tortuousness of construction, and an apologetic plainness, which contrast remarkably with the personal portions of the second Epistle.

'No Epistle raises in us a higher estimate of the varied and wonderful gifts with which God was pleased to endow the man whom He selected for the Apostle of the Gentile world or shows us how large a portion of the Spirit, who worketh in each man severally as He will, was given to him for our edification. The depths of the spiritual, the moral, the intellectual, the physical world are open to him. He summons to his aid the analogies of nature. He enters minutely into the varieties of human infirmity and prejudice. He draws warning from the history of the chosen people: example from the Isthmian foot-race. He refers an apparently trifling question of costume to the first great proprieties and relations of Creation and Redemption. He praises, reproves, exhorts, and teaches. Where he strikes he heals. His large heart holding all, where he has grieved any, he grieves likewise; where it is in his power to give joy, he first overflows with joy himself. We may form some idea from this Epistle better perhaps than from any one other,--because this embraces

the widest range of topics,-what marvellous power such a man must have had to persuade, to rebuke, to attract and fasten the affections of men.'

I now proceed to give an analysis of the contents of the Epistle, commenting shortly on the various points of interest as we proceed. After the opening salutation and expression of thankfulness for God's grace given to the Corinthians, the Apostle at once proceeds to treat of the divisions among them, of which he had learned from Chloe's people.' These divisions have been commonly understood to have taken the form of regular parties or sects; and the German writers have spent a great deal of ingenuity in minutely describing the Cephas-party, the Paul-party, the Apollos-party, the Christ-party. But this is hardly justified by the text. All we can assume is that certain persons had arisen as teachers antagonistic to St. Paul, and claiming superiority to him on various accounts: some as representing the teaching of St. Peter, an elder and greater Apostle: some as following the Alexandrine learning of Apollos: some again, as having had the advantage of nearer personal intercourse with Christ himself: while the followers of Paul were degenerating into the same type of a mere personal

adhesion to him, instead of following him as he followed Christ. This confused embryo state of parties appears to have been all that can be safely assumed. And this appears the case by the subsequent epistle of Clement, bishop of Rome, to the Corinthians, in which we find no vestige of any of these parties, but only the far commoner faults of insubordination and ambition.

This subject, and the consequent explanation and vindication of the Apostle's teaching, occupies him as far as the end of the fourth chapter, which he ends with a threat of soon coming among them, and vindicating his apostolic power.

Then, in ch. v. he deals with the gross case of moral delinquency which had been reported to him, and gives direction for the separation of the offender from the communion of the church. In doing this he takes occasion to correct, or rather to qualify, what he had written in his Epistle sent before this; drawing a distinction between, the fornicators of this world, with whom they must needs have ordinary commerce, and Christian brethren guilty of such sin, with whom they were to keep no company whatever.

Chap. vi. is of a mixed character. It would

appear that this case of the incestuous person had in some way given occasion for proceeding in the heathen courts of law respecting a matter in which the Christian Church ought to have pronounced judgment. We gather this from the circumstance of the Apostle's returning again to the subject of fornication, after he had spoken against calling in the heathen to judge between Christians.

Chap. vii. is devoted to answering an enquiry which they had addressed to him, respecting the expediency of marriage. It is one of those passages commonly supposed only to have reference to the time for which it was written, but in reality full of weighty counsel for all ages of the Church. Some of the matters in it, which appear obscure in our English version, will be found cleared up in the notices at the end of this article.

In ch. viii.-x. he deals with another question which they had referred to him, the lawfulness of partaking of meats which had been specially dedicated to idols, by forming part of animals sacrificed to them. Viewed in the abstract, there could be no doubt that such dedication was null and void, an idol being a mere fiction of a non-existent being. But such questions are not to be viewed in the

abstract. Harm may be done, not only by doing that which is wrong in itself, but by doing that which seems wrong to another man, and which if done by him after our example, would be against his conscience, and therefore, to him, an act of sin. He shows in ch. ix. how he himself abstained, on account of the conscience of others, from things otherwise lawful for him: how he, far from inquiring how much indulgence he might take for the flesh, kept under his body, and brought it into subjection, as one running for a prize. Then in ch. x. he goes into another aspect of the same question, showing them the peril of commerce with idolatry, by the history of Israel of old, and by the nature of the communion which we have with Christ and one another in the bread and the cup of the great Christian sacrament: concluding with definite directions how to act in doubtful cases, and a general exhortation to avoid giving offence

to any.

Chap. xi. deals with two matters. First, the question of the costume of women in the Christian assemblies; and secondly, the abuses which had crept into the administration of the Lord's Supper among them. In treating this latter, the Apostle