1. This is a very bold and sweeping statement. We seem almost to be listening to a prophet of revolution. St. Paul, addressing the democratic Corinthians, might be regarded himself as speak- ing the language of democracy. His view of Christianity, it might be said, was that it was an absolute emancipation from the fetters and traditions of the past. He was an over-zealous and ardent reformer ; he had no reverence for antiquity ; he was full only of a new order of things which was to supersede all that had gone before. Old thoughts, old systems, old beliefs — of all these a clean sweep was to be made, and man was to start afresh on a new path of progress, of which none could see the end. And something like this is the view, no doubt, which many persons have taken of Christianity. They do regard it essentially as a democratic movement, as a class religion. They identify it with the interests of a class. To them its chief charm consists in its assertion of the freedom and the equality of all men. They see that it has emancipated the slave and defended the right of the poor, and they value it most exclusively as the prime agent in a great social revolution. It was this communistic tendency that caused it to be welcomed at first by one class and suspected by another. Hence it was that the poor and the oppressed embraced it so eagerly. Hence it was that rulers, holding it to be subver- sive of governments, dreaded and sought to crush it in its cradle. It is the same tendency that in later times made many hail its influence, who had no sympathy with its creed.
Yet it cannot seriously be maintained that this is the view which St. Paul took of Christianity. Much less can it be pre- tended that such an opinion finds any kind of countenance or
support in this passage. The revolution of which St. Paul is
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speaking here is entirely a spiritual revolution. He has learnt, he tells us, a new estimate of things, he has learnt to give them their proper value. He no longer regards men or things by the common standards of the world. Even his appreciation of Christ as his Saviour is no longer what it then was — " after the flesh," that is, of an external kind ; it has been exchanged for a pro- foundly spiritual recognition of His glory. He has become the disciple of a Divine mysticism. He has a life quite distinct from the life of the senses or the life of the intellect. He can say of himself, " I live ; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me." St. Paul claims to have passed into a new region of spiritual life. He claims to have dispensed with a view of Christ's work which, true no doubt in itself, still fell far short of that to which he had now attained. Looking back upon his past career, and comparing his former with his present knowledge of his Saviour, he could liken the change to nothing less than a new creation : " If any man is in Christ, he is a/ new creature : the old things are passed away ; behold, they are become new."
2. The words of the Authorized Version do not represent accurately the original passage. The words, as written by St. Paul, are not " Old things are passed away ; behold, all things are become new," but " Old things are passed away ; behold, they are become new." St. Paul does not speak of an obliteration of the past, but of a renewal of the past. The old things themselves have become new. The old was gone, not because it had been blotted out, but because it had reappeared under a purer, nobler, more excellent form. God's law, as seen in the building up of the Christian life and Christian society, was the same law as might be discerned in all the work of His hands. Transformation, not destruction, is the rule of His operation.
You may trace that law, as some have thought, in that creation of which the first chapter of Genesis contains the record. The first creation fell into wasteness and crumbled into ruin ; but out of its ruins was built up that world of order and beauty which we inhabit. Old things passed away ; behold, they became new. You may trace that law, scientific observers will tell you, throughout the material universe. No matter perishes ; no force is lost The particles which constituted one body may be
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fashioned anew to constitute another. The force which we know as heat may be known under another name as motion or elec- tricity; but the matter never perishes, the force never decays. The old has passed away ; behold, it is become new. You may trace that law in the vegetable world, when the corn of wheat falls into the ground and dies only to emerge again, first in the green blade and then in the golden ear, the same and yet how different. The old has passed away; behold, it is become new. You may trace the law in that most wonderful of transformations, when the crawling, unsightly worm, whose house and world have been a leaf, bursts from its chrysalis-tomb, clothed with beauty and splendour, to spread its dazzling wings in the summer's sun, and to feed where it will on the choicest sweets of the summer's flowers. This eternal law shall be seen, we are assured, hereafter, when our human bodies, having turned to corruption, shall be raised anew, the same not in identity of substance but in identity of form, when that which was sown a natural body shall be raised a spiritual body, and that which was sown in corruption shall be raised in incorruption. And the change of the individual shall be repeated throughout God's visible creation, and there shall be new heavens and a new earth, new not by destruction but by transformation, and fitted for their new and transformed inhabitants.