I. The designation of the writers. Paul "an Apostle ". Sosthenes" brother." An apostle means our 66 one sent," a missionary to teach the truth committed to him; and the authority of this apostolic mission St. Paul substantiates in the words "called to be an Apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God." There was a necessity for this vindication of his Apostleship. At the time of writing this Epistle he was at Ephesus, having left Corinth after a stay of eighteen months. There he was informed of the state of the Church in Achaia by those of the house of Chloe, a Christian lady, and by letters from themselves. From this correspondence he learnt that his authority was questioned;-and so St. Paul, unjustly treated and calumniated, opens his Epistle with these words, written partly in self-defence-" Called to be an apostle through the will of God." In the firm conviction of that truth lay all his power. No man felt more strongly than St. Paul his own insignificance. He told his converts again and again that he "was not meet to be called an Apostle ;" that he was "the least of all saints," that he was the "chief of sinners." And yet, intensely as he felt all this, more deeply did he feel something above and beyond all this, that he was God's messenger, that his was a true Apostleship, that he had been truly commissioned by the King; and hence he speaks with courage and with freedom. His words were not his own, but His Who had sent him. Imagine that conception dawning on his spirit-imagine, if you can, that light suddenly struck out of his own mind in the midst of his despondency—and then you will no longer wonder at the almost joyful boldness with which he stood firm, as on a rock, against the

slander of his enemies, and the doubtfulness of his friends. Now, unless this is felt by us, our life and work have lost their impulse. If we think of our profession or line of action, simply as arising from our own independent choice, or from chance, instantly we are paralyzed, and our energies refuse to act vigorously. But what was it which nerved the Apostle's soul to bear reproach and false witness? Was it not this? I have a mission: "I am called to be an Apostle through the will of God.” Well, this should be our strength. Called to be a Carpenter, a Politician, a Tradesman, a Physician-is he irreverent who believes that? God sent me here to cut wood, to direct justly, to make shoes, to teach children :Why should not each and all of us feel that? It is one of the greatest truths on which we can rest our life, and by which we can invigorate our work. But we get rid of it by claiming it exclusively for St. Paul. We say that God called the Apostles, but does not speak to us. We say they were inspired and lifted above ordinary Humanity. But observe the modesty of the apostolic claim. St. Paul does not say, "I am infallible," but only that the Will of God has sent him as It had sent others. He did not wish that his people should receive his truth because he, the Apostle, had said it, but because it was truth. He did not seek to bind men, as if they were destitute of reasoning, to any avròc epn, as is set up now by Evangelicalism or Popery, but throughout the whole of this Epistle he uses arguments, he appeals to reason and to sense. He convinces men that he was an Apostle, not by declarations that they must believe him, but by appealing to the truth he had taught—“ by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every

man's conscience in the sight of God." Further, we see in the fact of St. Paul's joining with himself Sosthenes, and calling him his brother, another proof of his desire to avoid erecting himself as the sole guide of the Church. He sends the Epistle from himself and Sosthenes. Is that like one who desired to be Lord alone over God's heritage? I am an Apostle-sent by the will of God; but Sosthenes is my brother. Of Sosthenes himself, nothing certain is known. He is supposed by some to be the Sosthenes of Acts xviii., the persecutor, the ringleader of the Jews against the Christians, who was beaten before the judgment seat of Gallio. If so, see what a conqueror St. Paul, or rather, Christianity had become. Like the Apostle of the Gentiles, Sosthenes now built up the faith which once he destroyed. But in truth, we know nothing accurately, except that he was a Corinthian known to the persons addressed, and now with St. Paul at Ephesus. The proper reflection from the fact of his being joined with the Apostle, is the humility of St. Paul. He never tried to make a Party or form a Sect; he never even thought of placing himself above others as an infallible and autocratic Pope.

II. The persons addressed. "The Church of God which is at Corinth." The Church! What is the Church? That question lies below all the theological differences of the day. The Church, according to the derivation of the word, means the House of God. It is that Body of men in whom the Spirit of God dwells as the source of their excellence, and who exist on earth for the purpose of exhibiting the Divine Life and the hidden order of Humanity: to destroy evil and to assimilate Humanity to God; to penetrate and purify the world, and as salt, preserve it

from corruption. It has an existence continuous throughout the ages; continuous however, not on the principles of hereditary succession or of human election, as in an ordinary corporation, but on the principle of spiritual similarity of character. The Apostle Paul asserted this spiritual succession when he said that the seed of Abraham were to be reckoned, not as his lineal descendants, but as inheritors of his faith. And Christ, too, meant the same, when He told the Jews that out of the stones before Him God could raise up children unto Abraham. There is, however, a Church visible, and a Church invisible; the latter consists of those spiritual persons who fulfil the notion of the Ideal Church; the former is the Church as it exists in any particular age, embracing within it all who profess Christianity, whether they be proper or improper members of its body. Of the invisible Church, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks; and St. Paul also alludes to this in the description which he gives of the several churches, to whom he writes in language which certainly far transcended their actual state. As, for instance, in this Epistle, he speaks of them as "called to be saints," as "temples of the Holy Ghost," and then in another place describes them in their actual state, as "carnal, and walking as men." Again, it is of the visible Church he writes, when he reproves their particular errors: and Christ, too, speaks of the same in such parables as that of the net gathering in fishes both good and bad, and the field of wheat which was mingled with tares.

An illustration may make this plain. The abstract conception of a river is that of a stream of pure, unmixed

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water, but the actual river is the Rhine, or the Rhone, or the Thames, muddy and discoloured, and charged with impurity; and the conception of this or that river necessarily contains within it these peculiarities. So of the Church of Christ. Abstractedly, and invisibly, it is a Kingdom of God in which no evil is; in the concrete, and actually, it is the Church of Corinth, of Rome, or of England, tainted with impurity; and yet just as the mudded Rhone is really the Rhone, and not mud and Rhone, so there are not two churches, the Church of Corinth and the false church within it, but one visible Church, in which the invisible lies concealed. This principle is taught in the parable, which represents the Church as a Vine. There are not two vines, but one; and the withered branches, which shall be cut off hereafter, are really, for the present, part and portion of the Vine. So far then, it appears, that in any age, the visible Church is, properly speaking, the Church.

But beyond the limits of the Visible, is there no true Church? Are Plato, Socrates, Marcus Antoninus, and such as they, to be reckoned by us as lost? Surely not. The Church exists for the purpose of educating souls for heaven: but it would be a perversion of this purpose were we to think that goodness will not be received by God, because it has not been educated in the Church. Goodness is goodness, find it where we may. A vineyard exists for the purpose of nurturing vines, but he would be a strange vine-dresser who denied the reality of grapes because they had ripened under a less genial soil, and beyond the precincts of the vineyard. The truth is, that the Eternal Word has communicated Himself to man in