βολὴν ὑπὲρ δύναμιν ἐβαρήθημεν, ὥστε ἐξαπορηθῆναι ἡμᾶς καὶ τοῦ ζῆν· ἀλλ ̓ αὐτοὶ ἐν ἑαυτοῖς τὸ ἀπόκριμα τοῦ θανάτου ἐσχήκαμεν, ἵνα μὴ πεποιθότες ὦμεν ἐφ ̓ ἑαυτοῖς, ἀλλ ̓ ἐπὶ τῷ θεῷ τῷ ἐγείροντι τοὺς νεκρους, 10 ὃς ἐκ τηλικούτου θανάτου ἐρρύσατο ἡμᾶς [καὶ ῥύσεται], εἰς ὃν ἠλπίκαμεν [ὅτι] καὶ ἔτι ῥύσεται, 1 συνυπουργούντων καὶ ὑμῶν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν τῇ δεήσει, ἵνα ἐκ πολλῶν προσώπων τὸ εἰς ἡμᾶς χάρισμα διὰ πολλῶν εὐχαριστηθῇ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν.

• ἐβαρήθ. ὑπὲρ δύναμιν.

ο δύεται.

insomuch that we despaired even of life: but we ourselves had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead, 10 who delivered us out of so great a death and will deliver, in whom we trust that He will also yet deliver us, 11ye also helping together by prayer for us, that, for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many, thanks may be given from many faces on our behalf.

9 all', 'nay,'=' immo.' ἀπόκριμα, ‘When I have asked myself what would be the issue of this struggle, the answer has been "Death."

1ο θανάτου, peril of death, as in xi. 23; and 1 Cor. xv. 31 (ἀποθνήσκω).

11 ἐκ πολλῶν προσώπων is probably to be taken with εὐχαριστηθῇ, since the thanksgiving more properly proceeded from the Corinthians, the gift to the Apostle through them, πρωσώπων may have the later Greek sense

PARAPHRASE OF CHAP. I. 1–11.

I return my usual thanks to Him in whom we recognise not only the supreme God, but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; the Father also, from whose fatherly mercy all mercies descend, the God who is the source of that strengthening comfort which in manifold forms is sent to support us under manifold forms of affliction. Thus we in turn may be called to support others in like afflictions by the example and the sympathy of the comfort which we ourselves enjoy; for as we are identified with Christ in His sufferings, so also are we identified with you through Him in our comfort. Your comfort, in fact, is the end and object of our existence: if we suffer, it is for your welfare; if we are comforted, it is that out of your like sufferings may grow a like comfort. What my sufferings were you know; how the hope of life itself seemed to vanish away; and it is from that depth that I have been raised, by the deliverance for which I now thank God, and which was the result of your prayers.

THE APOSTLE'S SYMPATHY.

THE thanksgiving with which the Epistle opens, furnishes the key-note to the ensuing six chapters.

Two feelings rise in his mind the moment that he begins to address the Corinthians, and cross each other in almost equal proportions. The first is an overwhelming sense of gratitude for his deliverance from his distress, whether it were the actual dangers to which he had been exposed at Ephesus, or the inward trouble which he suffered from his anxiety for the Corinthian Church. The second is the keen sense which breathes through both the Epistles to Corinth, but especially through the Second, of his unity of heart and soul with his Corinthian converts. Not only did he naturally pour out his deepest feelings to them, but he felt that they were one with him in his sorrows and in his joys; that his comfort and deli

6

verance would be shared by them, as it had been the result of their prayers. He may have also been influenced partly by the desire to begin from that serene atmosphere of thankfulness and love, which would soon be disturbed in the course of the Epistle; and partly by the anxiety, here as in his other Epistles, to exhibit his relations to his converts in the most friendly aspect, and to dispel at once by his own frankness the cloud of suspicion which, as we see from many subsequent passages, intervened between him and them. But it is out of keeping with the irregular and impassioned tone of this Epistle to suppose that any such secondary considerations were put prominently forward as the groundwork of a formal and deliberate plan.

