The life and work of St. Paul

CONDITION OF THE CfitTRCH A.T COfclNTH. 393
iust, and rebellion, and murmuring, and were awful warnings against overweening
eetf-confidence ! Yea, the path of duty was difficult, but not impossible, and no
temptation waa beyond human power to resist, because with the temptation God
provided also the escape. Let them beware, then, of all this scornful indifference
about idolatry. As the Eucharist united them in closest communion with Christ,
and with one another, so that by all partaking of the one bread they became one
body and one bread, so the partaking of Gentile sacrifices was a communion with
demons, 1 The idol was nothing, as they had urged, but it 8
represented an evil spirit:
and fellowship with demons was a frightful admixture with their fellowship in
Christ, a dangerous trilling with their allegiance to God. He repeats once more
that what ia lawful ia not always either expedient or edifying. Let sympathy, not
selfishness, be their guiding principle. Over-scrupulosity was not required of them.
They might buy in the market, they might eat, at the private tables of the heathen,
what they would, and ask no questions ; but if their attention was prominently drawm
to the fact that any dish waa part of an idol-offering, then though they might urge
that "the earth waa the Lord's, and the fulness thereof," and that it was hard for
them to be judged, or their liberty abridged in a indifferent
purely act, which they
might even perform in a religious spirit still let them imitate Paul's own example,
which he had just fully explained to them, which was, indeed, Christ's example, and
consisted in being absolutely unselfish, and giving no wilful offence either to Jews
or Gentiles, or the Church of God.
In this noble section of the Epistle, so remarkable for its tender consideration
and its robust good sense, it is quite clear that the whole sympathies of St. Paul are
theoretically with the strong, though he seems to fool a sort of practical leaning to
the ascetic side. He does not, indeed, approve, under any circumstances, of an
ostentatious, defiant, insulting liberalism. To a certain extent the prejudices even
the absurd and bigoted prejudices of the weak ought to be respected, and it was
selfish and wrong needlessly to wound them. It was above all 'wrong to lead them
by example to do violence to their own conscientious scruples. But when these
scruples, and this bigotry of the weak, became in their turn aggressive, then St.
Paul quite sees that they must be discouraged and suppressed, lest weakness should
lay down the law for strength. To tolerate the weak was one thing ; to let them
tyrannise was quite another. Their ignorance was not to be a limit to real knowledge
; their purblind gaze waa not to bar up the horizon against true insight ; their
slavish superstition waa not to fetter the freedom of Christ. In matters where a
little consideratocess and self-denial would save oSence, there the strong should give
up, and do less than they might ; but in matters which affected every day of every
year, like the purchase of meat in the open market, or the acceptance of ordinary
invitations, then the weak must not attempt to be obtrusive or to domineer. Some,
doubtless, would use hard words about these concessions. They might charge St.
Paul, as
they
had charged St. Peter, with violating the awful and fiery law. They
might call him " the lawless one," or any other ugly nick-name they liked he waa
;
not a man to be "feared with bugs," or to give up a clear and certain principle to
avoid an impertinent and senseless clamour. Had he been charged with controver-
1 Cf. 2 Cor. vi. 14 sea. Evil spirits occupied a large part of the thoughts and teaching of Jewish
Rabbis ; e.g., Lilith, Adam's first wife, was by him the mother of all demons (Psachim, f. 112, 2). Ag
the Lord's Supper puts the Christian in mystical union wiin Christ, so partaking of idol feasts puts
the partaker into symbolic allegiance to devils. Pfleiderer con pares the Greek legend that by eating
& fruit of the nether world a man is given over to it (PaiMnlsm, I. 239).
8 The heathen gods as idols were tlSui\a, Elilvm, supposititious, unreal, imaginary but ; tn
another aspect they were demons. The Rabbis, in the same way, regard idols from tiro points