as a

to see in them. He had a right, for instance, to claim his personal maintenance from those whom he served in "spiritual things;" and he strongly vindicates that right for his fellow-labourers in the service of the gospel. But he had an equal right to dispense with any such assistance, and to support himself by his own manual labour. He tells us that he chose the latter alternative, and preferred to “labour and travail night and day " at the rough and ill-paid tent-making; although we may be sure it would have been far more congenial to himself, and in many respects more advantageous for his work, to spend the time thus employed in study and in prayer. For he judged that under the circumstances this would be the more expedient course for himself, in the interest of the widely scattered churches to which he ministered, and under the continual suspicions and misrepresentations by which he was pursued. He kept himself "free from all" that he might be the servant of all." And while he stoutly maintained the indifference of "meats" question of principle, he was ready to make every possible concession in practice, where the safety of a "weak brother" was concerned. "If meat make my brother to stumble,"why, then, he cries, "I will eat no meat for evermore." he claims no peculiar privilege of self-denial. He gathers from his own conduct a general precept for the Christian life; and bids the contentious and self-asserting Corinthians learn from him to "give no occasion of stumbling, either to Jews, or to Greeks, or to the Church of God; even as he also pleased all men in all things, not seeking his own profit, but the profit of the many" (chap. x. 32, 33). He shows us how to combine the utmost rigour, the most uncompromising thoroughness of principle with a tender sensitiveness to the prejudices of unenlightened minds or timid souls, and with the most generous spirit of concession and accommodation to the moral necessities of others. He teaches us that if we are strong indeed, and our strength is the strength of Christ in

But

us, it must be shown in the patience with which we bear the infirmities of others, and not in the wilfulness with which we

please ourselves at their expense. For the sake of the young and the weak around us, our liberty must be often, and in many things, a liberty of abstinence rather than of use, a liberty to self-denial, not to self-indulgence. If we "destroy him with our meat for whom Christ died," if we knowingly "wound weak consciences" by a freedom which they cannot understand and which tempts them into moral peril, then, he would have us understand, we "sin against Christ," and must answer for it at His judgment-seat.

In both passages the apostle's argument culminates in one ultimate appeal, in the face of which every sinful licence, or doubtful indulgence, or rash, uncharitable use of liberty, stands solemnly and finally condemned. He invokes the supreme imperative of religion, which Christianity seeks to make the all-pervading law of life: "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God."

It

St. Paul's treatment of the above topics might furnish a suitable standpoint from which to consider philosophically the relations of duty and expediency, the honestum and the utile in morals; and from which to attempt their adjustment. may be worth while, at any rate, without venturing on so large a task, to point out in a few words the position which he appears to take in regard to this great discussion.

He distinguishes emphatically between that which is intrinsically right or wrong (in itself, and always, to all men), and that which is so extrinsically and relatively (to me or thee, situated thus or thus). The ground of the absolutely right he finds at once in the declared law of God, and in the proper nature of man; or (including both definitions) in the divine. end of human life. Here lie those primary, constitutional moralities, wrought into the very fibre and framework of our being, which it is treason alike against God and the soul to

11 Cor. viii. 9-13.

U

question; and which, however much they are defied and outraged, never fail to avenge themselves, both on society and on the individual transgressor. But while our apostle insists so strongly on essential and à priori morality, at the same time he allows wide scope to the utilitarian principle in Christian ethics. He recognises the use of experience, the necessity of judging actions by their consequences, and the large place which Expediency claims to occupy as a guide in the conduct of life. Bentham himself is not more shrewd in the appliIcation of the utilitarian calculus than St. Paul. Both of these moralists make the practical welfare of mankind the standard by which to judge of the usefulness, and therefore the rightness, of contingent action. St. Paul's criterion, "the profit of the many, that they may be saved," is parallel— though at how great a distance-to Bentham's "greatest happiness of the greatest number." They differ and differ toto cœlo-in that the Christian apostle finds within the sphere of the contingent and experimental an inner realm of absolute and immutable righteousness, by its relation to which the whole of the outer circle of the contingently moral is governed and determined. This inner region is the province of the moral Reason or Conscience proper (Kant's Pure Practical Reason): the outer field belongs to the moral Judgment, the judgment moralized by the action of the indwelling conscience. The two regions may be distinguished as forming the higher and lower, the primary and secondary, the direct and indirect moralities of life. Between them they cover the whole of human conduct. Righteousness is the ideal of the first; Expediency, as subordinate to Righteousness, is the sub-ideal1 which governs the second.

Differing as to the criterion of moral conduct, the Christian apostle and the modern philosopher are entirely at variance in

1 This expression is borrowed from A Treatise on the Moral Ideals (Bell & Sons, 1876), by the late Professor John Grote, a singularly fair-minded and luminous philosophical teacher.

regard to the summum bonum, the true well-being of mankind. The latter finds it in pleasure; the former in character.1 And so, on the Benthamite theory, the right depends upon the useful, which in the last analysis becomes the pleasure-giving; in the Pauline teaching, the useful depends upon the right, and is therefore the soul-saving.

The distinction between the directly and indirectly moral, so fundamental in St. Paul's ethical philosophy, corresponds in its content with that between persons and things. The former he regards, with Kant, as "ends in themselves;" the latter as "means" only, having a moral value relative to the personal ends which they subserve. And he bids us use the non-moral elements of life only in such a way as to promote to the utmost those moral interests in which alone personal well-being consists. St. Paul would certainly have endorsed the maxim of the great German transcendentalist: "So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only." His own maxim, "Do all to the glory of God," is indeed the complement and the corrective of this. For the perfection of man and the glory of God are, in the Christian. view, ends that coincide. The unity of God and man in Jesus Christ is the proof that a perfect manhood and a full conformity to the will of God are ideals united and inseparable. And they claim for their realization the whole of human life and of human history.

GEORGE G. FINDLAY.

See, e.g., 1 Cor. i. 8; Col. i. 22, 28; Eph. i. 4.

STUDIES IN THE MINOR PROPHETS.

JOEL.

III.-The Day of the Lord.

All

WE are now prepared, having studied the background of contemporary facts on which the prophecy of Joel is set forth, to look more closely into the leading features which characterize the language of the book. We must expect that it will be pervaded throughout with the symbolism derived from natural events and a providential visitation, which are distinctly emphasized by the prophet as steeped with special divine significance. But we are immediately confronted with a bold metaphor, to which we are accustomed as students of Scripture, as it stands out more or less clearly through the whole volume of Revelation, but which became from the time of Joel the leading note in all the prophetic messages. that the prophets threaten and predict, all their warnings and appeals, concentrate the lines of divine purpose and agency towards a meeting-place of righteous judgment, which at the same time shall be the vindication of a perfect righteousness, and the bright revelation of the mystery of love "hidden from ages and generations." Joel stands like a herald on the mountain-top of his inspired vision and hails the streak of light upon the horizon. Behold, he says, "the day of the Lord"! What did he mean? What did succeeding prophets mean by such a proclamation? That we may fully understand this "burden of the word of the Lord," let us, first, put together the language of this first of the written prophecies, and then examine the scriptural foundation on which the messenger stood in the use of such language. Thus we shall be able to appreciate both its special significance as addressed