tions for the afflicted Church at Jerusalem. It would appear, as we shall find when we come to the Second Epistle, that, in some previous message or Letter, he had promised the Corinthians, that on his way to Macedonia he would pass from Ephesus to Corinth, instead of taking the more direct course through Asia Minor, and that on his return from Macedonia he would come to Corinth again on his way to Palestine. The first part of this intention, however, he abandoned, through a tender reluctance to meet the Church immediately after a necessity had arisen for the severe censures of this Epistle, and an extreme unwillingness that any personal intercourse should take place in a moment of irritation or estrangement. In such a moment the passions may precipitate the better nature into strife, -the fatal position may be taken from which there is no after retreating, — and the golden bridge of reconciliation be for ever broken down. It was certainly in the wisdon of Love that St. Paul avoided Corinth at such a time. This change of purpose, however, as we shall find in the Second Epistle, his enemies there attributed to the vacillating spirit of the man, and converted into a new pretext for disrespect. This alteration of plan he now announces. You will remember that this Epistle was written, not from Philippi, as the Postscript in our English Bibles affirms, but at Ephesus, in the year A. D. 56, and about the time of the Jewish Passover. "Now I will come unto you when I shall pass through Macedonia, for I do pass through Macedonia. And it may be that I shall abide, yea, and winter with you, that ye may bring me on my

journey whithersoever I go. I shall not therefore (as I formerly intended) see ye now on my journey,

but I hope rather to abide with you a long time, if the Lord permit. But I will remain at Ephesus until Pentecost: for a great and effectual door is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries." The number, and the activity, of adversaries are no signs that a good cause is languishing, but rather the contrary. It is when you are suffered to live at peace, that you may fear you are exerting little influence in the world, that you are disturbing no cherished prejudice, alarming no established error. St. Paul connects the opening of the "great and effectual door" with desperate efforts on the part of the enemies of Truth and God for the preservation of their own Kingdom. The more widely the door of the Gospel was thrown open, and the Ephesians, deserting the Idol altars, crowded the strait gates of Evangelical Life, the more would those who were connected with the secular interests of the Established Religions be excited to active hostility. It was very shortly after this passage was written, that a violent popular outrage took place at Ephesus against St. Paul, an unquestionable evidence of the success of his ministry. In the record, in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts, the progress of the Gospel, and the popular commotion against it, are brought into immediate juxtaposition: "So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed. After these things, Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome.

So he sent into Macedonia two of them that ministered unto him, Timotheus and Erastus; but he himself stayed in Asia for a season. And the same time there arose no small stir about that way. For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen, — whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, 'Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth. Yet ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying, that there are no gods which are made with hands; — so that there is not only danger that this our craft should be brought into contempt, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the World worshippeth.' And when they heard these words, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.'"*

In this passage mention is made of Timothy being sent to the Churches in Macedonia, the Churches of Philippi and Thessalonica, and in the tenth verse of this Chapter, without any notice of the Macedonian journey, we find an expectation on the part of St. Paul of his probable arrival at Corinth. This is one of those undesigned coincidences between independent writings, which afford the strongest moral proof of the authenticity of both, the coincidence being of such a nature that it escapes

* Acts xix. 20-28.

rather than courts observation. St. Paul had expected Timothy to arrive in Corinth after this Epistle had been received, and so to be able to convey to him the impression it had produced. Nothing can be keener than the anxiety he manifests upon this subject. "I had no rest in my spirit," is his language. In this expectation of intelligence, however, he was disappointed, as Timothy, owing to some detention in Macedonia, was obliged to return to Ephesus without visiting Corinth at all. These circumstances, are not without their interest, as they exhibit St. Paul subject to the casualties, the disappointments, the erroneous calculations, which disturb the arrangements of every life, and which discipline the spirit and the temper to be ever ready to abandon preconceived plans in order to make the best use of the unexpected exigencies that God may send. "That man appoints, but God disappoints," is a saying that is true only because man lingers with his own plans, and wants readiness of mind to follow God's beckonings, else might he find in every case that God's disappointments are better than Man's appointments.

In this passage there is another expression, which Paley, in his admirable work on this description of evidence, has singled out as one of those undesigned coincidences which establish beyond dispute the genuineness and simplicity of a writer. "Now if Timothy come, see that he may be among you without fear, for he worketh the work of the Lord, even as I myself do. Let no one therefore despise him." Why despise him? This charge is not given con

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cerning any other messenger whom St. Paul sent; and, in the different Epistles, many such messengers are mentioned. But turn to 1 Tim. iv. 12, and you will find that Timothy was a young man, younger, probably, than those who were usually employed in the Christian mission, and that St. Paul, apprehending lest, on that account, he should be exposed to contempt, urges upon him the caution which is there inserted, Let no man despise thy youth.""

It is satisfactory to find from the twelfth verse that Apollos, who, probably not with his own consent, had been made the nominal Leader of one of the philosophical parties at Corinth which introduced speculative distinctions into the simplicity of the Gospel, had followed St. Paul to Ephesus, and was then acting in intimate union with him. There is no proof, indeed, that this eminent man, however inclined by education and mental peculiarities to the Oriental Philosophy, had ever sought to ingraft it on the spiritual elements of Christianity, or to add it on to the Foundation, the genuine acceptance by the heart of Jesus Christ as the moral Saviour and Guide to God. It would appear, indeed, that he left Corinth and followed St. Paul to Ephesus, because he was unwilling to be identified with any sectarian party in the Church, and that he declined returning, even at the instigation of the Apostle, because he knew that the seeds of party division were still alive, and that his name and influence would be abused by those who ostentatiously, and factiously, preferred the speculative and rhetorical expositions of Religion which the Alexandrian had