The above account assumes that St. Paul's _second visit_ to Corinth was paid before 1 Corinthians was written, but it is thought by some writers of repute that it was paid after 1 Corinthians was written and before 2 Corinthians. [Sidenote Character and Contents.] This Epistle, like each of the three other Epistles belonging to the same group, has a perfectly distinct character of its own. It expounds the doctrine of a crucified Christ as applied to social difficulties. What Romans does as a theological treatise, and Galatians as a controversial admonition, and 2 Corinthians as a record of personal experience and vocation, this 1 Corinthians does as an instruction for influencing a corrupt urban life with the leaven of the gospel. It is very practical in tone, and the doctrine which it contains is not stated separately, but is throughout woven into the cords of the apostle's argument. There is nothing in the New Testament equal to this Epistle in its power of bringing us close to the difficulties of the Church in an ancient city. We seem to see the men and women who composed it--their eagerness for religious novelties, their debased surroundings, their anarchic divisions, their frail sense of moral responsibility. And a modern reader will probably lay the letter down with a conviction that our great modern cities have much to learn from the words written by St. Paul to Corinth, "the light of Greece." The Epistle is very olderly in arrangement. It deals first with the report which St. Paul had received about the Corinthian Church (i.-vi.); then it answers various questions {137} which the Corinthians had submitted to him (vii.-xi. 1). Then follow directions based on the report and the questions.