“Hopes have precarious life;
They are oft blighted, withered, snapt sheer off;—
But faithfulness can feed on suffering,
And knows no disappointment.”—SpanishGipsy.
NO one can realise the trials and anxieties which beset the life of the great Apostle during his stay at Ephesus, without bearing in mind how grave were the causes of concern from which he was suffering, in consequence of the aberrations of other converts. The First Epistle to the Corinthians was written during the latter part of his three years’ residence at the Ionian metropolis;1 and it reveals to us a state of things which must have rent his heart in twain. Any one who has been privileged to feel a deep personal responsibility for some great and beloved institution, will best appreciate how wave after wave of affliction must have swept across his sea of troubles as he heard from time to time to time those dark rumours from Galatia and Corinth, which showed how densely the tares of the enemy had sprung up amid the good wheat which he had sown.
Apollos, on his return to Ephesus, must have told him some very unfavourable particulars. St. Paul had now been absent from the Corinthians for nearly three years, and they may well have longed—as we see that they did long—for his presence with an earnestness which even made them unjust towards him. The little band of converts—mostly of low position, and some of them of despicable antecedents—not a few of them slaves, and some of them slaves of the most degraded rank—were left in the midst of a heathendom which presented itself at Corinth under the gayest and most alluring aspects. It is not in a day that the habits of a life can be thrown aside. Even those among them whose conversion was most sincere had yet a terrible battle to fight against two temptations: the temptation to dishonesty, which had mingled with their means of gaining a livelihood; and the temptation to sensuality, which was interwoven with the very fibres of their being. With Christianity awoke conscience. Sins to which they had once lightly yielded as matters of perfect indifference, now required an intense effort to resist and overcome, and every failure, so far from being at the worst a venial weakness, involved the agonies of remorse and shame. And when they remembered the superficially brighter and easier lives which they had spent while they were yet pagans;2 when they daily witnessed how much sin there might be with so little apparent sorrow; when they felt the burdens of their life doubled, and those earthly pleasures which they had once regarded as its only alleviations rendered impossible or wrong—while as yet they were unable to realise the exquisite consolation of Christian joy and Christian hope— they were tempted either to relapse altogether, or to listen with avidity to any teacher whose doctrines, if logically developed, might help to relax the stringency of their sacred obligations. While Paul was with them they were comparatively safe. The noble tyranny of his personal influence acted on them like a spell; and with his presence to elevate, his words to inspire, his example to encourage them, they felt it more easy to fling away all that was lower and viler, because they could realise their right to what was higher and holier. But when he had been so long away— when they were daily living in the great wicked streets, among the cunning, crowded merchants, in sight and hearing of everything which could quench spiritual aspirations and kindle carnal desires; when the gay, common life went on around them, and the chariot–wheels of the Lord were still afar—it was hardly wonderful if the splendid vision began to fade. The lustral water of Baptism had been sprinkled on their foreheads; they fed on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ; but alas! Corinth was not heaven, and the prose of daily life followed on the poetry of their first enthusiasm, and it was difficult to realise that, for them, those living streets might be daily brightened with manna dews. Their condition was like the pause and sigh of Lot’s wife, as, amid the sulphurous storm, she gazed back on the voluptuous ease of the City of the Plain. Might they no longer taste of the plentiful Syssitiaon some festive day? Might they not walk at twilight in the laughing bridal procession, and listen to the mirthful jest? Might they not watch the Hieroduli dance at some lovely festival in the Temples of Acrocorinth? Was all life to be hedged in for them with thorny scruples? Were they to gaze henceforth in dreaming phantasy, not upon bright faces of youthful deities, garlanded with rose and hyacinth, but on the marred visage of One who was crowned with thorns? Oh, it was hard to choose the kingdom of God; hard to remember that now they were delivered out of the land of Egypt; hard for their enervation to breathe the eager and difficult air of the pure wilderness. It was hard to give up the coarse and near for the immaterial and the far; hard not to lust after the reeking fleshpots, and not to loathe the light angel food; hard to give up the purple wine in the brimming goblet for the cold water from the spiritual rock; hard to curb and crucify passions which once they had consecrated under guise of religion; hard not to think all these temptations irresistible, and to see the way of escape which God had appointed them for each; hard to be bidden to rejoice, and not to be suffered even to murmur at all these hardnesses of life. And the voice which had taught them the things of God had now for so long been silent; for three years they had not seen the hand which pointed them to Heaven. It was with some of them as with Israel, when Moses was on Sinai: they sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. Many, very many—some in shame and secrecy, others openly justifying their relapse by the devil–doctrines of perverted truth—had plunged once more into the impurity, the drunkenness, and the selfishness, as though they had never heard the heavenly calling, or tasted the eternal gift.
So much even Apollos must have told the Apostle; and when he had occasion, in a letter now lost3—probably because it was merely a brief and businesslike memorandum—to write and inform them of his intended, but subsequently abandoned, plan of paying them a double visit, and to bid them contribute to the collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem, he had, in a message which required subsequent explanation, briefly but emphatically bidden them not to keep company with fornicators.4
And now a letter had come from Corinth. So far from dwelling on the ruinous disorders into which many members of the Church had fallen, it was entirely self–complacent in tone; and yet it proved the existence of much doctrinal perplexity, and, in asking advice about a number of practical subjects, had touched upon questions which betrayed some of the moral and intellectual errors which the Church, in writing the letter, had so disingenuously concealed.5
1. After greeting him, and answering him, in words which he quotes, that “they remembered him in all things, and kept the ordinances as he delivered them,”6 they had asked him a whole series of questions about celibacy and marriage, which had evidently been warmly discussed in the Church, and decided in very different senses. Was married life in itself wrong, or if not wrong, yet undesirable? or, if not even undesirable, still a lower and less worthy condition than celibacy? When persons were already married, was it their duty, or, at any rate, would it be saintlier to live together as though they were unmarried? Might widows and widowers marry a second time? Were mixed marriages between Christians and heathens to be tolerated, or ought a Christian husband to repudiate a heathen wife, and a Christian wife to leave a heathen husband? and ought fathers to seek marriages for their daughters, or let them grow up as virgins?
2. Again, what were they to do about meats offered to idols? They had prefaced their inquiry on this subject with the conceited remark that “they all had knowledge,”7 and had perhaps indicated their own opinion by the argument that an idol was nothing in the world, and that all things were lawful to their Christian freedom. Still, they wished to know whether they might ever attend any of the idol festivals? The question was an important one for the poor, to whom a visceratio8 was no small help and indulgence. Was it lawful to buy meat in the open market, which, without their knowing it, might have been offered to idols? Might they go as guests to their heathen friends and relations, and run the risk of partaking of that which had been part of a sacrifice?9
3. Then, too, a dispute had risen among them about the rule to be observed in assemblies. Was it the duty of men to cover their heads? Might women appear with their heads uncovered? And might they speak and teach in public?
4. They had difficulties, also, about spiritual gifts. Which was the more important, speaking with tongues or preaching? When two or three began at the same time to preach or to speak with tongues, what were they to do?
5. Further, some among them had been perplexed by great doubts about the Resurrection. There were even some who maintained that by the Resurrection was meant something purely spiritual, and that it was past already. This view had arisen from the immense material difficulties which surrounded the whole subject of a resurrection of the body. Would Paul give them his solution of some of their difficulties?
6. He had asked them to mate a collection for the poor in Judæa: they would be glad to hear something more about this. What plans would he recommend to them?
7. Lastly, they were very anxious to receive Apollos once more among them. They had enjoyed his eloquence, and profited by his knowledge. Would Paul try to induce him to come, as well as pay them his own promised visit?
