm for it. The

_kind_ of devotedness expected of the Christian is illustrated in the

lives of all men of any force of character; the Christian's

devotedness is only given to a larger and more reasonable object.

There have been statesmen and patriots, and there still are such, who,

though possibly not absolutely devoid of some taint of selfish

ambition, are yet in the main devoted to their country; its interests

are continually on their mind and heart, their time is given wholly to

it, and their own personal tastes and pursuits are held in abeyance

and abandoned to make room for more important labour. You have seen

men become so enamoured of a cause that they will literally sell all

they have to forward it, and who obviously have it on their hearts by

night and by day, who live for that and for nothing else; you can

detect as often as you meet them that the real aim and object of their

life is to promote that cause. Some new movement, political or

ecclesiastical, some literary scheme, some fresh enterprise of

benevolence, some new commercial idea, or no matter what it is, you

have seen again and again that men throw themselves so thoroughly

into such causes that they cannot be said to be living for themselves.

They will part with time, with property, with other important objects,

with health, even with life itself, for the sake of their cherished,

chosen cause. And when such a cause is worthy, such as the reformation

of prison discipline, or the emancipation of slaves, or the liberating

of an oppressed nation, the men who adopt it seem to lead the only

lives which have some semblance of glory in them; and the sacrifices

they make, the obloquy they incur, the toils they endure, make the

heart burn and swell as we hear of them. Every one instinctively

acknowledges that such self-forgetful and heroic lives are the right

and model lives for all. What a man does for himself is jealously

examined, criticised, and passed at the most with an exclamation of

wonder; but what he does for others is welcomed with acclamation as an

honour to our common humanity. So long as a man labours merely for

himself, to win himself a name, to get for himself a possession, he

makes no valuable contribution to the world's good, and only by

accident effects anything for which other men are thankful; but let a

man even with small means at his command have the interests of others

at his heart, and he sets in motion endless agencies and influences

that bless whatever they touch.

It is this then that our Lord does for us by claiming our service; He

gives us the opportunity of sinking our selfishness, which is in the

last analysis our sin, and of living for a worthier object than our

own pleasure or our own careful preservation. When He tells us to live

for Him and to seek the things that are His, He but tells us in other

words and in a more attractive and practical form to seek the common

good. We seek the things that are Christ's when we act as Christ

would act were He in our place, when we let Christ live through us,

when we, by considering what He would have us do, let His influence

still tell on the world and His will still be done in the world. This

should be so done by each and every Christian that the result would be

the same as if Christ had personally at command all the resources for

good that are possessed by His people, as if He were Himself expending

all the money, energy, and time that are being expended by His people,

so that at every point where there is a Christian Christ's purposes

might be being forwarded. This is the devotedness we are called to;

this is the devotedness we must cultivate until we do make some

considerable attainment in it.

_EXCOMMUNICATION; OR, PURGING OUT THE OLD LEAVEN._

"For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved

son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into

remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where

in every church. Now some are puffed up, as though I would not

come to you. But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will,

and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but

the power. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.

What will ye? shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and

in the spirit of meekness?"

"It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and

such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles,

that one should have his father's wife. And ye are puffed up, and

have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might

be taken away from among you. For I verily, as absent in body,

but present in spirit, have judged already as though I were

present, concerning him that hath so done this deed. In the name

of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my

spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such

an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the

spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your glorying

is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole

lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new

lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is

sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast, not with old

leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but

with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote unto

you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: yet not

altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the

covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye

needs go out of the world. But now I have written unto you not to

keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a

fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a

drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. For

what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye

judge them that are within? But them that are without God

judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked

person."--1 COR. iv. 17-v. 13.

VIII.

_EXCOMMUNICATION; OR, PURGING OUT THE OLD LEAVEN._

From the subject of the factions in the Corinthian Church, which has

so long detained Paul, he now passes to the second division of his

Epistle, in which he speaks of the relation the Christians should hold

to the heathen population around them. The transition is easy and such

as befits a letter. Paul had thought it advisable to send Timothy, who

perfectly understood his mind, and could represent his views more

fully than a letter; but it now occurred to him that this might be

construed by some of the vain popular leaders in the Church into a

timorous reluctance on his part to appear in Corinth and a sign that

they were no longer to be held in check by the strong hand of the

Apostle. "Some are puffed up, as though _I_ would not come to you." He

assures them therefore that he himself will come to Corinth, and also

that the leaders of the Church have little reason to be puffed up,

seeing that they have allowed in the Church an immorality so gross

that even the lower standard of pagan ethics regards it as an

unnameable abomination; and if once it is named, it is only to say

that not all the waters of ocean can wash away such guilt. Instead of

being puffed up, Paul tells them, they should rather be ashamed and

at once take steps to put away from them so great a scandal. If not,

he must come, not in meekness and love, but with a rod.

