qualifications of the principal Teachers of Christianity. The ambition of Leadership does not always originate with the Leaders: they are often tempted into it by the stimulants, and low-mindedness, of those who have no more spiritual source of interest in Religion. Mankind are willing to be led, are willing to have an Idol, and they are not displeased to believe that the lower interest of party, or personal excitement, is a true spiritual zeal. As Churches are constituted, and as the human heart is constituted, when the elements of ambition which every nature supplies are assailed by the very circumstances of temptation, when the weakest part of man is purposely heated,-when, under the guise of spiritual power exerted in the highest services that man can render man, undue self-love is studiously inflamed, who can wonder that minds, originally sincere and pure, have fallen under stimulants so coarsely administered? — and why should the ambition and miserable weakness of Church Leaders be more remembered, than the carnality and vulgarmindedness of the Churches that corrupted them? It is not Apollos, nor Peter, nor himself, that St. Paul blames, but the unspiritual Corinthians, who, having no purer interest, must have the carnal excitement of party Leaders, even within the bosom of the same Church. In these times of religious fever, it requires some nobleness of nature in any gifted mind not to prostitute its high powers to the purposes of self-distinction, of a superficial and pernicious popularity;- and Christian congregations of this day, no more than the Corinthians of St. Paul,

are free from vulgarity and carnal-mindedness, if they minister to the self-importance of individuals, court Leaderships, and tempt the lower passions of

men.

In the passage from the 5th to the 9th verse, St. Paul exposes the carnal character of Party spirit, by the consideration, that the Faith of the Soul, the confidence and repose of the moral being in relation to God, was the aim and rest of the Christian; and that to allow the soul to fall from this high desire to such unchristian work as a schismatical adherence to rival Teachers of the same truth, was in fact to derive their chief interest in Religion from low and passionate affections. "Who is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye were led to the supreme rest of the spirit, to faith and trust in God, with such success as God gave to each of them? Shall your spirits forget the supreme End, that your passions may centre on the human means? The agents by which God works are, as to their officers, all alike in honor,—and the only distinction between them is in the fidelity with which they work; — in that relation alone does God make a difference between his servants, - rewarding each, not according to his office, but according to his faithfulness and labor. But God, through his instruments, is the supreme Teacher and Light of the soul. Ye are carnal if ye stop short of him; and if ye all rest in him, how can ye be divided? Ye are God's husbandry, — ye are God's building; — why range yourselves under the servants he employs?"

With respect to the peculiarities of opinion which

the rival sects of Corinth elevated into Heresies,that is, sources of schism and contention, - St. Paul next lays down the doctrine, that there is but one thing fundamental in Christianity, namely, that Jesus is the Christ, the Leader up to God, the moral Lord and Master of the soul. If any man declares, that, in addition to this, something else is fundamental and essential, then that man takes upon himself to preach a new Gospel; - but God's Gospel is, that men will be saved if they take his Christ as their guide. This is the literal meaning of the 11th verse: "Other Foundation can no man lay, in addition to that which is laid, namely, Jesus as the Christ," the moral Leader of the soul. The sectaries at Corinth did not reject Jesus as the Christ, but along with this, the only fundamental, they wished to connect some peculiarity of their own as equally fundamental. Such peculiarities, St. Paul declares, provided they are not taught so as to interfere with the only foundation, or to add to it, had better be left to the action of Time;-the Day shall test them, for it will place them in the burning focus of the universal mind, enlightened continually by God's truth. If these secondary views are in harmony with the Foundation, if they are of the gold and precious metal of the soul, they will stand the fiery test, and they will remain, eternal possessions to the Christian mind; but if they are mere fancies, dross and' stubble, they shall be burned up by the searching fire of Truth. Yet the man himself shall be saved, provided he has not lost sight of the fundamental truth that Jesus is his moral Lord,

-though, since his favorite theories and systems will burn like wood and hay, his salvation, if he has consumed time, and thought, and zeal in over devotion to such non-essentials, may be as a rescue from the flames, and not without scathe.

I mention it as a curious fact in the morbid Anatomy of religion, and as showing the appetite for horrors engendered by systems, that there is a class of interpreters, who, finding the last clause, as now expounded, too merciful for their theology, which would require that the man himself should be burned up along with the false views which he had added to the true Foundation, propose to translate in this way: "If any man's work shall not bear the force of the fire, he shall suffer, its loss, but he himself shall be reserved, as one kept for fire, to be burned for ever."

From the 16th verse to the close of the chapter, there is introduced a sublime view of the relation of the Soul to the vast system of Providence which is spread around us, and to the Infinite Father, who employs these influences not as ends in which his children are to rest, but as means to conduct them to himself. The spiritual Church is his temple: his spirit reigns in every member of it, and not to be of that unity is to detach one's self from the spiritual building. "Know ye not that ye are the temple. of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man, by carnal strife, spoil this temple, God will cast him out of it,- so that he shall no more be one of its living stones. The Temple of God is holy, - but there is no holiness where there is no

peace. God is not the author of divisions."

And

all things serve the soul: the Universe, all Life and Providence, are but its ministers and helpers to God. Why, then, glory in any of his agents, when, through all things that exist, God is inviting us to have our glory and our joy in him? "Let no man glory in men ; for all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, — all are yours; but ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." This is the doctrine of Peace. There is unity in all hearts when they rise to and rest in God; their dissensions are all below, when they stop short among his means and instruments.

So unused are we to that elevation of thought which regards the spiritual life of his children as the central object of all God's works and agencies here, all their influences to be transmitted to our souls, — all their beauty to open a thirst in our hearts for divine perfection, all their teachings to build us up in heavenly knowledge, so timid are we of assuming this providential attitude towards the vast system of Life and Nature spread around us, that the practical force of the Apostle's sentiment is feebly realized. That all things are ours, sounds. strangely and unnaturally in our ears. It might be an unchristian sentiment, so little is it breathed forth by prevailing systems. Yet Christ lived, and made all things his; — and he left us the example that all should do likewise, and that our Lord. should be but the first-born among many brethren, the first Son of God among men, but the guide