Such, we gather from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, were the inquiries of a letter which had been brought to the Apostle at Ephesus by Stephanas. Fortunatus, and Achaicus. It was inevitable that St. Paul should talk to these worthy slaves about the Church of which they were the delegates. There was quite enough in the letter itself to create a certain misgiving in his mind, and some of its queries were sufficient to betray an excited state of opinion. But when he came to talk with these visitants from Chloe’s household, and they told him the simple truth, he stood aghast with horror, and was at the same time overwhelmed with grief. Reluctantly, bit by bit, in answer to his questionings, they revealed a state of things which added darkness to the night of his distress.
8. First of all, he learnt from them that the Church which he had founded was split up into deplorable factions.
It was the result of visits from various teachers who had followed in the wake of Paul, and built upon his foundations very dubious materials by way of superstructure. “Many teachers, much strife,” had been one of the wise and pregnant sayings of the great Hillel, and it had been fully exemplified at Corinth, where, in the impatient expression of St. Paul, they had had “ten thousand pedagogues.” The great end of edification had been lost sight of in the violences of faction, and all deep spirituality had been evaporated in disputatious talk. He heard sad rumours of “strifes, heartburnings, rages, dissensions, backbitings, whisperings, inflations, disorderliness.”10
i. It became clear that even the visit and teaching of Apollos had done harm—harm which he certainly had not intended to do, and which, as a loyal friend and follower of Paul, he was the first to regret. Paul’s own preaching to these Corinthians had been designedly simple, dealing with the great broad fact of a Redeemer crucified for sin, and couched in language which made no pretence to oratorical ornament. But Apollos, who had followed him, though an able man, was an inexperienced Christian, and not only by the natural charm of his impassioned oratory, but also by the way in which he had entered into the subtle refinements so familiar to the Alexandrian intellect, had unintentionally led them first of all to despise the unsophisticated simplicity of St. Paul’s teaching, and next to give the rein to all the sceptical fancies with which their faith was overlaid. Both the manner and the matter of the fervid convert had so delighted them that, with entire opposition to his own wishes, they had elevated him into the head of a party, and had perverted his views into dangerous extravagances. These Apollonians were so puffed up with the conceit of knowledge, so filled with the importance of their own intellectual emancipation, that they had also begun to claim a fatal moral liberty. They had distracted the Sunday gatherings with the egotisms of rival oratory; had showed a contemptuous disregard for the scruples of weaker brethren; had encouraged women to harangue in the public assemblies as the equals of men; were guilty of conduct which laid them open to the charge of the grossest inconsistency; and even threw the cloak of sophistical excuse over one crime so heinous that the very heathen were ready to cry shame on the offender. In the accounts brought to him of this Apollos–party, St. Paul could not but see the most extravagant exaggeration of his own doctrines—the half–truths, which are ever the most dangerous of errors. If it was possible to wrest the truths which he himself had taught into the heretical notions which were afterwards promulgated by Marcion, his keen eye could detect in the perversions of the Alexandrian eloquence of Apollos the deadly germs of what would afterwards develop into Antinomian Gnosticism.
ii. But Apollos was not the only teacher who had visited Corinth. Some Judaic Christians had come, who had been as acceptable to the Jewish members of the Church as Apollos was to the Greeks.11 Armed with commendatory letters from some of the twelve at Jerusalem, they claimed the authority of Peter, or, as they preferred to call him, of Kephas. They did not, indeed, teach the necessity of circumcision, as others of their party did in Galatia. There the local circumstances would give some chance of success to teaching which in Corinth would have been rejected with contempt; and perhaps these particular emissaries felt at least some respect for the compact at Jerusalem. But yet their influence had been very disastrous, and had caused the emergence of a Petrine party in the Church. This party— the ecclesiastical ancestors of those who subsequently vented their hatred of Paul in the Pseudo–Clementines— openly and secretly disclaimed his authority, and insinuated disparagement of his doctrines. Kephas, they said, was the real head of the Apostles, and therefore of the Christians. Into his hands had Christ entrusted the keys of the kingdom; on the rock of his confession was the Church of the Messiah to be built. Paul was a presumptuous interloper, whose conduct to Kephas at Antioch had been most unbecoming. For who was Paul? not an Apostle at all, but an unauthorised innovator. He had been a persecuting Sanhedrist, and he was an apostate Jew. What had he been at Corinth? A preaching tent–maker, nothing more. Kephas, and other Apostles, and the brethren ot the Lord, when they traveled about, were accompanied by their wives or by ministering women, and claimed the honour and support to which they were entitled. Why had not Paul done the same? Obviously because he felt the insecurity of his own position. And as for his coming again, a weak, vacillating, unaccredited pretender, such as he was, would take care not to come again. And these preachings of his were heretical, especially in their pronounced indifference to the Levitic law. Was he not breaking down that hedge about the law, the thickening of which had been the lifelong task of centuries of eminent Rabbis? Very different had been the scene after Peter’s preaching at Pentecost! It was the speaking with tongues—not mere dubious doctrinal exhortation—which was the true sign of spirituality. We are more than sure that the strong, and tender, and noble nature of St. Peter would as little have sanctioned this subterranean counter–working against the Apostle of the Gentiles, as Apollos discountenanced the impious audacities which sheltered themselves under his name.
iii. And then had come another set of Judaisers—one man in particular—to whom the name of even Kephas was unsatisfactory. He apparently was—or, what is a very different thing, he professed to be—an adherent of James,12 and to him even Peter was not altogether sound. He called himself a follower of Christ, and disdained any other name. Perhaps he was one of the Desposyni. At any rate, he prided himself on having seen Christ, and known Christ in the flesh. Now the Lord Jesus had not married, and James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, was unmarried; and this teacher evidently shared the Essene abhorrence of marriage. He it was who had started all the subtle refinements of questions respecting celibacy and the married life. He it was who gathered around him a few Jews of Ebionite proclivities, who degraded into a party watchword even the sacred name of Christ.13
9. Thus, as St. Paul now learnt fully for the first time, the Church of Corinth was a scene of quarrels, disputes, partisanships, which, in rending asunder its unity, ruined its strength. On all these subjects the Corinthians, in their self–satisfied letter, had maintained a prudent but hardly creditable silence. Nor was this all that they had concealed. They had asked questions about spiritual gifts; but it was left for the household of Chloe to break to St. Paul the disquieting news that the assemblies of the Church had degenerated into scenes so noisy, so wild, so disorderly, that there were times when any heathen who dropped in could only say that they were all mad. Sometimes half a dozen enthusiasts were on their legs at once, all pouring forth wild series of sounds which no human being present could understand, except that sometimes, amid these unseemly—and might they not at times, with some of these Syrian emissaries, be these half–simulated— ecstasies, there were heard words that made the blood run cold with shuddering horror.14 At other times, two or three preachers would interrupt each other in the attempt to gain the ear of the congregation all at the same moment. Women rose to give their opinions, and that without a veil on their heads, as though they were not ashamed to be mistaken for the Hetairæ, who alone assumed such an unblushing privilege. So far from being a scene of peace, the Sunday services had become stormy, heated, egotistic, meaningless, unprofitable.
10. And there was worse behind. It might at least have been supposed that the Agapæ would bear some faint traditional resemblance to their name, and be means of reunion and blessedness worthy of their connexion with the Eucharistic feast! Far from it! The deadly leaven of selfishness—displaying itself in its two forms of sensuality and pride—had insinuated itself even into these once simple and charitable gatherings. The kiss of peace could hardly be other than a hypocritical form between brethren, who at the very moment might be impleading one another at law before the tribunal of a heathen Praetor about some matter of common honesty. The rich brought their luxurious provisions, and greedily devoured them, without waiting for any one; while the poor, hungry–eyed Lazaruses— half–starved slaves, who had no contributions of their own to bring—watched them with hate and envy as they sat famishing and unrelieved by their full–fed brethren. Greediness and egotism had thus thrust themselves into the most sacred unions; and the besetting Corinthian sin of intoxication had been so little restrained that men had been seen to stretch drunken hands to the very chalice of the Lord!
