speculative tenets, the philosophic, or theosophic, Christians of St. Paul's day, whether of the Grecian or of the Oriental school, were the counterparts. It gratifies me to be able to present, in the words of Blanco White, a lively and accurate picture of that state of philosophical orthodoxy (or theosophy, a pretended insight into the mysteries of God's nature and of the modes of his operation in the world), of that speculative dogmatism at Corinth, against the influence of which St. Paul contended as destructive of the catholic spirit of Christianity:

"Christianity had been published only a very few years, when all the mystic and speculative sects commenced a series of efforts to incorporate the Gospel with their own tenets, and to graft their peculiar notions on the young and vigorous stock, whose branches, they could not but perceive, were about to spread far and wide. Although the writers of the New Testament do not mention the name of any philosophical sect except the Pharisees and Sadducees, it is clear to those acquainted with the doctrines of Eastern philosophy, that the notions from which Paul especially apprehended a danger to the simplicity of the Gospel belonged to those mystic systems, which, in some instances combined with Judaism, in others directly opposing it, were widely diffused soon after, under the name of Gnosis.

"But no warnings were sufficient to prevent a rapid growth of the evil which that Apostle feared and opposed. Men whose resources for wealth and distinction lay in the admiration of the multitude, saw a most favorable opportunity of rising in the

world by availing themselves of the ardor with which the primitive converts had embraced the Gospel. Vain babblers, pretending to a deep and extensive knowledge of the invisible world, flocked to the infant Christian communities; and, such was their power over the ignorant and simple minds which made up the great majorities of those societies, that the founders of them found it difficult to maintain their own authority against them. Paul's distressing difficulties at Corinth are too vividly and feelingly described, in his two Epistles to the Church of that great city, to require assistance from another pen. But no tolerably well instructed reader of the New Testament can doubt that Paul's rivals belonged to the class of Judæo-philosophical speculatists. Paul's express determination to lay down all claims to that kind of knowledge which our version denominates wisdom, to confine his teaching to the doctrine of Jesus Christ and him crucified,'clearly points out by contrast what kind of preaching had seduced the minds of his converts. It is true, the Apostle mentions the names of James, Cephas, and Apollos, men who seem to have been guiltless of the spirit of party which made use of their names to oppose the authority of Paul. That the persons thus named were not really leaders of those divisions, is proved by the appearance of Paul's own name as the watchword of a party. Even the name of Christ was, we find, used for a similar purpose. The fact seems to have been, that, when various intruders undertook to reduce the Gospel to a philosophic system, each of them pretended to

build his own speculations on the peculiar views sometimes real, sometimes supposed of the persons whose names they adopted as a party distinction.

"Besides the many remarkable passages of the two Epistles to the Corinthians, in which Paul's renunciation of all scientific teaching pointedly marks, in his rivals, a dangerous affectation of deep philosophy, there is a circumstance in the notices. preserved concerning Apollos which is strongly confirmatory of the view, that the attempts of various teachers to theorize on Christianity was the chief source of Paul's anxiety. It is on record that Apollos was a native of Alexandria, the great seat of speculative philosophy at that period. This fact alone would be a fair ground for conjecturing that he belonged to the numerous class of Alexandrian Jews who, like Philo, united the study of the Old Testament with the idealistic and mystic system which was taught in the schools of that great city. But this conjecture will grow almost into certainty when the word which in the English version is translated eloquent shall be expressed by learned, which gives the true sense in that passage. In the public disputations with the Jews, Apollos must have found it necessary to employ all the subtlety of the Alexandrian school in defence of Christianity. He may at a subsequent period have been checked by Paul in the use of weapons which, though of service in dialectic contests, would be eventually injurious to the simplicity of the Christian system. But vain and light-minded Christians would naturally be allured by the public triumph of the Alexan

drian, to imitate, and (as second-rate minds will always do) to exaggerate Apollos's manner and method. As we have the most powerful reasons to believe that Apollos himself was not actually at the head of an anti-Paulistic party, but remained in close friendship with the Apostle, we may safely conclude that his name was adopted for the purpose of expressing the nature of the system which his imitators professed to follow. In a similar manner we must conceive that the names of James * (who, as the local president of the congregation at Jerusalem, could not reside at Corinth) and of Cephas (who, as the Apostle of the Circumcision, is not likely to have ever been in Greece) were taken by other portions of the Corinthian Church, under the guidance of teachers who. respectively pretended to follow the views which they described as peculiar to each of those distinguished Apostles."†

In contrast to such teachers, St. Paul, in our present chapter, refers both to the matter and the manner of his own ministration of the Gospel. He did not teach it as a Rhetorician, to attract admiration to himself, and give more lively impressions of Paul the Orator than of Christ the Redeemer from sin,nor as a Philosopher, to raise doubtful questions on metaphysical subjects, and become the leader of a speculative School; but as the Apostle of Jesus Christ he proclaimed to the hearts of men the practical and life-giving Gospel, that "God was in

* This is a mistake: James is not mentioned in this connection. "Heresy and Orthodoxy."

Christ reconciling the world unto himself"; that by the universal Saviour all distinctions were for ever destroyed, and the whole family of God to grow into the common likeness of that well-beloved Son, - for that now neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but the renewal of the affections after the image of the Lord. Where could an entrance be found for party divisions in a Doctrine that professed nothing, that aimed at nothing, except to awaken the consciousness of sin within the heart, and, through trust in the God of holiness and love revealed in Jesus, to lead it to repentance and to life? All who felt this love of Christ constraining them, cleansing their souls through the divine image that had taken possession of their affections, and, through the Mercy it proclaimed, encouraging their penitence to look for pardon from their God, must of necessity be of one communion;- for this Gospel sentiment and hope could create no divisions amongst those who had it, and those who had it not were outside the Christian pale, and, so far, could make no schisms within it. Now whence comes this Gospel sentiment, this new principle of life? Were there any who had the exclusive power of communicating it? Were there any who had power of withholding it? Did it require to be introduced by any intricate reasonings, by any subtle dialectics, which only the Masters in philosophy had at their command? Not so, says St. Paul:-it is a spiritual feeling, excited by moral sympathy, as soon as Christ is offered to the hearts that are susceptible of the sentiment; - and in whatever bosom there is