References The First Epistle to the Corinthians References. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 69; ibid. vol. vii. p. 267. I. 1-9. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. i. p. 25. Called to Be Saints 1 Corinthians 1:2 Many names are given to the followers of our Lord in the New Testament. But the name most frequently given is 'saint'. The word occurs sixty times in its pages, and it is plainly intended to describe the life which every Christian should earnestly seek after. I. The idea of devotion devoted to Christ; that is the essence of the Christian life, that is the primary notion of sainthood. And really this is the basis of membership in the Church of Christ. This is the one thing to look for in every one who desires to join a Christian Church. The primary question to be asked is, What is Jesus Christ to you? Personal relation to Christ is the primary thing. I beg leave to say still further that this phrase, 'devoted to Christ,' expresses what every one of us professes who has been baptised. The pre-eminent idea in the ordinance is the absolute surrender of the life to Jesus Christ, that He may cleanse and use it. It is also the thing that we profess every time we come to the Lord's Table. We take again the vow of allegiance. This relation of devotion to Christ our Lord is the thing to watch and guard carefully and jealously. II. And now comes the second idea clinging to the word saint, viz., that of goodness as a result of our contact with Christ and His influence on our lives. One of the most serious questions in connection with organised Christianity at this moment a question on which its future largely depends is, are the people who profess the Christian faith by Church membership better people than others? You know, if you know anything, that the most eloquent evangelistic preaching in the world will be far less potent than character, and can never prevail against an unchristian spirit in a Church or in individuals connected with it. If we, bearing the name of Christ, have manifestly no joy in Him, there is no reality in our profession. Our business is to realise our calling. Our chief business is to be good, true, pure, loving, holy. The future of the Church depends on the character of its members. The way to goodness is devotion to Him. Charles Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. LXXIII. p. 280. References. 1. 2. R. W. Dale, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 264. R. J. Wardell, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xix. p 142. C. S. Horne, Christian World Pulpit vol. lii. p. 17. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 434. F. W. Farrar, Everyday Christian Life, p 128. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 204; ibid. (5th Series), vol. x. p. 159. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 1. I. 3. Expositor, vol. vii. p. 65. 1. 4-6. Ibid. vol. ii. p. 103. I. 6. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. 1 No. 2875. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 268. I. 7. Bishop Creighton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 264. E. A. Askew, The Service of Perfect Freedom, p. 1. H. J, Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 193. W. H. Evans, Short Sermons for the Seasons, p. 1. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. pp. 104, 440. I. 9. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi No. 616, and vol. xliv. No. 2580. R. W. Dale, Fellowship with Christ, p. 1. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p. 426. 1 Corinthians 1:10-11 The average man or woman is always at open discord with some one; the great majority could not live without oft-recurrent squabble.... Verbal contention is, of course, commoner among the poor and vulgar than in the class of well-bred people living at their ease, but I doubt whether the lower ranks of society find personal association much more difficult than the refined minority above them. High cultivation may help to self-command, but it multiplies the chances of irritative contact. In mansion, as in hovel, the strain of life is perpetually felt between the married, between parents and children, between relatives of every degree, between employers and employed. They debate, they dispute, they wrangle, they explode their nerves are relieved, and they are ready to begin again. George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, pp. 93, 94. Reference. 1. 10. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 38. 1 Corinthians 1:12 In a letter Vinet remarks, apropos of Thomas Erskine: 'If I did not abjure on principle such expressions as "I am of Apollos, and of Cephas," I should gladly allow myself to say "I am of Erskine". He does not wrap up the Gospel in shadows. He makes us feel that if the how of the mysteries of religion is inconceivable, the why is perfectly accessible to our reason.' References. 1.12. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 73; ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 79. I. 13. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 186. H. Alford, Sermons on Christian Doctrine, p. 210. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p. 48. I. 14. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 82. 1 Corinthians 1:17 'Take eloquence,' said Paul Verlaine once, 'and wring its neck.' References. 1.17. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 367; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. pp. 212, 366. I. 17, 18. Ibid. p. 29. The Preaching of the Cross 1 Corinthians 1:18 Christianity is the religion of redemption; it is for that reason that the Apostle gives as the motto and the summary of the Gospel this little sentence in the text, 'The preaching of the cross'. For the cross is the symbol, as it once was the instrument, of our redemption. Whether it were to Galatia or to Corinth; to rude and barbarous rustics in their impetuosity and changefulness; or whether it were to the cultivated children of Greek wisdom, St Paul had one message, and that message was, 'The preaching of the cross'. What did he mean? I. Well, first of all, the Apostle announced an historical reality. The Apostle rejoiced in an historical redemption. Not in ideas, but in facts; not in a code, but a Person; not in impulses and sentiments, but in the flesh and blood reality of the dire struggle of our Lord with human guilt, wretchedness, and wrong. He rejoiced in an historical redemption when he preached the Gospel of the cross; and if ever there was a doleful and desperate reality in this world, it was the cross of Jesus Christ. Paul spoke of this reality as a great thing effected here in this world, and on its dusty surface. He spoke upon events that transpired in a known place, under a known government, in known circumstances, on which eyes had been riveted, over which hearts had been broken. He spoke of Christ in Jerusalem nailed to the cross, placed in the tomb, and risen from the dead. Never forget that Christianity rests upon the great obdurate facts of human history. II. Secondly, St. Paul, when he spoke of this preaching of the cross, meant an inward experience. He said, 'I am crucified with Christ'. 'The life I live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.' 'God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Very personal, very inward, even mystical is the language, and it is the preaching of the cross that carries that message home into the living experiences of men and women. III. Thirdly, the Apostle referred to 'the preaching of the cross' as a vivid and graphic description of Christ in His unseen power working among men. Do you recall those words from the letter to the Galatians? So powerful was the portraiture which Paul drew before the spiritual eyes of the Galatian hearers, that for a moment they seemed to have seen the extended arms, the bleeding brow, and pierced side of the crucified Jesus. Now this, in brief, is what he meant by 'the preaching of the cross'; he meant the historical redemption, he meant the inward experience, he meant the vivid portraiture and living presentation of an exalted but still potent Saviour, so as to reach the inward vision of the soul; and such should be the preaching of the Gospel today. References. I. 18. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1611. T. D. Barlow, Rays from the Sun of Righteousness, p. 66. R. H. Conwell, Baptist Times, vol. liv. p. 396. A. Maclaren, The Wearied Christ, p. 296. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, p. 17. W. M. Clow, The Gross in Christian Experience, p. 193. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 201; ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 372. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 10. I. 18-24. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 276. 1 Corinthians 1:19 It is for the punishment of our temeritie and instruction of our misery and incapacity, that God caused the trouble, downfall and confusion, of Babels Tower. What course soever man taketh of himself, it is God's permission that he ever commeth to that confusion whose image he so lively representeth unto us by the just punishment, wherewith he framed the presumptuous overweening of Nembroth, and brought to nothin' the frivolous enterprises of the building of his high-towering Pyramis or Heaven-menacing tower. 'I will destroy the wisdome of the wise, and refuse the praidence of them that are most prudent'. The diversitie of tongues and languages wherewith he disturbed that worke and overthrew that proudly-raised Pile; what else is it but this infinit altercation and perpetual discord of opinions and reason which accompanieth and entangleth the frivolous frame of man's learning, or vaine building of human science? Montaigne, vol. II. p. 12. References. I. 20. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 31. I. 20, 21. T. D. Bernard, The Exclusion of Wisdom, p. 1. I. 21. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, p. 37. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 372. Christ Meets Every Need 1 Corinthians 1:22-23 I. Note the testimony of heathenism to men's religious wants, or what men desire. II. Note that Christianity seems to neglect and contradict many of men's ideas and wants. (1) We preach. Not we do opposition to all requirements for signs, to all sacramentarianism and ritualistic notions. (2) We preach Christ. We deal with a Person. (3) We preach Christ crucified. The cross is the centre of His work. III. Note that Christianity really meets and satisfies them all. (1) Christ crucified is Power. No other sign half as strong. (2) Christ crucified is Wisdom. Christ crucified meets the real wants of every age and of every man. A. Maclaren Reference. I. 22, 23. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 232. The Power of the Cross 1 Corinthians 1:22-24 'The Jews ask for signs,' a request which is not necessarily indicative of a thirst. That is the bane and peril of all externalism. It may gratify a feverish curiosity without awakening the energies of a holy life. 'And the Greeks seek after wisdom.' They are the epicures in philosophies, the dainty tasters of intellectual subtilties. 'The Jews ask for signs,' and their religion degenerates into a despiritualised system of magic. 'The Greeks seek after wisdom,' and their religion becomes the domain of the disciplinist theorist, the heritage of a cultured and exclusive aristocracy. 'We preach Christ crucified,' says Paul, and we are not going to be diverted by the hunger for mere sensation; 'we preach Christ crucified,' and we are not going to be disengaged from our high calling, and tempted to submit our Gospel as a piece of subtle and mincing controversy. I. We preach Christ crucified, because it is the doctrine which incomparably preserves for us the sense of the holiness of God. The sense of the holiness of God is an element that is conspicuously lacking in our modern religious life. The idea of Fatherhood does not exclude or obscure the idea of holiness: it includes and intensifies it. II. We preach Christ crucified, because it is the doctrine which incomparably creates and preserves the sense of the nature of sin. Any doctrine which unveils the holiness of God reveals also the horrible-ness of sin; any doctrine which obscures God's holiness veneers man's sin. All true forgiveness throws a most lurid illumination on the sin that is forgiven. The cross is the place of great awakening for sinners. III. We preach Christ crucified, because it is a doctrine in the experience of which we incomparably discern the realities of grace. IV. We preach Christ crucified, because it is the doctrine in whose heart we find ample resources for the attainment of moral and spiritual health. For ethical revivals we must first of all have evangelical revivals. We must first of all have the doctrine of the cross before we can hope for moral elevation. J. H. Jowett, Apostolic Optimism, p. 68. Christ Crucified 1 Corinthians 1:22-24 I. Let us note the desire of Jew and Greek. 'The Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom. A sign! Had not the Jew received signs sufficient? He had seen the leper cleansed, he had seen the dead raised from their graves, and yet the Jews required a sign. This is quite explicable in consistency with the nature of men. If you look for external things you will never be satisfied with them. 'And the Greeks seek after wisdom.' There was nothing wrong in that. But the Corinthian Greek babbled of wisdom when he had nothing but the name left. And yet they were not willing to accept the message of eternal truth, because they preferred their own little puppets to the Gospel, just as a child prefers the little ragged doll it has made for itself to the best products of the market. II. What does Paul do? What is his message in the face of this? Will he manufacture signs? I believe Paul could have done so had he chosen. Did Paul dazzle the Greek by a display of wisdom? No. 'We preach Christ.' And that is not all. 'We preach Christ crucified.' That is the gist of the matter; that is where the difficulty comes in. The cross must be taken into account, and not only that, but the cross is the centre and secret of all Christian life and power. Of course, Paul does not mean that he remains constantly with the cross, that he has nothing further to say; he does not mean that he never varies his discourse. What he means is, that all is built upon that, and though he may soar into the sunlight of the eternal glory, and tell men of all the vast expansion of God's purpose and kingdom in the future, he starts from the cross and comes back to it again. III. Notice the various estimates here formed of this preaching. 'Unto the Jews a stumbling-block.' Shall we remove the cross that people may not stumble? If you do you remove the world's redemption at the same time. 'Unto the Greeks foolishness.' Man redeemed by blood! It is vulgar. So shouts the modern Greek in his polished frenzy. But the foolishness of God is wiser than men. The world is saved by blood. Those who know themselves and God, those who find themselves in Christ, understand the cross; for its power has entered into their life. And because it is the power of God it is also the wisdom of God, for wisdom and power go together. John Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, vol. III. p. 99. References. I. 22. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 265. I. 22-24. Archbishop Magee, The Gospel and the Age, p. 3. E. M. Geldart, Echoes of Truth, p. 54. The Watershed 1 Corinthians 1:23 We preach Christ crucified. The phrase may be described as a watershed, and I will illustrate its different uses from a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes: Behold the rocky wall That down its sloping sides Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall In rushing river-tides! Yon stream, whose sources run Turned by a pebble's edge, Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun Through the cleft mountain-ledge. The slender rill had strayed, But for the slanting stone To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid Of foam-flecked Oregon. So from the heights of will Life's parting stream descends, And, as a moment turns its slender rill, Each widening torrent bends, From the same cradle's side, From the same mother's knee, One to long darkness and the frozen tide, One to the Peaceful Sea! Let me trace briefly the courses of the two streams. 'We preach Christ crucified' on one side, and on the other 'We, risen and crucified, preach Christ Divine, crucified, risen'. I. It is the word Divine which turns the course. The essence of heresy is the assertion that Christ is a creature. No matter how loftily He may be conceived of, if His Deity is denied the end is the long darkness and the frozen tide. (1) We begin with Arianism, which seems at first sight, to grant so much that it is barely distinguishable from Christianity. It affirms that Christ existed before Ho became Incarnate, that by Him God made the worlds, that He is, in a manner, to be worshipped, that He wrought miracles, and that He rose from the dead. But it affirms also that He had a beginning of existence, that He was created by God, that, being created by God, He could be annihilated by God. This conception of Christ was held at one time by many powerful intellects, and has at least one living representative who must be regarded with deep respect Yet it is fair to say that it has practically no place in the actual world of thought. (2) The stream descends, and we find it next as Socinianism, or, as it is now called, Unitarianism. Those who have read Socinus may be astonished to find how exalted is the place he accords to Christ. He differs from Arius in holding that Christ had no pre-existence, that His life began with His mortal birth. But he maintains that Christ was born of a virgin, that He was the Immaculate Son of God, that in a sense He is worthy of our homage, that He wrought miracles in the world, and visibly conquered death. Within living memory Unitarians made similar affirmations. (3) But this, so far as I am aware, can no longer be said. The disciples of Socinus began to maintain that Christ would be more powerful if He were freed from the bandages of the supernatural. So gradually miracle was denied. The truth of the Resurrection was volatilised, or openly rejected. Christ, it was said, shared the lot of the departed, and left His body to become Syrian dust Still, for a long time a strenuous effort was made to maintain His sinlessness. 'I know not,' said Channing, 'what can be added to the wonder, reverence, and love that belong to Jesus.' It was held that He towered over the rest of mankind in His moral and spiritual perfection, that He was the true Leader of faithful souls. I think it would be correct to say that this view is taken today by some representative Unitarians, including Stopford Brooke. But it has become clear to the majority that a sinless man is a miracle, and that if the order of the law is to remain inviolate, Christ must be, in another sense, numbered with the transgressors. (4) So the stream still descends. When the miracles are denied, when the Resurrection becomes incredible, when the sinlessness is seen to be impossible, the question comes, How are we to estimate Christ's character? Francis Newman was tempted to call Him a conscious and wilful impostor. He could not recognise Him as really simple and straightforward, and put Fletcher of Madeley, Wesley's designated successor, far above Him in point of character. I confess that Renan's conclusion seems to me by far the most logical. His apologies for Christ are far more appalling than his accusation, but on his own premises he is compelled to recognise that Christ was a schemer as well as a dreamer. A certain shrinking holds most critics back, but it is significant enough that one declares that Jesus is no part of His own Gospel, while another finds the historical proof of His existence in what he evidently takes for tokens and acknowledgments of mortal frailty. (5) Can the stream go lower? Yes. So desperate is the problem of the character of Christ as viewed by rationalistic criticism, that some have strenuously and ably argued that He has never existed at all. I cannot but think that this position will be much more widely adopted by the critics who deny the supernatural. Beside such a Christ as they conceive, the Christ of the Gospels is credible and simple. One to long darkness and the frozen tide. II. The other stream turns another way, and ends in another rest. We, risen and crucified, preach Christ Divine, crucified, and risen. The Divinity, or, rather, the Deity, is the dividing line. Christ was uncreated, not only the Son of God, but God the Son. He was perfectly and purely God, and as truly and really man. The Church lives only as she holds fast to this fact, and she knows it. No definitions or descriptions, theological or other, can do more than touch the fringe of His splendour. But, if we are to understand the preaching of Christ crucified, we must fill every word and every thought with the full meaning of Deity which belongs to the name of Christ. The more we do this, the more gloriously the river will expand and end. I can but touch on one or two points. (1) It is the Deity of Christ which gives meaning to His atonement We must not shrink from the strongest words that Scripture uses; rather we must glory in them. The Church of God has been purchased by the blood of God. Whenever we preach Christ, whenever we sit at His Table, we show forth the Lord's death. It is the Deity of Christ that gave His death its significance in regard to sin. (2) Nor is the Deity of Christ less important when we consider the relation of His death to human suffering. The sense of sin may be weak, but the sense of pain was never stronger than it is now. The springs of sorrow are full to the very lips. Lightness of heart has gone out of us, and the monotone of sadness is to be heard in most of our noblest literature We are already far past the optimism of even thirty years ago. If you tell a man that Christ was the chief of the noble army of martyrs, he will answer that you have merely increased his difficulty and despair. The line of martyrs has stretched so long and so far that men demand from us the news of the Suffering that hallows all sufferings, the sacrifice which consecrates all sacrifices. The optimism of Browning's God's in His heaven, All's right with the world, falls on deaf ears today. If God is merely in His heaven, all is wrong with the world. It is our business not to abandon but to expand the great truth that God in Christ suffered and died to take away our suffering and our death. The gospel to the generation of sufferers is that the sufferings of His people were the thorns in the crown which Christ wore as a fair mitre; and that these sufferings ended when they clasped the Sacred Head. (3) The Resurrection can only be understood as the Resurrection of the God-man. If Christ had been less than God, I could understand the force of many difficulties. If He was God, it was not possible that He should be holden of death. It was not possible that He should see corruption. He laid down His life of His own will, and of His own will He took His life again. Three days and three nights He was to lie in the grave, but for the elect's sake the days were shortened, and very early in the morning He burst the bonds of the tomb. Nor could the God-man rise for Himself alone Among the sleeping dead alone He woke, And blessed with outstretched hands the host around. Did He hear them say in their slumber, 'Think of me, I pray Thee, when it shall be well with Thee, and speak for me unto the King, that He may bring me out of this prison'. 'Draw me; we will run after Thee.' He heard, understood, remembers, and at the voice of the Archangel these little hills in the churchyard will one day rejoice on every side. This is the end, then, of the stream One to the Peaceful Sea. III. But we must say a word on the preachers of this Gospel. We, risen and crucified, preach Christ Divine, crucified, risen. Note the order risen and crucified. It is the order of St. Paul: 'That I may know Him, and the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings'. Not the fellowship of His sufferings and the power of His Resurrection, but first the power and then the fellowship. When we believe in the risen Christ there flows into us the strength and joy of His Spirit, the power of His Resurrection. Our own difficulties of faith we are to meet in the power of His Resurrection. Our own frequent failures and humiliations and trials in work we are to meet in the power of His Resurrection. Our own personal griefs of missing faces and loosened hands we must bear in the power of His Resurrection. The unbelieving world we must confront in the power of His Resurrection. Whatever there may be of indifference, of hostility, of persecution, we have to meet them all in the power of His Resurrection, and be made more than conquerors through Him that loved us. W. Robertson Nicoll, The Larrup of Sacrifice, p, 76. Preaching Christ Crucified 1 Corinthians 1:23 Preaching is an agency, previously unknown, which Christianity has created to be its chosen mode of utterance. Jesus and His messengers are the only preachers. Notice: I. The great pulpit theme: 'Christ crucified'. This is the sum of our message, the central regulative idea in the Gospel of God. The Gospel offers itself to us as a plan of restoration, it proceeds upon the fact of a fall. A Gospel based on the Incarnation of God cannot but be the final end of all God's other doings on this earth. The Christian scheme of salvation through God incarnate is thus the world's centre of gravity, but its own centre of gravity is the cross: it is not 'Christ' simply but 'Christ crucified' whom we preach. Modern thought is strong, because it recognises the Incarnation, but it is weak because it fails to see the necessary issue of the Advent in the work of the cross. The fact that our Divine Helper came in human form showed that there was a man's work to be done before God's help could be extended, and for the doing of that Christ was born. Christ bore His cross before He was fastened to it. He was born that He might die. Thus we reach the heart of Christianity. Such is the twofold Gospel fact: Christ the Incarnate Son; Christ crucified, our righteousness and ransom. II. The utterance of the Divine message: 'We preach'. What is this peculiar instrument? Preaching is the announcement of the Saviour, with the offer of His salvation, in its widest sense; both being delivered as a message from God. So the Apostles preached; so have all great and honoured preachers; so must we. (1) As to matter; everything should serve the preacher's main drift, and illustrate or commend his message. (2) As to the form of the message: it must be in the main declarative. Preaching is at once historical and personal. (1) All that concerns the life of Christ, with its historical foreshadowings, its self-manifestation in word and miracle must be prominent in the pulpit. (2) The Jesus of biography is now the glorified Christ, a Person present, though absent, whose spiritual power we feel; that ministry is best which leads straight to the living helping Saviour. Yet, even here, preaching will lose its savour unless it is sustained by a perpetual offer of the Saviour to men's hearts. J. Oswald Dykes, The Preacher's Magazine, vol. XI. p. 229. 1 Corinthians 1:23 Compare the curious use of this passage by Hazlitt in his Winterslow: 'It has always been with me a test of the sense and candour of any one belonging to the opposite party, whether he allowed Burke to be a great man. Of all the persons of this description that I have ever known, I never met with above one or two who would make this concession.... They did not know whom they had to contend with. The cornerstone, which the builders rejected, became the head-corner, though to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness; for, indeed, we cannot discover that he was much better understood by those of his own party, if we may judge from the little affinity there is between his mode of reasoning and theirs.' References. I. 23. Sermons for the Church Year, vol. ii. p. 119. H. S. Holland, Vital Values, p. 1. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 101. Expositor (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 349; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 471. The Message That Convinces 1 Corinthians 1:23-24 We preach Christ crucified... the power of God, and the wisdom of God! The words ring out, not in protest or defence, but as the summons of a herald. It is the message of an ambassador from his Royal Master. For this to St. Paul was the essence of His Gospel, so vital, so essential, so comprehensive that, as he adds presently, he had deliberately resolved to exclude from his teaching whatever was not directly concerned with the person and the work of His Lord Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. The declaration, as you remember, is the climax of a natural argument. There had been divisions in the Corinthian Church, divisions that after their manner had grown to contentions. Incidents, perhaps trivial, had roused the party spirit. Sharply the Apostle calls the Christians back to first principles. What meant this ranging of themselves some under one name, some under another? Was Christ divided? Had Paul been crucified for them? Had they been baptised in his name? Nay, his only office had been the ministry of the good news, and to declare it with such definite-ness and simplicity that its appeal to their consciences might come through no distorting medium, and that their faith should stand, not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. I. This very plainness of speech, this absence of philosophy and rhetoric, were resented by a Church where the eloquent Apollos had just been labouring. Offence had been taken and on various grounds. The Apostle's preaching had come into conflict with the prejudices of one class of men, and not less with the postulates of another class. The pride of religion and the pride of reason both refused their assent. The man who sought for merit in some sterile series of acts, who based his hopes on national or ecclesiastical birthright, whose ethics were the practice of rules rather than the exercise of principles such a man could have little sympathy with the message that offered life to the lost and grace to the guilty. And to the other man, who had allowed reason to usurp the place of faith, whose range of research rose no higher than the plane of human thought, who measured the supernatural by the natural to such a man the story of redemption would seem unreal and foolish. The cross, indeed, had its answer for each. It could tell them of forces far beyond their vision, of wisdom compared with which their own was as naked ignorance; for to those who will receive it in God's own way, it will reveal secrets for which ages have laboured in vain. So comes the fourfold experience which apart from Christ no human mind has ever conceived 'Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption'. World-wisdom, or, to borrow an alien but familiar word, Zeitgeist the spirit of the times, knows not God, nor the things of God. It may talk about Him, and it may criticise them, but it knows not either. That knowledge, as the Apostle has reminded us, comes not by world-wisdom, but by the exercise of spiritual and God-given faculties. II. The story of modern missions in this respect is the same as the story of the Apostolic day and the story of the living Church in every age. Conditions differ, of course, but the same causes are producing like results. The signs that follow the missionary today are just as much evidence of a Divine presence and of Divine forces at work with him as those seen by the early Church. When we hear, as, thank God, we so often hear, of some bitter Moslem turning to worship the Son of God, or some proud Brahmin counting all things lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord, or some poor pagan cleansed from loathsome vice and superstition, are we not face to face with facts which are just as truly 'signs and wonders' as those which were wrought in Apostolic times? And they can only be explained in the same way. They are also to be seen not only in separate instances but on a wider scale. The Cross draws men together still as it did then; it influences communities as well as individuals. In the ordered growth of Christian Churches, in the promotion of higher standards of social duty, in a new sense of brotherhood, in the elevation of home life, and not least in a wider outlook and in service for them that are without; in such facts as these, and many others of the same kind, must we not devoutly and gratefully recognise tokens of superhuman wisdom and supernatural power at work on the consciences and lives of men? III. And we are still far from the end of the message. We have been thinking only of the manifestation of Christ with regard to ourselves for us men and our salvation. We know, we think we know, what Christ did for us on the cross, and we speak of 'the innumerable benefits which by His precious blood-shedding He hath obtained for us': but there is another side on which I fancy few ponder. What is the Cross but Jesus Himself? Are the redemption and reconciliation of fallen man, marvellous, indeed, beyond all human thought, the final object of the Incarnation and the death and the Resurrection of the Lord? But may not reverent faith, led by the teaching of the Spirit, show us that an even greater purpose lies beyond? There is a profound saying of Jonathan Edwards, which runs thus: 'The emanation of His own infinite fulness was aimed at by God as the end of His creation'. How much more, then, of His creation restored in Christ? In one of those sublime glimpses of the other world which are given in the closing pages of the Bible, the occupants of the new heaven and the new earth are seen engaged in the highest acts of which created beings are capable; and there rises the united offering of angelic and human adoration before the throne of the eternal God, 'Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. H. G. Fox, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxix. p. 312. References. I. 23-24. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i. Nos. 7 and 8. H. Allen, Penny Pulpit, No. 1551, p. 41. J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 18. I. 24. H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, pp. 33 and 41. J. Oswald Dykes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 373. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii. No. 132. 1 Corinthians 1:25 The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. It is mystery, on the other hand, which the religious instinct demands and pursues: it is mystery which constitutes the essence of worship, the power of proselytism. When the cross became the 'foolishness' of the cross, it took possession of the masses. And in our own day, those who wish to get rid of the supernatural, to enlighten religion, to economise faith, find themselves deserted, like poets who should declaim against poetry, or women who should decry love. Amiel's Journal (June, 1870). References. I. 25. J. B. Lightfoot, Cambridge Sermons, p. 265. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 214. 1 Corinthians 1:26 'Saturday, 17th November (London). I spent an hour,' writes Wesley in his Journal for 1759, 'agreeably and profitably with Lady G H and Sir C H . It is well a few of the rich and noble are called. O that God would increase their number! But I should rejoice (were it the will of God) if it were done by the ministry of others. If I might choose, I should still (as I have done hitherto), preach the Gospel to the poor.' Not many wise, rich, noble, or profound In science, win one inch of heavenly ground. And is it not a mortifying thought The poor should gain it, and the rich should not? No: the voluptuaries, who ne'er forget One pleasure lost, lose heaven without regret; Regret would rouse them, and give birth to prayer, Prayer would add faith, and faith would fix them there. Cowper, Truth (337 f.). References. I. 26. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 275; ibid. (6th Series), vol. i. p. 98. I. 26, 27. J. G. Greenhough, The Cross in Modern Life, p. 54. 1. 26-28. E. M. Geldart, Faith and Freedom, p. 15. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 113. I. 26-29. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x. No. 587. 1 Corinthians 1:27 Sir John Hooker has pointed out a very remarkable illustration of this, in showing that... the English fly soon supersedes entirely the disgusting and enormous blue-bottle of New Zealand. The English rat drives out the Maori rat. The little clover competes successfully even with the phormium tenax, the sword-flax, 'a plant of the coarsest, hardest, and toughest description, that forms huge matted patches of woody rhizomes, which send up tufts of sword-like leaves six to ten feet high, and inconceivably strong in texture and fibre'. This is 'the weak things of the world confounding the mighty' over again, though in a purely physical sense. R. H. Hutton, Theological Essays, p. 53. 1 Corinthians 1:27-28 In his essay on George Eliot's Life and Letters, Mr. R. H. Hutton declares 'that her ambition always took an intellectual form, that she despised the moral judgment of those who were not intellectual, and never shared a trace of sympathy with the Christian principle "embodied in the above verses". George Eliot had absolutely none of this feeling.' In modern Christendom it is not merely our theories of life but the facts of life that have changed. 'Weak things of the world and things that are despised hath God called.' With the recognition of rights in human beings as such, there comes a new realisation of human capacities, not only for the emancipated multitude, but for those whom Aristotle would have allowed to be previously sharers in the βιός πρακτικός . The problems of life become for them far more difficult indeed, but first on account of their greater range and complication, they become of such a kind as to elicit powers previously unused. T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics (III. 5). Reference. I. 27. J. B. Johnston, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 252. 1 Corinthians 1:30 All early Christians taught in the same manner. They never cared to expound the nature of this or that virtue; for they knew that the believer who had Christ had all. Did he need fortitude? Christ was his rock: Equity? Christ was his righteousness: Holiness? Christ was his sanctification: Liberty? Christ was his redemption: Temperance? Christ was his ruler: Wisdom? Christ was his light: Truthfulness? Christ was the Truth: Charity? Christ was love. Ruskin, Stones of Venice, vol. II. chap. VIII. References. I. 30. W. J. Knox-Little, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 211. R. Flint, Sermons and Addresses, pp. 213, 223, 234. J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 282. W. B. Selbie, The Servant of God, p. 201. I. 30, 31. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 991. 1 Corinthians 1:31 'Religion,' says Butler in his thirteenth sermon, 'does not demand new affections, but only claims the direction of those you already have, those affections you daily feel.... We only represent to you the higher, the adequate objects of those very faculties and affections. Let the man of ambition go on still to consider disgrace as the greatest evil; honour, as his chief good. But disgrace, in whose estimation? Honour, in whose judgment? This is the only question.' Reference. I. 31. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1178. 1 Corinthians 1:31 The first text chosen by R. W. Dale as co-pastor at Carr's Lane Meeting, Birmingham. Reference. II. 1, 2. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 187. The Great Expiation 1 Corinthians 2:2 The Corinth of St. Paul's day had inherited a revival of philosophy, and was a home of culture so much as to induce a rivalry with Athens herself. But it was not in an atmosphere of intellectual restlessness, in a society where energy was dissipated in an excessive love of dialectic, that the Apostle's ministry was carried on. It was a wisdom of the world, worldly; brilliant yet pretentious, that led men no nearer to solving the deeper problems of life. When the gifted Alexandrian, Apollos, had appeared as a preacher of Christianity, a considerable section of the Church attached itself to him. The result of an adherence that ought to have been for good was a very grave misunderstanding many of them were men in whom the old pagan temper was by no means exterminated, and they claimed the sanction of his name, as it would seem, for a great deal that he would have been the very first to disown. The issue was the beginning of a party spirit, which has been under the most widely diverse conditions the bane and hindrance of Christendom. That there ought to have been no such divisions because the methods of two men in the interpreting of their common belief were different goes without the saying. But so it was, and this was the distressful condition of affairs with which in his first extant letter to them the founder of the Corinthian Church had to deal. I. Here at the outset we must be on our guard as to a possible misconception of St. Paul's determination. Let it be said at once (we shall find abundant reason to justify it later on) that there is no shadow of excuse in his words for a one-sided presentation of Christ's religion. Such partial treatment, to our great injury, is common enough, but it was not his way who had 'not shunned to declare the whole counsel of God'. In the conduct of our own life's occupation we all know that limitation of thought and labour for a while is an indispensable thing. It does not mean neglect of other responsibilities. Because the Bishop of Exeter found it requisite to concentrate two years' attention on the vast expansion of Plymouth, he did not overlook the claims of Devonshire at large. And St. Paul did not determine to know anything among the Corinthians 'save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified,' because he knew, not only, as few others, what human life really is, but he rightly judged that in the particular phase of it with which he had to deal a suffering Christ was the aspect under which he should preach His Lord. II. The cross of Christ, the final act which crowned a life which was a sacrifice throughout, is the centre of the good tidings to all people. It discovered to us the inmost heart of mercy of our God. It was at once the measure of and the only remedy for sin. 'Can we make the sun go back in its course? Can we recall the tide at its ebb? No more can we do away with, and make as though it had never been done, one single sin that we have ever committed,' the condemning voice within, the plague of our own hearts, the unbearable burden of secret or open sin. This is it with which, in the end, each one of us must needs reckon, and the true meaning and value of the Sacrifice offered on Calvary is that it alone Can give the guilty conscience peace, And wash away the stain. Therefore he was more than willing to lay aside any ornament of speech and reputation for ability he might possess, so that he might recall them to the one essential point, that in the crucifixion 'God made Him to be sin for us Who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him'. The showy speculations of the schools might supply a passing interest; they were absolutely worthless in view of the sorrows and degradation of humanity. 'Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified.' There is nothing else, we may be sure, to come between us and despair. 'Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified.' There is no power so attractive as that of the cross. And yet it is no wonder, for 'God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us'. There is no other appeal like unto it. It calls out an instinctive homage which nothing else can. Two generations ago, during the terrible fire that broke out in York Minster, a line of soldiers was posted at the south-west side to keep back the multitude that thronged the streets. The flames spread toward the extreme point of the aisle, and suddenly from within lighted up the western window, revealing the figure of the crucified Christ. And the soldiers, moved by an overwhelming impulse, presented arms before the suffering King of king. A little child was present at that memorable scene who in after-life became a Canon of this Cathedral and is now the Bishop of an English See. Another incident thoroughly well attested, in a family that is still among us, will illustrate further what I say. A notorious libertine of bygone days was reading one evening, when he saw an unusual blaze of light fall on the page, and looking up he saw before him a representation of our Blessed Lord on the cross surrounded by a glory. At the same instant he heard a voice saying, 'O sinner, did I suffer this for thee, and are these thy returns?' The vision filled him with unutterable astonishment and agony of heart, and, pierced by a sense of his ingratitude to God, he from that moment forsook his evil life. Still, it is true that, as in Corinth of old, men will avoid the teaching and the application of the cross. They will go round it, so to speak, and admire the poetry of religion while they resent the self-surrender which the Passion of the Master must ever claim. There can be no place for half-measures with the appeal of the crucified Christ. It implies the crucifixion of self, the abolition of the whole body of sin, the consecration of the personality to work in some unequivocal way for God, and for our fellowmen. It must mean this, as it means 'so great salvation,' and therefore many to their peril falter and delay. Archdeacon Tetley, The Guardian, 26th August, 1910. 1 Corinthians 2:2 'I am determined,' said William Lloyd Garrison, the great abolitionist leader, 'to know nothing as a public man save Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and in this country I see Him crucified again in the person of the slave.' References. II. 2. R. J. Campbell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 264. Archbishop Benson, Living Theology, p. 191. A. L. N. Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 350. W. C. Wheeler, Sermons and Addresses, p. 44. Joseph Parker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 67. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi. No. 1264, and vol. xlvi. No. 2673. J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 67. A. Barry, The Doctrine of the Cross, p. 5. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 19. Strength and Weakness 1 Corinthians 2:3 Who is it that says so? Weakness and fear and much trembling! Surely he never did any great good. Surely, when he says, 'I was with you,' he might as well, or better, have stayed away altogether. Was it so? It is none other than the Apostle St. Paul, who was in so many dangers, who underwent so many labours. What he felt none of us must be ashamed or discouraged if we feel also. I. To feel our weakness that is one great way to become strong. If we feel strong of ourselves, we are apt to look to ourselves, and to think that we can manage very well, we can overcome our enemies, we can gain for ourselves a passage to the kingdom of heaven. But when we feel weak, then we are more disposed to go to Him who can give all strength, to Him who is all strength our Lord Jesus Christ, as He said, 'The earth is weak and all the inhabitants of it; I bear up the pillars of it'. II. 'I was with you in weakness and in fear.' There is enough to be afraid of in this world. But unfortunately we are all just like children, afraid of that which we ought not to be afraid of, and not the least afraid of what we ought to fear. A child will be afraid of a stuffed wild beast, and cry out in terror. The same child will play in a room where there is a most malignant fever, and have no sense of danger. III. Every man is weak in that which is his besetting sin. Yet God would give us strength to overcome that completely if only we went to Him for it. 'The congregations of the ungodly have robbed me,' says David. So they have robbed us. The congregations of the ungodly are the devil and his wicked angels. IV. 'I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.' See where all that ended. He went through fire and water, and he has long since been brought out into a wealthy place. J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College Chapel, vol. II. p. 249. 1 Corinthians 2:4-5 'Treasurer Wightman, having glanced at the MS. on the Fourfold State,' says Thomas Boston in his memoirs for 1st January, 1719, 'wrote to me, that he found a vein of true Christianity in it, and therefore would contribute to the publication of it; and this requiring an answer, gave me an unlooked-for errand to the throne of grace at this time. He intimated withal, that the style would be nauseous to the polite world, and that no book had yet been written on the depraved state of man, with true spirit and elegancy of expression. This did not much move me; for I do not think that way of writing he is so fond of is the way the Lord has used much to countenance for the advancing of true Christianity.' 'I preach the Gospel not with the "enticing words of man's wisdom" this was the way of the Apostles' discoursing of things sacred,' says South. 'Nothing here of "the fringes of the north star"; nothing of "nature's becoming unnatural"; nothing of the "down of angels' wings"; or "the beautiful lock of cherubims": no starched similitudes introduced with a "Thus have I seen a cloud rolling in its airy mansion"; and the like. No, there were sublimities above the rise of the apostolic spirit. For the Apostles, poor mortals, were content to take lower steps.... It tickled not the ear, but sunk into the heart; and when men came from such sermons, they never commended the preacher for his taking voice or gesture; for the fineness of such a simile, or the quaintness of such a sentence; but they spoke like men conquered with the overpowering force and evidence of the most concerning truths.' We ask questions perhaps about diction, elocution, rhetorical power; but does the commander of a besieging force dream of holiday displays, reviews, mock engagements, feats of strength, or trials of skill, such as would be graceful and suitable on a parade ground when a foreigner of rank was to be received and fêted; or does he aim at one and one thing only, viz., to take the strong place? Display dissipates the energy, which for the object in view needs to be concentrated and condensed. We have no reason to suppose that the Divine blessing follows the lead of human accomplishments. Indeed, St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, who made much of such advantages of nature, contrasts the persuasive words of human wisdom 'with the showing of the Spirit,' and tells us that' the kingdom of God is not in speech, but in power'. Newman, The Idea of a University, p. 407. References. II. 4, 5. T. Sadler, Sunday Thoughts, p. 177. J. H. Holford, Memorial Sermons, p. 24. II. 5. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 276. II. 6. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 39. II. 6, 7. J. Oswald Dykes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 373. II. 6-8. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 31. II. 6-16. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 353. II. 7. H. Allen, Penny Pulpit, No. 1569, p. 185. J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii. p. 111. W. P. Du Bose, The Gospel According to St. Paul, p. 17. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 32. II. 8. