and Him crucified." More especially and in detail
" Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel
which I preached unto you, which also ye have received,
and wherein ye stand : by which also ye are saved, if ye
keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have
believed in vain : for I delivered unto you first of all that
252 PAUL AT CORINTH.
which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins
according to the scriptures ; and that He was buried, and
that He rose again the third day according to the scrip-
tures ; and that He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve :
after that He was seen of above five hundred brethren at
once ; of whom the greater part remain unto this present,
but some are fallen asleep. After that He was seen of
James 5 then of all the apostles. And last of all he was
seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. For I
am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called
an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But
by the grace of God I am what I am : and His grace which
was bestowed upon me was not in vain ; but I laboured
more abundantly than they all : yet not I, but the grace
of God which was with me. Therefore, whether it were
I or they, so we preached, and so ye believed."
Such was the burden of the apostle's message, which he
delivered to them first of all first in time, and first also
in importance. His first and foremost theme at Corinth
was the death of Christ ; for His death truly is the central
fact of the gospel. What He taught prepared for it, and
His power in glory applies its results. He came down
not simply to instruct, but also to atone ; not only to reveal
the will of His Father, but to offer propitiation for the sin
of the world. No matter what revelations He has given
us, if guilt remain unexpiated, and the sentence of death
unrepealed. He took upon Him the nature of man, that
He might possess the capability of dying for man. And
in man's place, and under his legal liabilities, He did die
obeyed the law and endured its penalty. What more
CENTRAL TRUTH. 253
glorious message than this could the apostle proclaim?
God's infinite pity for us ; His unspeakable gift of His
Son ; the Lord Jesus, in unfathomable grace, taking upon
Him our nature, and suffering and dying in order to
deliver us from the curse of that law which we had broken,
Himself yielding to it a voluntary and perfect obedience
and enduring its sentence of death.
The apostle preached that Jesus Christ died for our sins
on account of them, to make expiation for them. And
why should He die if His death had not been indispen-
sable? for, to use His own figure "Except a corn of
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but
if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." There is no har-
vest without previous death the seed dies, and by its
decomposition nourishes the life of the future plant. We
stop not to argue the necessity of Christ's death out of any
abstract speculation on the nature of God, the evil of sin,
or the principles of the divine administration. Yet, may
it not be said that a distinction must ever be maintained
between sin and righteousness that the majesty of law
must be vindicated that a separation must be made
between the perfect and the transgressors that statute
must not be weakened by repeated acts of mercy to its
violators and that the unchanging holiness of God must
for ever reign paramount in all His ways and works?
Normal procedure must have involved the sinner in ruin ;
but the abnormal process of an innocent one self-offered in
room of the guilty, satisfies the claims of justice, exhibits
the rectitude of the Judge, and manifests His compassion
254 PAUL AT CORINTH.
for the fallen, on whom, "but for His infinite love, the
original penalty must have been inflicted.
And Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures
the Bible contains clear information on the subject. It
tells us that though man has incurred the penalty, there is
mercy for him that mercy, however, being always con-
nected with the death of a victim in his room. " Without
the shedding of blood there was no remission," under the
old economy. Pardon is declared to be based on sacrifice
" The priest shall make atonement for his sin, and it shall
be forgiven him." The sacrificial type, while it exhibited
the penalty in the vicarious infliction of it, not only showed
how deliverance was to be attained, but also predicted the
atoning death of Calvary. The phraseology of the Old
Testament is employed to describe Christ's death in the
New Testament. It was a sacrifice; violent death a
"body broken ;" voluntary death "He gave Himself;"
vicarious death "the just for the unjust;" a death
endured as an expiation " blood shed for remission of sins
unto many." Had not such an agony been necessary, why
should it have been endured? Of other plans possible
to infinite wisdom, this was preferred as being the best to
illustrate the divine character, maintain the authority of
the divine law, show the true evil of sin, secure the alle-
giance and harmony of the universe, and provide salvation
for mankind.
