How beautiful is the mingled wisdom and charity with which the apostle handles the difficulty! It was absolutely none to him. The idol to him was not anything at all. It was a vain imagination of man’s vain heart. There could be no conscience of an idol in his mind in dealing with anything created by God, however the idol might have been connected with it by others. Who would recognise an usurper because he occupies the palace and assumes the signet of the rightful king? “_The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof._” The creature is the Lord’s, every limb, every particle. If I can but use it for the end for which the Lord created it and put it under my hand, I will rejoice and give thanks that so far the usurper is despoiled. Thus the instructed Jew would look at the matter: “_the idol is not anything at all_.” But the Corinthians were converted Gentiles. The idol was a reality, and a very terrible reality to them; in memory and association at any rate, if not in conviction. Relapse into idolatry, which was all round them, many dear to them being devoted to it, was a very pressing peril; and association with idolaters, with conscience of the idol in the act of association, might easily bring the danger near. There was but one thing which could deliver them; a thoroughly Christian conviction that the idol is not anything at all: that “_every creature of God is good and is to be received with thanksgiving, being sanctified by the word of God and by prayer_.” But these noble and lofty beliefs are not born in a moment. God had been for ages educating the Jews to the belief of which the Christian Paul, the Hebrew of the Hebrews, in this as in other things was reaping the fruit. And education is a slow and delicate process, and needs to be managed by a nursing hand. While these Gentile converts are being trained to this loftier view, beware lest, puffed up by your superior knowledge, your conduct tempts them to a course which will deaden that fine tact of conscience, by which alone, when it has fastened on the higher truth, the emancipation can be gained. Act on your higher knowledge as your rule of living. The fools and the weaklings are not to be the lords of life and the masters of the world. But if you see any attempt made to draw you into visible contact with the idol, that those weaker than you, led by your example, may be drawn into a contact which to them would be detrimental and degrading, bend the higher law for the moment, or rather lift it higher still—lose it in the lovelier law of charity, and practise a forbearance the motive of which is a brother’s good. “_All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth. Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake; for the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.