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 2; ibid. vol. ix. p. 93; ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 180. Heaven Prepared for Those Prepared for Heaven 1 Corinthians 2:9 To go to heaven when they die, to gaze upon the face of Jesus Christ and so to be blessed throughout all eternity, is the one great desire of all people, believers in the Christian religion, in their more serious moments of reflection to go to heaven. But there is a question which confronts every one who has ever so desired, a question so extremely simple and natural that one wonders that a reply is not oftener made to it, viz., What sort of place or state would one find heaven to be if he got there? Granted that earth was done with, its toils and tears for ever over, and a free and full entrance ministered abundantly into that happy realm beyond time and the gloomy grave, what sort of experience would it afford, what sort of occupation would one have assigned him, what kind of society would he find himself, mingling in? That heaven is a kingdom of unbounded delight, that Jesus is there, and that the ransomed and redeemed of the Lord are there, every one knows who has read even ten pages of the Bible in his lifetime. But this is not the question; but would the newly arrived spirit find it a state of enjoyment if he entered it? Granted that suddenly, as men on the battlefield pass, a soul winged its way into the dread presence of God, and that in the twinkling of an eye the Spirit had sped. If the golden bowl were broken, and the silver cord loosed, and the pitcher broken at the fountain, as happens every hour somewhere in this world, suddenly, and the liberated soul appeared before his Maker, is it conceivable that merely because a man had died and the gates of heaven opened wide to welcome the newly arrived spirit that heaven would be found truly enjoyable irrespective of and wholly apart from the kind of life he had led and the tastes that deepened into habits during that life? I. Say that a man had led a tolerably forceful and busy life, and had by his personality forged out for himself a well-recognised place in the esteem of his friends and fellow-mortals, and that he was summoned suddenly, as people are constantly, and found himself among the celestial and blessed throng on high, and that gazing round his newly attained, newly entered on surroundings, he found that the company was too good for him, that the employment assigned him was certain to eventually prove uncongenial to him that the presence of God and the holy Jesus and the blessed companionship of the pure angels and the ransomed and the redeemed liberated from earth's defilements and no longer trammelled by earth's limitations, all conduced to make up a state for him that he was convinced he could not possibly endure or ever be truly happy in; but that, on the contrary, promised to make him miserable beyond the power of words to describe; what would that heaven be? What though its delights were pure and unbounded its courts hallowed, its streets of gold, its citizens aglow with eagerness to serve the most High God, its infinite expanse pervaded to the remotest part by the consciousness in every heart but his own of the presence of an all-merciful, all-loving, ever-present God! And all this to go on indefinitely perpetuated, with no break, no year of respite, and with no hope of ever terminating an engagement which opened with nothing more certain than the certainty that the experience so often sighed for on earth, and over the attainment of which countless religious services had been engaged in and perhaps occasionally a few insipid tears shed, would end in misery, and this called heaven longed for, sung of, it may be even prayed for and now at last won! Why, such a heaven would prove itself to one unprepared for it a veritable hell, the torture and horror of which would burn into a man's being like a bar of hot iron into his flesh. II. Now in these circumstances what can be said in answer to this plain pointed question which every Bible reader finds himself face to face with, nay, which lies before every one who has even once sighed for the joy of heaven and longed to enter there. That question is, What sort of heaven am I prepared for entering here and now? To that plain and most serious question, can any reliable reply be given? Or must we shut and hasp our Bibles and go our ways into the world again, sad at heart, because we are unable to answer the question, and must we live and die unable to say what sort of heaven we are best fitted for inhabiting? Nay! There is no need for this. We have only to turn our searching scrutiny within to gaze, by the aid of memory and an awakened conscience, over the paths we have loved to tread, the secret delights that have charmed us most, the companionships we have cherished and most enjoyed, the kind of people whose society gave us the most intense and keenest enjoyment, and there, still gazing within ourselves, there rises before the mental eye a picture painted as truthfully as by the very hand of God Himself which with absolute faithfulness portrays the kind of heaven each worshipper is best fitted to inhabit and enjoy. We dare not always call it God's heaven or the Bible-lovers' heaven, but the realm or state which from that individual soul's past experience he or she is quite justified in believing would best secure the continuity of the kind of joy hitherto known on earth. There cannot be a moment's doubt in any one's mind that what has been so far said carries with it the emphasis of common sense and universal experience. We must breathe heaven's atmosphere on earth. The radiance of heaven, whatever its final fulness, must fall upon the heart on earth now, and wherever there is a heart that is animated by a love of good and by the spirit of a hidden love of God, there heaven has in no dim or uncertain sense already been entered, and the land of promise, however far off at times it may seem, has actually proved to be within. The one golden word in this beautiful verse that gives the key as of heaven itself to every thoughtful inquirer after heaven is love 'things God hath prepared for them that love Him'. Where this blessed influence is unfeignedly existing, leavening the life, clarifying the spiritual vision, sorting out the soul's choicest delights, God is and Christ even now reigns, and in a certain sense heaven's atmosphere is already breathed, though its courts in the final sense are not yet fully won. From all this there are reducible the following self-manifest deductions, which press themselves upon us all, and that in so solemn, so powerful and yet so persuasive a manner that they are unanswerable. First, although no man knows where heaven is, every man knows the kind of heaven best suited to his secret tastes. Next, the heaven a heart secretly sighs after and most enjoys the foretaste of on earth is the only state best suited for that soul in the hereafter; and finally, the state that affords most enjoyment on earth and which promises its continuity in the dread hereafter is the state that particular soul should inherit and no other. This might be cast into another set of words, viz., the sort of heaven best suited for a man is the sort of heaven he ought to have assigned him. D. D. F. Macdonald. 1 Corinthians 2:9 Hereafter, and up there, above the clouds, you have been taught to think; until you were informed by your land-surveyors that there was neither up nor down; but only an axis of x and an axis of y; and by aspiring aeronauts that there was nothing in the blue but damp and azote. And now you don't believe these things are prepared any where? They are prepared just as much as ever, when and where they used to be: just now, and here, close at your hand All things are prepared, come ye to the marriage. Ruskin, Fors Clavigera (III. 72). References. II. 9. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. pp. 350, 403; ibid. (6th Series), vol. v. p. 64; ibid. vol. viii. p. 454. 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 'These words,' says Miss Dora Greenwell in The Covenant of Life (p. 101), 'and those which follow in the twelfth verse, "now we have received of the Spirit which is of God, to know the things which have been freely given us of Him," and, indeed, the whole tenor of the chapter, make it evident that the Apostle is not looking beyond the time that now is. The mystery with which his thoughts are occupied is the life of God within the soul that "preparation of the heart of man," wherein He reveals Himself after a manner not to be apprehended by outward sense, or recognised by natural perception. It is the heaven within us, and not the heaven above us, that the Apostle would here unfold to us; he is concerned, not with such things of God as we have yet to wait for, but with such as we have already received.' References. II. 9. C. Cuthbert Hall, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxii. p. 12. Llewelyn Davies, The Purpose of God, p. 55. The Things Which God Reveals to Them That Love Him 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 St. Paul claims for himself and his fellow-Christians a certain superior insight and receptiveness, an endowment peculiar and unique, an apprehension which others have not of the things which make up the higher and diviner life. 'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.... But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.' I. Now this truth has often provoked the wit of the satirist and the sneer of the infidel. They have laughed at the idea that anything could be revealed to the soul of faith which is not open to the eyes of the intellect And sometimes, alas! their sneer has been not without provocation, for the truth itself has many times suffered in the hands of those who have abused and perverted it for their own ends. The priest has claimed it to silence the laity; the bigot and the persecutor have employed it to stop inquiry and quench the highest aspirations of men. And often the vulgar and self-confident preacher, talking the grossest absurdities, has denounced those who reasonably objected to his utterances as carnal, unspiritual, and incompetent to judge. It is open to anyone who is perhaps equally devoid of modesty and grace to use this as the cover of his own ignorance and arrogance, and to say, ' We know these things, and you do not'. All this is inevitable. You have read miserable parodies of the loftiest poems, and seen wretched caricatures of the noblest faces. So the sublimest truths may be easily turned into coarseness and buffoonery; but the truths remain great and immortal, in spite of that. II. There is a spiritual faculty given to men which makes them wiser in the things of the spirit than all which the wisdom of this world knows, and the merest child in faith may feel and know what the intellectual giant has no perception of. There are simple things in everyday life which are close akin to this. You know people who are clever enough in their own department, and yet blind, deaf, unfeeling, and unappreciative concerning the things which are profoundly interesting to you; men who know fifty times more than you know about the world of books, yet have no more sensitiveness than a stone to the music which sets your heart beating with inexpressible raptures; men who could run up a column of figures whilst you are stumbling over the first of them, and who are no more affected by the most exquisite poetry than your favourite dog might be. These differences run all through life. They determine whether a life shall be coarse and empty or refined and abounding with joy. There are perceptions which no training can give, which no schools can create: they are the endowment of nature, or rather the gift of God, and they are often in the possession of the child, or the untutored woman, and even of the unlearned preacher, whilst the most omnivorous reader and bookworm may be destitute of them. And if you think of this you may well allow, if you do not understand, that the same truth holds in the life of faith and religious emotion. III. It is simply impossible for the secrets of the Christian life to be revealed to those who have no Christian beliefs and sentiments. Plato draws a picture of the worshippers in the old pagan Mysteries. They are going through the sacred dance to the sound of sweet music which is being played in the midst of them. But there are spectators watching them from the hillside afar off who say these dancers are mad. The spectators can see the movements of joy, but they cannot hear the music. And people outside the Christian life are like these spectators. They cannot hear the music, and all the rest is strange and inexplicable. They do not know the raptures which are felt when the load of sin is removed; when God, who has seemed far off, comes as near as a familiar friend; when life moves in heavenly places, overshadowed by the love of Jesus, and there is a singing in the heart sweeter than all earthly music. They cannot know. They must taste before they can experience the things which God hath revealed to them that love Him. J. G. Greenhough, The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, p. 77. References. II. 9, 10. J. W. Houchin, The Vision of God, p. 132. T. Sadler, Sunday Thoughts, p. 101. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii. No. 56. W. R. Inge, All Saints' Sermons, 1905-7, p. 92. The Depths of God 1 Corinthians 2:10 I. The first suggestion of the passage is that as a man's own spirit alone knows the depths of his own nature, so the Spirit of God alone can know the depths of God, the mysteries of the Divine nature. A man also has depths within him; within him deep cries unto deep. The growth of a child is a series of revelations, but the development of life after childhood is hardly less surprising. Sir Walter Scott was a dull and wandering mind at school. It is no uncommon thing to find an unsuspected faculty emerging even late in life. The only personal knowledge of me that is in any sense full and inclusive is the knowledge acquired by my own spirit. In the same way the being of the Infinite is known only by the Spirit of God. The self-consciousness of the Being who made the universe, even as we know it, is as far beyond our thought as our human self-consciousness must be beyond the thought of the indistinguishable amoeba, which floats in the ooze of the sea. II. But now it is implied that the Spirit which is the self-consciousness of God can be and is imparted to the Christian, so that in some limited degree that self-consciousness of God, to which His own vast and unfathomable being lies revealed, produces, or reveals, in us a knowledge of His being. We must be careful here not to lapse into the vagueness and unrealities of Pantheism. And we can avoid the danger only by clinging close to the experience of the spiritual life. St. Paul is particular to say that this wisdom is only intelligible to the wise, or the full-grown, i.e. to those in whom the Spirit has been at work. What is it that occurs when by faith in Christ Jesus we receive the Holy Spirit? We can only say that we are introduced into the being and the life of God. III. These depths of God are searched for us by the Spirit much as Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise were searched for Dante by Virgil and Beatrice. That is, we are taken into abysses, and round the spiral ledges of a mountain, and into the circles of heaven. No poet, not even Dante, could describe the experience. We shall not venture now to do more than enumerate a few of these unfathomable depths of God, and even in our fullest investigations later we shall not flatter ourselves that we have fathomed them. (1) There is, to begin with, the depth of the Divine nature, which is revealed by the Incarnation of the eternal Son, and the deep beyond the deep which is revealed by His suffering on the cross for us men and for our redemption. (2) Guided by the Spirit, we discover that the Incarnation implies the eternal being of God as Love; a relation between Father and Son which was before the world began and will be when the world has ended. The cross implies that the Love which is God is the love which goes out beyond, creating and redeeming; a love which makes men in His image, a love which will save them even by suffering and death. (3) In Romans 11:33 Paul breaks into an exclamation as the great deeps become for a moment clear to him: 'O the depth of wealth and wisdom and knowledge of God!' It is by this initiation into the depths of the infinite God, and surely by this alone, that we can escape the terror of the infinite universe. R. F. Horton, The Trinity, p. 21. The Deep Things of God 1 Corinthians 2:10 What do we understand by 'the deep things of God'? There are the depths of Godhead, but that is not what is intended in the text. It is not the depths of Godhead, but the deep things of God which the Holy Ghost wishes us to have and enjoy. I. First of all, there is God's deep love. 'God so loved.' No plummet has ever been found capable of sounding the depths of that 'so'. We cannot learn God's love from Nature. Some people say that the Holy Ghost reveals God's love by the Incarnation of Christ. True, in the Lord Jesus we do see God's love, but we do not see its depths in the Incarnation. When the Holy Ghost wants us to know the great depth of God's love, He points us to Calvary. II. Another deep thing that the Holy Ghost reveals is God's deep wisdom. III. The Holy Ghost also reveals God's deep mercy. IV. The Holy Ghost also reveals God's deep righteousness. 'Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; and Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; Thy judgments are a great deep.' The deep things of God cannot be seen by the natural man they can only be spiritually discerned. A. G. Brown, The Baptist, vol. LXIX. p. 812. References. II. 10. Bishop Bickersteth, Sermons, p. 77. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 286; ibid. (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 416. II. 10-12. Ibid. vol. iv. p. 187. II. 11. J. Keble, Sermons for Lent to Passiontide, p. 183. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 248. II. 12. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 125. J. Keble, Sermons for Ascension Day to Trinity Sunday, p. 209. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No. 2087. W. T. Davison, The Indwelling Spirit, p. 59. The Natural Man 1 Corinthians 2:14 'The natural man.' The Greek is the 'psychical' man, the man in whom the soul is all, and the spirit is like a dark untenanted chamber. The natural man is the man whose spirit is empty of God. In the third chapter of the same Epistle, Paul says: 'And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ'. Now the 'carnal' man is a Christian, a babe in Christ He is regenerate, he is in Christ, and Christ is in him; but instead of Christ being predominant, the carnal element is predominant. I. There are Four Characteristics of the Carnal Life. (1) The carnal life is a babe life. What is sweeter than a babe? But what is tender and beautiful in a babe for a few months is terrible at the end of twelve months, or ten years. And what is lovely in a young convert is terrible in a man of ten or twenty years of Christian life (2) And then the carnal man lives on milk. (3) A carnal Christian is also sectarian. 'I am of Paul, and I am of Apollos, and I of Cephas.' (4) 'Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil' (Hebrews 5:14 ). Here we have a fourth characteristic of the carnal Christian; such an one is unable to exercise his senses to discern good and evil. II. How to get Rid of the Self-Life? There are three steps: (1) The cross. Whenever the self-life obtrudes, reckon yourself dead to it; reckon that the cross stands between you and it. (2) The Holy Spirit 'If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.' And again: 'The Spirit lusteth against the flesh'. It was by the Eternal Spirit that Christ offered Himself without spot to God, and it is by the Eternal Spirit that the cursed spirit of self is going to be antagonised in your life and mine. (3) This leads me to my third point, that whilst the Spirit of God in the depth of your heart is antagonising the self-life, He does it by making Jesus Christ a living bright reality. He fixes your thoughts upon Jesus. F. B. Meyer, The Soul's Ascent, p. 75. References. II. 14. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. i. p. 286. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No. 407. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 43; ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 164; ibid. vol. ix. p. 456. 1 Corinthians 2:15 'He that is spiritual judgeth all things' if cleaned from fanaticism and presumption, and taken in connection with 'But yet I show unto you a more excellent way' is at once, I think, our privilege and our duty. Dr. Arnold of Rugby. References. II. 15. Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth, p. 294. II. 16. J. Clifford, The Christian Certainties, p. 87. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 404. II. 31, 32. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 197. III. 1. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 198. 1 Corinthians 3:1-2 A man always is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to other men; even to those he would have work along with him. Carlyle, * Heroes, VI 1 Corinthians 3:2 * It is a fact, forced upon one by the whole experience of life, that almost all men are children, more or less, in their tastes and admirations. De Quincey, Autobiographic Sketches , XIII. References. III. 1-8. J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. i. p. 281. III. 2. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p.l. 1 Corinthians 3:3 Speaking of the spirit of jealousy, in his essay on Modern Dissent, Matthew Arnold observes that 'this temper is as much a spiritual hindrance nay, in the view of Christianity it is even a more direct spiritual hindrance than drunkenness or looseliving. Christianity is, first and above all, a temper, a disposition; and a disposition just the opposite to "a spirit of watchful jealousy". Once admit a spirit of watchful jealousy, and Christianity has lost its virtue; it is impotent. All the other vices it was meant to keep out may rush in. Where there is jealousy and strife among you, asks St. Paul, are ye not carnal? are ye not still in bondage to your mere lower selves? But from this bondage Christianity was meant to free us; therefore, says he, get rid of what causes divisions, and strife, and "a spirit of watchful jealousy". Compare the preface to Mazzini's essays on Faith and the Future, in which he asks, 'Why has reaction triumphed? The cause lies in ourselves; in our want of organisation, in the dismemberment of our ranks by systems, some absurd and dangerous, all imperfect and immature, and yet defended in a spirit of fierce and exclusive intolerance; in our ceaseless distrust, in our miserable little vanities, in our absolute want of that spirit of discipline and order which alone can achieve great results; in the scattering and dispersing of our forces in a multitude of small centres and sects, powerful to dissolve, impotent to found.' References. III. 3. W. M. Sinclair, Difficulties of Our Day, p. 109. T. Binney, King's Weigh-House Chapel Sermons (2nd Series), p. 341. III. 4-15. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 73. 1 Corinthians 3:5 Compare Martineau's remark, in his review of Dr. Arnold's life: 'Above all, he wholly lost sight of himself, and never gave occasion for even the perversest spirit to suspect that his battle with school evils was a contest for personal dignity or power; in his dominance over wrong, he was himself but serving the right '. References. III. 5. Joseph Parker, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 201. C. D. Bell, The Name Above Every Name, p. 51. 1 Corinthians 3:6 'We can look but a very little way into the connections and consequences of things: our duty is to spread the incorruptible seed as widely as we can, and leave it to God to give the increase,' says Butler in one of his sermons. 'Yet thus much we may be almost assured of, that the Gospel, wherever it is planted, will have its genuine effect upon some few, upon more perhaps than are taken notice of in the hurry of the world.' References. III. 6. S. Cox, Expositions, p. 377. III. 6-9. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1602. The Guild of God 1 Corinthians 3:9 It is a special feature of the Christian revelation that throughout it exhibits God as a Worker. Other systems represent Him as being eternally at rest; He is pictured as an infinite Dreamer; to impute to Him anything like personal action is considered derogatory to His glory. In a true sense the orbs of heaven, the forces of the earth, creeping things and flying fowl, are messengers and instruments of the Divine Will; but whilst they act involuntarily and unconsciously, we may co-operate with God intelligently, willingly, lovingly. In a sense altogether special it is our privilege to become His 'fellow-workers'. I. Consider the great design and obligation of life. To what end does God work? To establish in the human heart and in human society the kingdom of justice and righteousness. If we are co-workers with God, let us often remind ourselves of His ideal, consult His plan and programme, and strive toward His purpose, which is altogether spiritual, holy, and beautiful. Men toil in a thousand different departments, at ten thousand differing tasks, and the result seems only a mass of isolated strivings; yet let us be sure that the unification of action is a fact also, that all kinds of social ministries are vitally related, and that one Divine coordinating Mind directs our divided and confused activities to a definite and an inexpressibly glorious end. (1) The workers must not despise or disparage one another, nor must any one thus treat himself or his task. (2) Let each in his place faithfully and industriously realise the splendid conception of the Master-Builder. 'I sing for God,' cried Jenny Lind, who did not always sing in cathedrals; 'I pray with my fingers,' said a celebrated organist; and the million toilers of the city working in the fear of God and the love of their neighbour make shrines of workshops and transform rough tools into sacred vessels of worship and blessing. II. Remember the condition of success in the work of life. If 'God's fellow-workers,' we must do our part. Our infidelity, disloyalty, or sloth arrests the great Worker and His miracles of blessing. On the other hand, we must not forget our dependence. Do we not often pathetically fail because we forget the paramount Partner? III. Here we find the grand encouragement in all our generous aspirations and effects. 'God's fellow-workers.' Then He will bring the work through. What an efficient coadjutor! W. L. Watkinson, Inspiration in Common Life, p. 40. Workers with God 1 Corinthians 3:9 It is a bold claim to make, but facts correspond to it and justify it. There is a sense in which every man is a fellow-worker with God. St. Paul, of course, meant very much more than this when he described himself and his companions in service as 'fellow-workers with God.' His words speak of conscious and voluntary cooperation, a willing and intelligent oneness of purpose and effort with the will and work of God. I. In creating the world we are called to be God's fellow-workers. Creation is not finished, but is always proceeding. In this continuous and never-ceasing work of creation man can help or hinder, develop or retard the creative purpose and process. The world into which he is born has all the material prepared to his hands; he is here to work it into more and better things. An eminent geologist has written a book that bears this title, The Earth as Modified by Human Action, and one has only to read it to see the wide range of human power, to see how closely man is in partnership with God in the work of creation, how much God needs man and man needs God. II. And, in his own training and saving, in the work of developing, personal faculty and character, man is called to be God's fellow-worker. What he can do for the earth, and the creatures and things that live upon it, he can do for himself, fulfil and finish the Creator's purpose and plan. The statement in the Hebrew poem of creation, that man was made in the image of God, is prophecy, not history. It is the end seen from the beginning. Faith in what man can do and achieve does not mean any less faith in God. It includes God as the ground of all power, the inspiring Helper of all endeavour, the eternal life of all life. Real advance is only made when voluntary, purposeful efforts aid the unconscious strivings of Nature. It is an old saying that bids us pray as if God did everything, and work as if God did nothing. The will and work of God are identical not only with the moral regeneration of individuals, with the salvation and cultivation of the individual human soul, but with all work we respect and honour and rejoice in, with art, science, literature, politics, trade, with whatsoever activity works for the good of the community and the civilisation of nations. III. In reconciling the world to Himself we are called to be fellow-workers with God. The work of atonement is in a peculiar sense the work of God. The Divine mission of Jesus Christ is not so much an interpolation in human history as the reflection and revelation in space and time of the universal and eternal labour and passion and sacrifice of God. It is the Father's work into which the Son enters. And if we have got the Spirit of Christ, if we are within the circle of His fellowship, then we cannot help sharing in that work of reconciliation which is most clearly set forth by Jesus Christ to be the work of God in our human world. Worse than the most hopeless pessimism is the optimism of the men who are content to repeat the creed, 'Truth and right are mighty, and must prevail'. But truth and right have never yet prevailed in this world without the help of true and righteous men. The only real failure in life, believe me, is to do less than our best. John Hunter, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 257. References. III. 9. H. H. Snell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 70. J. S. Boone, Sermons, p. 136. C. G. Finney, Penny Pulpit, No. 1570, p. 193. E. Armitage, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 364. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 30. III. 10. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 372. III. 11. David Brook, Preacher's Magazine, vol. iv. p. 173. C. M. Betts, Eight Sermons, p. 3. H. Varley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 68. H. P. Liddon, Sermons Preached on Special Occasions, p. 220. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. v. p. 237. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv. No. 1494. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 293. The Trial By Fire 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 I. Let us ask, What is it we each build? The reply is, Character. What is character? It is the slow accretion of habits, acts, and impulses, of morality and emotion, tending toward a final mould, a fixed form. It is the accretion of habit, for we are so constituted that to do a thing once is to desire to do it again, and every act is the preface and preparation for a similar act. It is the work of impulse, for impulse is the glowing forge in which action is shaped. It is morality and emotion, for not more surely is the slenderest coloured thread gathered into the loom, or the lightest whisper chronicled on the wax tablet of the phonograph, than is each thrill of hope, each fear or prayer, recorded in the structure of character. Does it not follow, then, that character is everything to us: the one real possession which is imperishable? The whole worth of Christianity to the world is that it is the science of character, that it teaches men to build their lives up into a mould of moral beauty, and attain the stature of Christ. James Smetham said: 'It is of much more importance to preserve a fresh and tender love to God and man, than to turn the corner of an art career'. II. But the Apostle strikes a subtler chord when he speaks of the mixed elements that exist in the best work, of things perfect and imperfect the gold and the stubble that jostle one another in human character. Who has not remarked the imperfections of religious men? Who has not seen, as St. Paul saw, that the same man has both gold and stubble in him, that his vision of truth is often limited and vitiated by some error of nature, that his flaws of temper exist side by side with a great apostolic passion for souls, or that his narrowness of sympathy spoils all the admirable grasp of truth which is his? The whole history of the Church has been a record of these imperfections. The duty of charity towards others, which our own errors teach us, must not blind us to the main point of the passage, which is the testing of character which awaits us. Paul sees the fire that kindles for his trial, the purifying and avenging flame that is to test his work, and he would fain build only with such elements as the flames cannot consume. III. What, then, is this flame? What does it mean for us? (1) Surely time is one of the flames by which all our work is to be tested. (2) Temptation also is the flame through which all character must pass. (3) But beyond time and temptation there lies the third trial, and it is of that St. Paul chiefly thinks: the last day that day the great assize. There is one final word of consolation. Nothing that is really good in us can ever perish, or need fear that flame. W. J. Dawson, The Comrade Christ, p. 261. Reference. III. 11-15. C. D. Bell, The Name Above Every Name, p. 165. 1 Corinthians 3:12-13 'The more I think of the matter, and the more I read of the Scriptures themselves, and of the history of the Church,' Dr. Arnold wrote in 1827, 'the more intense is my wonder at the language of admiration with which some men speak of the Church of England, which certainly retains the foundation sure as all other Christian societies do, except the Unitarians, but has overlaid it with a very sufficient quantity of hay and stubble, which I devoutly hope to see burnt one day in the fire.' This passage was often in Mrs. Oliphant's mind, not only on her deathbed, but earlier in her career as a novelist. 'What is the reputation of a circulating library to me?' she wrote in her autobiography. 'Nothing, and less than nothing a thing the thought of which now makes me angry, that any one should for a moment imagine I cared for that, or that it made up for any loss. I am perhaps angry, less reasonably, when well-intentioned people tell me I have done good, or pious ones console me for being left behind by thoughts of the good I must yet be intended to do. God help us all! What is the good done by any such work as mine, or even better than mine? "If any man build upon this foundation... wood, hay, stubble;... if the work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire." An infinitude of pains and labour, and all to disappear like the stubble and the hay.' Reference. III. 12, 13. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 39. 1 Corinthians 3:15 To Dominic, in allusion to his supposed share in the Albigensian crusade, and the foundation of the Inquisition, he used to apply St. Paul's words, 1 Corinthians 3:15 . Stanley's Life of Arnold (ch. VIII.). References. III. 13. W. Redfern, The Gospel of Redemption, p. 135. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 9. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, p. 51. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 66. III. 15. C. D. Bell, The Name Above Every Name, p. 178. T. Binney, King's Weigh-House Chapel Sermons, p. 138. ** The Coming of the Holy Ghost ( for Whit-sunday ) 1 Corinthians 3:16 ** I. The first visible fruit of the coming of the Holy Ghost was in the gift of tongues. Part of that gift of tongues seems undoubtedly to have been that certain of the number, where they were, could speak languages they were not able to speak before. They were able to sing the praises of God in a way that all kinds of different nations who had come to Jerusalem from all parts were able to understand. That was part of the gift, and a wonderful gift, and yet it was the least valued of the gifts of God. It was the extraordinary, and not the ordinary, gift of the Holy Ghost, and we make a great mistake when we think that the extraordinary must of necessity be of more value, of greater worth, than the ordinary. That is a mistake which people make in many other directions: for instance, despising the wild flowers of the wayside, because, as we say, they are common, and valuing more highly the flowers which are uncommon. So with the gifts of the Holy Spirit there are those which are extraordinary, and which appear from time to time in the New Testament. They have passed; do not envy them. The ordinary gift of the Holy Ghost that remains with us, and that is of much higher value than the extraordinary. II. What is the ordinary gift? It is the gift of Spiritual power. 'Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.' That is the Master's promise, and they were to wait for it. Of this other gift of languages He said nothing only of the more precious gift, the gift of the power from on high. It is the power of the Holy Spirit which enters into our own soul, into our own spiritual nature, and deals with it and strengthens it in every department. It takes hold of our understanding. The Holy Spirit entering into our soul, making the body and the soul His temple and dwelling within us, comes as an added strength to our understanding, raising our understanding, so that it can not only deal with the things that it sees, but rise to the height of faith, giving a new power of faith and opening our eyes to see the true bearing and meaning of the words of the Lord, and of the acts of the Lord. All that He has done and said for our own soul needs a key. There the words lie on the page, and they are like a locked room. It is the Holy Spirit Who can come and open those words for our understanding, according to the promise of the Lord: 'When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth'. Remember, the words of the Lord are only to be understood by the help and by the power of the Holy Spirit. III. The Holy Spirit comes and brings power, or brings strength to our own heart and to our own affections, and teaches a man, and helps a man to hate what is hateful and to love what is good and what is true. The Holy Spirit dwells within our hearts and puts in them that double faculty of the appreciation of what is good, the love of what is good, and the renunciation and hatred of what is evil. And yet again, the Holy Spirit, entering into our hearts, finds His way into our will our will which has been weakened by self-indulgence and self-pleasing and puts new strength into that will, and gives to us what He gave to the Apostles at that time new heart and new courage to face the difficulties before them. The coming of the Holy Ghost made of these men, who were cowards, heroes and martyrs. One after another, these men who had denied their Master, after the coming of the Holy Ghost, laid down their lives. The strength of the martyrs is the witness of the power of the Holy Ghost, just as all the most beautiful things which have been written and thought are the gifts of the Holy Ghost. And all true love of God and man is an outcome of that Holy Spirit Who has made the soul His temple and resting-place. This gift of power to our understanding and our heart and our will that represents the ordinary gift of the Holy Spirit; and that is at our disposal, and according to our goodwill and our earnestness and the use we make of God's gifts will be given to us of the fulness of the power of the Spirit. Christ and His Human Temples 1 Corinthians 3:16 This Epistle was written from the city of Ephesus where was that famous temple of Diana which was reputed to be the world's greatest work of art. It was addressed to Corinth, which city also was renowned for its splendid temples. Now we can imagine St Paul writing in view of the Ephesian temple, or with his mind full of pictures which the sacred buildings of Corinth had impressed. He knew, at least, that these temples were always before the eyes and often in the thoughts of the Corinthian believers; and herein lies the point of such words as these: 'Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?' You poor, despised, scorned ones, cast out from society, are more and greater than these lofty fanes. I. In these words there was the new Christ-given thought of the dignity of man. Man was more than stones and marble, and statuary and material splendour. Manhood with a bit of faith and goodness in it was more than wisdom and genius and wealth, and all that these things could produce. When Christ took upon Himself a human body, He made humanity Divine. The Incarnation was the real starting-point of human progress and elevation. Thrones and palaces and temples are not the glory of the world, but men and women who reflect in their faces and conduct some of the majesty of the great King. II. Think of the nearness and familiarity of the Divine presence. You have not to go in search of Him; you carry Him with you. Stones cannot be consecrated, but souls can: priests cannot introduce you to Him He is nearer than the priest who whispers in your ears. He is part of you; your souls are the altar, your prayers are the incense, your aspirations are the painted windows and spires, your devout thoughts are the priests. III. Now what a solemn thought of dedication and of holiness is suggested by these words. Temple something detached, cut off, separated, taken out of the common, secular, corrupt world and marked out for other and higher uses; not to be employed again for any service that is low, vulgar, profane, for any service but what is pure and Divine; to be kept holy, undefiled, and perfumed with the incense of sweet thoughts and prayers. Keep the temple holy which He has made His own. IV. And, finally, remember that the temple is a witness for God. And we are to be as living temples among the crowd of men, bearing witness of the Spirit of God that dwells within us, forcing upon their unbelieving minds thoughts of the Christ whom we love, showing in speech, temper, and conduct, the image or the Invisible, proving to the world that God is near and that Christ is living by the Divinity and Christlikeness of our faces. J. G. Geeenhough, The Cross in Modern Life, p. 192. The Divine Indwelling (A Motive to Holiness) 1 Corinthians 3:16 I. Let us consider the fact to which the Apostle appeals: 'Ye are the temple of God the Spirit of God dwelleth in you'. (1) This is not, first of all, merely a recognition of the presence of God in Nature. Doubtless, the sense of God's encompassing, all-pervading life must be one of the main factors in the thought of every thinking man who believes in the existence and spirituality of God. He conceives of God as the Being from Whom it is literally impossible to escape. 'Whither shall I go then from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I go then from Thy presence? if I climb up into heaven, Thou art there: if I go down to hell, Thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning, and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall Thy hand lead me; and Thy right hand shall hold me.' God, the everywhere present, enwrapping, upholding, penetrating through and through each creature of His hand, yet in His Uncreated Essence distinct from all, is before the Psalmist's soul. Man, if he would, cannot be where God is not, cannot place himself outside this all-pervading ubiquity of God. Thus the universe is the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in it. (2) Yet the Apostle does not mean that the Corinthian Christians were only God's temple as being a part of His universe. For, first of all, man, as man, is differently related to the Divine Omnipresence from anything else in Nature. Man alone can feel it, can acknowledge it, can respond to it. God is just as present with a plant or an animal as with man; but neither animal nor plant is conscious of the Divine contact; both animal and plant offer only the homage of an unconscious obedience to God's law. Man, however, can know and adore his God, by the homage of his intelligence and of his moral freedom; and thus the human soul is a temple of God, in a distinct sense from any of the lower forms of life. It is a living temple, whereof each wall, each pillar, each cornice, nay the arches and the very floor, are instinct with the life whether of thought or feeling, so designed and proportioned as even by their silent symmetry to show forth their Maker's praise. To those among Adam's children who are alive in Jesus Christ, God manifests His presence by His Spirit; and this manifestation makes them His temples in an altogether intenser sense than is possible for unregenerate man. (3) For the presence referred to by the Apostle is not only the presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church. Primarily, indeed, the words imply that truth, 'Ye are the temple of God,' 'the Spirit of God dwelleth in' or 'among you'. It is indeed in the Church as a whole, and not in the individual, that the full majesty of the Spirit's presence is to be witnessed. The 'whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified 'by the Spirit, in a deeper sense than any individual can be. (4) The presence upon which he insists is ultimately a presence in the individual. It differs from the presence of the Spirit with saints and prophets under the Jewish Covenant, and still more from the occasional visits which He may have vouchsafed to heathens, in that, so far as the will of the Giver is concerned, it is normal and continuous. 'The Spirit of God dwelleth in you.' No passing visit is here, no sudden but transient illumination, no power, fitfully given and suddenly withdrawn. 'I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.' Such was to be the law of the Messianic kingdom: each of its subjects was to be gifted with an inward presence of the Holy One. II. If we have difficulty in habitually realising such a truth, it is, I believe, because we fail to do justice in our ordinary thoughts to that higher side of our composite being, which is the seat of the Spirit's Presence within us. Man is not merely a perishing animal gifted with life, a ψυχή : he is an immortal spirit, a πνεῦμα . III. Let us observe, in the substance of the Apostle's appeal, all the conditions of a really powerful religious motive. (1) Of these the first is, that the truth or fact appealed to should not be an open question in the mind of the person to whom the appeal is made. (2) A second condition of a strong religious motive is, that it shall rest upon a positive and not upon a merely negative conviction. (3) A third condition of a strong working religious motive is, that it shall rest upon what is felt to be a present truth. (4) A fourth condition of a strong religious motive is, that it shall appeal to the better side, to the more generous natural impulses of human nature. IV. Lastly, be it observed that this conviction furnishes the true basis both for the moral training of children, and for real self-improvement in later life. H. P. Liddon. References. III. 16. C. Perren, Outline Sermons, p. 228. M. G. Glazebrook, Prospice, p. 182. Bishop Winning-ton-Ingram, A Mission of the Spirit, p. 123. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 47. III. 17. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 202. III. 18. Phillips Brooks, The Mystery of Iniquity, p. 153. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 93; ibid. vol. xii. p. 30. Two Estimates of Foolishness 1 Corinthians 3:18-19 St. Paul touched a sensitive place when he talked in this way. If there was one thing which a Corinthian could not bear to have pricked it was his conceit in the matter of wisdom. To call that in question was the unpardonable insult. He was not particularly vain of his personal appearance, of his clothes, or his property; but he was always more than a little puffed up with intellectual pride. Of the two he would have much preferred an empty purse to a thinly furnished head, and he would almost rather be known as a criminal than be regarded as a fool. These words of St. Paul must have been like needles to him, unless he laughed them away as sheer stupidity. 'If any man among you seemeth to be wise, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.' The first point on which the Apostle insists here is I. That there are two estimates of folly God's estimate and the world's estimate; and these two are often as contrary as light and darkness. 'The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.' And if a man seems to be particularly wise in the eyes of the world, the best thing he can do is to become a fool in men's eyes in order to be called wise by God. That is St. Paul's extreme way of putting it, and it sounds extravagant. And yet it covers a profound and unquestionable truth. 'The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.' And, on the contrary, what seems to the world folly is often, in God's sight, the highest and divinest wisdom. An honest life will not be always called wise; a life of purity will occasionally win cheap sneers. If you pursue great ideals, if you kneel often in prayer, if you spend your energies in self-denying labours, if you give freely to help your fellowmen if you often lift your eyes from the dust toward the heavenly crown, if you seek God's 'Well done!' rather than the praises of men, you are sure to be called by the baser sort, as all good men have been called fools. Take it with a smile. Pin the name upon your breast, as a mark of honour. For it is an honour to have that name given by those who have no greatness of soul. You are in the way of God's wisdom, and it is of infinitely more consequence, both now and hereafter, that you should not be deemed a fool by Him, whatever you are in the eyes of men. For what He thinks folly now all lips will call folly some time, and the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. The second thought which St. Paul gives us here is II. That a man is never wise until he feels himself a fool, and just trusts in that higher wisdom which is not his own. 'If any man seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.' Some of us have had this grace given, to know that the human will is weak and the heart often prejudiced and darkened, that the most cultured mind cannot?ee a step before it, and the wisest mind stumbles unless God illumine, direct, and show the way. And we feel that we dare not take any important step in life until we have laid it before God in prayer. It is then that we become wise then when we say An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light; 'Show me Thy way, O Lord'; 'Take Thou my hand and lead me'. Then do we understand what St. Paul meant when he said, 'If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise'. J. G. Greenhough, The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, p. 139. References. III. 19. E. A. Bray, Sermons, vol. i. p. 361, and vol. ii. p. 1. Expositor (4th Series), vol. xiii. p. 119; ibid. (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 308. III. 21. Brooke Herford, Courage and Cheer, p. 235. T. Phillips, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 307. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 94. III. 21, 22. B. J. Snell, The All-Enfolding Love, p. 145. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 56. 1 Corinthians 3:21 * ; 1 Corinthians 3:23 * 'Who,' asks R. H. Hutton in his review of Renan's Paul, 'who that has studied St. Paul at all has not noticed that bold, soaring, and I might almost say by an audacious anachronism, if it did not give so false a conception of its intellectual motive Hegelian dialectic, with which he rises from the forms of our finite and earthly thought to the infinite and the spiritual life embodied in them?... "Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." What ease and swiftness, and power of wing in this indignant upward flight from the petty conflicts of the Corinthian Church; an upward flight which does not cease till the poor subjects of contention, though he himself was one of them, seem lost like grains of sand beneath the bending sky!' References. III. 21-23. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliv. No. 2589. J. Caird, Sermons, p. 247. F. L. Goodspeed, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 121. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 47. W. L. Alexander, Sermons, p. 122. J. W. Boulding, Sermons, p. 21. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 65. III. 22. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 211. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv. Nos. 870 and 875. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 309. III. 23. