21 lofty ways, disorders; afraid that my God will humiliate me before you when I return, and that I shall mourn for many of those who were previously in sin, yet have not repented of the impurity and fornication and sensuality which they practised.

13 1 For the third time now I am coming to you: on the statements of two 2 witnesses or three every case shall be decided. I have said and I now say beforehand (as when I was present for the second time, so now when I 3 am absent) to those who were previously in sin, and to all the rest if I come again, I will be unsparing-since you require a proof of the Christ who speaks in me. Nor is he weak among you, he shows himself 4 powerful in you; for he was indeed crucified in virtue of weakness, yet he lives in virtue of the power of God. And truly we are weak in him, 5 but we shall live with him, in virtue of the power of God among you. Try yourselves, to see if you are in the faith. Put yourselves to the test. Do you not understand yourselves, that Jesus Christ is within you ?—unless 6 indeed you are reprobates. (As for ourselves, I hope you will find we 7 are no reprobates.) We pray to God that you may do no evil; not that we may appear as men of genuine character, but that you may do what 8 is good, though we may look like reprobates. For we have no power 9 against the truth, but for the truth. Yes, we rejoice when we are weak 10 and you are strong; it is your development that we pray for. I am writing thus in absence, so that when I am present I may not have to deal severely, in virtue of the authority which the Lord has given me to upbuild, not to throw you down. . .

In the first place, it shows pre-eminently how completely the apostle was master of his mood. The letter is, from beginning to end, one of mood; but the mood, far from being identical, varies constantly. . . . And yet there is neither vacillation nor contradiction. As each is roused and warranted by circumstances, so he remains master of all. He throws his whole being into every emotion, and he is always the same. . . . The second feature disclosed pre-eminently by this letter is the interchange of the particular and the universal, the mingling of the discussion of the subject in hand with instruction in the highest matters. The letter, which at a first glance is entirely concerned with the questions and interests of the day, yet contains, in the midst of these, passages which belong to the most important sources for the doctrine of the apostle as a whole. It may be said that not even the slightest point is discussed without a universal application, without a reference to that which is ultimate and supreme. The look that has just been fixed upon the nearlying scene passes immediately to the distant prospects.—Weizsäcker.

II. CORINTHIANS

11 PAUL, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and Timotheus the brother,

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to the Community of God which is in Corinth, along with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia :

grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father 4 of tender mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our distress, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any distress by means of the comfort with which we are comforted ourselves by 5 God; for just as the sufferings of Christ abound for us, so our comfort 6 also abounds through Christ. Are we in distress? it is for your comfort and salvation; are we comforted? it is for your comfort-a comfort whose effect is the patient endurance of the same sufferings as we also suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, since we know that as you share in the 8 sufferings, so you share also in the comfort. For we would not

have you ignorant, brothers, with regard to the distress which befell us in Asia. Beyond measure, past our strength, we were weighed down, so 9 that we despaired even of life. Yes, for ourselves we decided the end must be death-it was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God, 10 who raises the dead, who rescued us out of so terrible a death and rescues now,1 on whom our hope is set that he will also rescue us still; 11 while you also co-operate on our behalf by prayer, in order that on the part of many persons thanks may be given on our behalf for the boon bestowed upon us.

12 For the cause of our exulting lies in the evidence of our conscience, that it was in holiness and godly sincerity, not with fleshly cunning but with God's grace, that we conducted ourselves in the world, and 13 especially towards you. We are not writing you anything else than what you read, or in point of fact acknowledge. And to the end, I hope, you 14 will acknowledge-as also you have partly acknowledged us-that we are your reason for exulting, as also you are ours, in the day of our 15 Lord Jesus. And it was with this confidence that I meant to 16 come to you before, that you might have a second benefit: intending to pass through you to Macedonia, and from Macedonia to come to you 17 again, and be sped by you on my journey to Judaea. With this in view, then, did I display fickleness? Or do I make my proposals according to the flesh, so as to be one who practically means "yes" as well as 18 "no"? As God is faithful, our word to you was not " yes and no." 19 For the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who was proclaimed among you by us (by myself and Silvanus and Timotheus) was not yes and no" 20 in him "yes" has come to be. For in him is the " yes to all God's promises; therefore through him also comes the "amen," to the honour 1 Reading ῥυέται.

21 of God through us. Now he who confirms us with you in Christ and 22 anointed us, is God: who also sealed us as his own and set the pledge and instalment of the Spirit in our hearts.

