being veiled, as if they were Greek courtesans; the Agapae, or love-feasts, had degenerated into luxurious banquets; and unchastity, the peculiar vice of the Corinthians, went unrebuked.  These evils Paul rebukes, and lays down rules for the faithful in reference to marriage, to the position of women, to the observance of the Lord’s Supper, and sundry other things, enjoining forbearance and love.  His chapter in reference to charity is justly regarded by all writers and commentators as the nearest approach in Christian literature to the Sermon on the Mount.  Scarcely less remarkable is the chapter on death and the resurrection, shedding more light on that great subject than all other writers combined in heathen and Christian annals,—­one of the profoundest treatises ever written by mortal man, and which can be explained only as the result of a supernatural revelation.

Paul’s second sojourn in Macedonia lasted only six months; this time he spent in going from city to city confirming the infant churches, remaining longest in Thessalonica and Philippi, where his most faithful converts were found.  Here Titus joined him, bringing good news from Corinth.  Still, there were dissensions and evils in that troublesome church which called for a second letter.  In this letter he sets forth, not in the spirit of egotism, the various sufferings and perils he had endured, few of which are alluded to by Luke:  “Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one; thrice was I beaten with rods; once was I stoned; thrice I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day have I spent in the deep; in journeyings often; in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own race, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in toil and weariness, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often; besides anxiety for all the churches.”

It was probably at the close of the year 57 A.D. that Paul set out for Corinth, with Titus, Timothy, Sosthenes, and other companions.  During the three months he remained in that city he probably wrote his Epistle to the Galatians and his Epistle to the Romans,—­the latter the most profound of all his writings, setting forth the sum and substance of his theology, in which the great doctrine of justification by faith is severely elaborated.  The whole epistle is a war on pagan philosophy, the insufficiency of good works without faith,—­the lever by which in later times Wyclif, Huss, Luther, Calvin, Knox, and Saint Cyran overthrew a pharisaic system of outward righteousness.  In the Epistle to the Galatians Paul speaks with unusual boldness and earnestness, severely rebuking them for their departure from the truth, and reiterating with dogmatic ardor the inutility of circumcision as of the Law abrogated by Christ, with whom, in the liberty which he proclaimed, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but