2. The original application of these words is distinctly to Christian teachers. The whole section starts from a rebuke of the party spirit in the Corinthian Church which led them to swear by Paul or Peter or Apollos, and to despise all teachers but their own favourite. The Apostle reminds these jangling partisans that all teachers are but instruments in God's hands, who is the true Worker, the true Husbandman, the true Builder. That word opens up a whole region of thought to his ardent mind. He goes on to speak of the foundation which God has laid, namely, the mission of Jesus Christ. That founda- tion laid once for all in actual reality, in the historical facts of our Lord's life, death, and resurrection, had been laid in preaching by St. Paul when he founded the Corinthian Church. There cannot be two foundations. So all other teachers at Corinth have only to build on that foundation, that is, to carry on a course of Christian teaching which rests upon that fundamental truth. Let all such teachers take heed what sort of materials they build on that foundation, that is to say, what sort of teaching they offer; for there may be gold, and silver, and precious stones — solid and valuable instruction ; or there may be timber, and hay, and straw — worthless and unsubstantial teach- ing. The materials with which the teachers build are evidently the instruction which they give, or the doctrines which they teach.
This, then, is the teacher's Great Text. The teacher's work is spoken of as building, with the certainty that one day the building will be tested by fire. Let us consider —
I. The Foundation. II. The Building. III. The Fire.
1 J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 200.
i CORINTHIANS m. 11-13 93
I.
The Foundation.
1. The Foundation is already laid. — " Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid." It was laid in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was laid before St. Paul himself or any of the Apostles began to teach.
A paradox which found favour with some of the earlier moods of German Eationalism went to the effect that St. Paul and not Jesus Christ was the real founder of Christendom. How the writer of the indignant appeal to the Corinthians, "Was Paul crucified for you ? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul ? " could ever have been seated, by the convictions of any intelligent readers of his Epistles, in his Master's place, might well raise our wonder, if experience did not prove that of all credulity the easiest is that which is enjoined by unbelief, and of all theories, the wildest are those which are put forward in order to discredit the creed of Christendom. If the Church is built upon the labour of Apostles, as her foundation, the Apostles themselves rested on the Chief Corner-stone. And, indeed, since Schleier- macher, the paradox in question has been discredited well-nigh everywhere. It is one of that great man's many claims to honour, that he did more than any other writer in his day and country to reassert Christ's true historical relation to the Christian Church.
^J In a lecture, given in St. George's, Edinburgh, Principal Eainy made this comparison between Jesus and Paul : " We can easily mark the tie between the two; we also easily feel the difference. In both, there is goodwill to men below; in both, a constant reference to One above. But in the true manhood of our Lord, we own something serener, more self-contained and sovereign. The love to His Father moves in great tides of even perpetual flow. The love to men is a pure compassion, whose perfect goodness delights in bringing its sympathy and its help to the neediest and the worst, does so with a perfect under- standing and an unreserved self-communication. When He speaks, He speaks in the language of His time and land and circumstances, but He speaks like one who addresses human nature itself, finding the way to the common mind and common heart of every land and every age and every condition. When He reasons, it is not like one who is clearing his own thoughts, but like one who turns away from the perversity of the caviller,
94 THE TEACHER'S GREAT TEXT
or who, for the perplexed inquirer, brings into view the elements of the spiritual world he was overlooking or forgetting. And with what resource — none the less His that He rejoiced to think of it as His Father's — does He confront whatever comes to Him in life ! As we watch Him, there grows upon us the strongest sense of a perfect inner harmony with Himself and with His Father that lives through all changes. Finally, standing in this world, He declares the order of another and a higher world. He does it as one who knew it, who speaks what He had seen.
" We turn to Paul, and we perceive him also to be great ; great thoughts, great affections, great efforts, great fruits are his. But he is not great in the manner of his Master. He goes through the world full of a noble self-censure that bows him willingly to the earth, and of a passionate gratitude that cannot speak its thanks but offers up its life. Like his Master, while he rever- ences the order of this world and of society as God has framed it, he is at the same time full of the relations of a world unseen. To that world unseen he already belongs ; it determines for him, and for all who will listen to him, the whole manner of thought and life and feeling in this world ; it holds him, it inspires him. But it is in the manner of faith rather than of knowledge, of earnest rather than of possession. Especially, the influence that has mastered him and is the secret of his power and nobleness, has not brought him to the final harmony of all his powers. It has, on the contrary, committed him to an inward conflict, a fight of faith, which he will never cease to wage till the final victory crowns him. This man knows the inward weakness and the inward disgrace of Sin. He knows forgiveness and repentance, and good hope through grace. The Lord received sinners and sat and ate with them ; but this man was himself a sinner who was forgiven much and loved much. That was the Saviour : this, a pattern of them that should believe on Him to life ever- lasting." x