fragrant in aroma, however hungry you may be, out of regard to that weak brother's conscience deny yourself. The most sacred thing under these heavens is the conscience. The weakest conscience should be respected; to wound the conscience is to wound the man. What are meats and drinks in comparison with a human conscience? IV. SUPREME REGARD FOR THE GLORY OF Goo SHOULD RULE us IN ALL. " Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." " These words embrace all life. The definite acts of eating and drinking are mentioned expressly, as they are the subject immediately under consideration. '!'hey are, how- ever, to be regulated by the same principle which guides all true life. '!'he modern idea of some acts being religious and some secular is neither here nor elsewhere recog- nized by St. Paul. No act of life is in itself either religious or secular.. 'l'he quality of each act depends on the spirit which guides it and the motives from which it sprin"S, The commonest thing may be done in a highly Christian spirit; the greatest deed m~y spring from a low and selfish motive. A religious act done in a secular spirit is- secular; a secular thing done in a religious spirit is religious. This is the first great principle of Christian life." V. THE GOOD OF OTHERS, AND NOT THE GRATIFICATION OF SELF, SHOULD BE OUR co:?sSTANT AIM. "Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth." "Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the Church of God: even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved."
HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vers. 1-13.-Subject continued; arguments from the Old Testament; warning against false security. Reference bad been made in the preceding chapter to the law of Moses respecting oxen, and to the priests of the temple, for whose support there was a special provision, But St. Paul bad introduced a striking illustration from Grecian life to show the importance of earnest and exact discipline in matters per- taining to the soul's sa"ivation. The body, with its infirmities and sins, was a very serious danger, and, unless kept under by the power of grace, would acquire mastery over the spirit. Even be, though an apostle, might become "a castaway." The terrible liability was before him as a personal thing, the idea lingered and demanded a fuller emphasis, and bow could be contemplate himself without considering the hazardous exposure of bis brethren? Every fibre of his private heart was a public tie that bound him to others, and hence be could not see his own peril and be blind to the peril of the Church. Under the pressure of this anxiety, his mind reverts to the history of the Jewish Church. Historical examples are very powerful, and where could be find them except in the Old Testament'? Grecian games pass out of view, and the stately procession of wonders, beginning in the deliverance of the elect race from Egyptian bondage and progressing through the events of the desert, mov?s before his eye. "Our fathers " indicates how true he was to ancestral blood, and this warm- hearted sense of country, in which patriotism and piety interblended, exemplifies. the origin and tenacity of the feeling that prompted him in the previous chapter to put in the foreground this fact, "Unto the Jews I became as a Jew." Let us. remember that bis peculiar state of mind at the moment took its colouring from one single thing, viz. the hazards of moral probation because of the body. How pre- <loniinant this idea was appears in the instances enumerated to show the unfaithfulness of God's pe"ple to their covenanted engagements. Such words as "lust," "lusted," "eat and drink," "rose up to play," "commit fornication," am significant of bis- intense feding, and they are as reverberations from what was to him an awful term- " castawa!J," "rejected," "fail shamefully of the prize." According to his conception, br~in and nerves, all the facts of the physical organism, had to be taken into account in looking at the practical side of Christianity. And it was a practical question, because it rested on a broad gen/!ralization of man's pince, order, and destiny in the· universe. No empiric was be, but a thinker of most penetrating insight, far in advance of his times, in advance too of our century; and while· he was not a psychologist nor a physiologist in our 8ense of the terms, yet no man has ever seen so clearly, so deeply, e11. x. 1-33.] THE FJRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 331