Next comes his famous argument and disquisition regarding death, the grave, the resurrection, and the final consummation of all things (xv.). At last he gives his orders regarding the collection for Jerusalem, and ends with various intimations and greetings.

The entire Epistle shows that it was designed for the Corinthian church, without excepting any party in it, or including any other persons. This appears also from the greetings at the end. A different opinion has been drawn from the introductory address, Unto the church of God, which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours' (2); as if the Letter were sent to all that in every place,' besides the Corinthian Christians. If this view were correct, the Epistle would assume the character of a general Epistle. Against this view, militates the whole substance of the Letter, which, in an especial is of a limited and particular application, being directed and adapted to meet certain peculiarities then existing in the church at Corinth. Nor does the view which involves this error necessarily come out of the language employed. The words with all,' &c. are not subjoined to the words 'unto the church,' but to the words called to be saints.' The apostle recognises the common election of the Corinthians with Christians generally. They, he intimates, had received a holy calling in common with all who in voked the name of the one and sole Lord, Jesus Christ.

manner,

To whatever extent the church at Corinth may have consisted of heathen converts, it is clear that it must have contained many Jews and Jewish proselytes. This appears

from several parts of the letter, in which the argument and the proof imply, on the part of its readers, an intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures of the Old Testament: see i. 19; ii. 9, 16; iii. 19, 20; v. 7; ix. 7, 9; &c.

The place where, and the time when, this Epistle was composed, are more easily determined than in some other cases. In chap. xvi. 8, we read, I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost;' and at the 19th verse, 'The churches of Asia salute you.' Whence it is clear that Paul was, when he wrote it, at Ephesus, in Asia Minor; whither he had gone from Corinth, and where he remained nearly three years. Towards the end of this period, he sent into Macedonia two of them that ministered unto him, Timotheus and Erastus, while he himself yet stayed in Asia for a time (Acts xix. 8, 10, 22). Now we find that Timothy received this commission before the Letter was written, under such circumstances, however, as would not allow him to reach Corinth till it had been delivered (1 Cor. iv. 17; xvi. 10). Between his de

parture and arrival at Corinth, the Letter, therefore, was composed. This must have been near the termination of Paul's stay at Ephesus; as, indeed, appears also from the fact, that, when he sent these messengers, he was contemplating his own departure from that city, 'purposing, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem' (Acts xix. 21; comp. 1 Cor. xvi. 3, seq.). It must, however, have been written some, but apparently only a short, time before Pentecost (1 Cor. xvi. 3—8). But Paul left Ephesus in the year A.D. 59 or 60. So that we may fix the spring of one of these years as the time when the Letter was composed.

A note at the end states the Letter to have been written from Philippi; an error which may have arisen from Paul's words, in xvi. 5.

The authenticity of the Epistle is unquestionable. Numerous and weighty are the evidences which show that its author was Paul. If we know any thing of the history of Paul, of his manner of thinking and speaking, of his position, adversaries, and influence, this Letter is his; for it is full of materials congruent with the entire cast of his mind, as well as with his outward condition. The subject is far too ample to be entered upon here. The reader is referred to a few general remarks which will be made before this article comes to a close.

The first Letter to the Corinthians, from its value, attracted attention at a very early period. Hence, we find the apostolical father, Clemens Romanus, probably the same with Clement, one of Paul's fellow-labourers (Phil. iv. 3), in his authentic Letter to this same church at Corinth, saying to them, — 'Take the Letter of the blessed Paul the apostle; what, first, did he write to you in the beginning of his gospel? In truth, under the spirit, he gave directions to you respecting himself, Cephas, and Apollos, because you were then also under the influence of party feelings.' After this testimony, there can be no need to occupy our space with citations from later writers. The passage just given is remarkable, not only as a very early testimony to the authenticity of our Epistle, but also as showing that the apos tle's writings were, from the first, recognised and appealed to as of authority, in the church of Christ generally.