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 335. Secrets Made Known 1 Corinthians 4:1 The point for us is, 'What does the word "mystery" mean in the New Testament?' Mystery in the New Testament means one thing only, and that is something which has been kept secret for centuries, but has at last been revealed. And I am going to speak to you about five secrets five mysteries if you like five things which have been kept secret since the foundation of the world, but which have at last been told us. Now what are those five secrets? I. What was there Behind that which we can See? It is a question which men have been trying to answer for thousands of years. What is behind it all? The answer has now been revealed, and it is astonishing to me the apathetic way in which thousands of men today regard this secret. The answer that has been given is that behind this puzzling universe of ours there is a living Person. He watches you with as much attention as if there were not another living person in the world. And when you pray, it is not as if you have one-forty-millionth part of God's attention, but you have His whole attention, because He is the living Person Who watches over all the world. It is a mystery of light, not a mystery of darkness. II. What is it all Tending to? What is the Object of Life? It has been divulged to us that the stream of life the main stream is a stream of love. With all its suffering, the happiness of human life outweighs the misery by ninety-nine to one. And therefore the Gospel that we have to preach is that you, and I, and all men move under a canopy of love. III. Can Sin be Forgiven? What we have to preach today is that sin can be forgiven. Hut can those be forgiven who lead the innocent astray? Not while they are impenitent. If they are penitent they will be forgiven. To those who believe in the crucifixion of our Lord, and still go on sinning and leading others to sin, I say that you are trampling the Son of God under foot and putting him to an open shame. IV. How is the Pardoned Felon to become a Holy Saint, to be Ready for Heaven? How is it that we find girls like pure lilies-of-the-valley in London living in houses which one would think can only produce the garbage of the streets, and boys standing firm under temptations to which some of the older men might succumb? The answer is, By the wonderful and extraordinary mystery of grace. V. What is the Relation of God to this World? God is using the outward world as a veil through which to teach and bless His children. Every sunrise is a sacrament of love and every sunset a sacrament of peace. Apostolic Succession 1 Corinthians 4:1 Apostolic succession, in the general usage of the phrase, stands for the theory of the origin of the episcopal ministry, which was developed in the conflicts with the heretics of the second and third centuries, which was formulated by the organising genius of St. Cyprian, and commended to the acceptance of the Church by his lofty character and masterful personality, and which was finally established in Christian thought and practice by the still greater authority of St. Augustine. Apostolic succession, as the title-deeds of an exclusive hierarchy, is a fiction, but as a doctrine of the Christian ministry, as such, it is profoundly true. And here we may distinguish three characteristics of the ministry, which attach to it by virtue of the fact that it perpetuates within the Christian society the ministry of the Apostles. I. The Divine Commission. We are warned away from low views of the ministerial vocation. We are reminded that the Christian ministry is no afterthought, no creature of policy, no temporary feature of the historic society, but, in and through all varieties of organisation, a Divinely ordained, Divinely commissioned, perpetually obligatory means of grace. It is no fiction, but blessed and momentous verity, that the Christian ministry stands in the succession of those Apostles to whom Christ's ordaining word was spoken: 'As the Father sent Me, even so send I you'. II. The Sacerdotal Usurpation. The Christian ministry, standing in the succession of the Apostles, has the same essential character. It is not, in the usual sense of the phrase, a sacerdotal ministry, and the most unfortunate results necessarily followed from the early and natural transference of Mosaic nomenclature to Christian ministers. Almost from the first the language implied and strengthened an utterly unchristian way of regarding the ministry. The conception of a ministry, succeeding to the sacrificial functions, and perpetuating the sacerdotal character of the Jewish priesthood, is obviously and utterly opposed to the apostolic conception. III. The Pastoral Ministry. Necessarily, in the wake of faithful preaching, follows the situation out of which the pastoral character of the Apostolic ministry arises. I need not remind you that in both its great branches, moral discipline and the administration of the sacraments, this pastoral ministry draws its authority from the Gospel. As a pastor, emphatically, the Christian minister answers to St. Paul's description. He is a 'minister of Christ and a steward of the mysteries of God'. H. Hensley Henson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 401. References. IV. 1. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 7. E. A. Stuart, His Dear Son and other Sermons, vol. v. p. 41. H. H. Henson, Godly Union and Concord, p. 239. IV. 1, 2. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 275. ** Faithfulness and Fear ( For Advent ) 1 Corinthians 4:1** * ; 1 Corinthians 4:4 * I. Faithfulness to God. The warning, 'It is required in stewards that a man be found faithful,' refers to all Christians. And the duty of faithfulness demands of all: (a) That we do not despise the gifts with which God has entrusted to us. These gifts are called 'mysteries'. The treasures of Divine truth and love are not indeed secrets mysteries, in the sense that they remain completely hidden from us, or that they are only intended for a select circle. Still, every heavenly blessing is so far a secret that it is hidden to the natural man. Humanity with all its wisdom could not discover it. And it remains a mystery even now to the unspiritual. 'The natural man receiveth not the things of God.' It is when the heart feels its own natural weakness and poverty that these gifts are not despised, but greatly valued. (b) That we preserve these gifts pure and unadulterated. Unbelief despises, superstition adulterates, the truth. The sacraments, the way of salvation, and many other truths of Scripture, have been obscured by errors. In the opposite direction, the superstition of the understanding has reduced our Lord Jesus to a Jewish Rabbi, and denied the Atonement. (c) That we diligently employ these gifts in the spirit of the Lord. The Church must not be like the unprofitable servant who hid his Lord's talent in the earth. The Church of England, by its regular reading of God's Word, is a faithful steward of the mysteries of Christ. II. Among other Qualities Necessary in a Steward, the fear of God occupies a large place. This is implied by the words: 'But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment.... He that judgeth me is the Lord.' In this is included: (a) Fearlessness of man's judgment of himself. Many people boast, 'What do I care for men's opinion?' Such a boast is not often grounded in the fear of God, but in pride and self-will, or lightness of mind, or in a defiant spirit. St. Paul's freedom from that 'fear of man which brings a snare' was grounded on this: 'He that judgeth me is the Lord'. When we avoid all that, in the light of His Word, is displeasing to Him, we have a sure ground for disregarding the mere opinion of our fellows. (b) Mistrust of his own judgment of himself. 'Yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing against myself.' It is only Godless self-exaltation which says, 'I do not care for the judgment of others, I rely on my own'. St. Paul, on the other hand, has learnt how precarious his own judgment of himself really was. By it he was formerly led into the most dangerous courses. He who thinks more of God's judgment than either of his own or other men's will be likely to be led into right actions, and a right use of God's gifts, and will hesitate to pronounce judgment on others. He will leave such judgment to the Judge of all, the great trier of hearts. 'Therefore judge nothing before the time.' He will wait for the judgment and approbation of the Lord, 'Who will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.' The great day comes when He comes. References. IV. 2. W. R. Inge, All Saints' Sermons, 1906-7, p. 134. IV. 3. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. i. p. 190. The Three Tribunals 1 Corinthians 4:3-4 The Church at Corinth was honeycombed by the characteristic Greek vice of party spirit. The three great teachers, Paul, Peter, Apollos, were pitted against each other, and each was unduly exalted by those who swore by him, and unduly depreciated by the other two factions. So Paul, in the immediate context, associating Peter and Apollos with himself, bids the Corinthians think of ' us' as being servants of Christ, and not therefore responsible to men; and as stewards of the mysteries of God, that is, dispensers of truths long hidden but now revealed, and as therefore accountable for correct accounts and faithful dispensation only to the Lord of the household. Here we have three tribunals, that of men's estimates, that of our own consciences, that of Jesus Christ So let us look briefly at these three tribunals. I. First, the lowest men's judgment. Such a character as Paul's could not but be quick to feel the surrounding atmosphere, whether it was of love or of suspicion. So, he had to harden himself against what naturally had a great effect upon him, the estimate which he felt that people round him were making of him. I need not say a word about the power which that terrible court which is always sitting, and which passes judgment upon every one of us, though we do not always hear the sentences read, has upon us all. There is a power which it is meant to have. It is not good for a man to stand constantly in the attitude of defying whatever anybody else chooses to say or to think about him. But the danger to which we are all exposed, far more than that other extreme, is of deferring too completely and slavishly to, and being far too subtly influenced in all that we do by, the thought of what A, B, or C may have to say or to think about it. 'The last infirmity of noble minds,' says Milton about the love of fame. It is an infirmity to love it, and long for it, and live by it. (1) But not only in these higher forms of seeking after reputation, but in lower forms, this trembling before, and seeking to conciliate, the tribunal of what we call 'general opinion,' which means the voices of the half-dozen people that are beside us, and know about us, besets us all, and weakens us all in a thousand ways. (2) The direct tendency of Christian faith and principle is to dwindle into wholesome insignificance the multitudinous voice of men's judgments. (3) Cultivate more distinctly, as a plain Christian duty, this wholesome independence of men's judgment. II. Note the higher court of conscience. The absolving by conscience is not infallible. I fancy that conscience is more reliable when it condemns than when it acquits. The inward judge needs to be stimulated, to be enlightened, to be corrected often. III. Note the supreme court of final appeal. 'He that judgeth me' not, 'will judge,' but now at this very moment. (1) The estimate will dwindle the sentences of the other two tribunals into nothingness. (2) That judgment, persistent all through each of our lives, is preliminary to the future tribunal and sentence. A. Maclaren, Triumphant Certainties, p. 152. References. IV. 3, 4. J. T. Bramston, Fratribus, p. 156. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. i. p. 155. J. G. Greenhough, The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, p. 284. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 74. Spiritual Character 1 Corinthians 4:4 The Apostle has been talking of judgment, and he has plainly said, '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 against myself, as between man and man, 'yet am I not hereby,' through that simple fact, 'justified,' or made just; the fact is we have nothing to do with judgment; 'He that judgeth me is the Lord'. How calm he was, how almost defiant when face to face with social or hostile criticism! How heart-searching he was; how thoroughly this man grips every case that he deals with! There is no escaping his iron handling. He is the kind of man to follow when we do not quite know what to do with some things. He is so courtly, so learned in the deepest laws, so profoundly human. Yet there is about him such mystery and gladness of unexplained divinity. I. We are not to judge ourselves as others see us, but as we really, interiorly, spiritually are. Who then can stand? None. That is the whole mystery; if men would believe that one little sentence we should see new heavens and a new earth, if they acted upon the vision, and were obedient to the heavenly revelation. We see one another externally; we think we are nice men. Oh the lie! It is because we fail just there that we need no cross. As to our own self-gratulation, boasting, and vain pride, we do everything conventionally well; we pay our debts, we exchange social courtesies, and we conduct ourselves generally so that our neighbours say about us we are nice, agreeable, respectable people. Oh if they knew, really knew! We make ourselves coats and clothing of fig leaves, and we hide up all that is foul or unlovely in our sight and in the sight of other men. But no man can destroy his own sin. If any one could be persuaded to believe that not merely to nod assent to that, but to believe it there would go up out of this nation such a cry for the Gospel as would make a new nation of it. Concealment of sin is not destruction of sin; momentary forgetfulness of sin does not quench one cinder in hell. It is sin, sinful sin, the abominable thing which God hates, and which can only be really cleansed out of the soul by the hot heart-blood of the Priest of the universe. II. So we are face to face with the great doctrine of spiritual character; what we are in motive, in purpose, in our heart of hearts, that is the question. O thou who dost boast of thy good reputation amongst neighbours, and empty thy pockets of testimonials to prove how respectable a man thou art, that is not the question. It is, What are we in the sight of white light, what are we in the sanctuary? Who can stand? None. What then? Penitence, self-renunciation, an earnest, piercing cry to the heavens for mercy, a clinging round the Cross. We are cursed by being satisfied with mere respectability. Respectability now takes the place of spiritual criticism. We do not refer to God, we refer to man. If a man with a thousand a year can testify that I am a respectable person, I care for nothing else; you know my referee, this is what he says about me. And socially, conventionally, that is true; spiritually and interiorly it is a lie; take it back, burn it. III. Then we come face to face with the great doctrine of regeneration. Marvel not that I say unto you, Ye must be born again; except a man be born again he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. He must be born again without explanation, though he is a very intelligent creature. God is continually snubbing intelligence; God is often ordering mere knowledge off the doorstep of His palace. He does not want knowledge, intelligence, criticism, or anything of that kind, separately, independently, and by itself, so to say, but He wants the outgoing desire of the heart, the longing of the soul, the cry in the dark, Oh that I knew where I might find Him! The Gospel has a great broad, clear, trumpet-like answer to that inquiry. We see Jesus crucified, and we see Jesus crowned. That is God's answer. Then let us cease comparison with others and let us make every day a day of judgment upon ourselves. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. IV. p. 155. 1 Corinthians 4:4 In the eighth chapter of her Life of Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell quotes a friend who says that, 'One time I mentioned that some one had asked me what religion I was of (with the view of getting me for a partisan) and that I had said that that was between God and me; Emily (who was lying on the hearthrug) exclaimed, "That's right". This was all I ever heard Emily say on religious subjects.' Reference. IV. 4, 5. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 177. The Intermediate Goal 1 Corinthians 4:5 I. We may be certain that the thought of the coming of the Lord is meant to act as an incentive. When we feel tired and care-laden, when the way is steep and the lesson harder than usual, what a difference it might make to remind ourselves that it will not go on so for ever. After all, it is only 'until the Lord come'. II. The thought of our Lord's coming will not only rouse and strengthen us to do things; it will also keep us from doing things, unnecessary things, and from one thing more especially. Let us listen to the Apostle as he describes it. Having spoken of the duty of faithfulness in the discharge of appointed duty, St. Paul goes on to say: '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 against myself, yet I am not hereby justified; but He that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who will both 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.' You see what he means. The thought of the Lord's coming is to serve not only as an incentive to action, it is to be also a restraint upon criticism. A. W. Robinson, Church Family Newspaper, vol. XIV. p. 1000. Judgment 1 Corinthians 4:5 The rashness of hearers in pronouncing judgment upon ministers is no novelty. Such of the Corinthians as elected to prefer the teaching of Apollos or of Cephas to that of Paul, appear to have proceeded to charge the Apostle with having imperfectly instructed them in the Gospel. He does not submit to their tribunal; nor will he even trust to his own judgment. His appeal is to an infinitely higher Court. He announces I. That the Coming Lord will sit in Judgment. (1) His 'day of judgment' will extend over a long period. (a) The term 'day' in Scripture is often used to express a considerable period. (b) The period of the judgment is not in the text expressly called a 'day,' but it is so described by implication. For it is here opposed to 'man's day' in the context (see v. 3, marg.). (c) In this view 'The Lord's day' will be opposed to a period of 6,000 years. It cannot, there fore, be limited to four-and-twenty hours, or to any inconsiderable period. It must extend through many ages. (2) His day of judgment will be a day of ruling. (a) Such is 'man's day' viz., of judgment, to which it is opposed. This is the period in which man's opinions are current, his principles of action sanctioned, and his standards of truth, of morals and religion, admitted and approved. (6) Judgment in Scripture is not used exclusively, or even chiefly, in the forensic sense, but is another term for ruling. (c) Hence Christ comes to judgment in His quality as King (see Psalms 2:6 ; Psalms 2:9 ; Psalms 72:1-2 ; St. Matthew 25:34-40 ). So the coming to judge and the coming to reign are the same thing (see Isaiah 32:1 ; Jeremiah 23:5 ; 2 Timothy 4:1 ). There are not three personal advents of Christ. (3) The reign will close with a great assize. (a) It will commence with military judgments. As God went forth in His Shechinah at the head of the armies of Israel, so in the latter days will He fight against the anti-Christian confederacy (see Joe 3:9-17 ; Haggai 2:6 ; Zechariah 14:1-2 ; Zechariah 14:9 ; Revelation 19:11-21 ). (b) These military judgments will introduce the reign of Christ. It will extend through the millennium. It will be distinguished by justice and truth. (c) At the close of this great period will be the great assize (Revelation 20:11-15 ). II. That Every Man then shall have Perfect Justice. (1) Such a judgment is a necessity in equity. (a) The maxims of man's day will need to be reviewed. (b) The judgments of man's day will have to be reviewed. The fearful aggregate of wrongs perpetrated and suffered in the whole history of man's day will be adjusted in judgment. (c) The best human judgments are imperfect. Motives are misread by upright but fallible judges. (2) In it shall every man have his meed of praise. (a) To this end all must appear before the Judge. (b) The Judge is competent to the task. He can 'bring to light the hidden things of darkness'. (c) The 'sons of God' will have the greater praise. The day of judgment will be the day of their 'manifestation,' or 'revealing' (Romans 8:19 ; 1 John 3:2 ). Their grandeur will then come out to the day. (d) The 'servants of God' also will have His praise. (e) Even the pronouncedly wicked the downright servants of the devil will have any praise they can justly claim. But in reference to these it is to be feared praise is used euphemistically; the contrary of praise being implied (cf. 1 Samuel 26:23 ). (f) The praise of God will be a true reward. If He says 'Well done,' the whole universe will re-echo the Approbation. When He says, 'Well done,' it is the prelude to substantial and permanent promotion. The moral is that we should strive to merit this applause. The way is through the merits of Christ. 1 Corinthians 4:5 Is there record kept anywhere of fancies conceived, beautiful, unborn? Some day will they assume form in some undeveloped light? If our bad unspoken thoughts are registered against us, and are written in the awful account, will not the good thoughts unspoken, the love and tenderness, the pity, beauty, charity, which pass through the breast, and cause the heart to throb with silent good, find a remembrance too? Thackeray, in * The Last Sketch. 1 Corinthians 4:5 * But if I plan a little sin, So small no eye can enter in? Thou fool! if thine own soul can see, What need for God to look at thee? Evelyn Phinney. References. IV. 5. T. F. Crosse, Sermons, p. 74. Bishop Wilberforce, Sermons, p. 67. R. W. Church, Village Sermons, p. 8. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p. 217. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Notes of Sermons for the Year, pt. i. p. 13. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 390. IV. 6. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 406. IV. 6-13. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. i. p. 204. The Grace of Receptivity 1 Corinthians 4:7 'Receptiveness,' George Eliot says, 'is a noble and massive virtue.' I. There are two tendencies which are characteristic of the present time, and which make it hard to write our text upon our banner. (1) First, then, this is an inventive age. In every one of us, perhaps quite unconsciously, there is a touch of the inventor's and the discoverer's temper. That is to say, we are bred in the idea that all that is best and highest and most noble has to be won by human search and seeking. Does that then make us arrogant? Not so. But it makes it hard to remember that the things which count are after all not wages but are gifts. (2) Then this is a critical age. All of us, more or less, are touched with the critical spirit of the day, and the critical spirit even at its noblest is very far away from receptivity. When we are accustomed to get at truth by fine dissection, it is not easy to regard it as a gift. II. Let us apply the text in different ways, and (1) let us think of the world of nature. We invent the telegraph, we do not invent the spring. We discover the power of steam, but not the dawn. These things find us, they are given freely; and I believe that the keenest intellect will fail to grasp the true value of this great creation, unless there come seasons when it can be let alone, and practice the great grace of receptivity. (2) Think again of our capacities and faculties. The possibility of all we do lies not in what we do but in what we get. Our gifts are the only basis of our gain. (3) What is heredity that strange and awful fact but the expansion by science of this inspired word? What motto for the text-books of heredity could match this motto, 'What have ye that ye did not receive?' Whence comes the bent and bias of my nature? The basis of all my strength and all my weakness, of all I battle with, of all I hope to be the basis of it is the unsought-for gift of the generations who have passed and died. (4) Apply the text to the great gospel of the love of God. All love is a gift; you cannot compel or force it; it is only love when it is freely given; and if that is true of the love of man and woman it must be true of the love of God to me. The New Testament throbs and thrills with the glad thought that the Gospel is a gift. Therefore would I say to all who are longing and striving and toiling for the best: all that is best does not begin in striving; it comes as a gift from God and must be taken. G. H. Morrison, The Unlighted Lustre, p. 57. 1 Corinthians 4:7 When John Knox was dying, Doctor Preston demanded how he did. He replied: 'I have been tempted by Satan. When he saw that he could not prevail, he tempted me to have trusted in myself, or to have rejoiced or boasted of myself. But I repulsed him with this sentence, ' Quid habes quod non accepisti? ' ('What hast thou which thou hast not received'). References. IV. 7. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. i. p. 221. H. P. Liddon, University Sermons (2nd Series), p. 18. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii. No. 1271, and vol. xxiv. No. 1392. 1 Corinthians 4:8 Though there is no recorded instance of our Lord's making use of any of the weapons of wit, nor is it conceivable that He ever did so, a severe taunting irony is sanctioned by the example of the Hebrew prophets, as in Isaiah's sublime invective against idolatry, and in Elijah's controversy with the priests of Baal, and by that of St Paul especially in the fourth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Surely, too, we may say with Milton, in his Animadversions on the Remonstrant, that 'this vein of laughing hath oftimes a strong and sinewy force in teaching and confuting'. Julius Hare, in Guesses at Truth (1st Series). References. IV. 8. H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, p. 448. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 94. IV. 9. Ibid. vol. viii. p. 74. IV. 9-14. J. R. Legge, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 68. 1 Corinthians 4:10 * f * Compare Cowper's famous lines on Whitefield ( Hope, 574 f.): He loved the world that hated him: the tear That dropped upon his Bible was sincere; Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife, His only answer was a blameless life; And he that forged, and he that threw the dart, Had each a brother's interest in his heart. Paul's love of Christ, and steadiness unbribed, Were copied close in him, and well transcribed. He followed Paul; his zeal a kindred flame, His apostolic charity the same. Like him, crossed cheerfully, tempestuous seas, Forsaking country, kindred, friends, and ease; Like him he laboured, and like him content To bear it, suffered shame where'er he went. 1 Corinthians 4:19 The tongue of a man is very seldom sober. Maxim Gorky. References. IV. 10. David Brook, Preacher's Magazine, vol. v. p. 33. IV. 11-13. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 231. IV. 12. Ibid. vol. x. p. 99; ibid. vol. xi. p. 293. IV. 16. E. M. Geldart, Echoes of Truth, p. 247. IV. 17. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 259. IV. 18. Ibid. vol. i. p. 204. IV. 19. J. Bolton, Selected Sermons (2nd Series), p. 251. IV. 20. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p. 234. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 71. 1 Corinthians 4:21 'Nothing moved her more,' says Charlotte Bronte of her sister Emily, 'than any insinuation that the faithfulness and clemency, the longsuffering and lovingkindness which are esteemed virtues in the daughters of Eve, became foibles in the sons of Adam.' 1 Corinthians 5:6-7 The 'eternal vigilance' required to maintain not only liberty but purity, should have for its guide a principle just opposite to the principle commonly followed. Most men, alike in public affairs and private business-affairs, assume that things are going right until it is proved they are going wrong; whereas their assumption should be that things are going wrong until it is proved they are going right. Spencer, Principles of Ethics (§ 470). References. IV. 21. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 296; ibid. vol. x. p. 426; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 112; ibid. vol. ix. p. 73. V. 1. J. D. Jones, Elims of Life, p. 220. V. 1, 2. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 203. V. 2. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 15. V. 3-5. Ibid. vol. ii. p. 385. V. 3-6. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 49. V. 5. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 24; ibid. (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 351; ibid. (6th Series), p. 460. V. 6-8. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi. No. 965. V. 7. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 169. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii. No. 54. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 29; ibid. vol. ix. p. 355; ibid. (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 277; ibid. (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 444. V. 7, 8. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 283. W. C. Wheeler, Sermons and Addresses (2nd Series), p. 202. R. M. Benson, Redemption, p. 308. J. Keble, Sermons for Easter to Ascension Day, p. 1. J. H. Holford, Memorial Sermons, p. 56. V. 8. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 83. V. 9. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 236. 1 Corinthians 5:9-10 Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is Man. 'Unless above himself, how poor a thing; yet, if beyond and outside of his world, how useless and purposeless a thing. This also must be remembered. And I cannot help thinking,' says Clough, 'that there is in Wordsworth's poems something of a spirit of withdrawal and seclusion from, and even evasion of, the actual world'. References. V. 9-11. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p. 107. V. 9-13. Ibid. vol. vi. p. 87. V. 10. Ibid. vol. iii. p. 110; ibid. vol. x. pp. 57, 161. 1 Corinthians 5:11 In Fors Clavigera (III. 49) Ruskin, after quoting some facts about the luxury of the wealthy and the violence of the lower classes, breaks out with an appeal to the clergy, and especially the bishops, to obey 'St. Paul's plain order in 1 Corinthians 5:11 . Let them determine as distinctly what covetousness and extortion are in the rich, as what drunkenness is in the poor. Let them refuse, themselves, and order their clergy to refuse, to go out to dine with such persons; and still more positively to allow such persons to sup at God's table. And they would 6oon know what fighting wolves meant; and something more of their own pastoral duty than they learned in that Consecration Service, when they proceeded to follow the example of the Apostles in Prayer, but carefully left out the Fasting.' References. V. 15. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 132. V. 19. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 19. V. 21. Ibid. vol. xi. p. 201. V. 23. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 456. VI. 1. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 99. VI. 1-11. Ibid. vol. i. p. 273. VI. 2. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 248. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 113. 1 Corinthians 6:3 Astronomy without Christianity only reaches as far as 'Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and put all things under his feet'; Christianity says beyond this 'Know ye not that we shall judge angels (as also the lower creatures shall judge us!)' Ruskin, Mornings in Florence (137). Reference. VI. 3, 4. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 109. 1 Corinthians 6:9 Religion co-exists, as it were, in the mind of an Italian Catholic, with a faith in that of which all men have the most certain knowledge. It is interwoven with the whole fabric of life. It is adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admiration; not a rule for moral conduct. It has no necessary connection with any one virtue. The most atrocious villain may be rigidly devout, and without any shock to established faith, confess himself to be so. Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check. Shelley, Preface to * The Cenci. * References. VI. 9. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 200; ibid. (5th Series), vol. x. p. 108. VI. 9-11. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvi. No. 2661. VI. 10. J. Aspinall, Parish Sermons (1st Series), p. 162. VI. 11. J. Keble, Village Sermons on the Baptismal Service, p. 86. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 91. VI. 12. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons (2nd Series), p. 30. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xii. p. 275. VI. 12-20. Ibid. vol. i. p. 280. VI. 13. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 42. VI. 15. T. Arnold, Christian Life: Its Hopes, p. 147. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 366. VI. 17. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi. No. 961. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 49; ibid. (6th Series), vol. ix. pp. 63, 155. The Body a Temple 1 Corinthians 6:19 Let us ask how as Christian people we ought to look upon our bodies, and what new light is shed upon their part in life through the redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ. I. First note the dignity of the body. The text informs us what the Apostle believed about that. He has no hesitation in saying that these bodies of ours are temples of the Holy Ghost, or, as he puts it a verse or two before, 'members of Christ'. Think what that metaphor of the temple meant. There had been a temple in Israel before, all compact of ivory and gold and marble; and not many years were to pass, from the date of this letter, till its hour struck and it passed away. But, ere it fell, its place had been taken by the redeemed personalities in which Christ was dwelling. So St. Paul's argument is very simple only this; God inhabits us; we inhabit our bodies; therefore our bodies are God's temple. Though he had laboured the point for page on page, he could have added nothing to the solemn emphasis of that one word the body a Divine temple. Let us lay the truth to heart, that Christ has redeemed both parts of our nature, and that His will for us covers both the material and the spiritual. The body has its own share in the great salvation. Certain ancient philosophers and some Christian thinkers who ought to have known better, have tended to despise the body; they have heaped abuse upon it, as the jail and prison of the soul; but the one fact of Christ's coming in the flesh has swept away all such shame and contempt and poured honour upon every member. Wherever His Gospel has penetrated, it has taught men a sweet and beautiful reverence even for the bodies of the dead. The nobility and sanctity of the human organism have been revealed in Jesus. Moreover, if the body is redeemed, it is no longer our own, and has to be cared for as particularly as honesty bids us care for some one else's property. The guarding of health is a part of religion. To neglect or squander our bodily powers is to steal what belongs to God. As Charles Kingsley said once, and no man had a better right to speak: 'There has always seemed to me something impious in the neglect of personal health.... I could not do half the good I do do, if it were not for the strength and activity some consider coarse and degrading.' II. Note, secondly, the gravity of bodily sin. Strictly speaking, this is the connection in which the text occurs. St. Paul is warning the Corinthians against the foul practices which made their city a byword, and tainted every breath they drew. On that subject he does not argue. He simply bids them consider that their bodies are God's temples. Where lies the gravity and guilt of sins like gluttony, intemperance, or lust in any form? In this, for one thing, that they give the body the upper hand. The only right and safe thing is that the body shall always serve. Any attempt to reverse the Divine law of our nature, that that part of us which is akin to God must rule, means a loss of true manhood and inevitable suffering. Forget this, and the appetite which was but a means in the Divine plan comes to be an end it itself. 'Hold off from sensuality,' Cicero writes, 'for if yon once give yourself to it, you will not be able to think of anything else.' The body ceases to be the soul's instrument or servant, and becomes its dungeon, then its tomb; so that the drunkard reeling down the street is, in too many cases, a man whose body has already become the grave of a lost spirit. Then again, bodily sin is so heinous because it defiles what Christ has redeemed. The reason why Christ's atoning passion was endured, and followed by triumphant resurrection, lay in God's great purpose that our human nature, in both its parts, should be cleansed and restored in beauty and purity. For this He bore the shame, the grief, the scourging, the spitting, the awful desolation of the last hour. The aim and issue of it all was that we should become a habitation of God through the Spirit. Gross sin in the body thwarts and defeats that purpose. Therefore it is to be feared and avoided by men and women who have a stake in the Divine redemption, and know that God has called them unto holiness. III. Lastly, note the prospects of the body. What is supremely important here also is to fix in our minds that truth, that the body has its own real share in the hopes and promises that cluster round the name of Jesus. The heathen said our modern heathen say still the body will perish like the animals; what matters it how we treat it? let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Nay, replies Christian faith, there is a second and nobler chapter in the story even of this frail tenement we here inhabit, which sheds back its light upon the chapter we are living in now. God, who raised up Jesus, shall in due time also quicken your mortal bodies. H. R. Mackintosh, Life on God's Plan, p. 129. 1 Corinthians 6:19 'The body the temple of the living God,' Kingsley writes in one of his early letters. 'There has always seemed to me something impious in the neglect of personal health, strength, and beauty, which the religious, and sometimes clergymen of this day affect. It is very often a mere form of laziness.' References. VI. 19. J. C. Hill, Preacher's Magazine, vol. v. p. 130. J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p. 346. R. J. Wardell, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 266. W. Unsworth, ibid. vol. xix. p. 33. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 42; ibid. (7th Series), vol. v. p. 498. VI. 19, 20. Brooke Herford, Courage and Cheer, p. 191. D. W. Simon, Twice Born and Other Sermons, p. 141. T. Arnold, Christian Life: Its Hopes, p. 147. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 1004; vol. xxvi. No. 1554. The Body in the Light of the Resurrection 1 Corinthians 6:20 The Resurrection of Jesus, which we celebrate afresh at Easter-tide, is the witness not to the existence of a shadowy, unsubstantial life separated from these delightful shores by the untravelled sea, but to the largeness of a life that knows no death, and is as real, every bit of it, as the sky above us and the earth beneath our feet. What a great thing it would be if people could be brought to see, as the Christians of whom we read in the New Testament most certainly saw, that it is a matter of supreme moment, not so much to what is sometimes understood by our eternal welfare, as to our whole view of what is meant by the life through which we are now passing, whether our conduct and conception of the world are really governed by our belief in Jesus' Resurrection. I. It was no spirit from the vasty deep that first affrighted and then gladdened the eyes of those who had seen their Master die on the deserted cross of Calvary. Ghosts do not change the lives of men, inspiring the fearful with courage, the despairing with hope, the dying with life. 'Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself.' It was no impalpable apparition that stood in the midst of those who had been the disciples of the crucified Nazarene, and said, 'Peace be unto you'. It was Jesus Himself in all the fulness, in all the reality of His rich, warm personality. The sun shone with fairer light, as the old carol has it, on the morning when Jesus Christ arose. Many philosophers have taught that the soul is immortal; Christians believe in the resurrection of the flesh. Earth and sky seem more real to the sons of the Resurrection. We cannot picture to ourselves the garden of the Holy Sepulchre but as spread with a carpet of living green and decked with the fresh flowers of spring. The Christian falls in love afresh with the beauty of the world, as he is awakened by the joyous pealing of the bells in the dawn of Easter Day. If we meet a young man striding down the valley on his way to the early Communion, we find ourselves rejoicing in the strength of his limbs, in the glory of his manhood, in the dew of his youth, as from the womb of the morning. And the lithe form of a maiden tripping across the fields brings a new sympathy with the poet's fancy when he sings, 'her feet have touched the meadows and left the daisies rosy'. This could never be, unless we felt instinctively that to the Christian the world meant infinitely more than it could ever mean to such as have never found that inexhaustible capacity for pure enjoyment which comes from drinking of the Well of Life. We who have been redeemed at the cost of God's own tears and blood, not from the body, but from the curse which has rested upon it, take our true place in universal nature, and amid the chorus of the birds, the hum of the bees, the sounding waves, the rushing winds, the breath of a living and life-giving earth, know how good it is to be alive as we offer the praise of redeemed lips, the thankful exercise of all our liberated forces to Him Who is the Father of our whole being. II. St. Paul was a much greater Christian than those who came after him, and who emended the grand simplicity of his text until the shadow of that fatal distinction between body and soul, which in the history of the human race has again and again proved either the sanction of a maimed experience or the excuse for sinful indulgence, seems almost to rest upon one of the most magnificent passages in the whole Bible? Do not let us mar the directness of this appeal by imitating the timidity of those later interpreters who read: 'Glorify God in your body and in your spirit'. We do not want to have our life divided up into body and spirit, secular and sacred, weekday and Sunday. The Devil likes to keep us talking about what we ought not to do on Sunday morning, because none knows better than he that our destinies are really determined by what we do on Saturday night. A few reserves which are labelled 'sacred' are the best guarantee that Beelzebub can have for undisturbed possession of the character. 'Give me the body' is the cry of every claimant for the citadel of Mansoul, 'and let who will have the spirit.' Yes! there is but one problem in human life, and that is the problem of the body, the organ through which alone life manifests itself, the home of our activities, the seat of our desires. 'Glorify God in your body' was the straight appeal of one who knew what it was to stand fast in the liberty with which Christ had made him free. 'I beseech you,' he cries, 'by the mercies of God' by the very form, that is, which your redemption has taken, by the manifestation of the Son of God in the likeness of sinful flesh, by the offering, not of the spirit, but of the body of Christ once for all, by the condemnation, the killing, the extermination of sin in the flesh, by the return of the Body which was crucified from the grave by which it could not be holden, and by the quickening of our mortal bodies of which that Resurrection is the pledge 'I beseech you by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice,' a holy offering, to the God Who has redeemed them. That, and that alone, is 'your spiritual service'. J. G. Simpson, The Church Times, 19th May, 1911. References. VI. 20. E. M. Geldart, Echoes of Truth, p. 234. J. B. Lightfoot, Cambridge Sermons, p. 283. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1163. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 29; ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 279; ibid. vol. ix. p. 44. VII. Ibid. vol. i. p. 284. VII. 1 . Ibid. p. 253; ibid. (5th Series), vol. v. p. 142; ibid. vol. vi. p. 73; ibid. (6th Series), vol. i. p. 284. VII. 2. Ibid. vol. x. p. 278. VII. 1-25. Ibid. vol. vii. p. 117. VII. 5. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. i. p. 350; ibid. (5th Series), vol. i. p. 15; ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 372; ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. pp. 20, 23. VII. 6. Ibid. vol. i. p. 373; ibid. vol. iii. p. 277; ibid. vol. i. p. 373. VII. 7, 8. Ibid. vol. v. p. 442. 1 Corinthians 7:10 * ; 1 Corinthians 7:12 * 'He can be nowise considered the disciple of Paul,' says Bacon in the De Augmentis Scientiarum, "who does not sometimes insert in his doctrines, "I, not the Lord," or again, "according to my counsel," which style is generally suited to inferences. Wherefore it appears to me that it would be of especial use and benefit if a temperate and careful treatise were instituted, which, as a kind of Divine logic, should lay down proper precepts touching the use of human reason in theology. For it would act as an opiate, not only to lull to sleep the vanity of curious speculations, wherewith sometimes the schools labour, but also in some degree to assuage the fury of controversies, wherewith the Church is troubled.' Again, in the Advancement of Learning (bk. II. xxv. 7), he observes that men, instead of saying, ego, non dominus , 'are now over-ready to usurp the style, non ego, dominus ; and not only so, but to bind it with the thunder and denunciations of curses and anathemas, to the terror of those which have not sufficiently learned out of Salomon that * the causeless curse shall not come.' * References. VII. 10. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 70; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 403. VII. 12, 25. Ibid. p. 71. VII. 14. Ibid. vol. ix. p. 13. VII. 16. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon Sketches, p. 241. VII. 17. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 405; ibid. (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 299. VII. 19. J. Iverach, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 262. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 307. A. P. Stanley, Canterbury Sermons, p. 222. J. Iverach, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 342. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 92. 1 Corinthians 7:20 I am for permanence in all things, at the earliest possible moment, and to the latest possible. Blessed is he that continueth where he is! Here let us rest and lay out seed-fields; here let us learn to dwell. Here, even here, the orchards that we plant will yield us fruit; the acorns will be wood and pleasant umbrage, if we wait. How much grass everywhere, if we do but wait!... Not a difficulty but can transfigure itself into a triumph; not even a deformity, but, if our own soul have imprinted worth on it, will grow dear to us. Carlyle, Past and Present (II. ch. v.). 'If there's anything our people want convincing of,' says Felix Holt, in chapter forty-five of George Eliot's novel, 'it is, that there's some dignity and happiness for a man other than changing his station.' Reference. VII. 20-24. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 449. 1 Corinthians 7:21 'True it is,' Dr. Arnold wrote in 1840, 'that St Paul, expecting that the world was shortly to end, tells a man not to care even if he were in a state of personal slavery. That is an endurable evil which will shortly cease, not in itself only, but in its consequences. But even for the few years during which he supposed the world would exist, he say, "if thou mayst be made free, use it rather". For true it is that a great part of the virtues of human nature can scarcely be developed in a state of slavery, whether personal or political. The passive virtues may exist, the active ones suffer.' 1 Corinthians 7:24 The worst feature of the rustic mind in our day, is not its ignorance or grossness, but its rebellious discontent.... The bucolic wants to 'better' himself. He is sick of feeding cows and horses; he imagines that, on the pavement of London, he would walk with a manlier tread. George Gissing, Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, p. 201. 'Do not despise your situation,' says Amiel. 'In it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and the infinite. Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident, It is the very place God meant for thee; And shouldst thou there small scope for action see, Do not for this give room to discontent; Nor let the time thou owest to God be spent In idly dreaming how thou mightest be, In what concerns thy spiritual life, more free From outward hindrance or impediment. R. C. Trench. We continually hear it recommended by sagacious people to complaining neighbours (usually less well placed in the world than themselves), that they should 'remain content in the station in which Providence has placed them'. There are perhaps some circumstances of life in which Providence has no intention that people should be content. Nevertheless, the maxim is on the whole a good one; but it is particularly for home use. That your neighbour should, or should not, remain content with his position, is not your business; but it is very much your business to remain content with your own. What is chiefly needed in England at the present day, is to show the quantity of pleasure that may be obtained by a consistent, well-administered competence, modest, confessed, and laborious. We need examples of people who, leaving heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek not greater wealth but simpler pleasure, not higher fortune but deeper felicity. Ruskin, Unto This Last (IV.). References. VII. 22. C. S. Home, Relationships of Life, p. 85. J. Martineau, Endeavours After the Christian Life (2nd Series), p. 58. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 20. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 103. VII. 23. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 11G3 . Expositor (4th Series), vol. viii. p. 273. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 374. Service in a Lowly Sphere 1 Corinthians 7:24 It is not easy to every one to display the virtue of contentment. To be conscious of possessing powers which one never has an opportunity of exercising naturally arouses restlessness or despondency. The position of a slave, for example, in apostolic times must have been galling in the extreme. He might be, and often was, far superior to his owner in capacity and in culture, and yet had nothing he could call his own. But even he was exhorted, as a Christian, to serve the Lord Christ in the position he occupied, and to do so with cheerfulness and goodwill. Instead of struggling for his freedom, and so embittering his own lot, and that of other slaves, by a hopeless servile war, Paul urged that he should remain in the position he occupied when he was called to spiritual freedom. In his letter to the Church at Corinth, addressing slaves as well as citizens, the circumcised and the uncircumcised, Christians married and single, he said, 'Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called'. In other words, whether Christians are engaged in the doing of things great or small, they are to do them contentedly and devoutly, as part of their ministry unto the Lord. All is of His appointment, and all may be for His glory. He is glorified in us whenever and however our characters are developed and ennobled. I. It may be well to confront the temptations which come to those who are only called to the ministry of little things, and to strip off the disguises of those spirits of evil who too often approach us as if they were angels of light. Think of the temptation to indolence which assails a man whose work seems to him hardly worth the doing. Our Lord hinted at this in His well-known parable of the Talents, for it is the servant with only one talent who is represented as hiding it in the earth, instead of employing it for his master. The sin of neglecting one talent lay in the fact that the servant had one talent which he might either neglect or use. Again, there are many who, in a commercial or professional career, are called to a post where drudgery is more obvious than recognition and reward. Unless they are able to accept their work as of God's appointment, and to believe that development of character may be as great a reward as an increase of income, they are likely to regard duty as hardly worth while, and do it carelessly, without heartiness or thoroughness. Thus the ideal becomes insensibly lowered from what it was at first, and the service of earth is no longer such a preparation for the service of heaven as it was meant to be. II. How then can we resist these and other temptations? What encouragements can we think of which may help us to continue steadily and cheerfully in our ministry of little things? (1) We may bethink ourselves of the value of unseen work in spheres outside our own. (2) Think, too, of the effect of obscure and even menial work in preparing men for what is higher. We are all familiar with this in the spheres of human industry, and we have good reason to believe that the principle holds good in every sphere of Divine service; and he that is faithful in a few things will, on account of his fidelity, become a ruler over many things, in a realm unseen and eternal. (3) This reminds us that God Himself notices the ministry which man often shrinks from or despises. (4) We may be helped still further if we reflect that the well-beloved Son, in Whom the Father was well pleased, of His own free will undertook precisely such duties, and thus made them sacred to us who are His followers. Alfred Rowland, The Exchanged Crowns, p. 97. Reference. VII. 24. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 112. 1 Corinthians 7:26 Among the countless problems presented to the mind, there is none more difficult than to distinguish clearly between the will of Providence and the accidents, to be surmounted, of daily life to know when we should submit to circumstances, and when we should rise in rebellion against them. John Oliver Hobbes, in The School for Saints (ch. XXL). More than half a century of existence has taught me that most of the wrong and folly which darken earth is due to those who cannot possess their souls in quiet; that most of the good which saves men from destruction comes of life that is led in thoughtful stillness. George Gissing, in The Private Papers of Harry Ryecroft, pp. 13, 14. 