only with the affections, but with the mind of God. And who, that has any clear consciousness of this deep want, can doubt that God is preparing to supply it, and from the long ferment of its elements, and the exclusive development of some portions of its principles, that a full and perfect Christianity, to rise at length out of mixed agencies, to combine all partial truths, and to reconcile the warring world, is in the purpose of His providence? And with this view we mitigate our religious animosities; for, partial and incomplete as we all are, we learn to perceive that tendencies the most opposite to our own, may yet contribute something to the perfect form of Truth, the full and unmutilated Christianity which, uniting all real elements of Grace and Power, will appear at last, to explain the Past, and reconcile the Future.

The immoral tendencies and perplexities of the Corinthian Church, in contrast with their high speculative pretensions, which are described in the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters, we shall now enumerate, noticing whatever difficulties may occur in the Apostle's treatment of these subjects.

I. He charges them with the scandal to Christianity, of retaining within its nominal communion a person notoriously guilty of leading an impure life. St. Paul, in this and in some other cases, advised excommunication, but it was always the excommunication of immorality, and never of heresy. In this respect the Church has precisely reversed the practice of the Apostle, always excommunicating for

heresy, and never for immorality. It is evident that infant and nascent Christianity, professing to exhibit a Kingdom of God upon the Earth, with its handful of disciples scattered in the midst of a Universal Heathenism, could prevail only through a true Christian power breathed forth from the lives of holy and devoted men, that the salt of the earth must be true salt, and not unsound itself, — and that to let a Heathen man, with a heathen heart and a heathen life, be pointed at as an example of a Christian, was at once to destroy the Christian peculiarity, and to confuse the Kingdom of Satan with the Kingdom of God. St. Paul claims no jurisdiction over those that were without: he says that it was not for him to pass judgment on a heathen man, - let God judge him; but if any man professed himself a Christian brother; and joined himself to the small band of Christ's representatives on earth, and then brought disgrace on them by a scandalous life, with that man he could have no association," no, not even to eat." If he acted in Satan's spirit, let him take his place on Satan's side; but why should one of the adversary's force, one of Satan's friends, be admitted, or openly retained, within the camp of the Lord? Let the contamination be removed; let him be taught his true place among Satan's followers, that, if there is any vestige of grace in his heart, he may be awakened to self-knowledge, and that by the present suffering of remorse his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. That by "Satan no allusion was intended to any infernal Principle or Power, is very evident from the purpose

"that

which this committal to Satan was to serve, the spirit might be saved." And we find exactly the same use of the expression- viz. assigning a man to the adversary's party, to the worldly side, if his life was worldly, - and for the same remedial purpose, that he might be awakened to a knowledge of his gross inconsistency in 1 Tim. i. 20; when St. Paul, speaking of nominal Christians who had made utter shipwreck of conscience, adds, " of whom is Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme." It is clear that the conception was that of two hostile Kingdoms, struggling for dominion on the earth, and that the Kingdom of Christ must not be weakened by communion with the allies of Satan, and that these treacherous and fatal friends, if made to feel that their lives were against the Lord, that they were serving one cause whilst professing another, might be stirred unto repentance. This, indeed, is the essential idea that the Jews connected with Satan,- that of a tester and searcher of the spirits of men, with the probationary purpose of ascertaining, or confirming, their loyalty to conscience and to God. "Satan hath desired to

have thee," says our Lord to Peter, "that he may sift thee as wheat." "Get thee behind me, Satan," is his reply to the same Apostle, when he suggested the worldly view of Messiah's kingdom. In the Book of Job, Satan is described as one of the angels of the Lord, whose function it was to prove by trial the hearts of men: "Now there was a day when the Sons of God came to present themselves

before the Lord, and Satan came among them. And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou?' Then Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down in it.' And the Lord said unto Satan, 'Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?" Then Satan answered the Lord and said, 'Doth Job fear God for naught? Hast thou not made a hedge about him and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.' And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power, put not forth thine hand.' from the presence of the Lord.”

So

only upon himself

Satan went forth

When St. Paul urges the Corinthians to reject from the Christian Association the impure person, he employs the illustration, that "a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump "; — and following out the figure, he conceives of Christianity as the everlasting Festival of purity, when the old leaven was to be cast away for ever, and the unleavened bread of simplicity and truth, through an everlasting Passover, was to be the heavenly bread of life to the delivered of the Lord. The death of Christ dated the Era of Deliverance: the Passover is slain, — let nothing of the leaven of slavery and sin be found among the Lord's freemen. I know not under what

strange misunderstanding this beautiful image can be applied to the common doctrine of the Atonement. The Passover marked a season of Deliverance, and annually at the commemorating Feast the Jews cleansed their houses, and for eight days used only unleavened Bread. The Lamb slain on the occasion was not a sacrifice in any sense; it was a commemorative emblem of the Blood on the lintel, which the Destroying Angel observed, and left the house unscathed. And when Christ brought Deliverance from sin, and led the way to a heavenly Canaan, the Festival of Purity was to last for ever, the leaven of malice and wickedness was never to ferment in Christian homes or hearts again, and those whose Passover from Heathen slavery commenced with the death of the Lamb of God (no more a sacrificial death than the Lamb of the Passover), - their relations to whom were now unbroken in the pure Heavens, spiritual and immortal, were to keep for ever the Festival of Sacredness, and to have no more fellowship with the old Leaven, but to live as New Creatures, members of a Heavenly Kingdom.

II. In the sixth chapter, St. Paul exposes the utter violation of the Idea of a Christian Community implied in the injurious and litigious spirit, that, in the first place, could give cause for the interference of the Law, and in the second, through the weakness of brotherly love, require the settlement of differences to be referred to the Heathen Tribunals. There was a double evil here; the absence of the Christian bond in their own hearts, and the injury