kind.

Certainly, as St Paul argues, a man must follow his own sense of right, but no man has more enforced the solemn obligation of seeking the true Light, lest the fancy of the Individual should be the ignis fatuus of self-deception and of willing defect. The bearing of this principle upon the use of intoxicating liquors is manifest; for the light now shed on the nature and effects of such beverages must increase the number of persons who cannot use them without misgiving; and all such persons should be impressed with the declaration that they cannot be other than 'brought into judgment' if, while in this state of moral indecision, they partake of inebriating drinks.*

CHAPTER XV. VERSES 1-3.

I We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification. 3 For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me.

Most beautiful and Christ-like is the exhortation of ver. I. Those who cannot partake of any particular kind of food with a good conscience are to abstain, and those who might conscientiously partake are not to do so if their example will be a snare to others, for the strong (dunatoi, 'the able') ought to bear the infirmities (ta astheneemata, 'the weaknesses') of the weak (tōn adunatōn, ‘of the unable'), and not to please themselves. How emphatically does this principle condemn those who boast that they take intoxicating drink 'because they like it ' !—' because they have a right to do what they please'! The true Christian's highest pleasure consists in what is most acceptable to Christ and most useful to man; so 'let every one of us please his neighbour for his good (eis to agathon, for the neighbour's benefit) to edification'—to the building up of the Christian character and of the Christian brotherhood as a Living Temple, all glorious with the beauty of holiness and lovingkindness. For even Christ pleased not Himself.' As a man He had appetencies which might have been innocently gratified, considered in themselves, but they were not indulged-they were inflexibly and cheerfully restrained,-in order that the work of human redemption might be triumphantly carried out. How singular and suspicious, that while every day professed Christians are earnestly pleading the example of our Lord for drinking what they like, we never hear of their insisting upon His example of perfect self-denial! Yet the Lord Jesus is the sublimest and most perfect example of self-denial the world has seen; He pleased not Himself sensuously, because He pleased His Father and Himself spiritually; and in exact proportion as His professed followers are like Him, they will not consult with flesh or fashion, with palate or custom, as to what should be done or left undone. If this standard were honestly applied to the question of using intoxicating liquors, and if no more strong drink were to be henceforward consumed merely to please the lower-self, who can doubt that the habitual use of it would rapidly disappear from the Christian world?

*What is a person to do, if he is in as much doubt whether it is lawful to abstain as he is whether it is lawful to drink? Two answers may be given,-(1) that a question as to the lawfulness of abstinence can hardly arise, except on the score of health, and then the best information must be sought; and (2) that in a case of balanced doubts, the deciding motive may always be found by estimating the kind of influence most likely to be exerted, by either course, upon domestic, social, and religious life.

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF

ST PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS.

CHAPTER V. VERSES 6-8.

6 Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? 7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: 8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

V. 6. A LITTLE LEAVEN] Mikra zumee. Zumee, 'ferment,' answers to the Hebrew Wiclif has 'witen ye not that a litil sourdouy apeirith al the gobet?' (corrupteth all the lump).

seor.

V. 7. AS YE ARE UNLEAVENED] Kathōs este azumoi, 'as ye are unfermented' = uncorrupted. Tyndale's version gives 'swete breed'; so Cranmer's and the Geneva versions.

FOR EVEN CHRIST OUR PASSOVER IS SACRIFICED FOR US] The words huper heemon, 'for us,' are absent from all the ancient MSS.

V. 8. BUT WITH THE UNLEAVENED BREAD OF SINCERITY AND TRUTH] All' en azumois eilikrineias kai aleetheias, 'but with the unfermented (things) of sincerity and truth.'

This passage may be appropriately compared with Luke xiii. 21, where the penetrative and diffusive influence of leaven is used as an emblem of heavenly truth in its rapidity of operation;-here, ver. 6, the same qualities are ascribed to spiritual error. But ver. 7,- Purge out therefore the old leaven,' etc.-answers to the Saviour's warnings, and is founded on the well-known nature of ferment as the product and producer of corruption. [See Notes on Matt. xvi. 6, 12, and Luke xii. 1.] Contact with evil is to be avoided, 'for a little leaven leavens the whole lump,' if allowed to work unchecked;-probably a proverbial saying, like to the other, Evil communications corrupt good manners.' But as this evil had begun to work in the Corinthian Christians, they were to 'purge it out,' that they might resemble an unleavened lump. Christ our passover (pascha = paschal-lamb) is sacrificed; and as the ancient sacrifice was to be eaten with unfermented cakes and bitter herbs, so must the great spiritual feast, in which the Lamb of God is set forth as the food of the soul, be observed, not with malice and wickedness-the leaven of the heart,—but with simplicity and truthfulness, the unperverted elements of a genuine Christian disposition.

CHAPTER V. VERSE 11.

But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.

OR A DRUNKARD] Ee methusos, or one who fills himself with drink' = a hard drinker = a drunkard, but not necessarily a drunkard of the English type. The habitual bibber was not to be regarded as a 'brother,' though he might wish to pass as such; nor was he to be associated-with in the festivities of the church. Such persons were sure to be, as Jude afterwards describes, 'spots in their feasts of charity,' and ought to be shunned, lest the contagion of their example should breed a moral pest.

CHAPTER VI. VERSES 9-11.

9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

V. 10. NOR DRUNKARDS] Oute methusoi, nor inordinate drinkers.' An excessive addiction to liquors-even such as would not readily, or at all, intoxicate -was a vice of the apostolic age, and one that abounded in Corinth, the most profligate city of Greece.