1 Corinthians 7:29 In the fifth chapter of Alton Locke, Kingsley makes Crossthwaite, the sturdy Radical, thank God he has no children, whereupon young Locke asks him in surprise if he is a believer in Malthusian doctrines. 'I believe them,' Crossthwaite answered, 'to be an infernal lie. I believe there is room on English soil for twice the number there is now; and when we get the Charter we'll prove it; we'll show that God meant living human heads and hands to be blessings and not curses, tools and not burdens. But in such times as these, let those who have wives be as though they had none as St. Paul said, when he told his people under the Roman Emperor to be above begetting slaves and martyrs. A man of the people should keep himself as free from encumbrances as he can just now. He will find it all the more easy to dare and suffer for the people when their turn comes.' References. VII. 29. O. Bronson, Sermons, p. 136. J. Edwards, Preacher's Magazine, vol. iv. p. 555. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2861. VII. 29-31. R. W. Church, Village Sermons, p. 305. J. H. Holford, Memorial Sermons, p. 232. J. Cumming, Penny Pulpit, No. 1504, p. 169. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 481. The Brevity of Time 1 Corinthians 7:29-32 The text supplies us with three thoughts for consideration: I. The fact of the constant passing away of time and all created things. II. How the Christian should act in this transitory condition. III. How such action brings blessed calmness in view of the fleeting time. A. Maclaren. Reference. VII. 29, 31, 32. J. Martineau, Endeavours After the Christian Life (2nd Series), p. 89. Algebraic Religion 1 Corinthians 7:30 We are often challenged in Holy Writ to do a little spiritual algebra The great teachers have called in an * x. * Let us see how this works out in various ways. The subject is Algebraic Religion. 'As if,' 'As though'; it is not so, but take it as if it were so. I. Let us look at creation in the light of this suggestion; by creation I mean this great wondrous system of things, even so far as it reveals itself to the naked eye, and let us go through it, or such portion of it as is accessible, as if it had been Divinely made, as if it throbbed with God. We do not say that it does so, but we ask ourselves to believe for the moment that it is so; and then we want to test the ideality by what we know of the fact. We are to assume that God made it all. What is the other idea? The other x is that all came to be nobody knows how. I could believe the first theory sooner. The other lame and blind x is that somehow things atoms, molecules, whatever the little things may be got together, laid their heads together in counsel and finally came out in the shape of a universe. No, I am willing to oblige you, but I cannot; it would relieve me of some difficulty if I could oblige you, if I could say that the whole conception of things is confusion, a harum-scarum without policy, a great, marvellous display of nothingness. But the one man asks me to believe that the universe was made and is administered by a personal, living, loving God; and the other man asks me to believe that the whole thing called the universe is after all nothing at all but just a little film or species of expanded gas or magnified vapour that really means nothing and had no beginning, has no reality, and will have no ending. No! I think I will go to church. Now that you suggest the idea and ask me to look at the universe as if it were the expression of a great personality, I thank you for the idea; it does look as if it might be so; but to suggest that it is the expression of nothing leads me to say that credulity is even greater than faith. II. Let us look at man as if as though he were obeying a Divine impulse. We do not say that he is obeying such an impulse, we are simply saying, Let us look at man in the light of the suggestion that he may be obeying a Divine impulse and working out a Divine purpose. I must say here, as I said a moment ago, that when I take in great breadths of human history it seems as if man, total man, were being machined, administered, and educated, and set to a great purpose by some living, mysterious, inscrutable Personality. What is the other x? The other x is: Man is a mere anecdote, a sort of crude and incoherent fact, generally a nuisance, not knowing whether he came from the east or from the west; a drunken kind of intoxicated and muddled dream of a thing. No; I will not walk one moment in company with that assumption. But when you ask me to look at man in great breadths of development and education and progress, as if he were working out a Divine purpose, you make a strong appeal to my reason. There is order in all the development of life; God is ruling, directing. I might not myself have conceived that notion, but now that you suggest it, it seems to me wonderful that I never thought of it before. That is the way with all great discoveries, with all illuminated sayings and poems. The man who has been most with God speaks sentences that we ourselves would have spoken if they had occurred to us; we know their origin when we hear their music. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. v. p. 88. How to Use the World 1 Corinthians 7:31 If St. Paul can give us guidance as to our relation to the world, it will indeed be opportune, for it is indeed a problem that is continually before us. And here is such guidance 'Use the world, as not abusing it'. Short and pregnant, but somewhat perplexing! It comes at the end of a passage which leads up to this. 'It remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.' It comes, as you see, at the climax, after St. Paul has been discussing various departments of the world; and it is, therefore, a summary of men's attitude to the world as a whole. But that very word 'world' is so perplexing. What is meant? The word has so many uses. Is St. Paul thinking of that lurid world into which Faust went off to drown himself in a great sea of new and wild experiences? Or is he thinking of the world upon which the hermits turned their backs, not willing to touch it at all, but anxious only to escape into a wilderness, and to be far from the clamour of all the world? Or is he thinking of that more ordinary world such as faces you and me day after day, into which we peer with a good deal of uncertainty and perplexity this world which we know we have renounced, and which yet is always close upon us, which presents such vast difficulty in front of us? Well, certainly, 'the world' has many meanings of that sort; ana equally certainly St. Paul is speaking here of the world, not necessarily in the sense of the evil world, but rather, may I not say? of a neutral world. Not the evil world, to which the word is so often applied in Holy Scripture, being that view of the universe which has left God out of account; but a neutral, and as yet ambiguous, world which may become to us that wrong world, if we go on looking upon it as a scheme wherein we may dispense with the thought of God; but may, on the other hand, if we will regard it aright, be to us God's world, indeed, nothing else but the kingdom of heaven. It is that world clearly; for St. Paul says we are to use it. I. Given this world, we are to use it, but to use it as not abusing it; and there is our second difficulty. We are willing enough to do our best to use this world, but it is this limitation upon our use that is perplexing. Let me make to you two suggestions as to what this involves 'using the world as not abusing it, for the fashion of this world passeth away'. It means, then, in the first place, that we enter into the world, for it is the place that we cannot do without. The world is the familiar sphere that we know, and, therefore, our use of it does not involve a change of circumstances. It is not an appeal to us to leave our London and go into a desert if we can find one, or in any form to change our circumstances. What is wanted, if we are to use the world without abusing it, is not a change of position, change of climate, change of scene not a change of circumstances in any shape, but a changed view, a view of the world as God's world. II. Secondly, it involves also in us, not merely a change of view, but an attitude with regard to the world. We must be the conquerors of the world. There is no other alternative open to us. Either I must conquer the world or infallibly the world will conquer me. There is nothing intermediate between the two. And, therefore, if we are to use the world as not abusing it, it must be that we have obtained the position of mastery over it, that we have conquered the world. Unless we have done that, the world is our master; unless we attain that, then every single detail and item in our world has a supremacy over us instead of our having mastery over it: and that whole vast complex world, unless we have conquered it, becomes a conspiracy against us. I cannot use it without misuse unless I have, in some form or another, and somehow in some way, conquered it and made it my weapon, my means, my tool. III. We have got to come back in detail to all those different departments of our world, and there, in the power of the cross, do our bits of renunciation. There are many steps that lead up to the cross of Calvary, and much of the way is uphill, and many steps are blood-stained; it is only by slow degrees and with great difficulty and halting footsteps and failing heart and courage that we can make our way there, or even take the pains the pains! for it is that of conquering the world. But as you do it step by step and day after day a transformation takes place as you know a transformation of yourself and a transformation of your surroundings. Each bit of the renunciation that you make is a victory; each victory that you gain lets you into a larger sphere; each opening out of your sphere sets you in a more glorious fellowship with the Saints. And so as we go on day by day our world expands and victories increase; our knowledge of God is enhanced, our nearness to the Saviour is made more near. We ourselves wake up to find ourselves changed men in a changed universe a universe that is for us no longer a mere conspiracy against us no longer an evil world which we can only renounce, but, thank God, a kingdom of heaven of which, by His grace, we are the inheritors. W. H. Frere, The Church Times, 20th November, 1908. Fashion 1 Corinthians 7:31 We all speak of the tyranny of fashion; and yet we most of us obey it. There are some people who seem to think that in regard to manners as well as habits and usages, all are sufficiently condemned if you call them old-fashioned; all are sufficiently recommended if you can only describe them as being in the very latest fashion, and the point that I want to emphasise is this, that if the Bible counts for anything, and if the Lord Jesus Christ, His character and His teaching, goes for anything, then all standards, all styles, all methods, all usages, be they fashionable or not, have got to be brought to the test of a certain fashion that He set a fashion of thinking, a fashion of living and of attitude towards life, and that by that they shall be justified, or by that they shall be condemned. I. Undue deference to fashion must result in a peril to your sincerity. What I want to urge upon you is this: that for the sake of something which after all is an artificial advantage you are sacrificing the substantial advantages of life. And what does it come to after all? To a matter of pretence, to a matter of hypocrisy, to an attempt to appear to be something that we are not: in point of fact it comes to the sin against which Jesus Christ waged His most ceaseless war, insincerity, hypocrisy, the ugly venomous poisonous fruit of the tree of the idolatry of fashion. If you believe for a single moment that by the use of any form or phrase you are either deceiving yourself, or deceiving another person, it is your bounden duty as a Christian to make yourself more explicit. II. The peril to individuality and personality from the undue deference or idolatry of fashion is a very real peril in our time, and in all times the slave of fashion ceases to be himself or herself, becomes a mere mirror into which you look in order to see the reflection of their times. You look into their lives not to discover their own personal wealth and riches, but in order to see reflected there something which they have mirrored of the world outside. Dare to be yourself. Resolve from the very first that you will not be slaves of any mere shibboleth, any mere formula, any mere usage of society. Think of the one and only Leader who is worthy of our homage, I mean the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it was written in golden words that He was made in fashion as a man, and He made manhood the fashion, so that our late Laureate rose and said about Him, 'The highest holiest manhood Thou'. That is the only fashion worth having. Nothing is ever going to surpass it C. S. Horne, Christian World Pulpit, vol. LXX. p. 273. References. VII. 31. George Adam Smith, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 44. E. A. Askew, The Service of Perfect Freedom, p. 13. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p. 199. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. liii. No. 3032. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 261. VII. 32. J. S. Maver, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 46. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1692. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 372; ibid. vol. iv. p. 398; ibid. vol. vii. p. 372. VII. 33. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 420. 1 Corinthians 7:33 'I'll never marry,' says Felix Holt in George Eliot's novel of that name, 'though I should have to live on raw turnips to subdue my flesh. I'll never look back and say, "I had a fine purpose once I meant to keep my hands clean, and my soul upright, and to look truth in the face; but pray excuse me, I have a wife and children I must lie and simper a little, else they'll starve"; or, "My wife is nice, she must have her bread well buttered, and her feelings will be hurt if she is not thought genteel". That is the lot Miss Esther is preparing for some man or other.' 1 Corinthians 7:34 In the third chapter of Adam Bede, George Eliot makes Seth plead thus with Dinah Morris: 'I know you think a husband 'ud be taking up too much o' your thoughts, because St. Paul says, "She that's married careth for the things of the world how she may please her husband"; and may happen you'll think me overbold to speak to you about it again, after what you told me o' your mind last Saturday. But I've been thinking it over again by night and day, and I've prayed not to be blinded by my own desires, to think what's only good for me must be good for you too, and it seems to me there's more texts for your marrying than ever you can find against it.' References. VII. 34, 35. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 150. VII. 38. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 285. 1 Corinthians 8:1 This was a favourite text of Bacon's. Thus, in Valerius Terminus he observes: 'Evermore it must be remembered that the least part of knowledge passed to man by this so large charter from God must be subject to that use for which God hath granted it; which is the benefit and relief of the state and society of man; for otherwise all manner of knowledge becometh malign and serpentine, and therefore as carrying the quality of the serpent's sting and malice it maketh the mind of man to swell; as the Scripture saith excellently, knowledge floweth up, but charity buildeth up.' A similar application occurs in The Advancement of Learning (I. 3). Curiously enough, F. W. Robertson, in one of his letters, connects this very text with Bacon himself. After quoting it, he remarks: 'Cultivated understanding has no necessary connection with strengthened, much less purified, will, in which moral excellence lies, and in which alone Bacon was The wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind.' Compare Froude's remarks ( Short Studies, IV. pp. 268-269) upon Keble. If he 'had remained a quiet country clergyman, unconscious that he was a groat man, and uncalled on to guide the opinions of his age, he would have commanded perhaps more enduring admiration. The knot of followers who specially attached themselves to him, show traces of his influence in a disposition not only to think the views which they hold sound in themselves, but to regard those who think differently as their intellectual inferiors.' This then is the prima-facie advantage of the pursuit of knowledge; it is the drawing the mind off from things which will harm it to subjects which are worthy a rational being; and, though it does not raise it above nature, nor has any tendency to make us pleasing to our Maker, yet is it nothing to substitute what is in itself harmless for what is, to say the least, inexpressibly dangerous? is it a little thing to exchange a circle of ideas which are certainly sinful, for others which are certainly not so? You will say, perhaps, in the words of the Apostle, 'Knowledge puffeth up': and doubtless this mental cultivation... may be from the first nothing more than the substitution of pride for sensuality. I grant it; but this is not a necessary result, it is but an incidental evil, a danger which may be realised or may be averted. Newman, Idea of a University, p. 186. Thinkers too often are apt to despise those who go through life without thinking. Thought is doubtless of high value; our first endeavour should be to think as often and as well as we can, but nevertheless we are wrong in believing that the possession, or the lack of a certain faculty for handling general ideas can actually separate men. After all, the difference between the greatest thinker and the humblest country yokel is often only the difference between a truth that at times finds expression, and another that never is able to crystallise into form. Maeterlinck. References. VIII. 1. W. Richmond, A Lent in London, p. 41. Archbishop Benson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 136. Archbishop Magee, The Gospel and the Age, p. 241. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 129. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 93. Knowledge and Love 1 Corinthians 8:1-3 Knowledge puffeth up, charity edifieth. Knowledge passeth away, charity abides for ever. Knowledge sees through coloured glass darkly, love sees face to face. Knowledge may be greatest in devils, love makes angels and saints. Knowledge is temporal and earthly, ever changing with the fashions of earth; love is Godlike, heavenly, immortal, enduring like the mercy of the Lord for ever. Thus Paul sings in diverse tones to one clear harp. I. Now, if any other of the Apostles had written in this way about knowledge, men would have been found ready to quote against him the old fable of Æsop about the grapes. Untutored peasants and fishermen lifting up their voices in disparagement of knowledge would have furnished the intellectual scorner with a convenient sarcasm. Ah, yes, these men were ignorant. Singularly enough, however, it is St. Paul, the one learned man in the apostolic band, who talks in this way. II. Knowledge puffeth up. Yes, from the raw schoolgirl to the man of greatest literary attainments, this is the effect of knowledge when it is found without the warm and generous and tender emotions of the heart Oh, how well did Paul express the jaunty airs and supercilious pride of loveless and unsanctified knowledge when he wrote these words, 'Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth'. III. We are always boasting that knowledge is power, that knowledge has enriched the world, that knowledge has done wonderful things for humanity. It is the idlest of delusions. Knowledge by itself has done very little. Heart rather than head has given to humanity its noble inheritance; love rather than knowledge. IV. And who are doing the best work in the world now its purifying, saving, uplifting work? Not the men who call themselves the cultured class. It is love, not knowledge, that generates all the power of sweet activities. It is to the pure, gentle, tender heart that God tells His secrets. And the loving heart, too, understands the mystery of sorrow and pain as the head does not and never can. The loving heart always knows what knowledge cannot tell it, that though the winter be here and the chill frosts of sorrow, yet behind the hills not far off are the flowers and fruits of an everlasting summer, and the sunny atmosphere of a love that can never die. J. G. Greenhough, The Cross in Modern Life, p. 31. References. VIII. 1-9. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 65. VIII. 1-13. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 374. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 125. VIII. 2. W. M. Sinclair, Christ and our Times, p. 63. T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p. 204. VIII. 2, 3. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 157. VIII. 4-6. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 39. VIII. 5. J. B. Lightfoot, Cambridge Sermons, p. 80. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 227. VIII. 6. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 65; ibid. vol. x. p. 40; ibid. (5th Series), vol. x. p. 425; ibid. (6th Series), p. 368. VIII. 9-13. W. H. Parr, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 344. VIII. 10. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 431; ibid. vol. iii. p. 99. VIII. 11. W. C. E. Newbolt, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 13. 1 Corinthians 8:13 All other requisites are unimportant compared with this primary requisite, that each shall so live as neither to burden his fellows nor injure his fellows. Spencer, Sociology (ch. xiv.). References. VIII. 13. Asa Mahan, Penny Pulpit, No. 1487, p. 33. VIII. 29. J. Keble, Sermons for Easter to Ascension Day, p. 251. IX. 1. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 345; ibid. (7th Series), vol. v. p. 146. IX. 1-6. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 269. IX. 5. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. v. p. 413; ibid. vol. vi. p. 223; ibid. vol. viii. p. 74; ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. pp. 20, 40, 181. IX. 7, 11, 13, 14. W. M. Sinclair, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 172. IX. 9. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 213. IX. 10. G. L. Richardson, Sermons for Harvest, p. 40. IX. 11. Expositor (5th Series), vol. x. p. 196. IX. 14. F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 356. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 389; ibid. vol. xi. p. 45. 1 Corinthians 9:15 You find these heroic words in 1 Corinthians 9:15 . I purposely cut the text short here, and leave every man to fill up the concluding sentence for himself. Paul tells us the reason, but Paul's reason may not be ours. We have a great principle laid down here, and it is for each man in his own sphere and in his own way to apply that principle. I want every man who is here to take this as a motto, a living principle, a perpetual rule of life. 'It were better for me to die than that,' and let 'that' express every man's peculiar conviction and standard of integrity. Paul said, 'It were better for me to die than that any man should make my glorying void'. Then there are circumstances in which death is the preferable alternative. What are those circumstances? They must be very peculiar and very urgent. Yet here is the great principle laid down by the greatest man that ever lived as a servant of Jesus Christ, and that principle is that death is preferable to something else. 'It were better for me to die.' I wonder what the Apostle's point of glorying is. Well, he said, 'If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing that we shall reap your carnal things?' If we have given you ideas, is it a great thing that you should clothe us and feed us and give us a pillow to rest our aching head upon? Nevertheless we have not used this power but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the Gospel of Christ. We are perfectly well aware that we have a right to this compensation; the Lord hath ordained that they who preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel. I know that I do not modify my right or claim, but I use none of these things. I would not be a burden to any man. This is my glorying, that I have done all this for nothing, and so much do I glory in it according to the measure of the grace of Christ, that it were better for me to die than that I should lose my glorying. What we have to do with today is the principle or doctrine that there are circumstances in life in which death is the preferable alternative. It would be difficult for me to get a hearer, I should almost have to beg for people to listen to me, if I preached this most monstrous doctrine that it is better to die than to do some things. The City says, No; let us fight now and conquer the god of this world in the spirit of the next. I. It is better for me to die than to break my word That is right. Does some man say that? He is a wise man and a hero. Why, certainly your word is yourself. That is the great doctrine of the Gospel, nobody believes it. But Jesus said, 'Let your yea be yea and your nay nay; whatsoever more cometh cometh of evil'. That one text would, if received with the heart and applied all day long, make a new world. Let your yea be yea and your nay let it be nay. That one little line would convert the world. The whole Gospel is in that one expression the evangelical Gospel, all the blood which makes it evangelical, all the fire which makes it Divine. It were better for me to die than to break my word. I promised a dying friend that I would look after the boys, and he died in comfort when he received that assurance. II. It were better for me to die than to deny the omnipotence of my Lord's grace. He said, 'My grace is sufficient for thee'. He said, 'I will be with thee in six troubles, and in seven I will not forsake thee'. Have I magnified this, and do men say, pointing to me, Behold what God's grace can do for the poorest creature? Or have I murmured and repined? have I rubbed off my baptismal seal, and am I now a Church-going Psalm-singing atheist? Oh, it were better for me to die. III. 'It were better for Abraham to have died than to have told the king a lie.' He should have said, 'Yes, she is my wife'. 'But the king might have lifted a long sharp knife and taken my poor life away.' Well, it were better for you to have died than to have told that lie. But if so, who can live? Very few, but that is of no consequence. It is not necessary for any man to live, but it is necessary to have every man to tell the truth. Ah me! what wonder if the Church is empty and her altars are forsaken by all but the giddy and the vain and the frivolous, who think that by dressing they can accomplish the will of God? It were better that David should have died than that he had put Uriah in the forefront and heat of the battle. Suppose he had died, he would have been a hero, one of God's heroes; he would have magnified God's grace, he would have illustrated the greatness of the Christian call, he would have been received up into heaven. But he did put the man in the front of the battle. In a sense he won; in God's own sense, he lost. What have ye done? Let that question be a sharp two-edged sword, though it cut the preacher in pieces and turn him into shed blood. What is this but saying in another form, 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' It were better for him to die than that he should give his soul in exchange for the whole world, for all the worlds. That is the grand Christian doctrine, that is the tonic thought of the New Testament. We want enthusiasm for our faith, our love, our God, and Saviour Jesus Christ. Joseph Parker The Gospel of Christ As an Obligation 1 Corinthians 9:16 St. Paul often insists upon the fact that his main duty in life was to make known the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To save the souls of men was the one passion of his life. The obligation to preach the Gospel, and so to spread the kingdom, was enforced on Paul by several considerations, and as those ought to have weight with us also, I ask you to think of them. I. This Divine impulse of his was partly due to the fact of his own redemption. You know how often reference is made in the New Testament to the sacrifice of Christ as the means of redemption, purchasing us, as it were, and giving God a new claim on our obedience. Thus Peter says: 'Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ'. Here lies a main distinction between the Christian and the unchristian man. The Bible proclaims that God is Lord over us; and this not merely because He has made us for Himself, enduing us, as our Creator, with powers and possibilities we could never have acquired, and crowning us with His lovingkindness, but because when we had ignored this and gone astray like lost sheep, He in the person of His Son came to redeem us again to Himself. This should strengthen His claim indefinitely for service and inward devotion. II. But, besides the fact of his redemption, Paul was always conscious of his position as a steward, holding in trust for another what he possessed and controlled. This is exactly in accordance with the teaching of our Lord, who, in His parables, often alludes to us as having been put in trust by an unseen Master who will at last demand of us an account of our stewardship. If that view be taken by us, it will no longer seem a hardship to give to His cause, or to spend our best energies in helping on His work. III. Finally, a sense of gratitude for the mercies received in and through Christ was an element in the constraining force to which Paul alludes. Now the secret of our difficulties in regard to home and foreign missions lies just here. We ourselves do not realise the blessings of the Gospel sufficiently to fill us with an enthusiastic desire to enrich the world with them. The kingdom of Christ must be intensified in our own hearts before it can be extended among the heathen here and elsewhere. We want also to Know more of the power of the Gospel in our own land in saving men from their sins and delivering us from the scandals which come from the unrighteousness and the unloveliness of those who profess to represent our Lord. A. Rowland, Open Windows and other Sermons, p. 116. 1 Corinthians 9:16 Describing the prostration into which grief for his wife's death plunged Dr. Donne, Izaak Walton observes that, with sighs and cries, 'he ended the restless night and began the weary day in lamentation, and thus he continued, till a consideration of his new engagement to God, and St. Paul's "woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel," dispersed those sad clouds that had thus blighted his hopes, and now forced him to behold the light'. References. IX. 16. E. A. Askew, The Service of Perfect Freedom, p. 197. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i. No. 34. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 44. IX. 16, 17. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 131. IX. 16, 26 and 27. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 177. IX. 17. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 207. IX. 19-21. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 235. IX. 19-23. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 142. IX. 20. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 114. IX. 20, 21. Ibid. vol. vii. p. 138. IX. 20-22. J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 280. H. S. Holland, ibid. p. 65. IX. 21. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 347. 1 Corinthians 9:22 We have the old disciplina arcani among us in as full force as in the primitive Church, but with an all-important difference. The Christian Fathers practised reserve for the sake of leading the acolyte the more surely to the fulness of truth. The modern economiser keeps back his opinions, or dissembles the grounds of them, for the sake of leaving his neighbours the more at their ease in the peaceful sloughs of prejudice and superstition and low ideals. We quote St. Paul when he talked of making himself all things to all men, and of becoming to the Jews a Jew, and as without the Law to the heathen. But then we do so with a view to justifying ourselves for leaving the Jew to remain a Jew, and the heathen to remain heathen. John Morley, Compromise (ch. III.). 'The general spirit of Doddridge's advice,' says Sir Leslie Stephen ( English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ch. 11. p. 387), 'was that the dissenting minister should try to please everybody. Doddridge wished the minister to become "all things to all men". That was rather too markedly the leading principle of his own life. The eminent dissenter was on friendly terms with the established clergy, and corresponded with bishops; he had relations with Wesley and the Methodists; he was a spiritual adviser of Lyttelton, and of the converted rake, Colonel Gardiner. His life was honourable, independent and laborious; but we may perhaps surmise, without injustice to a good man, that his emotions were rather facile, and that his temptation was to err on the side of complacency. There is a want in his writings of that piousness which is produced by the bracing air of more vigorous times; they show a tendency to flabbiness, and the enthusiasm has a hollow ring.' He prided himself upon his capacity for becoming all things to all men; but when he applied this maxim to his intercourse with the great, it always resulted in his becoming nothing but a flatterer or an obsequious adviser.... His employers never had any difficulty with him; they let him know their mind, and he went their way. E. A. Abbott, Francis Bacon, pp. 327-328. Even if Bacon had had the insight of a prophet, he could have done nothing with so pliant and self-seeking a nature. He wanted not only strength of convictions, but pertinacity in maintaining and imparting them. Like St. Paul if he could be all things to all men; but he had not the Pauline art of being instant in season and out of season for any policy except that which would commend him to the king. E. A. Abbott, Francis Bacon, p. 151. References. IX. 22. H. Arnold Thomas, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 308. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints' Days, p. 100. C. Perren, Revival Sermons in Outline, p. 317. H. P. Liddon, Sermons Preached on Special Occasions, p. 26. J. T. Bramston, Fratribus, p. 34. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1170, and vol. xxv. No. 1507. J. G. Greenhough, The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, p. 156. Advice to Young Athletes 1 Corinthians 9:24 I. Always play the game. II. Learn to lose sometimes and yet keep your temper. III. Let England attend to the weak and train them gently and carefully, and not devote all her attention to the mighty and the strong. May I also remind you that there is a race for which you were entered at your baptism, that there is training provided for you, that you may 'run well,' that a reward is offered, an incorruptible crown, and that Jesus Christ, who called upon you to enrol yourself, is Himself the judge. C. H. Grundy, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xv. p. 672. References. IX. 24. R. W. Church, Village Sermons, p. 195. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon Sketches (2nd Series), p. 102. J. M. Neale, Sermons for Some Feast Days in the Christian Year, p. 36. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 198. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 146. How the Prize Was Won At an Old Athletic Festival 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 Time has washed out much of the vivid colouring which these words had for those who first read them. The language and metaphors are borrowed from those ancient athletic festivals which date back from before the dawn of history, and which were counted among the chief glories of the Grecian people. The influence on Paul's thought of these great national gatherings is evident from all his writings. In the Epistle from which my text is taken, Paul is writing to Christians. They might be living amongst men who cared for nothing better than the poor perishing pine-wreaths of time, but their eyes were fixed upon 'the crown of glory which fadeth not away. That was their faith; then says Paul, Live up to it. I. But I must begin with a question, Is that true of us which Paul assumed to be true of these Corinthian Christians? The question is vital. Just as the racer must know where the goal lies, so we must settle the question, What I am going to live for? Is it for the things that will last, or for the things that will wither and die? The perishable pine-wreath or the unfading crown? Which? II. Note, further, that if the true end of life is to be attained, it must be kept before us by a distinct effort of the mind. 'I so run,' said Paul, 'as not uncertainly.' Have you 'chosen your path Path to a clear-purposed goal, Path of advance?' For without that 'clear-purposed goal' life will end in failure. III. But again to return to the metaphor of my text it is not enough even to keep the goal in view. To reach it there must be effort intense and prolonged, up to the very edge of our powers of endurance. If it is worth while to take pains to win a race, is it not to work out our own salvation? What makes your Samuel Budgetts, your 'successful merchants'? Tireless patience, unending toil; and do you think if getting 'on' is difficult, getting 'up' is easy? Like the racer that 'receiveth the prize,' so must we run if we would attain. IV. Notice, in the last place, that 'every man that striveth in the games is temperate in all things'. Let no one mistake: this is no defence of asceticism as an end in itself, and for its own sake. It is only the affirmation of the great and true principle, that the lower must give way to the higher, wherever the two clash. 'If we would run well, we must run light. Does anybody tell me I have forgotten the central truth of the Gospel? that I have been speaking of what man has to do for himself, and have said nothing of what God has done for him? There is no salvation by struggle, and there is none without it. Effort alone is vain, faith alone is equally vain. G. Jackson, First Things First, p. 115. Reference. IX. 24-27. G. Reith, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 52. 1 Corinthians 9:25 'The question still recurs,' says Pater, in his Plato and Platonism (p. 233), when discussing the aims of Spartan education, ' To what purpose? Why, with no prospect of Israel's reward, are you as scrupulous, minute, and self-taxing, as he? A tincture of asceticism in the Lacedaemonian rule may remind us again of the monasticism of the Middle Ages. But then, monastic severity was for the purging of a troubled conscience, or for the hope of an immense prize, neither of which conditions is to be supposed here. In fact the surprise of St. Paul, as a practical man, at the slightness of the reward for which a Greek spent himself, natural as it is about pagan perfection, is especially applicable about these Lacedaemonians, who indeed had actually invented that so "corruptible" and essentially worthless parsley crown in place of the more tangible prizes of an earlier age. Strange people! Where, precisely, may be the spring of action in you, who are so serene to yourselves?' References. IX. 25. S. Gregory, How to Steer a Ship, p. 136. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 202. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 153. The Race and the Fight 1 Corinthians 9:26 We have here two topics first, the danger of running vaguely; and, secondly, of fighting ineffectively. I. I so run, St. Paul says, as not vaguely. There is a danger, then, of running vaguely; and there are two modes of this error. (1) We may fail to keep the goal in view. The Christian life is a precarious thing in each one of us on many accounts, especially because we are so apt to lose sight of our goal. If we do this we must run at hazard or go wrong. I greatly fear that many have (a) no definite goal at all. Every one, when asked, hopes to reach heaven. But what is heaven? And what is reaching it? Many of us have no real, no adequate notion, of heaven. A safe place, a place of rest, a place of meeting, a place of calm, a place where sorrow, and crying, and pain, and change will be no more. These are our more thoughtful ideas of heaven. I believe they are all true, but I am quite sure they do not make up, they scarcely touch, St. Paul's idea, for they are heaven without its foundation, heaven without its sun. St. Paul's heaven was briefly defined where Christ is: 'I have a desire to depart, and to be with Christ'. It is impossible that we should desire this sort of heaven unless we know much of Christ here below. Many do without Him here; they set Him aside in their daily life. Such cannot have the world or the eternity where Christ is, except in a very feeble sense, for their desire, their goal. But even those who know Christ may run vaguely in the same sense. They often (6) lose sight of the goal. Which of us keeps the goal always in view? Be not hasty to answer. Think what it implies. How unworldly, how heavenly-minded, how charitable, unselfish, and pure that man must be who is running thus, with his goal full in view, and that goal a right one! (2) We may run vaguely by failing to keep within the course. There were very strict rules on this point in the Grecian games every part was rigidly marked out; the course must be all fairly traversed; and there were perils awaiting the unskilful charioteer who took either a too circuitous or a too abrupt sweep at the turning-point. And a Christian in the spiritual race has not only to keep the goal in view, but he has also all along to keep within the course; and that means he must live exactly by Christ's rules throughout his life on earth. II. There is a second danger that of fighting ineffectively. 'So fight I, as not beating the air.' This was an allusion to blows that fell short of the adversary by misdirection or by skilful evasion. Now we may beat the air in like manner that is, fight ineffectively in either of two ways: (1) We may mistake our real enemy. We may direct our attacks upon a wrong point. We have an enemy, but we do not always know who that enemy is. For example, there are those who are spending much of their strength upon what they deem errors of opinion. It is the duty, indeed, of Christian teachers to see that the truths of Revelation and the doctrines of the Gospel are carefully set forth, lest they mar the beauty of 'the faith once delivered to the saints'. But how different is all this from the practice of those who make men offenders for a word; of hearers who sit in judgment on their teachers; of those who fasten on slips of expression, often arising out of candour or fervour! This is a mistaking of our adversary. (2) We may mistake our adversary by a very common want of self-knowledge. We all take it for granted that we know our own faults. Where there is a very strong besetting sin in any of us, no doubt this is so; but where the life has been more carefully regulated, and kept pure from gross stain, and the supremacy of conscience obeyed, it often happens that there is an almost entire ignorance of faults of spirit and temper patent to others. How often has some particular virtue been magnified into the whole of duty, such as, e.g., the virtue of temperance or of purity, which has rendered us blind to other faults! (3) We may 'beat the air' not by fighting with the wrong foe only, but by fighting with the real foe wrongly. Which of us has not done this? Which of us has not regretted, resolved, yes, and prayed against, his besetting sin, and yet fallen again before it when it has assailed him? This is sad indeed, and discouraging. We ought to have strength, considering the motive given us in Christ's death and the promised help of His Holy Spirit. It is all for want of faith, for want of accepting what is offered, for want of believing that there is a Holy Spirit given to all for the asking. If we did believe, we should use it; but for want of faith we fall, even when experience of, and sorrow for, and resolve against, sin, and even prayer for victory, has not been wholly wanting. C. J. Vaughan. A Castaway 1 Corinthians 9:27 Paul was too eager and too practical a man to dally with a bogy dread. After he had founded so many churches, written so many Epistles, and exercised so widespread an influence, in his quiet moments he was perpetually face to face with this awful nightmare, that the day might come when he would be a castaway; and the thought drove him almost to madness. Have you ever feared this? I am not sure that a man ever reaches his highest development without something of the element of fear. I. Reverently, humbly, but most searchingly, I ask you whether it may not be possible that at this very moment you are already a castaway. 'A castaway' in what sense? You must know that Paul lived to save men. It was the passion of his life; but he feared that unless he took good care, the hour might come in his life when Christ would say: 'Thou hast served Me well, but thou shalt serve Me no more. Of late thou hast become indolent, and choked with pride, and I have not secured thy whole obedience. I am now compelled to call upon some soul more alert, more obedient than thee; and that man I will use to do the work that thou mightest have done, but which thou didst fail to accomplish.' II. Look for a moment upon the pages of Scripture, and see how they are littered with castaways! Let us then understand why men are cast away. (1) I take the first case, that of Esau. Is there not here some Christian, who in the past has had some steaming mess of pottage appealing to the senses? (2) I turn the page of Scripture, and come to the first King of Israel, Saul. A noble man in many respects, he was sent by God to fulfil His mission, but he put a reserve upon his obedience, and told Samuel: 'Blessed be thou of the Lord! I have performed the commandment of the Lord.' The old prophet at that moment detected the lowing of the herd and the bleating of the flock, and said very significantly: 'Performed the commandment of the Lord! What means then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?' I am not here to denounce special forms of sin. It is for you to determine if under the profession of obedience there are some flocks and herds that you are reserving for yourselves. Saul professed obedience, but kept back something for himself, and God rejected him. III. This is very stern work. We must begin at the bottom; we must begin at the root of our self-confidence. The prime cause of all failure in private life as well as in public ministry is the assertion of self. F. B. Meyer, The Soul's Ascent, p. 3. References. IX. 27. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 526. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons (2nd Series), p. 99. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p. 15. S. M. Taylor, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xv. p. 152. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 196; ibid. (6th Series), vol. xii. p. 192. IX. 28. Ibid. vol. ii. p. 376. X. 1, 2. J. Keble, Village Sermons on the Baptismal Service, p. 65. X. 1-4. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 99. X. 1-11. Ibid. vol. i. p. 214. X. 2. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 398; ibid. (6th Series), vol. v. p. 48; ibid. vol. vi. p. 252. 1 Corinthians 10:2 'They were all baptised in the cloud and in the sea'; this is the register of all Christ's chosen ones.... It needs but a little consideration to perceive that devotion, self-sacrifice, all the higher moods and energies, even of natural feeling, are only possible to seasons of adversity. Dora Greenwell, in The Patience of Hope, p. 19 f. Biblical Rocks 1 Corinthians 10:4 The people who are referred to in this argument of the Apostle's in the tenth chapter of First Corinthians did not know what was following them. Who knows what is following him? Who can draw a true picture of his own shadow? Who can talk to the shadow which he himself throws upon the ground in the sunlight? We may in a certain limited sense be men of intelligence, and we may have reserved for our own special use divers eulogistic and comforting terms; but herein we may have been acting foolishly. Who knows the ghost that is behind him? Who can interpret the spirits that are singing above him? We cannot tell anything as it really is; we make guesses, some of the guesses are clever and almost original, and give us a kind of fading fame in the esteem of our contemporaries; but if we come to central and essential matters, we must be taught, first of all, that we know nothing of the mystery of things, except as that mystery may be revealed to us by the superlative mystery known and no other name will fit the personality as the Holy Ghost. We are told by some persons that we ought not to read meanings into the Divine Word; I always retort, 'And we must be equally careful not to read meanings out of it'. Our fathers did not know what that Rock meant; not for hundreds of years was the world to know why the rock moved and the name of the rock and the purpose of the moving. We must for some meanings wait until the centuries have whispered the secret in the ear of our broken heart. If our fathers did not know the name of the Rock, the personality, so to say, of the Rock, so it is with us in many providences, in many deaths, in many cold, deep, cruel, keyless graves. Some day when the century has struck the right hour we shall know names and secrets and meanings which today simply constitute an impenetrable and lowering cloud, darkening the path along which our soul-life reluctantly moves. I. In Exodus 17:6 : 'Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink'. It was a disastrous case; all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, and the people did chide with Moses, saying, Give us water, that we may drink. The reason you and I do not possess the water we really need and thirst for is that we think that we can find a well somewhere ourselves; the Lord says, Let it be so; go forth and find it. Not until we come back, with our self-conceit burned out of us, and with a tongue that can say nothing but Lord, save me! do we find the Horeb we need, the Rock that has in it fountains of unsuspected water. II. And this case is not solitary. If we read Exodus 33:21 , we shall come upon the same thought: 'Behold, there is a place for me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock'. What is the meaning of that rock? The meaning is, outside sanctuaries, socalled unconsecrated sanctuaries. Thou dost desire a vision which may not be granted unto mortal eyes in a mortal state; not until corruption has put on incorruption can thy prayer be answered: meanwhile make the rock a standing-place, stand there, wait there, and look, and behold My glory thou shalt not see, but My goodness, the hinder parts, the back of the glowing garment, not glory now, but goodness, and goodness as a pledge of glory. That is how it stands. We want to see the glory now, and we cannot do it; we want to be perfect now, and we cannot be perfect now; but we can struggle towards perfectness, we can cry out with a strong voice, and say, Lord, show me Thy glory! and if we only get goodness instead of glory, that is enough. Aim high. III. In Numbers 24:21 we read, 'Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock'. Secure refuges; it is not enough to have the nest, we must have the rock to put it in. There are some people that have a great nest, but they put it in the wrong bank, they put their gold in bad hands, and they never can find the gold any more. By nest, mean life, home, purpose, policy, fortune, whatever it may be that constitutes the true wealth of the soul; it is not enough to have it, thou must put thy nest in a rock. Not a strong rock only, but a high rock, right away so that the clouds are beneath it, and the stars all but stumble against it; a great strong rock. IV. The Psalmist says, in Psalm XXVII., 'He shall set me up upon a rock'. The Psalmist had had a hard time of it, and then a joyous time. He spoke about the times of trouble, and he spoke about the time of destruction and his enemies, and he saw them in imagination all round about him; and then he said, in the midst of the whole survey, 'He shall set me up upon a rock'. Final triumphs, final deliverances. This is what it must come to in the end. Once, when Jesus Christ wanted to put His case with the greatest possible effect, He went back, as it were, to Exodus and Deuteronomy, to Numbers and the Psalms, where we have been this morning, and He said, 'Whosoever heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock'. I think we might translate the passage, His house upon the Rock. Was not the dear Saviour talking about Himself when He was talking about the Rock? Is there any other Rock but Christ? All else is sand. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. VII. p. 251. References. X. 4. Basil Wilberforce, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 113. