man free to be what he pleased, provided only he preserved uninjured the sentiment of Christian Love, and found his Rule of conduct, not in an intensely concentrated regard for his own Rights, but in the sympathy of the Christian spirit. The practical direction of the Apostle to the conflicting elements of the primitive Church was, to yield every thing external for the sake of a common sentiment of fellowship with Christ. The rule of "the Successors of the Apostles" is, to make every thing yield to the external Uniformity, and to let the unity of the Spirit and of Love pass for nothing, without the outward symbols of agreement. These are the great lessons we collect from a study of these Epistles: --that there never was a perfect realization of a Christian Church, that only a Uniformity of the Christian Temper can gradually produce that Realization;— and that, meanwhile, he is working against Christ who adopts any other aim, than a desire for this inward unity of spirit and moral purpose, as a Christian Rule of conduct.

We saw, in the last two chapters, how St. Paul would not permit those Corinthians, who argued a question of Practice on the abstract ground of their individual knowledge and enlightenment, to avail themselves of that plea; that not even on a subject so little doubtful to a Christian as that of Idolatry, was Knowledge alone a safe guide; nor should Christian love forget the traces of Polytheism that might linger involuntarily with the weakest brother; and in his recurrence to the subject of this tenth chapter, he evidently fears, that those who violated Love

were in imminent danger of violating Knowledge too, and that a slight and vaunting estimate of a temptation overcome, gave no security that they were never again to fall beneath its power. Here then we have in a primitive Church, with an Apostle at its head, — what indeed we might reasonably have expected, the distinctly announced danger, that, over the Christians of a heathen city, Polytheism might yet regain its sway. It is difficult to realize how thoroughly Polytheism was incorporated with the life of the Ancients. Every familiar salutation invoked the gods; the commonest utensils for household use were wrought in symbolic shapes; all the forms and courtesies of social life were associated with acts of worship; and even the daily meal had first been offered in sacrifice.

St. Paul, in guarding the Corinthians against this atmosphere of insensible temptation, compares, in this respect, the primitive Christian with the primitive Jewish Church; and warns the former that the lapse into Idolatry made by the Jews, when under the most signal guidance of God, was an example of what might happen again to a people who, if under the same guidance, were also under the same temptations. The opportunities which the Heathen Worship supplied for the gratification of the sensual and licentious passions, were in both cases the moving temptations to Idolatry; and in a city proverbially so corrupt as Corinth, the Baal Peor of old might be too closely paralleled by the Aphrodite of the Greek. Their external protections were the same, and the inward vices that had seduced the

Jew to false Worship were also those that most abounded in the Corinthian character. If, argues St. Paul, some of the Corinthians have been separated by God from the practices of the Heathen World, so also had the whole body of the Jews: if the Corinthians had been baptized into Christ, -the Jews had been baptized into Moses, and had passed, under his standard, through that separating sea which left behind them, as a memory, their former and idolatrous Life: - if the Corinthians had perpetual remembrancers of that spiritual connection with Christ, in their participation of those memorial emblems which signified that they were of one Body with the Lord, so also the Jew ate of that Manna in the Wilderness which, provided without toil or care, was as Bread from Heaven, and drank from that Rock whose gushing streams tracked their steps through the arid Desert, an emblem of that Fountain of Living Waters, of which he who drinketh shall never thirst again: - yet these, though thus encompassed about with a divine Hand, fell away from God through the very lusts, and sins, and murmurings, that were rife in the Corinthian Church, and, as the Examples of all former Times are for the guidance and admonition of those upon whom the latter ages have come, "let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall." There hath no Temptation taken any one but such as is common to Man. Temptation is universal; it has its sources in human relations, and for him who is willing to be taught, there is no condition so peculiar, but in the past History of Man there is the failure to warn,

and the example to guide; and if he will not make temptations for himself, if he will not impair his own spiritual strength by contact and dalliance with Evil, God, who is ever faithful to the earnest mind, will not suffer him to be tempted beyond what he is able, but will with the temptation, to those that enter into no voluntary alliance with it, make a way to escape, that they may be able to bear it. Wherefore, says St. Paul, shaping this general principle to the special case, give no facility to the temptation, nor indulge in the careless pride of strength, but "flee from Idolatry.”

We are prone to imagine that our Temptations are peculiar; that other hearts are free from secret burdens that oppress our energies, and cast a cloud upon our joy; that Life has for others a freer movement, and a less embarrassed way. But in no one has God made the human heart to carol its thoughtless song of joy; and the shadow of our moral being rests darkly on us all. We cannot take the world as it comes, enjoying what it offers, and passing by its sufferings and its burdens with our lightest touch; -we get involved in the deep questions of Conscience and Duty, and the sense of Responsibility stills the carol of the spirit, and suffers no man to repose without a trouble on the bosom of life. Infinite are the ways in which the devices and aims of the Moral Nature break the instinctive happiness that lives for the day, and forgets the morrow; but effectually this awakening of deeper and sadder life takes place in all; and struggle, fear, disappointment, the partial feeling of an unfilled Destiny, the

restless wavings of uncertain Hopes, are in the heart of every man who has risen but a step above the animal life. The more we know of what passes in the minds of others, the more our friends disclose to us their secret consciousness, the more do we earn that no man is peculiar in his moral experience, that beneath the smoothest surface of outward life lie deep cares of the heart, and that, if we fall under our burdens, we fall beneath the temptations that are common to Man, the existence of which others as little suspect in us, as we do in them. We have but the trials that are incident to humanity; there is nothing peculiar in our case,

and we must take up our burdens in faith of heart that, if we are earnest, and trifle not with temptation, God will support us, as, in the past fidelity of his Providence, he has supported others as heavily laden as ourselves.

St. Paul always places a practical question, however slight and passing, in the light of the largest and most permanent Principles, and discusses the smallest outward matter in connection with the most spiritual views of Life. The propriety of a Christian, supposed to be an enlightened Monotheist, partaking of a feast in an Idol's Temple, which was to him no more than any other feast, introduces three leading principles of the Christian Life:- 1st. That mere knowledge, without a consideration for the influences we may exert on others, is not a Christian Rule of conduct;-2dly. The Moral Law in relation to Temptation, that no man, whatever he may think of his own security, is safe, or in