The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-12-04
OUR RnExazous conunrN.

teaches us that the rule holds good i'm divine
= things as well. We shall not dwell upon the
I sin recorded and dealt with in this chapter. 1t
! Is painful to think that even in the Church at
Corinth, Church so lately called to the know
/ ledge of the truth, and endowed with SO many
miraculous gifts as we know it to have possessed
sin of so fragrant character should have been
i committed. Neither shall we dwell on the sem
81 tence pronounced upon the offender, which en-
braces more than mere exclusion from the
/ Christian community and implies the exercise
. of a peculiar power, the possession of which
by the Church seems to have passed
away. The Apostle resolves that the
guilty member of the Corinthian Church
referred to shall be delivered upto Satan
'tfor the destruction of the lesh;" that
is, that he may become the victim of bodily sick
ness and disease, so that, under the pressure of
temporal aflliction, his conscience may be
| awakened, his sinful inclinations destroyed and
the bitterness of the fruits of sin brought home
/ to him. 1t is not solitary instance in the New
Testament of such punishment. Elymas the
j sorcerer was struck blind when he resisted st.
Paul; and we read in this very epistle of disease
! and death brought upon the Corinthians for
their PROCLAMATION of the Lords Supper-''for
this cause many are weak and sckly among
you, and many sleep" In the instance before
u.s. indeed, it was not found necessary to nfct
the punishment denounced. The Apostle resolves
only that it shall be inflicted at u certain time
and in certain way, leaving, of course, in the
meanwhile, the possibility of repentance to the
offender, possibility which we know, from
Cor. ii. 5-S, became reality. He did repent;
there was even danger that he would be swal-
lowed up with overmuch sorrow; the Apostle
had to enjoin the Corinthians to forgive him,
and to confirm their love towards him.
Hnny for n ei,,,i1, 90, tlott
nounced could now be inflicted in its complete
ness it is difficult to say. On the one hand, it
may be urged that there is here the direct exer-
else of apostolic power; and that without the
possession of those apostolic gifts which sub
stantiated and regulated the exercise of that
power, any attempt on the part Of the Church
of our day to exercise it could only prove dan
gerous to others, and draw down rdcule on
herself. On the other hand, it is to be noticed
that st. Paul does not seem to place himself in
the passage before us, on any platform distinct
|, from that occupied by the Church. No doubt
he takes the lead, but he associates the Church
with himself; the sentence is finally to be the
Church's, and not his. We are thus led up into
question which does not seem to have been
yet adequately discussed, the distinctions drawn
in connection with which are rather in a high
degree arbitrary and unsatisfactory-th ques-
ton, viz, How far the powers of the Apostolic
Church were peculiar to it, or, How far they
were at least intended by the Saviour to be the
! possession of his people in all ages.
Having said thus much upon points all notice
of which it was hardly possible to omit we turn
to what more Immediately concerns the ques-
ton before us in this paper, How shall we best
reprcss sin in the Christian Church:
1t is the duty of the Church at large. the duty
ofeach particular congregation, of each Chris
tan community, to keep alive in its members
the feeling that they are one united whole, not
mere collection of individual persons, each
standing apart from the rest and concerned only
about his own salvation, but an organized body,
all whose parts are bound together for the pro-
duction OF holy result in which all are into
rested to which all are bound, but which none
of them can produce separately. There seems
reason to fear that the force of this conception
of church's-of a gation's-calling is not
sufficiently felt among There is earnest zeal,
anxious prayer, self-denyng effort on the part
of tens of thousands of the members of our con-
gregations to grow up to the great standard o,
the divine life presented in Christ Jesus. In
many private chamber, in many family cir
Gle, in the midst of us the Saviour sees Of the
travail of his soul and is satisfied. Nothing can
be more beautiful, nothing more sanity, than the
specimens of these to which, thank God, we can
point on every side. But can we speak
equally of congregational, of common, effort in
the same great cause? Is the idea of the COM
mon responsibility sufficiently impressed upon
us? Do we feel enough that we are not only our
own but our brothers and our sisters keepers;
that when they stand strong in the lovely life OF
Christianity, we have share in the blessing;
that when they fall the blame is in part ours?
An old Father of the Church writes:-'They say
in the traditions that Matthew the Apostle con-
stantly said that, if the neighbor of an elect
n man sin, the elect man has sinned For,
prescribes, his neighbor also would have
been filled with such reverence for the
} life he led as not to sim" Could these words
J have been written by many now The feeling
of strangeness with which most will at first read
them is the answer in the negative. And the
negative is confirmed by the bitter complaints
! made, during the commercial disasters of the
" last few years, only against those often office
bearers even in their different churches, who
were the immediate instruments of the calami
>>,ties and dishonor. Were these complaints IL
their exclusiveness just? We have no wish tC
defend those against whom they were made
Let them be condemned they deserve to be
and let the condemnation be continued aftel
they have retrieved their own fortunes
y while their victims pine and die. But die
!. it never occur to the general Christian commu
nifty that it was largely partaker of the sin
thot, by its own love of luxury and display, by
= its too common haste to be rich, by it
want of plainness and simplicity and practca