SECTION IV. IRREGULARITIES FROM SOME ABUSE BY WOMAN OF HER SPIRITUAL EQUALITY, AND FROM A PROFANE AND HEATHENISH ABUSE OF THE LORD'S SUpper. CHAP. XI. 2–34. 2 Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the instructions as I delivered 3 them to you. But I wish you to know that the Head of every man is Christ; and the Head of woman, man; 4 and the Head of Christ, God. Every man that prayeth or prophesieth, having a covering on his head, 5 dishonoreth his Head. And every woman praying or prophesying with uncovered head, dishonoreth her Head for it is one and the same thing as if she were 6 shaven. For if a woman is uncovered, let her also be shorn, but if it is a disgrace to a woman to be 7 shorn or shaven, let her be covered. For man indeed ought not to cover the head, being the image and 8 glory of God: but woman is the glory of man. For 9 man is not of woman, but the woman of man. Neither man created for woman, but woman for man. 10 Therefore ought the woman to wear his authority on 11 her head, because of the angels. Yet neither is woman separate from man, nor man separate from 12 woman, in the Lord. For as woman is of man, so 13 also is man by woman; and all of God. Judge of was ity of all mankind - the doctrine of individual responsibility, and of course of an unlimited right over our own limbs and souls, that we may obey our own conscience proclaimed in the midst of a civilization of which Slavery was a fundamental institution; a doctrine which could not instantly be realized without, not only a revolution in the inward sentiment, but a total derangement in the daily life of a whole people, — such a derangement as, if immediately enforced, must have reduced Society to its first elements, and led to a direct collision of conflicting interests. Here, the pure sentiment of Christian Love, and a sense of the union of all spirits in holy relation to one Heavenly Father, was penetrating the bosom of Heathen families, and separating some wedded heart from a partner who still revelled in the worship and the license of Idolatry. Here were the very household usages of a People determined by the daily sacrifices to the gods, and interwoven with all the observances of Polytheism; — and to stand aloof from all contact with Idolatry would have been to renounce the World. increases the feeling of reality with which we conceive of Christianity coming as a new Influence into the world, when we thus historically find it engaged in collision with the modes of common Life created by a spirit so different from its own, and can trace the moral inconsistencies, the first incomplete workings, of the partial penetration of its energy into the bosom of the Heathen and Jewish civilizations. And when we consider that the Authenticity of these Epistles of St. Paul has never been disputed Now it greatly by any party, we cannot conceive that any thing more is wanting to the substantial validity of the external evidences of Christianity, nor how, amid such vivid pictures of its actual workings, the reality of that new Influence, introduced from on high into the affairs of men, can in its essential character be open to question, or received by so many earnest minds with vague and doubting Faith. The delineation of Christ's mind can be collected only from the Gospels; but as evidences of the Reality of some higher influence, introduced by God through the person of Christ into the common heart of the World, the Epistles afford the ground on which the Argument can decisively be conducted. I. And if the actual appearance of these difficulties, in the midst of the common relations of Heathen and Jewish life, is the best proof of the reality of the Christian Influence, the spirit in which they were met and overcome exalts the character of that Influence to the calmness and comprehensiveness of God, by that "meekness of wisdom" which is the least questionable sign of whatever is Divine. Knowledge, superior enlightenment, the Freedom of a strong mind from religious weaknesses, St. Paul maintains, have their distinctive and Christian value, not in enabling a man to pursue his own way, but in enabling him to tread, with a quiet and sympathizing heart, in the harmless ways which, for a time, the comparative feebleness of others may compel them to adopt. In relation to things indifferent, who ought to yield, — the strong or the weak, — the scrupulous or the enlightened? - those who deem them essential and indispensable, or those who deem them of no vital importance whatever, the one way, or the other? The weak cannot yield, without an injury and violence to Conscience, the worst of all evils; and if the strong will not yield, because they stand on the individual rights of their own Enlightenment, then Christian Unity is broken by those who follow the guidance of Knowledge alone, and take no guidance from Love. The Christian use of a spiritual discernment of things essential, is to enable a large mind to act with forbearance in things indifferent, to yield to the scrupulous who conscientiously cannot yield, and in its tenderness and comprehensiveness to manifest the catholic and healing spirit of true Religion. What is the moral use of Strength, if it does not enable us to bear with the weaknesses of others? The strong, unless they can vindicate their right to walk the world alone, and come into contact with no mind but God's, are the last who can, with a clear conscience, pass by the infirmities of the feeble. It is for the weak to be intolerant of the weak,- for his own helplessness is enough for each, and their mutual infirmities may come into selfish collision; but it is for the strong, who can do it, to forbear, and stoop, and lift the burden, in thankfulness of heart to God, by whose grace it is that he himself is not one of those who crowd, and straiten, and embarrass the way of Life. What is the boasted privilege of Liberty, if we are as much Bigots in our opposition to scruples as others are in their slavery to them? It is the glory of the free mind, that in things indifferent it can move off its own ground of abstract Knowledge, and with a clear and loving heart go, and join itself, to the weak and the bound, who cannot come to it. This is the Law of guidance in all such collisions, which St. Paul, with exquisite beauty and force of expression, lays down for those Corinthian leaders, who, severing Knowledge from Love, deemed themselves strong and independent in their religious enlightenment. Knowledge, unless placed under the guidance of Sympathy, is not a Christian principle of action, in relation to other minds. Knowledge alone only elateth the individual; but when guided by Love, it buildeth up the Church. "Knowledge puffeth up, but Charity buildeth up." "If a man thinketh that he knoweth any thing, and that his Knowledge makes for him an independent path in his moral relations to others, then he knoweth nothing as he ought to know: but if any man love God, and sinks all individual pretensions in his common relation to the universal Father, and so rises above self-love into a disinterested affection, the same is known of God, God recognizes in him His own spirit." Here it is remarkable that the man who loves God is not said to know God, — but God is said to know him. In the same manner, the Son of Man is represented as saying to those who do not manifest the mercies of his temper, "I know you not." Such expressions show how thoroughly the spiritual sentiment had penetrated to the finest sources of language; and in both cases they mean, that the spirit of God, full of Grace as of Truth, has no inti - |