The life and work of St. Paul

396 THB LIS-B AND WOEK OS1 ST. PAtJL.
Apostle, or prophet, or teacher was but a baptised member of the one body of
Christ and ; by a fresh application of the old classic fable of Menenius Agrippa, he
once more illustrates the fatal results which must ever spring from any strife
between the body and its members.1 Let them covet the better gifts and tongues,
in which thev gloried most, he has studiously set last and yet he is now about to
point cut to them a path more transcendent than any gifts. And then, rising on the
wings of inspired utterance, he pours forth, as from the sunlit mountain heights,
his glorious hymn to CHRISTIAN LOVE. Without it a man may speak with human,
aye, and even angelic tongues, and yet have become but as booming gong or clang-
ing cymbal.* "Without it, whatever be his unction, or insight, or knowledge, or
mountain-moving faith, a man is nothing. Without it he may dole away all hia
possessions, and give bis body to be burned, yet is profited Thoa follows
nojhing.
that description of love, which should be written in letters oi gold on every
Christian's heart its patience, its kindliness ; its freedom from envy, vaunting self-
assertion, 8 inflated arrogance, vulgar indecorum ; its superiority to self-seeking ; its
calm control of temper ; its oblivion of wrong ; its absence of joy at the wrongs of
others ; its sympathy with the truth ; its gracious tolerance ; its trustfulness ; its
hope ; its endurance.* Preaching, and tongues, and knowledge, are but partial, and
thall be done away when the perfect has come ; but love is a flower whose petals
never fall off.* Those are but as the lispings, and emotions, and reasonings of a
child ; but this belongs to the perfect manhood, when we shall see God, not as in the
dim reflection of a mirror, but face to face, and know him, not in part, but fully,
even as now we are fully known. Faith, and hope, and love, are all three, not
transient gifts, but abiding graces ; but the greatest of these the greatest because
the greatest because they are for ourselves, but love
it is the root of the other two ;
is for others the ; greatest because neither in faith nor in hope is the entire and
present fruition of heaven, but only in the transcendent and illimitable blessedness
of "faith working by love;" the greatest because faith and hope are human, but
love is essentially divine the greatest of these is love. 7
15. On such a basis, so divine, so permanent, it was easy to build the decision
about the inter-relation of spiritual gifts ;
to glossolaly ;
easy to see that preaching was superior
because the one was an introspective and mostly unintelligible exercise,
the other a source of general advantage. The speaker with tongues, unless he could
also interpret, or unless another could interpret for him his inarticulate ecstacies,
did but utter indistinct sounds, like the uncertain blaring of a trumpet or the confused
discordances of a harp or flute. Apart from "
interpretation tongues" were a
mere talking into air. They were as valueless, as completely without significance,
as the jargon of a barbarian. Since they were so proud of these displays, let them
pray for ability to interpret their rhapsodies. The prayer, the song of the spirit,
should be accompanied by the assent of the understanding, otherwise the "tongue"
was useless to any ordinary worshipper, nor could they claim a share in what was
said by adding their Ainen* to the voice of Eucharist. Paul, too and he thanked
1 xil. 131. See a noble passage in Maurice, !7y,469, seq., contrasting this conception with
the artificial view of society in Hobbes' Leviathan. The absolute unity of Jews and Gentiles (ver. 13)
exhibited in baptism and toe Lord's Supper, whence it resulted that the Jews would henceforth be
but " a dwindling majority in the Messianic kingdom," was, with the Cross, the chief Btvuiiblingblock
to the Jews.
'
"Ephyreia aera" (Virg. Georg. 1L Corinthian brass
464); (Plin. H. N. 34, 2, 8).
* Ver. 4,ov irepirtpoJeTot. Perperus, "abraggart." "Heavens! howI/iowioif(eVer?iU(>