The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Corinthians — Section 200

"Abba, Father," which is not heard in the rrsponses of the Church, nor in hymns of tmcial worship, but is an utterance that rises to God in those hours when loneliness is 11, supreme joy. I have the power; I will not use it; I will deny myself its exercise, and I will do it because "all things are not expedient." \Vhat other eye save his own could penetrate those mysteries, from which he draws reasons and motives for particular acts of self-denial? Mysteries, we say ; for many an advanced believer yields in this phase or experience to half-awakened instincts and undefined impulses. How can ministers of the gospel, how can Churches in their official capacity, get at the lmowledge of what is wisest and best in those matters that belong to the very highest -attributes of personality as the ground of individuality? "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." "Fully persuaded " he can never be unless he use ihis liberty untrammelled. If you dogmatize and legislate, the full persuasion cannot be the outcome of "his own mind." If God can trust him, why not you? The safeguard has been provided-it is expediency. And this sense of expediency or of fitness and propriety is a conservative and prudential force, which operates to check all excesses, and binds about the man the golden cestus of moderation. Expediency is never self-willed and arbitrary. It presides over tastes and the minor moralities no 'iess than over the more prominent virtues; nor does it trifle with trifles nor disdain the helps of look and tone and manner, but is cardinal to whatsoever reflects the man upon his associates. Keenly alive to discriminations, it educates us to know the best from the merely good, and, by its fine tact and subtle sagacity, goes on swift wing to the noblest objects. It considers, as though it were a part ot itself, the welfare of others, and thus becomes a guarantee that a man's liberty shall not invade the rights of his fellow-man. And remembering that "all things" are his only so far as he is •Christ's, he realizes that it is "no more I that live, but Christ liveth in me." Then :St. Paul proceeds to dwell on the sanctity of the human body-a favourite topic, on whicl1 he expends much thought. In the third chapter he had discussed it, and in subsequent passages, every one of them singularly clear and vivid, he recurs to this great topic. Here the leading idea is that our bodies "are the members" of Christ's body. "The body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." And hence St. Paul, in his concrete method of thinking, refuses to separate, even in thought, body and soul, as they are -connected with redemption. Matter and mind are perfectly unlike; they are known to us only by their infinite contrariety; and yet matter and mind meet and unite as \iody and soul, and the union is humnn nature. These two substances grow each in its own way, the natural union at birth becoming closer and yet closer as years progress, and the body subordinating itself more and more to the mind's service. Jn the mature mnu-the mechanic, the accountant, the artist, the poet, the philosopher- a vast advance has occurred in the nearness and adaptability of ihe corporcity to the wants, demands, and aspirations of the spirit. If the providential idea in education and culture be fulfilled, the co-operative activity constantly increases, each forward -step a step for both, and the law of development taking effect in mutuality of ndvantage. Still more fully is this fact brought out in Christian experience. St. Paul's figures on this subject stand for facts. Bodily appetites cease to be mere anima: instincts. '!'hey are elevated and purified. If Christ was raised from the dead, so too our bodies shall be raised, for the companionship of mind and matter as soul and bo<ly is not a transient but nn eternal fact. One may speak of being "here in the body pent" and of the "body of humiliation" (vile bndy), but the idea of body as an investiture of spirit and an auxiliary to its functions is a part of the original scheme of humanity, and will ha1•e its complete development in the future life. Little do we realize that the resurrection-man is now in a process of training as to his corporeal form. This training is double-mental and material-and hence, while it is true that certain physical functions will expire and be known no more, yet the effects of their experience will survive in the soul itself. "A spiritual body" is assnred us by Christianity and confirmed to us by Christ's resurrection; and, agreeably to this doctrine, the present growth of body into the mind's service, the tuition of the senses, the reduction of the nerves to the will, the command which is ncquired over the lower organs, all indicate that the resurrection-man of body and spirit is now in process of formation. If this i3 true; if the resurrection is not only a prospective_ glor_y but a realization now going on by means of the present ennoblement and sanct1ficat1ou of  TUE FmST EPISTLE TO '1'1-IE CORINTHIANS. [en. v1. 1-~C>.