was afterwards shipwrecked, and came so near losing his life.

The constant influx of trade from age to age, made Corinth the richest city of Greece. Wealth, in the control of so ingenious a people as the Greeks, gave rise to a wonderful development of the arts, and Corinth became one of the most beautiful cities of the world. Its public buildings were most costly and magnificent, its squares and streets were adorned with beautiful trees and exquisite statuary. It was not wanting in literary cultivation. Extensive schools of philosophy, rhetoric, and the fine arts were established, and men of all professions resorted there from all parts of the world to seek either education, or distinction, or wealth in their several pursuits. Such advantages, without any better guide or restraint than Paganism, produced their natural result-luxury and licentiousness. Its inhabitants became as famous for their dissipation, as for their wealth; and to Corinthize became a proverbial phrase for plunging into the depths of dissoluteness and sensuality. The Pagan religion, every where loose in its moral precepts, here appeared as the patroness of debauchery, and their sacred rites were administered with a strong admixture of animal indulgence.

Among the foreigners who had resorted to this city were a number of Jews, and as in other cities of the Roman empire, they were permitted to have a

synagogue, and the free exercise of their religion. They were even allowed, to a certain extent, the enjoyment of their own civil laws, so that it was unnecessary for them to carry their legal differences before the Roman tribunals. This was the more convenient and advantageous, as they had a form of administering justice, which of all human contrivances, seems to be the most admirably fitted for that purpose, that of arbitration. One of the litigants chose a referee, the other chose another, and they together chose a third, and the decision of the three was final and conclusive.

Such was the condition of Corinth, when in the year fifty-one from the birth of Christ, and eighteen from his ascension, it was visited by Paul, with his companions Silas and Timothy. Of all the cities of Greece, and perhaps of the world, this was the last in which the pure and spiritual doctrines of Christianity could hope to find a reception. In refined and intellectual Athens, the Apostle seems to have made little or no impression. But in Corinth, surfeited by wealth and drowned in pleasure, his doctrine found hearers, and his mission was crowned with success. He was favored by an especial vision of encouragement of the Saviour saying to him, "Fear not, but speak, and keep not silence; for I am with thee, and no one shall set upon thee to do thee harm; for I have much people in this city."

As usual in other cities, his first public appearance was in the synagogue. There, every sabbath, he preached to the Jews and proselytes, endeavoring to persuade them that Jesus was the Messiah. In this city he made the acquaintance of Aquila and Priscilla, a Jew and his wife, natives of Pontus in Asia, persons of most estimable character, and who seem to have been his warm and attached adherents as long as he lived. They were tent-makers by trade, and Paul having been educated to the same mechanic art, became an inmate of their house, and to his eternal honor, sustained himself by his daily labor, while on the sabbath days he dispensed the Gospel of salvation. With the Jews, his preaching was not successful. But with the proselytes his doctrines met with a more ready reception. They moreover, holding a middle ground between the Jews and Pagans, gave the Apostle a more ready introduction to those who had taken no interest in the Jewish religion. To facilitate his intercourse with the latter, he changed his lodgings from the house of Aquila and Priscilla, who were Jews, to that of Justus, a proselyte, in the neighborhood of the synagogue. Here he remained for eighteen months, preaching with great success. His success is indicated by the opposition which was excited among the Jews. At the end of a year and a half, they prosecuted him before the Roman Proconsul, for teaching men to worship God contrary to their

law. Gallio was then Proconsul of Achaia, a brother of Seneca the philosopher, a man of great excellence and moderation of character, and he gave the complaint of the Jews just the answer it deserved: "If it were a matter of wrong or wickedness, O ye Jews, it were reasonable for me to listen to you. But if it be a question of words, and names, and of your law, you must settle it among yourselves, for I will be no judge of such matters. And he drove them from the judgment seat."

Paul, seeing his usefulness temporarily suspended by this public disturbance, set the church in order which he had established, and sailed for Syria, taking with him Aquila and Priscilla. The vessel touched at Ephesus, and there his companions took up their residence. He himself, during the stay of the vessel, went into the synagogue of the Jews and taught. He was well received, and invited to remain among them. But he declined for the present, being bound, it is supposed, by a vow which he had made at Cenchreæ, the seaport of Corinth, to be at Jerusalem at the next feast. After visiting Jerusalem, and having made a tour through Asia Minor, confirming the churches, which he had formerly planted, he came again to Ephesus.

Here he had bad accounts of the church which he had planted at Corinth. They had fallen into errors of doctrine, and corruptions of practice. Upon this

he wrote them a letter, which is now lost, concerning principally, as it would seem, an incestuous marriage between a man and his stepmother. This drew from them a letter in reply, which has likewise perished, concerning several matters of faith, morals and discipline. Paul's replies to these enquiries, we have in what we call, the first Epistle to the Corinthians.

After the salutation, the first subject of rebuke, is their partizan character and proceedings. This tendency they derived from the sects of the Pagan philosophy, or perhaps, we may as well say, from the original bias of human nature. The city had been for ages filled with the schools of the different sects of the Grecian philosophy. There were the Stoics, the Epicureans, Peripatetics, the Eclectics and the Academics, all boasting to belong to the school of Zeno, or Plato, Carneades, or Epicurus. When Paul came among them, and afterward Apollos, preaching Jesus as the founder of their religion, they introduced into the Christian church the habit so universal among the followers of the Greek philosophers, of calling themselves according to their individual preferences after the principal Christian teachers. One said that he was of Paul, another that he was of Apollos, another who might have been a hearer of Peter in some other quarter of the world, said he was of Cephas, another that he was of Christ.