11. Last and worst, not only had uncleanness found its open defenders, so that Christians were not ashamed to be seen sitting at meat amid the lascivious surroundings of heathen temples, but one prominent member of the Church was living in notorious crime with his own stepmother during the lifetime of his father; and, though the very Pagans execrated this atrocity, yet he had not been expelled from the Christian communion, not even made to do penance in it, but had found brethren ready, not merely to palliate his offence, but actually to plume themselves upon leaving it unpunished. This man seems to have been a person of distinction and influence, whom it was advantageous to a Church largely composed of slaves and women to count among them. Doubtless this had facilitated his condonation, which may have been founded on some antinomian plea of Christian liberty; or on some Rabbinic notion that old ties were rendered nonexistent by the new conditions of a proselyte; or by peculiarities of circumstance unknown to us. But though this person was the most notorious, he was by no means the only offender, and there were Corinthian Christians—even many of them—who were impenitently guilty of uncleanness, fornication, and lasciviousness.15 In none of his writings are the Apostle’s warnings against this sin—the besetting sin of Corinth— more numerous, more solemn, or more emphatic.16
Truly, as he heard this catalogue of iniquities—while he listened to the dark tale of the shipwreck of all his fond hopes which he had learnt to entertain during the missionary labour of eighteen months—the heart of St. Paul must have sunk within him. He might well have folded his hands in utter despair. He might well have pronounced his life and his preaching a melancholy failure. He might well have fled like Elijah into utter solitude, and prayed, “Now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers.” But it was not thus that the news affected this indomitable man. His heart, indeed, throbbed with anguish, his eyes were streaming with tears, as, having heard to the bitter end all that the slaves of Chloe had to tell him, he proceeded to make his plans. First, of course, his intended brief immediate visit to Corinth must be given up. Neither he nor they were yet in a mood in which their meeting could be otherwise than infinitely painful. He must at once despatch Titus to Corinth to inform them of his change of plan, to arrange about the collection, and to do what little he could, before rejoining him at Troas. He must also dispatch a messenger to Timothy to tell him not to proceed to Corinth at present. And then he might have written an apocalyptic letter, full of burning denunciation and fulminated anathemas; he might have blighted these conceited, and lascivious, and quarrelsome disgracers of the name of Christian with withering invectives, and rolled over their trembling consciences thunders as loud as those of Sinai. Not such, however, was the tone he adopted, or the spirit in which he wrote. In deep agitation, which he yet managed almost entirely to suppress, summoning all the courage of his nature, forgetting all the dangers and trials which surrounded him at Ephesus, asking God for the wisdom and guidance which he so sorely needed, crushing down deep within him all personal indignations, every possible feeling of resentment or egotism at the humiliations to which he had personally been subjected, he called Sosthenes to his side, and flinging his whole heart into the task immediately before him, began to dictate to him one of the most astonishing and eloquent of all his letters, the first extant Epistle to the Corinthians. Varied as are the topics with which it deals, profound as were the difficulties which had been suggested to him, novel as were the questions which he had to face, alienated as were many of the converts to whom he had to appeal, we see at once that the Epistle was no laborious or long–polished composition. Enlightened by the Spirit of God, St. Paul was in possession of that insight which sees at once into the heart of every moral difficulty. He was as capable of dealing with Greek culture and Greek sensuality as with Judaic narrowness and Judaic Pharisaism. He shows himself as great a master when he is applying the principles of Christianity to the concrete and complicated realities of life, as when he is moving in the sphere of dogmatic theology. The phase of Jewish opposition with which he has here to deal has been modified by contact with Hellenism, but it still rests on grounds of externalism, and must be equally met by spiritual truths. Problems however dark, details however intricate, become lucid and orderly at once in the light of eternal distinctions. In teaching his converts St. Paul had no need to burn the midnight oil in long studies. Even his most elaborate Epistles were in reality not elaborate. They leapt like vivid sparks from a heart in which the fire of love to God burnt until death with an ever brighter and brighter flame.
1. His very greeting shows the fulness of his heart. As his authority had been impugned, he calls himself “an Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,” and addresses them as a Church, as sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called to be saints, uniting with them in the prayer for grace and peace all who, whatever their differing shades of opinion or their place of abode, call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours.17 Thus, in his very address to them, he strikes the key–note of his own claim to authority, and of the unity and holiness which they so deeply needed. “Observe, too,” says St. Chrysostom, “how he ever nails them down to the name of Christ, not mentioning any man—either Apostle or teacher—but continually mentioning Him for whom they yearn, as men preparing to awaken those who are drowsy after a debauch. For nowhere in any other Epistle is the name of Christ so continuously introduced; here, however, it is introduced frequently, and by means of it he weaves together almost his whole exordium.”18
2. Although he has united Sosthenes19 with him in the superscription, he continues at once in the first person to tell them that he thanks God always for the grace given them in Christ Jesus, for the eloquence and knowledge with which they were enriched in Him, so that in waiting for the Apocalypse of Christ, they were behindhand in no spiritual gift; and as the testimony of Christ was confirmed among them, so should Christ confirm them to be blameless unto the end, since God was faithful, who had called them unto the communion of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.20
3. That communion leads him at once to one of the subjects of which his heart is full. He has heard on indisputable authority, and not from one person only, of schisms and strifes among them, and he implores them by the name of Christ to strive after greater unity in thought and action.21 They were saying, “I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Kephas, and I of Christ.” What! has Christ been parcelled into fragments?22 Some of them called themselves hisparty; but had hebeen crucified for them? had they been baptised into hisname? It may be that Apollos, fresh from his discipleship to John’s baptism, had dwelt very prominently on the importance of that initial rite; but so liable were men to attach importance to the mere human minister, that Paul, like his Master, had purposely abstained from administering it, and except Crispus and Gaius—and, as he afterwards recalls, Stephanas and his household—he cannot remember that he has baptised any of them. Christ had sent him not to baptise, but to preach; and that not in wisdom of utterance, that Christ’s cross might not be rendered void. The mention of preaching brings him to the aberrations of the Apollonian party. They had attached immense importance to eloquence, logic, something which they called and exalted as wisdom. He shows them that they were on a wholly mistaken track. Such human wisdom, such ear–flattering eloquence, such superficial and plausible enticements, he had deliberately rejected. Of human wisdom he thought little. It lay under the ban of revelation.23 It had not led the world to the knowledge of God. It had not saved the world from the crucifixion of Christ. And, therefore, he had not preached to them about the Logos, or about Æons, or in Philonian allegories, or with philosophical refinements. He had offered neither a sign to the Jews, nor wisdom to the Greeks. What he had to preach was regarded by the world as abject foolishness—it was the Cross—it was the doctrine of a crucified Messiah, which was to the Jews revolting; of a crucified Saviour, which was to the Greeks ridiculous; but it pleased God to save believers by the foolishness (in the world’s view) of the thing preached,24 and it was to those who were in the way of salvation the wisdom and the power of God. They were not the wise, and the mighty, and the noble of the world, but, as a rule, the foolish, and the weak, and the despised.25 It was not with the world’s power, but with its impotences; not with its strength, but with its feebleness; not with its knowledge, but with its ignorance; not with its rank, but its ignobleness; not with kings and philosophers, but with slaves and women, that its divine forces were allied; and with them did God so purpose to reveal His power that no glory could accrue to man, save from the utter abasement of humanglory. That was why Paul had come to them, not with rhetoric, but with the simple doctrine of Christ crucified;26 not with oratoric dignity, but in weakness, fear, and trembling; not with winning elocution, but with spiritual demonstration and spiritual power—so that man might be utterly lost in God, and they might feel the origin of their faith to be not human but divine.27
4. Yet they must not be misled by his impassioned paradox into the notion that the matter and method of his teaching was really folly. On the contrary, it was wisdom of the deepest and loftiest kind—only it was a wisdom of God hidden from the wise of the world; a wisdom of insight into things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, and which had never set foot on human heart,28 but which were revealed to him by that Spirit which alone searcheth the depths of God,29 and which he had taught in words not learnt from wisdom, but from that same Spirit of God, combining spirituals with spirituals.30 And this spiritual wisdom was, to the natural man,31 folly, because it could be only discerned by a spiritual faculty of which the natural man was absolutely devoid. It was to him what painting is to the blind, or music to the deaf.32 But the spiritual man possesses the requisite discernment, and, sharing the mind of Christ, is thereby elevated above the reach of all merely natural judgment.