The reader must have been struck with the marked agreement there is in parts of the Epistle, with the character and condition of the citizens of Corinth. We refer specially to their dissolute morals, and to their pretensions to superior knowledge and refinement. Now, these two topics occupy a very large portion of Paul's letter. We see in these facts a correspondence which assures us we have here to do with realities. In regard to the former topic, we find a confirmation of the Corinthian propensity in the

Letter of Clemens Romanus. Now, where was a case of such enormity as that mentioned by Paul (v.), so likely to occur as in Corinth? or where could the exhortations found in vi. 9, seq. be more called for, yet at the same time be more likely to give offence? Nevertheless the needful rebukes were administered; the offensive implications were made; nay, charges of the grossest vice were put forward, and condign punishment was demanded. Who but a man conscious of integrity would, who but the apostle Paul- - Paul with his brave, firm, noble spirit, nerved and braced by his assurance of having a divine commission - could have ventured to take a position which must have been perilous, if not positively destructive, to a pretender? Then Corinth was a most likely place for the existence of that wisdom of the world which assumingly professed to conduct men up into the heights, and down into the depths, of mysterious knowledge? As a seaport, Corinth would be the mart of new ideas. Thither would be conducted the dark and turbid modes of Eastern thought. Thither would Athens send her lofty intellectual culture. Corinth itself would add to these an element of her own, one generally found in maritime and commercial populations, a rough presumptuous feeling, which would sink the better parts of philosophy, and make its worse prominent and offensive. Hence the wisdom of the world, when introduced into the Christian church, would unhesitatingly seek to supplement the gospel, and, having supplied its deficiencies, would give it out that its own adherents were distinguished for the highest spiritual endowments, in comparison with which, the attainments of ordinary Christians were beggarly elements.' That such a state of feeling existed in the Corinthian church is evident from several parts of the Epistle (iii. 21; iv. 8). And thus we find another incidental correspondence between the Letter and facts of whose existence we are informed by independent witnesses.

An interesting inquiry is suggested by the variety of persons, topics, modes of thought and expression, which appear in this Epistle -namely, is it possible to refer the date of it to a much later period than that which is commonly assigned? The position that there is extant no Christian literature, the origin of which can be carried into the first century, is one of those bold statements that may startle and please the partially informed, but will be repudiated without a moment's delay by those who are intimately acquainted with the mental as well as the civil history of the first and second centuries. The Epistle before us is all over alive with the spirit of Paul, and the spirit produced by the first planting of Christianity in the world. fear not to say, that it could not have come

We

into existence in the second century. The second century was intellectually a period of decline. This Letter is written in all the vigour of early spiritual manhood. If the adolescence of Christianity could not produce a Paul, how much less its decay and decrepitude! Besides, if the cast of thought represented by Apollos grew in strength and prevalence, that which Cephas espoused declined and passed ere very long into a general exhibition of the gospel, in which Paul and Peter were lost in Christ. And the expectation of the speedy return of Jesus, to take up his government and rule in glory, which we find active and fresh in this Epistle, entering as a practical element into men's thoughts, and influencing their hearts and their lives (i. 7, 8; vii. 29), gradually died away; being corrected by time and Providence, till, ere the first century closed, it gave place to a spiritual exposition of the language on which the personal re-appearance of the Saviour rested.

The

One or two lesser proprieties we must not pass unmentioned. In xvi. 19, Aquila and Priscilla are represented as greeting the Corinthians. Taken by itself, the fact bears no particular significance. Yet, if the reader reflect a moment, he may be led to suppose that Paul had some good reason for mentioning them in this special manner. Book of the Acts supplies the needed light. There we learn that in Corinth it was, that the apostle first became acquainted with this worthy pair, with whom he formed a close intimacy, and who were members of the Corinthian church (xviii. 1, seq.). But how, then, were they at Ephesus whence this Epistle was sent ? This is also explained by the same historical narrative; for, when Paul left Corinth, he was accompanied by these, his friends, first into Syria, and then to Ephesus (xviii. 18, 19). Paul and Aquila are, moreover, spoken of in the Epistle in a way which leads the reader to infer that they were of a zealous and devoted spirit; for it appears they had in Ephesus a church in their own house. This fact, thus inciden. tally mentioned, is in keeping with all we know of this man and his wife, and specially with the successful efforts that they made to bring the eloquent Apollos out of the school of John into that of Christ (Acts xviii. 26, seq.). And if, as was the fact, the adherence to Apollos of an anti-Pauline party in the Corinthian church produced no alienation between him and the great apostle,-this may, in part at least, be referred to the good offices which their common friends, Aquila and Priscilla, employed between the two.

Even in his figures of speech, Paul writes like a master of the art of composition. This is exemplified in the striking and pertinent allusion which he makes in ix. 24, seq. to the Grecian games. On the Isthmus of Corinth, games, hence termed Isthmian

justification of his apostolic dignity, against those by whom it had been rudely called in question. The close ensues.

