SECTION IV.

AN APOSTLE'S WAY OF APPLYING APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY TO THE STRIFES OF A CHURCH.

CHAP. IV. 1-21.

1 LET a man account us, as ministers of Christ, and 2 stewards of the mysteries of God. What remains is, that 3 it is required of stewards that each be faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or by human measurement: nay, I judge not my4 self. For I am conscious of nothing against myself; yet not by this am I justified, for he that judgeth me is the 5 Lord. Wherefore, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of hearts; and then praise shall be to each from God. 6 And these things, brethren, I have transferred to myself and Apollos, for your sakes, that ye may learn by us not to be wise above what is written, that no one be 7 inflated on behalf of one against another. For who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? But if thou didst receive it, why dost thou 8 glory as if thou hadst not received it? Now ye are full:

now ye are rich: ye have reigned without us: And I would ye did reign, that we also might reign along with 9 you. For I think that God has set forth us, the Apostles,

We are

last, as appointed to death, that we might be made a spec10 tacle to the world, both to angels and to men. fools for Christ's sake, but we are wise in Christ: we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honorable, but we are de11 spised. Up to this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are beaten, and have no certain dwell12 ing-place; and labor, working with our own hands: being 13 reviled, we bless: being persecuted, we endure : being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the expiation of the world, the offscouring of all things to this day.

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I write not these things to shame you, but as my be15 loved sons I warn you. For though ye have ten thousand teachers in Christ, ye have not many fathers, for I have begotten you in Christ Jesus through the Gos16 pel. Wherefore, I beseech you, be imitators of me. 17 To this end I have sent unto you Timothy, who is my

beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every 18 Church. Now some are puffed up, as if I were not com19 ing to you. But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will: and I will know not the word but the power of 20 those who are puffed up. For the kingdom of God is 21 not in word, but in power. Which choose ye? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and the spirit of mildness?

Ir is only in the most advanced state of religious knowledge, that the individual mind takes confidence to abandon mere Symbols, as grounds of spiritual safety, and to trust itself with God alone. Long as it is since Christ taught the sublime doctrine, that the true worshippers worship in spirit and in truth,

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by the reality of an inward communion and not by outward signs, there is yet no universal disposition amongst men to rest themselves, or to permit others to rest, in this direct and immediate worship, and, satisfied with knowing that God is in his temple. within, to be spiritually independent of the mere mechanism of Religion. Few are the minds so purely Christian, that they dare to trust themselves to God without a mediator, or to look within for the kingdom of heaven. In these days spiritual safety is made to consist, not in Christ's feeling of union with his Father, but rather in interposing as much as possible what are called Means of Grace, — in fact, in protecting ourselves against God, that, in the multitude of spiritual contrivances, we may get . possession of the true watchword, or connect ourselves with some outward vehicle of favor, dotal, sacramental, or doctrinal, to which if we but cling fast we may find a passage into heaven. Where are the Christians who can put aside all this intervening machinery, and say with the filial heart of Christ, "I am not alone, for my Father is with me"? Alas! to meet the Deity alone, without some intermediate protection, is just the most terrific idea that Theology has planted in the common mind. Prepare to meet your God!" are words employed to awaken the terrors of the soul, and the intervention of an Intercessor who will prevail for us, as the means to assuage them. To many minds, a Christianity in spirit and in truth, the filial relation of Christ to God, appears to afford no protection, in fact, to be no Religion, a word that seems to

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be used in the old heathen sense, of something so prescribed that a man can observe it with an out

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ward exactitude and certainty, and which when observed binds God to show favor. To profess that your whole Christianity consists in making your own spirit a living temple for God, employing as your greatest aid the study and imitation and spiritual attraction of his Christ, is held to be no definite answer to the question, What do you believe? what are your grounds of Hope? what is your Christianity?

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How often are Unitarians met with that question, What is Unitarianism, — what is your Religion? And the question always means this: "What are your special reliances, that you have secured for yourselves a protection against God?" If you say, "Christianity has taught you to have faith in the divine Love, and to seek immediate communion with the Father of the soul, and that the Son of God has shown us how to prepare the heart for some inward union with God's spirit," you are thought to say a thing utterly vague, indefinite, shadowy, in fact, to have no certain grounds of safety, no definite terms on the observance of which you can hold God bound to save you. For this is what is chiefly sought for in religion, this is the refined selfishness of spiritual anxiety;-"How can I get assured of my safety, how can I hold God pledged to me?Let me know what I am to believe in as the terms of salvation, what are the outward observances that God has appointed as the conditions of final Mercy?" and so vanish, in this legal and cove

nanting temper, all the filial trusts of a religious mind, the worship of the Father in the spirit of a child's faith and reality. There never was a time, since the Reformers, with a dim consciousness of spiritual freedom, made their ineffectual protest, when Christianity was so prominently an ecclesiastical, and so little a spiritual interest. On all sides. the machinery is thrust upon you, as if it was the inward and essential life. Not the squl's communion with God, but the agency of a Church, - not practical discipleship to the Lord Jesus, the baptism of the affections into the spirit of his life and death, but the efficacy of the sacraments, not faith in God, but belief in doctrines, not reliance on divine Beings, but confidence in dead rites and propositions: - these are the essentials of which we hear so much,

the symbols every thing, the Realities forgotten. Even the dying wretch, on whose crimes man will have no mercy, is taught to lay hold on the symbol, and, naming the name of Christ, to exult in his safety. The man who has spent his life without God in the world, will yet close it with some feeling of protection if he has partaken of the Sacrament on his dying bed; -the most worldly deem there is some security in avowing an attachment to the Bible, and the Ministers of the Gospel of repentance and newness of life not only assume, but, so little are they aware of the degradation, vindicate, their exclusive claims to the character of spiritual Magicians.

The Priest is the symbol that, in all ages, the common mind has substituted for a spiritual com