The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Corinthians — Section 328

into the principleK underlying psychology and physiology in their relations t0 spiritu,,, life. His own personal experience turned his thoughts to this study. Providence made him this sort of a student, and the Holy Ghost enlarged and sanctified his. investigations. Such thinkers generally come as precursors to scientists and. philosophers; but St. Paul was much more than a precursor, for we find in him, not merely a knowledge of facts, but of truths, and a facility in applying them altogether remarkable. What a volume on this subject lay open in his own consciousness! A temperament of singular impressionableness·; a natural activity that sprang quite as much from the interaction of his mental faculties and their quick sympathy with one another as from the accesses of the outer world; feeble health, and yet that kind of weakness in certain functions which is sometimes connected with other organs of great strength, and is consistent with astonishing power of endurance; the "thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet" him; add to all this the manner of life he led, and the physical sufferings that enemies inflicted on him ;-and how could he help being reminded what a factor the body was in his manhood and apostleship?- 'l'hink of the effect on the associating and suggr.stive faculty, on the imagination~ on his use of language both for thought and expression, that this mass of disturbed sensibility must have produced, and for which there was no earthly anodyne. Observe, moreover, how the wisdom of God manifests itself in the temperament of this man and its specific discipline. Probably temperament is the secret of individu- ality, but whether so or not, it must be reckoned as of no little significance as to the· influence of the books we read, the teachers that instruct, and the other counties;, agencies which make up the total of educative forces. Now, in this particular, mark the contrast between St. Peter and St. Paul. The fisherman of Galilee, healthy,. robust., abounding in the instinctive joyousness of natural sensations, trustful to an extreme of his emotions, pliant towards himself, singularly impulsive; what a problem was in that temperament and its physiological laws, when the Lord Jesus began t<> educate his nerves, arteries, brains, for discipleship, and through the disciple to develop the apostle of the "Rock" and the" Keys"! Yet it was done, and clone thoroughly, so that the changed body of St. Pete.r is quite as noteworthy as the changed mind, tlio same body but functionally subdued to a well-governed organism. During the forty days between the Lord's resurrection and ascension, the man and the apostle emergc,i from the chrysalis. At Pentecost, what a commanding figure be presents! No haste, no spasmodic action, now, but equipoise and cool wisdom and the courage of repose. In temperament, no less than in official position, St. Peter is the antecedent of St. Paul. And their difference herein, according to providential ordination, was carried out in their training and culture, so that diversity, jealous of its rights in al! things, is only self-insistent for the sako of prospective unity. Now, St. Paul wishes to put this subject of danger on the bodily side of human life in the strongest possible light for his own benefit and that of the Corinthians. What then? A nation rises befuro him. By the arm of Jehovah, Egypt has been smitten, the Red Sea has opened a pathway to their triumphant march, and waves and winds have chanted the anthem of a victory in which they had no share. And this nation "passed through the sea," and "were all baptized unto Moses," as their medintorial leader, "in the cloud aud in the sea." Nay, more; the typical idea is still further wrought out, and baptism and the Lord's Supper arc conjoined. "All did eat the same spiritual meat; all did drink the same spiritual drink;" the meat and drink were from above; the Holy Ghost was present as the source of the miracies and the Divine Agent of blessing~ the "spiritual" is insisted on, for "that Rock was Christ." 'l'hero was a revelation to the senses and there was a revelation to the spirit. 'l'o deny the supersensuons element is to destroy the force of the analogy, since it is not a resemblance to the imagination alone, but a real likeness to the reason, Christianity and its sacraments being prominent in St. Paul's view. It was not, then, a mere miracle to the body ancl for the body. It was likewise a supernatural demonstration, a gracious inlltlencc from the Holy Ghost, a prelusive blessedness brought within reach of experience in that. dispensation of types and shadows. It was not our spirituality; nevertheless, it was Rpiritual, since "that Rock was Christ." Our Lord said in his Capernaum discourse, just after his great miracle that fed thousands, "Your fathers did eat manna in tho wilderness, and are dead. '!'his is the bread which cometh dowu from heaven, that  TllE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE COillNTH[ANS. [err. x. 1-3:J.