The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Corinthians — Section 431

their worth, if the fuller splendours, of which these are faint escapes of light, were not ab,olute certainties of the future. Only when the "perfect is come" shall that which is "in part" be "done away." Institutions founded in providence and upheld by the Spirit are left to no chance or accident as to cont.inuance, decay, extinction. God comes into them, abides, departs, according to the counsel of his will. If he numbers our days as li,·ing men, and keeps our times in his hand ; if only his voice says, "Return, ye children of men; "-this is equally true of institutions. For the dead dust, man makes a gra,·e; but the life of individuals, institutions, government, society, even the Church, is in God's keeping, and be alone says, "Return." How shall St. Paul set forth the relation of the partial to the perfect? A truth lacks something if it cannot be illustrated, and a teacher is very defectiYe in ability when he cannot find a resem- blance or an analogy to make his meaning more perspicuous and vivid. Truth and teacher have met in this magnificent chapter on ground reserved, we may venture to say, for their special occupancy and companionship. The great teacher sees the sublimest of truths in a glowing light, and most unlike Paul would he be if no illustration came to band spontaneously. Is there something in the more hallowed moments of the soul that suddenly reinstates the sense of childhood? "When I was a child" in the heathen city of Tarsus, the capital of a Roman province; the mountains of 'faurus and the luxuriant plain and the flowing Cydnus near by ; the crowded streets an<l gay popu- lation aud excited groups of talkers pressing on eye and ear; the festivals of paganism; the strauge contrasts of these with the life in his Jewish home; his training under the parental roof; the daily reminders of the Law and the traditions of the Pharisees;- what thoughts were they? Ouly those of a child, understood and spoken as a child. No ordinary child could he have been. Providence was shaping him then for an apostle, so that while the holy child Jesus was growing "in wisdom and stature" amid the hills of Nazareth and in the nursery of the virgin mother's heart, there was far away in Cilicia a boy not much younger, who was in rearing there, under very unlike circum- stances, to be his chosen apostle to the Gentile world. Yet the boy Saul was but a child, and thought and spake "as a child." Dut is childhood disallowed and set off in sl,arp coutrast with manhood? Nay; childhood is of Gcd no less than manhood as to quality of being. ,vhat is contrasted is the childishness in the one case and the per- fected manhood in the other. So that we suppose the apostle to mean that whatsoever is initial, immature, provisioual, in the child, has been put away to make room for something better. Tbe better implies the good, a childish good, indeed, and yet a good from the hand of God however mixed with earthly imperfections. Another movement occurs in the leading thought. Can one think of knowledge without an involuntary recurrence of the symbol of light? The symbol has quite supplanted the thing signi- fied, and the enligldened man is more honoured than the knowing man. St. Paul pro- ceeds to say, "Now we see through a glass, darkly;" the revealed Word of God is conveyed to us "in symbols and words which but imperfectly express them" (Hodge, Delitzsch); and yet, while there is a" glass" or mirror, and the knowledge or vision of Divine thin"s is "darkly" !!iven, there is a real knowledge, a true and blessed know- led"e for "~e see." Enotwh is made intelligible for all the purposes of the spiritual mi;d: for all spiritual uses,in all spiritual relatio1;1ships of co~p!eheusion, conscie~ce, volition, affection, brotherhood; enough for probat10n, respons1b1hty, culture, and life- time growth. What in us is denied? Only curiosity, excessive appetencies of the faculties habits of perception and ju<lgiug superinduced in the intellect by the sensa- tional p~1tion of our nature,-tbese are denied their morbid gratification. A pletlio_ra of evidence is denied that faith may have its sphere. Over-strength and over-constramt of motive are denied that the will may be left free. Violent impulses of feeling are denied that the heart may be intense without wild and erratic enthusiasm, treasurin~ it,; life of peaceful blesseduess in unfathomable depths like the ocean, that keeps its n;.ass of waters in the vast hollows of the globe and uses the bills and mountains only to shape its shores. On the other hand, what is granted to the mind in the revelation of Divine truth? Such views of God in Christ as the soul can realize in its present condition and thereby form the one master-habit of a probationary being, viz. How to see God in Christ. At present, we can only begin to see as by reflection in a mirror; and, as in the education of the ~enses to the finer work of earthly life the cultivation of the eyw is tne slowest and most exacting, the longest, the most difficult, and that too because <JH. xm. 1-13.] THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 439