CHAPTER IV.

DIVISIONS AND DENOMINATIONS-THE PLACE OF THE MINISTERPAUL'S EXPERIENCE-POSITION OF MINISTERS IN THE EYES OF MEN-PURE AND UNPRECEDENTED MORALITY-BAPTISM-THE KINGDOM OF GOD-PAUL'S CONVICTION OF THE GOSPEL.

Ir is important that we should recollect the strain of thought which runs through the whole of this chapter. The origin of the sin which the apostle rebukes in the Corinthian Church was their giving precedence, one sect to Apollos, another sect to Paul, a third to Cephas, and so ardently glorying in the excellence of the minister that they lost their trust in and reverence for Christ the master; and instead of being what they should be, a united church, glorifying Christ together, they were rent and split into fragments, each antagonistic to the other. But from this miserable condition of this visible church we learn a very important lesson. It is alleged by Rome that the Protestant Church cannot be the true church, because there are divisions in it. But this reasoning strikes higher and farther; for it must also prove that the Corinthian Church could not have been a true church, because in the Corinthian Church there were wide and severe rents, and very discreditable divisions. Those divisions deformed the church, but they did not destroy it. And because there are divisions in the Protestant Church, it does not prove that it is no church, but that it has not yet attained the full stature of a perfect church in Christ Jesus.

The apostle, in this chapter, puts the minister in his place, and the people's estimate of him in its proper place also. He says, "Let a man account of us," the ministers of Christ, not as gods, not as infallible persons, armed personally with infallible power; but "let him account of us as the ministers," that is, the servants, "of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God." The word "mystery" means a new testament, something once hidden, and now revealed. Now, says the apostle, the great function of a minister is this: it is required of him, not that he be learned, or eloquent, or great in this world, which may be; but this is the essential requisite, that as a steward he distribute what is entrusted to his charge with faithfulness, impartiality, and diligence; withholding nothing that he ought to disseminate, and giving out nothing that has not been entrusted to him by the great Economist of heaven and of earth. Here, then, is the function of a minister, not to preach or distribute to the people what will propitiate their taste, not to proclaim and give out what will by the compromise of truth conciliate the opposition of its foes; but at all hazards, and without reference to circumstances, which rest with God, to unfold faithfully what he reads, to expound truly what is written, and to prove the truth of what he alleges-not by patristic reference or conciliar authority, but by an appeal to that book which convinces in few words, and settles with few arguments; "Thus saith the Lord."

Well, says Paul, this is my office; and "with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment." I am anxious to have your

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good opinion; I wish to have it as if the apostle had said but in order that I may have your good opinion, I will concede the loftiest preference that I cherish in my heart; but I will not, for the good opinion of the whole world, compromise the least vital truth that God has entrusted to my care and keeping. And therefore, he says, with me it is a very small thing that you should condemn me; it is an equally small thing that you should applaud me : this is the great thing, that I may be approved and applauded by him at whose bar I must stand, and to whom I must give an account of all that I have preached, and of all that I have distributed of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. The apostle says, "For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified;" that expression is an idiom too literally translated from the Greek. Both in the Greek tongue, and also in the Latin, "to know nothing by one's self" means, "I am not conscious of any crime." Horace uses the expression, for in

stance,

"Nil conscire mali,

Nulla pallescere culpa;"

that is, "To be conscious of no sin; to turn pale by the mention of no crime." Now, says the apostle, "I know nothing by myself; I am not aware that I have been unfaithful as a steward: but on that account I am not hereby justified. There is a keener eye upon me than my conscience; there is a more accurate and powerful discerner than my own judgment; for he that judges me is God."

And then he calls upon them to come to no judgment as to the merits or demerits of man, but to leave all to him who will give Paul, Apollos, and Cephas,

their due; nothing less, and nothing more. And if you find, he says, any excelling difference in any, who maketh them to differ? They did not make themselves. Who has given to Paul his reasoning, to Apollos his eloquence, to Cephas his energy? Who has made them to differ? It is only God. And therefore, instead of giving men the glory of their gifts, you must see God in the gift, and ascribe to him the glory, and the honour, and the praise.

Then the apostle contrasts what he was then with what they were; and he says, "Now ye are full, ye are rich; ye have reigned as kings without us; and," he says, "I would to God that ye did reign in the highest sense, that we, the apostles, might share in the splendour of your reign. But it is not so." And therefore he adds, "I think that God hath set forth us, the apostles, last, as it were appointed to death; for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men." The allusion here is most beautiful. In Corinth, standing between its two seas, there still remains the mouldering wreck of a magnificent amphitheatre. The theatre in ancient times was not a building roofed and closed in, but with tiers of seats rising semicircularly from the floor up to the very loftiest part of the wall, and the open air for its only ceiling. In this amphitheatre, ten, twelve, or twenty thousand assembled together, and the gladiators fought on the floor or arena for the amusement of the mob, patricians and princes present in the midst of it; and the whole ten thousand spectators in this circle, seated in concentric tiers, looked down upon the conflict that was taking place below. Now, says the apostle Paul, we, the apostles, are at this moment, as it were, on the floor of

the amphitheatre; angels, and God, and men, and the wide world, are the spectators looking down. "We are regarded as fools for Christ's sake; we are looked upon as weak; we are despised; we hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted; and labour, working with our own hands; and are treated at this moment with contemptuous disregard, as the very offscourings of the world itself." But, says the apostle, though thus treated, we do not retaliate; but, "being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat." What magnificent morality is here! Whence did this morality come? Who inspired it? Where is there a parallel to it? What work of heathendom even approaches it in the least degree? Whence did these Jews get so pure a morality? whence did they obtain it? The answer is, they wrote, the men of old, as they were inspired by the Holy Ghost; and that is the reason why the morality of the Scripture is the morality of heaven; and the morality of Seneca and Socrates debased and defiled by the contaminations of earth.

And then, says the apostle, speaking to them again, "Ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, but ye have not many fathers; you have but one; for," he says, "I have begotten you through the Gospel." That word "begotten" is just equivalent to regeneration; and if any one should say now that baptism is in every case the instrument of regeneration, you may just add, and with as much scriptural ground for adding it, and perhaps a good deal more, that the preaching of the Gospel is in every instance the instrument of regeneration; for the apostle ascribes to the preaching of the word what he does not ascribe to