5. And then, with wholesome irony, he adds that this divine condition, which was earthly folly, he could only teach them in its merest elements; in its perfection it was only for the perfect, but they, who thought themselves so wise and learned, were in spiritual wisdom fleshen babes, needing milk such as he had given them, not meat, which they—being fleshly—were still too feeble to digest.33 These might seem hard words, but while there were envy, and strife, and divisions among them, how could they be regarded as anything but fleshly and unspiritual? Paul and Apollos! who were Paul and Apollos but mere human ministers? Paul planting, Apollos watering—neither of them anything in himself, but each of them one in their ministry, and each responsible for his own share in it. God only gave the harvest. “God’s fellow–workers are we; God’s acre. God’s building are ye.” Paul, as a wise master–builder, had laid the foundation: others were building on it all sorts of superstructures. But the foundation was and could be only one—namely, Christ—and the gold, silver, precious marbles, logs, hay, stubble, built on it should be made manifest in its true quality in God’s ever–revealing fire,34 and if worthless, should be destroyed, however sincere the builder might be. If his superstructure was sound, he would be rewarded; if perishable, it would be burnt in the consuming flame, and he should suffer loss, though he himself, since he had built on the true foundation, would be saved as by fire.35 Did they not know then that they were a temple, a holy temple for the spirit of God? If any man destroy God’s temple, God shall destroy him. And human wisdom might destroy it, for before God human wisdom was folly. The mere human wisdom of this or that favourite teacher has nothing to do with the real building. If a man wanted Divine wisdom, let him gain it by the humble paths of what was regarded as human folly. How unworthy, then, to be boasting about mere human teachers—how unworthy was it of their own immense privilege and hope— when all things were theirs—Paul, Apollos, Kephas, the universe, life, death, the immediate present, the far future— all theirs, and they Christ’s, and Christ God’s. Their party leaders were but poor weak creatures at the best, of whom was required one thing only—faithfulness. As for himself he regarded it as a matter utterly trivial whether he were judged by their tentative opinions or by man’s insignificant feeble transient day;36 nay, he even judged not himself. He was conscious indeed of no sin as regards his ministry;37 but even on that he did not rely as his justification, depending only on the judgment of the Lord. “So then be not ye judging anything before the due time until the Lord come, who shall both illuminate the crypts of darkness and reveal the counsels of the heart.” Then, and not till then, shall the praise which he deserves, and no other praise, accrue to each from God.38
6. He had, with generous delicacy, designedly put into prominence his own name and that of Apollos (instead of those of Kephas or the Jerusalem emissary) as unwilling leaders of factions which they utterly deprecated, that the Corinthians might learn in their case not to estimate them above the warrant of their actual words,39 and might see that he was actuated by no mere jealousy of others, when he denounced their inflated exasperation amongst themselves in the rival display of what after all, even when they existed, were not intrinsic merits, but gifts of God.40 And what swelling self–appreciation they showed in all this party spirit! For them the hunger, and the poverty, and the struggle, are all over. What plenitude and satiety of satisfaction you have gained; how rich you are; what thrones you sit on; and all without us. Ah, would it were really so, that we might at least share your royal elevation! For the position of us poor Apostles is very different. “God, I think, displayed us last as condemned criminals,41 a theatric spectacle to the universe, both angels and men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we weak, but ye strong; ye glorious, but we dishonoured. Up to this very hour we both hunger and thirst, and are ill–clad,42 and are buffeted, and are hustled from place to place, and toil, working with our own hands; being abused, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being reviled, we entreat; as refuse of the universe43 are we become, the offscouring of all things till now.” These are bitter and ironical words of contrast between you and us, I know; but I write not as shaming you. I am only warning you as my beloved children. For, after all, you are my children. Plenty of teachers, I know, have followed me; but (and here comes one of his characteristic impetuosities of expression) even if you have a myriad pedagogues44 in Christ—however numerous, or stern, or authoritative—you have not many fathers. It was I who begot you through the Gospel in Christ Jesus, and I therefore entreat you to follow my example; and on this account I sent you my beloved and faithful son Timothy, to remind you of my invariable practice and teaching.45 Do not think, however, that I am afraid to confront in person the inflated opposition of some who say that I do not really mean to come myself. Come I will, and that soon, if the Lord will; and will ascertain not what these inflated critics say, but what they are; not their power of talk, but of action. “But what will ye? Am I to come to you with a rod, or in love and the spirit of gentleness?”46
7. One thing at least needs the rod. A case of incest—of a son taking his father’s wife—so gross, that it does not exist even among the heathen,47 is absolutely notorious among you, and instead of expelling the offender with mourning and shame, you—oh! strange mystery of the invariable connexion between sensuality and pride—have been inflated with sophistical excuses about the matter.48 “I, at any rate, absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged as though actually present the man who acted thus in this thing, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—you being assembled together, and my spirit which is present with you, though my body is absent—with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to hand over such a man to Satan, for destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ.”49 If any passage of the letter was written with sobs, which are echoed in his very words, as Sosthenes wrote them down from his lips, it is this. He summons up the scene and sentence of excommunication. He is absent, yet he is there; and there, with the power of Christ, he pronounces the awful sentence which hands over the offender to Satan in terrible mercy, that by destruction of his flesh he may be saved in the spirit. And then he adds, “The subject of your self–glorification is hideous.50 Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out then at once the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are (ideally) unleavened.51 For indeed our Passover is slain52—Christ. Let us, then, keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither with leaven of vice and wickedness, but with unleavenedness of sincerity and truth.”53
And here he pauses to explain a clause in his last Epistle which had excited surprise. In it he had forbidden them to associate with fornicators. This had led them to ask the astonished question54 whether it was really their duty to go out of the world altogether? His meaning was, as he now tells them, that if any Christian were notoriously guilty, either of fornication or any other deadly sin,55 with such they were not to associate,—not even to sit at table with them. They really need not have mistaken his meaning on this point. What had he, what had they, to do with judging the outer world? This passage reads like a marginal addition, and he adds the brief, uncompromising order, “Put away at once that wicked man from among yourselves.”56
8. The allusion to judging naturally leads him to another point. Dare they, the destined judges of the world and of angels, go to law about mere earthly trifles, and that before the heathen? Why did they not rather set up the very humblest members of the Church to act as judges in such matters? Shame on them! So wise and yet no one of them wise enough to be umpire in mere trade disputes? Better by far have no quarrels among themselves, but suffer wrong and loss; but, alas! instead of this some of them inflicted wrong and loss, and that on their own brethren. The follows a stern warning—the unjust should not inherit the kingdom of God— “Be not deceived”—the formula by which he always introduces his most solemn passages— neither sensual sinners in all their hideous varieties, nor thieves, nor over—reachers, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. “And these abject things some of you were;57 but ye washed yourselves, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and the Spirit of our God.” It is evident that some of them were liableto be deceived; that they liked to be deceived on this point, and they seem to have holdly said that the Christian is free, that “all things are lawful” to him because he is no longer under the law, but under grace. “All things are lawful to me.” Yes, says St. Paul, but all things are not expedient. “All things are lawful to me”; yes, but I will not become the slave of the fatal tyranny of anything. The case of meats, which perhaps they adduced to show that they might do as they liked, irrespective of the Mosaic law, was not a case in point. They were ἀδιάφορα.— matters of indifference about which each man might do as he liked; they, and the belly which assimilated them, were transient things, destined to be done away with. Not so the body; thatwas not created for fornication, but for the Lord, and as God had raised Christ so should He raise the bodies of Christ’s saints. And then—thus casually as it were in this mere passing reference—he lays down for all time the eternal principles which underlie the sacred duty of chastity. He tells them that their bodies, their members, are not their own, but Christ’s;—that the union with Christ is destroyed by unions of uncleanness;—that sensuality is a sin against a man’s own body;—that a Christian’s body is not his own, but a temple of the indwelling spirit, and that he is not his own, but bought with a price. “Therefore,” he says, feeling that he had now laid down truths which should be impregnable against all scepticism, “glorify God in your body.”58