The Corinthian Church had fallen into a common snare. Churches have

always been tempted to pique themselves on their rich foundations and

institutions, on producing champions of the faith, able writers,

eloquent preachers, on their cultured ministry, on their rich and

æsthetic services, and not on that very thing for which the Church

exists: the cleansing of the morals of the people and their elevation

to a truly spiritual and godly life. And it is the individuals who

give character to any Church. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole

lump." Each member of a Church in each day's conduct in business and

at home stakes, not only his own reputation, but the credit of the

Church to which he belongs. Involuntarily and unconsciously men lower

their opinion of the Church and cease to expect to find in her a

fountain of spiritual life, because they find her members selfish and

greedy in business, ready to avail themselves of doubtful methods;

harsh, self-indulgent, and despotic at home, tainted with vices

condemned by the least educated conscience. Let us remember that our

little leaven leavens what is in contact with us; that our worldliness

and unchristian conduct tend to lower the tone of our circle,

encourage others to live down to our level, and help to demoralize the

community.

In the judgment Paul pronounces on the Corinthian culprit two points

are important. First, it is noteworthy that Paul, Apostle though he

was, did not take the case out of the hands of the congregation. His

own judgment on the case was explicit and decided, and this judgment

he does not hesitate to declare; but, at the same time, it is the

congregation which must deal with the case and pronounce judgment in

it. The excommunication he enjoined was to be their act. "Put away

from among yourselves," he says (v. 13), "that wicked person." The

government of the Church was in Paul's idea thoroughly democratic; and

where the power to excommunicate has been lodged in a priesthood, the

results have been deplorable. Either, on the one hand, the people have

become craven and have lived in terror, or, on the other hand, the

priest has been afraid to measure his strength with powerful

offenders. In our own country and in others this power of

excommunication has been abused for the most unworthy purposes,

political, social, and private; and only when it is lodged in the

congregation can you secure a fair judgment and moral right to enforce

it. There is little fear that this power will nowadays be abused. Men

themselves conscious of strong propensities to evil and of many sins

are more likely to be lax in administering discipline than forward to

use their power; and so far from ecclesiastical discipline producing

in its administrators harsh, tyrannical, and self-righteous feelings,

it rather works an opposite effect, and evokes charity, a sense of

solemn responsibility, and the longing for the welfare of others which

lies latent in Christian minds.

But, second, the precise punishment intended by Paul is couched in

language which the present generation cannot readily understand. The

culprit is not only to be excluded from Christian communion, but "to

be delivered unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the

spirit may be saved." Many meanings have been put upon these words;

but after all has been said, the natural and obvious meaning of the

words asserts itself. Paul believed that certain sins were more likely

to be cured by bodily suffering than by any other agency. Naturally

sins of the flesh belonged to this class. Bodily suffering of some

kinds he believed to be the infliction of Satan. Even his own thorn in

the flesh he spoke of as a messenger of Satan sent to buffet him. He

expected also that the judgment pronounced by himself and the

congregation on this offender would be given effect to in God's

providence; and accordingly he bids the congregation hand the man over

to this disciplinary suffering, not as a final doom, but as the only

likely means of saving his soul.[4] If the offender mentioned in the

Second Epistle is the same man, then we have evidence that the

discipline was effectual, that the sinner did repent and was

overwhelmed with shame and sorrow. Certainly such an experience of

punishment, though not invariably or even commonly effectual, is in

itself calculated to penetrate to the very depth of a man's spirit and

give him new thoughts about his sin. If when suffering he can

acknowledge his own wrong-doing as the cause of his misery and accept

all the bitter and grievous penalties his sin has incurred, if he can

truly humble himself before God in the matter and own that all he

suffers is right and good, then he is nearer the kingdom of heaven

than ever he was before. Substantially the same idea as Paul's is put

in the mouth of the Pope by the most modern of poets:--

[4] Some account of the Jewish and other forms of

excommunication is given in the _Encycl. Brit._, art.

Excommunication. Milman's _History of the Jews_, Book XIX.,

should also be consulted, and the _Pontificale Romanum_.

"For the main criminal I have no hope

Except in such a suddenness of fate.

