prominent than the Universal Good, to sacrifice the Body to the Members. Human Nature, in the extraordinary awakening, in the rush of new spiritual Life which characterized the first age of Christianity, was not altogether in a natural state, nor in that condition of liability to selfish temptations, which may be considered as its normal form. Nevertheless, under all variety of external influence, the same spirit betrays itself with more or less violence. And it is, perhaps, not more reasonable to expect that all exclusiveness of aim should disappear, when God pours out His Spirit to regenerate the heart of Life, and endows his servants with the rare gifts of utterance and spiritual energy by which a new Faith and Worship are established in the World, than when under his natural Providence He distinguishes his Agents by peculiar gifts and energies, and seeks, with an impartiality equally unlimited as the Gospel's Grace, the same result of Universal Good from the same diversity of Individual Endowments. The Corinthian Christians acted with the same narrow, and ostentatious, individuality under extraordinary circumstances, as other men do under ordinary circumstances, — and certainly the whole Scripture History leads us to attach no signal efficacy for sanctifying and exalting human nature to outward Wonders, but shows that even the good seed, though sown by the hand of God himself, must fall also upon the good soil, before it bears fruit a hundred-fold.

That it was less excusable in a primitive Christian than it is in a modern Christian, to regard his

individual endowments as sources of personal glory rather than as instruments in God's hands to establish the Kingdom of Heaven upon Earth, and beyond that, nothing in themselves, -is an opinion that ascribes to extraordinary influences, to miraculous interferences, a moral power to subdue and purify the ordinary passions, which nothing in the Gospel History would lead us to attribute to such an influence. A gift direct from God may inflame individual pretension and self-love, and convert the mere instrument of his Providence into the inflated favorite of Heaven, with even more of strong delusion than the rarest powers, or the most eminent attainments, disciplined by education, and acquired by toil, that come to us in the natural way, and do not separate us from the common necessities of men. How, it is asked in astonishment, could men like Judas and Peter, associates of Christ, and witnesses of Miracles, be base and false?—or, like the primitive Church, gifted with inspired utterance and Apostolic powers, be vain, selfish, ostentatious, uncharitable? St. Paul, at least, saw nothing impossible in the coexistence of such qualities, for it is a supposition that he makes himself, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity, I am but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." And surely in our own day, and to our own hearts, we may put the parallel question,How is it that men taught by Christ, habituated from their earliest years to the idea of a Community in which one spirit, and one law, represent the Reign of God among His children of Earth, should

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manifest such regard for individual interests, such avidity for individual distinctions, such strong subjection to selfish aims and passions? Or how is it that those who now believe themselves to be in more intimate communion with God, to be on a higher religious level" than other men, should live perpetually in the angry heat of unimportant controversy, and manifest so little of the Catholic and Apostolic spirit which would reunite the Church, and gather into one Body, as Members of Christ, all those who, inasmuch as with sincerity they call "Jesus their Lord," would be acknowledged by St. Paul "to speak in the spirit of God." "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but in the Holy Spirit"; some divine sentiment must be in the heart that recognizes the divine in Christ, and all in whom that recognition livingly exists are in saving communion with him, and, under the Gospel conception, are members of the new spiritual Family of God.

The Corinthians, with the self-love of our Nature when unsanctified by the inner spirit of the Gospel, took the individual view of Life, as if each man was complete and independent in himself; and regarded their personal properties and gifts, not as instruments that were to work together for a common good, each indispensable, yet each nothing without the rest, — but as rival Endowments, matters for jealous comparisons, sources of self-importance. St. Paul reminds them of the Time when they were all equal in their Heathenism, when the dumb Idol awake no divine spirit in any of them, when

no voice of God spoke through them, when there was the leaden sameness of spiritual insensibility and death. And as then they were all on a level, in the absence of the Spirit, all in that common blindness, that with one voice they would have called Jesus accursed, so now, when the energy of the Most High had penetrated them with its living Spirit, and was manifesting its infinite variety according to the individualities and natural aptitudes of different men,- making, according to their fitnesses, some Apostles, some Prophets, some Teachers, — giving to one the word of Wisdom, to another the word of Knowledge, to another the gift of Tongues, were those workmen of the Lord, thus brought by Grace out of the uniformity of Death into the diversity of Life, instead of joining together their hearts and hands to build up the Church (that spiritual Temple framed of living stones), to stand apart in their rival individualities, discussing the comparative importance of their several gifts and powers? They were spiritually dead, and dumb as their Idols, in their Heathen state; and now, when the Spirit of God spake and wrought through them, was Self-glory to forget His purposes, and commence its own wretched strife? "There are diversities of Gifts, but they cannot enter into individual competition, for one Spirit gave them all. There are differences of Offices, but all contributing to a common Result, and in subordination to the same Lord; there are diversities of Energies, but it is the same God who works in each, and binds all together. And the manifestation of the Spirit has this variety

of forms, according to the predominant capability of the individual, for the benefit of the whole: the manifestation of the Spirit is given to Each, according to the Law of the Common Good."

We must not altogether sacrifice the less interesting duties of an Interpreter, for the sake of pursuing the view that is here opened to us, of the organized nature of every Christian Community. God has regard for the Individual, mental Peculiarities are not annihilated by Him; He finds an office and a place for all, but one Soul of Love must guide and combine the whole, as one Will directs the planning Thought, and moves the executing Hand: and all individuals must regard themselves as “forming reciprocal complements to each other, as parts of one vast whole in the Kingdom of God."— It is not possible to define the functions of the several Individualities of Office and Operation, to which St. Paul assigns a place in the administration of the Early Church. Some of these relate to the vivid communication of Spiritual Energy, which a Soul deeply moved itself can impart to others; some, to the more practical qualifications for the wise government and direction of a Church, at every moment liable to fatal collisions; and some, to interior details of mutual assistance and coöperation, the particulars of which have for ever escaped us.

"The word of Wisdom" we find distinguished from "the word of Knowledge." The first corresponds with our ideas of practical Instruction, and denoted the application of Christian Truth to the various relations of Life, and the exercise of Chris