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 421; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 412. X. 6. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. i. p. 8. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 382. X. 9. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 373. History in Perspective 1 Corinthians 10:11 St. Paul is here looking back over the long line of Hebrew history from the vantage-ground of the Cross. He knew it well, and was saturated with it, like so many other people, but formed his own opinions of it, and had been ready to hold to his estimate with a murderous tenacity which would make short work of opponents. He was at the same time no ignorant follower of the blindest Rabbinical tradition. And as he looks back over the chequered history of his race, he sees the hand of Christ in it all. I. It is a Useful Thing for us to View History in Perspective from time to time; to look back and see how things which bulked so largely at the moment as to dwarf all else, and to shut out the true bearing of events upon our lives, take their places quite naturally in an ordered sequence tending to a due development. It is so when we find ourselves toiling along a dark road in some of those sunless days of disappointment which await us all. St. Paul himself was no stranger to the chilling influences of such times. We find him again and again moved to anger, to reproach, to scorn, to sorrow, to anything short of despair, by the broken road which, again here and there checks the progress of him who would prepare the way of Christ. In our own life, how sad it is to see around us the shattered ideals which strew the desert of unfulfilled hopes! We escaped the perils of fleshly Egypt. We have been sacramentally fed and nourished, but the Promised Land seems far off, and we are perplexed with the very monotony of our failures as we stumble on in the desert. When we doubt whether we are moving, when we seem to be slowly turning back on our own footsteps, look back and see look across life and bring it into true perspective, and you will see by what you have passed on the march that there is some progress, and that even your falls may be written down under the head of experience. II. We Must Never Despair. There is one thing which the Apostle saw clearly, and we also may see in our retrospect how much the purpose of God has been shaped by human sin. The passage to the Promised Land was not designed by God to be the gloomy thing it eventually proved to be. God's mercy prevented, that is went before, His people with a prospect of blessing, but it had also to follow them in order to adapt their life by correction and discipline to the alteration caused by their mistakes. As the Apostle looks back, what does he see as the main cause of the dark patch of failure which lies across the line of progress in which God still hastens to fulfil His promise? It is wilfulness, nothing else wilfulness in one form or another: the wilfulness of those who find their human passions and desires too much for them. Directly an appetite is followed for its own sake apart from the purpose for which God implanted it, then there is confusion. The Promised Land is lost sight of; the desert is a desert to wander in, not a road to be passed, and here it is that the danger begins, and degradation speedily follows. Yet we know we are free. III. Why do we go back to the Records of Rebellious Israel? Here we have the reason. The Apostle tells us how to read these and how to read the records of all other Scripture given us by the inspiration of God. It is that we may find in them recorded on a large scale the history of our own dangers, and the remedy which God provides against them, that in learning to look back over life as a whole we may be less tempted by its dark hours, and may contemplate the resource of God in the face of man's wilfulness, and through patience and comfort of the Scriptures have hope. References. X. 11. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 21. Bishop Alexander, Verbum Crucis, p. 145. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 134. The Weakness of Strength 1 Corinthians 10:12 Take care of your strong points. I want to speak about the weakness of strength. It is customary to say that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. It is quite right to direct our attention along that line, but there is another and completing line. Distrust yourselves when you are most conscious of your strength. Do not make too much an exhibition of your wonderful side; be very careful about your specialties; set a double watch over the pen of your pet graces; they may ruin you, they have ruined many: be self-distrustful, and in God's strength be self-confident Paul speaks of the enabling Christ; the Christ that gives ability, and more ability, and still more ability as the days come and go until those who live nearest to Him cry by the end of the week, I can do all things through the Christ that enables me. We say in our English Version, 'Christ which strengtheneth me'; I like the other word, enableth me feeds my ability, recruits my strength, waters the flower of my spiritual beauty, and sends all needful things to the oak of my power. I. Let us see if we cannot establish the strange proposition that many men not all but many men have failed at the point of their supposed strength and fancied security. (1) You say that Moses was a man meek above all the men that dwelt on the face of the earth. It was just at the point of meekness that he became red-hot angry the angriest man that the rocks of Sinai ever saw, and the angriest man that the rocks in the wilderness ever felt, for he lashed them as if, by some mighty thong, he could lacerate their backs and humble them to his will. Which is Moses the meek man, so meek, so humble, so retiring; or the Moses that lifts up his arms and dashes the tables of stone to the earth, and that smites the rock, and calls in anger, as it were, for water? Whereas nature is not to be so solicited, but quite in another way, gentler, stiller, a way wholly sweeter and more obedient to the soft music of nature. You and I may fail at our meekness. (2) How would you describe Abraham? 'The father of the faithful.' Is that his special grace? Probably so; he is called the father of the faithful, he is honoured for his faith; the word 'believed' occurs first in biblical history in connection with the name of Abraham; surely, therefore, there can be no stretch of imagination in saying that faith was Abraham's supreme virtue or grace. Well, it was just at that point that he told lies, and distrusted God, and turned his back upon the starry heavens that were meant to be an omen to him and to his seed for ever. He concocted lies, he turned his wife into his sister that he might escape a possible danger he who held the charter of the stars and could read them into the history of his race, he indirectly, if not directly, told lies to a poor pagan hound that rebuked him for being false to his own faith and tradition. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed at his strongest point. He may fall from the topmost pinnacle. He that is low need fear no fall, but what about him who touches the pinnacle-top gleaming in the sun? Lucifer, son of the morning none fell so low as Lucifer, for none was ever quite so high. (3) How would you describe Solomon? You would say that Solomon was noted for wisdom. That is so; 'As wise as Solomon' has become almost a proverbial expression. He had wisdom and understanding above all men upon the face of the earth. And what did he die of? Folly! Well for him if he had died when he had a renown for wisdom. (4) We have heard of the patience of Job, brethren, and yet when patience does give way what can be so petulant? When the motion is in the other direction, self-accelerating every moment, who can stop the rushing wheels? Job was patient, his patience is historical; but he was the most impatient man in the world. II. Take care of yourselves! is a voice that comes to us from all history, when you suppose you are strongest; let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall; if any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing as it ought to be known. Oh for the larger love, the diviner pity, that takes in all souls. Better be deceived than rot away in some malignant and ungenerous suspicion of others. I have to keep under, in the grace and love of Christ, my own soul, and not to set up myself as a judge concerning other souls more than I can possibly help. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. IV. p. 31. References. X. 12. J. T. Bramston, Fratribus, p. 18. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays After Trinity, pt. i. pp. 293 and 303. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i. No. 22. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 105. 1 Corinthians 10:12 While there is life there is hope and there is fear. The most inveterate habits of vice still leave a power of self-recovery in the man, if he will but exert it; the most confirmed habits of virtue still leave the liability to a fall. Mozley, Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, p. 247. Temptation 1 Corinthians 10:13 I. None of our temptations exceed our powers of endurance. This does not imply that we shall always overcome whenever we are tempted, but it does imply that we always may. In other words, it conveys the assurance that we shall never be placed where to sin will be a necessary or inevitable thing. God will so adjust our surroundings that we shall always be able to serve Him and do what is right in spite of all inducements to deny Him and do what is wrong. Not that it will ever cease to be an arduous thing to live as He would have us, or that temptation will be otherwise than a dangerous foe. But further, there will not only be hindrances without the Church, stubborn and unyielding enough if we be thoroughly in earnest, but there will also be obstacles within. The dust of conflict will never be laid. Checks and harassments will never disappear. But even where these abound the most, and do their best to overbear us, they shall never acquire such obstructive strength as to make it impossible to advance beyond them, and even by means of them, to better things. II. The second ground of support furnished by my text is, that with every temptation God will also make a way of escape that we may be able to bear it This is but an application of the general law that Christ's grace is sufficient for us, and covers the whole extent of our need. You will observe that He is said here to make the temptation as well as the way of escape. Nor is this withont a purpose. He knows precisely the strength we need, because He has prepared the occasion on which we shall be called to use it. But how is it he makes a way of escape? He does not withdraw His temptation, or divest it of its force. For this would be to defeat the very purpose for which He has sent it. And this purpose is to develop by exercise the strength we possess, and train it into greater maturity, patience, and self-restraint. III. We come now to the third ground of encouragement on which both the others rest. God is faithful. Therefore it follows that He not only controls the strength of temptation, but will also make us equal to the effort of sustaining it. (1) He cannot be true to His purpose of grace, and yet allow us to be overcome by the sheer weight and pressure of evil without a possibility of escape. (2) But not only would it be inconsistent with His purpose of grace were God to suffer overwhelming evil to assail us; it would also place Him in contradiction to Himself. And this cannot be. Let us, therefore, be of good courage. C. Moinet, The Great Alternative and other Sermons, p. 105. Temptation 1 Corinthians 10:13 There are two factors in every temptation, the sinful heart within, the evil world without, and they stand to one another much in the relation of the powder-magazine and the lighted match. Temptation originates in the heart, says James, and that is absolutely true. The heart is the powder-magazine. But for the lusts raging there, the allurements of the world would be absolutely powerless for harm. Temptation comes from the sinful world, says Paul; that is also true. I. Occasion to be Avoided. In face of the danger arising from temptation, what are we to do? First of all, and for this we have our Lord's authority and warrant, * we must avoid all possible occasion of temptation. * We want above everything else a baptism of 'godly fear'. We want courage enough to be able to say, when invited to do this or that, 'I cannot I am afraid'. Mr. Fearing, in John Bunyan's allegory, reached the Celestial City in safety; but the last view we have of Presumption is in that valley but a little beyond Interpreter's House, where he lies fast asleep and with fetters on his heels. Wherefore 'fear' lest we too, like that foolish Presumption, for the very same reason, fail of the promised rest. Remember your own weakness, I say, and fear. There are some things you had better never touch; there are some books you had better never read; there are some pictures you had better never see; there are some places you had better never visit; there are some people you had better never know. Your wisdom is to be afraid of them; to shun them; never to come near them. Listen to this sentence: 'The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and to depart from evil' to give it a wide berth 'is understanding'. II. Temptation Common to Man. But supposing, as will of necessity happen, in spite of all our efforts, we find ourselves face to face with temptation, what then? First of all remember this, and say it to your soul again and again, that no temptation has met you but such as is common to men. There is a difference in the meanings various commentators attach to the Greek word ἀνθρώπινος in the text. Literally, it means 'of or belonging to man'. Our Revisers have translated it, 'such as man can bear'. But that seems to me to be reading into the word more than it really contains. I follow Dr. Charles Edwards, who has written, perhaps, the finest English commentary on this Epistle, and translate it 'common to men'. 'There hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man.' That is the first thing to remember. For this is one of the pleas behind which men shelter themselves when asked to account for their failure. 'There never was such a temptation as mine,' they say. Men have a trick of salving their consciences and excusing their miserable collapses, on the ground that the temptations to which they were exposed were of quite unique and extraordinary force. III. Temptation to be Conquered. There is no positive comfort in the assertion that our temptations are common to men. When some one tried to comfort Tennyson in his grief for Hallam by reminding him that 'loss was common to the race,' the poet's retort, you remember, was this: 'That loss is common would not make my own less bitter, rather more'. And the knowledge that others are tempted in much the same way as we are, in itself does not bring much comfort and encouragement to our souls. But there is a truth which is of unspeakable comfort to those who are in the midst of manifold temptations, viz., every temptation is to be overcome. Let me repeat it. Every temptation is to be overcome. You must make that belief your very own, if you are to emerge victorious out of your conflicts with temptation. To those who are down, who are dead beat, who are almost tempted to give up, we must say again and again, every temptation without any exception every temptation is to be overcome. Henry Drummond tells, in one of his books, a story about the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular campaign. He was trying to get his troops into a place of safety, and between him and their safety ran a deep and rapid river. Neither bridge nor ford could be seen, and it was a hostile country; he sent his men up and down the side of the river to hunt for a bridge or a ford, and they found none. So the Duke himself went to the top of a hill near by, and looked through his telescope, and far away down the river-side he saw a town, and on the other side of the river he saw a straggling village, and he said, 'Now, between that town and that village there must be a bridge or a ford'. So when night came, he sent his soldiers in the silence and darkness to see, and they brought back the report: 'Yes, there is a ford'. He passed his army over that ford that night, and next morning they were all in the land of safety. The danger besetting us may be manifold and formidable, but remember this there is always a ford! There is no occasion for despondency or despair. * Every temptation is to be conquered. * IV. The Faithfulness of God. And the ground and reason for our confidence that every temptation can be overcome is that God is faithful. 'God is faithful,' says the Apostle, 'who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation make also the way of escape that ye may be able to endure it'. J. D. Jones, Elims of Life, p. 92. The Limitations of the Law of Antagonism 1 Corinthians 10:13 Very delightful is our text, showing how the Divine love tempers life's fierce tyranny. Nature is a sphere of darkness, life is a tragedy, into which revelation brings precious explanations and encouragements. I. We observe that whilst discipline is essential to the perfecting of our nature, the struggle of life might be excessive and destructive. 'Tried above that ye are able.' How easily this might be! We see in nature that the law of antagonism may become so severe and unremitting that it makes impossible those things of beauty and joy which prevail under normal conditions. The same is true of animal life. And this applies equally to man. He is all the better for a regulated conflict with his environment, but all the worse if the conflict attain undue severity. And this is just as true of our moral as it is of our physical and intellectual nature. It is truly comforting to recognise the hand of God limiting and regulating the severities of life, so that they may serve and not destroy us. II. Let us observe some of the limitations which God has imposed on the severity of life. 'But will with the trial also make a way of escape.' (1) There are doors of escape in the direction of nature and intellect. It is not all conflict with nature. We have all gracious hours in which the discords of life are drowned in the music of the world. The door opening into the library, the picture-gallery, the observatory, the museum all are doors of hope and salvation. (2) The Divine government softens the severity of life by the disposition and alternation of the trials by which we are exercised. We little know how much we owe to the vast variety and unceasing change which obtain in the disciple of human life. (3) The severity of life is broken by that law of reaction which God has established within our nature. Trials without discover forces within. Says Victor Hugo, 'There are instincts for all the crises of life'. A deep perplexity awakens a flash of insight; a bitter opposition sets the soul on fire; a grave peril opens our eyes to horses and chariots of fire; a severe catastrophe evokes a heroism of which the sufferer had not thought himself capable. (4) The rigour of life is abated by the social law. What a royal gate is that of Charity! How many welcome doors Sympathy opens! What a grand door is Domesticity! (5) Life is blessedly tempered by the religious hope. Victor Hugo says truly, 'The whole of existence resembles a letter modified in the postscript.' Marvellously in all kinds of ways does the grace of God assert itself in softening the severity that threatens utterly to overwhelm us. W. L. Watkinson, The Transfigured Sackcloth, p. 207. Comfort in Temptation 1 Corinthians 10:13 Temptation is our environment, as much with us as the air we breathe. They are the common lot of man, the fire through which the ore is purified from the dross. There is comfort in this thought. I. But the comfort and strength of the thought is not that our trial is common to men and our temptations are the human temptations, but that other men have triumphed, and that we too by the same means can triumph. II. There is this further comfort that temptation has its limits if a man be but true. 'God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able.' The finest commentary I know on this passage is a great sentence from one of Johnson's 'Essays,' which Boswell says he never read without feeling his frame thrill: 'I think there is some reason for questioning whether the body and mind are not so proportioned, that the one can bear all which can be inflicted on the other; whether virtue cannot stand its ground as long as life, and whether a soul well principled will not be sooner separated than subdued'. The first step to victory is to believe that the battle need not be lost at all. A man came to Sir Andrew Clark complaining of depression, inability to do his work, and that he was tempted to rely on stimulants. Sir Andrew saw the perilous state and forbade resort to stimulants, and when the patient declared that he would be unequal to his work and would sink, he replied, 'Then sink like a man'. Strength is got through the strain. III. When we have a glimmering of the great and inspiring thought that this is the will of God for us, even our sanctification, we see how it must be, as St. Paul asserts, that 'God is faithful, Who will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape that we may be able to bear it'. Faith does not remove the temptation altogether, which has still to be borne, but it makes a man able to bear it. 'The door is open,' said the Stoic, meaning that at the worst there was always suicide by which a man could cheat misfortune when it became too hard to bear. There is in every moral conflict a way of escape other than the way of dishonour or defeat. Hugh Black, Edinburgh Sermons, p. 44. References. X. 13. Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 142. R. W. Dale, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 298. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 190. F. de W. Lushington, Sermons to Young Boys, p. 9. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li. p. 217. C. A. J. Nibbs, Preacher's Magazine, vol x. p. 413. Spurgeon Sermons, vol. 1. No. 2912; vol. xlv. No. 2603. X. 14-21. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 437. X. 14-22. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. i. p. 238; ibid. (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 437; ibid. vol. iii. p. 99. The Personal Choice 1 Corinthians 10:15 St. Paul is writing to Christians at Corinth. He knows well their circumstances; he has lived in their homes; he has worked as tent-maker there for two years and six months; he knows all their dangers, their difficulties, their embarrassments; he knows that it is impossible to move about in social life in Corinth without running up against idolatry. He knows that the idolatry there has availed itself of the natural passions of mankind and entwined itself with the social institutions of the city. He knows all this, and he writes sympathetically to the Corinthian Christians. He says to them You cannot very well avoid idolatry if you enter into society at all. You will find yourself asked to dine with people whose banquets have an idolatrous significance; they will say to you abruptly at table, 'This meat has been offered to idols'. Then you stop eating. You will find, when you move freely among your fellowmen because you have an innate sense of fellowship, that that is embarrassed very often, prejudiced by the fact that they have already claimed those instincts for idolatry. You will find, that what is animal in you is evoked, elicited, and exaggerated too by the premium set upon animal passion in Corinth. But I need not go on, he says: I am not writing rules for you; that is not part of my work as a Christian teacher. I have only to tell you the doctrinal principle upon which you have to live. As for rules, I give you none. No Christian teacher, even an Apostle, has any authority to lay down rules for you. I leave that to yourself. I am writing to sensible men; argue it out for yourself. Judge ye what I say. I cannot lay down rules; that is no part of the Christian system. For it is always a fatal proposition of mankind to demand in the sphere of religion exact rules; and in the measure in which any religion is true it refuses to give men exact rules of conduct. Our Lord always refused to give men rules when they came after Him. And for this reason the Christian character is formed not from without but from within: no formula can imprison the |truth, no regulation can form character; and, after all, character is the chief thing. You must think for yourselves. I. So St. Paul is a true follower of his Master when he says abruptly: But I am not going on with that matter; after all, there is no rule that will serve; I am speaking to sensible men, and you must judge for yourself; you must work it out for yourselves. You remember what St. Augustine said when some people asked for a rule of life. He replied: There is no rule of life but this, 'Love God and do what you like'. It is an extraordinary rule, and yet it is the only true one, 'Love God and do what you like'. But, you ask: Do you mean to say that if we love God it does not matter what we do? No, no; but I mean to tell you that if you love God you will not want to do what is wrong. 'Love God and do what you like,' will serve as a rule, for it means this the love of God will purify your desires; and you will then only want to do what will please God. The love of God will illumine your understanding, will move your heart, will compel your obedience, will inspire your conduct, will shape your course. If you love God you will always will the will of God. That, after all, is the true rule or Christian conduct to do the will of God. II. As I move amongst business men very greatly I find that they commonly give me this verdict of their experience. They say: Well, the more I go on the more I realise that what is called my work is really my recreation; but my real work is at home; it is the formation of character, and above all things by the endurance of pains and sufferings and tribulations of this present life. When a man has got that secret he has learnt the whole secret of life that the means by which he supports himself and family is only as it were incidental, it is by the way, that the true purpose of his being, his real work in life, is the formation of his own character as a Christian man, and the chief means to that end is the endurance of suffering and hardship and the troubles of this present life. St. Paul says that the troubles of the present life form our capacity to enjoy the glory that is eternal. He leaps to the conclusion in a moment, and he says: The troubles of the present life work out to glory; they form the capacity for attaining to the glory that is eternal. III. So when we come to understand life aright we say the great task God has laid upon me is the formation of personal character; and if the way were cut and dried I should never form that character. The formation of character means at least independence; it means that we should weigh circumstances, realise alternatives, make a choice; that I should definitely set myself to follow a course that seems to be approved by judgment and conscience. Character is formed not from without but from within, not stamped out from a mould, but grown from a germ; and the germ of Christian character is the intense conviction, the personal faith that Jesus is God; and it has consequently that formative principle which expresses itself in the development of the Christian character. We must lay hold of the truth that there is no method can be offered to compel us into Christian conformity, but there is inspiration that can develop the Christian character. Not rules but a principle is what is given us. 'I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.' J. Wakeford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxix. p. 219. References. X. 15. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xi. p. 146. X. 16. H. H. Henson, Godly Union and Concord, p. 254. E. A. Stuart, His Dear Son and other Sermons, p. 177. S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 97. R. Winterbotham, Sermons on the Holy Communion, p. 5. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliv. No. 2572. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 29; ibid. (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 47; ibid. (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 379. X. 16, 17. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p. 225. X. 17. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 292. R. F. Horton, ibid. vol. lv. p. 40. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 374. X. 21. J. Denney, Scottish Review, vol. iv. p. 161. X. 23-33. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 300. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 146. X. 24. C. S. Horne, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 115. X. 24-33. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 103. X. 27. C. H. Grundy, Luncheon Lectures at St. Paul's Cathedral, p. 33. X. 29. H. Varley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p. 374. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 276. 1 Corinthians 10:31 If, instead of prescribing to ourselves indifferent Actions or Duties, we apply a good Intention to all our most indifferent Actions, we make our very existence one continued Act of Obedience, we turn our Diversions and Amusements to our eternal Advantage, and are pleasing Him (whom we are made to please) in all the Circumstances and Occurrences of life. It is this excellent Frame of Mind, this holy officiousness (if I may be allowed to call it such) which is recommended to us by the Apostle in that uncommon Precept, wherein He directs us to propose to ourselves the Glory of our Creator in all our most indifferent Actions, * whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do. * Addison, in The Spectator, 3rd November, 1711. To be a saint is always to make God our end. F. W. Faber. References. X. 31. G. H. Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 124. Bishop Westcott, The Incarnation and Common Life, p. 125. R. F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. p. 353. H. R. Heywood, Sermons and Addresses, p. 150. W. H. Evans, Short Sermons for the Seasons, p. 114. C. G. Finney, Penny Pulpit, No. 1581, p. 41. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 378. X. 32. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. x. p. 203. X. 33. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. i. p. 173. XI. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 70; ibid. (5th Series), vol. x. p. 55. XI. 1. H. Bailey, The Gospel of the Kingdom, p. 146. R. W. Church, The Gifts of Civilisation, p. 56. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 259; ibid. vol. xi. p. 46. The Duty of Praising People 1 Corinthians 11:2 What is praise? There is all the difference in the world between praise and flattery. Praise is commendation of character, the expressed approval of conduct. Flattery is false or insincere praise. Flattery is essentially a lie; it is poisoned honey. The Bible utters most terrible denunciations against flattery. Yet the Book, which waxes fierce against flattery, enjoins praise; and in this text of mine Paul's voice rings out like a clarion in the gladdened ears of the Corinthian Church. 'Now I praise you.' I. Praise is a Duty. How Scripture illustrates this! God is ever praising man in this inspired history of humanity now by direct message, now through human lips. Christ loved to praise. How He commended all who were in any degree commendable! (1) Conscience sanctions the duty of praising people. Conscience does not side with Epictetus when he says, 'We should not praise any one'. It confirms Paul when he cries, 'I praise you'. (2) Praise encourages effort towards higher good. 'Praise,' says George Meredith, 'is our fructifying sun.' (3) Praise is a duty because it raises our appreciation of humanity. No pessimist can win man. (4) Praise of others discourages self-hood. II. Praise is a Difficult Duty. (1) The self-centred find it all but impossible. (2) The jealous cannot praise. (3) The unsympathetic feel it peculiarly difficult to praise. Many of us neglect the culture of our sympathies. We know men when we feel with them. As Smetham remarks in one of his letters, 'Pure love to every soul of man is the true standpoint from which to judge men'. He who allows himself to become unsympathetic freezes the fountain of praise. (4) The narrow-minded seldom praise. III. Praise is a Much-Neglected Duty. (1) Is it not neglected in the Church? If pastors and people praised with mutual love, if grumbling vanished and praises resounded, how happy and prosperous would the Churches be! (2) In the home this duty is glaringly neglected. (3) Praise is a duty much neglected in society. IV. Praise is a Duty which requires Discrimination. (1) It must not be excessive. (2) It must not exclude faithfulness. (3) Nor must we praise so as to arouse envy. (4) Beware of praising for the sake of popularity. Watch thy motive, O soul of mine! V. Praise is a Duty which tests Character. (1) You test yourself when you praise people. (2) You test the receiver of your praise when you eulogise him. J. M. Barrie, in one of his lovely books, says: 'The praise that comes of love does not make us vain, but humble rather'. Be it ours to say, 'I praise you' often as we may! But let us be solicitous to give God the glory for all the praises we receive. Dinsdale T. Young, Unfamiliar Texts, p. 1. References. XI. 2. Penny Pulpit, No. 1492, p. 73. XI. 3. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 285; ibid. (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 152. XI. 7. Ibid. vol. iii. pp. 139, 140; ibid. (5th Series), vol. iv. pp. 119, 164, 168. XI. 10. Ibid. vol. x. p. 139. The Rights of Woman 1 Corinthians 11:11 There were three great doctrines enunciated by Christ in the course of His earthly ministry which were in a marked degree 'revelations' to the human race. He taught the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Dignity of Womanhood. I. Consider the position of woman before the advent of Christ. It is acknowledged that in the barbaric nations woman was the abject slave of man. But even amongst the cultured and highly civilised nations of the earth, woman's position was very little higher than that of a slave. II. Consider also woman as she exists in our own day in non-Christian lands. In Moslem countries women are at the mercy of the caprice and passion of men. The Zenanas of India and China are probably worse than the harem of the Turk; and as for the poorer women, the low-caste women, they are the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the men. When we turn to darkest Africa there we find the 'lord of creation' sitting at his ease while his wives minister to his comfort, and provide for his household. III. With the advent of Christ and His Gospel, and with the spread of Christianity, a new respect was horn for woman. (1) There are her marriage rights. (2) There are the domestic rights of woman. (3) There are the spiritual rights of woman. T. J. Madden, Tombs or Temples, p. 16. References. XI. 11. J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 75. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 296. XI. 12. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 335. XI. 16. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. xi. p. 461. XI. 18. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 79. XI. 18, 19. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 14; ibid. vol. ix. p. 9. XI. 18-34. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. i. p. 214. XI. 20. Ibid. vol. iii. p. 275. 1 Corinthians 11:20 Compare Charles Lamb's lines, The Sabbath Bells: The cheerful Sabbath bells, wherever heard, Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims Tidings of good to Zion: chiefly when Their piercing tones fall sudden on the ear Of the contemplant, solitary man, Whom thoughts abstruse or high have chanced to lure Forth from the walks of men, revolving oft, And oft again, hard matter, which eludes And baffles his pursuit, thought-sick and tired Of controversy, where no end appears, No clue to his research, the lonely man Half wishes for society again. Him, thus engaged, the Sabbath bells salute Sudden! his heart awakes; his ears drink in The cheering music; his relenting soul Yearns after all the joys of social life, And softens with the love of human kind. There was a little Roman Catholic church at the foot of the hill where his own was placed, which he always had to pass on Sundays. He could never look on the thronging multitudes that crowded its pews and aisles or knelt bare-headed on its steps, without a longing to get in among them and go down on his knees and enjoy that luxury of devotional contact which makes a worshipping throng as different from the same members praying apart as a bed of coals is from a trail of scattered cinders. O. W. Holmes, Elsie Venner (ch. v.). The Social Value of the Lord's Supper 1 Corinthians 11:20-22 I. The Lord's Supper is a new grouping of men a new principle of classification, without any violent or revolutionary interference with the existing order of things. In the world, differences of rank, age, sex, grouped men and women in the usual way on the night in which Jesus was betrayed. At the supper tables of Pilate and Herod guests were arranged according to the relation they held to the Court, the Temple, the Sanhedrin, and the Exchange. But at one table a new order reigned. Jesus Himself was the centre. The greatest was he who rendered the best service in Christ's kingdom. And all division gave way to love. Now the trouble at Corinth was that they followed the old order of Pilate and Herod, not the new order of Jesus. Weekday differences were reproduced at the Supper. Well, the weekday differences are much the same now as they were in remote ages; and there is not the slightest probability that they will ever be otherwise. But in the Supper we have the means to neutralise differences, to break down the Chinese wall of prejudice, and blend all classes into a loving harmony. II. But again, a certain measure of friction is inseparable from social life. When Paul heard of troubles in Corinth he did not whine, but accepted them as things not to be avoided, but to be overcome and sanctified. Our feelings are often hurt; bitterness creeps into our souls. Well, in our Lord's Supper we have a means wherewith to repair the ravages life makes in our affections, to heal the hearts' hurt, and make good all the damage done to our friendship by the gales and waves of life. III. In the Supper, Christ sweetens earthly love with the promise of eternal life, and this should help to make all the relations of home and neighbourhood purer and sweeter. The thought of death is the bitter drop in our cup of love. Horace was moved to unwonted pathos as he thought of the end, and Huxley owned that as the years swept forward to the great cataract, the horror of extinction so possessed him that life, even in a hell, seemed preferable. Well, in the light of the upper room there is no death only transition. Bring your friendship, your married life, bring all loves to feed at Christ's Table. For here the eternal side of things is shown. IV. And at the same time that it feeds love it nourishes hope. As Christians we all engage, directly or indirectly, in some endeavour to better the world. But often the outlook is so hopeless. Then we relax in our efforts, or we curtail our gifts and starve the work. Well, Jesus foresaw it all. Here is a little festival of hope ordained by Christ. A Supper, not for the body, but solely for the heart. Here is the Bread of heavenly Hope. This is the wine of Assurance. J. M. Gibbon, Eden and Gethsemane, p. 199. References. XI. 20-34. D. Martin, Penny Pulpit, No. 1603, p. 223. XI. 21. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 97. The Contrasts of the Night of Betrayal 1 Corinthians 11:23 This contrast may be distributed in three particulars. There is, in the first place, the contrast of grace with sin; in the second place, of faithfulness with treachery; and in the third place, of love with hate. I. First: the contrast of grace with sin. The betrayal of Jesus by Judas was not a single act. It came to its climax in the kiss given in the garden. But it was a series of thoughts, resolves, decisions. AH of them were known to Jesus. He had watched the tragedy in the heart of Judas as a chemist might watch a process, or a physician might watch the progress of a disease. On that last night He marked the final stage in the course of evil. He saw the fever rise to a burning flame. He heard the betrayal in the words on the lips of Judas. He saw it in the shifty glances of his eyes. He read it in the sullen anger of his heart. All that is hideous and repulsive and pitiless in sin sat down with Him at the feast. We know that it is not the most abandoned profligate who so fully incarnates sin as the man whose face and words are fair, and his cloaked malice inspired by hell. Jesus might have turned aside in loathing, and broken forth in exposing and withering rebuke. Yet with the hand of the betrayer dipping in the same dish with Him He sets up this Sacrament for sinful men. That is the contrast of grace with sin. 'On the same night in which He was betrayed, He took bread.' II. Second: the contrast of faithfulness with treachery. Our Lord's last night was one of mingled joy and sorrow. It had hours of peace and exaltation, but towards its close the shadows deepened. The shadows of His shrinking from death, of His bewilderment at God's will and way, of His prevision of the cross, of His desertion by His own, and of the burden and shame of His last hour, quenched every joy but the joy set before Him. But the darkest shadow fell on Him from the treachery of Judas. 'Now is my soul troubled,' He cried, and we know where His eyes rested. They had caught sight of the face of Judas. There is no wrong baser than treachery. There is no pain so personal. It is the most execrated of crimes and the most difficult to forgive. In the annals of Scottish history there are two events which stand out as the blackest and foulest to people's minds. They are both deeds of treachery. For generations men have spoken of 'the fause Menteith who betrayed Wallace' with a strangely perpetuated resentment. No later indictment rouses the national feeling like the story of the massacre of Glencoe. Simple Scottish faces grow as dark as the gloomy glen itself when they tell the story to their children. It is due to the same moral reaction against treachery that in every army the traitor is punished with a swift and unrelenting stroke. The deserter from the ranks is treated as a felon. The coward's uniform is stripped from him and he is drummed out of the ranks. The traitor is set with his face to the wall, and the levelled muskets rain death upon him, and his body is cast into an unmarked grave. The man whom you find it difficult to forgive, whose name recalls a deed of falsehood, is the man whose words were fair, whose actions were secretly base. The Gospels reflect this instinctive resentment at the traitor's deed. The Evangelists never mention the name of Judas with compassion. The kindest word is that sombre sentence in Peter's prayer, 'that he might go to his own place'. To the Gospel writers he is always 'Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed Him'. But the contrast Paul saw was not simply between a persistent treachery and the absence of resentment, but between that treachery and a persistent faithfulness. The night in which He was betrayed was not only the night of His patience but of His noblest loyalty. Without a murmur, without a bitter word, in faithfulness He goes forward to His cross, to be betrayed. 'On the night on which He was betrayed, Jesus took bread.' III. Third: the contrast of love with hate. It is, I think, safe to say that this is the deepest contrast in Paul's mind. To Paul the most marvellous thing about Jesus was not His wisdom, nor His holiness, nor His meek endurance. It was His love; that love which to Paul passed knowledge, and constrained him with its resistless force; that love which had not been quenched by his own years of sin. Paul never speaks of Christ's love without seeing the heavens open. He becomes a poet with a poet's vision, and his rugged prose passes into a poet's music. On this night he sees love contrasted with hate. He sees love baffled by hate. When we read that it was on the night in which He was betrayed that His grace triumphed over sin, His faithfulness over treachery, and His love, though baffled by one whose hate He could not expel, never failed, we can take new heart and find fresh comfort. With whatever disloyalty of heart, in whatever mood of alienation, with whatever lurking purpose of evil, we have come here to this table, we can now, in this moment, yield ourselves to Him whose love not even betrayal could quench. W. M. Clow, The Cross in Christian Experience, p. 77. References. XI. 23. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 155. Expositor (4th Series), vol. v. p. 434; ibid. (5th Series), vol. i. p. 337; ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 25. XI. 23-25. Ibid. vol. x. p. 243. The Sacramental Remembrance and Testimony 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 I. If we are to reach the inner meaning of this many-sided mystery, we must consider the place and part of the Lord Himself in the upper room. Two symbolic acts and their interpreting words are brought before us. He appears in the midst of the Twelve as a priest, dedicating His own life in its outward form and its inner virtue to the will of the Father and the salvation of the world. At the beginning of His public ministry He had been described, by His own kinsman the Baptist, as the Lamb of God who beareth away the sin of the world; and the Paschal significance of that utterance had perhaps never quite faded away from the minds of those who heard it. Has the Lord Jesus the same part and place in the sacramental celebrations of the future as He assumed in the upper room? Does the first ministrant disappear from the rite, and is His personality merged with the emblems? Of course, the emblems exchange their prophetic for a retrospective meaning, and the benign form, which stood before the disciples, passes out of view. But He is present in the power of His spiritual priesthood, and there is no room for a visible successor to His office. II. Our Lord defines the motive which must rule disciples in their future celebration of this Covenant Feast. 'Do this in remembrance of Me.' This directing word fixes the standpoint of the participant, and puts the Sacrament into a realm of spiritual affection. Whatever else it may be, its practical value consists in the stimulus it affords to reflection, gratitude, and the homage of the soul. The test of a valid Sacrament is inward and practical. Does it summon up within us thoughts of the spotless offering, and bow our hearts to the love and law of the cross, so fulfilling the Master's hope? Then, no matter what the form observed or the organisation of the church within which it is celebrated, it is just as valid as the sacramental act at which the Pope of Rome, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, officiates; more so, if it melts the heart into a more plastic tenderness, and strengthens the faith into a loftier victory. III. The Apostle reminds us that this sacred observance is a solemn corporate proclamation of the Lord's death, to be continued until the end of the world. 'As oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come.' The object-lesson presented in the Holy Supper is the quintessence of all Gospel preaching. Wherever celebrated, the voice is heard proclaiming to the four winds that Christ gave Himself for our sins, according to the Scriptures. Whilst the disciples keep their Master's word, the world is compelled to reckon in some way or other with the cardinal doctrine of atonement. Reference. XI. 23-26. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No. 2638. The Lord's Supper and Personal Faith 1 Corinthians 11:24 The Lord's Supper is a great symbol. The bread broken symbolises that Jesus Christ, dying for our sins, has become the bread of life. The eating of the bread symbolises the faith of the communicant. Faith thus unites us and Christ inseparably; it gives us an inalienable possession of Christ. Faith then being on our side the great act of the Lord's Supper, let us note more particularly its action therein. I. We in the Lord's Supper confess our faith. 'We make a confession,' many say, 'when we partake of the Lord's Supper.' They seem to mean that we profess a certain sanctity, or a certain superiority. No; the Lord's Supper is not such a profession, it is rather the confession of our faith. He who partakes, confesses he is unable of himself to attain salvation. 'But,' say others, 'to partake of the Lord's Supper is to profess a great creed.' It is certainly to profess a certain faith. But it is a confession that is experimental, not dogmatic; practical, not theoretic. II. But the confessing involves the exercising of our faith. In the Lord's Supper, Jesus Christ is most certainly present. His presence does not wait upon the consecrating word of priest. Christ is present as truly before as after the consecrating word of priest or minister. The communicant, discerning the Lord's presence and offer, does there and then receive his Saviour, His truth and grace, His love and spirit. III. This being so, our third position follows, that in the Lord's Supper we receive nourishment to our faith. The silent impressive appeal of the symbols, the communion of saints, the presence of the Lord, quicken our faith to appropriate and assimilate Jesus Christ, so that our spiritual man is nourished, as our body is, by partaking of its appropriate food. This nourishment, it must be noted, depends upon the activity of the faith of the communicant. IV. In the Lord's Supper our faith pledges us anew to Christ. If we confess, and exercise our faith in Christ, and receive spiritual nourishment in the Sacrament, our hearts involuntarily consecrate us anew to our blessed Lord. An act of consecration, therefore, should follow the partaking, and be a part of the communion. A. Goodrich, Eden and Gethsemane, p. 105. References. XI. 24. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xvii. p. 625. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i. No. 2. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. pp. 77, 78. XI. 24, 25. R. Winterbotham, Sermons on the Holy Communion, p. 26. XI. 24, 25. Expositor (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 90. XI. 25. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. v. p. 8; ibid. vol. vi. p. 138. XI. 26. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 101. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 111. J. B. Brown, Aids to the Development of the Divine Life. J. Keble, Sermons for Advent to Christmas Eve, p. 469. J. Cumming, Penny Pulpit, No. 1511, p. 225. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 228. D. C. A. Agnew, The Soul's Business and Prospects, p. 62. Bishop Wilberforce, Sermons, p. 209. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2307; vol. xliv. No. 2595; vol. 1. No. 2872; and vol. li. No. 2942. G. H. Morrison, Scottish Review, vol, i. p. 422. Expositor (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 60. XI. 27. Ibid. (7th Series), vol. v. p. 297. Fitness for the Lord's Supper 1 Corinthians 11:28 I. What constitutes fitness for communion? How shall a man prepare for the Lord's Table? Our text says: 'Let a man prove himself. Exactly, but how? For this information we must consult the example and commandment of Jesus Christ Himself. The Supper was instituted by Him for purposes determined by Himself. Jesus, and Jesus only, is our teacher and standard in this matter. II. And what does Jesus Himself say? 'This is My body which is for you.' The nerve of the whole lies in that emphatic 'My body,' says Weiss. My body, not My flesh, but My body, flesh, and blood, for you. Whatever that means, the Bread in the Sacrament means. First and foremost, this table symbolises atonement, forgiving love. III. In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying: This cup is the New Covenant in My blood, this do, as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of Me, for as often as ye eat this Bread and drink the cup, ye proclaim (ye evangelise) the Lord's death till He come. The bread stands for atonement, forgiveness, grace; the cup for the new covenant, the new union of God with man, and man with his fellow, arising out of atonement J. M. Gibbon, Eden and Gethsemane, p. 23. References. XI. 28. T. F. Crosse, Sermons, p. 133. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (3rd Series), p. 172. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No. 2647; vol. xlvi. No. 2699, and vol. 1. No. 2865. XI. 28-30. H. Bell, Sermons on Holy Communion, p. 11. 