I stood at Naples once, a night so dark,

I could have scarce conjectured there was earth

Anywhere, sky, or sea, or world at all,

But the night's black was burst through by a blaze;

Thunder struck blow on blow; Earth groaned and bore,

Through her whole length of mountain visible:

There lay the city thick and plain with spires,

And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.

So may the truth be flashed out by one blow,

And Guido see one instant and be saved."

The necessity for keeping their communion pure, for being a society

with no leaven of wickedness among them, Paul proceeds to urge and

illustrate in the words, "For even Christ our passover is sacrificed

for us; therefore let us purge out the old leaven." The allusion was,

of course, much more telling to Jews than it can possibly be to us;

still, if we call to mind the outstanding ideas of the Passover, we

cannot fail to feel the force of the admonition. That must be the

simplest explanation of the Passover which Jewish parents were

enjoined to give to their children, in the words, "By strength of hand

the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of bondage. And it

came to pass when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the Lord slew

all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, with the firstborn of man and

the firstborn of beast. Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all the

firstborn being males, but all the firstborn of my children I redeem."

That is to say, all the firstborn of animals they sacrificed to God,

slaying them on His altar, but instead of slaying the human firstborns

they redeemed them by sacrificing a lamb in their stead. The whole

transaction of the night of the first Passover stood thus: God

claimed the Israelites as His people; the Egyptians also claimed them

as theirs. And as no warning would persuade the Egyptians to let them

away to serve God, God at last forcibly delivered them, slaying the

flower of the Egyptian people, and so crippling and dismaying them as

to give Israel opportunity of escape. Being thus rescued that they

might be God's people, they felt bound to continue to own this; and in

accordance with the custom of their time they expressed their sense of

it by sacrificing their firstborn, by presenting them to God as

belonging to Him. By this outward sacrificial act engaged in by every

family it was acknowledged that the whole nation belonged to God.

Christ, then, is our Passover or Paschal Lamb, in the first place,

because through Him there is made the acknowledgment that we belong to

God. He is in very truth the prime and flower, the best representative

of our race, the firstborn of every creature. He is the one who can

make for all others this acknowledgment that we are God's people. And

He does so by perfectly giving Himself up to God. This fact that we

belong to God, that we men are His creatures and subjects, has never

been perfectly acknowledged save by Christ. No individual or society

of people has ever lived entirely for God. No man has ever fully

recognised this apparently simple truth, that we are not our own, but

God's. The Israelites made the acknowledgment in form, by sacrifice,

but Christ alone made it in deed by giving Himself up wholly to do

God's will. The Israelites made the acknowledgment from time to time,

and with probably more or less truthfulness and sincerity, but

Christ's whole spirit and habitual temper of mind was that of perfect

obedience and dedication.

Only those of us, then, who see that we ought to live for God can

claim Christ as our representative. His dedication to God is unmeaning

to us if we do not desire to belong entirely to God. If He is our

Passover, the meaning of this is that He gives us liberty to serve

God; if we do not mean to be God's people, if we do not resolutely

purpose to put ourselves at God's disposal, then it is idle and false

of us to talk of Him as our Passover. Christ comes to bring us back to

God, to redeem us from all that hinders our serving Him; but if we

really prefer being our own masters, then manifestly He is useless to

us. It is no matter what we say, nor what rites and forms we go

through; the one question is, Do we at heart wish to give ourselves up

to God? Does Christ really represent us,--represent, by His devoted

unworldly life, our earnest and hearty desire and intention? Do we

find in His life and death, in His submission to God and meek

acceptance of all God appointed, the truest representation of what we

ourselves would fain be and do, but cannot?

It is through this _self-sacrifice_ of Christ that we can become God's

people, and enjoy all the liberties and advantages of His people.

Christ becomes the representative of all whose state of mind His

sacrifice represents. If we would fain be of one mind and will with

God as Christ was, if we feel the degradation and bitterness of

failing God and disappointing the trust He has confided in us His

children, if our life is wholly spoiled by the latent feeling that all

is wrong because we are not in harmony with the wise and holy and

loving Father, if we feel with more and more distinctness, as life

goes on, that there is a God, and that the foundation of all happiness

and soundness of life must be laid in union with Him, then Christ's

perfect surrender of Himself to the will of the Father represents what

we would but cannot ourselves achieve. When the Israelite came with

his lamb, feeling the attractiveness and majesty of God, and desiring

to pour his whole life out in fellowship with God and service of Him,

as entirely as the life of the lamb was poured out at the altar, God

accepted this symbolic utterance of the worshipper's heart. As the

worshipping Israelite saw in the animal yielding its whole life the

very utterance of his own desire, and said, Would God I could as

freely and entirely devote myself with all my powers and energies to

my Father above; so we, looking at the free, and loving, and eager

sacrifice of our Lord, say in our hearts, Would God I could thus live

in God and for God, and so become one with perfect purity and justice,

with infinite love and power.

