The life and work of St. Paul

CONDITION OF THE CHDECH AT CORINTH. 377
as matters of perfect indifference, now required an intense effort to resist and
overcome, and every failure, so far from being at the worst a venial weakness,
involved the agonies of remorse and shame. And when they remembered the
superficially brighter and easier lives which they had spent while they were
yet pagans ;* when they daily witnessed how much sin there might bo with so
when they felt the burdens of their life doubled, and
little apparent sorrow ;
those earthly pleasures which they had once regarded as its only alleviations
rendered impossible or wrong while as yet they were unable to realise the
exquisite consolation of Christian joy and Cliristian hope they were tempted
either to relapse altogether, or to listen with avidity to any teacher whose
doctrines, if logically developed, might help to relax the stringency of their
sacred obligations. While Paul was with them they were comparatively safe.
The noble tyranny of his personal influence acted on them like a spell and
;
with his presence to elevate, his words to inspire, his example to encourage
them, they felt it more easy to fling away all that was lower and viler, because
they could realise their right to what was higher and holier. But when he
had been so long away when they were daily living in the great wicked
streets, among the cunning, crowded merchants, in sight and hearing of
everything which could quench spiritual aspirations and kindle carnal desires;
when the gay, common life went on around them, and the chariot-wheels of the
Lord were still afar it was hardly wonderful if the splendid vision began to
fade. The lustral water of Baptism had been sprinkled on their foreheads;
they fed on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ ; but, alas ! Corinth
was not heaven, and the prose of daily life followed on the poetry of their
first enthusiasm, and it was difficult to realise that, for them, those living
streets might be daily brightened with manna dews. Their condition was like
the pause and sigh of Lot's wife, as, amid the sulphurous storm, she gazed
back on the voluptuous ease of the City of the Plain. Might they no longer
taste of the plentiful Syssiiia on some festive day ? Might they not walk at
twilight in the laughing bridal procession, and listen to the mirthful jest ?
Might they not watch the Hieroduli dance at some lovely festival in the Tem-
ples of Acrocorinth ? Was all life to be hedged in for them with thorny
scruples ? Were they to gaze henceforth in dreaming phantasy, not upon
bright faces of youthful deities, garlanded with rose and hyacinth, but on the
marred visage of One who was crowned with thorns ? Oh, it was hard to
hard to remember that now they were delivered
choose the kingdom of God ;
out of the land of Egypt ; hard for their enervation to breathe the eager and
difficult air of the pure wilderness. It was hard to give up the coarse and
near for the immaterial and the far ; hard not to lust after the reeking fleshpots,
and not to loathe the light angel food ; hard to give up the purple wine
In the brimming goblet for the cold water from the spiritual rock ; hard to
.
l " In the young pagan world
Men deified the beautiful, the glad,
The strong, the boastful, and it came to nought ;
We have raised pain and Borrow into heaven " (Athelv/old).