LECTURE XVIII.

January 25, 1852.

1 CORINTHIANS, viii. 8-13.-"But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse. But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak.-For if any man see thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols;-And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?-But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ.— Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."

We have already divided this chapter into two branches— the former portion of it containing the difference between Christian knowledge and secular knowledge, and the second portion containing the apostolic exposition of the law of Christian conscience. The first of these we endeavoured to expound last Sunday, but it may be well briefly to recapitulate the principles of that discourse in a somewhat different form. Corinth, as we all know and remember, was a city built on the sea-coast, having a large and free communication with all foreign nations; and there was also within it, and going on amongst its inhabitants, a free interchange of thought, and a vivid power of communicating the philosophy and truths of those days to each other. Now it is plain that to a society in such a state, and to minds so educated, the gospel of Christ must have presented a peculiar attraction, presenting itself to them, as it did, as a law of Christian liberty. And so, in Corinth the gospel had "free course and was glorified," and was

received with great joy by almost all men, and by minds of all classes and all sects; and a large number of these attached themselves to the teaching of the Apostle Paul as the most accredited expounder of Christianity-the "royal law of liberty." But it seems, from what we read in this Epistle, that a large number of these men received Christianity as a thing intellectual, and that alone-and not as a thing which touched the conscience, and swayed and purified the affections. And so, this liberty became to them almost all-they ran into sin or went to extravagance-they rejoiced in their freedom from the superstitions, the ignorances, and the scruples which bound their weaker brethren; but had no charity-none of that intense charity which characterized the Apostle Paul-for those still struggling in the delusions and darkness from which they themselves were free. More than that, they demanded their right, their Christian liberty of expressing their opinions in the church, merely for the sake of exhibiting the Christian graces and spiritual gifts which had been showered upon them so largely; until by degrees those very assemblies became a lamentable exhibition of their own depravity, and led to numerous irregularities, which we find severely rebuked by the Apostle Paul. Their women, rejoicing in the emancipation which had been given to the Christian community, laid aside the old habits of attire which had been consecrated so long by Grecian and Jewish custom, and appeared with their heads uncovered in the Christian community. Still further than that, the Lord's Supper exhibited an absence of all solemnity, and seemed more a meeting for licentious gratification, where "one was hungry, and another

was drunken”—a place in which drunkenness, and the enjoyment of the earthly appetites, had taken the place of Christian charity towards each other. And the same feeling this love of mere liberty-liberty in itself— manifested itself in many other directions. Holding by this freedom, their philosophy taught that the body, that is, the flesh, was the only cause of sin; that the soul was holy and pure; and that, therefore, to be free from the body would be entire, perfect, Christian emancipation. And so came in that strange wrong doctrine, exhibited in Corinth, where immortality was taught separate from and in opposition to the doctrine of the Resurrection. And afterwards they went on with their conclusions about liberty, to maintain that the body, justified by the sacrifice of Christ, was no longer capable of sin; and that in the evil which was done by the body, the soul had taken no part. And therefore sin was to them but as a name, from which a Christian conscience was to be freed altogether. So that when one of their number had fallen into grievous sin, and had committed licentiousness, "such as was not so much as named among the Gentiles," so far from being humbled by it, they were "puffed up," as if they were exhibiting to the world an enlightened, true, perfect Christianity-separate from all prejudices. To such a society and to such a state of mind the Apostle Paul preached, in all their length, breadth, and fulness, the humbling doctrines of the Cross of Christ. He taught that knowledge was one thing— that charity was another thing; that "knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up." He reminded them that love was the perfection of knowledge. In other words, his teaching came to this: there are two kinds of know

ledge; the one the knowledge of the intellect, the other the knowledge of the heart. Intellectually, God never can be known; He must be known by Love-for, "if any man love God, the same is known of Him." Here, then, we have arrived, in another way, at precisely the same conclusion at which we arrived last Sunday. Here are two kinds of knowledge, secular knowledge and Christian knowledge; and Christian knowledge is this-to know by Loving.

Let us now consider the remainder of the chapter, which treats of the law of Christian conscience. You will observe that it divides itself into two branches-the first containing an exposition of the law itself, and the second, the Christian applications which flow out of this exposition.

1. The way in which the Apostle expounds the law of Christian conscience is this:-Guilt is contracted by the soul, in so far as it sins against and transgresses the law of God, by doing that which it believes to be wrong: not so much what is wrong, as what appears to it to be wrong. This is the doctrine distinctly laid down in the 7th and 8th verses. The Apostle tells the Corinthians-these strong-minded Corinthians—that the superstitions of their weaker brethren were unquestionably wrong. "Meat,"

he says, "commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse." He then tells them further, that "there is not in every man that knowledge: for some, with conscience of the idol, eat it as a thing offered unto an idol." Here, then, is an ignorant, mistaken, ill-informed conscience; and yet he tells them that this conscience, so ill-informed,

yet binds the possessor of it: "and their conscience, being weak, is defiled." For example; there could be no harm in eating the flesh of an animal that had been offered to an idol or false god; for a false god is nothing, and it is impossible for that flesh to have contracted positive defilement by being offered to that which is a positive and absolute negation. And yet if any man thought it wrong to eat such flesh, to him it was wrong; for in that act there would be a deliberate act of transgression—a deliberate preference of that which was mere enjoyment, to that which was apparently, though it may be only apparently, sanctioned by the law of God. And so that act would carry with it all the disobedience, all the guilt, and all the misery which belongs to the doing of an act altogether wrong; or, as St. Paul expresses it, the conscience would become defiled.

Here, then, we arrive at the first distinction-the distinction between absolute and relative right and wrong. Absolute right and absolute wrong, like absolute truth, can each be but one and unalterable in the sight of God. The one absolute right-the charity of God and the sacrifice of Christ-this, from eternity to eternity, must be the sole measure of eternal right. But human right or human wrong, that is, the merit or demerit of any action done by any particular man, must be measured, not by that absolute standard, but as a matter relative to his particular circumstances, the state of the age in which he lives, and his own knowledge of right and wrong. For we come into this world with a moral sense; or, to speak more Christianly, with a conscience. And yet that will tell us but very little distinctly. It tells us broadly that which