17

For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel not in the wisdom of words [Argument], 18 lest the cross of Christ be made of none effect. For the doctrine of the cross is foolishness to those who are yielding themselves to ruin, but the power of God 19 to those of us who are willing to be saved. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.' 20 Where is the Wise? where is the Scribe? where is the Disputer of this world? Hath not God proved foolish 21 the wisdom of this world? For when, in the wisdom

of God, the world through wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save 22 those who have faith. The Jews indeed require Signs, 23 and the Greeks seek after Wisdom: but we preach

Christ crucified, to the Jews an offence, and to the 24 Gentiles foolishness; but to the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of 25 God. Because this foolishness of God is wiser than men and this weakness of God is stronger than men. 26 For you see your calling [class], brethren, that there

are not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, 27 not many noble: but God hath chosen the foolish things

of the world to shame the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the mighty; 28 and the ignoble and despised things of the world hath

God chosen, and things that are not, to bring to naught 29 things that are; that no flesh should glory in the pres30 ence of God. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who hath been made unto us wisdom from God, and right31 eousness, and sanctification, and redemption; so that, as it is written, "Let him that glorieth glory in the Lord." +

* Isaiah xxix. 14.

† Jeremiah ix. 24.

*

It is no easy matter for a modern European to conceive, with any truth, the state of things that presented itself to a Christian Apostle entering, for the first time, one of the great cities of Greece or Asia Minor. The materials for such a conception exist only in the indirect and evanescent reflections of ancient life and manners which a fragmentary literature presents; and much easier is it, from the remains that are left to us, to reconstruct one of the Cities of classic antiquity, to bring back the exact image of Athens or Pompeii, than to people its streets with veritable copies from the antique, — to picture with any reality the living throngs of Corinth, that Venice of the ancient world,* or to penetrate to the varied heart and inner spirit of that motley society, where Greek and Asiatic, Roman and Jew, trader and philosopher, Egyptian magician, sophist, and travelling impostor of every description, passed and repassed between the commercial capital of the West, that point of conflux, and the scattered cities of the East. Corinth itself was but a new city, raised from its ruins and rebuilt by Julius Cæsar. From its central situation on the Isthmus, as the gates of Greece, through which passed all communication between the Eastern and the Western Worlds, it had sprung at once into magnificence. Every thing in it was young, fresh, restless, unsettled. It was a state of society in which there were no conservative influences, no venerable usages,where even the temples and the gods had no great

* Milman's History of Christianity, Vol. II. p. 20.

antiquity to boast of, and where accordingly every variety of man, every new theory and speculation, might meet on nearly equal ground, and have a fair struggle for predominance. Now let us venture to enter this Corinth along with the Apostle, and witness his reception.

Gentile and idolatrous cities were, it is true, to him no novelties. He was himself Paul of Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, and since his conversion he had witnessed to the Truth amid the splendid temples of Asia, and stood upon Mars' Hill in Athens. It was with no unprepared spirit, with no narrow, local, and unfurnished mind, with no incompetent experience, or exclusive development of his own religious nature, that the missionary of Christ appeared among these struggling individualities to announce a universal and allreconciling Faith. With no surprise or flurry of spirit, but with a calm and understanding eye, as a man who knew what he had to expect, would he pass along through temples, and sacred groves, and theatres, and processions, until he came to the obscurer quarters where his countrymen lived apart, and endeavored, as far as might be, to shut out idolatrous spectacles. To these expectants of Israel's Messiah, he would announce the Gospel of the Saviour of the World; and the Jew of Palestine, who cared nothing for the World, but only for the Israel of God, would denounce the supposed apostate from Judaism as the most accursed of blasphemers,whilst the Jew of Alexandria, who had been brought into contact with the philosophies of Plato and the East, and had worn off the rigid nationality of the

Palestinian, would seize, with more avidity than fidelity, on the new ideas of Christianity, as a means of reconciling his old faith with his later and foreign speculations. And if, as a mean between these two, a Jew of the old school should be found to give a more favorable reception to the "testimony respecting Jesus," it would be only as to the long expected consummation of Judaism; and without accepting its more spiritual and universal elements, he would take it to be the completion of the National Religion in the subjugation of the other religions of the earth.

Expelled from the Synagogue, yet with such of its members as might have some points of affinity with the more generous faith (and at Corinth it happened that even the chief ruler was one of those),* St. Paul, in the expressive figure of the times, would "shake his raiment" before the Jews; and casting off upon themselves all responsibility for their decision, betake himself to the Gentiles. With them he would meet, if not a very earnest or respectful, yet an easy and a willing reception, so long at least as he had the power to keep their curiosity alive,for Paganism was not deficient in toleration, except towards a religion that aimed at its destruction. Polytheism indeed could not, with any consistency, denounce the claim to notice of any new worship, nor was such exclusiveness the genius of the Greek. Paul at Athens was supposed to be only desirous of introducing some new divinity into the already full

Acts xviii. 8.

Pantheon; and not immediately would Christianity come to be apprehended in its character of destructiveness, not as claiming a share for itself, but as the total subverter of Polytheistic worship,—making the universe and the soul the only fit temples of the One Everlasting and Omnipresent. With such minds. the difficulty would be to obtain a reception for the new religion, not as a Philosophy, but as a Life; not as a source of intellectual or speculative interest, but as a moral spirit, breathing tender and purifying influences into the affections, developing the force of conscience, withdrawing the soul from the outer shrine to the voice of the eternal Spirit within the breast, and conforming the entire man to that divine harmony, that holy will of God, of which conscience is the faint announcer in each soul, and Christ the perfect image. The Grecian mind was extravagantly addicted to fanciful, and speculative, philosophizing; and largely used its religion as a means of sanctifying its vices, of elevating its vilest desires. into the worship of some patron God presiding over the earthly and passionate elements of our mixed nature, converting deeds of darkness into the mysteries of a sacred service; and if Christianity, through native force and the vigor of its great Apostle, made its way into such minds, there could be little hope that it should take no taint or bias from such souls, that it should all at once maintain an absolute independence on their past practices, and not be drawn into the vortex of the prevailing intellectual and practical habits. We often ask, Why does not Christianity work greater and more instant effects?