9. This paragraph, touching as it has done on the three topics of chastity, meats offered to idols, and the resurrection, introduces very naturally his answers to their inquiries on these subjects, and nobly wise they are in their charity, their wisdom, their large–heartedness. He is not speaking of marriage in the abstract, but of marriage regarded with reference to the near advent of Christ, and relating to the circumstances and conditions of the most corrupt city of ancient Greece. The Corinthian letter seems to have been written by those members of the Church who, partly it may be in indignant revolt against the views of the small faction which had adopted Antinomian opinions, seem to have regarded celibacy as the only perfect from of life. In the abstract, somewhat hesitatingly, and with the confession that here he is not sure of his ground, and is therefore offering no authoritative decision, St. Paul on the whole agrees with them.59 “He quotes, with something of approval, their dictum that the maiden life is the best,60 and utters the wish that all had the same spiritual grace61—the charismaof continence—as he himself. But since this was not the case, as a permitted remedy against the universal prevalence of unchastity, he recommended (but not by way of distinct injunction) that Christians should live together, and with no long ascetic separations, in the married state.62 As regards widowers63 and widows their celibacy for the rest of their lives would be an honourable state, but immediate marriage would be better than long–continued desires.64 Divorce had been discouraged by Christ himself, and on that analogy he pronounced against any voluntary dissolution of unions already existing between Pagans and Christians, since the children of such unions were holy, and therefore the unions holy, and since the believing wife or husband might win to the faith the unbelieving partner. The general rule which he wished all Christians to observe was that they should abide in the state in which they were called, whether circumcised or uncircumcised, since “circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping of the commandments of God.”65 Even if a Christian were a slave and might obtain his freedom, it would be better for him to brook slavery,66 seeing that earthly relations were utterly insignificant when regarded from the spiritual standpoint.67 As to virgins he could only give his opinion that, considering the present distress, and the nearness of the end, and the affliction which marriage at such a period brought inevitably in its train, it was better for them not to marry. Marriage, indeed, he told them distinctly, was no sin, but he wished to spare them the tribulation it involved; he did not wish them, now that the time was contracted,68 and the fleeting show of the world was passing away, to bear the distracting burden of transient earthly and human cares, or to use the world to the full,69 but to let their sole care be fixed on God.70 If then a father determined not to give his maiden daughter in marriage, he did well; but if a lover sought her hand, and circumstances pointed that way, he was not doing wrong in letting them marry.71 Widows might re–marry if they liked, but in accordance with the principles which he had been laying down, he thought they would be happier if they did not. It was but his wish and advice; he asserted no Divine authority for it; yet in giving it he thought that he too had—as other teachers had claimed to have— the spirit of God.72
10. As to the pressing question—a question which bore on their daily life73—about meats offered to idols, he quotes, but only by way of refutation, their self–satisfied remark that they “all had knowledge”—knowledge at the best was a much smaller thing than charity, and the very claim to possess it was a proof of spiritual pride and ignorance. If they knew that an idol was nothing in the world, and their conscience as to this matter was quite clear and strong, it was no sin for them personally to eat of these sacrifices; but if others, whose consciences were weak, saw them feasting in idol temples, and were led by this ostentatious display of absence of scruple74 to do by way of imitation what they themselves thought wrong, then this knowledge and liberty of theirs became a stumbling–block, an edification of ruin,75 a source of death to the conscience of a brother; and since thus to smite the sick conscience of a brother was a sin against Christ, he. for one would never touch flesh again while the world lasted rather than be guilty of putting a fatal difficulty in a brother’s path.”76
11. And at this point begins a remarkable digression, which, though a digression, indirectly supported the position which some of his adversaries had impugned, and though personal in its details, is, in Paul’s invariable manner, made subservient to eternal truths. They might object that by what he had said he was curtailing their liberty, and making the conscience of the weak a fetter upon the intelligence of the strong. Well, without putting their objection in so many words, he would show them that he practised what he taught. He, too, was free, and an Apostle, their Apostle at any rate, and had every right to do as the other Apostles did—the Desposyni, and Kephas himself— in expecting Churches to support them and their wives.77 That right he even defends at some length, both by earthly analogies of the soldier, husbandman, and shepherd,78 and by a happy Rabbinic midrash on the non–muzzling of the ox that treadeth out the corn;79 and by the ordinary rules of gratitude for benefits received;80 and by the ordinance of the Jewish Temple,81 and the rule of Christ;82 yet plain as the right was, and strenuously as he maintained it, he had never availed himself of it, and, whatever his enemies might say, he never would. He must preach the Gospel; he could not help himself; his one reward would be the power to boast that he had not claimed his rights to the full, but had made the Gospel free, and so removed a possible source of hindrance. Free, then, as he was, he had made himself a slave (as in one small particular he was asking them to do) for the sake of others; a slave to all, that he might gain the more; putting himself in their place, meeting their sympathies, and even their prejudices, half way; becoming a Jew to the Jews, a legalist to legalists, without law to those without law (never, however, forgetting his real allegiance to the law of Christ),83 weak to the weak, all things to all men in order by all means to save some. And if he thus denied himself, should not they also deny themselves?84 In their Isthmian games each strove to gain the crown, and what toil and temperance they endured to win that fading wreath of pine! Paul did the same. He ran straight to the goal. He aimed straight blows, and not in feint, at the enemy;85 nay, he even blackened his body with blows, and led it about as a slave,86 lest in any way after acting as herald to others he himself should be rejected from the lists.87
If he had to strive so hard, could they afford to take things so easily? The Israelites had not found it so in the wilderness; they, too, were in a sense baptised unto Moses in the cloudy pillar and the Red Sea waves;88 they, too, in a sense partook of the Eucharist in eating the heavenly manna, and drinking of the symbolic following rock;89 yet how many90 of them fell because of gluttony, and idolatry, and lust, and rebellion, and murmuring, and were awful warnings against overweening self–confidence! Yes, the path of duty was difficult, but not impossible, and no temptation was beyond human power to resist, because with the temptation God provided also theescape. Let them beware, then, of all this scornful indifference about idolatry. As the Eucharist united them in closest communion with Christ, and with one another, so that by all partaking of the one bread they became one body and one bread, so the partaking of Gentile sacrifices was a communion with demons.91 The idol was nothing, as they had urged, but it representedan evil spirit;92 and fellowship with demons was a frightful admixture with their fellowship in Christ, a dangerous trifling with their allegiance to God. He repeats once more that what is lawful is not always either expedient or edifying. Let sympathy, not selfishness, be their guiding principle. Over–scrupulosity was not required of them. They might buy in the market, they might eat, at the private tables of the heathen, what they would, and ask no questions; but if their attention was prominently drawn to the fact that any dish was part of an idol–offering, then—though they might urge that “the earth was the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof,” and that it was hard for them to be judged, or their liberty abridged in a purely indifferent act, which they might even perform in a religious spirit—still let them imitate Paul’s own example, which he had just fully explained to them, which was, indeed, Christ’s example, and consisted in being absolutely unselfish, and giving no wilful offence either to Jews or Gentiles, or the Church of God.
