collection for the poor at Jerusalem, which St Paul set on foot and carried through with a truly amazing energy, in spite of his often strained relations with the heads of that Church. But this was by no means all. Either the apostle himself or his fellow-workers brought each congregation news of the other congregations as they travelled about from place to place, thus awakening feelings of shame, resentment, emulation, and ambition. Each congregation felt that it was observed, and possibly also criticised, by all other congregations throughout the whole world. Besides this, there was the link formed by united prayer for the apostle and with him for congregations in distress. And finally, the exercise of a generous hospitality was regarded as a duty towards all missionaries and brethren on their travels, and they in their turn again strengthened the feelings of union between each and all. In this manner St Paul created an organization so closely pieced together that no single link could fall out of the chain, but that each felt that it was kept in its place by the united efforts of all the rest; and in so doing he afforded Christian love a wide and varied sphere wherein to realize itself.

But its chief domain was after all that which lay nearest home-the individual congregation. Just like Jesus, St Paul esteemed that love highest which did not go forth in search of distant and extraordinary deeds, but proved its strength in the ordinary and everyday life. A man might give all that he had to the poor and yet be without the right kind of love. It is this prosaic, everyday love-no sentimental enthusiasm that St Paul commends to the Corin

thians, in the celebrated chapter, as the greatest thing in the world, as that which abideth for ever when speaking with tongues, prophecy, and knowledge have passed away; yea, which is even greater than faith and hope. There is indeed nothing simpler than to exercise patience and goodness, and not to boast or envy, not to offend against good manners nor seek one's own, and not to bear a grudge; and therefore of course nothing harder. By all that he did and said St Paul strove that the Christians should pursue this simple ideal. And yet what difficulties were placed in his path by this very system of separate congregations! Parties and factions seemed for ever to be forming, and celebrated teachers to be founding schools. The strong looked down with contempt upon the weak, and these in their turn condemned the strong. There were lawsuits about property which brought the brethren into evil repute amongst their heathen neighbours. The apostle intervened in each case with a peremptory yet friendly admonition to live in unity and practise mutual concession, modesty and humility. He came in course of time to attach the highest value to this congregational life as the most important school for the training of the individual. Here frequent occasions occur for the individual to forget himself, to become of no reputation, to retain the self-mastery by concession and patient endurance, to allow freedom of conscience to be ruled by love, and to further a brother's best interests in all things. But then the consequence of this is that each no longer has to fight his own battle, but feels himself supported, comforted and strengthened by the whole community. St Paul revives the old picture of the

body and the members, where each member is of importance for the body, and gives it a new and magnificent application and meaning. When one member suffers all suffer; when one is honoured all are glad; it is a duty to rejoice with them that do rejoice and to weep with them that weep. Who can complain any longer that love has been narrowed? Surely it is Jesus Himself who imparts to this brotherhood this unexampled capacity for active love? St Paul merely caught up this love that issued from Jesus, assigned to it a narrower sphere, and then multiplied it in the congregations which he founded.

St Paul's third and last task, the regulation of public worship, is almost entirely a part of the second. For Jesus there was naturally no such thing as a Christian public worship, for the simple reason that He founded no Church. He taught His disciples to pray both by themselves and together; and it is at least the beginning of such worship that one liturgical prayer, the Lord's Prayer, is ascribed to Him. The necessity of a special separate Christian form of worship made itself felt in the first congregation, otherwise there had been no continuance of the corporate life of the Church. Its two two principal component partsBaptism and the Lord's Supper-are signs of this very corporate life, intended to mark, the one the reception of the member into the community, the other the public meetings of the brethren. We must be careful to remember this when we come to examine St Paul's regulations.

In regard to both sacraments St Paul is no longer a creator. He simply accepts the tradition. The

public worship of the Church was likewise in all probability modelled after the pattern of the Jewish synagogues. This much we may safely infer from the use of Aramaic words; only the enthusiasm of the congregations generate, at any rate at first, a far greater freedom and variety of forms. When an exaggerated, and at the same time selfish, form of pietism availed itself at Corinth of this freedom, to the destruction of all decency and order, St Paul introduced a liturgical form of worship, and thereby also checked the desire of the women for emancipation. And for the same reason he was compelled to turn his attention to the common meals, which at times degenerated into pious drinking bouts, and to issue strict regulations as to the right and wrong way of partaking of the Supper of the Lord. In both cases we see how the good order of the life of the congregation, the edification of all instead of merely a few, the participation of the poorer brethren in the meals -all of them social considerations were really decisive. It is more important that all should profit than that one or two should be caught up into the seventh heaven for a few moments. His digression on love, while treating of ceremonial regulations, is his grandest and completest statement of this truth.

So far all is simple. The Church must have its outward symbols and its means of edification, and these things must be so regulated that they really conduce to the Church's benefit. And though we have here much that is new and that goes beyond what Jesus taught, yet the purely moral character of His Gospel is left inviolate. But through St Paul a new value

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comes to be attached to acts of worship which cannot be harmonized with the teaching of Christ. Corinth Christians suffered themselves to be baptized a second time for their deceased relations, and St Paul refers to this in his defence of the resurrection. That is a heathen conception of baptism which turns it into an opus operatum,' and as such a guarantee for blessedness. Whilst in this case St Paul simply accepts the superstitious view without saying anything, he is himself actually the cause of it in the case of the Lord's Supper. To please his Greek converts he compares it to the Greek and Jewish sacrificial feasts. He is the first to contrast the holy food there consecrated with all other that is profane, and bids us see in the sickness and death of many Christians the judgment upon their profane participation in the holy meal. Now, that was an accommodation to Greek superstition which led to the establishment of a religion of a lower, less spiritual, nature as a direct consequence. But the mere fact that an extraordinary value is attached to ceremonial acts is in itself fatal. The conception of what constitutes a Christian is here enlarged in a very ominous fashion.

The apostle, however, knew full well that besides participation in acts of ritual there is an altogether different manner in which Christians can have communion with God. Like Jesus, he exhorts his hearers and readers to offer up prayer and thanksgiving, to place their trust in God, to commit all their cares to Him, to accept everything, even affliction and suffering, as from His hand, to fear Him and to long for Him. The prayer of thanksgiving is above