1 Cor. ii. 3. I was with you in iveakiiess, and in fear, and in much trembling.
THERE was one subject on which St. Paul de- hghted chiefly to expatiate, which was, " Christ crucified ;" a subject which to the Jews was a stum- bhng-block, and to the Greeks foohshness. The mode on which he insisted upon it, contributed to render it yet more distasteful to the philosophic reasoners of Greece and Rome : he laid aside all needless parade of wisdom, and all adventitious ornaments of rhetoric, and plainly declared the fact, that Christ was cru- cified for the sins of men. This he did, not because he was not able to express himself agreeably to the taste of men of learning, but because he was anxious " that the faith" of all who received the Gospel " should stand, not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God," accompanying a simple statement of the truth. It is probable, too, that somewhat in his speech and external form contributed to render him base and contemptible in the eyes of many^ In addition to all this, the hostility of his enemies was most bitter, so that they sought by all possible means to destroy him. These diversified trials he sustained for the most part with great fortitude : but it seems that at Corinth his courage was in some degree shaken ; for our blessed Lord, in order to comfort and encourage him, appeared to him in a vision, and bade him not be afraid, for that he would suffer none in that place to hurt him^ To this state of mind he most probably alludes in the words before us, de- claring, that, partly by his " fightings without and fears within," he had been '* among them in weak- ness, and fear, and much trembling." But we must not confine the words to this sense : there can be no doubt but that he had many other sources of inward
a 2 Cor. X. 1, 10. C.al. iv. l;3. '•' Acts xviii. 9, 10.