The Paschal Lamb then was in the first place the acknowledgment by the

Israelites that they belonged to God. The lamb was offered to God, not

as being itself anything worthy of God's acceptance, but merely as a

way of saying to God that the family who offered it gave themselves up

as entirely to Him. But by thus becoming a kind of substitute for the

family, it saved the firstborn from death. God did not wish to smite

Israel, but to save them. He did not wish to confound them with the

Egyptians, and make an indiscriminate slaughter. But God did not

simply omit the Israelite houses, and pick out the Egyptian ones

throughout the land. He left it to the choice of the people whether

they would accept His deliverance and belong to Him or not. He told

them that every home would be safe, on the door-posts of which there

was visible the blood of the lamb. The blood of the lamb thus

provided a refuge for the people, a shelter from death which otherwise

would have fallen upon them. The angel of judgment was to recognise no

distinction between Israelite and Egyptian save this of the sprinkled,

stained door-posts. Death was to enter every house where the blood was

not visible; mercy was to rest on every family that dwelt under this

sign. God's judgment was out that night all over the land, and no

difference of race was made anything of. They who had disregarded the

use of the blood would have no time to object, We be Abraham's seed.

God meant that they should all be rescued, but He knew that it was

quite possible that some had become so entangled with Egypt that they

would be unwilling to leave it, and He would not force any--we may say

He _could_ not force any--to yield themselves to Him. This rendering

of ourselves to God must be a free act on our part; it must be the

deliberate and true act of a soul that feels convinced of the poverty

and wretchedness of all life that is not serving God. And God left it

in the choice of each family--they might or might not use the blood,

as they pleased. But wherever it was used, safety and deliverance were

thereby secured. Wherever the lamb was slain in acknowledgment that

the family belonged to God, God dealt with them as with His own.

Wherever there was no such acknowledgment, they were dealt with as

those who preferred to be God's enemies.

And now Christ our Passover is slain, and we are asked to determine

the application of Christ's sacrifice, to say whether we will use it

or no. We are not asked to add anything to the efficacy of that

sacrifice, but only to avail ourselves of it. Passing through the

streets of the Egyptian cities on the night of the Passover, you could

have told who trusted God and who did not. Wherever there was faith

there was a man in the twilight with his bason of blood and bunch of

hyssop, sprinkling his lintel and then going in and shutting his door,

resolved that no solicitation should tempt him from behind the blood

till the angel was by. He took God at His word; he believed God meant

to deliver him, and he did what he was told was his part. The result

was that he was rescued from Egyptian bondage. God now desires that we

be separated from everything which prevents us from gladly serving

Him, from every evil bias in us which prevents us from delighting in

God, from all that makes us feel guilty and unhappy, from all sin that

enchains us and makes our future hopeless and dark. God calls us to

Himself, meaning that we shall one day get for ever past all that has

made us unfaithful to Him and all that has made it impossible for us

to find deep and lasting pleasure in serving Him. To us He throws open

a way out from all bondage, and from all that gives us the spirit of

slaves; He gives us the opportunity of following Him into real and

free life, into glad fellowship with Him and joyful partnership in His

ever beneficent and progressive work. What response are we making? In

the face of the varied difficulties and deluding appearances of this

life, in the face of the complexity and inveterate hold of sin, can

you believe that God seeks to deliver you and even now designs for you

a life that is worthy of His greatness and love, a life which shall

perfectly satisfy you and give play to all your worthy desires and

energies?

Sacrifices were in old times accompanied by feasts in which the

reconciled God and His worshippers ate together. In the feast of

Passover the lamb which had been used as a sacrifice was consumed as

food to strengthen the Israelites for their exodus. This idea Paul

here adapts to his present purpose. "Christ our passover is sacrificed

for us," he says; "let us therefore keep the feast." The whole life of

the Christian is a festal celebration; his strength is maintained by

that which has given him peace with God. By Christ's death God

reconciles us to Himself; out of Christ we continually receive what

fits us to serve God as His free people. Every Christian should aim at

making his life a celebration of the true deliverance Christ has

accomplished for us. We should see that our life is a true exodus, and

being so it will bear marks of triumph and of freedom. To feed upon

Christ, joyfully to assimilate all that is in Him to our own

character, it is this which makes life festal, which turns faintness

into abounding strength, and brings zest and appetite into monotonous

labour.

