toleration of foul sins, grave abuses in
their worship even at the Lord's Supper, gross errors in opinion in
the denial of the Resurrection. And in this last solemn warning he
traces all these vices to their fountainhead--the defect of love to
Jesus Christ--and warns of their fatal issue. 'Let him be Anathema.'

But he will not leave these terrible words for his last. The thunder
is followed by gentle rain, and the sun glistens on the drops; 'The
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.' Nor for himself will
he let the last impression be one of rebuke or even of warning. He
desires to show that his heart yearns over them all; so he gathers
them all--the partisans; the poor brother that has fallen into sin;
the lax ones who, in their misplaced tenderness, had left him in his
sin; the misguided reasoners who had struck the Resurrection out of
the articles of the Christian creed--he gathers them all into his
final salutation, and he says, 'Take and share my love--though I have
had to rebuke--amongst the whole of you.'

Is not that beautiful? And does not the juxtaposition of such
messages in this farewell go deeper than the revelation of Paul's
character? May we not see, in these terrible and tender thoughts thus
inextricably intertwined and braided together, a revelation of the
true nature both of the terror and the tenderness of the Gospel which
Paul preached? It is from that point of view that I wish to look at
them now.

I. I take first that thought--the terror of the fate of the unloving.

Now, I must ask you for a moment's attention in regard to these two
untranslated words. _Anathema Maran-atha_. The first thing to be
noticed is that the latter of them stands independently of the
former, and forms a sentence by itself, as I shall have to show you
presently. 'Anathema' means an offering, or a thing devoted; and its
use in the New Testament arises from its use in the Greek translation
of the Old Testament, where it is employed for persons and things
that, in a peculiar sense, were set apart and devoted to God. In the
story of the conquest of Canaan, for instance, we read of Jericho and
other places, persons, or things that were, as our version somewhat
unfortunately renders it, 'accursed,' or as it ought rather to be
rendered, 'devoted,' or 'put under a ban.' And this 'devotion' was of
such a sort as that the things or persons devoted were doomed to
destruction. All the dreadful things that were done in the