Paul had left Ephesus when he wrote this Letter (i. 8). He had also passed through Troas, and gone into Macedonia (ii. 12, 13; vii. 5; viii. 1; comp. Acts xx. 1); where he appears to have actually been at the time of its composition (ix. 2, 4), and where he was joined by Titus (vii. 5, 6), whom he had expected to meet at Troas (ii. 13). This Letter, then, would appear to have been written in the same year as the previous one. That was composed before Easter. Some time must have elapsed. We may, therefore, approximate to the truth, in fixing the summer months of the year 59 as the period in which this second Epistle was composed. It could not well have been later. Shortly after Easter, Paul left Ephesus, and proceeded first to Troas, then to Macedonia, and then to Greece, Corinth (Acts xx. 2), agreeably to his promise of paying its believers a third visit (2 Cor. xiii. 1). These events could not have occupied a long time, and in the midst of them it was that the letter was written. Towards the end of the year, we meet with the apostle in the house of Gaius (Rom. xvi. 23), at Corinth (1 Cor. i. 14), where he spent at least three months, awaiting the season of spring, in order to sail into Syria (Acts xx. 2, 3); which voyage the apostle took, reaching Jerusalem early in the year 60 (A.D.), with the collection made for the poor in that city, of which both these Epistles to the Corinthians speak.

Of the authenticity of this Letter, there has never been a doubt. It bears in itself the clearest, most forcible, and numerous evidences of having proceeded from the pen of the apostle Paul. In regard to external testimony, Clemens Romanus seems undeniably to make a reference to 2 Cor. xi. 24, when he says (v.), Through zeal, Paul obtained the reward of patience, when he had seven times worn chains, been beaten, and stoned.' Irenæus (from 120 to 140, A.D.) directly quotes it in these words: As to what they allege that Paul, in his second Letter to the Corinthians, says, In whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them who believe not' (Adv. Hær. iii. 7. 1; comp. 2 Cor. iv. 4). And in the iv. 28. 3,- For the apostle also says, in the second Epistle to the Corinthians, For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ in them that are saved, and in them that perish. To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other, the savour of life unto life' (2 Cor. ii. 15, 16).

These two passages are too peculiar, and the citation by Irenæus is too verbal, to leave any doubt that this Letter was recognised as Paul's in the commencement of the second century. But if it was then acknowledged as of authority, must have been in existence a considerable time before. Authority

is of slow growth, especially when, as in Paul's case, it is vehemently contested. The particular year when an Epistle or a Gospel. was produced, we think a matter of comparatively small concern; but it is of great consequence to trace our Christian literature back to the generation of men who were contemporaneous with Jesus and his apostles, or at least with their immediate successors; and this can be done by marks and evidences which are free from the danger of being successfully assailed.

The

The unity of this Epistle has been questioned. Semler divided it into three letters. Weber held it was originally two. grounds for this proceeding are insufficient. It has been said that there is a want of unity and regular arrangement, and also that dissimilar states of mind are manifest in it. In what may be termed outward and superficial oneness and order, the Epistle may be deficient. It appears to have been composed in haste, and is an outpouring of warm personal feeling on topics of very deep interest. A mind kindled, as was the writer's, does not wait to find an artistically constructed case in which to deposit its thoughts and emotions, but hurries on, thinking of nothing but its aim, and the means of securing it. Hence, as we find in the Letter before us, a rapid, perhaps a somewhat turbid, flow of thought, which is not always confined within the customary banks, but which, here and there growing too full and too strong, overflows them in digressions; after which the current of thought returns to the proper channel. Hence, too, a topic may for a while be dropped, not to be abandoned, but taken up again, when the immediate pressure on the mind has found relief in utterance. But, combined with an almost total disregard to form, there may be a very close observance of unity of substance and of purpose. This unity we find in the second Epistle to the Corinthians, and that in a very marked degree. This unity is seen in the entire subserviency of the Epistle to the great end of the apostle in writing it, namely, to establish his authority in the church at Corinth, and so to lead to a resumption of those pleasing, friendly relations which became the position in which he stood as its founder, and as the representative with them of the Lord Jesus; and which, when properly established, would work effectually for the removal of all moral laxity, and the sanctification in heart and life of his beloved Corinthian brethren. It may also be granted, that the tone of different parts of the Epistle varies. What, then? But we here cite the words of Hag:-'It is, moreover, objected, how different is the tone of the first part, mild, amiable, affectionate; whereas the third part is severe, vehement, and indiscriminately castigatory. But who, on this account, would divide Demosthenes' oration pro

Corond into two parts, because, in the more general defence, placidity and circumspection predominate; while, on the other hand, in abusing and chastising the accuser, in the parallel between himself and Eschines, words of bitter irony gush out impetuously, and fall like rain in a storm? Every kind of discourse allows a flight; but, in such a case, can the speech flow on as mildly and softly as in the calm development of motives? What philologist could require of Paul, that he should nowhere allow to himself a flight in his discourse, under the penalty that such a part of it should be separated from the rest? All that can reasonably be said may be comprised in this, that now and then, in the first chapters, the sentences are intricate; the cause of which, as is reasonable, has been sought in the apostle's agitated state of mind' ('Introduction,' ii. 392).

