9, 10), would be constantly brought into contact with it, and through it, it might seem to them, with the idol by whose name it had been consecrated. A serious difficulty would thus arise. I beg you to mark carefully where the real heart of the difficulty lay. It was not at all a question of meat in itself, noxious in quality or becoming noxious by quantity. If it had been a question of a man eating unwholesome food, or eating good food to excess, damaging health of body and mind thereby, I cannot imagine that Paul would have treated it as a difficult question at all. You have a sinful habit he would say, you are injuring and destroying your system; you must break it, absolutely, decisively, or perish: what help I can give you as man to man, by the influence of my words or works, is at your service; but it is no question of what I do or do not: it is a simple point, it is between you and God; fly to Him for grace and strength, and master your lust. But here the case is quite different. It is a case not of a vicious habit, but of a puzzled conscience; a feeble apprehension of truth, a doubt as to what is right or wrong, in which the conduct of the wise and enlightened would be a most wholesome and valuable guide. This weak soul trying to see its way needed guidance. What a glutton or a sot needs is power. For the one use, example is most precious; the other need can only be supplied from a yet deeper spring. How far am I in contact with idolatry in this eating of meat offered to idols? might easily be a very fair question; and not only with the weakest of the young Gentile Church. Some would eat it with conscience of the idol. They would be pained and distressed, and a constant tolerance of such pain and distress is demoralizing. Doing great acts of life with a half heart, with a troubled faith, paralyses conscience, and in the end opens the way to tremendous sins. The constant converse with idolatry which attending these feasts with a “conscience of the idol” would generate, might easily end in apostasy, shipwreck of faith and hope for ever.