1 Corinthians 11:29 'I have known several men, who, though their manner of thinking and living was perfectly rational, could not free themselves from thinking about the sin against the Holy Ghost, and from the fear that they had committed it. A similar trouble threatened me,' says Goethe, in describing his early life, 'on the subject of the communion, for the text that one who unworthily partakes of the Sacrament eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, had, very early, already made a monstrous impression upon me. Every fearful thing that I had read in the histories of the Middle Ages, of the judgments of God, of those most strange ordeals, by red-hot iron, flaming fire, swelling water, and even what the Bible tells us of the draught which agrees well with the innocent, but puffs up and bursts the guilty all this pictured itself to my imagination.... This gloomy scruple troubled me so much... that, as soon as I reached Leipzig, I tried to free myself altogether from my connection with the Church.' Discerning the Lord's Body 1 Corinthians 11:29 I. He eats unworthily who does not discern the Lord's body. II. He who does not discern the Lord's body is judged. III. We are judged in order that we may not be condemned. A. Maclaren. The Real Presence 1 Corinthians 11:29 Many have started frightened by the strong words of St. Paul, 'He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation'. In very fear there are some who do not come at all to the table of the Lord. Better that our place be empty than that we eat and drink unworthily. Let this fear only drive us to seek for grace lightly to celebrate this holy ordinance. 'Not discerning the Lord's body.' One thing it cannot mean. It cannot mean that any priest can by any service or authority transform the bread and wine into the Body of Christ. He who takes it makes it the Sacrament; not he who gives it. I. Let us consider devoutly what makes this Sacrament a fitting memorial of the Lord. Many have sought in other ways to recall that life and death such ways as naturally suggest themselves. By many kinds of penance, by fasting, by humiliation, by gloom and grief men have sought to recall the Man of Sorrows. And they are right if the Church of today has but a cross and a grave. But He is here. Not a dead Christ or a departed Saviour is it that thus we celebrate, but One who saith, 'Lo, I am with you alway'. II. See here a gracious provision for all time. This Sacrament means that for Him and for us the cruel limits of time and place are broken. III. We discern herein the gracious brotherliness of our Lord. As He came of old so would He come to us, at home with us, sitting down at our tables. He would not be to us a stranger afar off, a mystery of awe too sacred for any place but the altar, too glorious for any moment but of worship. He would be one with us in the common round of life, teaching us that when we eat and drink we can do it to the highest glory of God. IV. These very elements do help us to discern the Lord as the Saviour. The commonest and lowest of our wants is made to help our faith. By earth's poor bread He feeds our faith. He hath given Himself for me that He may give Himself * to me. * M. G. Pearce, The Preacher's Magazine, vol. VI. p. 70. References. XI. 29. J. Bolton, Selected Sermons (2nd Series), p. 84. J. Watson, The Inspiration of Our Faith, p. 274. XI. 30. J. M. Whiton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 164. XI. 30-32. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 437. XI 31. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, p. 65. XI. 31, 32. J. Keble, Sermons for Advent to Christmas Eve, p. 458. 1 Corinthians 11:32 There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by. Meredith. All sorrow is an enemy, but it carries within it a friend's message, too. Carlyle. References. XI. 32. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvii. No. 2746. XI. 42. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 168. XII. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 82. XII. 1. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, p. 81. XII. 3. R. F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 244. J. Baines, Twenty Sermons, p. 221. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, p. 95. Phillips Brooks, The Mystery of Iniquity, p. 90. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons (2nd Series), p. 158. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. pp. 45, 292. 1 Corinthians 12:4 In the Iliad (bk. XIII. 726 f.), Polydamas says to Hektor: 'Hektor, ill is it for thy counsellors to persuade thee. Since God has dowered thee with warlike deeds, thou art fain to excel others in council as well. Yet by no means shalt thou be able to take all upon thyself. For to one God grants warlike deeds, to another the dance, to another the lute and song, and in the heart of another, farseeing Zeus hath set a goodly understanding to the profiting of many men.' 1 Corinthians 12:4 Ruskin says: 'God appoints to every one of His creatures a separate mission; and if they discharge it honourably, if they quit themselves like men, and faithfully follow the light which is in them, withdrawing from it all cold and quenching influence, there will assuredly come of it such burning as in its appointed mode and measure shall shine before men, and be of service, constant and holy.' References. XII. 4. J. S. Bartlett, Sermons, p. 97. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p. 220. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 51. XII. 4-6. T. F. Crosse, Sermons, p. 27. Basil Wilberforce, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 65. XII. 4-6, 13. H. S. Holland, ibid. vol. liv. p. 8. The Christian Ministry 1 Corinthians 12:4-7 Let me read the passage in Dr. Rutherford's rendering: 'There are gifts, each from each distinct, but the same Spirit; modes of service, each from each distinct, and the Master served the same; manifestations of energy, each from each distinct, and the same God, sole source of all energy whatsoever, in whomsoever manifested. None but has the opportunity offered him for revealing the Spirit for a beneficent end.' I. When St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians the Christian Church was in its infancy. There was as yet no recognised ecclesiastical hierarchy, though already the necessity of maintaining order had created within the little communities of disciples a division of functions, which would inevitably lead on in due course to an official ministry. Assuredly there was nothing which could suggest the notion of an indispensable priesthood vested with sacerdotal functions by ordination, and holding these apart from the sanctions of the Christian congregation by an inherent and inalienable right. 'There is in the New Testament,' wrote Bishop Westcott, 'no trace of any rigid universal constitution of the Christian society. Of a primitive hierarchical ministry there is no record or tradition. And there is no provision for all time. The provision of a permanent and universal organisation of the Church was, in fact, wholly alien from the thought of the first age. The vision was closed by "the coming". At the close of it the Lord was to come Himself.' II. What were the objects with which the primitive believers were originally formed into associations? They desired to do two things: first, to set forward the kingdom of their Master, and, next, to keep themselves loyal to His discipleship. They existed therefore for two grand purposes witness to the unconverted world, and mutual help in Christian living. They needed to organise themselves with that twofold end in view; and, under the inspired leadership of the Apostles, we can see them even in the first age setting themselves to the task. Very soon they had to distinguish between the business of the community, 'the serving of tables,' and the more solemn 'ministry of the Word'. As the Christian missions were extended, and the number of converts increased, subordinate ministries were developed. St. Paul tells us that he did not usually administer baptism, but left that work to his companions. With the establishment of local churches there emerged the necessity of making provision for their instruction and good discipline. We find mention of 'presbyters,' and clear indications of a careful disciplinary dealing with scandalous Christians. Over everything the Apostles appear to have exercised an authoritative oversight, taking counsel together with the presbyters, and restraining the enthusiastic tendencies of the believers. Everything had a provisional aspect, for everybody expected the speedy return of the Lord, but with the passing away of that great illusion the provisional ministries inevitably began to take a more settled and permanent form. In the Pastoral Epistles we have the picture of an organised Church, with an official ministry, to which men and women were admitted by formal appointment. The close of the apostolic age was followed by an obscure period, of which the scanty literary memorials allow us to possess no certain knowledge; but it is the case that, when the veil is lifted at the beginning of the second century, we find that the threefold ministry is already in existence. III. The Christian minister is not a priest in any other sense than that in which every Christian man is a priest. He is appointed by public authority to serve his brethren in the office of a pastoral and teaching ministry, and so long as he labours honestly therein, he is justly entitled to their confidence, their sympathy, and their support. His ordination will do much for him. He will receive authority for his public ministry; he will be given a sphere in which to work. A door of opportunity will be opened to him. But there is no grace in ordination to remedy the defects of education, or to make amends for the weakness of undisciplined habits of life. The ministerial commission adds nothing to personal qualifications, and grants no exemption from the Divinely ordained laws under which human effort must proceed. As a teacher his competence will necessarily depend in great part upon his knowledge; as a pastor his success will turn on his courage and wisdom. Only hard work can secure the one; only self-discipline and experience can secure the other. Let him not dream that ecstatic fervour can serve the turn of serious study or a facile sympathy do duty for thought and trouble. But when he has done his best to make himself efficient, let him remember that he has but prepared the altar. The fire which shall consume the sacrifice must descend from above. Self-dependence here will be a sterilising blunder. It is the hardest of all the lessons which the Christian minister has to learn. The strength of God moves with the efforts of a man, and the Christian minister 'by the manifestation of the truth commends himself to every man's conscience in the sight of God'. 'Love never faileth.' H. Hensley Henson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. LXXVIII. p. 305. References. XII. 4-27. Marcus Dods, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p. 356. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 25. XII. 6. Ambrose Shepherd, The Gospel and Social Questions, p. 97. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 254. XII. 7. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, p. 178. XII. 8-11. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 103. XII. 9. J. Bannerman, Sermons, p. 63. XII. 9, 10. Expositor (4th Series), vol. v. p. 138. XII. 10. Ibid. vol. iii. p. 362. The Universality of the Spirit 1 Corinthians 12:11 I. All that is good in Christian men is the gift of the Spirit. II. The universality of the Spirit; or, each Christian man has it. III. The endless variety in which the one Spirit manifests itself. Unity must needs express itself in infinite variety. A. Maclaren. References. XII. 11. J. Keble, Sermons for Ascension Day to Trinity Sunday, p. 281. Bishop Alexander, Verbum Crucis, p. 145. 1 Corinthians 12:12 'Like the flaming torches, the lampada vitae , which were passed from hand to hand, in the sacerdotal ceremonies of ancient Rome, this initiative,' says Mazzini, speaking of the moral initiative in Europe, 'has passed from one nation to another, consecrating each and all missionaries and prophets of Humanity. Were they not all destined hereafter to become brothers, fellow-labourers, equals; each according to his especial capabilities, in the great common workshop of Humanity, towards a common end collective perfection, the discovery and progressive application of the law of life?' References. XII. 12. R. J. Campbell, British Congregationalist, 27th June, 1907, p. 633. Marcus Dods, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 90. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 379. XII. 12, 13. Marcus Dods, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 321. XII. 13-26. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 41. XII. 13. Ibid. (6th Series), vol xii. p. 257. 1 Corinthians 12:14 'Every man would like to reproduce himself,' said Dr. John Duncan, 'and so turn God's beautiful variety into a hideous uniformity.' References. XII. 14. T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p. 220. J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 376. XII. 15. H. S. Holland, Vital Values, p. 154. XII. 17. A. P. Stanley, Canterbury Sermons, p. 397. XII. 20. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 251. XII. 21. A. P. Stanley, Canterbury Sermons, p. 397. T. Barker, Plain Sermons, p. 257. XII. 22. G. Sarson, A Lent in London, p. 142. 1 Corinthians 12:26 The simple truth is, that though it is one of the deepest laws of human society that we should bear each other's burdens that when 'one member suffers all the members suffer with it' that there is no such thing as the isolation of a sin, or even of the misery that proceeds in widening circles, though with slackening force, from every centre of sin though it is a law of human fellowship that the good must suffer with the guilty (and the more willingly the higher they are in goodness), as the price of that fellowship yet this is not a law of vicarious punishment, a law by which the penalty proper to sin is borne by one who has not committed that sin, but rather a law which intensifies a hundredfold instead of removing the sense of social responsibility, and consequently the burden of social guilt. R. H. Hutton, Theological Essays, p. 371. References. XII. 26. A. P. Stanley, Canterbury Sermons, p. 397. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. v. p. 263. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, p. 110. XII. 27. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 222. XII. 28. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. No. 777. The Best Gifts 1 Corinthians 12:31 I. Think of the manifold gifts which the Church owes to the Spirit II. The supremacy of Love. In Paul's idea love to God is the one root of love to man. It is the side of religion which is turned to the world and is the same as the side which is turned to God. Love is the root and flower of everything. III. This supreme Love is the Spirit's gift A. Maclaren. 1 Corinthians 12:31 I would the great world grew like thee, Who grewest not alone in power And knowledge, but by year and hour In reverence and charity. Tennyson, In Memoriam (CXIV.). 'Not to all men is it given,' says Maeterlinck, 'to be a hero or a genius, to be victorious, always admirable, or even simply happy in external things; but it lies within the power of the least favoured of us to be loyal and gentle and just, to be generous and brotherly; he who has least gifts can learn to look on his fellows without envy or hatred, without malice or futile regret; he who has barely one talent can still learn to forgive an injury with an ever nobler forgiveness, can find more excuses for error, and more admiration for human words and deeds.' References. XII. 31. J. S. Boone, Sermons, p. 207. J. T. Bramston, Fratribus, p. 80. R. W. Church, The Gifts of Civilisation, p. 3. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvi. No. 2694. 1 Corinthians 13 The paean of love chanted at Ephesus under Nero for the poor saints of Corinth, has not perished with Corinth. Annihilated for ever, the magnificence of Nero's Corinth lies buried today beneath silent rubbish-mounds and green vineyards on the terraces between the mass of the Acrocorinthus and the shore of the gulf; nothing but ruins, ghastly remnants, destruction. The words of the paean, however, have outlasted the marble and the bronzes of the Empire, because they had an unassailable refuge in the secret depths of the soul of the people. The Corinthian Christians, who suffered other writings of St. Paul to be lost, preserved these; copies were taken and circulated; at the turning-point of the first and second century The Corinthians was already known at Rome, and probably St. Paul's other letters were also in circulation then in the Christian assemblies of the great Mediterranean coast cities, guarded with the gospels and other texts of the fathers as an heirloom and treasure. Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, p. 399. Reference. XIII. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 135. 1 Corinthians 13:1 Speaking of an early friend, Joseph Fawcett, Hazlitt in his Table-Talk observes that 'he has made me feel (by contrast) the want of genuine sincerity and generous sentiment in some that I have listened to since, and convinced me (if practical proof were wanting) of the truth of that text of Scripture "That had I all knowledge and could speak with the tongues of angels, yet without charity I were nothing!" I would rather be a man of disinterested taste and liberal feeling, to see and acknowledge truth and beauty wherever I found it, than a man of greater and more original genius, to hate, envy, and deny all excellence but my own but that poor scanty pittance of it (compared with the whole) which I had myself produced!' But was it thou I think Surely it was! that bard Unnamed, who Goethe said, * Had every other gift, but wanted love; * Love, without which the tongue Even of angels sounds amiss? M. Arnold, * Heine's Grave. * But it was of Platen that Goethe spoke. In his conversations with Eckermann (1825) he remarks: 'We cannot deny that he has many brilliant qualities, but he is wanting in love. He loves his readers and his fellow-poets as little as he loves himself, and thus we may apply to him the maxim of the Apostle "Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not love, I am become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal".... He is deficient in love, and therefore will never produce the effect which he ought' References. XIII. 1. W. H. Brookfield, Sermons, p. 96. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons, p. 11. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p. 47. 1 Corinthians 13:2 'Somehow,' says James Smetham, referring to De Quincey,' there is a Divine instinct within us which decides that pre-eminence using the term in its final sense shall not be given to mere intellectual strength and prowess.' References. XIII. 2. H. M. Bate, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xiv. p. 776. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 7; ibid. vol. x. p. 124; ibid. (5th Series), vol. i. p. 144. St. Paul's View of Sacrifice 1 Corinthians 13:3 It has been pointed out that St. Paul, when he wrote, Though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing, may have had an actual historical incident in view. A story is told by classical writers of an embassy sent to Augustus by Porus, an Indian king, attached to which was a fanatic who, under circumstances of which we have no information, publicly burnt himself at Athens. His tomb, according to Plutarch, was one of the sights of the city. It bore the inscription 'Zarmanochegas, the Indian from Bargosa, who after the fashion of his Indian forefathers made himself immortal, died here'. 'Now, Zarmanochegas is evidently the same word as Iramana-Karja, which means "teacher of the ascetics," and shows that its owner was not Braham, but Buddhist; while Bargosa may be taken as identical with Barygoza, a city in which we know Buddhism flourished at the beginning of the Christian era. What more likely than that Paul, whose eye had been attracted by the inscription "To the unknown God," should have seen this also, and should have heard the story of the strange self-immolation which was still fresh in the minds of men?' Mr. Beard describes this as the only meeting-point that exists between Buddhism and Christianity, and it may well be that this exit by the gate of fire drew the thoughts of St. Paul. For the practice of suicide was hardly Greek, and took easier ways than through the flames. The death would thus be a wonder a wonder apparently heroic, but on deeper reflection alike vain and cowardly. St. Paul's devotion was unbroken; but he testified that sacrifice by itself is nothing. The sacrifice which is the imitation of Christ must be moved by love, and must seek a worthy end. Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not, applies to all such purposeless and theatrical displays. The great oblation which is our example as well as our propitiation, and his own daily dying, were of another order. I. Why did Christ die? There is no difficulty in saying that He died for love. Trace the life-giving river to its fountain-head, and we see it spring in everlasting love. Though the deep human heart's first demand even in its fall is for justice; though St. Paul declares that he is not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, because first of all it reveals the righteousness of God from faith to faith, yet it is the love of the Atonement that draws us out of the dreary years of routine and of sin, and gives us power to become true sons of God. II. And now that we have fairly entered the political period of Christianity, whose watchword is charity, it is well to consider what self-sacrifice really is. It is not lavish giving. Though, says the Apostle, I give all my goods to feed the poor, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. A man whose whole income appears in subscription lists may or may not be charitable. In the war between the haves and the have-nots many will give lavishly to put off the day of reckoning. But what is surrendered from fear is not charity. Others, again, give from a sense of duty; they understand that they ought to part with one-tenth of their incomes; perhaps there is a lurking thought somewhere that God may prosper their business if they give Him some small share, but neither duty nor calculation is love. We believe there are in the Christian Church, that today looks so dead, so comfortable, so utterly deaf to its call, many thousand souls of the true Israel seeking to be led from the house of bondage. But their Moses will not put giving first. Love is first that love which can be learned nowhere but at the Cross. The Gospel is the reinstatement of love, and love is maintained only by the sacrifice. Philanthropy is very popular, but it is only an outer energy, and it has been well said that a virtue which is fashionable is next door to being out of fashion. Love is the condition of the Christian disentanglement. Neither is voluntary suffering the true self-sacrifice. Love will find the way to its own expression. There will be no need to seek occasions of sacrifice. If we but look where next to plant our foot, we shall in due time discover all the length and all the winding of the way. III. We shall thus come to understand the life of St. Paul in its sweetness, in its greatness, in its pain the life of constant suffering and constant triumph, the life that ever heard and never left unheeded the call to bonds and afflictions, the life that did not hurry to useless pains and unasked renunciations, the life that loved and was loved back, the life of a surrender that smoked day and night like the perfumes on the altar. And when all the years are full, when much has been attained, accomplished, foregone, we shall hear the last solemn call, My son, give Me thine heart, and go forth to our creating, redeeming, sanctifying God, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven, and to Jesus. W. Robertson Nicoll, Ten Minute Sermons, p. 173. References. XIII. 3. H. Jones, A Lent in London, p. 134. Expositor (5th Series), vol. x. p. 325. 1 Corinthians 13:4 Trying to be kind and honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemen of our heroic mould; we had rather set ourselves to something bold, arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us is rather one of microscopic fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. To be honest, to be kind to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. R. L. Stevenson, in * A Christmas Sermon. 1 Corinthians 13:4 * 'Swift,' says Dr. Johnson, 'seems to have wasted life in discontent, by the rage of neglected pride, and the languishment of unsatisfied desire. He is querulous and fastidious, arrogant and malignant; he scarcely speaks of himself but with indignant lamentations, or of others but with insolent superiority when he is gay, and with angry contempt when he is gloomy.' 1 Corinthians 13:4 Those whom their virtue restrains from deceiving others, are often disposed by their vanity to deceive themselves. Johnson, * Life of Blackmore. * References. XIII. 4. C. Perren, Sermon Outlines, p. 333. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Reading (2nd Series), p. 84. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 222. XIII. 4-7. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 88. XIII. 4-8. H. Elvet Lewis, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xix. p. 393. XIII. 4-13. Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 36. D. L. Moody, The Fulness of the Gospel, p. 90. 1 Corinthians 13:5 'Love,' says George Eliot, 'has a habit of saying "never mind" to angry self, who, sitting down for the nonce in the lower place, by-and-by gets used to it.' There is no safer test of greatness than the faculty of letting mortifying words and insults pass unheeded, and of ascribing them, like many other mistakes, to the weakness and ignorance of the speaker merely, as it were, perceiving without feeling them.' Schopenhauer. 1 Corinthians 13:5 Charity is generous; it runs a risk willingly, and in spite of a hundred successive experiences, it thinks no evil at the hundred-and-first. We must be knowingly rash, that we may not be like the clever ones of this world, who never forget their own interests. Amiel. 1 Corinthians 13:6 'I hold it a crime,' says Caleb Garth in Middlemarch, 'to expose a man's sin, unless I'm clear it must be done to save the innocent.' References. XIII. 5. Archbishop Temple, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 241. XIII. 6. C. S. Home, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lv. p. 408. 1 Corinthians 13:7 Writing to a young friend on marriage, Henri Perreyve said: 'Love is not pleasure, it is not a mere selfish enjoyment, it is not the illusion of a coarse passion. He who loves gives himself above all; in its final expression, love is sacrifice. Therefore be alone is the true lover who sacrifices his rest, his joys, his fortune and if need be, life itself, for the being whom he ought to love on earth or in heaven. Those who marry ought to surrender themselves as the priest does in his sacred office, with devotion, with self-abandonment with joy, indeed, but with a solemn joy, which is closely akin to resignation, and which accepts suffering beforehand.' Lettres de L'Abbé Perreyve (edition of 1903), p. 98. 1 Corinthians 13:7 'The many ties of acquaintance and friendship which I have, or think I have in life, I have felt along the lines, and they are almost all of them of such frail contexture, that I am sure they would not stand the breath of the least adverse breeze of fortune. But from you, my ever dear Sir,' writes Burns in 1787 to William Nicol, 'I look with confidence for the apostolic love that shall wait on me through good report and bad report.' Coleridge makes the words 'beareth all things' the motto fur the following lines on Forbearance: Gently I took that which ungently came, And without scorn forgave: Do thou the same. A wrong done to thee think a cat's-eye spark Thou wouldst not see, were not thine own heart dark. Thine own keen sense of wrong that thirsts for sin, Fear that. 1 Corinthians 13:7 A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting all the virtues from us, and who can appreciate them in us. Thoreau Compare Cléante's outburst in Tartuffe (Act i. Scene 5): Our age, my brother, has made plain to us Some who may serve as glorious exemplars. No trumpeters of virtue they; you mark No vaunt intolerable in their lives; nay more. Their piety is human, reasonable. They blame not all we do, for that, they deem. Smacks overmuch of arrogant pretence, So, leaving proud words to the lips of others, They make their actions a reproof to ours. They build not on appearances of evil, And quick are they to judge well of their neighbours. No faction lurks in them, no sly intrigue, Their only care is to live well and true. They do not run the sinner harshly down, But keep their hatred for the sin alone. These, these the men for me! That's the true life. That's the example for us all to follow. 1 Corinthians 13:7 It is not true that love makes all things easy; it makes us choose what is difficult. George Eliot Felix Holt, ch. XLIX 1 Corinthians 13:8 'If you want a person's faults,' says Stevenson in his essay on Thoreau, 'go to those who love him. They will not tell you, but they know. And herein lies the magnanimous courage of love, that it endures this knowledge without change.' References. XIII. 7. H. D. M. Spence, Voices and Silences, p. 197. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No. 1617. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p. 218. XIII. 8. T. F. Crosse, Sermons, p. 67. XIII. 8-10. T. G. Bonney, Sermons on Some of the Questions of the Day, p. 56. XIII. 8-12. J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. ii. p. 162. What Lasts 1 Corinthians 13:8 * ; 1 Corinthians 13:13 * We discern the run of the Apostle's thought best by thus omitting the intervening verses and connecting these two. The part omitted is but a buttress of what has been stated in the former of our two verses; and when we thus unite them there is disclosed plainly the Apostle's intention of contrasting two sets of things, three in each. The point mainly intended by the contrast is the transiency of the one and the permanence of the other. I. What will Drop Away. Paul answers, 'prophecies, tongues, knowledge'. All our present modes of apprehension and of utterance are transient, and will be left behind. (1) Knowledge shall cease because the perfect will absorbs into itself the imperfect, as the inrushing tide will obliterate the little pools in the rocks on the seashore. (2) Knowledge will pass because here it is indirect, and there it will be immediate. 'We shall know face to face,' which is what philosophers call by intuition. (3) Modes of utterance will cease. With new experiences will come new methods of communication; as a man can speak, and a beast can only growl or bark. II. What will Last? 'So then abideth these three, faith, hope, love.' The two latter come out of the former, and without it they are nought, and it without them is dead. (1) Faith breeds hope. There is the difference between earthly hopes and Christian people's hopes. The one basis on which men can rest is trust in Jesus Christ, His word, His love, His power, and for the heavenly future, in His Resurrection and present glory. (2) Faith, in like manner, is the parent of love. The abiding of all three is eternal abiding, and there is a heavenly as well as an earthly form of faith and hope as well as of love. III. What Follows from all this? (1) Let us be quite sure that we understand what this abiding love is. Paul's notion of love is the response of the human love to the Divine, which Divine is received into the heart by simple faith in Jesus Christ. (2) Let us take this great thought of the permanence of faith, hope, and love as being the highest conception that we can form of our future condition. (3) Let us shape our lives in accordance with these certainties. A. Maclaren, Triumphant Certainties, p. 162. References. XIII. 8, 13. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 186. 1 Corinthians 13:9 * ; 1 Corinthians 13:12 * Bishop King of Lincoln wrote, in his paper on Clerical Studies: 'This conviction of our own ignorance is one of the most prominent and valuable features in the system of Bishop Butler. 'It is after all only what St. Paul has told us, that we know in part ( ἐκ μέρους γὰρ γινώσκομεν ). But it was the forgetfulness of this which led to the weakness of the great systems of the schoolmen in the Middle Ages. They were tempted by the desire for intellectual scientific completeness to add connecting pieces of their own invention, instead of, as Lord Bacon says, being content to have breaks and chasms in their system, and to cry out, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" It is the forgetfulness of this condition of partial knowledge which has placed the modern Roman Church in such a perilous position, allowing herself to be led on by the popular desire to have everything defined and made plain, "howbeit," as Hooker said, "oftentimes more plain than true". 'This seems to me to be most important for us to remember in the Church of England at the present time, with the pressure of modern Romanism on the one side, and the desire for secular scientific knowledge on the other. We must not be afraid to say, ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους , and one of the best ways, I think, to be convinced of one's ignorance is to try to know. 'It is a matter not for pride but for thankfulness that hitherto the clergy of the Church of England have been better educated than the clergy of any other part of Christendom, but from different causes it is an obvious fact that men are now being ordained who have not had the same opportunities, which most of us had, of knowing how much there is that they do not know. It is more than ever, therefore, important that we should all continue reading, that we may preserve the condition so favourable to true humility and be ready for the gift of faith. Let this be a watchword for the Church of England, ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους . The Love and Wisdom, of God, p. 337. References. XIII. 9. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. i. p. 106. A. Rowland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 166. XIII. 10. H. Windross, The Life Victorious, p. 65. Christian Manhood 1 Corinthians 13:11 If there be those among us, who, like the young ruler, 'worshipping Christ,' and 'loved' by Him, and obeying His commandments from their youth up, yet cannot but be 'sorrowful' at the thought of giving up their pleasant visions, their childish idolatries, and their bright hopes of earthly happiness, such I bid be of good cheer, and take courage. What is it your Saviour requires of you, more than will also be exacted from you by that hard and evil master, who desires your ruin? Christ bids you give up the world; but will not, at any rate, the world soon give up you? Can you keep it, by being its slave? Will not he, whose creature of temptation it is, the prince of the world, take it from you, whatever he at present promises? What does your Lord require of you, but to look at all things as they really are, to account them merely as His instruments, and to believe that good is good because He wills it, that He can bless as easily by hard stone as by bread, in the desert as in the fruitful field, if we have faith in Him who gives us the true bread from heaven? Daniel and his friends were princes of the royal house of David; they were 'children well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, cunning in knowledge, and understanding science'; yet they had faith to refuse even the literal meat and drink given them, because it was an idol's sacrifice, and God sustained them without it. For ten days of trial they lived on pulse and water; yet 'at the end,' says the sacred record, 'their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king's meat'. Doubt not, then, His power to bring you through any difficulties, who gives you the command to encounter them. He has showed you the way; He gave up the home of His mother Mary to 'be about His Father's business,' and now He but bids you take up after Him the cross which He bore for you, and 'fill up what is wanting of His afflictions in your flesh'. Be not afraid it is but a pang now and then, and a struggle; a covenant with your eyes, and a fasting in the wilderness, some calm habitual watchfulness and the hearty effort to obey, and all will be well. Be not afraid. He is most gracious, and will bring you on by little and little. There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in His excellency on the sky. The Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. He knows no variableness, neither shadow of turning; and when we outgrow our childhood, we but approach, however feebly, to His likeness, who has no youth nor age, who has no passions, no hopes, nor fears, but who loves truth, purity, and mercy, and who is supremely blessed, because He is supremely holy. J. H. Newman, from the * Sermon on Christian Manhood. 1 Corinthians 13:11 * O what a wilderness were this sad world, If man were always man, and never child. Hartley Coleridge. Horace Walpole used to say that Gray 'was never a boy,' and Coleridge confesses that at school 'I became a dreamer, and acquired an indisposition to all bodily activity; and I was fretful, and inordinately passionate; and as I could not play at anything, and was slothful, I was despised and hated by the boys; and because I could read and spell, and had, I may truly say, a memory and understanding forced into almost unnatural ripeness, I was flattered and wondered at by the old women.... Alas! I had all the simplicity, all the docility of the little child, but none of the child's habits. I never thought as a child, never had the language of a child'. Compare Wordsworth's lines written upon visiting Milton's rooms at Cambridge: Yea, our blind Poet, who in his later day Stood almost single; uttering odious truth Darkness before and danger's voice behind, Soul awful if the earth has ever lodged An awful soul I seemed to see him here Familiarly, and in his scholar's dress Bounding before me, yet a stripling youth A boy, no better, with his rosy cheeks Angelical, keen eye, courageous look, And conscious step of purity and pride. 'Looking back upon all this period of his early years,' says Sainte-Beuve, 'Gibbon is careful to point out that the golden age of life's morning, which all praise, never existed for him, and that he "never knew the happiness of childhood". I have already noted the same thing with regard to Volney. Those who have lacked such maternal care, the early bloom and blossom of tender affection, the varied charm which imbues our early impressions, are more easily detached from the religious feeling than other people.' 1 Corinthians 13:11 'Do as a child but when thou art a child,' says Sir Thomas Browne in his Christian Morals, 'and ride not on a reed at twenty. He who hath not taken leave of the follies of his youth, and in his maturer state scarce got out of that division, disproportionately divideth his days, crowds up the latter part of his life, and leaves too narrow a corner for the age of wisdom.' Again, in his Religio Medici (I. 42), he observes sadly: 'I find in my confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my youth; I committed many then because I was a child; and because I commit them still, I am yet an infant Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child, before the days of dotage.' In his Walden, Thoreau tells of a vigorous Canadian wood-chopper who came to him. 'But the intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in which the Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child.' Compare also the account, quoted from Rousseau in Hazlitt's essay on 'A Sun-dial,' of how he sat up 'with his father reading romances, when a boy, till they were startled by the swallows twittering in their nests at daybreak, and the father cried out, half angry and ashamed allons, monfils; je suis plus enfant que toi .' Compare Goldsmith's lines on Italy in The Traveller: Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp arrayed, The paste-board triumph and the cavalcade; Processions form'd for piety and love, A mistress or a saint in every grave. By sports like these are all their cares beguiled, The sports of children satisfy the child. It were well if none remained boys all their lives; but what is more common than the sight of grown men, talking on political or moral or religious subjects in that off-hand, idle way which we signify by the word unreal? 'That they simply do not know what they are talking of,' is the spontaneous, silent remark of any man of sense who hears them. Newman, The Idea of a University, p. xvii. References. XIII. 11. J. Martineau, Endeavours After the Christian Life (2nd Series), p. 78. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 199. H. S. Holland, Old and New, p. 181. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. pp. 8 and 16. J. S. Maver, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 318. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 31. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 470; ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 26. Through a Glass Darkly 1 Corinthians 13:12 This fragment of Inspiration appears in the Revised Version thus: 'For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I have been known'. Some critics, however, prefer another and fuller rendering; 'For now we see by means of a mirror, darkly, or in a riddle; but then face to face: now I know in part; then shall I fully know even as also I was fully known'. But it is an open question whether the reference made is to a medium of silver or polished metal which can only reflect objects, or to that of thin horn or pellucid stone used by the ancients. No matter, each figure admirably illustrates the thought of the writer. I. The imperfection of the present is the first thought brought out in this passage. The medium of our vision is now defective. Nature is a mirror which reflects God; but the primal transgression has shattered it, so that it now gives but misty or distorted views of Him. The Bible, too, is as full a revelation of God as it can be; but its representations, albeit very sublime, are necessarily figurative, and therefore contain truth only in a relative form. So of nearly all the Divine facts. There is, however, one fact 'the faithful saying, worthy of all acceptation' which shines brilliantly on its holy pages as noontide sun on cloudless skies (1 Timothy 1:15 ). The capacity of our mind is also now limited. Were the medium never so perfect, we could take but slight advantage of it, because we are, in a mental and moral sense, like the man whose blindness was only half healed, and who, when asked by Jesus what he saw, replied, 'I see men as trees walking'. Sin has so weakened and darkened our mind, that we often call good evil, and evil good. We now see by means of a piece of burnished metal, or through a plate of horn or translucent stone; consequently, we know only in part; and a child may ask a question which a philosopher could not answer. II. But the perfection of the future is what we look forward to. The vision will then be unobstructed. It will be as immediate as the 'mouth to mouth' with which the I AM spoke to the leader of Israel (Numbers 12:8 ). 'Face to face.' 'This is,' as an eloquent divine remarks, 'the beatific vision' absolutely clear and direct A thick cloud necessarily intervened between Jehovah and Moses; but how the latter yearned to see the face of the former! (Exodus 33:18 ). To grant such a request would have proved fatal to the beholder. Not so in the great future. Oh what transporting views will then be had of God! When the angels front His throne, they veil their faces with their wings; but the redeemed and glorified have no wings. With God and them it is 'face to face': no cloud on His face; no veil on theirs! And, if they see God thus in heaven, what can hinder them from seeing their friends 'face to face' there, and knowing them again? The mind will then be perfected. 'Now,' we are known of God rather than He is known of us; 'then,' God will be fully known by us; yet not so fully as He knows us, because His knowledge of us is absolutely complete from the beginning, whereas our knowledge of Him will ever be progressive. We shall spend the golden ages of the great future in the rapt contemplation of His infinite perfections as exhibited in the face of Jesus Christ. There will be no mysteries then: the full-orbed light of eternity will illumine all worlds, all beings, and all things. Mystery 1 Corinthians 13:12 I. It has ever been a mark of Christianity that it kept men alive to the mysteries around them. The souls that have drunk most deeply of the Christian doctrine are the souls who have most felt the mystery of life. And yet, perhaps, there never was a time in which the sense of mystery was less present than today. How far that dying out of the mysterious may be traced to the decline of living faith is a question that might admit of much discussion. But there are other causes which I should like to indicate. (1) One is the tyranny of facts under which we live. There is no man more apt to be blind to the great mysteries than the specialist, and this is pre-eminently the age of specialism. (2) And then again this is an age of machinery, and there is little mystery in a machine. 'So many hundred hands in this mill,' says Charles Dickens in Hard Times, 'so many hundred horse steam power. It is known, to the force of a single pound-weight, what the engine will do.... There is no mystery in it.' (3) And then this is an age of travel. The world is explored into its darkest corners. Knowledge has come, and perhaps a little wisdom with it; but the older sense of the world's mystery has gone. II. I think, then, that it is supremely important in these times that we should endeavour to keep alive the sense of mystery. And I am sure that the Lord Jesus Christ always meant it to have large room in His disciples' hearts. (1) Think, for example, of what our Lord meant by unbelief. 'Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?' Had they only felt the mystery of the Divine, touching and girding even the angry waters, they had been less disquieted out at sea. That was what Jesus meant by unbelief; not a mind that denies, but a spirit that disowns. (2) And then you remember that other declaration: 'Except ye become as little children'. You cannot even see the kingdom of God unless within you is the heart of childhood, and all things are mysterious to the child. III. It is notable, too, that Jesus deepened the mystery of everything He touched. (1) Take one of His leading words like life, for instance. When I think of what life meant in the old pagan world, how shallow it was, how sensuous and short, and when I compare that with the life that is in Christ I feel at once how the mystery of life is deepened in passing through the hands of Jesus Christ. (2) Or take the thought of death. Christ has illumined death; but has He banished its mystery? He hath taken away its sting, but deepened its mystery. (3) Take the thought of God. God was a Sovereign once, now He is Father, and there are more mysteries in Fatherhood than in Kingship. Christ has intensified the mystery of God. G. H. Morrison, Sunrise: Addresses from a City Pulpit, p. 12. 1 Corinthians 13:12 In his essay on Clough's poems, Bagehot describes how 'the best of us... strive, more or less, to "make the best of both worlds". We know that the invisible world cannot be duly discerned, or perfectly appreciated. We know that we see as in a glass darkly, but still we look on the glass. We frame to ourselves some image which we know to be incomplete, which probably is in part untrue, which we try to improve day by day, of which we do not deny the defects but which nevertheless is our "all"; which we hope, when the accounts are taken, may be found not utterly unlike the unknown reality. This is, as it seems, the best religion for finite beings, living, if we may say so, on the very edge of two dissimilar worlds, on the very line of which the infinite, unfathomable sea surges up, and just where the queer little bay of this world ends, we count the pebbles on the shore, and image to ourselves as best we may the secrets of the great deep.' Most men's minds are dim mirrors, in which all truth is seen, as St. Paul tells us, darkly; this is the fault most common and most fatal; dulness of heart and mistiness of sight, increasing to utter hardness and blindness; Satan breathing upon the glass, so that if we do not sweep the mist laboriously away, it will take no image. Ruskin, Stones of Venice (III. To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not difficult it is impossible. Even what is passing in our presence we see but through a glass darkly. The mind as well as the eye adds something of its own, before an image, even of the clearest object, can be painted upon it. Froude, on * The Dissolution of the Monasteries. * Newton, Pascal, Bossuet, Racine, and Fénelon, that is to say, the most enlightened men on earth, in the most philosophical of all ages, and in the full vigour of their spirit and their age, have believed in Jesus Christ; while the great Condé, on his deathbed, repeated these noble words, 'Yes, we shall see God as He is, * face to face'. * Vauvenargues. 1 Corinthians 13:12 I wait and wonder: long ago This wonder was my constant quest, Wonder at our environing, And at myself within the ring: Still that abides with me, some quest Before my footsteps seems to lie, But quest of what I scarcely know, Life itself makes no reply: A quest for naught that earth supplies, This is our life's last compromise. W. Bell Scott. To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident of its little native Creek may have become familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all of which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time to time ( un miraculously enough) be quite overset and reversed? Such a minnow is Man; his Creek this planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasureable All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of Providence through Æons of Æons. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (III. 8). 'Madam,' Samuel Rutherford wrote once to Lady Kenmure, 'ye must go in at heaven's gates, and your book in your hand, still learning.' References. XIII. 12. Bishop Bickersteth, Sermons, p. 50. J. Cumming, Penny Pulpit, No. 1506, p. 185. J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 10. J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. i. p. 164. