Lord, who is both their Lord and ours, grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ."-"Though this Epistle," says Chrysostom,*" was written only to the Corinthians, yet he makes mention of all the faithful in the whole world, showing that as the universal Church should be one, though separated by many places, so much more ought that in the same city,—for if place separates, yet a common Lord unites." From the 4th to the end of the 9th verse, St. Paul presents to the Corinthians the obligations and thankfulness of spirit they owed to God for a participation in the Gospel of his Son, suggesting that they should not by unchristian hearts show themselves unworthy of that grace which caused "the testimony concerning Christ to take root amongst them," and that the same God who had called them into the fellowship of his Son, must desire to keep them in the same fellowship for ever. - In the 10th verse we have another instance of the closeness with which St. Paul keeps his aim before him, even in his forms of address:-"In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ," into whose fellowship you are called, how comes it that other names are mentioned among you,—or that you break the unity of that discipleship which you all have to Christ, by taking the names of fellow-disciples? "You are of Paul, and you of Apollos, and you of Cephas, and you of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? were you baptized * Quoted by Billroth, Biblical Cabinet. into the name of Paul? I thank my God that I baptized none of you, with some trifling exceptions, so that none of you can say I baptized into mine own name." It has been much questioned whether, by the clause "and I of Christ," we are to understand that there was a Christ party in the Corinthian Church, by a monstrous abuse of words taking that name to designate some class peculiarity, or whether by that clause St. Paul meant to signify that there were an exceptional number who refused discipleship to others, and took the name only of their great Master. There is nothing in the construction to indicate that those who called themselves "of Christ were less sectarian than the others, and as there evidently had sprung up in the Corinthian Church a strong opposition to the apostolical authority of Paul, a vehement Jewish party who deemed his Christian doctrine of freedom from the law, and of the spirituality of the Gospel, to be a scandalous innovation, it may be that in the name of the Christ party there is a covert attack on the apostolic character of St. Paul, intimating that he was not, like Peter, a personal disciple and companion of the Lord; - and we shall afterwards find, that against such a party St. Paul had expressly to defend the authenticity of his Apostolic commission. The two verses from the 14th, in which he disowns all leadership amongst them, are in the most characteristic manner of St. Paul. The dash of indifference with which he treats the whole subject of Baptism, when he finds that the converts were taking class names from those who had baptized them, breathes at once his genuineness, and the scornfulness with which his natural temper sets aside all comparisons between spiritual realities and outward forms: "I thank God that I baptized none of you, except Crispus and Gaius";- and then, as if the matter had been too trivial to live distinctly in the memory, he adds, "and I baptized the family of Stephanas, and whether I baptized any other of you I know not." From the 17th verse to the end of the chapter, the preaching of the Gospel St. Paul declares to be his only business; - that Gospel, "the glad tidings" from God, which could in no way be made a source of separation, for that it had no connection whatever · with that speculative philosophy about which men may differ, nor with that glory of individuals which bands men under leaders, and had only to do with God, and sonship unto Him after the likeness of Christ, with the free grace of the universal Father, and our obedience as loving children after the pattern of the faith and self-devotion of Christ upon the cross. All the glory of this belongs to the God who gave it, and all the leadership to Christ crucified, the author and finisher of this Faith. And who, besides these, in the matter of Christianity, shall presume to put in a claim for an individuality of his own? Will the Gentile, whose Philosophy could not teach him the true God, nor save the world from polytheism? Will the Jewish Scribe, whose outward Law could not keep him in spiritual and saving connections with the God whom it revealed? Will the Sceptic and Disputer, whose highest Wis dom is to doubt, and who has arrived at no sound faith on any rock of the soul? St. Paul branches hist declaration of the indestructible character of Christian unity against the Jew, who would identify the Gospel with a ritual law; and against the Gentile, who would identify it with some speculative system: "Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel, and not with the word-power of philosophy, but with the heart-power of the cross. The Messianic Jew-sensual, earthly, and millennial in his conceptions of Messiah takes offence at the word made flesh,' the meek Son of God, the Galilean and the crucified; and to the Greek, conversant only with airy speculations, the establishment of a divine kingdom through a suffering Son of God, sounds strange foolishness, and not worthy of the notice of philosophy.* But who can escape exposure under the practical test, 'By their fruits ye shall know them'? Where is the Philosopher? What eminence has he attained, what fruits has he gathered, as a teacher of religion and a revealer of God? Where is the Jewish Scribe or Rabbi? Did he ever discover for the world the reconciling Gospel of God? Where is the Disputer, Critic, and Sceptic? Has he been able by cavils and dialectics to bring his own soul into the light divine? If not, then let them all give way, and, instead of dismembering Christ by pretensions of their own, accept with united hearts the salvation of his incarnate Truth. When all these had failed to reveal religious truth, and to sanctify the * Verses 17, 18. * soul, then God sent his Son. When the world in its own wisdom knew not God with any approach to his wisdom, then it pleased him, by the preaching of this which the scribe and the sophist deem foolishness, to save them that believe. The Jew requires an overwhelming exhibition of outward power,—and the Greek seeks an intellectual display of subtle wisdom, but we preach a moral power and a moral wisdom; even Christ the Lord, who by his doctrine and his life hath given to his true disciples the spiritual knowledge of his Father, and practical power to become the sons of God." And since the Gospel is the gift of God to a world that knew it not, how can Greek or Jew presume now to fasten his own individuality on that universal spirit, or to make a party within the bosom of that heavenly Truth to which neither the cold speculations of the one, nor the law-wisdom and outward righteousness of the other, was able to attain, but which God by his Son revealed to the poor in spirit, and opened as a spring of living water in the hearts of the meek? Who can claim as his own, or find a source of divisions in the Gospel of God, the Gospel of repentance and forgiveness, and the new life after the image of the obedience of Christ? The glory is God's, - for the gift is his, and all are his children, who by union with his Christ are formed into one spiritual family, sanctified in heart and life. This is St. Paul's idea of Christian unity; this the inward bond of the Church Universal. To partake of the spirit of -- * Verses 19-24. |