apprehensions, Paul speaks in 2 Cor. i. 15 of the double visit that had been for a while intended (a third and fourth from the beginning) as “a second joy” (or ‘grace’’), he is probably quoting words of the Church letter. Further, one detects in 1 Cor. iv 1-10 a sharp note of personal feeling that indicates some recent contact between writer and readers, and ocular observation on the Apostle’s part of the altered bearing of his spoilt children at Corinth. This Epistle manifests a mastery of the situation and a vivid realisation of its detailed circumstances such as we can best account for on the supposition that Paul had taken a personal survey of the develop- ment of the Church since his first departure, and that behind all he has heard latterly from others and seen through their eyes, he is also judging upon the strength of what he has himself witnessed and knows at first hand. 8 '
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CHAPTER III, THE TEACHING OF THE EPISTLE.
Wuite the doctrine of the companion Epistles to the Galatians and Romans lies upon the surface, the theology of this Epistle has to be disentangled from a coil of knotty practical questions. The Apostle writes under constraint, unable to count on the full sympathy of his readers or to say all that is in his mind (ii. 6, iii. 1). Instead of giving free play to his own reflexions, he is compelled through the greater part of the letter to wait upon the caprices of this flighty young Greek Church. At first sight one fails to observe any continuous teaching in the Epistle; a doctrinal analysis of its con- tents seems out of place. But closer attention discovers a real coher- ence behind this disconnectedness of form. While Paul comments on the sad news from Corinth and answers seriatim the questions addressed to him, his genius grasps the situation, and the leaven of the Gospel all the while assimilates the discordant mass. The Pauline standpoint is firmly maintained. The Christian prin- ciple shows itself master of the Gentile no less than the Jewish field, and gives earnest of its power to meet the changeful and multiplyin demands that will be created by its expansion through the αι There is a unity of thought in this letter as real as that stamped upon the Epistle to the Romans, a unity the more impressive be- cause of the baffling conditions under which it is realised. Paul’s Gospel stands here on its defence against the pretensions of worldly wisdom and the corruptions of the fleshly mind; from the height of the Cross it sends its piercing rays into the abyss of pagan sin disclosed at Corinth in its turpitude and demonic force. Amongst the four Evangelical Epistles, this is the epistle of the cross in its social application. It bears throughout a realistic stamp. ‘The Church of God that exists in Corinth,’’ the men and women that compose it, are constantly present to the writer’s mind—their diverse states and relationships, their debasing antecedents and surroundings, their crude ideas and conflicting tempers and keen ambitions, their high religious enthusiasm and their low moral sensibilities, their