The life and work of St. Paul

376 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAITI*
mass of shapeless ruins ; its harbour is s reedy pool ; the bittern booms amid
its pestilent and stagnant marshes ; and malaria and oblivion reign supreme
over the place where the wealth of ancient civilisation gathered around the
scenes of its grossest superstitions and its most
"
degraded sins. A noisy
flight of crows," says a modern traveller, " seemed to insult its silence ; we
heard the partridge call in the area of the theatre and the Stadium," l
CHAPTER XXXIL
CONDITIOK O THE CHURCH AT COEINTH.
" Hopes have precarious life ;
They are oft blighted, withered, snapt sheer off }
But faithfulness can feed on suffering,
And knows no disappointment." Spanish Gipsy,
No one can realise tne trials and anxieties which beset the life of the great
Apostle during his stay at Ephesus, without bearing in mind how grave were
the causes of concern from which he was suffering, in consequence of the
aberrations of other converts. The First Epistle to the Corinthians was
written during the latter part of his three years' residence at the Ionian
metropolis; 2 and it reveals to us a state of things which must have rent his
heart in twain. Any one who has been privileged to feel a deep personal
responsibility for some great and beloved institution, will best appreciate how
wave after wave of affliction must have swept across his sea of troubles as he
heard from time to time those dark rumours from Galatia and Corinth, which
showed how densely the tares of the enemy had sprung up amid the good
wheat which he had sown.
Apollos, on his return to Ephesus, must have told him some very unfavourable
particulars. St. Paul had now been absent from the Corinthians
for nearly three years, and they may well have longed as we see that they did
long for his presence with an earnestness which even made them unjust
towards him. The little band of converts mostly of low position, and some
of them of despicable antecedent? not a few of them slaves, and some of
them slaves of the most degraded rank were left in the midst of a heathendom
which presented itself at Corinth under the gayest and most alluring
aspects. It is not in a day that the habits of a life can bo thrown aside. Even
those among them whose conversion was most sincere had yet a terrible battle
to fight against two temptations: the temptation to dishonesty, which had
mingled with their means of gaining a livelihood ; and the temptation to sensuality,
which was interwoven with the very fibres of their being. With
Christianity awoke conscience. Sins to which they had once lightly yielded
* See Chandler, pp. 109137. * Probably about April, A.D. S7,