nors in Christ." The spiritual interest, the relation to God revealed in Christ, was not supreme and exclusive of every other; -the passions were not stilled in the intense life of the soul; the communion with Heaven did not preclude all earthly altercations; even within the sphere of Religion, the carnal nature could not contest with the spiritual the occupation of the heart, and find food for its gratification and occasions for its exercise. Those whose humble and supreme desire it was to feel the presence of God in the Temple of the spirit, and to find in Christ a divine light and guidance for the soul, could not merge these spiritual affections in the vulgar strife of Leadership, in the rival pretensions of distinguished Teachers. It is only among minds not engaged with the highest and purest sources of life and peace, not lifted above the lower faculties, that Dissensions can arise, or Party spirit find a place. Those who truly seek to be one with God and with his Christ, do not breathe in the element of partisanship. "Whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? do ye not walk with a view to man's glory and pretensions, instead of centring all in God? For while one saith, I am of Paul,' and another, I am of Apollos,' are ye not carnal?" not this to have worldly contentions on holy ground, -to call the commonest passions a zeal for Religion, —and to forget, through the hot interest arising out of enlisted passions, that the whole Church has but one spiritual aim, and seeks, through the guidance of Christ, to be of God alone?

Is

There were at Corinth- and until Christianity effectually realizes in the world the reign of God, there must always be-men belonging to a Church, and even passionately pledged to some of its interests, who yet do not find their chief attraction to it to be connected with the quiet nourishment of the inward life, with the improvement and exercise of the spiritual nature. In such cases, when the true bond does not exist, when the soul does not seek, in the simplicity of its affections, subjection and discipleship to Christ, the branch must either drop off from the vine, or some outward ligament supply the place of the living and organic connection; and the flame of zeal, if it burns at all, must derive its heat from some other source than the "baptism by fire." Such men are the worldly leaven of the Church, its tempters and corrupters. They are worse than all external enemies, for they introduce the poison and agitation of low passions within its own bosom. They live upon coarse excitements,they fasten with a carnal eagerness on some merely outward and instrumental interest, they stir in other hearts the party spirit always too ready to be excited, that yet might have slept if the more elevated soul had not been rudely called away from deeper thoughts. Their element is external and superficial; they require stimulants addressed to the carnal and the natural man,- and they foster whatever in the administration of Religion may be connected with the importance of individuals, or with the vanity and ambition of Churches. The unspiritual Corinthians fed their zeal by disputing the rival

qualifications of the principal Teachers of Christianity. The ambition of Leadership does not always originate with the Leaders: they are often tempted into it by the stimulants, and low-mindedness, of those who have no more spiritual source of interest in Religion. Mankind are willing to be led, are willing to have an Idol, and they are not displeased to believe that the lower interest of party, or personal excitement, is a true spiritual zeal. As Churches are constituted, and as the human heart is constituted, when the elements of ambition which every nature supplies are assailed by the very circumstances of temptation, when the weakest part of man is purposely heated, when, under the guise of spiritual power exerted in the highest services that man can render man, undue self-love is studiously inflamed, who can wonder that minds, originally sincere and pure, have fallen under stimulants so coarsely administered? - and why should the ambition and miserable weakness of Church Leaders be more remembered, than the carnality and vulgarmindedness of the Churches that corrupted them? It is not Apollos, nor Peter, nor himself, that St. Paul blames, but the unspiritual Corinthians, who, having no purer interest, must have the carnal excitement of party Leaders, even within the bosom of the same Church. In these times of religious fever, it requires some nobleness of nature in any gifted mind not to prostitute its high powers to the purposes of self-distinction,- of a superficial and pernicious popularity; — and Christian congregations of this day, no more than the Corinthians of St. Paul,

are free from vulgarity and carnal-mindedness, if they minister to the self-importance of individuals, court Leaderships, and tempt the lower passions of

men.

In the passage from the 5th to the 9th verse, St. Paul exposes the carnal character of Party spirit, by the consideration, that the Faith of the Soul, the confidence and repose of the moral being in relation to God, was the aim and rest of the Christian; and that to allow the soul to fall from this high desire to such unchristian work as a schismatical adherence to rival Teachers of the same truth, was in fact to derive their chief interest in Religion from low and passionate affections. "Who is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye were led to the supreme rest of the spirit, to faith and trust in God, with such success as God gave to each of them? Shall your spirits forget the supreme End, that your passions may centre on the human means? The agents by which God works are, as to their officers, all alike in honor, and the only distinction between them is in the fidelity with which they work;

in that relation alone does God make a difference between his servants, — rewarding each, not according to his office, but according to his faithfulness and labor. But God, through his instruments, is the supreme Teacher and Light of the soul. Ye are carnal if ye stop short of him; and if ye all rest in him, how can ye be divided? Ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building;- why range yourselves under the servants he employs?"

With respect to the peculiarities of opinion which

the rival sects of Corinth elevated into Heresies,— that is, sources of schism and contention, St. Paul next lays down the doctrine, that there is but one thing fundamental in Christianity, namely, that Jesus is the Christ, the Leader up to God, the moral Lord and Master of the soul. If any man declares, that, in addition to this, something else is fundamental and essential,-then that man takes upon himself to preach a new Gospel; - but God's Gospel is, that men will be saved if they take his Christ as their guide. This is the literal meaning of 'the 11th verse: "Other Foundation can no man lay, in addition to that which is laid, namely, Jesus as the Christ," the moral Leader of the soul. The sectaries at Corinth did not reject Jesus as the Christ, but along with this, the only fundamental, they wished to connect some peculiarity of their own as equally fundamental. Such peculiarities, St. Paul declares, provided they are not taught so as to interfere with the only foundation, or to add to it, had better be left to the action of Time; - the Day shall test them, for it will place them in the burning focus of the universal mind, enlightened continually by God's truth. If these secondary views are in harmony with the Foundation, if they are of the gold and precious metal of the soul, they will stand the fiery test, and they will remain, eternal possessions to the Christian mind; - but if they are mere fancies, dross and stubble, they shall be burned up by the searching fire of Truth. Yet the man himself shall be saved, provided he has not lost sight of the fundamental truth that Jesus is his moral Lord,