In this noble section of the Epistle, so remarkable for its tender consideration and its robust good sense, it is quite clear that the whole sympathies of St. Paul are theoretically with the strong, though he seems to feel a sort of practical leaning to the ascetic side. He does not, indeed, approve, under any circumstances, of an ostentatious, defiant, insulting liberalism. To a certain extent the prejudices— even the absurd and bigoted prejudices—of the weak ought to be respected, and it was selfish and wrong needlessly to wound them. It was above all wrong to lead them by example to do violence to their own conscientious scruples. But when these scruples, and this bigotry of the weak, became in their turn aggressive, then St. Paul quite sees that they must be discouraged and suppressed, lest weakness should lay down the law for strength. To tolerate the weak was one thing; to let them tyrannise was quite another. Their ignorance was not to be a limit to real knowledge; their purblind gaze was not to bar up the horizon against true insight; their slavish superstition was not to fetter the freedom of Christ. In matters where a little considerateness and self–denial would save offence, there the strong should give up, and do less than they might; but in matters which affected every day of every year, like the purchase of meat in the open market, or the acceptance of ordinary invitations, then the weak must not attempt to be obtrusive or to domineer. Some, doubtless, would use hard words about these concessions. They might charge St. Paul, as they had charged St. Peter, with violating the awful and fiery law. They might call him “the lawless one,” or any other ugly nickname they liked; he was not a man to be “feared with bugs,” or to give up a clear and certain principle to avoid an impertinent and senseless clamour. Had he been charged with controverting the wise and generous but local and temporary agreement which has been exalted into “the decree of the Council of Jerusalem,” he would have quietly answered that that was but a recommendation addressed to a few predominantly Jewish Churches; that it did not profess to have any universal or permanent authority; and that he was now arguing the case on its own merits, and laying down principles applicable to every Church in which, as at Corinth, the Gentiles formed the most numerous element.
12. A minor point next claimed his attention. Some men, it appears, had sat with covered heads at their assemblies, and some women with uncovered heads, and they had asked his opinion on the matter. Thanking them for their kind expressions of respect for his rules and wishes, he at once decides the question on the highest principles. As to men it might well have seemed perplexing, since the Jewish and the Roman custom was to pray with covered, and the Greek custom to pray with uncovered, heads. St. Paul decides for the Greek custom. Christ is the head of the man, and man might therefore stand with unveiled head before God, and if he veiled his head he did it needless dishonour, because he abnegated the high glory which had been bestowed on him by Christ’s incarnation. Not so with the woman. The head of the woman is the man, and therefore in holy worship, in the presence of the Lord of her lord, she ought to appear with veiled head.93 Nature itself taught that this was the right decision, giving to the woman her veil of hair, and teaching the instinctive lesson that a shorn head was a disgrace to a woman, as long hair, the sign of effeminacy, was a disgrace to a man. The unveiled head of the man was also the sign of his primeval superiority, and the woman having been the first to sin, and being liable to be seduced to sin, ought to wear “power on her head because of the angels.”94 Man and woman were indeed one in Christ, but for that very reason these distinctions of apparel should be observed. At any rate, St. Paul did not mean to enter into any dispute on the subject. If nature did not teach them that he had decided rightly, he could only refer them to the authority of custom, and that ought to be decisive, except to those who loved contentiousness.95
13. Then follows a stern rebuke—all the sterner for the self–restraint of its twice–repeated “I praise you not”—for the shameful selfishness and disorder which they had allowed to creep into the love–feasts which accompanied the Supper of the Lord—especially the gluttony, drunkenness, and ostentation of the wealthier members of the community, and the contemptuous indifference which they displayed to the needs and sensibilities of their poorer neighbours. The simple narrative of the institution and objects of the Supper of the Lord, which he had received from the Lord and delivered unto them, and the solemn warning of the danger which attended its profanation, and which was already exhibited in the sickness, feebleness, and deaths of many among them, is meant to serve as a remedy against their gross disorders. He tells them that the absence of a discrimination (διάκρισις) in their own hearts had rendered necessary a judgment (κρίμα) which was mercifully meant as a training (παιδευόμεθα) to save them from final condemnation (κατάκριμα).96 All minor matters about which they may have asked him, though they kept back the confession of this their shame, are left by the Apostle to be regulated by himself personally on his arrival.97
14. The next three chapters—of which the thirteenth, containing the description of charity, is the most glorious gem, even in the writings of St. Paul—are occupied with the answer to their inquiries about spiritual gifts. Amid the wild disorders which we have been witnessing we are hardly surprised to find that the Glossolalia had been terribly abused. Some, we gather—either because they had given the reins to the most uncontrollable excitement, and were therefore the impotent victims of any blasphemous thought which happened for the moment to sweep across the troubled horizon of their souls; or from some darkening philosophical confusion, which endeavoured to distinguish between the Logos and Him that was crucified, between the Man Jesus and the Lord Christ; or perhaps again from some yet unsolved Jewish difficulty about the verse “Cursed is he that hangeth on a tree;”98—amid their unintelligible utterances, had been heard to exclaim, AnathemaIesous, “Jesus is accursed;” and, having as yet very vague notions as to the true nature of the “gift of tongues,” the Corinthians had asked Paul in great perplexity what they were to think of this? His direct answer is emphatic. When they were the ignorant worshippers of dumb idols they may have been accustomed to the false inspiration of the Pythia, or the Sibyl—the possessing mastery by a spiritual influence which expressed itself in the broken utterance, and streaming hair, and foaming lip, and which they might take to be the spirit of Python, or Trophonius, or Dis. But now he lays down the great principles of that “discernment of spirits,” which should enable them to distinguish the rapt utterance of divine emotion from the mechanical and self–induced frenzy of feminine feebleness or hypocritical superstition. Whatever might be the external phenomena, the utterances of the Spirit were one in import. No man truly inspired by Him could say, “Anathema is Jesus;”99 or uninspired by Him could say from the heart, “Jesus is the Lord.” The charismata, or gifts, were different; the “administrations” of them, or channels of their working, were different; the operations, energies, or effects of them were different; but the source of them was One—one Holy Ghost, from whom they are all derived; one Lord, by whom all true ministries of them are authorised; one God, who worketh all their issues in all who possess them.100 And this diverse manifestation of one Spirit, whether practical wisdom or scientific knowledge; whether the heroism of faith with its resultant gifts of healing, or energies of power, or impassioned utterance, or the ability to distinguish between true and false spiritual manifestations; or, again, kinds of tongues, or the interpretation of tongues,101 were all subordinated to one sole end—edification. And, therefore, to indulge in any conflict between gifts, any rivalry in their display, was to rend asunder the unity which reigned supreme through this rich multiplicity; to throw doubt on the unity of their origin, to ruin the unity of their action. The gifts, whether healings, helps, governments, or tongues, occurred separately in different individuals; but each of these—whether Apostle, or prophet, or teacher—was but a baptised member of the one body of Christ; and by a fresh application of the old classic fable of Menenius Agrippa, he once more illustrates the fatal results which must ever spring from any strife between the body and its members.102 Let them covet the better gifts—and tongues, in which they gloried most, he has studiously set last—and yet he is now about to point out to them a path more transcendent than any gifts. And then, rising on the wings of inspired utterance, he pours forth, as from the sunlit mountain heights, his glorious hymn to CHRISTIAN LOVE. Without it a man may speak with human, aye, and even angelic tongues, and yet have become but as booming gong or clanging cymbal.103 Without it, whatever be his unction, or insight, or