The life and work of St. Paul

384 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL.
yisit to Corinth must be given up. Neither he nor they were yet in a mood
in wLicli their meeting could be otherwise than infinitely painful He must
at once despatch Titus to Corinth to inform them of his change of plan, to
arrange about the collection, and to do what little he could, before rejoining
him at Troas. He must also despatch a messenger to Timothy to tell him not to
proceed to Corinth at present. And then he might have written an apocalyptic
letter, full of burning denunciation and fulminated anathemas ; he might have
blighted these conceited, and lascivious, and quarrelsome disgracors of the name
of Christian with withering invectives, androUed over their trembling consciences
thunders as loud as those of Sinai. Not such, however, was the tone he adopted,
or the spirit in which he wrote. In deep agitation, which he yet managed
almost entirely to suppress, summoning all the courage of his nature, forgetting
all the dangers and trials which surrounded him at Ephesus, asking God for the
wisdom and guidance which he so sorely needed, crushing down deep within
him all personal indignations, every possible feeling of resentment or egotism
at the humiliations to which he had personally been subjected, he called
Sosthenes to his side, and flinging his whole heart into the task immediately
before him, began to dictate to him one of the most astonishing and eloquent
of all his letters, the first extant Epistle to the Corinthians. Varied as are
the topics with which it deals, profound as were the difficulties which iiad
been suggested to him, novel as were the questions which he had to face,
alienated as were many of the converts to whom he had to appeal, we see at
once that the Epistle was no laborious or long-polished composition. En-
lightened by the Spirit of God, St. Paul was in possession of that insight
which sees at once into the heart of every moral difficulty. He was as capable
of dealing with Greek culture and Greek sensuality as with Judaic narrowness
and Judaic Pharisaism. He shows himself as great a master when he
is applying the principles of Christianity to the concrete and complicated
realities of life, as when he is moving in the sphere of dogmatic theology.
The phase of Jewish opposition with which he has here to deal has been modified
by contact with Hellenism, but it still rests on grounds of ezternalisni, and
must be equally met by spiritual
truths. Problems however dark, details
however intricate, bocoino lucid and orderly at onco in tho light of external
distinctions. In teaching his converts St. Paul had no need to burn the mid-
night oil in long studies. Even his most elaborate Epistles were in reality
not elaborate. They leapt like vivid sparks from a heart in which the fire
of love to God burnt until death with an ever brighter and brighter flame.
1. His very greeting shows th.3 fulness of his heart. As his authority had been
impugned, he calls himself " an Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God," and
addresses them as a Church, as sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called to be saints,
uniting with them in. the prayer for grace and peace all who, whatever their differ,
ing shades of opinion or their place of abode, call upon the name of our Lord Jesus
Ciiriflt, both theirs and ours.1
lie strikes the
Thus, in his very address to them,
i "Est enim haec periculosa tentatio nullam Ecclesiam putare ubi non apparent perfects
puritas" (Calvin). The absence of fixed ecclesiastical organisation is clew, as fie addresses tt$