The words of Paul to his Corinthian converts may furnish you with new
interpretations of your own daily life and duty.
If they were God's husbandry, or God's building, are not you? If the
Spirit of God dwelt in them, how does He not dwell likewise in you?
striving for your growth in holiness and good purpose, and for your
salvation from sin and its defilements, as he strove for theirs?
And if it was good for every man in that Corinthian community to be
warned how he built upon the foundation of life that had been laid in
Christ; if it was good for them to be reminded that every man's work
would be made manifest, and that the fire would try it, of what sort it
was; it is good also for us, masters and boys alike, to remember that we
are living under the same law, and that we should take care lest haply we
be found to be working against God.
That Epistle of St. Paul's was written in pain and anguish of heart. The
seeds of Christian life which he had sown among them, the purifying
influences of the Holy Spirit which were working among them through him
and his fellow-labourers, all these ought to have produced fruits easily
described, such as peace and love, and purity, and good works; but
instead of these, and threatening their destruction, there had sprung up
dissension and strife, party spirit, self-conceit, and gross sins which I
need not name.
In all this there was grief, disappointment, bitterness; for did they not
prove that his work was threatened with failure?
Yet in all that storm of feeling his chief exhortation is this reminder
of the dignity of their calling. In the midst of all their sin and
failure, though he does not spare rebuke and warning, he always aims at
inspiring them by uplifting. And we know that this is the true method,
because there is nothing which exercises an influence so strong to uplift
and purify as the feeling of our kinship with the life above us, and that
we are degrading our life when we forget this or ignore it. And herein
is the value of this word of his that God is dwelling and working in us.
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, that the Holy Ghost dwelleth
in you, and that God's temple is holy? and if any man destroy the temple
of God, him shall God destroy."
Let us then begin again our common life with a determination to bear in
mind the possibilities and the sanctity of each separate soul that comes
amongst us.
Living in crowds, we are apt to forget this; and, forgetting it, some
treat their own souls as if they were of no value, and some the souls of
others, and so the work of sin and waste goes on from generation to
generation.
But in our best moments, in our times of serious thought, if we have been
once enlightened, we can never again cease to feel the dignity and the
value of each human life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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