Perceive the King of Kings My God and portion; to see His treasures
Made all mine own, myself the end Of His great labours! 'Tis the life of pleasures
To see myself His friend ! Who all things finds convey'd to Him alone,
Must needs adore the Holy One.1
1 Thomas Tralierne.
Our Three Judges.
T4«
LITERATURE
Arnold (T.), Sermons, i. 155. Bramston (J. T.), Fratribus, 156.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, iv. 489. Greenhough (J. G.), The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 284. Hoyle (A.), The Depth and Power of the Christian Faith, 89. Jackson (G.), Judgment Human and Divine, 1. Liddon (H. P.), Advent in St. PauVs, 195, 295. Maclaren (A.), Expositions : 1 and 2 Corinthians, 74.
„ Triumphant Certainties, 152.
Neale (J. M.), Sermons Preached in a Religious House, 2nd Ser., i. 190. Parker (J.), City Temple Pulpit, iv. 155. Pusey (E. B.), Parochial and Cathedral Sermons, 1. Stalker (J.), The Four Men, 2. Tholuck (A.), Hours of Christian Devotion, 34. Vaughan (C. J.) Family Prayer and Sermon Book, ii. 576. Christian World Pulpit, xxxvii. 225 (Stalker). Church of England Pulpit, lxii. 71 (Barnes). Churchman's Pulpit : Third Sunday in Advent : i. 469 (Hobhouse), 472
(Battershall), 474 (Arnold), 477 (Gurney), 479 (Temple). Contemporary Pulpit, 1st Ser., ix. 161 (Liddon).
Our Three Judges.
But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment : yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing against myself ; yet am I not hereby justified : but he that judgeth me is the Lord.— i Cor. iv. 3, 4.
1. To understand this passage we must remember what the cir- cumstances were which led St. Paul to write this first letter to the Corinthians. He had been absent from them for three years, during which time trouble and disorder of several kinds had been arising and spreading in the body of the Corinthian Christians. And the first of these troubles, to which he alludes in this letter, was the numberless divisions and parties into which they seemed to have broken. Full of intellectual restlessness, craving after new varieties of doctrine, they had formed at least three eager and violent parties : the party of Paul, the party of Apollos, the party of Cephas. We may gather that while St. Paul's own partisans had raised him to a height of authority which he would not for one moment claim, his opponents had brought the charge of unfaithfulness against him.
And in this letter he tells them what he would have them think of his office and his relations to them. Not a leader, not a favourite of a party, but a servant doing work for God, a steward dispensing to them the riches of the revelation of Christ. And if a servant and a steward, then the one merit that he would claim, the one thing that makes his service and his stewardship real is faithfulness. But who is to judge whether he has been faithful or not ? Men may judge, but he does not care for their verdict : " It is a very small thing that I should be judged of you or of man's judgment." His own conscience may judge, but he will not stand on its acquittal alone : " though I know nothing against myself, yet am I not hereby justified." There is only one
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judgment to which he will submit, only one utterly true and infallible approbation or condemnation, which will be awarded to those who will wait for it: "He that judgeth me is the Lord."
2. So here we have three tribunals, that of men, that of our own conscience, and that of Jesus Christ. An appeal lies from the first to the second, and from the second to the third. It is base to depend on men's judgments ; it is well to attend to the decisions of conscience, but it is not well to take for granted that, if conscience approve, we are absolved. The court of final appeal is Jesus Christ, and what He thinks about each of us.
I.
Men's Judgment of Us.
Dr. Stalker says that in every man there are four men — the man the world sees, the man seen by the person who knows him best, the man seen by himself, and the man whom God sees. We can reduce the four to three by taking the first two together. Under " men's " judgment we have (i) the judgment of the world, and (ii) the judgment of our friends.
i. The World.
The world looks at each of us and sees a certain image of us. It observes single actions of ours and watches our courses of action, and gradually makes up its mind about our character and conduct as a whole. It takes in a general impression of what we are, and gives it expression in a brief judgment on us.
From morning till night we are all of us passing judgment : we are passing judgment on the dead and the living, on those the most remote and the most unknown to us, and on those who are close to us, on the things we know best, and on the things of which we know nothing. Men, and classes, and nations throw back their judgments one at another, as if they were the most real and unquestionable certainties, about which no one could doubt. West judges east, and east judges west — each with equal confidence, each on grounds which are held to be clear and strong. Rich judge poor, and poor judge rich, family judges family, and neighbourhood judges neighbourhood, and party judges party. The learned judge the practical and the busy, the busy and