The loftiest Christian hopes have close relation to the lowliest Christian duties, and Paul’s triumphant song ends with plain, practical, prose exhortations to steadfastness, unmovable tenacity, and abundant fruitfulness, the motive and power of which will be found in the assurance that, since there is a life beyond, all labour here, however it may fail in the eyes of men, will not be in vain, but will tell on character and therefore on condition through eternity.  If our peace does not rest where we would fain see it settle, it will not be wasted, but will return to us again, like the dove to the ark, and we shall ‘self-enfold the large results of’ labour that seemed to have been thrown away.

STRONG AND LOVING

   ’Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like
   men, be strong. 14.  Let all your things be done
   with charity.’—­1 COR. xvi. 13, 14.

There is a singular contrast between the first four of these exhortations and the last.  The former ring sharp and short like pistol-shots; the last is of gentler mould.  The former sound like the word of command shouted from an officer along the ranks; and there is a military metaphor running all through them.  The foe threatens to advance; let the guards keep their eyes open.  He comes nearer; prepare for the charge, stand firm in your ranks.  The battle is joined; ‘quit you like men’—­strike a man’s stroke—­’be strong.’

And then all the apparatus of warfare is put away out of sight, and the captain’s word of command is softened into the Christian teacher’s exhortation:  ‘Let all your deeds be done in charity.’  For love is better than fighting, and is stronger than swords.  And yet, although there is a contrast here, there is also a sequence and connection.  No doubt these exhortations, which are Paul’s last word to that Corinthian Church on whom he had lavished in turn the treasures of his manifold eloquence, indignation, argumentation, and tenderness, reflected the deficiencies of the people to whom he was speaking.  They were schismatic and factious to the very core, and so they needed the exhortation to be left last in their ears, as it were, that everything should be done in love.  They were ill-grounded in regard to the very fundamental doctrines of the faith, as all Paul’s argumentation about the resurrection proves, and so they needed to be bidden to ‘stand fast in the faith.’  Their slothful carelessness as to the discipline of the Christian life, and their consequent feebleness of grasp of the Christian verities, made them loose-braced and weak in all respects, and incapacitated them for vigorous warfare.  Thus, we see a picture in these injunctions of the sort of community that Paul had to deal with in Corinth, which yet he called a Church of saints, and for which he loved and laboured.  Let me then run over and try to bring out the importance and mutual connection of what I may call this drill-book for the Christian warfare, which is the Christian life.