g to a very common experience. The springs lie close
together up in the hills, the rivers may be parted by half a
continent.

These feuds were all the more detestable to the Apostle because his
name was dragged into them; and so he sets himself, in the first part
of this letter, with all his might, to shame and to argue the
Corinthian Christians out of their wrangling. This great text is one
of the considerations which he adduces with that purpose. In effect
he says, 'To pin your faith to any one teacher is a wilful narrowing
of the sources of your blessing and your wisdom. You say you are
Paul's men. Has Apollos got nothing that he could teach you? and may
you not get any good out of brave brother Cephas? Take them all; they
were all meant for your good. Let no man glory in individuals.'

That is all that his argument required him to say. But in his
impetuous way he goes on into regions far beyond. His thought, like
some swiftly revolving wheel, catches fire of its own rapid motion;
and he blazes up into this triumphant enumeration of all the things
that serve the soul which serves Jesus Christ. 'You are lords of men,
of the world of time, of death, of eternity; but you are not lords of
yourselves. You belong to Jesus, and in the measure in which you
belong to Him do all things belong to you.'

I. I think, then, that I shall best bring out the fulness of these
words by simply following them as they lie before us, and asking
you to consider, first, how Christ's servants are men's lords.

'All things are yours, Paul, Apollos, Cephas.' These three teachers
were all lights kindled at the central Light, and therefore shining.
They were fragments of His wisdom, of Him that spoke; varying, but
yet harmonious, and mutually complementary aspects of the one
infinite Truth had been committed to them. Each was but a part of the
mighty whole, a little segment of the circle

'They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord! art more than they.'

And in the measure, therefore, in which men adhere to Christ, and
have taken Him for theirs; in that measure are they delivered from
all undue dependence on, still more from all slavish submission to,
any single individual teacher or aspect of truth. To have Christ for
ours, and to be His, which are only the opposite sides of the same
thing, mean, in brief, to take Jesus Christ for the source of all
knowledge of moral and religious truth. His Word is the Christian's
creed, H