Gospel. So now if a man, whether he be lay or clerical, says that Christ will save any who come to Him, provided only they be baptized and have received the Lord's Supper and absolution, from one who has been properly and apostolically ordained, he does not deny Christ; he only mixes the truth and adds to it, and thus corrupts the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ. In these cases it is not Christ simply, that is, as the Eternal Word manifested to the soul, but something additional which is taught as necessary to salvation. What St. Paul charged the Corinthians with was this, that they had added Judaic ceremonies to the pure gospel of salvation by Christ alone.

Secondly, It was necessary to vindicate the character of St. Paul. Character is an exceedingly delicate thing, that of a Christian man especially so. To a certain extent it is true, no doubt, that we must not be over anxious as to the estimation in which we are held by others—it is true no doubt, to a certain extent, that the character which cannot defend itself is not worth defending, and that it is better to live down evil reports. But if a character is never defended, it comes to be considered as incapable of defence, and besides we know that often many years are required to clear away suspicions, and then the vindication often comes too late for the maligned man.

Lately antiquarians have dived deep into historic records, and have made discoveries which have established the purity of certain characters over which slurs have been cast for centuries. But although it is made clear to us, it is too late for them. Besides, allowing an uncontradicted slander to rest upon us, may perhaps greatly injure our influence with others. And therefore St. Paul says boldly, "I am not a whit behind the very chiefest of the apostles." Some cannot understand the feeling which would prompt such an expression as this. Shallow men would call it egotism, vanity, folly, as if egotism consisted only in speaking of one's self, as if when the

personal pronoun was omitted the egotism ceased, as if it were vanity in St. Paul to assert the fact of his innocence, when his whole life was one long martyrdom for Christ. True Christian modesty is not the being ignorant of what we are, neither does it consist in affecting ignorance. If a man has genius, he knows he has it; if a man is more powerful than others, he knows his strength. If a man is falsely charged with theft, there is no vanity in his indignantly asserting that he has been honest all his life long. Christian modesty consists rather in this,-in having set before us a sublime standard of what is high and great and pure and good, so that we feel how far we are from attaining to that. Thus we can understand him when he says, he is "not behind the chiefest of the apostles," while he yet says in another place that he is "the chief of sinners."

Foolish men cannot comprehend this; they cannot understand how a Christian man can simply and undisguisedly say what he knows to be true of himself, in reply to accusations— that his honour is unsullied, his chastity untainted, his truth indisputable, that though rude in speech he is not so in knowledge and yet how the same man can go into the secret sanctuary of his closet before God, and alone with his Maker bow himself in deepest self-abasement, and cry, “Unclean, unclean." That was the mistake Job's wise friends made. Job vindicated his own innocence, and bade them observe how the city was filled with his praises, and how when the eye saw him, it blessed him; and his friends charged him with boasting and justifying himself when he replied thus indignantly to their suspicions. To them this was a proof of his self-righteousness; they could not see how that relatively to man, he was righteous, yet that absolutely, before God, his feeling was, "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

If we have found out this afternoon in what true Christian modesty consists, we shall not have studied these verses in

vain.

It is not ignorance, it is not blindness, it is not affectation. It is not in hiding from ourselves what we are, nor in hiding from others what we know ourselves to be, but in placing before us ever the sublime unapproachable standard of Christ. Let a man once feel the beauty and holiness of that Life and he will feel that there is no room for vanity, for he will feel how small, how guilty, how erring and how ignorant he is. If we want to know the language of true modesty, here is an example of it: "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect; but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus." "Brethren" (he goes on to say), "I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Surely this cannot be vanity.

II. We must now notice the points of which St. Paul boasted.

First, That he had preached the essentials of the Gospel. "For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted; ye might well bear with him." In other words he had been a true minister, his matter had been true, whatever fault they might have found with his manner. And the men of Corinth thought that they had found much to blame in his manner. Some said he spoke the Greek tongue badly, as a foreigner; others said he had none of those graces of oratory that Apollos had, that he had not been a personal disciple of Christ, as St. Peter had. St. Paul told them that, better far than grace of language or eloquence, or mere adventitious outward circumstances, was the fact, that the truth he had

preached was the essential truth of the Gospel: and this truth he gives in a very few words, as Christ and Christ's Spirit. The central object of Christianity is Christ, not merely His Cross; Christ the risen and the crucified; Christ held not merely according to a set of doctrines and dogmas, but in the heart and life, the Spirit of the Cross and of the Resurrection: the Spirit of the Cross sundering the heart, no matter how painfully, year by year from the evil and devilry within us; the Spirit of the Resurrection raising us to all things high and pure and noble, leaving in the grave behind us all despondency, sadness, gloom and sin, and raising us up, as on angels' wings, to contemplate, and gradually to have formed within us, the purity of Him who sitteth on the right hand of God.

"Have I

Secondly, He boasts of his disinterestedness. committed an offence in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the Gospel of Christ freely?" We must remember that St. Paul had a right to be maintained by the church, not only because he was an apostle, but, as he had shown them, because it is a great law of God's universe, belonging equally to an ox or to a man, "The labourer is worthy of his hire." And he had taken sustenance from other churches, from that of Macedonia for instance, but he would not take anything from the Corinthians, and this not from pride, nor because he loved them less, but because he desired not to leave one single point anywhere on which his enemies might hang an accusation.

There is something exquisitely touching in the delicacy of the raillery (if we may venture to call it so), with which he asked if he had committed an offence in so doing. He asked them whether they were ashamed of a man of toil and labour -nay, was not this the very spirit of Him who was not born among the sons of idleness, but among those of toil and want and labour? Here is great encouragement for those who labour; they have no need to be ashamed of their labour,

for Christ Himself and His Apostle toiled for their own support. I think that it is especially necessary to urge this consideration now-the time has come when this truth must be more fully exhibited; for I think great changes are approaching in our social economy; there is a continual drifting of population from our shores, and gradually the distinction between rich and poor is becoming less prominently marked; the time is coming when mere idleness and leisure will not be a ground for boasting any longer, when that truth will come out in its entireness, that it is the law of our Humanity that all should work, whether with the brain or with the hands, and when it will be seen that he who does not or will not work, the sooner he is out of this work-a-day world of God's, the better.

Thirdly, St. Paul boasted of his sufferings: he enumerates them at too great length for me to touch upon all of them now, and we are all well acquainted with them, yet one or two we must notice. First he boasted of that which he had from God, his extraction. "Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I." Of his apostleship—" Are they ministers of Christ ? (I speak as a fool) I am more." Secondly, He tells of his stripes: in one verse he says that "of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one," and afterwards he says he was beaten with rods, thus proving that he was persecuted both by Jews and Gentiles he was a Jew and was persecuted by the Gentiles, and afterwards when he preached the salvability of the Gentiles, he was persecuted by the Jews. Are we surprised at this? he himself says, "If I yet pleased men, how should I please God? Then He mentions what he calls the most painful trial of all, the care of the churches: "Besides those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches." To his loving spirit, the dissensions, the quarrels of the converts were more hard to bear than any personal suffering. In this one sentence speaks the spirit of

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