Priest that when professing to adumbrate the chamber of an Apostle and himself at work therein, he should not omit the mention of its noblest circumstances, merely because they do not meet the eye. If he would conceive it exaggerated to represent the Apostle as Moses with his arms outspread in prayer, realizing in his body the power of the Cross of which he spake, and dictating thus as from the steps of Calvary, and in immediate communion with Him Who died there, the words which should confound the reasonings of the world and establish the Church of CHRIST to all future generations, yet surely he might have suggested how the Apostle looked to his scribe for something better than hints to aid his memory or obviate his mistakes,-how he would bid him pause and pray with him one hour, that so the words written might not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of GOD.

"The feelings of S. Francis in foreboding the corruptions of his order,-of Luther on hearing of the insurrection of the peasants of Suabia, or the enormities of the Anabaptists of Munster, afford a faint image of the Apostle's position in dealing with the first great moral degeneracy of the Gentile Churches. But if the importance of the crisis demanded the utmost energy, so also it demanded the utmost wisdom. Of all the Epistles, perhaps there is not one so systematically arranged or in which the successive steps of the Apostle's mind are so clearly marked, as this."-I. 22.

Now S. Paul at this time was not foreboding, but actually censuring, and therefore the example of S. Francis (probably introduced as a kind of counterpoise to the Protestant hero) is not to the point, and we cannot conceive anything less likely to convey a faint image of S. Paul's devotional indignation, than the bearing of Luther at that epoch. To S. Paul also the evil he was contemplating was no unexpected phenomenon. He was not a disappointed partizan. Mr. Stanley indeed tells us that

"It is not to be supposed that S. Paul was unprepared for such intelligence. The germs of the evil must have been sufficiently apparent while he was still at Corinth, and the constant communication between that city and Ephesus must have brought him continual information of the state of the Corinthian Church."-I. 19.

But more than this. He had already known by the teaching of prophecy that there must be a great falling away, and he must have felt that Antichrist was even then at work destroying in carnal self-complacency those whom he had called out of the world as bearers of the Cross into the fellowship of the regenerating Spirit. He gazed upon the calamity, not with merely human feelings, but with prophetic certainty, and the parchment which was to convey the denunciation of this mischief received its characters not merely

from the pen of Sosthenes, or the lips of the Apostle, but from the dictates of another Person of whose presence both alike were conscious, the Spirit of Life and Love, of Power and Truth.

Bearing this in mind, we cannot sanction the theory of the language of the Epistle being "free" or indefinite. On verse 2, of the 1st chapter, we have this note :—

"Observe here, 1. The inversion of the usual order of λños ('calling,' 'conversion,' 'justification') and ȧyiaouos (holiness,' 'sanctification') is an instance of the freedom of the Apostle's language; 2. The application of these words to the Corinthian Church generally, in spite of the sins and irregularities which prevailed amongst many of its members, is an instance of the manner in which the Apostle invests the Christian society with its ideal as distinct from its actual attributes."

If the principles involved in this note were true, the Apostle's language would be simply worthless. On 1. it should be observed that there is really no such inversion as is supposed. "Sanctified in JESUS CHRIST," is the general expression of the Christian character. Christians are "sanctified" or "saints" by being "in JESUS CHRIST." In the words which follow the Apostle does not mean to add a new feature to their character, but to indicate how they had become what they were. They had not become members of CHRIST because of anything they had done to make themselves fit to be so, but because GOD had called them. They were "in JESUS CHRIST" and so "sanctified," possessed of the character of "saints" because they were "called." Indeed, missing this little insinuation, Mr. Stanley has missed the key to the whole argument which follows. All the Epistle is a developement of this fact that their Christian position, the gifts they were admitted to, the character they were to exhibit, was a result of the Divine Calling. The Commentators who treat the words of inspiration as if they were rambling and extempore effusions, are fond of saying that S. Paul " goes off at a word." It is not true that he allows the word to draw him away from his subject, for all of his digressions will be found to fall in with the general scheme of his argument; but it is quite true that in the collocation and recurrence of little words we shall generally find a clue to unravel his argument. A word that seems perhaps inserted for no purpose, is often the hinge by which a large train of thought is moved. So in this Epistle the great idea is that the fact of their Christianity is no result of wisdom or wealth, or natural power, but that it is of Divine "calling," that their position did not depend only on themselves, but altogether on GOD, that it was a character which they could not alienate, however much they might disregard it. The argument thus flows out of the insinuation conveyed by the two words which here are added as a commentary to their title as "sanctified in JESUS CHRIST," and the text, if we may so speak, is found in the closing