But Paul's purpose in introducing the idea of the Passover is rather

to enforce his injunction to the Corinthians to purge their communion

of all defilement. "Let us keep the feast, not with old leaven,

neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness!" Leaven was judged

unclean, because fermentation is one form of corruption. This impurity

was not to be touched by the holy people during their festival week.

This was secured at the first keeping of the Passover by the

suddenness of the exodus when the people fled with their kneading

boards on their shoulders and had no time to take leaven, and had

therefore no choice but to keep God's command and eat unleavened

bread. And so scrupulously did the people at all times observe this

that before the day of the feast they used to sweep their houses and

search the dark corners with candles, lest a morsel of leaven should

be found among them. Thus would Paul have all Christians be separate

from the rotting, fermenting results of the old life. So suddenly

would he have us issue from it and so clean would He have us leave it

all behind us. A _little_ leaven leaveneth the whole lump; therefore

must we be careful, if we would keep this precept and be clean, to

search into even unlikely corners in our hearts and lives, and as with

the candle of the Lord make diligent search for the tainting remnant.

It is the purpose to keep the feast faithfully, and live as those who

are delivered from bondage, which reveals in our consciousness how

much we have to put away, and how much of the old life is following on

into the new. Habits, feelings, likings and dislikings, all go with

us. The unleavened bread of holiness and of a life bound to and ruled

by the earnest and godly life of Christ, seems flat and insipid, and

we crave something more stimulating to the appetite. The old

intolerance of regular, intelligent, continuous prayer, the old

willingness to find a rest in this world, must be purged out as leaven

which will alter the whole character of our life. Are our holy days

holidays, or do we endure holiness of thought and feeling mainly on

the consideration that holiness is but for a season? Patiently and

believingly resist the stirrings of the old nature. Measure all that

rises in you and all that quickens your blood and stirs your appetite

by the death and spirit of Christ. Sever yourself determinedly from

all that alienates you from Him. The old life and the new should not

run parallel with one another so that you can pass from the one to the

other. They are not side by side, but end to end; the one all

preceding the other, the one ceasing and terminating where the other

begins.

The old leaven is to be put away: "the leaven of malice and

wickedness," the bad-heartedness that is not seen to be bad till

brought into the light of Christ's spirit; the spiteful, vindictive,

and selfish feelings that are almost expected in society, these are to

be put away; and in their stead "the unleavened bread of sincerity and

truth" is to be introduced. Above all things, Paul would say, let us

be sincere. The word "sincere" sets before the mind the natural image

from which the moral quality takes its name, the honey free from the

smallest particle of wax, pure and pellucid. The word which Paul

himself, using his own language, here sets down, conveys a similar

idea. It is a word derived from the custom of judging the purity of

liquids or the texture of cloths by holding them between the eye and

the sun. What Paul desiderates in the Christian character is a quality

which can stand this extreme test, and does not need to be seen only

in an artificial light. He wants a pure transparent sincerity; he

wants what is to its finest thread genuine; an acceptance of Christ

which is real, and which is rich in eternal results.

Are we living a genuine and true life? Are we living up to what we

know to be the truth about life? Christ has given us the true estimate

of this world and all that is in it, He has measured for us God's

requirements, He has shown us what is the truth about God's love;--are

we living in this truth? Do we not find that in our best intentions

there is some mixture of foreign elements, and in our most assured

choice of Christ some remaining elements which will lead us back from

our choice? Even while we own Christ as our Saviour from sin, we are

but half-inclined to go out from its bondage. We pray God for

deliverance, and when He throws wide open before us the gate that

leads away from temptation, we refuse to see it, or hesitate until

again it is closed. We know how we may become holy, and yet will not

use our knowledge.

Let us, whatever else, be genuine. Let us not trifle with the purpose

and requirements of Christ. In our deepest and clearest consciousness

we see that Christ does open the way to the true life of man; that it

is our part to make room for this self-sacrificing life in our own day

and in our own circumstances; that until we do so we can only by

courtesy be called Christians. The convictions and beliefs which

Christ inspires are convictions and beliefs about what we should be,

and what Christ means all human life to be, and until these

convictions and beliefs are embodied in our actual living selves, and

in our conduct and life, we feel that we are not genuine. Time will

bring us no relief from this humiliating position, unless time brings

us at length to yield ourselves freely to Christ's Spirit, and unless,

instead of looking at the kingdom He seeks to establish as a quite

impossible Utopia, we set ourselves resolutely and wholly to aid in

the annexing to His rule our own little world of business and of all

the relations of life. To have convictions is well, but if these

convictions are not embodied in our life, then we lose our life, and

our house is built on sand.

