Oh, brethren I let us cultivate the sense of our need of this divine help, for it does not come where men do not know how weak they are, and how much they want it.  The mountain tops are high,—­yes! and they are dry; there is no water there.  The rivers run in the green valleys deep down.  ‘God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.’  Let us see that we open our hearts to the reception of these quickening and cleansing influences, for it is possible for us to cover ourselves over with such an impenetrable covering that that grace cannot pass through it.  Let us see to it that we keep ourselves in close contact with the foundation of all this grace, even Jesus Christ Himself, by desire, by faith, by love, by communion, by meditation, by approximation, by sympathy, by service.  And let us see that we use the grace that we possess.  ’For to him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not’—­not possessing in any real sense because not utilising for its appointed purpose—­’shall be taken away even that he hath.’  Wherefore, brethren, I ’beseech you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.’

THE UNITY OF APOSTOLIC TEACHING

   ’Whether it were I or they, so we preach,
   and so ye believed.’—­1 COR. xv. 11.

Party spirit and faction were the curses of Greek civic life, and they had crept into at least one of the Greek churches—­that in the luxurious and powerful city of Corinth.  We know that there was a very considerable body of antagonists to Paul, who ranked themselves under the banner of Apollos or of Cephas i.e. Peter.  Therefore, Paul, keenly conscious that he was speaking to some unfriendly critics, hastens in the context to remove the possible objection which might be made, that the Gospel which he preached was peculiar to himself, and proceeds to assert that the whole substance of what he had to say to men, was held with unbroken unanimity by the other apostles.  ‘They’ means all of them; and ‘so’ means the summary of the Gospel teaching in the preceding verses.

Now, Paul would not have ventured to make that assertion, in the face of men whom he knew to be eager to pick holes in anything that he said, unless he had been perfectly sure of his ground.  There were broad differences between him and the others.  But their partisans might squabble, as is often the case, and the men, whose partisans they were, be unanimous.  There were differences of individual character, of temper, and of views about certain points of Christian truth.  But there was an unbroken front of unanimity in regard to all that lies within the compass of that little word which covers so much ground—­’So we preach.’

Now, I wish to turn to that outstanding fact—­which does not always attract the attention which it deserves—­of the absolute identity of the message which all the apostles and primitive teachers delivered, and to seek to enforce some of the considerations and lessons which seem to me naturally to flow from it.