compassion, of preferring the ease of his friends to their safety. He never soothed where it was his duty to reprove. He knew that integrity was the true tenderness; that a harsh truth, which might tend to save the soul, had more humanity than a palliative, which might endanger it.

From his intimate knowledge of the infirmities even of good men, he had such a conviction of the possibility of relaxing in religious strictness, that he scrupled not to express his fears to his Corinthian friends, that when he came among them, "he should not find them such as he "would:" in order to soften, he divides the blame, by fearing, that " he should "be found of them such as they would "not." Knowing, too, that the temper was more under controul, and irritation less easily excited, by epistolary than by verbal communication; when he expresses his fears that at their meeting he

might find among them" debates, envy❝ings, wrath, swellings," he tenderly apologizes for expressing his apprehensions, because lest in conversation he might use sharpness.

In his most severe animadversions. he does not speak of any with hopeless harshness. He seldom treats the bad as irreclaimable, but generally contrives to leave them some remains of credit. He seems to feel that by stripping erring men of every vestige of character, he should strip them also of every glimmering of hope, of every incitement to reformation. It is indeed almost cutting off any chance of a return to virtue, when we do not leave the offender some remnant of reputation to which he may still be led to act up. May not this preservation from despair lead to the operation of a higher principle? Though Timothy is exhorted to have no company with him who obeys not the word of Paul's Epistle, the prohibition is only in order

order "that he may be ashamed;" " yet is he not to be accounted as an enemy, "but exhorted as a brother."

As there seems to have been no church which had fallen into such important errors as that of Corinth, and consequently none where more pointed reproof was necessary, so in no Epistle is there more preparatory soothing, more conciliatory preliminaries, to the counsels or the censures he is about to communicate. He tells them that " in every thing they "are enriched," -"that they come be"hind in no gift," before he reprehends them for their contentious spirit, for their divisions, for their strifes. Thus, though the reproof would be keenly felt, it would not be met with a spirit previously exasperated a spirit which those reprovers infallibly excite, who by indiscriminate upbraiding stir up the irascible passions at the outset, shut up every avenue to the kind affections, and thus deprive the offender of that patient calmness with

which

which he might otherwise have profited by the reproof.

This intimate feeling of his own imperfection is every-where visible. It makes him more than once press on his friends, the Christian duty of bearing one another's burdens, intimating how necessary this common principle of mutual kindness was, as they themselves had so much to call forth the forbearance of others. In his usual strain of referring to first motives, he does not forget to remind them, that it was fulfilling the law of Christ.

As the ardent zeal of Saint Paul led him into no enthusiasm, so the warmth of his affections never blinded his judgment. Religion did not dry up, as it is sometimes accused of doing, the spring of his natural feelings; his sensibility was exquisite; but the heart which felt all, was quickened by an activity which did all,

and

and regulated by a faith which con quered all.

His sorrows and his joys, both of which were intense, never seem to have arisen from any thing which related merely to himself. His own happiness or distress were little influenced by personal considerations; the varying condition, the alternate improvement or declension of his converts alone, could sensibly raise or depress his feelings. With what anguish of spirit does he mourn over some," of whom I have told you often, " and now tell you weeping, that they 66 are the enemies of the cross of Christ." Mark again his self-renouncing joy"We are glad when we are weak and ye "are strong." Again, "Let me rejoice "in the day of Christ, that I have not "run in vain, neither laboured in vain."

When he expresses such a feeling sense of distress, upon the interesting occasion