may dwell in your hearts by faith." This manifestation of joy and good to the Gentiles was, according to him, the great mystery of Love. A Love, brighter, deeper, wider, higher, than the largest human heart had ever yet dreamed of. But the apostle tells us it is, after all, but a glimpse of the love of God. How should we learn it more? How should we comprehend the whole meaning of the Epiphany? By sitting down to read works of theology? The Apostle Paul tells us - No. You must love, in order to understand love. "That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length, and depth and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge." Brother men, one act of charity, will teach us more of the love of God than a thousand sermons; one act of unselfishness, of real self-denial, the putting forth of one loving feeling to the outcast and "those who are out of the way,” vll tell us more of the meaning of the Epiphany tin whole volumes of the wisest writers on theology.

CORINTHIANS viii. 7–13. "Howbeit there is not in every man that Knowledge: for some, with conscience of the idol, unto this hour, eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled. But meat commendeth us not to God for neither if we eat are we the better; neither if we eat not are we the worse. But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak. For if any man see thee, which hast knowledge, sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him, which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols; and through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? But when ye sin so against the brethren 'and' wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."

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We have already divided this chapter into two branches, the former portion of it containing the difference between Christian knowledge and secular knowledge, and the second portion containing the apostolic exposition of the law of Christian conscience. The first of these we endeavored to expound last Sun day, but it may be well briefly to recapitulate the prin ciples of that discourse in a somewhat different form. Corinth, as we all know and remember, was a city built on the sea-coast, having a large and free communication

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with all foreign nations; and there was also within it, and going on amongst its inhabitants, a free interchange of thought, and a vivid power of communicating the philosophy and truths of those days to each other. Now, it is plain that to a society in such a state, and to minds so educated, the Gospel of Christ must have presented a peculiar attraction, presenting itself to them, as it did, as a law of Christian liberty. And so in Corinth the Gospel had "free course and was glorified," and was received with great joy by almost all men, and by minds of all classes and all sects; and a large number of these attached themselves to the teaching of the Apostle Paul, as the most accredited expounder of Christianity, the "royal law of liberty" But it seems, from what we read in this epistle, that a large number of these men received Christianity as a thing intellectual, and that alone, and not as a thing which touched the conscience, and swayed and purified the affections. And so this liberty became to them almost all they ran into sin or went to extravagance; they rejoiced in their freedom from the superstitions, the ignorances, and the scruples, which bound their weaker brethren; but had no charity none of that intense charity which characterized the Apostle Paul, for those still struggling in the delusions and darkness from which they themselves were free. More than that, they demanded their right, their Christian liberty of expressing their opinions in the Church, merely for the sake of exhibiting the Christian graces and spiritual gifts which had been showered upon them so largely; until, by degrees, those very assemblies became a lamentable exhibition of their own depravity, and led to numerous irregularities, which we find severely

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rebuked by the Apostle Paul. Their women, rejoicing in the emancipation which had been given to the Chris tian community, laid aside the old habits of attire which had been consecrated so long by Grecian and Jewish custom, and appeared with their heads uncovered in the Christian community. Still further than that, the Lord's Supper exhibited an absence of all solemnity and seemed more a meeting for licentious gratification, where "one was hungry, and another was drunken," a place, in which earthly drunkenness, the mere enjoy ment of the appetites, had taken the place of Christian charity towards each other. And the same feeling this love of mere liberty, liberty in itself manifested itself in many other directions. Holding by this freedom, their philosophy taught that the body that is, the flesh was the only cause of sin; that the soul was holy and pure, and that, therefore, to be free from the body would be entire, perfect, Christian emancipation. And so came in that strange, wrong doctrine,. exhibited in Corinth, where immortality was taught separate from, and in opposition to, the doctrine of the resurrec tionwAnd afterwards they went on with their conclu sions about liberty, to maintain that the body, justified by the sacrifice of Christ, was no longer capable of sin; and that in the evil which was done by the body the soul had taken no part. And, therefore, sin was to them but as a name, from which a Christian conscience was to be freed altogether. So that, when one of their number had fallen into grievous sin, and had committed fornication, "such as was not so much as named among the Gentiles," so far from being humbled by it, they were "puffed up," as if they were exhibiting to the world an enlightened, true, perfect

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Christianity, separate from all prejudices. To such a society, and to such a state of mind, the Apostle Paul preached, in all its length, breadth, and fulness, the humbling doctrines of the Cross of Christ. He taught that knowledge was one thing, that charity was another thing; that "knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up." He reminded them that love was the perfection of knowledge. In other words, his teaching came to this there are two kinds of knowledge-the one, the knowledge of the intellect; the other, the knowledge of the heart. Intellectually, God never can be known; He must be known by Love; for, "if any man love God, the same is known of Him.". Here, then, we have arrived, in another way, at precisely the same conclusion at which we arrived last Sunday. Here are two kinds of knowledge-secular knowledge and Christian knowledge; and Christian knowledge is this; to know by Love.

Let us now consider the remainder of the chapter, which treats of the law of Christian conscience. You will observe that it divides itself into two branches. the first containing an exposition of the law itself, and the second the Christian applications which flow out of this exposition.

I. The way in which the apostle expounds the law of Christian conscience is this: Guilt is contracted by the soul, in so far as it sins against and transgresses the law of God, by doing that which it believes to be wrong; not so much what is wrong as what appears to it to be wrong. This is the doctrine distinctly laid down in the 7th and 8th verses. The apostle, tells the Corinthians these strong-minded Corinthians —–