knowledge, or mountain–moving faith, a man is nothing. Without it he may dole away all his possessions, and give his body to be burned, yet is profited nothing. Then follows that description of love, which should be written in letters of gold on every Christian’s heart—its patience, its kindliness; its freedom from envy, vaunting self–assertion,104 inflated arrogance, vulgar indecorum; its superiority to self–seeking; its calm control of temper; its oblivion of wrong;105 its absence of joy at the wrongs of others; its sympathy with the truth; its gracious tolerance; its trustfulness; its hope; its endurance.106 Preaching, and tongues, and knowledge, are but partial, and shall be done away when the perfect has come; but love is a flower whose petals never fall off.107 Those are but as the lispings, and emotions, and reasonings of a child; but this belongs to the perfect manhood, when we shall see God, not as in the dim reflection of a mirror, but face to face, and know him, not in part, but fully, even as now we are fully known, Faith, and hope, and love, are all three, not transient gifts, but abiding graces; but the greatest of these—the greatest because it is the root of the other two; the greatest because neither in faith nor in hope is the entire and present fruition of heaven, but only in the transcendent and illimitable blessedness of “faith working by love;” the greatest because faith and hope are human, but love is essentially divine— the greatest of these is love.108
15. On such a basis, so divine, so permanent, it was easy to build the decision about the inter–relation of spiritual gifts; easy to see that preaching was superior to glossolaly; because the one was an introspective and mostly unintelligible exercise, the other a source of general advantage. The speaker with tongues, unless he could also interpret, or unless another could interpret for him his inarticulate ecstacies, did but utter indistinet sounds, like the uncertain blaring of a trumpet or the confused discordances of a harp or flute. Apart from interpretation “tongues” were a mere talking into air. They were as valueless, as completely without significance, as the jargon of a barbarian. Since they were so proud of these displays, let them pray for ability to interpret their rhapsodies. The prayer, the song of the spirit, should be accompanied by the assent of the understanding, otherwise the “tongue” was useless to any ordinary worshipper, nor could they claim a share in what was said by adding their Amen109 to the voice of Eucharist. Paul, too—and he thanked God that he was capable of this deep spiritual emotion—was more liable to the impulse of glossolaly than any of them;110 yet so little did he value it—we may even say so completely did he disparage it as a part of public worship—that after telling them that he had rather speak five intelligible words to teach others than ten thousand words in “a tongue,”111 he bids them not to be little children in intelligence, but to be babes in vice, and quotes to them, in accordance with that style of adaptation with which his Jewish converts would have been familiar, a passage of Isaiah,112 in which Jehovah threatens the drunken priests of Jerusalem that since they would not listen to the simple preaching of the prophet, he would teach them—and that, too, ineffectually—by conquerors who spoke a tongue which they did not understand. From this he argues that “tongues” are not meant for the Church at all, but are a sign to unbelievers; and that, if exercised in the promiscuous way which was coming into vogue at Corinth, would only awaken, even in unbelievers, the contemptuous remark that they were a set of insane fanatics, whereas the effect of preaching might be intense conviction, prostrate worship, and an acknowledgment of the presence of God among them.113
16. The disorders, then, in the Corinthian Church had sprung from the selfish struggle of each to show off his own special gift, whether tongue, or psalm, or teaching, or revelation. If they would bear in mind that edification was the object of worship, such scenes would not occur. Only a few at a time, therefore, were to speak with tongues, and only in case some one could interpret, otherwise they were to suppress the impulse. Nor were two people ever to be preaching at the same time. If the rivalry of unmeaning sounds among the glossolalists had been fostered by some Syrian enthusiast, the less intolerable but still highly objectionable disorder of rival preachers absorbed in the “egotism of oratory” was an abuse introduced by the admirers of Apollos. In order to remedy this, he lays down the rule that if one preacher was speaking, and another felt irresistibly impelled to say something, the first was to cease. It was idle to plead that they could not control themselves. The spirits which inspire the true prophet are under the prophet’s due control, and God is the author, not of confusion but of peace. Women were not to speak in church at all; and if they wanted any explanations they must ask their husbands at home. This was the rule of all Churches, and who were they that they should alter these wise and good regulations? Were they the earliest Church? Were they the only Church? A true preacher, a man truly spiritual, would at once recognise that these were the commands of the Lord; and to invincible bigotry and obstinate ignorance Paul has no more to say. The special conclusion is that preaching is to be encouraged, and glossolaly not forbidden, provided that it did not interfere with the general rule that everything is to be done in decency and order. It is, however, extremely probable that the almost contemptuous language of the Apostle towards “the tongues”—a manifestation at first both sacred and impressive, but liable to easy simulation and grave abuse, and no longer adapted to serve any useful function—tended to suppress the display of emotion which he thus disparaged. Certain it is that from this time forward we hear little or nothing of “the gift of tongues.” It—or something which on a lower level closely resembled it—has re–appeared again and again at different places and epochs in the history of the Christian Church. It seems, indeed, to be a natural consequence of fresh and overpowering religious emotion. But it can be so easily imitated by the symptoms of hysteria, and it leads to consequences so disorderly and deplorable, that except as a rare and isolated phenomenon it has been generally discountenanced by that sense of the necessity for decency and order which the Apostle here lays down, and which has been thoroughly recognised by the calm wisdom of the Christian Church. The control and suppression of the impassioned emotion which expressed itself in glossolaly is practically its extinction, though this in no way involves the necessary extinction of the inspiring convictions from which it sprang.114
17. Then follows the immortal chapter in which he confirms their faith in the resurrection, and removes their difficulties respecting it. If they would not nullify their acceptance of the Gospel in which they stood, and by which they were saved, they must hold fast the truths which he again declares to them, that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and had been raised the third day. He enumerates His appearances to Kephas, to the Twelve, to more than five hundred at once of whom the majority were yet living, to James, to all the Apostles; last, as though to the abortive–born, even to himself.115 “For I am the least of the Apostles, who am not adequate to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. Yet by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace towards me has not proved in vain, but more abundantly than all of them I laboured—yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me; whether, then, it be I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.”116
If, then, Christ had risen, whence came the monstrous doctrine of some of them that there was no resurrection of the dead? The two truths stood or fell together. If Christ had not risen, their faith was after all a chimera, their sins were unforgiven, their dead had perished; and if their hope in Christ only was a hope undestined to fruition, they were the most pitiable of men. But since Christ had risen, we also shall rise, and as all men share the death brought in by Adam, so all shall be quickened unto life in Christ.117 But each in his own rank. The firstfruits Christ; then His redeemed at His appearing, when even death, the last enemy, shall be reduced to impotence; then the end, when Christ shall give up His mediatorial kingdom, and God shall be all in all. And if there were no resurrection, what became of their practice of getting themselves baptised for the dead?118 And why did the Apostles brave the hourly peril of death? By his boast of them in Christ he asseverates that his life is a daily dying. And if, humanly speaking, he fought beasts at Ephesus,119 what would be the gain to him if the dead rise not? The Epicureans would then have some excuse for their base sad maxim, “Let us eat and drink, for to–morrow we die.” Was it intercourse with the heathen that produced their dangerous unbelief? Oh, let them not be deceived! let them beware of this dangerous leaven! “Base associations destroy excellent characters.” Let them awake at once to righteousness out of their drunken dream of disbelief, and break off the sinful habits which it engendered! Its very existence among them was an ignorance of God, for which they ought to blush.120
