PARAPHRASE III. 5-IV. 20. "Think not because I have confined myself to this simple preaching that I am inferior to the other teachers, whose wisdom and whose progress in Christian knowledge you prize so highly. All such distinctions are as nothing compared with the source from which alone they spring, namely, God.—All such progress is as nothing compared with the permanent importance of the one unchangeable foundation, namely, Jesus Christ; nay, more, although it may be truly valuable, it may also be most pernicious, as well as most perishable, its author escaping because of his own right intention, but in itself leading to fatal sins, fatal both to the purity of the Christian society and to the safety of him who perpetrates them. All such wisdom is as nothing compared with that Christianity which you all possess in common. However great your several teachers may appear in your eyes, or in their own, even though it be myself and Apollos, remember that you were not made for them, but they for you; and not they only, but the whole universe, past, present, and to come; if only you bear in mind that as these things depend on you, so you depend on Christ, and Christ on God. Remember, also, that your teachers only preach what they have been told, not what they invent; that whether you blame or praise them, it is not by your judgment but by God's that they must stand or fall. And they toothey and all of you — must remember that their gifts are not their own, but God's. Great indeed are those gifts-I do not deny it; and deep indeed in comparison is the degradation into which we the Apostles are sunk. Yet even from that degraded state there is a lesson which you might well learn, the lesson of self

denial and humility. And this at least, the lesson of example, is one which my relation to you as your founder well entitles me to urge upon you, however much in other points you may wish to follow others. This is the lesson which I have told Timotheus to impress upon you, though I shall also come in person to impress it upon you by my own presence."

THE most striking points in this section belong rather to the incidental than to the general argument, namely, the fate of the false teachers in iii. 13-15., the privileges of the Christian (iii. 22.), and the picture of the Apostle's hardships (iv. 9-13.). But there are some points brought out with peculiar force in the general warning against the party-leaders as distinct from the previous warning (in i. 10-16.) against the parties themselves.

(1.) The mere structure of the argument, which makes it difficult to distinguish when the Apostle is addressing the taught and when the teachers, is instructive, as indicating, first, the historical fact (borne out both by particular expressions in this section, as iii. 10., iv. 16., and by the whole of c. xii.) that there was at this early period of the Apostolic age no marked distinction between these two classes; and, secondly, the moral warning that the sins of party spirit are shared, although not in equal degree, by the leaders and the led.

(2.) The great stress laid throughout, but especially in iv. 1—5., on not overrating their spiritual instructors, even though they be Paul and Apollos themselves, shows that there are times and circumstances when the Christian's duty lies not in submission to authority, but in questioning it; that there is a religious danger in

excessive veneration, as well as in excessive independence.

(3.) The whole passage is remarkable as showing the possibility and duty of uniting a consciousness of great gifts and actions (iii. 5-9., iv. 7-14.) with a complete dependence on a higher power and wisdom than our own, and also a consciousness of great imperfection in detail, and of great difference of views and characters (iii. 12—15. 22, 23.) with a consciousness no less strong of practical unity and sympathy. What the precise nature might be of these gifts, imperfections, and differences, is difficult, perhaps impossible, to ascertain ; but this ignorance does not make the general lesson less applicable to future ages, where similar circumstances arise.

(4.) Lastly, the whole of this first division of the Epistle is important, as bearing on the general question of divisions in the Christian Church. In it we have an indisputable proof that it was not merely the errors or the hostilities of sect or party, but the spirit itself of sect and party, even when it conferred glory on himself, that the Apostle denounced as the sign of an unchristian or half-christian society, when he warned them that, not only their sins and their Judaism, but their "strifes" and "divisions" of whatever kind, were a proof that they were "carnal and walked as men;" when he "transferred in a figure to himself and Apollos" all that he would teach them of the evil of the factions generally, in order that they might fully understand that it was by no personal feeling that he was influenced, but that what he condemned he condemned "for their sakes" in whatever form it might be found, whether it made for him or against him. Here too we meet with the most express contradiction to the suspicions always natural

to low minds, that a character which exercised so vast an influence must have been intent on self-exaltation, when he tells them that "he rejoices that he had baptized none of them, but Crispus and Gaius, lest any should say that he had baptized in his own name;" when he conjures them "so to account of him " not as an independent teacher and master, but merely as a subordinate "minister (inpérny) to Christ," as a humble "steward" whose only object it was faithfully to expound "the secrets of God," not to think that their favourable judgment would justify him before God, but to wait patiently to the end of all things, for " then " and not before, "shall every man have praise of God." And here also we see the true secret of freedom from party-spirit, true always, but in the highest degree true of the Apostles, when he represents the nothingness of himself and all other teachers, how wise soever, in comparison with the grandeur of their common cause, with the recollection that they were" in Christ Jesus, who of God was made unto them wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." "All things are yours," however strong their outward contrast, "whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death; all are yours; for ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." These last words, setting forth as they do the distinctness of character and mind on the one hand, and the unity of object and spirit on the other, sum up the point of view from which all human differences, whether within or without the Scriptures, ought to be regarded. These differences are not concealed or overlooked; but they are made to enhance the greatness of Christ and of God.

(II.) THE INTERCOURSE WITH HEATHENS.
IV. 21-VI. 20.

FROM the subject of the Factions the Apostle passes to the second piece of intelligence brought to him at Ephesus (apparently not by the household of Chloe, but by popular rumour), namely, that there was in the Corinthian Church a free indulgence of heathen sensuality, and in particular one flagrant case of incest, in which the whole society had acquiesced without remonstrance. This forms the crisis (practically speaking) of the whole Epistle. It is, as it were, the burst of the storm, of which, as Chrysostom observes, the mutterings had already been heard in the earlier chapters (iii. 16., iv. 5. 20, 21.), and of which the echoes are still discernible, not only in this Epistle (vii. 2., x. 8. 23., xv. 33.), but also in the Second Epistle, the first half of which (i.—vii.) is nothing less than an endeavour to allay the excitement and confusion created by this severe remonstrance. But the Apostle, in rebuking this one crime, is led to consider the whole question of the intercourse of Christians with the heathen world; and hence arise the complications of the latter portion of this section.