in addition to that which is laid, which is Jesus the Christ. 12 Now if any one build upon this foundation, gold, 13 silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, the work of each will be made manifest, for the day [time] will declare it, because it is revealed in fire, and the fire 14 shall try every man's work, of what sort it is. If any one's work which he hath built up endure, he 15 shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burnt, he shall suffer the loss; but he himself shall be 16 saved, yet so as through fire. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God 17 dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God defile: for the temple of God is holy, 18 which be ye. Let no one deceive himself: If any one among you seem to be wise in this 19 become a fool that he may be wise. of this world is foolishness with God, 20" He taketh the wise in their own craftiness." * And again, "The Lord knoweth the calculations of the 21 wise, that they are vain." + Wherefore let no man 22 glory in men, for All Things are yours. Whether Paul, world, let him For the wisdom for it is written, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or 23 things present, or things to come, All are yours; but ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's. THE worst sources of Party spirit in Religion are the passions, the pride, the self-importance, of Individuals. In the peculiar language employed by St. Paul, these are connected, not with the natural man, but with the carnal man; they have their origin not in the errors, insufficiencies, or arrogance of mere intellect, but in the vanities, the jealousies, the intruding pretensions, the lowness and vulgarity, of the sensual nature. Their source is not in the Thoughts, but in the passions: they are not errors, but vices. St. Paul, as we have observed, points at the existence of a threefold nature in man; one of which is peculiarly the religious faculty, — whilst the others, whenever they presume to impress themselves on Christianity, and to mould it after their own tendencies, become the sources of divisions, intolerance, bigotry, mere human partisanship, and all the rest of the practical religious evils. In a broad and general way we may comprehend this triple nature under the heads of the Sensual or carnal man, the Intellectual or animal man, and the Religious or spiritual man. Every man is a compound of these three, and the moral question is, Which predominates, and subordinates the rest? There is order in the individual mind, and peace in the Church, only when the spiritual faculty, the recognized oracle and vicegerent of God, is the essential leader, and when the dictates of speculation or corporeal feeling, however innocent or serviceable, as accessories, to the Individual, are never suffered to become leading principles in the mind, or to lay foundations in the Church. In our English translation these three elements in man are distinguished, as the carnal man, the natural man, and the spiritual man. It may perhaps place many in a position to form an independent judgment as to what St. Paul understood by this so-called natural man, to mention that it is the same conception, and the same word, as the Psyche of the Greeks. From the utterly indefensible and misleading use which polemics make of the expression, "natural man, in our translation, no one could suppose that it related to those parts of Man- the passions, loves, thoughts, and sensibilities of the earthly mindwhich correspond with this impersonation of Mythology. By confounding the "natural man " with the "carnal man," and by representing that the "spiritual man is not an original element in our nature, but a distinct endowment, like a new sense, of supernatural Grace acting arbitrarily, our orthodox theologians have removed St. Paul's conceptions of Man and Christianity, and substituted their own System. Our last chapter was occupied with the divisions which arise from the speculative tendencies, presuming to lay foundations and prescribe essentials in Christianity;-the present chapter is chiefly occupied with the meaner strife of personal pretensions, — with the vulgar ambition of Leadership in the Church, which has its main roots in the animal man, in the carnal envies and passions. In Religion we may distinguish the End, which is the filial relation of the soul to God, from the Means, which are the agencies, of every kind, - moral, intellectual, liturgical, ceremonial, rhetorical, or imaginative and artistical, — by which the Church, for religious purposes, has sought to address and influence the nature of Man. Now here, as in all -- the other concerns of man, a livelier interest may improperly attach to the means than to the end; so that the Church, the outward instrumentality and appliances, may really attract to itself all the sympathies and feelings which ought to be devoted, and indeed are supposed to be devoted, to the religious relations of the soul. There is hardly any thing connected with himself, which a man, so disposed, cannot make a source of personal importance. It is in this way that the carnal element defiles Religion. The rank and standing of a congregation, the numbers and even the wealth of its members, the fulness and solemnity, or the poverty and bareness, of its outward worship, the comparative gifts of its minister, nay, the rival claims of the very Building, are all matters on which keen feelings. can be excited, and partisanship exist, whilst Religion is made the mere occasion of these low interests. Of this nature are the pretensions of a sacred order, the claims of superiority on the part of Establishments, the emasculated character of the spiritual leaders of what calls itself the religious world by privilege of official rank, — and, what perhaps is more offensive still, the official importance of the ruling members in some dissenting communities, who sit in conclave on the rights of church-membership and issue permission to their fellow-Christians to attend the Lord's Supper. It is instructive to observe, and a warning that will be despised by none who know the human heart, over what an extent of foreign objects such men can swell their individuality, appropriating to themselves the genius of a preacher, the splendors of an edifice, the prosperity of a Church, converting all these into sources of self-importance, whilst Religion is the mask under which these low passions find their gratification, and can exist without detection. The Roman Catholics and the Methodists recognized these carnalities, and acutely turned them to account. They made a place for the gratification of individual importance, -they used it to build up a Church, -as the Prophet complains, "calling in the Syrians to serve the Lord." The only way to destroy the roots of Party spirit in religion is to regard the great end—the relation of the soul to God-as alone essential, and the instruments as utterly indifferent, provided only they are effectual; for then would the interests and the efforts of each mind fasten upon that which is universal in Christianity, and all the diversities of administration be but the special means best fitted to the individual, conducting the free mind to the same God. "There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. And there are differences of administration, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operation, but it is the same God which worketh all in all." At the same time we ought to be aware that freedom from Party spirit in Religion is not an easy virtue, and that nothing but the purest and most earnest interest in the spiritual reality can save us from attaching a lower class of interests to the instruments and the accessories. "I was not able," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, "to speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto mi |