We add, that if proper attention had, in the study of this Epistle, been paid to the general qualities of the apostle's mind, not only the theory now spoken of would never have been propounded, but critics would have seen, in the very facts on which it is buil', indications which, under the circumstances, are most natural on the part of Paul, and argue, as one author and one mental effort, so also one continuous composition. And from the remarks which have now been made, the reader may gather sound evidence of the Pauline origin of the Letter under consideration. We know not that it would be an exaggeration to say, that of all Paul's Letters this is the most Pauline. It is a mirror of Paul's very soul. It is an outpouring of his very heart. Here speaks in a most characteristic manner, if now and then somewhat darkly, if with more than one digression, if with a momentary forgetfulness of the topic in hand, not on these accounts the less characteristically, that ardent and vigorous mind, whose intellect was so steeped in emotion, that all its thoughts were feelings; whose feelings were as tender as a child's, and as effusive and gushing as a woman's; whose bosom had been agitated and made tremblingly sensitive by manifold and almost unparalleled suffering, yet whose unbending conscience, and strong, ceaseless, unconquerable sense of duty, bore him through, and even above, the most bitter opposition, and made him claim his rights as an apostle in a manner so bold and so energetic, as to abash, if he could not altogether silence, his assailants.

The agitation of mind which this Letter displays, is very great. It gave rise to passages of much beauty and touching pathos (i. 8, seq.; iv. especially 6-12; v.; vi. 4 -11). Paul obviously wrote under the pressure of heavy affliction. Death itself had recently been before his eyes, if the dark image had even yet departed (i. 9; v. 1, seq.). This trial had befallen him chiefly in Asia,

where he was pressed out of measure above strength, insomuch that he despaired even of life, having the sentence of death in him self (i. 8, 9). His trial was so severe, that he describes it by a figure borrowed from the gladiatorial fights in the amphitheatre, with which the Corinthians were familiar, declaring, after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus' (1 Cor. xv. 32). Now, if we turn from these Letters to the history, we find that the last period of the apostle's sojourn in Ephesus was troubled by a popular religious tumult, which put the whole city into confusion and alarm, and jeopardised the liberty, if not the life, of the apostle. Yet, in the midst of this storm, Paul is found acting with a boldness that disregarded personal consequences. Already, two of his companions in travel' had been seized by the enraged multitude, when Paul, wishing to appease men's minds, and rescue his friends, was rushing into the midst of the mob. His disciples catch a sight of him: they know that he is hurrying to his own destruction. They hold him back, and remove him by force. So great is his peril, that even men of high station, certain of the Asiarchs, who are his friends, send to join their entreaties to the mild compulsion of his disciples. His absence confounds his enemies; they know not why they have come together; their murderous designs are frustrated, and the apostle is saved. Surely this was fighting with passions as ferocious as those of wild beasts. Why, when Alexander attempted a compulsory defence, he was silenced by the roaring of the mob, who with one voice, about the space of two hours, cried out, Great is Diana of the Ephesians!' (Acts xix. 34.) Ephesus, however, was no longer safe for Paul. To avoid the danger, he left the place the moment the storm had sunk. But in what condition? Doubtless, harassed in mind; infirm of body; little fit to travel; still in fear of pursuit; and possibly under some legal obligations, in relation to which he might be compromised by his flight. Yet must he accomplish a long journey; for Asia could afford no place of refuge. He therefore passed into Europe; but, when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side: without were fightings, within were fears' (2 Cor. vii. 5).

The history thus supplies the comment on the Epistle. The reader can now enter into the peculiarly strong and expressive terms which Paul employs in writing, at this very juncture, the second Letter to the Corinthians. We venture, moreover, to ask him, if so consecutive, so consistent a narrative could have been compiled, if one or both of our authorities had been a fabrication, got up for some unworthy purpose long after the events in question, or with