verse of the first paragraph: "GOD is faithful by whom ye were called into the fellowship of His SON JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD."

The reality of the character involved in the mere fact of Divine calling being thus ignored, it is not wonderful that we have view 2. The whole Christian Society are addressed as "Sanctified," because they were sanctified,-as "called to be saints," because all were called to be saints; saintliness was not a character they were to make for themselves by the acts of their lives, but an inherent character which they were to exhibit in the acts of their lives. It was indeed their "ideal" attribute, i.e., their attribute in the counsels of GOD, the attribute resulting from the character God had impressed upon them, and so their real, true, essential attribute. It was their actual attribute, because it was the attribute which the act of God had given them, although it was not their actual attribute, if by that we mean that their own acts did not exemplify it. S. Paul is anxious to exhibit their calling as a real inherent work of Divine grace. Mr. Stanley's treatment makes their calling nugatory, because the grace which they did not stir up in their own work, is supposed to be ideal, that is, imaginary merely and null.

The first six chapters exhibit the life of faith as a real substantial change wrought in us by GOD, the beginning of a new creation, with a new wisdom, a new power, a new glory (IV. 10); and they close with the appeal :

"Know ye not that your body is the temple of the HOLY GHOST which is in you, which ye have of GOD, and ye are not your own? For ye were bought with a price: therefore glorify GOD in your body and in your spirit, which are GOD's."

This is the appeal in which the consideration "called to be saints" issues. Christians were called out of the wisdom of the world into a new wisdom, a hidden wisdom realized by faith (II. 7.) Mr. Stanley lays some stress upon the fact that the wisdom of Greece which S. Paul had to encounter, was in a decrepit state, sophistry and no longer philosophy. This seems to be entirely ignoring the drift of the argument, which is not against this or that particular form of wisdom which might be in the world, but to all wisdom which was of the world.

"In considering what was the human wisdom which in this and in the previous section is disparaged by the Apostle, it is necessary to bear in mind that it was not the highest but the lowest form of intellectual eminence with which he was immediately confronted; not the vigorous and lofty aspirations of Aristotle and Plato, but the hollow and worn out sophistries of the last days of the Greek rhetoricians. Still, although a different turn would doubtless have been given to the whole argument if S. Paul had written in the better days of Greece, if the living power of the Gospel had been met, not by a dead form, but by a power which though of lower origin, and moving in a different sphere,

VOL. XVII.

4 E

*

was still living like itself, the general truth here urged remains the same, that it is not by intellectual, but by moral and spiritual excellence that the victories of the Gospel have been achieved; that religion is not philosophy; that Christianity is a religion, not of exaltation, but of humiliation."—I. 69.

Now we are quite sure that S. Paul would altogether have denied that Greek Philosophy in its very highest forms was ever a living power like the wisdom which is of faith. The difference between the earthly and the heavenly wisdom was not one capable of gradation. It was a difference of kind. "The world by wisdom knew not GOD." The Philosophy of former years had shown its inability, its deadness, and this text may probably be taken as referring expressly to the former time of its splendour, when it effected so little in the way of elevating mankind, and as indicating that it had been tried and had been found wanting. What men required was not merely the exhibition of a dead skeleton of truths, but they needed the Divine living "Truth" which should "make them free." It was not that former philosophy possessed a power "moving in a lower sphere." On the contrary, it was a description perhaps of a power, but not itself a power; it was motionless, uninspiring because uninspired. In truth, morals are not a lower sphere than what is spiritual. Morals are not true, unless they be impregnated with spiritual life. They are not perfected by Christian phraseology, but they altogether spring forth from the faith of CHRIST. This is what the Apostle is here expressly teaching: "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is JESUS CHRIST." (iii. 11.) The faith of CHRIST begins in laying aside that which is old, and receiving that which is new.