It is a cheering truth that Jesus endured the penalty
justice being diverted from its natural course, and falling
upon the surety ; so that the original transgressor escapes.
MISREPRESENTATIONS OF THE ATONEMENT. 255
And why should this procedure stir up such hostility?
why should so many men be so anxious to caricature it,
and disavow their belief in it ? Thus one, and he a trans-
atlantic Unitarian, describes it as if the Creator, " in order
to pardon His own children, erected a gallows in the midst
of the universe, and publicly executed upon it, in the
room of the offenders, an infinite being, the partaker of
His own supreme Divinity." Another pictures it as if
Saul, missing his stroke at David, " had, in disappointed
fury, dashed his javelin at his own son Jonathan." A third
affirms that the atonement likens God to some heathen
divinity who must be appeased "a thought which refutes
itself by the very indignation it calls up in the human
bosom." "A relic of heathen conception," says one; "an
elaborate process of self-confutation," cries another. That
the just should suffer, even though willingly, for the unjust,
is not justice, one opponent asserts ; and his fellow responds
that a man's debt may be freely forgiven, and why not
God's? All these objections appear to us frivolous and
baseless. The language of scripture gives them no coun-
tenance. It declares that God is infinite love and purity ;
that He vindicates His righteousness while He extends
His mercy, and upholds His law while He forgives its
unworthy violators. We say not that He is vengeful, and
strikes wildly in His anger ; but that, in the vindication of
His government, He consults the happiness of His universe.
For if His law be wantonly broken, and the criminals are
treated quite as the unfallen and loyal, then it might be
surmised that moral distinctions were obliterated. The
vicarious and willing suffering of Jesus is not inconsistent
256 PAUL AT CORINTH.
with highest equity, though human analogy fails to illus-
trate it ; and if language have meaning, the phraseology of
the New Testament declares that Christ died as a substi-
tute. Are we not " healed by His stripes," " bought with
a price" His "precious blood; 7 ' "redeemed from the
curse of the law, Christ being made a curse for us?" The
plan arose in love, and in love was perfected, when the
Father " spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up
for us all." The distinctive feature in the atonement is
not the unjust sentence which led to it, nor its ignominy or
external agony ; the nakedness and nails of the cross, nor
the personal virtue of the sufferer, though it shone in
bright serenity; nor the great penal example which it
afforded but the representative character or position of
Him who died the Son of God who " gave Himself for
us an offering and a sacrifice to God." 0, this is the
precious truth which lifts the burden from the conscience,
and leads us to adore and serve the Lamb.
" Talk they of morals ? 0, thou bleeding Love,
The grand morality is love of Thee."
In connection with the death of Christ, the ordinance
which commemorates it was enjoined upon the Corinthian
church : " For I have received of the Lord that which also
I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night
in which He was betrayed, took bread : and when He had
given thanks, He brake it, and said, Take, eat ; this is my
body, which is broken for you : this do in remembrance of
me. After the same manner also He took the cup, when
He had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament
BUEIAL OF JESUS. 257
in my blood : this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remem-
brance of me." Paul was not present at the first celebration,
but the account which he gave them he received of the
Lord by immediate revelation from Him. The institu-
tion vividly sets before the mind the love and the death of
the Lord Jesus not His birth or His life, His miracles
or His teaching; but His death, and that death as the
one source of salvation. It is a communion with Him
and with one another over the emblems of His suffering
humanity, and a eucharist or scene of devout thanksgiving
an anticipation of the gratitude and song of heaven;
but more especially is it a feast, in which, as we " eat of
that bread and drink of that cup, we do show the Lord's
death till He come." Doctrine is presented in vivid
symbol, and participation is imaged as the enjoyment of a
banquet. And yet the Corinthians profaned that ordi-
nance or the accompanying love-feast one being hungry,
another being drunken.
Farther, the apostle preached that " Christ was buried."