And as for material difficulties, Paul does not merely fling them aside with a “Senseless one!” but says that the body dies as the seed dies, and our resurrection bodies shall differ as the grain differs with the nature of the sown seed, or as one star differs from another in glory. The corruption, the indignity, the strengthlessness of the mortal body, into which at birth the soul is sown, shall be replaced by the incorruption, glory, power of the risen body. The spiritual shall follow the natural; the heavenly image of Christ’s quickening spirit replace the earthly image of Adam, the mere living soul. Thus in a few simple words does St. Paul sweep away the errors of Christians about the physical identity of the resurrection–body with the actual corpse, which have given rise to so many scornful materialist objections. St. Paul does not say with Prudentius—
“Me nec dente, nec ungue
Fraudatum redimet patefacti fossa sepulcri;”
but that “flesh and blood” cannot enter into the kingdom of God; that at Christ’s coming the body of the living Christian will pass by transition, that of the dead Christian by resurrection, into a heavenly, spiritual, and glorious body.121
The body, then, was not the same, but a spiritual body; so that all coarse material difficulties were idle and beside the point. In one moment, whether quick or dead, at the sounding of the last trumpet, we should be changed from the corruptible to incorruption, from the mortal to immortality. “Then shall be fulfilled the promise that is written, Death is swallowed up into victory. Where, O death, is thy sting? where, O death, thy victory?122 The sting of death is sin, the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who is giving us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my brethren beloved, prove yourselves steadfast, immovable, abounding in the work of the Lord always, knowing that your toil is not fruitless in the Lord.”123
So ends this glorious chapter—the hope of millions of the living, the consolation for the loss of millions of the dead. And if, as we have seen, Paul was the most tried, in this life the most to be pitied of men, yet what a glorious privilege to him in his trouble, what a glorious reward to him for all his labours and sufferings, that he should have been so gifted and enlightened by the Holy Spirit as to be enabled thus, incidentally as it were, to pour forth words which rise to a region far above all difficulties and objections, and which teach us to recognise in death, not the curse, but the coronation, not the defeat, but the victory, not the venomous serpent, but the veiled angel, not the worst enemy, but the greatest birthright of mankind. Not by denunciation of unorthodoxy, not by impatient crushing of discussion, not by the stunning blows of indignant authority, does he meet an unbelief even so strange, and so closely affecting the very fundamental truths of Christianity, as a denial of the resurrection; but by personal appeals, by helpful analogies, by calm and lofty reasoning, by fervent exhortations, by the glowing eloquence of inspired convictions. Anathema would have been worse than useless; at excommunication he does not so much as hint; but the refutation of perilous error by the presentation of ennobling truth has won, in the confirmation of the faith, in the brightening of the hope of centuries, its high and permanent reward.
Let us also observe that St. Paul’s inspired conviction of the Resurrection rests, like all his theology, on the thought that the life of the Christian is a life “in Christ.” On Plato’s fancies about our reminiscence of a previous state of being he does not touch; but for the unfulfilled ideas on which Plato builds he offers the fulfilled ideal of Christ. He founds no arguments, as Kant does, on the failure of mankind to obey the “categorical imperative” of duty; but he points to the Sinless Man. He does not follow the ancients in dwelling on false analogies like the butterfly; nor is he misled like his very ablest contemporaries and successors by the then prevalent fable of the Phoenix. He does not argue from the law of continuity, or the indestructibility of atoms, or the permanence of force, or the general belief of mankind. But his main thought, his main argument is—Ye are Christ’s, and Christ is risen; if ye died with him to sin, ye shall also live with him to righteousness here, and therefore to glory hereafter. The life ye now live is lived in the faith of the Son of God, and being eternal in its very nature, contains in itself the pledge of its own inextinguishable vitality. He teaches us alike in the phenomena of human sin and of human sanctity to see the truth of the Resurrection. For the forgiveness of sin Christ died; for the reward and the hope and the support of holiness he lives at the right hand of God. He does not so much argueinfavourofthe Resurrection as represent it, and make us feel its force. The Christian’s resurrection from the death of sin to the life of righteousness transcends and involves the lesser miracle of his resurrection from the sleep of death to the life of heaven.
18. The Epistle closes with practical directions and salutations. He establishes a weekly offertory, as he had done in Galatia, for the saints at Jerusalem. He tells them that he will either—should it be worth while—take it himself to Jerusalem, or entrust it with commendatory letters from them, to any delegates whom they might approve. He announces without comment his altered intention of not taking them enrouteas he went to Macedonia, as well as on his return, and so giving them a double visit, but tells them that he should come to them by way of Macedonia, and probably spend the winter with them, that they might help him on his further journey; and that he means to remain in Ephesus till Pentecost, because a great door is open to him, and there are many adversaries.
Timothy will perhaps come to them. If so they are not to despise his youth, or alarm his timidity by opposition, but to aid his holy work, and to help him peacefully on his way to the Apostle with those who accompanied him. They had asked that Apollos might visit them. St. Paul had done his best to second their wishes, but Apollos—though holding out hopes of a future visit—declined to come at present, actuated in all probability by a generous feeling that, under present circumstances, his visit would do more harm than good.
Then a brief vivid exhortation. “Watch! stand in the faith! be men! be strong! let all your affairs be in love.”
Then a few words of kindly eulogy of Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus—of whom Stephanas had been the earliest Achaian convert—who devoted themselves to ministry to the saints, and by their visit had consoled him for his absence from them, and themby eliciting this Epistle. He urges them to pay due regard and deference to all such true labourers. It is not impossible that these few words may have been added by an afterthought, lest the Corinthians should suppose that it was from these— especially if they were of Chloe’s household— that St. Paul had heard such distressing accounts of the Church, and so should be inclined to receive them badly on their return. Then the final autograph salutation:—
“The salutation of me, Paul, with my own hand;” but before he can pen the final benediction, there is one more outburst of strong and indignant feeling. “If any one loveth not the Lord, let him be Anathema; Maranatha, the Lord is near. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” That would have been the natural ending, but he had had so much to reprobate, so many severe things to say, that to show how unabated, in spite of all, was his affection for them, he makes the unusual addition, “My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.”124 So ends the longest and, in some respects, the grandest and most characteristic of his Epistles. He had suppressed indeed all signs of the deep emotion with which it had been written; but when it was despatched he dreaded the results it might produce— dreaded whether he should have said too much; dreaded the possible alienation, by any over–severity, of those whom he had only desired to win. His own soul was all quivering with its half–stifled thunder, and he was afraid lest the flash which he had sent forth should scathe too deeply the souls at which it had been hurled. He would even have given much to recall it,125 and awaited with trembling anxiety the earliest tidings of the manner in which it would be received. But God overruled all for good; and, indeed, the very writings which spring most naturally and spontaneously from a noble and sincere emotion, are often those that produce the deepest impression upon the world, and are less likely to be resented—at any rate, are more likely to be useful—than the tutored and polished utterances which are carefully tamed down into the limits of correct conventionality. Not only the Church of Corinth, but the whole world, has gained from the intensity of the Apostle’s feelings, and the impetuous spontaneity of the language in which they were expressed.