It has been truthfully said that no portion of the New Test- ament discusses so directly the moral problems of that age or of our own. Many of the same questions emerge in the social and church-life of modern times. Such are the rally of cliques round popular preachers; the antithesis of asceticism and christian liberty ; of christian zeal and christian wisdom; the true relation of the sexes and the proper position and function of woman in the Church ; the assertion of individual inspiration against the canons of christian decency; the antagonism be- tween individualism and the subordination of the members to the body; the resurrection in the light of modern science; aestheticism and morals.
No epistle of the New Testament, therefore, should be more carefully studied by the modern pastor.
Paul’s stay at Ephesus was cut short by the riot. He de- parted to Troas, and thence to Macedonia (Acts xx.), where he met Titus, for whose arrival he had anxiously waited in order to learn the effect of his letter (2 Cor. i. 8; ii. 18; vii. 5). Titus’ report was both gratifying and disheartening. He had been cordially received, and the epistle had caused penitence and amendment; but the influence of the anti-Pauline parties had increased, and they were openly assailing Paul’s character and insisting on their own superior apostolic claims. Accord- ingly Titus was again sent to Corinth with a second epistle, written from some point in Macedonia. The statement of the subscription that it was written from Philippi, lacks evidence, besides being in itself improbable. The date is the autumn of ADEST.
The epistle is among the least systematic of Paul’s writings, for the reason that it was written in a conflict of feeling, in which joy, grief, and indignation struggled for the mastery. Its main motives are three in number. 1. Thankfulness for the effect of his first letter. 2. Indignation at the work and increasing influence of the false teachers. 3. Anxiety for the completion of the collection, and that the Corinthians should
XViil INTRODUCTION.
imitate the good example of the Macedonian churches. “ The three objects of the epistle are, in point of arrangement, kept distinct ; but so vehement were the feelings under which he wrote, that the thankful expression of the first part is darkened by the indignation of the third; and the directions about the business of the contribution are colored by the reflections both of his joy and of his grief ” (Stanley).
The style accords with this turbulence of feeling. It is sur- charged with passionate emotion. No one of Paul’s epistles is so intensely personal. Here only he reveals two of those great spiritual experiences which belong to a Christian’s inmost heart-life—personal crises which are secrets between a man and his God. One of these—the thorn in the flesh—is a crisis of agony; the other—the rapture into the third heaven—a crisis of ecstasy. Bengel’s remark is familiar, that the epistle is an itinerary. ‘The very stages of his journey are impressed upon it; the troubles at Ephesus, the repose at Troas, the anxieties and consolations of Macedonia, the prospect of removing to Corinth ” (Stanley). His self-vindication is not only a remark- able piece of personal history, but a revelation of his high sense of honor and his keen sensitiveness. His ‘“‘ boasting,” into which he is driven by persistent slander, throws into relief his aversion to self-praise. He formally announces his intention to boast, as though he can bring himself to the task only by committing himself toit. Thrice he repeats the announcement, and each time seems to catch, with a sense of relief, at an oppor- tunity for digressing to a different subject. Ecstatic thanks- giving and cutting irony, self-assertion and _self-abnegation, commendation, warning and authority, paradox, apology, all meet and cross and seethe ; yet out of the swirling eddies rise, like rocks, grand Christian principles and inspiring hopes. Such are the double power of the Gospel for life or death ; the freedom and energy of the dispensation of the Spirit ; suffering the path to glory ; the divine purpose in the decay of the fleshly tabernacle; the new and heavenly investment of the mortal life ; the universal judgment; the nature of repentance as dis- tinguished from sorrow, and the principles of christian liberal- ity. Full and swift as is the torrent, there is ever a hand on