Before the synagogue in the Pisidian Antioch he had
also dwelt on this, declaring that "they laid Him in a
sepulchre," but yet that " He saw no corruption," as had
been predicted of Him by the royal psalmist. He was
laid in a borrowed tomb, and in one which had not been
previously occupied. Nay, according to the prophet,
11 He made His grave with the wicked and with the rich
in His death ;" or rather, more literally, " there had been
appointed to Him His grave with the wicked, but He
was with a rich man in His dead state:" that is, three
tombs had been prepared for the three men that day to
'UNIVERSITY'
258 PAUL AT CORINTH.
be executed,' for any one dying under sentence of law
could not be buried in the sepulchre of his fathers. But
"a rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, begged the
body of Jesus, and laid it in his own new tomb," " wherein
was never man yet laid." Thus prophecy was fulfilled,
and the truth of the resurrection confirmed. As we have
seen under the last head " Paul at Athens" the tomb of
Jesus was guarded, and the story of the guard was an
inconsistent falsehood. It was a solitary tomb, occupied by
its first tenant, and disputes about identity were, therefore,
precluded. The burial proved also the reality of the death,
and the resuscitation was, therefore, a resurrection. He
left the "linen clothes lying, and the napkin that was
about His head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapt
together in a place by itself" a proof of His calmness and
composure as He rose from the realms of the dead. The
act of rising was seen by no one ; but the tomb was found
empty, and ample proof has been vouchsafed. The last
honours were paid in haste to His corpse, and the entomb-
ment was a melancholy deed to all concerned in it. Be-
cause they "trusted that it had been He which should
have redeemed Israel," the two disciples on the road to
Emmaus were "sad" all their prospects had been dashed.
But the apostle farther preached that
"He rose again the third day, according to the scriptures."
The proof which the apostle refers to is that of testimony-
the testimony of credible witnesses, so placed that they could
not be imposed upon, and so honest that they could not
stoop to deceive others. He appeared to them in different
places, and at different times, the variety of the appear-
APPEARANCES OF THE RISEN MESSIAH. 259
ances itself affording evidence of their truth. A man in
one position may be deceived, but a number of men in
separate circumstances cannot surely be all duped in succes-
sion. The apostle selects a few of these appearances, and
some of them are not recorded in the gospels. " He was
seen of Cephas" Peter, who had run to the tomb and
found it empty, but did not meet the Lord there, as did
Mary Magdalene seen of him probably in the forenoon of
the day on which He rose. Peter had been singled out
for the kind message " Go, tell my disciples and Peter;"
and perhaps he was the first of the apostles to whom
singly the Lord showed Himself. " Then of the twelve "
the familiar round number being employed to designate
the eleven ; to the ten, Thomas being absent, He appeared
on the first day of His resurrection, and eight days after
to the whole eleven, vouchsafing to Thomas the palpable
proofs of His identity. The next appearance is not referred
to in the gospels, but implied, and it is thus described
" After that He was seen of above five hundred brethren at
once ; of whom the greater part remain unto this present,
but some are fallen asleep." This large assemblage was
specially honoured, the only assembly of the size on earth
which has enjoyed the singular felicity. Probably in some
remote spot, some retreat among the mountains of Galilee,
did the spectacle greet the eyes of the five hundred, many
of whom had known Him in Nazareth, heard Him in Caper-
naum, and followed Him by the shores of Tiberias. Was
it possible that this whole company were cheated by some
hallucination, or made to believe that there was among
them He who had been executed in the capital the true
260 PAUL AT CORINTH.
and loving teacher, the illustrious wonder-worker at whose
word thousands had been feasted, and every form of
disease had vanished ? The apostle adds, " After that He
was seen of James" some special manifestation and
"then of all the apostles," prior to His ascension.
Such is a summary of the proof which the apostle
adduced in his preaching. All these men bare witness to
the resurrection, and they were worthy of credit, as they
only testified what they had seen, and they could surely
trust their own senses.
