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derived from his birth and education, to the unadorned moral preaching of the Power that was in the Life and Cross of Christ, by the Evangelical St. Paul. "As for our brother Apollos, I greatly entreated him to go to you with the brethren: but he was by no means willing to go at that time, but he will go when he shall have a convenient season.”

The thirteenth verse contains, in one sentence, an exhortation to the love and pursuit of those spiritual virtues, which their condition and their dangers most urgently required. Their condition, as we have seen, was one of disunion, growing out of a neglect of the simple principle of the Gospel Salvation, the acceptance of Jesus by the affections as the Image of God, the inspirer and pattern of the spiritual life in man. This simple love and imitation of the Lord Jesus, the source of unity and bond of peace, was deserted for every favorite tendency of superstition or philosophy that prejudice or education had introduced into the various minds, gathered out of every nation, that met at Corinth, and the result was a struggle of conflicting Individualities, each claiming to stamp itself upon the Gospel, and to be essential to Christianity, instead of resorting to it as a common fountain of Life, a fountain open to all who thirst for living water, whatever may be the diversity in outward form of their mental and national peculiarities. There was the Grecian type of mind, which would exalt knowledge above simple Trust in God and in his Christ, and would insist that every thing in Religion should be reduced to a scientific form; - there was the Jewish cast of spirit,

imperfectly emancipated from days, and meats, and feasts; there was the impetuous imitator of St. Paul, without fully comprehending his wise and tender spirit, who to show his freedom rushed into indecent excesses, sat down to meat in the Idol's temple to display his philosophic indifference to outward things, and tempted, by the rudeness of his liberty, the weak brother, for whom Christ died, to sin against his conscience;-there was the Christian woman whom the Gospel had elevated to the full dignity of human nature, in the first flush of excitement overstepping for a moment the modesty of nature; and lastly, there was the natural man, unchastened by the Gospel, eager, with a childish vanity, for the most ostentatious display of spiritual Gifts, and more set on self-exaltation than on the edification of the Church. Among these, the presumptuous, the exalter of speculation above simple faith, the childish rhapsodist who used his spiritual gifts for purposes of vanity, the weak, the scrupulous, and the formalist, the hard and proud sciolist, who would stand upon his abstract knowledge and concede nothing to the infirmity of a brother; among these, how aptly are distributed the several clauses of the condensed exhortation,"Watch ye, stand fast in the faith,- behave like men,- be strong, let all things among you be done in Love!"

St. Paul did not write his Epistles with his own hand. He dictated to an amanuensis, and authenticated the letter by a few words at the close in his own writing. This was rendered necessary by the

appearance of forged Letters by those who wished to give currency, and the sanction of authoritative names, to their own favorite views, even in that early period in the Church, so falsely represented as pure. Of one of these forgeries in his own name, St. Paul complains in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. The autograph by which he authenticated his Letters, was generally some weighty sentence, suggested by the occasion and the thoughts he had been expressing, with the Salutation of Christian affection. In the present case, it is the appropriate sentiment, going to the root of their divisions: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him not belong to the Church"; closing with the Syriac words, "Maran-atha, - the Lord is coming."

The distress occasioned by these words to some Unitarian commentators,* as if they contained a denunciation which the spirit of Christ would not justify, is entirely factitious, arising out of a false interpretation: "Let him be accursed: The Lord is coming." Yet would we rather be identified with those venerable men, who, believing it to be a denunciation, true to the spirit of Jesus, had the courage to condemn it even in an Apostle, than with those dogmatic interpreters who also believe it to be a denunciation, but, false to the spirit of Jesus, seize upon it with a furious eagerness, rejoice in it and justify it, -inflame by it their religious passions, — and defend by its authority a temper and a spirit which the Gospel never breathed. Better to belive Paul wrong, than

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* See Belsham on the Epistles of St. Paul, at this place.

to believe Jesus intolerant, but better still to find Paul and Jesus one in Wisdom and in Love. And this communion with the Catholic Spirit of the Lord, St. Paul claims for himself; — and with the expression of it closes his Epistle. "The "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you! My Love be with you all in Christ Jesus.

Amen."

THE SECOND EPISTLE TO

THE CORINTHIANS.

PART I.

(CHAPS. I.-VII.)

ADMONITIONS,

AND EXPLANATIONS OF SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY,

ADDRESSED CHIEFLY

TO THAT PORTION OF THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH WHOSE AFFECTIONS, BY HIS FIRST EPISTLE, WERE REGAINED TO PAUL.

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