Further, it should be remarked, that when we speak of laying aside the old, we mean laying it aside as a power: we do not mean laying it aside as an exhibition of truth. S. Paul did not come to represent religion as disconnected with philosophy, but to insist upon the worthlessness of philosophy until assumed into the Christian faith and sanctified by that assumption. So far from saying that "Religion is not Philosophy," he would have said, "There is no philosophy but in Religion.' He expressly says, "we speak wisdom," i.e., we are the teachers of Divine philosophy. The simplicity of S. Paul's teaching did not consist in the absence of a vast range of thought. It consisted in the integrity of the submission of the intellect. It was simple, because it did not appeal to a priori reasonings, but claimed entire faith. When he preached "JESUS CHRIST and Him Crucified," we are not to think that he was unaware of the "subtlety of discussion" to which those words might and would give rise. We are not to suppose of him as intending merely to give the Corinthian sophist "flesh and blood instead of words and theories." (I. 59.) We are told (p. 61,) that “when

Bonaventura pointed to the Crucifix as the source of all his learning,. . . . it was the same effect produced in a less direct form."

Does Mr. Stanley mean that Bonaventura did not know the "subtleties of discussion" to which the object of his contemplation had given rise? Then neither need S. Paul mean that when he spoke of "crucifying the LORD of glory," (ii. 8,) he was speaking a fact of simple and shallow significance, Quite otherwise. He himself acknowledged, "Great is the mystery of godliness: GOD manifest in the flesh." It was indeed "to the Greeks foolishness," because it did not come as the culminating point of their researches, but as the germ of a new philosophy, which set at nought all their previous conceptions, and destroyed everything which it did not incorporate.

The supernatural implanted virtue of faith, the echo in the human mind of the Divine calling, is the great subject of the first six chapters: and as "faith worketh by love," the subject of the chapters following is Christian love. The transition is formed by the words "Glorify GoD in your body [and in your spirit, which are GoD's."] The words bracketed are omitted by Lachmann and accordingly by Mr. Stanley, but we would observe that they are singularly appropriate, not only in themselves as forming a complete appeal, but also as forming the basis of that double series of practical exhortations which follow. Chapters VII. to XI. are concerned with glorifying God in the body which is His, whether in matters of marriage or circumcision, or slavery, or food. Chapters XII. to XIV. are an exhortation to glorify GOD with the spirit which is His, and the due use of spiritual gifts, and subordination of all spiritual phenomena to that which is the essence of Divine Character, the virtue of Charity.

AS CHRIST Crucified was the great exhibition of Divine Charity, so was the mission and life of the Apostle an emanation from the same principle. Mr. Stanley's mind is so possessed with the idea of the "Factions" that he quite misreads the argument of chapter IX. He regards it as the Apostle's self-defence. Now it would really be pointless unless it were written with the express understanding of the Apostle's authority. He is holding up to the discontented at Corinth his own example as exhibiting the likeness of CHRIST. It is extraordinary how the theory of S. Paul's being opposed by rival sects at Corinth destroys the unity of each of these two Epistles. It is quite true that there was a party at Corinth setting at nought the principles which he had left behind him, but it is evident from the whole drift of S. Paul's reasoning, that they did not attempt to deny his authority. Rival teachers there were whose divisions and party names he "transferred in a figure to himself and Apollos," but in the first Epistle he holds himself up as an

1 The same kind of injury is done to the sense of S. John's Gospel, by commentators who are perpetually hunting for imaginary refutations of the Cerinthians or the Gnostics.