Now the resurrection proves the Messiahship, for it not
only verified prediction, but proved that Jesus was all in
person and commission that He professed to be. If He
rose again by His own power, then indeed He was God,
and if the Father raised Him, Jehovah could not accredit
a deceiver. He was crucified under a charge that He
called Himself the Son of God, and He was " declared to
be the Son of God with power, by His resurrection from
the dead." Put to death as an impostor, He rose again
in token that He was " the faithful and true Witness."
" If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and
your faith also is vain." It also proved His death to be
a perfect atonement. The debt was cancelled when the
surety was released. He died to satisfy the law, and rose
again as a proof that His death was all which the law
demanded, and that the law so satisfied will not demand
another victim, or exact another penalty. We point to
His empty tomb as evidence of His completed atonement.
On the other hand, " if Christ be not raised, your faith is
vain, ye are yet in your sins;" there has been no expiation,
SIMPLE PREACHING. 261
and there can be no forgiveness. And the apostle, in the
sequel of his argument, maintains that Christ's resurrec-
tion secures that of His people " Christ the first-fruits,
afterward they that are Christ's at His coming." And
they are raised in incorruption, in glory and in power, pos-
sessed of spiritual bodies, bearing the image of the last and
heavenly Adam, fitted to dwell in a world which " flesh
and blood cannot inherit" the sting having been extracted
from death, and the grave spoiled of its victory. "If
Christ be not raised, then they also which are fallen asleep
in Christ are perished."
Further, when at Corinth, the apostle insisted on the
plainest truths" And I, brethren, could not speak unto
you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes
in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat ;
for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now
are ye able." He did not stretch away into the region of
ultimate truths, did not prelect on the " deep things of
God," though his great mind had strong likings for the
profound, and he loved to tread on the borders of the
incomprehensible. But he restrained himself, and set
before the Corinthian minds the simplest truths, the
clearest facts of redemption. He did not amaze them
with compacted argument, or dazzle them with glowing
imagery, or transport them with rhetorical displays. Man's
sin and Christ's salvation were the twin-truths which he
illustrated, without bewildering them with the divine
purpose of a past eternity, or the divine developments of
an eternity to come. He addressed the Corinthians out of
the fulness of his own soul, uttered before them all his
262 PAUL AT CORINTH.
convictions, spoke from the heart, in the hope of reaching
the heart.
Nay more, the apostle preached at Corinth the plainest
truths with the utmost simplicity "And I, brethren, when
I came to you, came not with excellency of speech, or of
wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God ; for I
determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus
Christ, and Him crucified. And my speech and my
preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom,
but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power; that
your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in
the power of God." The apostle, then, did not repeat at
Corinth the kind of discourse which he had tried at Athens ;
did not, as he might say of himself in his boyhood
" Having lost one shaft,
I shot another of the self-same flight
The self-same way, with more advised watch,
To find the other forth."
No, he preached the cross, and that alone, and having
secured such results, having gained so many who were
" epistles of Christ," he was anxious that no other form or
theme of teaching should be introduced "According to
the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master-
builder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth
thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth
thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that
is laid, which is Jesus Christ." That foundation is stable
and sure, and will support the edifice. The truth concerning
Christ does not grow old any more than creation. It is
still fresh and mighty, new to every succeeding age which
PLAIN STYLE. 263
receives it, and is ever to be kept free from contamination
or foreign admixtures. Every doctrine must be homo-
geneous with the great central truth, of the same nature
with it, and dependent upon it. He says, "I determined"
made a formal resolution, " not to know anything among
you, save Jesus Christ;" such a determination seeming to
imply that he was under temptation to waver, and to mingle
up other allied topics in his addresses, and that he may have
felt such a temptation in Athens, when he spoke to its wise
men. But he had vowed within himself, that at Corinth
the one topic should occupy him, though it should appear
" foolishness ; " for, by the preaching of that very foolish-
ness, they who believed were saved by God. He also refers
to his style more especially, as it may have been brought
in contrast with that of the " eloquent" Apollos, and may
have been compared with it to the apostle's disadvantage.