The

There are two remarks of Bengel on this portion of the Epistle, which sum up its characteristics well. First, His exExperientiæ quanta est necessitas: quâ qui caret, perience. quàm ineptus magister est!' Secondly, Communio Sanctorum in corde Pauli, Titi, Corinthiorum, aliarum Ecclesiarum exercita, egregiè representatur in hâc Epistolâ. Hæc corda fuere quasi specula imagines inter se reciprocantia.' sympathy with which the Apostle makes himself one with his converts their joys his joys, their sorrows his sorrows, their thoughts his thoughts-is a striking instance of the manifold susceptibility with which he was endowed, and of his capacity for throwing himself into the position of others-becoming 'all things to all men,'' transferring the feelings of others to his own person. It is the same largeness and depth of His verheart which embraced so wide a circle of personal satility. friends; which suffered when the weaker brother suffered,' which would not allow him to eat meat whilst the world standeth lest he make his brother to offend.' It is the Gentile side of his character, which so remarkably qualified him for his mission to the Gentile world; the Christian or religious form of the proverbial versatility of the Grecian mind, and of the significant maxim of the Roman poet, Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.'

2

6

For the right understanding of the Epistle, this identity of

1 1 Cor. ix. 22.

2 Rom. vii. 7-23; 1 Cor. iv. 6, vii. 1, viii. 1-6. The closest resemblance to this passage in its

expression of personal affection is 1 Thess. ii. 7-12.

32 Cor. xi. 29; 1 Cor. viii. 13.

current of feeling.

feeling between the Apostle and his converts must be borne in Double mind throughout. It accounts for a large portion, even in detail, of the peculiarities of the style and language; the double self, which creates, as it were, a double current of feeling and thought, now taking the form of passionate sympathy, now of anxiety, now of caution and prudence; the plural number, which he employs in this Epistle even more frequently than elsewhere for himself, as if including his readers also.

It is also important as the liveliest instance of the real communion or community of feeling introduced by Christianity into the world. Never had there been seen amongst heathens so close a bond between those who had no local, natural, or hereditary connexion with each other. And it thus exemplifies a universal truth. The Apostle did not think it beneath him to show that he rested his claims on his capacity of thoroughly understanding those with whom he dealt. Let them sympathy. see that he cared for them, that he loved them, and he felt that all else was as nothing in the balance. Sympathy is the secret of power. No artificial self-adaptation, no merely official or pastoral interest, has an influence equal to that which is produced by the consciousness of a human and personal affection in the mind of the teacher towards his scholars, of the general towards his soldiers, of the Apostle towards his

Effect of

converts.

THE TIDINGS BROUGHT BY TITUS.

Chap. I. 12-VII. 16.

HIS CONFIDENCE IN THE INTENTIONS OF THE CORINTHIAN CHURCH. Chap. I. 12-II. 11.

THE connexion of this section with the preceding is this: "Your intercessions and your sympathy will, I trust, continue for my intercourse with you has been always frank and open.' With this declaration of conscious uprightness, he enters on the reply to a charge which weighed so heavily on his mind, as to be one of the chief reasons for his writing. His coming, announced in 1 Cor. xvi. 5-8, had been long delayed; even Timotheus, who had been sent before (1 Cor. xvi. 10), seems never to have arrived. Titus only had appeared as the Apostle's deputy; the threat of Divine vengeance upon the offending sinner (1 Cor. iv. 21, v. 5) had not been fulfilled. Accordingly, when Titus returned to St. Paul, it was with the tidings, on the one hand indeed, that the Corinthian Church had to a great extent complied with his injunctions; but, on the other hand, that in consequence of these delays there had arisen insinuations that he had broken his word, that he practised worldly wisdom, and wrote one thing to the eye and another in reality (i. 12, 17, x. 10). Against these insinuations the Apostle remonstrates with the indignation natural to an honourable mind unjustly suspected. At the same time, it must be observed that, till the 10th chapter, this indignation is kept within bounds: it is only by covert allusions that we discover, in the earlier part of the Epistle, the real occasion of his remarks: and as if restrained partly by affection, partly by prudence, his chief object here seems to be so to conciliate his readers, as to prevent an open rupture.