_ON GOING TO LAW._

"Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law

before the unjust, and not before the saints? Do ye not know that

the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be

judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?

Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that

pertain to this life? If then ye have judgments of things

pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed

in the Church. I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not

a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge

between his brethren? But brother goeth to law with brother, and

that before the unbelievers. Now therefore there is utterly a

fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye

not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to

be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your

brethren. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the

kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor

idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of

themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor

drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the

kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but

ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord

Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God."--1 COR. vi. 1-11.

IX.

_ON GOING TO LAW._

St. Paul here gives his judgment on the litigiousness of the

Corinthians. The Greeks, in general, were fond of going to law. They

were not only quarrelsome, but they seemed to derive an excitement

pleasant to their frivolous nature in the suspense and uncertainty of

cases before the courts. The converts to Christianity seemed not to

have discarded this taste, and as a habit of going to law not merely

involved great loss of time, but was also dangerous to the feeling of

brotherhood which should exist among Christians, St. Paul takes the

opportunity to throw in some advice on the subject. He has been

telling them they have nothing to do with judging the heathen; he now

proceeds to remind them that they ought not to go to law before the

heathen. He feared that an unseemly wrangling among Christians might

convey to the heathen quite an erroneous impression of the nature of

their religion. There was, to his mind, something incongruous,

something monstrous, in brother going to law with brother. What was

that brotherhood worth that could not bear a little wrong? How could

he continue to speak of Christian love, if Christians were to bite and

devour one another? How could he preach the superiority of

Christianity to heathenism if Christians had so little common sense,

so little _esprit de corps_, so little mutual forbearance, that they

must call in a heathen to settle their disputes for them? It seemed to

Paul to be a losing of caste for Christians to proclaim their

insufficiency to carry on their own affairs without the aid of

heathen. It seemed to him a public profession that Christianity was

not sufficient for the needs of its adherents.

The reasons which St. Paul adduces to give weight to his rebuke are

important.

I. The saints are destined to judge the world, to judge angels; that

is to say, to judge persons in separation from earthly interests, to

judge unclothed detached spirits, to ascertain what is spiritually

good and spiritually evil. Shall they not then be considered fit to

judge little worldly matters, matters of £. _s. d._, matters of

property and of bargain? This statement that the saints shall judge

the world is one of those broad widely-suggestive statements with

which St. Paul from time to time surprises us, making them casually,

as if he had many more equally astounding facts in his knowledge which

he might also reveal if he had leisure. It is difficult to grasp the

statements which he makes in this style; it is also difficult to link

a truth so revealed to the truths amid which we are now living; it is

difficult even to ascertain with precision the bearing and

significance of it.

It seems plain, however, that whatever else may be implied in this

statement, and in whatever way it is to be fulfilled, St. Paul meant

that ultimately, in that final state of things towards which all

present things are growing and travelling, the men who are holy shall

be at the head of affairs, acknowledged as the fittest to discern

between right and wrong; and also that the germ and first principles

of this final state of things are already implanted in the world by

the Christian religion--two very important truths, certainly, to those

who believe them. The precise form of the final judgment and future

government of the world we cannot predict; but from this statement a

bright ray of light shoots into the darkness, and shows us that the

saints, _i.e._, the servants of Christ, are to have the responsibility

of pronouncing judgment on character, and of allotting destiny, reward

or punishment. We shrink from such a thought; not, indeed, that we are

slow to pronounce judgment upon our fellow-men, but to do so

officially, and in connection with definite results, seems a

responsibility too heavy for merely human judges to sustain. But why

men should not judge men hereafter as they do judge them now, we do

not see. If we, in this present world, submit ourselves to those who

have knowledge of law and ordinary justice, we may well be content to

be judged in the world to come by those whose holiness has been

matured by personal strife against evil, by sustained efforts to

cleanse their souls from bias, from envy, from haste, from harshness,

from all that hinders them from seeing and loving the truth. Holiness,

or likeness to God, assimilation to His mind, formed by the constant

desire to judge of things in this world as He judges, and to love

truly all that He loves, this quality is surely worthy to be at the

head. In that future kingdom of God in which all things are to have

their proper place, and are to be ranked according to their real

worth, holiness must come to the supremacy.