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Sketches from the Life of Paul
among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind
and in the same judgment. For it hath been declared unto me of you,
my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are
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contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith,
I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is
Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the
name of Paul?”
He also explains the reason of his manner of labor among them:
“And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as
unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk,
and not with meat; for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet
now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal; for whereas there is among
you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as
men?”
He thus shows them that he could not, when with them, address
them as those who had an experience in spiritual life and the mystery
of godliness. However wise they might have been in the worldly
knowledge, they were but babes in the knowledge of Christ; and it
was his work to instruct them in the rudiments, the very alphabet, of
Christian faith and doctrine. It was his part to sow the seed, which
another must water. It was the business of those who followed him, to
carry forward the work from the point where he had left it, and to give
spiritual light and knowledge in due season, as the church were able
to bear.
When he came to them, they had no experimental knowledge of the
way of salvation, and he was obliged to present the truth in its simplest
form. Their carnal minds could not discern the sacred revealings of
God; they were strangers to the manifestations of the divine power.
Paul had spoken to them as those who were ignorant of the operations
of that power upon the heart. They were carnal-minded, and the apostle
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was aware that they could not comprehend the mysteries of salvation;
for spiritual things must be spiritually discerned. He knew that many
of his hearers were proud believers in human theories, and reasoners
of false systems of theology, groping with blind eyes in the book of
nature for a contradiction of the spiritual and immortal life revealed in
the Book of God.
He knew that criticism would set about converting the Christian
interpretation of the revealed word, and skepticism would treat the