He spoke without the aids and ornaments of rhetoric. He
placed the gospel before them in pure light. A showy
eloquence might suit the degenerate taste of the city, but
the apostle would not indulge it. He wished to gain men
to the truth for the pure love of it, and not for any attrac-
tions which might be thrown around it. He would not
throw a rainbow over the fountain of life, but wished that
thirst and not curious gaze should bring men to it. He
would not charm them by his oratory, lest some inferior
motive should influence their conviction. He would not
put himself in the foreground, and leave his Master in the
shadow. He was anxious that men should not praise the
preacher to the neglect of his sermon. Himself was
nothing, Christ and His cross were everything.
264 PAUL AT CORINTH.
Nor did he array the gospel in the garb of wisdom philo-
sophy. It was, in truth, the highest wisdom true in its
views of man and God, and of the relation between them.
Its theology is just, for it reveals a perfect God, and its
ethics fit into man's nature. Its God is one to be believed
in, loved, and served, faith in such a God being productive
of peace and happiness ; and its obligations so suit them-
selves to us, that we feel their equity, and cannot refuse
them, assured that obedience will train us to the high end of
our being. Given, man's nature as it is what other creed
so speaks home to its spiritual instincts and satisfies them,
and what other code of duties so approves itself to his
reason, or so brings him under its imperative sway, by
simply quickening his consciousness of its authority and
truth? But the apostle did not proclaim it in the language
of philosophy, did not bury it under rich and redundant
illustration, did not employ pretentious terms, or borrow the
phrases of the schools. He spoke to them in the tongue
of common life that which they most easily understood :
" Which things also we speak, not in the words which
man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teach-
eth." When a man is in danger, the simplest cry is the
most significant to him. But this example set by the
apostle has been often lost sight, of, and the Bible has
been made to speak the nomenclature of human systems :
sometimes Aristotelian, sometimes Platonist, and some-
times modern antichristian errors. Thus the combination
of two natures in the Redeemer has been profanely taken
as a mystic delineation of pantheism the union of Creator
and creature j eternal life has been explained to be, not the
A DARK CLOUD. 265
immortal happiness of the individual, but only the duration
of the species ; and the Trinity has been degraded into a
metaphysical symbol shadowing out the subjective, the
objective, and the relation between them, or the thinker,
the thought, and the link that connects them.
To dwell upon the central fact of Christianity salvation
by the cross; to connect all truth with it, and trace all
blessings from it; to present it as the living source of
hope, and the one stimulus to duty, bringing with it
pressure of obligation and ability to comply ; to put forth
every power in doing this from love to Christ and love to
souls; and to do it all the while in earnest simplicity,
affectionate fidelity, and constant dependence on Him who
" giveth the increase " that is to preach like Paul.
The apostle when at Corinth was in a state of great
dejection " in weakness, and in fear, and in much trem-
bling." It was a dark and desponding mood, to which a
variety of causes might contribute. His signal failure at
Athens must have deeply vexed him, and he must have
had nervous apprehensions as to his success at Corinth.
The scenes were new, and he trembled at his responsi-
bilities. His physical constitution was not robust, and the
scourging at Philippi may have seriously impaired it. All
men of such susceptibility as Paul are liable to depressions,
and when they are exhausted by exertion, and find their
great wishes unrealized, the sky darkens over them, and
'"^xthey sink into themselves with grief and alarm. For some
weighty reason, implying vexation or difficulty, the apostle
at this time put himself under a vow, which lasted till
he set sail from Cenchrea. It could scarcely be the formal
266 PAUL AT CORINTH.
vow of the Nazarite, but it may have been one of similar
self-denial and restraint, his hair being all the while
allowed to grow in token of his entire subjection to the
will, and devotion to the service of God. Such vows were
taken, Josephus says, " by those who were afflicted with
disease, or any other distress." The incident shows that
Paul during his stay at Corinth was in some critical state
infirm and nervous and filled with unwonted agitation.
His enemies at Corinth said " His bodily presence is
weak," and perhaps he was smarting at the same time
from the prickings of the thorn in the flesh, and the buffet-