In dissolute Corinth the gospel had become the power of God to the salvation of some who had been steeped in every form of sensuality and impurity. This text has been adduced to show that the Gospel, without the intervention of Temperance societies, is equal to the reclamation of the intemperate. But it is never wise to set historical allusions against present and patent facts; and no fact is more completely attested than this, that for every drunkard reclaimed by the ordinary religious ministrations, direct Temperance efforts have reclaimed hundreds. Not the gospel, however, but the routine of religious instruction has been at fault, and mainly, because (1) the religious teachers have not gone to seek out the intemperate who would not come to receive instruction; and because (2) they have not pressed upon the intemperate the gospel principle of separation from the causes of their besetment. Corinthian drunkards, coming under the influence of the Gospel, would be necessarily drawn away from their former companions and associations, and be introduced into a new society, of which the watchword was, 'Let us go on unto perfection.' Where intemperance had been the result of an appetite for alcohol, the Corinthian convert would not be safe unless he put the mocker' away from him altogether. The principle of abstinence from intoxicants, by whomsoever applied, is one recognised by the Gospel as the sine qua non of safety for the drunkard; and without it there can be no reasonable hope that the appetite for strong drink will be overcome, or the Divine life effectually nourished and matured in the once intemperate man.

CHAPTER VI. VERSE 12.

All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.

ALL THINGS Aare lawful uNTO ME] Panta moi exestin, 'all (things) to me are possible'; i. e. ‘I am able to do (the kind of actions referred to) without scruple as to their moral propriety.' These 'all things' related to the use of meats which some persons regarded as being ceremonially unclean. A provincial divine has wrested this text from its moral association in order to prove the logical universal, that all physical things are lawful, and to be received with thanksgiving'; and to establish the special inference, Therefore alcohol is lawful, and must not be denounced as a bad article'! A moment's reflection would have exhibited the absurdity of construing in a logical and absolute sense the simple and natural words of Paul, which have not the slightest allusion to the physiological qualities of food or drink. No one can believe that St Paul was discussing a question of regimen or health, and asserting his physical invulnerability to the action of poisons (which are included in 'all things'); or, supposing him to have possessed a miraculous exemption from the operation of divinely appointed physical laws, that his professed disciples have inherited the privilege! St Paul was arguing the moral quality of certain actions, and the duty of a given course of life, as his next words demonstrate; and to quote 'all (actions) are lawful for me,' in a universal sense, is not only to 'wrest the Scripture to our own hurt,' but to make the apostle contradict and abolish his own argument for the greater suitability and excellence of the conduct which he is explicitly enforcing upon the Corinthian church, and therefore implicitly upon the entire Christian world.

*

BUT ALL THINGS ARE NOT EXPEDIENT] All' ou panta sumpherei, "but all things do not hold (or fit) together,' = do not edify or adapt themselves to profiti. e. all things are not suitable.

BUT I WILL NOT BE BROUGHT UNDER THE POWER OF ANY] All' ouk egō exousiastheesomai hupo tinos, 'but I will not allow myself to be mastered by anything,'-i. e. I will not suffer anything, however enticing, to induce me to act contrary to my conviction of what is best, or contrary to the interests committed to my trust.

CHAPTER VI. VERSES 19, 20.

19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20 For ye are bought with a price therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.

The solemn and glorious fact here declared should cause every Christian to exercise the utmost care in rejecting whatever may, directly or indirectly, pollute the ' temple of the Holy Spirit'; for even the body, by its union with the soul, is con

*See Note on chap. ix. 25, for the Vulgate use of omnibus, 'all things.' If the runners in the Grecian games abstained from 'all things' absolutely, then starvation was a preparation for strength!

sidered a fit dwelling-place of God. Nor is such a fact altogether beyond our comprehension, since the reciprocal relation of body and mind is too constant and intimate not to impress us with the importance of guarding the purity of the latter, by excluding from its material tenement whatever may becloud or deprave it. Whatever stimulates animal appetite, and abates the vigour of the intellectual and moral nature, is not suitable for the Christian's use, because not fitting to his high calling, and his consecration as 'a temple of the Holy Ghost.' How can he wisely, or even complacently, consume the wine and strong drink which the Aaronic priests were forbidden to use, and introduce into the temple of the Holy Spirit that which the Spirit himself has branded as a 'mocker' and 'seducer'? However limited in quantity, the use can serve no sanctifying purpose, and may gradually create for alcoholic liquors (as it has done in innumerable instances) a taste morbid in its physical character, and pestiferous to every attribute of the rational and spiritual being.

CHAPTER VIII. VERSES 4-13.

4 As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. 5 For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) 6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. 7 Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled. 8 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. 9 But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to them that are weak. 10 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; 11 And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? 12 But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. 13 Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.

In these paragraphs the apostle deals with a question on which he had evidently been consulted. The question consisted of two parts,-Was it right to eat of food that had been devoted to idols? Was it right to set an example of eating it to those who believed that to eat was to contract defilement? The first part of the question the apostle answers in the affirmative, the second in the negative. The use of the terms 'lawful' and 'expedient' by the English translators has very much confused St Paul's reasoning to the common mind, and conveyed a wholly fallacious notion of lawfulness as distinct from expediency,—the utter absurdity that what is not expedient to be done may still be lawfully done! Such a construction runs counter to the apostle's clear intention to distinguish between certain