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii. No. 1002. Llewelyn Davies, The Purpose of God, p. 80. Expositor (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 382; ibid. vol. i. p. 452; ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 358. The Geometry of Life 1 Corinthians 13:13 It is a deep saying of the Greek philosopher Plato that 'God geometrises'. And this means that God is the grand Geometrician of the Universe and has constructed it on geometrical principles. A complete life is geometrical. It is a triangle, and its three sides are Work, Love, and Religion. They must all be there, and if one of them be lacking, the triangle is broken, the life is incomplete. I. Work. This is the base of the triangle. It is the foundation of life. Work is a necessity, and it is a sacred thing. Here I would specially address young men, and I would say to you: Recognise the sacredness of your work, whatever it may be, and accept it as God's appointment, as the work which He has given you to do. I know that you are often discouraged because it seems so trivial and commonplace, because it has so little outcome and offers so little prospect of promotion. But recognise it as the will of God concerning you, and you will find it transfigured and invested with a new significance. Quiet acceptance of the lot which God in His providence has appointed to us, and faithful performance of the work, often so hard and distasteful, which He has given us to do that is the way to a larger heritage and a loftier service. II. Love. Work alone is not enough. Even if it be not mere drudgery, it is a selfish thing, so we must bring in Love. Love carries us out of ourselves; it redeems our lives from 'miserable aims that end with self,' and makes our work a gracious ministry. It lifts our horizon and broadens our world. III. Religion. This completes the triangle. If Work without Love be drudgery, Love without Religion is tragedy. What is the use of loving if it must end with a green mound in the churchyard, with a tender memory and a vain regret? There comes to my remembrance here an incident of my own ministry. Death had suddenly visited a home and carried off a little child. It was a cruel blow to the poor mother. She was a widow, and the little maiden had been the light of her eyes and the gladness of her heart. I feared that the sorrow would crush her, but she bore up bravely; and afterwards she said to me: 'I am sure that I would have lost my reason but for the promise of meeting my wee lassie again in the Father's House'. This is the supreme blessing of Religion. It gives Love permanence. It teaches us that Death is, in St. Bernard's phrase, 'the Gate of Life'. It draws aside the veil and discovers to us the broad and beautiful world of Eternity, and the Holy City where the inhabitant never says, 'I am sick,' and no mourners go about the streets, and the Father's House where there are many mansions and where, by the mercy of Jesus, we shall all meet again on the eternal Sabbath morning. David Smith, Man's Need of God, p. 15. Love 1 Corinthians 13:13 The whole civilised world has come round at any rate, in theory to the teaching of St. Paul. The verdict of the popular magazine of today is, that cleverness may be a great thing, and learning a great thing, but a greater than these is Love. Pick up a philosophical treatise on ethics, and, in a more cumbrous style, you will find the same thing said. What comes out as the ultimate basis of conduct in such books? Is it not Altruism? But Altruism, after all, is but a cumbrous name for Love, and was taught the world by Christ, and therefore the verdict of the ethical treatise is the verdict of St. Paul. Or take again practical life. Let a man be kind-hearted and generous, and there is nothing that he is not forgiven today. The popular verdict of the day is that sobriety is a great thing and honesty is a great thing, but 'a greater than these is Love'. And if this is so with regard to man's opinion of man, it is even more forcibly true with regard to man's opinion of God. I. What has Love Done? The old-world stories of the Bible are but the beginning of all the stories of self-sacrifice endured by father for children, by children for father, by brother for brother, and friend for friend; and a great chorus from all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues cries, 'This hath Love done'. Nor is it only the love of relatives and of friends. Who is this spare man with the stern, severe face who is searching the arches of London with his lantern? This is Lord Shaftesbury. Again, what is this which comes looming up before us today? Why do I speak of the Cross as it stands up clearer and clearer before our eyes? Because what the Cross gives is the most overwhelming answer to our question, 'This hath Love done, this!' II. If then Love hath done this, What is Love? (1) The first answer which springs from its manifestation in the Cross is, 'God is Love'. (2) And if the first thing about Love is that it is Godlike, the second follows from the first, and that is, it is indestructible. (3) And thirdly, love is unselfish. III. Have we got this Love? To be without Love is to be without God, and to be without God is to be lost. The old idea of the ancients was that fire was stolen from heaven; but whether fire was stolen from heaven or not, Love only comes from heaven. Only by keeping our hearts throbbing with His can we truly love. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Banners of the Christian Faith, p. 32. Imperishable Jewels 1 Corinthians 13:13 Their order is instructive. Faith is the root. Hope springs out of faith, what faith believes hope expects. And love is the fruit produced by faith and hope. All three abide: faith abideth, hope abideth, love abideth. I. Faith. Our Lord taught St. Thomas the happiness of faith when He said: 'Happy are they that have not seen, and yet have believed' (St. John 20:29 ). As to the origin of saving faith, it is of God. Its object is Christ and Christ only. Faith is the Yes of the heart to the promises and propositions of God. II. Hope. God is 'the God of hope' (Romans 15:13 ). 'We are saved in hope' (Romans 8:24 ), i.e., hope is the element in which we are saved. III. Love. 'Love is the crown of faith and hope.' There are two elements of earthly happiness. I mean, if you would be happy in your life you must have some one to love, and something to do. Apply this to spiritual things and you will see how true it is. Some One to love: Christ, Something to do: for Him. Remember this: these three graces are gifts. Surely we may well add St. Augustine's prayer to our other prayers: 'Lord, give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt'. F. Harper, The Preacher's Magazine, vol. x. p. 560. 1 Corinthians 13:13 The Americans have many virtues, but they have not Faith and Hope. I know no two words whose meaning is more lost sight of. We use these words as if they were as obsolete as Selah and Amen. Emerson, on * Man the Reformer. 1 Corinthians 13:13 * Hope, Faith and Love at God's high altar shine, Lamp triple-branched, and fed with oil divine. Two of these triple-lights shall once grow pale, They burn without, but Love within the veil. R. C. Trench. 'I suppose,' says George Eliot in a letter of 1862 to Miss Hennell, 'no wisdom the world will ever find out will make Paul's words obsolete, "Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity".' A man's love is the measure of; his fitness for good or bad company here or elsewhere. O. W. Holmes, Elsie Venner (ch. XVII.). References. XIII. 13. W. R. Inge, All Saints' Sermons, 1905-7, p. 20. L. D. Bevan, Sermons by Welshmen, p. 266. T. H. Bell, Persuasions, p. 69. Bishop Winnington-Ingram, Christian World Pulpit, vol: liii. p. 124. Bishop Bethell, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 182. R. Higinbotham, Sermons, p. 193. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. i. p. 119. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p. 219. E. T. J. Marriner, Sermons Preached at Lyme Regis, p. 231. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (3rd Series), p. 74. A. J. Palmer, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 36. Alfred Rowland, The Exchanged Crowns, p. 29. R. J. Drummond, Faith's Certainties, p. 235. XIV. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 391. 1 Corinthians 14:1 In his letter to the Governor of Edinburgh Castle (12th Sept. 1650), on the Scottish preachers' objections to lay preaching, Cromwell asks: 'Where do you find in the Scripture a ground to warrant such an assertion, That Preaching is exclusively your function? Though an Approbation from men hath order in it, and may do well; yet he that hath no better warrant than that, hath none at all. I hope He that ascended up on high may give His gifts to whom He pleases.... You know who bids us covet earnestly the best gifts, but chiefly that we may prophesy; which the Apostle explains there to be a speaking to instruction and edification and comfort.' References. XIV. 1. J. S. Bartlett, Sermons, p. 156. A. J. Palmer, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. p. 36. XIV. 2. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ix. p. 83. XIV. 3. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 271. XIV. 7. H. S. Holland, A Lent in London, p. 230. 1 Corinthians 14:8 The eighth aphorism in the preface to Bacon's De Augmentis Scientiarum is: 'Certainty is so essential to law, that law cannot even be just without it "For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?" So if the law give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare to obey it? It ought therefore to warn before it strikes.' References. XIV. 8. Penny Pulpit, No. 1653, p. 265. XIV. 10. Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 369. XIV. 11. W. M. Sinclair, Words from St. Paul's, p. 69. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p. 113. XIV. 12. George Matheson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p. 155. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 437. XIV. 13. H. S. Holland, Vital Values, p. 192. 1 Corinthians 14:15 The human mind stands ever in perplexity, demanding intellect, demanding sanctity, impatient equally of each without the other. Emerson. References. XIV. 15. W. C. Wheeler, Sermons and Addresses (2nd Series), p. 19. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, p. 124. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. i. p. 34. XIV. 19. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 355. The Childlike Character 1 Corinthians 14:20 'Be not children in understanding.' This text may seem by some of us to be not quite in key with a great many passages of Scripture with which we are familiar. The Apostle may even seem to be out of sympathy with his Master. Jesus said: 'I thank Thee, O Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes'. And He took a little child and set him in the midst of them as the type of the true Christian. 'Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.' What is the reconciliation of the two instructions to be children and not to be children? I. Let us then begin by asking, What did Christ mean by saying that we are to become like children? It is not the goodness of children which our Lord praises. It is certain natural qualities of children that have a sad way of vanishing as we grow older, but which, if they are lost, we must do our best to recover. What are those qualities? If we recall the circumstances in which our Lord spoke about children, we shall at once see that the prayer, 'I thank Thee that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes,' was uttered after His rejection by the chief priests and elders, and of His acceptance by the band of Apostles, and it must refer to that And I would ask you, Is not one of the most characteristic and delightful qualities of children their habit of looking straight at what is before them and judging it to the best of their power, without prejudice or fear of consequence, on its merits? A child's candour and simplicity sometimes, by clashing with our polite conventions, causes momentary annoyance, but it is, in essence, a most valuable quality, as we cannot deny even while we suffer from it. And it is this childlike quality in the Apostles which distinguishes them from the Pharisees and enables them to receive the new revelation of Christ. Now this sincerity, this true thinking and plain speaking, which is natural to children, often tends to be worn away as we leave childhood behind us, by the proper and natural desire to stand well with the little world of society, politics, or religion in which we happen to move, and, if so, it must be recovered, and we have to set it before us as a virtue to be attained; we have to turn and become in this respect once more like little children. II. And the second childlike quality which also we must labour to get back again is absence of self-importance. You will remember that our Lord's putting the little child in the midst followed upon the wrangling of the Apostles as to their order of precedence. Children are not, as a rule, concerned with themselves in such a way as that; they look away from themselves. And this self-importance brings in its train vices which are objectionable to others and excruciating to ourselves, one of which the Apostle notices in the text Malice. Do not be malicious: children are not. Malice springs out of jealousy, and jealousy is the other side of self-importance. III. And that word brings us back to the other part of our text 'In understanding be men'. Common sense, wisdom, comes as near as we can get to what St. Paul is here urging upon the Corinthians. He is not exhorting them to any great effort of intellect, nor to accept the foundations of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. St. Paul is always telling them that the Gospel appeals to the child more than to the grown man. In the apprehension of the message it is the child in us that comes into play the frank outlook, the instinct for goodness, humility all childlike qualities. It is to them the Gospel appeals. And so St Paul is not contradicting his Master; he is urging that, when the Christian faith has been received, there is room in our religious life, as much as in any other life, for the exercise of a man's faculty of judgment, common sense. And, if you think about it, the child's virtue of sincerity and the man's faculty of judgment are very closely allied, and one is really the outgrowth of the other. I dare say you have often remarked the judgments of Christ. Those judgments of His which enraged the Pharisees, and almost His own disciples, were simple judgments of common sense, guided by sincerity. Is it not enough that we the clergy, or you the laity, should be as 'harmless as doves,' if we are not also as 'wise as serpents'. It is not enough to be children in malice; let us also 'in understanding be men'. 1 Corinthians 14:20 'When, by what test, by what indication, does manhood commence?' De Quincey asks, in the thirteenth chapter of his Autobiographic Sketches. 'Physically by one criterion, legally by another, morally by a third, intellectually by a fourth and all indefinite. Equator, absolute equator, there is none. Between the two spheres of youth and age, perfect and imperfect manhood, as in all analogous cases, there is no strict line of bisection. The change is a large process, accomplished within a large and corresponding space.... Intellectually speaking, a very large proportion of men never attain maturity. Nonage is their final destiny; and manhood, in this respect, is for them a pure idea.' References. XIV. 20. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 258. T. Binney, King's Weigh-House Chapel Sermons, p. 96. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 268; ibid. (5th Series), vol. v. p. 31. XIV. 21. Ibid. vol. iii. p. 406. Outsiders 1 Corinthians 14:23 What was the policy of the great-hearted Apostle? It was that everybody should at some point or other be able to come into the service of the Gospel, the worship of God, and should in some degree at least find the supreme blessing. There is a lesson to you, church leaders, preachers, and persons concerned as you suppose yourselves to be in the advancement of the kingdom of Christ. In the degree in which you are so concerned heaven's blessing cannot be withheld from you; but let us take care lest we become mere botanists or geologists or astronomers, lest we cultivate some favourite science of things, and lest, above all, we raise ourselves up and say, this place was not made for the unlearned; as for the unbelievers, turn them out. We must not do so. And the greatest man will be the first to say that in the Church of Christ there ought always to be at least one mouthful of bread for the very poorest soul that has crept into the Father's house. I. The question which the Apostle put to the Corinthians is the question of all days. The Apostle Paul looks in upon the churches, and in the name of Christ says, What kind of preaching have you here? are you preaching to men, sinful, awful, shameful; or do you never refer to these things, but take the evil of the world for granted and leave it in the hands of the devil? That is poor preaching, poor praying, and poor singing. We are wrong, we are failing in duty, if we do not say in the construction of every service and the building up of every plan of operation, Now how will this fit the unlearned? what shall we say to the unbeliever if he challenge us at this point? We have made many churches, comfortable places, we know where we begin and how we continue and where we end, and if so much as a little child were to cry out in the middle of our perfunctory service we would be quite startled and wish the little angel to be cast out. You know nothing about the Church if that is your view; the cross you have never touched if you despise the unlearned; and if you cannot stop to explain your faith to the earnest, simple-minded inquirer or unbeliever you have not experienced the evangelising and redeeming spirit of the Cross. II. We must, in thinking of the congregation, think of every one, of the great and the small; and, blessed be God, I repeat that when a man is truly great he is always willing to wait for the slow and the crippled and the infirm. He says, the preacher is now speaking to a class of persons of whom I am not one, but my not being one does not destroy the class of persons especially contemplated, and there must be something in the discourse for that class. So the sermon should be high as heaven and low as the ground we tread, balmy as the air we breathe, friendly as the sunlight that plays around us. III. The great purpose of coming together in the church is edification, building up; so we must have as much as possible of intelligence that can be appreciated; not intelligence that moves itself right away from the tracks of the people, but that truer and more intelligent intelligence which says, Now where can we begin? where are these people prepared to make an opening? let us bring the Gospel into their civilisation, into their language, classical or unclassical, and give them to feel that there is something in the Gospel for the building up of their hearts and lives. That is right. Heaven bless the thought. There is one other aspect to be looked at, or the preacher would sit down without having completed his purpose. We must not expect any one man to absorb the whole service to himself alone. Even the unlearned man must not come into the church and say to the well-informed man, You have no business here, because all this church arrangement is for the unlearned and ignorant man; so withdraw, if you please. No! A man is not bound at a great civic feast to eat up the whole banquet; I do not know any law by which a man attending the great civic feast should be compelled to eat up the whole bill of fare. I should recommend him not to do so; let him take what suits him, let him take exactly what he wants or what he needs, and be content with that. But, remember, that the lines you omit may be the very lines that will suit some other man. So it must be in the setting up of the religious service. There should be something for everybody. No man should find fault with the portion of another; he should say, This is not the portion that I immediately care for, but my brother will relish it, his very soul will be in an ecstasy of thankfulness and delight. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. IV. p. 107. 1 Corinthians 14:23 In his essay on Unity in Religion, Bacon observes that the fruits of unity are towards those within and also towards those without the Church. In the latter case, 'The Doctor of the Gentiles (the Propriety of whose Vocation drew him to have a speciall Care of those without) saith: If an Heathen come in, and heare you speake with severall Tongues, will he not say that ye are mad? And certainly, it is little better, when Atheists and prophane Persons do heare of so many Discordant and Contrary Opinions in Religion; it doth avert them from the Church and maketh them to sit downe in the Chaire of the Scorner.' References. XIV. 24, 25. T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p. 212. XIV. 25. Archbishop Benson, Singleheart, p. 1. XIV. 26. W. M. Sinclair, Simplicity in Christ. p. 59. H. C. Beeching, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xiv. p. 444. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 273; ibid. vol. ix. p. 87; ibid. (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 380. XIV. 28. Ibid. (5th Series, vol. vi. p. 268. XIV. 29. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. pp. 395, 462. 1 Corinthians 14:33 In men who have risen to wide-reaching power we generally observe an early preponderance of one of two instincts the instinct of rule and order, or the instinct of sympathy. The one instinct may degenerate into bureaucracy, the other into sentimentalism. Rightly ordered, they make the master or the leader of men. F. W. H. Myers, Modern Essays, p. 21. Reference. XIV. 33. J. Martineau, Endeavours After the Christian Life (2nd Series), p. 68. The Rights of Women in the Church 1 Corinthians 14:34 Do the Scriptures forbid women to speak? I have deliberately chosen for consideration the strongest text I could find in the Bible on this subject, which plainly settled the discussion so far as women in Corinth were concerned, and settles it for us, also, if the deliverance of the Apostle were final, and universal in its application. No doubt there are those among us who are ready to say: 'We take God's word as our rule, and if we find a precept in it as plain as this we do not wish to go any further'. But others lightly dismiss this view as being a private opinion of Paul's, which he would have been wiser to keep to himself. I take neither of these views. I believe that the Apostle spoke under the guidance of the Spirit of truth, and, therefore, with a Divine authority which his readers were bound to obey. But while I accept the New Testament as my rule of faith and practice, I can only do so when its meaning is fairly interpreted in the light which would naturally illumine it in the eyes of those who first read it. And when I focus all the stray beams of that light, and concentrate them on this precept, I do not hesitate to say that as an absolute prohibition it was transient and local, that it was necessary for that time and place, but is neither necessary nor desirable as the final dictum of Christianity to the world at large, for all generations. I will now give some reasons for this position. I. First let me call your attention to the fact that the New Testament does not attempt to regulate procedure for all ages and peoples. It lays down principles, but leaves procedure to be determined by the teaching of Him of whom Jesus said: 'He shall abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth'. II. The condition of women under the old dispensation, and in the early Christian Church, was not one of universal silence. There is nothing in the Gospels, or the Acts, or in any Epistle addressed to Jewish Churches, which puts the smallest restriction on the rights and liberties of Christian womanhood. III. There were good reasons for making this precept a distinct and definite rule in the Christian Churches which were found in Greek cities. IV. There are other laws which, in their strict application, we regard as local and transient. V. We hold, then, that inspired womanhood should not be debarred by artificial rules from Christian speech, or song, or prayer. We believe that woman is fit to take such part in the service of God as the result of Christianity itself, which has made many things natural and right which were formerly inexpedient or wrong. VI. It need hardly be said that in the use of such liberty the Church must be guided by sanctified common sense. A. Rowland, The Burdens of Life, p. 225. References. XIV. 36. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 273. XIV. 37. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. v. p. 253. 1 Corinthians 14:40 The love of order I the thing receive From reverend men, and I in part believe Shows a clear mind and clean, and whoso needs This love, but seldom in the world succeeds. Crabbe. References. XIV. 40. F. C. Spurr, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 92. J. S. Bartlett, Sermons, p. 165. H. C. Beeching, Church Family Newspaper, vol. xiv. p. 444. J. S. Maver, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 126. XV. Expositor (4th Series), vol. viii. p. 137; ibid. (7th Series), vol. v. pp. 403-416, 491-504. What Is the Gospel 1 Corinthians 15:1 I. A Gospel of Mercy. It is a Gospel of mercy. There are three points about it. (a) Its efficacy. 'The Gospel which ye have received, and wherein ye stand.' The first Christians received this great message of God's truth as coming not from man. It was not St Paul's Gospel; he merely handed it on. It could not be improved by his own witness. This message the people received, and on the strength and truth of this message they stood. So the Christian today first receives this message unto himself, and then stands upon it as upon a foundation. That upon which we trust is not within us but outside of us. 'By which also ye are being saved.' If we treasure the Gospel we shall find it a source of ever necessary salvation. Remember that the Bible never tells us for a moment that our salvation is completed. It is going on all the time we are here. God wants to save us not only from the past consequences, but from the daily contamination of sin. We are never really saved until body and soul are in their glorified state in heaven, temptation and sorrow are put away, and we live in an atmosphere where there is nothing to prevent the growth of holiness. (b) Its simplicity. There are three chief points in the Gospel that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again. The death of Christ is of supreme importance. He came into the world in order that He might offer that mysterious sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. Then the burial of Christ certified His death. He really died. The Resurrection certified the sufficiency of that death. He triumphed over death and made it man's servant instead of his master. So you see the Gospel is not a matter of philosophy, but it is a simple declaration of fact. (c) Its trustworthiness. These simple facts bear investigation, they can be proved. The Resurrection was witnessed to by all the disciples. Such is the Gospel of mercy the great message of the redeeming work of our Saviour. II. The Gospel of Grace. The Gospel of mercy is outside us; the Gospel of grace within us. And this Gospel of grace is the first source of Christian character. St Paul was not all that he wished to be, but 'by the grace of God,' said he, 'I am what I am'. The grace of God had changed him, and he would no more have parted with the Gospel than with life, for it was his life. This great mystery of the grace of God passes our comprehension. The grace bestowed upon St. Paul was not in vain: it was the source of his usefulness. 1 Corinthians 15:1 'I may be thought bold,' says a writer in the Spectator (15th Dec, 1714), 'in my judgment by some; but I must affirm that no one Orator has left us so visible Marks and Footsteps of his Eloquence as our Apostle.... His discourse on the Resurrection to the Corinthians, his harangue before Agrippa upon his own conversion and the necessity of that of others, are truly great and may serve as full examples to those excellent rules for the Sublime, which the best of criticks has left us.' About three o'clock in the afternoon, one of his eyes failed, and his speech was considerably affected. He desired his wife to read the fifteenth chapter of first Corinthians. 'Is not that a comfortable chapter?' said he, when it was finished. 'Oh what sweet and salutary consolation the Lord hath afforded me from that chapter!' McCrie's Life of John Knox (VIII.). By way of contrast, Matthew Arnold's remarks, in the fourth chapter of Culture and Anarchy, may be cited here: 'It surely must be perceived that the idea of immortality, as this idea rises in its generality before the human spirit, is something grander, truer, and more satisfying, than it is in the particular forms by which St. Paul, in the famous fifteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians, and Plato, in the Phædo, endeavours to develop and establish it. Surely we cannot but feel, that the argumentation with which the Hebrew Apostle goes about to expound this great idea is, after all, confused and inconclusive; and that the reasoning, drawn from analogies of likeness and equality, which is employed upon it by the Greek philosopher, is over-subtle and sterile. Above and beyond the inadequate solutions which Hebraism and Hellenism here attempt, extends the immense and august problem itself, and the human spirit which gave birth to it.' References. XV. 1. R. W. Dale, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliii. p. 257. J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 309. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 204. Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 128. The Gospel of Christ's Resurrection 1 Corinthians 15:1-2 I. Nothing can be more plain than that the Apostles, when they set themselves to obey their Lord's commands and to go forth preaching His Gospel, were content to rest their claim for belief on their knowledge of Christ's Resurrection. II. The fact of Christ's Resurrection is the only explanation of the existence and power of Christ's Church. No delusion, no pious imagination or exaggeration could give the security on which faith builds. W. H. Hutton, Church Family Newspaper, vol. XIV. p. 308. References. XV. 1, 2. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p. 73. XV. 1-3. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 13. XV. 2. D. C. A. Agnew, The Soul's Business and Prospects, p. 145. The Death of Christ 1 Corinthians 15:3 Let us attempt to gather up some of the main teachings of the New Testament about the meaning of the death of Christ. I. Note the central place the cross occupies in the New Testament. 'All the light of sacred story,' says Sir John Bowring, 'gathers round its head sublime;' and so it does. It is the centre of gravity of the New Testament. For proof of what I say, you need but turn to the Gospels and notice the space the Evangelists devote to the account of our Lord's Passion; you need but turn to the Acts and the Epistles and read the account of the apostolic preaching. Look at my own text. 'I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received,' says the Apostle Paul, writing to his Corinthian converts, 'how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.' 'First of all.' This took first rank; this was Paul's primary and central message. And it was not Paul alone who gave the cross this central and primary place. In doing this he was only following the example of the other Apostles who were in Christ before him. You have but to turn to the Epistles of Peter and John, and to the record of the apostolic preaching in the Book of the Acts, to see that the other Apostles placed the emphasis exactly where Paul placed it. Indeed, in this very paragraph from which my text is taken Paul asserts that identity in emphasis in set and definite terms. This was no message which he had himself invented, which Paul preached to the Corinthians. He delivered to them only what he had received. In preaching as he did he was at one with Peter, and John, and James, and the rest. 'Whether it be I or they so we preached, and so ye believed.' II. Now, what was it that the Apostles saw in the cross which led them to give it this supreme and central place in their preaching? 1. They saw in it, first, the final and consummate Revelation of the Divine Love. 2. And, secondly, the Apostles saw in the cross the Divine judgment upon sin. 3. Thirdly, the Apostles see in the cross of Christ the ground of pardon and forgiveness. The Gospel story seems to succeed or to fail very much as the vicarious suffering of Christ is present in it or absent from it. You have heard the story of the Moravian missionaries to Greenland. For years they toiled in Greenland teaching the natives about the Creation and the Fall, the Flood and the Dispersion, and so on, and all to no purpose. But one day John Beck read to a small company of them the old story of Christ's dying love. And one of them, Kayamak, with tears streaming down his face, said to him, 'Tell it me once more, for I too would be saved'. At last they had found the key to the Greenlanders' hearts. And what happens in Greenland happens everywhere. In a little book entitled Gospel Ethnology, the author shows by a careful comparison of missionary enterprise for the past 170 years, that what has been most effective to pierce through the callousness and prejudices of heathenism has been the story of the cross, the sufferings of the sinless Saviour proclaimed to men as the means of their pardon and acceptance with God. And what is seen abroad in heathen lands is seen also here at home. The vicarious sacrifice of Christ is the only thing that meets the deepest needs of the heart. J. D. Jones, Elims of Life, p. 60. References. XV. 3. J. D. Jones, Sermons by Welshmen, p. 284. R. W. Dale, The Epistle of James, p. 174. W. M. Clow, The Gross in Christian Experience, p. 306. W. B. Selbie, The Servant of God, p. 157. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p. 402; ibid. (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 107. XV. 3, 4. A. Maclaren, The Wearied Christ, p. 21; ibid. Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 195. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p. 107. T. Binney, King's Weigh-House Chapel Sermons, p. 307. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 16; ibid. (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 123. XV. 3-5. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 216; ibid. (7th Series), vol. v. p. 143. XV. 3-8. Ibid. p. 510. XV 3-9. Ibid. p. 146. XV. 4 . Ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 445. XV. 4-8. Ibid. (7th Series), vol. v. p. 48. XV. 4-11. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p. 220. XV. 5. W. H. Hutchings, Sermon Sketches, p. 117. T. V. Tymms, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 276. Expositor (6th Series), vol. ii. p. 70; ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 100. XV. 5-8. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. x. p. 66; ibid. (7th Series), vol. v. p. 316. XV. 6. T. Arnold, Christian Life: Its Hopes, p. 1. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvi. No. 2659. A. Maclaren, After the Resurrection, p. 102. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 109. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 205. XV. 7. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 37. XV. 8. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvi. No. 2663. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 122; ibid. (5th Series), vol. iii. p. 423. 1 Corinthians 15:9 Compare the closing sentences of Matthew Arnold's essay on St. Paul and Protestantism. 'A theology, a scientific appreciation of the facts of religion, is wanted for religion; but a theology which is a true theology, not a false. Both these influences will work for Paul's re-emergence. The doctrine of Paul will arise out of the tomb where for centuries it has lain buried; it will edify the Church of the future. It will have the consent of happier generations, the applause of less superstitious ages. All will be too little to pay half the debt which the Church of God owes to this "least of the Apostles, who was not fit to be called an Apostle, because he persecuted the Church of God".' References. XV. 9. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 89. J. S. Bartlett, Sermons, p. 22. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p. 245. XV. 9, 10. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints' Days, p. 122. 1 Corinthians 15:10 During his last hours, John Knox woke from a slumber sighing, and told his friends that he had just been tempted to believe he had 'merited heaven and eternal blessedness, by the faithful discharge of my ministry. But blessed be God who has enabled me to beat down and quench the fiery dart, by suggesting to me such passages of Scripture as these: "What hast thou that thou has not received? By the grace of God I am what I am. Not I but the grace of God in me."' References. XV. 10. W. J. Dawson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p. 200. W. L. Watkinson, ibid. vol. lvii. p. 391. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2833. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vii. p. 274; ibid. (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 230. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 216. The Unity of Apostolic Teaching 1 Corinthians 15:11 I. I ask you to think of the fact itself the unbroken unanimity of the whole body of apostolic teachers. I may take it all from the two clauses in the preceding context, 'how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day- according to the Scriptures'. Now, what lies in it? (1) The Person of the Christ. (2) They were unbrokenly consentient in regard to the facts of His life, His death, and His Resurrection. (3) The great meaning of the death, viz., the expiation for the world's sins. There were limits to the unanimity. Paul and Peter had a great quarrel about circumcision and related subjects. The apostolic writings are wondrously diverse from one another. But in regard to the facts that I have signalised, they are absolutely one. The instruments in the orchestra are various, the tender flute, the ringing trumpet, and many another, but the note they strike is the same. 'Whether it were I or they, so we preach.' II. Consider the only explanation of this unanimity. They were one, because their Gospel was the only possible statement of the principles that underlay, and the conclusion that flowed from, the plain facts of the life and the teaching of Jesus Christ. III. Note the lesson from this unanimity. Let us distinctly apprehend where is the living heart of the Gospel that it is the message of redemption by the Incarnation and sacrifice of the Son of God. There follows from that Incarnation and sacrifice all the great teaching about the work of the Divine Spirit in men dwelling in them for evermore. But the beginning of all is, 'Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures'. And that message meets, as nothing else meets, the deepest needs of every human soul. Let this text teach us what we ourselves have to do with this unanimous testimony. 'So we preach, and so ye believed.' A. Maclaren, Triumphant Certainties, p. 140. References. XV. 11. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays After Trinity, pt. i. p. 394. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ix. p. 13. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 225. XV. 12. H. Alford, Sermons on Christian Doctrine, p. 242. T. Binney, King's Weigh-House Chapel Sermons, p. 340. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 157. XV. 12-14. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1502, p. 153. XV. 12-19. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxviii. No. 2287. XV. 13. A. G. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, pt. ii. p. 354. XV. 13-17. Expositor (6th Series), vol. i. p. 391. Evidences for the Resurrection 1 Corinthians 15:14 * ; 1 John 1:3 * It would be difficult to name two greater witnesses to the Resurrection than St. Paul and St. John. What is the evidence of the Resurrection? Open George Cornewall Lewis's book on the rules of historical criticism. He says the first rule you must put into operation is this, that you must have contemporary evidence. I. The Evidence of Contemporary History. Have we got contemporary evidence that Jesus Christ rose from the dead? Remember what you mean by contemporary evidence. Any evidence within a century is contemporary evidence. Remember that that is accepted by every scholar in history. There is not today a scholar in Europe who has a reputation to lose who would challenge that the first three Gospels were written in the first century. I could not have said that in this pulpit twenty-five years ago. I should have been challenged by the most eminent scholars. That is what the Church has gained by criticism. We are more sure of the dates; they are further back than ever they were. What else have we got? Four letters written by St. Paul, one to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, one to the Galatians, admitted as genuine historical documents by sceptics like Strauss, or that eloquent French Free-thinker, Ernest Renan. Indeed Ernest Renan states that they possess every element of authenticity and genuineness. II. Is the Evidence Intelligent? Now George Cornewall Lewis says evidence must not only be contemporary but intelligent. Read St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. There is not a book on theology in the language equal to St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. III. Is it Honest? That is the next rule, says the great scholar. Is it honest? Now what had the Jews to gain in preaching this? In St. Paul's next verse he says, Yea, if Christ be not risen, we are false; the Apostle, the Church, the five hundred brethren, the women, are false witnesses. Now look at that. To me that is the biggest monument of its genuineness in the book. That you get Jews to go out and preach a lie, knowing it to be a lie, propagating a lie, and being persecuted for it, stoned, killed, isolated, shipwrecked, beaten, hungry, thirsty, all, what for? Preaching a lie? Why that in itself is almost a bigger miracle than one in the book. I cannot accept it; it is against all reason. IV. The Evidence of the Memorial. What else must you have? You must have a memorial established. Before this book was written, before one letter was written, they kept that memorial. Read contemporary history Pliny's Letters to the Emperor Trajan. 'Who are the Christians?' said the Emperor. 'Who are those in Bithynia who have been persecuted?' Pliny wrote back and said: 'They are men who meet every Sunday morning, the first day of the week, to break bread, drink wine, sing a hymn, pray to One, a Nazarene, Who was crucified. They swear an oath to abstain from all evil, and after they have taken this simple feast, they pray again, and swear an oath to the Nazarene, that they will do all the good they can in the world.' That letter was written probably before St. John's Gospel was written. That memorial sweeps the world. V. The Evidence of Easter. Again the biggest feast in Christendom is Easter, the open grave. They say He did not die. This man the best in the world lent Himself to the biggest fraud ever perpetrated. Why even the enemies have given that up. They saw that would not account for the Church. They say the Apostles knew He was dead; that they stole the body and preached a lie. That has been given up. It does not hold; it will not account for the enthusiasm, the hope, the courage, the self-sacrifice, the nobility. It has been given up. You must account for the Church. The Church did not come all at once, the Church with all its wonderful history, its splendid ritual, its glorious ceremonies, its magnificent liturgy and hymns. Where did it come from? To me it is a far more reasonable explanation to believe that He rose, than to account for it by some trickery of imagination, some impostture practised by some designing Jews. The miracle of the Resurrection is simplicity by the side of the complex and insidious reasons for the existence of the Christian Church. The Resurrection (for Easter-tide) 1 Corinthians 15:14 It will be profitable for us to consider the triumphant tone of assured certainty on the part of St. Paul and of all the other Apostles upon the fact of the Resurrection. That note of certainty is very striking in the Second Lesson this morning. Let us then think of some of the grounds for that certainty. I. The Resurrection not Expected. First of all, we have this fact, and I do not think its importance can be overlooked, the belief in our Lord's Resurrection did not come with the Apostles. None of them were prepared for it. None of them in the least expected it. They did not even faintly hope that it might be. Their attitude of mind, after the awful tragedy of Good Friday, was simply one of blank despair, unillumined by any single ray of hope. We see the Apostles gathered together in their dumb despair, in that upper chamber, where they had gone for fear of the Jews, prepared for the very worst. The holy women, indeed, inspired with a woman's courage, made their way to the tomb in the early morning; but only to pay that last tribute of affection to the dead body of the Master they had loved, and that by completing the embalming of His body. Their only wonder as they went was, who should roll away the stone from the door of the sepulchre; and then, to their great astonishment, they found the stone rolled away. And then there is the vision of angels, who gave their message the message of our Lord to them, and they are convinced. At once they make their way to the Apostles, where they are gathered together, and tell them the news. How was that news received? With absolute unbelief! 'Neither believed they them!' Everywhere, with all Christ's disciples, not only was there no expectation of His Resurrection, there was absolute disbelief until the truth was forced upon them by evidence that they could no longer resist. For example; there were the two disciples on the afternoon of the day, sad and cast down. They had heard the rumour of the empty, grave, that Christ had risen, but they did not for one moment credit it. All they could say was: 'We had hoped that it would be so'. That hope had gone. The splendid vision of the future, which in Christ's life had appealed to their imaginations, seemed to them now to be merely a dream, and as a dream it had passed, leaving only sadness and darkness behind not to these two only, but to all. 'Fools and slow of heart to believe.' This then is the state in which we see the Apostles and the disciples generally on the day of the Resurrection: weak, hopeless, truly unnerved. II. The Resurrection a Fact. But, after the Resurrection they have no longer any hesitation in believing in the reality of this stupendous miracle. Their conviction is firm and unshakable. It is the one subject of their teaching. It is the firm basis upon which all faith and teaching rests. It is a truth concerning which they cannot now keep silent; for which they are now prepared to die. For this extraordinary change in their whole moral attitude there is only one possible explanation, namely, that they had sufficient evidence to convince them that what they had once thought to be not only improbable but impossible, had actually taken place, and that Christ had truly risen the object of their worship. III. The Foundation of the Christian Church. Apart from the Resurrection of Christ, and from the Apostles' belief in it, how could they ever have attempted to do that which they did attempt, and which they succeeded in doing, namely, to found the Christian Church? What object, what motive could they have had to do anything at all, if Christ had not risen? To my mind, it is no exaggeration to say that, in these circumstances, the founding of the Christian Church and its marvellous growth, apart from the Resurrection, would have been an even greater miracle, greater even than the Resurrection itself, and more utterly inexplicable. But, given the Resurrection, given that absolute certainty concerning it, all that is inexplicable and impossible otherwise at once becomes possible and explicable. The Resurrection of Christ is the sole reasonable explanation of the existence to this day of Christianity. References. XV. 14. F. B. Woodward, Selected Sermons, p. 157. A. Ainger, Sermons Preached in the Temple Church, p. 74. T. G. Bonney, Sermons on Some of the Questions of the Day, pp. 111, 122. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 252; ibid. (6th Series), vol. viii. p. 345; ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 422. XV. 17. T. G. Bonney, Death and Life in Nations and Men, p. 35. Expositor (4th Series), vol. viii. p. 467. XV. 18. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 103. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 29; ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 435. This Life Only 1 Corinthians 15:19 'If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.' In the Revised Version: 'If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable.' In the margin of the Revised Version: 'If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable.' The Versions and the margin say the same thing in other words. The truth admits of being variously stated; there is no one unchanging formula. The truth comes in its own way, incarnates itself in its own flesh and shape, but it is always the same, as the Gospel is, whether preached on the high hill or in the deep dale, in thunder or in whispered love. 'This life only.' But that is an impossibility; there is no 'life only'. We have made the little seas of language, the small pools, and islanded off the great continents of duration, continuity, and divinity. Always distinguish between what God did and what we have done. I. 'If in this life only.' What is meant by that expression? Sometimes what is meant is mistakenly called environment. That is not a scriptural expression; that word has done a good deal of mischief in the Church. It sounds well, but there is nothing in it. If it were fuller of meaning it would be less resonant. II. Take the expression 'this life only'. There is no such thing; we cannot start an argument upon that basis. Sometimes we make large drafts upon the credulity of men, and say, Suppose for argument's sake We cannot get even so far on this line. It is inconceivable and unthinkable. How far is it possible to dislodge the sophism that there is a lonely world, a cut-off life? 'This life only.' Life cannot be so bisected; no man has an instrument keen enough to cut life up into little pieces, allocate some of the pieces in this place and others in that place. It is not possible, it is not in the charter by which we hold our life. Unity is the sign of the universe. Sometimes for convenience sake we say, as the Apostle said, 'this life only' here and now, in this place or in that place. In making such remarks we are taking great liberties with thought and with speech, we are showing our littleness and betraying our Master who has given us a kingdom to expound and to illustrate. When we break anything off from any other thing, the house is one. If we could grasp that idea in any approachably adequate degree there would follow mastery, a sense of rest, security, and ever-springing life and gratitude. The Apostle says, 'hope in Christ' an expression which renders the suggestion of there being a 'this life only' absolutely more and more, if the expression may be allowed, impossible. Christ never came with one world; He belongs to all the world. The whole Christ-idea multiplies the worlds; the Christ-idea even multiplies the life that is here and now around us. The Christ-idea makes the wilderness a banqueting palace, turns the stones into children of Abraham, makes the stars significant of many mansions in my Father's house. There you have the plural and the singular; the mansions are many, the house is one. There are many stars at night visible to the naked eye: there is only one sky. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. IV. p. 261. References. XV. 19. H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, p. 139. Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlix. p. 119. T. Rhondda Williams, ibid. vol. li. p. 36. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. v. p. 29. John Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, vol. iii. p. 11. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii. p. 55. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x. No. 562. Expositor (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 371. XV. 20. W. C. E. Newbolt, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 257. J. Keble, Sermons for Easter to Ascension Day, p. 147. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Reading, p. 110. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 143. H. Alford, Sermons on Christian Doctrine, p. 251. W. C. Wheeler, Sermons and Addresses, p. 162. T. F. Crosse, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 70. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 445. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p. 94. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 236. XV. 21. Ibid. vol. iv. p. 257. XV. 20-22. J. H. Holford, Memorial Sermons, p. 56. J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. iii. pp. 187, 201, and 213. XV. 21. E. W. Attwood, Sermons for Clergy and Laity, p. 169. H. Bushnell, Christ and His Salvation, p. 240. XV. 22. F. B. Cowl, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 46. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 130; ibid. (5th Series), vol. viii. p. 149; ibid. (6th Series), vol. ix. pp. 51, 151; ibid. vol. x. p. 359. Rank 1 Corinthians 15:23 That is a great and far-reaching principle. Paul declares it to be the principle of the Resurrection: the dead shall rise 'each in his own order' (R.V.). But the truth applies today as assuredly as in that final day; and whilst it is conspicuously a law of the Resurrection, it is distinctly a law of present-day life. I. This is a recognition of Variety. If God is to recognise human variety at last, surely we should do so now. Life is ranged in orders. The army of mankind is split up into regiments. And it is God who setteth men so. A great deal of injustice is done because we do not respect this great law of being. We must recognise individuality. We must recognise classes of men. Thank God for all the 'orders'. There is something noble and royal and Divine in all. (1) This is true of nations. Duty varies with endowment. (2) Churches are under this same law of variety 'Each in his own order'. Every Church has lessons for every other Church. (3) The same is true of Christians. All intolerance of our Christian brethren arises from our non-recognition of the great law of variety. (4) It would prevent much bitterness if we applied this ideal to Christian ministers. If there is a great variety there is also a great unity. 'The Head of every man is Christ.' II. This is a determination of Destiny. Our 'rank' will determine our eternal estate. According to our Christian character shall our immortal portion be assigned. We are each now settling our final 'order'. Be ambitious to stand well at last. III. This is a rule of Criticism. 