The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Corinthians — Section 397

which he wished to emphasize. Most impressively is this done by presenting Father, Son, and Spirit as the one God of these diverse gifts, the Trinity itself bein" the very ground and source of the diversification. The broad scope of the diversitie; in the Church is indicated in the statement that the "manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal." The character of the Divine communication to "every man" is defined by the word "manifestation," which expresses the agency of the Spirit in these human instruments. First of all, the Spirit is mani- fested to the man and then through the man. As a condition precedent to his office, the man has an experience, and it consists in his own conscious knowledge that God has come to his soul and imbued it with the Spirit. Herein, herein only, lies his capacity for usefulness ; herein his safeguard against failure. And the measure of the one manifestation is the measure of the other; for in the degree that a man feels his own soul alive to God will he impart vitality to his ministrations. Preacher, Sunday school teacher, Bible reader, tract distributer, Paul on Mars' Hill or in the prison at Rome, Bunyan writing in gaol, Hannah More at Barleywood, John Pounds with his ragged school; no matter what the manifestation, as to where made and how modified by individuality, it is divinely human to its subject before it is made divinely human in him as an instrument. Finally, the broad scope (every man) and the quality of the influence (manifestation) are carried forward to the objecL and end, viz. to profit withal. }'or the common advantage these gifts were bestowed; the greater the bestowmeut, the nearer its human connections; and the more of a recipient the man, the more of a man must he be in the outgoings of his intelligence, love, and zeal in behalf of others. "Who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?" Such was the argument (eh. iv.) tc check partisanship in the Corinthian Church; but in this passage, "to profit withal" is exhibited in its positive aspect as the inspiration of motive and purpose and end of all Christian working. Is it not, then, remarkable that Christianity approaches man at a point where he is most sensitive to self, and where he is quickest antl boldest to assert his unyielclingness to the claims of others, and at this very point tu demand of him "the common profit"? Make any analysis of human nature you please, pride of intellect is the most lordly of all its imperious qualities. Particularly in the case of fine gifts, men who are the possessors of them are instinctively dis- 110sed to assert a. despotic sway over others, or, if not that, to indulge a feeling of self-gratulation and its counterpart of self-isolation because of their superiority. Yet it is just here Christh\nity requires humility and enforces the claims of a most vigorous sympathy. How this "common profit" is to be subserved, St. Paul proceeds to show in vers. 8---11. '!'here is no large accumulation in one man, no fostering of the spirit of self-aggrandizement no such exaltation of one ns to prove a humiliation to another. Talents are divided out, and each talent bears the seal of God, antl comes authenticated, not to the intellect, but to the spiritual sense of a redeemed man- hood. Go through this catalogue as drawn out by the apostle; dwell on the signifi- cance of each specification; avail yourself of the helps afforded by our most critical scholars in the explication of "wisdom" as intuition, of "knowledge" as acquired information, of "faith" as transcending its ordinary limits as tho grace of salvation, of the "gifts of healing" as adapted to various diseases, of the "working of miracles" as time and occasion called for, all these charisms proceeding from the same Spirit; continue the enumeration that includes "prophecy" or the illumination of the mind by the Spirit and the exalted activity of its faculties, arter that the eye of watchful judgment, "discerning of spirits," so as to discriminate between genuine inspiration and its alloys and counterfeits, then the " divers lcinds of tongues," and the power to interpret or translate the unknown language ; and all these the works of "one and the selfsame Spirit" that distributes the charism to each one in harmony with the law of individuality, and, at the same timo, exercises tho Divine sovereignty so that the distribution is me.do "severnll;y as he will" (Alford, Hodge, Lange); and when you have thus expanded your views to the dimensions of this spiritual provision for the Church and the exquisite symmetry of its organism, tell us if any interest possible to man's present attitude, if any craving of true lifo m its mortal and immortal relationships, if any outrcachings toward the infinite when body, soul, and spirit have interblendcd their instincts, and bccomtl ouo iu the heir- ·4'04 THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. [cu. xu. l-3l.