of the spiritual superiority of the saint.~ in Christ, he claims that the judgment of believers may now be most advantageously exercised. It is a training in tl,e school of Christ, and the discipline, while varied, is adapted to the highe,;t ~ood. Does St. Paul mean to put earthly tribunals under the ban? By no means. Again and agaitt he sought their protection against Jews and Gentiles, and, if Homan law had not befriended him, his apostleship-as men reason would have had a speedy tnrnination. Who was more explicit and earnest than he in urging the doctrine that human government was a Divine ordinance, and as such to be obeyed and honoured? And who among statesmen and philosophers ever saw as deeply into the nature and func- tions of sovereignty as au essential element of the idea of man in the scheme of the universe? In law, in its administration of justice, in its protection of persons and property, in its power to verify and conserve the multitudinous interests of society, he recognized the right arm of Providence. The sense of providence must be social no less than individual, must transcend geographical bounds, and embrace the human family as a family of "one blood," or it failed of its office. So, then, he bas no issue with la\\· and its adjudications as such. But the uses of the law by Christians; the common and facile resort to it in order to gratify covetousness, pride, ambition, revenge, and any and every form of seifishness ;-that is the grave matter before his mind. "There is utterly a fault among you," a weakness, a repudiation of noble sentiment, a departure from the idea of the true self in Christ, "because ye go to law one with another" before unbe- lievers; brother arrayed against brother; and this exposure of a mutilated unity, with its accompanying ~vils, made in the presence of men whose criticisms would be only too eager to detect and magnify your imperfections. This is one aspect of the matter. But you gain your rights. Ay, and rights may be purchased too dearly. Go to law and get your rights; and then, as yon retire from the seat of judgmcnt, think of what yon leave Lehind you-what losses of sentiment, trust in others, hope of humanity, brother- liness of heart, perchance even integrity and honour. Right and rights, how often they part company, and the one is the burlesque, the shame, the bitter contempt of the at.her! "Rather take wrong;" it is altogether a manlier thiug, if done for Christ's 8ake. Lonl Erskine, when at the bar, once said to Dr. Parr," Accommorlate the difference amicably . . . . I can scarcely figure to myself a situation in which a lawsuit is not, if possible, to be avoided." This is another aspect of the matter. Alas! there is an aspect yet sadder. Law is used as a means to inflict a wroug. "Ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brcthre!l." What gigantic wrongs have been perpetrated under the name of law, we all know; but who can tell bow far this spirit, which uses justice to accomplish injustice, has gone forth into all the relationships of men, and vitiated life among the. sacred retreats of home and the Church? The depravity of man's lower nature is fearful, not because it is cruel and brutal, but because it is continually re-enforced and invigorated by the depravity of his higher nature. What is true of the iudividual in this respect is true also of society. History and our own observation warrant the statement that the :rrossest perverters of law and justice have been found among those who were wealthy, or in high office, or otherwise influential. Their ·example, in very many instances, has worked downward, just as certain poisonous gases, too heavy to ascend, have infected the air on a level with us. Then follows a question cont,iining its own answer: "Know ye not that the unjust shall not inherit the kingdom of God?" His impassioned formula," Be not deceived," introduces a catalogue of i=ornlities that slrnt out men frorn God's kingdom, in which we have a startling revelation, common wilh St. Pan!, of bO(lily sins. "Such were some of you." But how different now !-washed, sanctified, justified, in the Name of Christ, and by the Spirit. W ouhl they fall back into their heatheniRh practices? Within the compass of a few vcn;es, St. Paul gives us principles t.hat permeate civil society no less than religious. 1f carried ont, \\'e should have much less law and much more equity, and both law and equity would be immense gainers by the change. '!'he tendency of the argument is the thing to notice. 'l'hat tendency is to give _men a true spiritual conception of themselves, ai1d to develop their thought of self in nccordanco with God's thon~ht of them. The sense of pt:blic justice may compel us to resort to law, but this will not confiict with St. Paul's idea. On the other hand, any abuse of an institution, whether ~ovcrnmcntal or domestic, whether ecclesiastical ot· earthly, i.s an abuse of manhood, and on this truth he expc_nds the force of his reasoning. In these verses, as in the previous chapters, argu1 u:;, :.!00 THE I<'IRS1' EPISTLE 1'0 THE COHl~THlANS. [ou. v1. 1-20.
denouncing, exborting, pleading,-it is the voice of a grand doctrine and a lofty trust and a sublime hope that we hear. And we hear it in the midst of strife and turbu- lence, out of the depths of a lienrt most sorrowful and yet" always rejoicing," and able to command itself and its faculties and resources whenever and wherever needed.-L.