'Every man in his own order.' If we are to be judged by that canon at last, we ought to judge one another by it now. It was said that the only poet Tennyson criticised roughly was himself. Charles Kingsley's widow said he was most stem toward himself. Be your own rigorous critic. IV. This is a maxim of Service. God does not expect a kind of service from you for which you are constitutionally unfitted. God needs and asks all types of service. 'Only through each can all be gathered,' says Dean Vaughan. V. This is also an inspiration to Holiness. To be content to be indifferent, mediocre Christians, when we are to be ranged at last according to our rank, is to commit eternal suicide. O believer, be thy best for thy Saviour's sake! Dinsdale T. Young, The Enthusiasm of God, p. 122. Reference. XV. 23. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 346. The Coming of the End 1 Corinthians 15:24 It is not possible to rule these words out of life. They are perpetually recurring. We contemplate a man's life from childhood to full manhood and old age; all the works that he will do; all the associations that he will form; our eye runs along his whole course; but, at last, we reach the point where, 'Then cometh the end,' sums up and closes all. Beyond our own little sphere it is still true. Our text tells us of Christ and His finished work. Here is His great work, conquering death, redeeming men from sin, claiming the world for God; but, even of His work, it is written, 'Then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power'. Even the great redemptive work of Christ must some day be folded up and finished, and some new dispensation take its place. Let us consider this strange characteristic of life this constant recurrence of 'endings'; this law of perpetual perishing or cessation of one man's work and its resumption by another and re-starting, by which alone the perpetual motion of life is maintained. I. The most striking thing about the whole matter is the way in which men's desire and dread are both called out by this constant coming of the ends of things; this stopping and re-starting of the works of life. (a) There is man's desire of the end. This partly arises from man's instinctive dread of monotony. 'I would not live always,' has been a true cry of the human soul. The wandering Jew, compelled to live on until his Saviour came again, has been one of the most pathetic and fearful figures which have ever haunted the imagination of mankind. Man's mere dread of monotony, his sense of the awful weariness of living on for ever, has made him rejoice that down the long avenues of life here, he could read the inscription of release, 'Then cometh the end'. Tell any man that he, out of all the mortals on earth, was to have no end here, and, whatever might be his first emotion, he would by-and-by be filled with dismay; for every man has gathered something which he must get rid of, something he would not carry always; and so he welcomes the prophecy, 'Then cometh the end'. But it is not only the sense of the evil element in life that makes men desire the coming end. That is after all a poor and desperate reason. When life has been a success, and developed its better powers, then, for a man to say, 'This road is glorious, but I am glad to see it stops yonder; for beyond, without doubt, there is something yet more glorious' that is a fine impatience. The noblest human natures are built thus. Let the life be filled with the spirit of the springtime, and then 'cometh the end,' but not a cessation of life, but fuller life which the heart expects. The end which comes to the promise of springtime shall be the luxuriance of summer. Thus, in many tones, some pathetic, some triumphant, yet all tones of satisfaction, do men desire the end. But there is that other point of view from which man regards the coming of the end in life. (b) There is man's dread of the end. Undoubtedly the sense of the changefulness of things is what sends such a feeling of insecurity through all our ordinary living; a dread which haunts the very feature of life which, as we have seen, wakens also the almost enthusiastic desire of men's souls. And one reason is the soul shrinks from change; it shudders at the thought when it must reach, at last, the end of its journey here and embark on something new; and it is good in a way that the burden of proof should be on the side of change. Another reason is, that one shrinks from the thought of the coming end of the condition in which he is now living, in proportion, as he is aware, of how far he is from having fulfilled and exhausted the fulness and richness of this present life. But the strongest element in our dread of change is the great uncertainty which envelops every untried experience, the great mystery of the unlived. We dread the end even of our own imperfect condition. Thus we recount our human lot and see man standing in desire and dread, at once, of this perpetual change, this perpetual coming of the end of things. II. Fortunate, indeed, is it that the end of things does not depend upon man's choice, but comes by a will more large, more wise than his. If we, in such mingled mood, were at last compelled to give the sign when we thought the time had come for this mortal to put on immortality how the desire and the dread would fight within us! We are spared all that. 'It comes of itself,' men say; the Christian man with perfect reverence and truth exclaims, 'God sends it'. Apart from this view of the changefulness of life, this perpetual hurrying of all things to an end, we can make nothing out of it all. But if around this instability of human life is wrapped the great permanence of the life of God; if no end comes which is not in His sight truly a beginning; then there is light shed upon it all, and everything is instinct with His spiritual design. Phillips Brooks. References. XV. 24. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 5. XV. 24-28. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. iv. p. 136. XV. 25. W. Ross Taylor, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p. 45. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 807, and vol. li. No. 2940. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 324. XV. 26. E. A. Bray, Sermons, vol. i. p. 282. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii. No. 721, and vol. xxii. No. 1329. XV. 27. Expositor (4th Series), vol. vi. p. 251; ibid. vol. x. p. 40; ibid. (6th Series), vol. x. p. 370. 1 Corinthians 15:28 For a curious misapplication of this saying, see Emerson's essay on Circles, where he observes that 'Christianity is rightly dear to the best of mankind; yet was there never a young philosopher whose breeding had fallen into the Christian Church, by whom that brave text of Paul's was not specially prized: "Then shall also the Son be subject unto Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all". Let the claims and virtues of persons be never so great and welcome, the instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimitable, and gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots with this generous word out of the book itself.' References. XV. 28. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No. 2501. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 139; ibid. vol. x. p. 45. XV. 29. J. Bunting, Sermons, vol. i. p. 71. J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv. p. 249. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. ii. p. 590. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 238. XV. 29-34. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. iv. p. 185. XV. 30. H. Howard, The Raiment of the Soul, p. 211. XV. 31. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv. No. 828. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 174. J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, vol. ii. p. 145. Dinsdale T. Young, Unfamiliar Texts, p. 42. Expositor (6th Series), vol. x. p. 359. 1 Corinthians 15:32 Criticising, in his Spirit of Modern Philosophy (p. 452 f.) the optimistic idealism of Sidney Lanier and others, Professor Royce remarks that 'from every such halfhearted scheme of the moral order we return to the facts of life themselves. There they are, our ills and our sins denying them does not destroy them, calling them illusions does not remove them, declaring them utterly insignificant only makes all the more hollow and empty the life of which they are an organic part. If, then, the only escape of our philosophy from the individual ills of life lies in denying their significance, and so the significance of this whole seeming world whereof they are a part, then indeed we are of all men most miserable.... Nay, what shall it profit us that after the manner of men we have fought wild beasts at Ephesus. There are no wild beasts, you see. It was all a dream, our morality.' 1 Corinthians 15:32 His loveless, cheerless boyhood was over, and the liberty of Oxford, which, even after the mild constraint of a public school, seems boundless, was to him the perfection of bliss.... He lived with the idle set in college, riding, boating, and playing tennis, frequenting wines and suppers. From vicious excess his intellect and temperament preserved him. Deep down in his nature there was a strong Puritan element, to which his senses were subdued. Nevertheless, for two years he lived at Oxford in contented idleness, saying with Isaiah, and more literally than the prophet, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die'. Herbert Paul's Life of Froude, pp. 20, 21. References. XV. 32. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 382. R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. i. p. 198. J. B. Lightfoot, Cambridge Sermons, p. 109. 1 Corinthians 15:33 'Wednesday 17. I met the class of soldiers, eight of whom were Scotch Highlanders,' Wesley writes in his Journal for 1749, in Ireland. 'Most of these were brought up well; but evil communications had corrupted good manners. They all said, from the time they entered into the army, they had grown worse and worse.' 'Of all the painful things connected with my employment,' wrote Dr. Arnold of Rugby, 'nothing is equal to the grief of seeing a boy come to school innocent and promising, and tracing the corruption of his character from the influence of the temptations around him, in the very place which ought to have strengthened and improved it. But in most cases those who come with a character of positive good are benefited; it is the neutral and indecisive characters which are apt to be decided for evil by schools, as they would be in fact by any other temptation.' So many men are degraded by their sympathies. They have any amount of aspirations and would like to fly, but they have not the courage to fly alone. So they prefer to crawl in company. John Oliver Hobbes, in The School for Saints (ch. XXVIII.). 'Many a man's destiny,' says Stevenson in his essay on Villon, 'has been settled by nothing apparently more grave than a pretty face on the opposite side of the street and a couple of bad companions round the corner.' References. XV. 33. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 202; ibid. (5th Series), vol. iii. p. 383; ibid. (6th Series), vol. iii. p. 393; ibid. vol. vii. p. 296. XV. 34. F. C. Spurr, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p. 416. S. Gedge, The Record, vol. xxvii. p. 977. The Resurrection Body 1 Corinthians 15:35 Observe here the contrast between other religious systems and Christianity. The most spiritual of Greek philosophers regarded man's body as a hopeless burden, a fatal clog on the soul; Christianity recognises this as partly true of the body in its present state, but asserts that these imperfections are neither necessary nor permanent; it looks forward with absolute confidence to a future state, in which the whole man, spirit, soul, and body, shall be transfigured and glorified, on the ground of the Resurrection of Christ. The fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was not denied by the Corinthians; it made them Christians; they knew the Church was founded, not simply on a Saviour Who had died, but upon one Who had been raised from the dead by the power of God. St Paul restates this fact; reaffirms two great truths involved Christ died; Christ had risen; he marshals his evidence, and witnesses: Cephas, the Twelve, a surviving majority out of five hundred, St. James all these had seen the risen Christ. This is the Gospel which saves, awakens, and maintains the spiritual life. But, as he pressed home the issues of the Resurrection, doubts and difficulties arose; questions asked by inquiring minds: 'How are the dead raised up? With what manner of body do they come?' What the process, what the result of the Resurrection? The early belief in the Resurrection was not a stupid credulity. The Corinthians were intellectual, the objections natural then and natural now. As we have stood by the open grave we have known their force, and often asked ourselves, 'With what body do they come?' Will the child rise a child? the old man an old man? the cripple maimed? the blind sightless? Will the Resurrection body be of the same material and form, only reconstructed? Is this the Christian faith? If not, 'With what body do they come?' The Apostle meets these objections by analogy. (Analogy does not, cannot demonstrate. This passage is not a proof of the Resurrection, nor intended to be so, but it meets certain difficulties impressively, powerfully; it argues that the laws in Nature have their counterpart in the spiritual world; that there is a unity throughout the system of the universe, and that the God of Grace and of Nature is one.) I. 'Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.' There is no question, then, of re-gathering the particles of the dead body; 'neither doth corruption inherit incorruption'. None of the particles composing a human body seven years ago exist in that body today; they have passed into new combinations and forms. St. Paul points us to the analogy of the seed and the plant: 'Thou foolish one! that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain, but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own body.' Here we have a parable of wondrous force and beautiful simplicity. 'With what manner of body do they come?' Certainly not with the same body. The plant is entirely unlike the seed from which it sprang. The Resurrection body will not be the body which we now possess. The seed is not identical with the plant; it is the parent of the organism, the form of which is determined by God. 'So also is the Resurrection of the dead.' The body is sown in corruption, liable to change, infirmity, dissolution; but 'it is raised in incorruption'. Proof against sickness and death; the glow of health throughout the ages. 'It is sown in dishonour,' in weakness a natural body, frail and helpless, ruled by the senses; 'it is raised in power,' a spiritual body, a body fashioned anew. II. Yet the Resurrection body will, in a real sense, be our own body. When clothed with it, we shall be the same persons that we are now. The Thames is the same river now that it was a hundred years ago, flowing from the same source, created by the same force, coursing in the same channel; it is still the Thames, though not a drop of its water today was there ten years ago. The old man today says: 'I am the same person that I was twenty, fifty years ago; though not a single particle of my body is the same, yet I am the same'. So in the Resurrection, it will be our body, only the identity will not be that of form or of particles, but that of a permanent force and character which make it what it is and constitute its unity. 'God giveth it a body,' remember, not as it pleaseth Him, 'but as it pleased Him' according to a certain law, which is His eternal will, that, through whatever changes the seed or germ of life should pass, something there shall be which shall connect its latest with its earliest stage. III. The Resurrection body will be the manifested expression of ourselves. This, then, will be the Resurrection body ourselves, essentially ourselves. We are perpetually judging men by what we have learned to call their 'expression'. We look into a face, and say, 'There is kindness, sympathy, tenderness'; or, 'There is pride, temper, passion, avarice'. But we often judge wrongly; for this self-expression is, at present, imperfect; in the Resurrection body it will be full, complete, the perfect expression of the inmost spirit. According to the lives we live now we shall be hereafter. The character formed here will determine our future expression. Our very bodies will be our condemnation or our glory in that day. We shall then wear the garb of holiness, or the livery of sin; and every man shall know, even as he is known. J. Stores. References. XV. 35. H. Bonner, Sermons and Lectures, p. 163. W. P. S. Bingham, Sermons on Easter Subjects, p. 88. T. G. Bonney, Sermons on Some of the Questions of the Day, p. 09. F. Hastings, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 99. C. J. Ridgeway, The King and His Kingdom, p. 150. Dins-da T. Young, Unfamiliar Texts, p. 131. W. L. Watkinson, The Fatal Barter, p. 77. XV. 35, 36. Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p. 295. XV. 35-37. S. G. Fielding, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. p. 259. St. Paul's Fool 1 Corinthians 15:35-38 St. Paul is here speaking of the Resurrection of the dead. In this immortal chapter St. Paul asserts the doctrine and reasons about it, and in the text, he deals with a specific objection which was commonly urged against it. 'Some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body what manner of body do they come?' The objection, you observe, is twofold. It states two difficulties which were felt regarding the Resurrection in those days, and which are felt, perhaps no less acutely, still. I. When these bodies of ours are laid in the grave, they are not preserved intact century after century, millennium after millennium, waiting until the resurrection morning shall break and the touch of God shall awaken them and His voice summon them forth from their secure abode. Nay, no sooner are they committed to the bosom of the earth than they are subjected to the mysterious processes of Nature's alchemy. They decay; they crumble; they vanish away. Open a grave where a dead body was laid only the other year, and do you find it still lying there, 'with meek hands folded on its breast,' awaiting the Resurrection? No, it has disappeared. It has disappeared, but it has not perished. It has been transmuted. The worn-out fabric has been taken down and re-made and woven by the deft hand of Nature, that skilful artificer, into new and diverse vestures. It has passed into other vital organisms grass, flowers, trees, and animals. And how then are the dead raised up? How can the material which has undergone such dissolution and dispersion, be re-collected and re-fashioned. It belongs to the common store of matter which never increases and is never diminished through all its manifold transformations and adaptations; and the corporeal tabernacles which our souls inhabit now have served myriads before us during the long ages of the past, and will be theirs no less than ours at the Resurrection. II. And suppose our bodies could be restored to us at the Resurrection: are they suited for the eternal world, which is so unlike the world that we inhabit now? It is a spiritual world, and shall we go thither, according to the coarse gibe of the Pagans in early days, with hair on our heads and nails on our fingers? What use will there be for material bodies with their carnal functions in that immaterial domain? This is the difficulty which vexed the mind of that believer in the city of Corinth when he asked: 'With what manner of body do they come?' It is a hard question and a deep problem, and he was no frivolous sceptic who propounded it. He was an earnest man who would fain believe but found faith very difficult. And does it not seem as though the Apostle made a very bad beginning when he prefaced his answer to that distressed soul with an abusive epithet 'thou fool?' No, look at the word and consider what it means. He listens to that difficulty about the Resurrection, and then he turns upon his questioner, not abusively but kindly and sympathetically, and says: 'Ah, you blind, unperceiving man! Look about you and see what is going on everywhere in this great, mysterious world; and you will never ask that question and never be troubled with that difficulty any more'. And this is the lesson which I would bring home to you. Here is that transcendent mystery, the Resurrection of the dead, the awakening of our mortal bodies to a larger, fuller, more glorious life; and it seems a stark impossibility. But look around you, and you will see on every side innumerable prophecies, arguments, and evidences of this miraculous consummation. You observe, St. Paul points out two wonders which that troubled inquirer had never noticed, although they were continually being enacted before his eyes; for he was like the statue in the temple senseless, unperceiving. I. The first is the law that, in St. Bernard's phrase, 'Death is the Gate of Life'. 'That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.' II. Death is not only the Gate of Life; it is the pathway to a larger, richer, and more beautiful life. 'Some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what manner of body do they come?' 'Ah, blind, unperceiving man!' answers the Apostle, 'look at the seed cast into the ground, quickened, and raised up to a new and more abundant life; and recognise what this betokens. So also is the Resurrection of the dead.' David Smith, Man's Need of God, p. 109. References. XV. 35-38. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 306. XV. 35-41. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 161. XV. 36. J. B. Lightfoot, Cambridge Sermons, p. 63. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons, p. 213. Expositor (4th Series), vol. i. p. 131. XV. 36, 37. S. H. Fleming, Fifteen Minute Sermons for the People, p. 153. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p. 411. The Resurrection Body 1 Corinthians 15:37 I. The body is essential to the complete idea of immortality. II. The resurrection is not the resurrection of the present body, though it is in some way connected with it. III. Men receive a glorious body not because of death, but because of life in Christ. A. Maclaren. God and the Body 1 Corinthians 15:38 'Giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him.' He must always be pleased; there cannot be two kings upon the throne of the universe; God never asks any man to share His throne with Him in the government of things: Providence is one, an integer that cannot be broken up into fractions or decimals: and we have to come to that conclusion; after all our wandering, we come back travel-stained and travel-worn, we put off our sandals and set our staff in its place in the corner. What, then, is common to all these bodies and all these entities, what is the common denomination in which all these fractions stand? LIFE! Who has seen life? Nobody. Who can define life? No one. You never can define the truly great: you can define living, but not life; loving, but not love; godliness but not God. There are some private chambers in the creation the doors of which we may not open. God is the creator of life, and in Christ Jesus He came to give man more life and life more abundantly, in wave upon wave, and billow upon billow, and ocean rolling over the shoulders of ocean; all life. There is no death in God. I. God has given His own life a body. God always illustrates His own doctrine, and gives object-lessons in His own science. God has always been writing in white letters upon a black background. God has given Himself a body. Have we seen it? We have seen nothing else. Where is it? Everywhere. He who has seen only dust has not seen the very world he lives in; he who has seen only the surface of things has seen nothing, he can explain nothing, he can worship nothing, he has not seen enough to draw out his soul in religious adoration and expectancy. What is the body of God? Creation; all the things that are above us and around us and beneath us are endeavouring to express in visible form and symbol the It whose heart throbs and quivers through creation. I see God in all stars and flowers, in all angels and ravenous beasts, in all crystal temples and in all wild wildernesses and jungles; I see Him in the cultivated flower, on which He often smiles to see how poor a workman his little Adam is; and I see Him in the wild wayside flower, which bears more evidently, to the observing and religious eye, the signature of God. God comes to us in snow and in violets, in all colours, in all events; history is His tabernacle, providence His altar, life His throne: these are not Himself; the glove is not the hand, the house is not the occupant, the body is not the soul: creation is not God. God is within creation, and beyond it, outside it, above it, beneath it, around it: but creation is not God; God is a Spirit; God incarnated Himself in Adam; the whole Trinity was in that one Man, and that one man was a duality, 'male and female created He him'. How was Adam an incarnation of God? Because the Bible tells us that God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him, in our image and likeness was Adam made. We have no explanation, we have only a fact; if we could accept facts, and let explanations alone, the Church would have next to nothing to do in the way of controversy, it would be reduced to the ministry of charity, to the holy apostleship of love and service. II. God was supremely and gloriously incarnated, embodied in Christ. In Christ dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. God gave Himself a body when He caused Christ to be born of the Virgin, and to go forth that He might redeem with blood the self-enslaved and self-destroyed race of man. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; there is no other true and adequate explanation of Christ. Until you have come to His Deity I speak now from the standpoint of my own conviction you have not even begun to explain in any degree the mystery which goes through all the life of the world by the name of Christ. In Him was all fulness; all things are created by Him and for Him, and without Him was not anything made that is made. With these assurances, apostolically given, I can have no hesitation whatever in accepting Jesus Christ as God. He was the body of God, He was the impersonation of God, He did the work of God; He created by healing, He redeemed by sacrifice, He broke His heart that ours might not be broken. He died in the ineffable darkness that we might never know the meaning of such night as that which enshrouded His orphaned soul. Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. VII. p. 12. References. XV. 38. J. A. Alexander, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 184. XV. 40. F. Lawrence, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 285. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vi. p. 396. XV. 40, 48, 49. Ibid. (4th Series), vol. i. p. 138. XV. 41. C. S. Horne, The Soul's Awakening, p. 119. 1 Corinthians 15:42 Compare the closing words of Walton's Life of Donne, where he remarks: 'He was earnest and unwearied in the search of knowledge, with which his vigorous soul is now satisfied, and employed in a continual praise of that God that first breathed it into his active body; that body, which once was a temple of the Holy Ghost; and is now become a small quantity of Christian dust. But I shall see it re-animated.' References. XV. 42. W. Alexander, Primary Convictions, p. 281. XV. 42-44. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 35. The Natural and the Spiritual 1 Corinthians 15:44 There is no more wonderful or impressive chapter in the Bible than this fifteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians, which deals with the transfiguration of this present life into its future state. Whenever we hear it read as we often do on the saddest occasions of our lives we are listening to the best explanation we shall ever get of the great change which will take place when we ourselves pass out of the present life. I. Life Beyond the Grave. In stating the fact of the future life St. Paul was, of course, not making a new statement, especially to the people of Greece. Their most ancient poets had written of a future life. They believed most thoroughly in a life beyond the grave. These Corinthians to whom St. Paul was writing had their own witnesses if they chose to call them. Indeed the Gentile world had shown in their past history an even clearer idea of immortality than had the chosen nation itself. They had obstinately clung to the instinctive belief that they must go on living that the soul, whatever it was, wherever it was, would never be destroyed. But though there was this unmistakable certainty about the future, yet there was no glory in this certainty. Man would continue to live that was the idea but only in some shadowy state, some pale reflection of the life on earth. And so this letter of St. Paul to these clever Corinthians, these men of universal intelligence, had a very special message. It was not to prove that the soul was indestructible, but to prove by the Resurrection of Christ what sort of life awaited man beyond the grave. The value of human personality is the basis of St. Paul's letter. II. A Spiritual Existence. Our ideas of personality are so much bound up with the bodies that are so closely our own, that we shrink from the idea of a purely spiritual existence. It is so unintelligible; we have not the slightest idea what pure spirit is like. We may say truly, of course, that our bodies are not ourselves that, indeed, every particle of the body we see and feel undergoes some complete chemical change in the course of seven or eight years, while we remain the same, we continue the same personality. We admit logically and easily that our individuality that mysterious something within us which is not imperilled by such changes as loss of limb or the chemical renewal of the flesh is our true soul. Yet, though the thought is quite logical, we cannot separate the body from the soul, we cannot imagine a pure spiritual existence. St. Paul, however, distinctly encourages us to believe that the future life will not be that mere abstraction from which we recoil, will not be a merely spiritual existence; but rather that the spirit will continue to have its body. We may be comforted by the hope that in the future life our friends, and we ourselves, shall possess some real distinction in form as well as in spirit. St. Paul speaks of another body, a spiritual body, yet a body bearing the closest relationship with the natural body. An analogy, he says, may be found in the growth of the seed the seed which in its wonderful transformation to the flower loses none of its individuality. That suggests to us much that is comforting. III. Recognition in Eternity. It suggests to us the comfort of recognition. We shall not be lost to one another. The resurrection body will, we doubt not, in a way that we cannot yet conceive, present sufficient points of resemblance to the earthly body to make recognition possible. There is the consolation here that we all want that we must have before we can ever take a calm view of death. All that is best in our life here has been sanctified by loving ties. Our spiritual growth has depended so largely on the way we have spent and used our life in the interests of others that we seem to demand the assurance that all this love will not be lost. Such an assurance is given us by St. Paul. References. XV. 44. D. W. Simon, Twice Born and other Sermons, p. 220. J. M. Whiton, Beyond the Shadow, p. 51. B. J. Snell, Sermons on Immortality, p. 47. XV. 45. Reuen Thomas, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 113. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 39. XV. 45, 46. Ibid. vol. ii. p. 101. XV. 45, 47. Ibid. (5th Series), vol. ii. pp. 175, 180; ibid. vol. iv. p. 399. Life's Development 1 Corinthians 15:46 This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/expositors-dictionary/ 1 Corinthians 16:9 In Wesley's Journal for 1st February, 1736, written as he approached the shores of Georgia, the following entry appears: 'We spoke with a ship of Carolina; and Wednesday 4, came within soundings. About noon, the trees were visible from the masts, and in the afternoon from the main deck. In the evening lesson were these words: "A great door and effectual is opened ". O let no one shut it!' References. XVI. 9. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p. 148; ibid. (7th Series), vol. vi. p. 278. 1 Corinthians 16:10-11 This was the passage from which John Angell James preached at Carr's Lane Meeting, Birmingham, on the Sunday before R. W. Dale became his colleague (1853). Writing to Dale, Mr. James said: 'There is little ground for the fear mentioned in the text, but I have thought it not unreasonable to require for you a warm-hearted, confidential reception'. 1 Corinthians 16:11 'It is of the nature of wisdom,' says Maeterlinck, 'to despise nothing; indeed, in this world, there is perhaps only one thing truly contemptible, and that thing is contempt itself.' True Manliness 1 Corinthians 16:13 Emerson says that the main enterprise of the world, both for splendour and extent, is the upbuilding of a man, and he is undoubtedly correct. The German philosopher Kant fully endorses the eloquent American's sentiments when he says to his students, 'Take humanity for an end' that is, perfect yourselves, in order to be the better able to perfect mankind. The true man is the man likest Jesus and nearest God. Let us now study a few of the world's Ideals of Manliness. I. For years the Athletic man was the Ideal. Ancient Sparta paid special attention to the growth of strong, sinewy, muscular men. But such an ideal was too animalistic, for it ignored the solemn fact that man was vastly more than a body of clay. Man is more than body. Man was not made for pleasure, but pleasure for man. II. For years the Ascetic man, or Anchorite, was the Ideal. We are quite ready to believe that these anchorites meant well. They hoped to escape from their sins by escaping from the world; but you cannot get away from your soul by crossing the Atlantic or plunging into the Saharan desert. Your soul is ever with you! Have nothing to do with the anchorite style of religion. As Sydney Smith quaintly says: 'Never wear a face that is a breach of the peace'. The anchorite ideal is a failure, condemned by the unanimous voice of history. III. For years the Patriot was the Ideal man. True manhood meant absolute consecration to one's country. Patriotism we admire; but it has its perils. Like sectarianism it may narrow our horizon, and it may degenerate into clannishness, and of all narrownesses, that is certainly one of the worst. IV. For years the Intellectual man was the popular Ideal. Plato, Socrates, Homer, and others were considered the pattern-men. The mere intellectualist is not a full man, but a fragment. The true man is intellect plus heart-power and conscience-power. Byron, and Burns, and Shelley were intellectual stars of rare brightness; but who will dare say that they were ideal men? V. For years the Civic man was the Ideal. The Roman ideal was true citizenship. The State was everything and the individual nothing; and a system that crushes the individual can never produce the pattern-manhood. Citizenship, without moral principle at the root of it, is a hollow sham, and the subsequent decline and fall of Rome was the best evidence of the fact. VI. For years the Judaic man was the Ideal. But the Jewish ideal was not the highest, for the Jews were too fond of drilling men into manhood. They paid too little attention to inwardness, and too much to circumcisions, and washings, and purifications. If you want to see the difference between the ideal Jew and the ideal Christian, just compare Mount Sinai with Mount Hattin, and the Decalogue with the Beatitudes. VII. But we are proud to say that the Ideal man of today is the Christ's man, that is, the Christian. Diogenes could not find his man in Athens; but we have discovered our Man in this old book, and His name is Jesus! (1) Be magnanimous like Jesus. (2) Be courageous like Jesus. (3) Be sincere with Jesus. (4) Be pure like Jesus. J. Ossian Davies, The Dayspring from on High, p. 145. Spiritual Strength 1 Corinthians 16:13 We are conscious of our weakness, our need is strength, but how shall we attain to it? Elsewhere St. Paul, using the same military metaphors that we have seen here, tells his people how that strength is to be obtained. 'Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.' From the words of the Apostle two things are clear. I. The Struggle with Evil. First he regards every man as engaged in a separate personal struggle with a real spiritual power of evil. It is not merely the evil that is inherent in his own nature. It is something more than that It is an organised host of wickedness. It is, in fact, all that we mean when we say in the Catechism, 'The devil and all his works'. I know, of course, that the devil is often made, in the expression of Bishop Butler, a subject of mirth and ridicule; but our Lord's language is utterly meaningless unless it signified that there is a real spiritual power of evil. He always seemed to find it hanging on the frontiers of His own life, tempting all along the way, especially in the hours of weakness and sorrow. May we not also appeal to the experience of spiritual people, of all those who have entered with all their power into the personal struggle against evil? Is it not a fact that the more earnestly they have engaged in it the more they have been sensible of struggle with a real spiritual power, force, kingdom, method of evil? Nay, may we not say of ourselves, is it not our own experience in the darkest hours of temptation, when the worst thoughts come, when the most awful strain is put upon us, do we then find it difficult to believe in the working of a personal power? Nothing can be more foolish than to underrate the power with which we are engaged, or may be engaged. II. Sources of Spiritual Strength. And then, secondly, after insisting upon the reality of this power, this kingdom of evil or of darkness, St Paul insists upon every man's need of Divine strength. The Apostle would say, when he says here, 'Be strong,' as he says elsewhere, 'Be strong in the Lord'. Do not go unready, unprepared, unarmed, into the struggle against evil. Put on the whole armour of God, and remember that the putting on of the spiritual armour is not a matter for one or two occasions, however great they may be, in a lifetime; it has to be continued from the beginning to the end. Let me remind you of a few of the means by which we seek to attain that spiritual grace, that Divine help, without which the spiritual combat will certainly be a failure. (a) Prayer. First of all, there is the weapon of prayer. Here we have always before us the example of our Lord Himself. What is prayer? All of you know it is not a mere asking for something, above all it is a contact of spirit with spirit, of person with person; it is the contact with God Himself, putting ourselves in touch with Him. If you doubt prayer, or the power of prayer, just remember for a moment, again in this instance also, what the experiences of spiritual men have been, how they have found prayer to be this very power in their lives, how they have proved it, how they have lived by it. (b) The devotional reading of the Scriptures. Or, again, there is the devotional use of the Holy Scriptures. This use of the Holy Scriptures is much more rare than it used to be, and the Bible is much less read than it used to be, even by good, church-going, religious people. No doubt there are reasons for this. One reason is the enormous multiplication of every form of literature, especially ephemeral literature. People who read four or five newspapers a day have no time obviously to read the New or the Old Testament. Partly it may be caused by what is supposed to be the unsettlement of the basis of Holy Scripture. Most people hear something, if they know little, about Higher Criticism, but we may be sure that whatever has happened to the Holy Scriptures nothing has happened to make their devotional value less than it used to be Questions of date or authorship do not really affect spiritual power. Experience shows still, as it used to show, that the Holy Scriptures can make men wise unto salvation. (c) The Holy Communion. Or once more, there is the Supper of the Lord, or the Holy Communion. It ought not to be necessary now for one to say that the Holy Communion is not, what it used so often to be regarded as, a sort of mark or test of superiority. Believe me, it is not for strong men, but for weak men, for those who know and feel and realise their own weakness. Hesitate before you pass it by, before you let it go. 1 Corinthians 16:13 'In Italy,' says Emerson, Napoleon 'sought for men, and found none. "Good God," he said, "how rare men are! There are eighteen millions in Italy, and I have with difficulty found two Dandolo and Melzi."' A depression possessed him which he could not shake off. What had he to show, after all, for these fifty odd years of life granted to him? He feared his religion had walked in silver slippers, and would so walk to the end. Could it then, in any true and vital sense, be reckoned religion at all? Gross sins had never exercised any attraction over him? What virtue was there, then, in being innocent of gross sin? But to those other sins sins of defective moral courage in speech and action, sins arising from over-fastidiousness had he not yielded freely? Was he not a spiritual valetudinarian? He feared so. Offered, in the Eternal Mercy, endless precious opportunities of service, he had been too weak, too timorous, too slothful, to lay hold on them. Lucas Malet, in Sir Richard Calmady (bk. III. ch. IV.). 'One comes across human beings at times,' says Maxim Gorky, 'with complex characters, so that whatever name one applies to them seems a fitting one, only the one word "man" seems inapplicable to them.' 1 Corinthians 16:13 Charles Kingsley wrote these two words once in answer to a question, 'What is your favourite motto or proverb?' And, when Dean Stanley preached his funeral sermon in Westminster Abbey, from this text, he observed that 'There were three main lessons of his character and career which may be summed up in the three parts of the apostolic farewell, "Watch ye; quit you like men and be strong; stand fast in the faith,"' adding that 'amidst all the wavering inconstancy of our time, he called upon the men of his generation with a steadfastness and assured conviction that of itself steadied and reassured the minds of those for whom he spoke, "to stand fast in the faith".' References. XVI. 13. J. Keble, Miscellaneous Sermons, p. 487. C. Neil, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 167. C. D. Bell, The Name Above Every Name, p. 111. F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xliv. p. 363, and vol. xlvi. p. 66. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 210. W. J. Hills, Sermons and Addresses, p. 63. A. P. Stanley, Sermons on Special Occasions, p. 184 D. Macleod, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p. 78. J. B. Brown, Aids to the Development of the Divine Life, No. iii. D. L. Moody, The Fulness of the Gospel, p. 72. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. p. 270. 1 Corinthians 16:13-14 Coleridge concludes his first set of essays in the Friend with an appeal for moderation and forbearance in the prosecution of first reforms. 'A system of fundamental reform will scarcely be effected by massacres mechanised into revolution. We cannot therefore inculcate on the minds of each other too often or with too great earnestness the necessity of inculcating benevolent affections.... It is not enough that we have once swallowed these truths we must feed on them, as insects on a leaf, till the whole heart be coloured by their qualities, and show its food in even the minutest fibre. 'Finally, in the words of the Apostle! 'Watch you, stand fast in the principles of which ye have been convinced 1 Quit yourselves like men! Be strong! Yet let all things be done in the spirit of love.' Reference. XVI. 13, 14. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 262. 1 Corinthians 16:14 Why does Paul add this word at this point? He has been exhorting the Corinthians to a manly, resolute religion: stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. Why speak of love in this connection? Because love is the atmosphere of a robust faith. There is a spurious or inferior type of strength which has firm convictions but insists upon its own opinions or methods without paying sufficient regard to the feelings of other people. This masterful temper is often confounded with true strength of character, and Paul seeks to guard against this misconception. A firm grasp of principle is always apt to be uncharitable. Its temptation is to grow impatient of any defects in the belief or conduct of others, and a trifle hard in its moral judgments. Resolute natures often say and do the right thing, but it is in the wrong spirit Instead of edifying their fellows, they produce a feeling of irritation. They are difficult to work with. They want echoes, not colleagues, in the church. Their very tenacity of purpose develops an inconsiderateness which tends now and then to make trouble, instead of peace, in the community. Paul suggests that forbearance and consideration, so far from being a mark of weakness, are an inseparable element of strength. A man who is strong in the faith, full of clear ideas and energy, ought to be strong in love, conciliatory, unselfish, forbearing. James Moffatt. 1 Corinthians 16:15-16 I could not be content, unless I was found in the Exercise of my Gift, unto which also I was greatly animated, not only by the continual desires of the Godly, but also by that saying of Paul to the Corinthians, I beseech you, Brethren (ye know the household of Stephanas, that it is the first fruits of Achaia, and that they have addicted themselves to the Ministry of the Saints) that ye submit yourselves unto such, and to everyone that helpeth with us, and laboureth. By this text I was made to see that the Holy Ghost never intended that men who have Gifts and Abilities should bury them in the earth, but rather did command and stir up such to the Exercise of their Gift... This Scripture, in these days, did continually run in my mind, to encourage me and strengthen me in this my work for God. Bunyan, Grace Abounding, pp. 269, 270. 1 Corinthians 16:17-18 Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank? Walt Whitman, * Song of the Open Road. * References. XVI. 17. Expositor (4th Series), vol. x. p. 99. XVI. 21. Expositor (5th Series), vol. x. p. 199; ibid. (6th Series), vol. ix. p. 450. XVI. 21, 22. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p. 241. XVI. 21-24. Expositor (5th Series), vol. x. p. 205. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Corinthians, p. 258. 1 Corinthians 16:22 'If there be any among you,' Samuel Rutherford wrote to his former parishioners at Anwoth, 'that take liberty to sin because I am removed from amongst you, and forget that word of truth which ye heard, and turn the grace of God into wantonness, I here, under my hand, in the name of Christ my Lord, write to such persons all the plagues of God, and the curses that ever I preached in the pulpit of Anwoth, against the children of disobedience.' References. XVI. 22. J. Bunting, Sermons, vol. i. p. 484. F. B. Woodward, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 56. H. J. Windross, Preacher's Magazine, vol. v. p. 179. Our Lord Jesus 1 Corinthians 16:23 The text is in the Epistle to the Romans; the text is in both the Epistles to the Corinthians; the text is in the Epistle to the Galatians, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, in the Epistle to the Philippians, in the First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians. It is in the brief note to Philemon; it is in the Epistles of Peter, and Jude could not write his little burning note without using it three times. The text is everywhere, in the heavens above and on the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth. What is it? It is short, but it is full as an acorn that holds all the oaks of Bashan in possibility. The text is 'Our Lord Jesus Christ'. He was before all things; He is above all things; by Him all things consist, to Him they owe their cohesion and unity, their poetry and their purpose. It is the theme of every true ministry. He who has alighted upon this text need not turn a page, though he minister from jubilee to jubilee, and through all the coming, rising, falling, millenniums of time. He cannot be short of a subject; the preacher's subject is fixed; he is not dependent upon the journals of the day or upon the accident of the morning. His theme never changes; it is the all-comprehensive theme; there is nothing of monotony or sameness about it; these seven notes have in them the greatest oratorios yet to be written. I. It will be profitable to fix upon the keyword, so far as our special appropriation of the name is concerned. That personal, domestic, love-word is 'our' Lord Jesus Christ It is in the word 'our' that the pathos palpitates and cries; not Lord Jesus, not Lord Jesus with a grammatical article before it, but Lord Jesus with our in front of it our Saviour; though the world despise Him, He is ours. We are pledged men; we are not walking up and down amid a dozen Christs asking which we shall have, or shall we have any or none; we represent a vow, an oath; we carry about with us the brand, the stigma of the Lord Jesus. A wondrous little word is * our. * (1) Our child; he is not beautiful according to formal notions of beauty, he is not so precocious as other children are, he is not brilliant, he is by no means so shapely as if he were a trained athlete: but he is our child. Our eyes are blind to any possible deficiency; our eyes cannot see what the eyes of cold criticism can perceive. The reason is that the child lives in the heart; he is our child; and the house would be no house without him. If that little child were not to come home to-night nobody under our roof could go to bed. Why, he is only one. True, but he is ours. He is only little, fragile, puny. Quite true, but he is ours. (2) So we speak of our country. I do not believe in a narrow patriotism. I could not accept any patriotism that was inconsistent with philanthropy; and yet there is a sense in which the stones of our country, whatever it be, are more precious than the stones of any other country, though the stones of the other country be diamonds, and precious to the lapidary. It is an instinct, it is an inborn something, it is a mystery, but a mystery that is poetic, inspiring, comforting, ennobling. It is by the culture of such instincts that we become intellectually and morally rich and free. (3) Where is there a man who does not say with natural pride 'our house'? It is not a big one; the garden, front and back, can hardly be called a garden; the rooms are not large, there are few pictures on the walls, but we keep the window open, and he who keeps his window open may some day pray, for it is a long distance that man can see through his open window, and he may see in the clouds, where the first tabernacle was built, Jerusalem, the city of the great King; it may come into his heart whilst he looks through the open window, to fall upon his knees and cry to the Invisible and the Almighty. Never obliterate or modify that word our, it is a personal pronoun that holds an entire grammar in itself. II. And so, carrying the idea to its highest, widest application, we come upon 'our Lord Jesus Christ'. He may not be the Lord of some other man, but He is our Lord, we cannot dispute about Him. Who would bring his own wife into the market for a public opinion? he wants no public criticism upon his larger life, his true grand heart; he silences criticism. Alas! we sometimes invite it upon the Man of God. Where we should knock a man down if he said words like that about our wife, we permit the fool to expectorate his contempt upon the name that we hold dearest of all. Remember, whatever He may be to other people, He is our Lord Jesus, our Saviour, our hope, and to stand by whilst He is being traduced is treachery; in such a case silence is blasphemy. III. He is our Lord Jesus in example, in doctrine, in sorrow, in joy. How did He bear His sorrow? even so must I bear mine, saith the Christian in every night-shadowed Gethsemane; I will listen to my Lord that I may know how to bear my sorrow; He delivered several sweet discourses upon grief and pain of heart, 1 will listen to Him, His voice is music; if I do not understand His words, I can kiss the lips that speak them: Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in Me: Fear not, little flock; peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you. God help me, then! I will try to be a man. If the Lord Jesus spake such words, He did not speak them wastefully or idly, He spake them to a heart broken, helpless, hopeless; I do my Lord dishonour by letting His words lie outside the sanctuary of my heart; I will take them all in, and if I cannot sing my prayer, I will moan it Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. VII. p. 156.