ed, though not
quite identical. 'Quit you like men.' Play a man's part in the
battle; strike with all the force of your muscles. But the Apostle
adds, 'be strong.' You cannot play a man's part unless you are. 'Be
strong'--the original would rather bear 'become strong.' What is the
use of telling men to '_be_ strong'? It is a waste of words, in
nine cases out of ten, to say to a weak man, 'Pluck up your courage,
and show strength.' But the Apostle uses a very uncommon word here,
at least uncommon in the New Testament, and another place where he
uses it will throw light upon what he means: 'Strengthened with might
by His Spirit in the inner man.' Then is it so vain a mockery to tell
a poor, weak creature like me to become strong, when you can point me
to the source of all strength, in that 'Spirit of power and of love
and of a sound mind'? We have only to take our weakness there to have
it stiffened into strength; as people put bits of wood into what are
called 'petrifying wells' which infiltrate into them mineral
particles, that do not turn the wood into stone, but make the wood as
strong as stone. So my manhood, with all its weakness, may have
filtered into it divine strength, which will brace me for all needful
duty, and make me 'more than conqueror through Him that loved us.'
Then, it is not mockery and cruelty, vanity and surplusage to preach
'Quit you like men; be strong, and be a man'; because if we will
observe the plain and not hard conditions, strength will come to us
according to our day, in fulfilment of the great promises: 'My grace
is sufficient for thee; and My strength is made perfect in weakness.'

And now we have done with the fighting words of command, and come to
the gentler exhortation: 'Let all your things be done in charity.'

That was a hard lesson for these Corinthians who were splitting
themselves into factions and sects, and tearing each other's eyes out
in their partisanship for various Christian teachers. But the advice
has a much wider application than to the suppression of squabbles in
Christian communities. It is the sum of all commandments of the
Christian life, if you will take love in its widest sense, in the
sense, that is, in which it is always used in Paul's writings. We cut
it into two halves, and think of it as sometimes meaning love to God,
and sometimes love to man. The two are inseparably inter-penetrated
in the New Testament writings; and so we have to interpret this
supreme c