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I call God to witness against my soul, it was to spare you that I 24 forbore to revisit Corinth. (Not that we exercise lordship over your faith. Nay, we work together for your joy. For by your faith you 2 1, 2 stand.) I decided that I would not visit you again in sorrow. For if I make you sorrowful, then who is to make me glad? who but he who is 3 made sorrowful by me? and I wrote just for this reason, in case upon my arrival I might have sorrow from those who ought to furnish me with joy; confident as I am in you all, that my joy is the joy of you 4 all. For it was out of much distress and misery of heart that I wrote you, with many tears; not to make you sorrowful, but to make you 5 realise the love which I have for you especially. If anyone has

caused sorrow, he has not caused sorrow to me, but to you all; at least— 6 not to be too severe to a section of you. This punishment from the 7 majority is enough for the individual in question, so that on the contrary you should rather forgive him and comfort him, lest haply the 8 man be swallowed up by excessive sorrow. Wherefore I appeal to you 9 to ratify your love to him. For it was with this object that I also 10 wrote, to find out the proof of your obedience in every point. The man whom you forgive for anything, I forgive also. And truly whatever I have forgiven, my forgiveness has been for your sakes in the 11 presence of Christ-to prevent Satan from taking any advantage of us; 12 for well do we know his schemes. Now on arriving at Troas to

preach the gospel of Christ, even although a door stood open for me in the 13 Lord, I got no relief for my spirit, since I did not find Titus my brother; 14 so I took leave of them and departed to Macedonia. Thanks be to God

who ever makes our life a pageant of triumph in Christ, and dis15 closes through us in every place the odour of his knowledge! For to God we are a fragrance of Christ, in the saved and in the perishing: 16 to these an odour of 1 death to death, to those an odour of 1 life to life. 17 (And who is qualified for this?) For we are not like the majority who adulterate the word of God; nay, out of sincerity, from God, thus it is we speak in Christ before God.

31 Are we beginning once more "to commend ourselves"? or do we require, like some people, letters of commendation to you or 2 from you? You are yourselves our letter, written within our hearts, 3 recognised and read by all men. It is plain, to look at you, that you are a letter of Christ, executed by our ministry, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of 4 stone, but on tablets that are hearts of flesh.-Such is the confidence 5 we have through Christ towards God. It is not that we are personally qualified to form any judgment by our unaided selves; our qualifica6 tion is from God, who has also qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not of written law but of spirit. For the written law 7 puts to death, but the spirit makes alive. Now if the ministry of death, engraved in letters of stone, was accompanied with such splendour that the sons of Israel could not gaze on the face of Moses 8 for the splendour of his face-a splendour that was waning-surely the 9 ministry of the Spirit shall be of still greater splendour? For if splendour belongs to the ministry of condemnation, far far more does 10 the ministry of uprightness excel in splendour. Indeed in this respect 1 Omitting ix.

what has been made splendid possesses no splendour, in view of the 11 splendour that is surpassing. For if the appearance of what was waning was splendid, then splendid far far more is what remains. 12, 13

Since then we have such a hope, we use great openness, and are not like Moses, who used to put a veil upon his face, to prevent the sons 14 of Israel gazing on the end of what was waning. Moreover their minds have been hardened. For to this very day, upon the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains. Veiled to them the fact that it 15 has waned in Christ! Yes, down to this day, whensoever Moses is 16 read, a veil lies on their heart. But whensoever they turn to the Lord, the 17 veil is taken away. The Lord is the Spirit: where the Spirit of the 18 Lord is, there freedom is. And while we all, with face unveiled, behold as in a mirror the splendour of the Lord, we are transformed into that very image from splendour to splendour, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

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Therefore, after the mercy we have obtained, we do not lose 2 heart in this, our ministry. The practices which very shame conceals, we have disowned; we do not proceed by craft or falsify the word of God, but by the disclosure of the truth we commend ourselves to 3 every man's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel 4 is veiled, it is veiled for the perishing; in their case the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that no ray should reach them from the radiance of the gospel of the splendour of Christ, 5 who is the image of God. For it is not ourselves that we preach, it is Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for the sake of Jesus. 6 For the God who said, "Out of darkness light shall shine," is he who shone within our hearts to irradiate the knowledge of God's splendour in the face of Christ.

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But this treasure we hold in earthen vessels,

That the pre-eminence of the power may be God's, not due to us—
In everything distressed yet not straitened,

perplexed yet not despairing,

persecuted yet not forsaken,

prostrate yet not destroyed,

Bearing about ever in the body the dying of Jesus,

That the life of Jesus also may be disclosed in our body :

For we who live are always being delivered to death for Jesus' sake,

That the life of Jesus also may be disclosed in our mortal flesh. In us then death is active, in you life. Yet having the same spirit of faith as that whereof it is written, I believed: therefore I spoke we too 14 believe, and therefore speak; since we know that he who raised up the Lord Jesus shall also raise us up with Jesus and present us with you. 15 All is for your sakes, that grace multiplied may cause thanksgiving to abound through the greater number to the honour of God.

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Wherefore we lose not heart:

Although our outer man decays,

Day after day our inner man is renewed.

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For the moment's light distress results for us in an eternal weight of majesty:

While we look not at the seen, but at the unseen,

For the seen is for a time,

But the unseen is eternal.

1 Omitting ☎r.