direct and manifest intervention of God ; they had been mira- culously guided and miraculously fed in the wilderness, and yet the great majority perished. Their experience should be a warning to the Corinthians not to be overcome by similar temptations, and especially to be on their guard against idola- try, 10, 1-13. Their danger in this respect was very great. They knew that the Grecian deities were imaginary beings ; they knew that things offered to those deities had no contami- nating power ; they knew that it was, under some circumstan- ces, lawlul to eat meat which had been thus offered ; they were, therefore, in danger of being led to eat it under circum- stances which would render them guilty of idolatry. As they were constantly exposed to have such meat set before them, it became a matter of the highest importance to know when it might, and when it might not be eaten with impunity. The general principle which the apostle lays down on this subject is, that all participation in the religious services of a people, brings us into communion with them as worshippers, and therefore with the objects of their worship. Consequently, to eat of heathen sacrifices under circumstances which gave a re- ligious character to the act, was idolatry. It is not necessary that they themselves should view the matter in this light. They might worship idols, and incur the guilt and penalty of idolatry, without knowing or suspecting that they did so. To prove this he appealed to their own convictions. They knew that all who came to the Lord's table did thereby join in the worship of Christ ; and that all who attended the altars of the Jews, and eat of the sacrifices, did thereby unite in the wor- ship of Jehovah. By parity of reasoning, those who took part in the religious festivals of the heathen, joined in the worship of idols. And although the idols were nothing, still the wor- ship of them was apostacy from God, and the worship of devils, 10, 14-22. On the other hand, to eat of these sacrifices under circumstances which precluded the idea of a religious service, was a matter of indifference. Therefore, if meat offered to idols was exposed for sale in the market, or met with at private tables, it might be eaten with impunity, 10, 23-33.
XVUl INTRODUCTION.
Seventhly: grave abuses had been introduced into the celebration of public worship at Gorinth. The women spoke in public unveiled ; the Lord's supper was degraded into a common meal, and the use of spiritual gifts gave rise to great disorder. With regard to the first of these abuses, the apostle teaches that, as by the divine constitution the woman is subordinate to the man, and as the veil was the conven- tional symbol of that subordination, for a woman to appear in public unveiled, was to renounce her position, and to forfeit the respect due to her sex, 8, 1-16. As to the Lord's supper, it seems probable that it was, in Corinth at least, connected with an ordinary meal in which all the Christians met at a common table. For this meal each one brought what provi- sions he was able to contribute. Instead, however, of its being a feast of brotherly love, the rich ate by themselves, and left their poorer brethren no part in the feast. To cor- rect this abuse, destructive of the whole intent of the sacra- ment, the apostle reminds his readers that he had communi- cated to them the account of the original institution of the ordinance, as he himself had received it of the Lord. Accord- ing to that institution, it was designed not to satisfy hunger, but to commemorate the death of Christ. It was therefore a religious service of a pecuharly solemn character. The bread and wine being the appointed symbols of his body and blood, to eat and drink in a careless, irreverent manner, making no distinctions between the consecrated elements and ordinary food, was to be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, 11, 17-34.
With regard to spiritual gifts, the apostle, after reminding the Corinthians that the possession of these gifts was one of the distinctive marks of their Christian as distinguished from their heathen state, teaches that all these extraordinary mani- festations of the Holy Ghost have a common origin ; that they were all given, not for the exaltation of those who re- ceived them, but for the edification of the church, and that they were distributed according to the good pleasure of God.