out
spiritual things, and also very deep and subtle thinkers about spiritual
things. So far so good. These are great gifts--gifts of Christ, too,--
tokens that God's spirit is with them, and that all they need is to be
true to His gracious inspirations. Then, when he has told them that, or
rather made them understand that he knows that, and is delighted at it,
then he can go on safely and boldly to tell them of their sins also in
the plainest and sternest and yet the most tender and fatherly language.

This is very important, my friends. I cannot tell you fully how
important I think it, in more ways than one. I am sure that if we took
St Paul's method with our children we should succeed with them far better
than we do. And I think, I have thought long, that if we could see that
St Paul's method with those Corinthians was actually the same as God's
method with us, we should have far truer notions of God, and God's
dealings with us; and should reverence and value far more that Holy
Catholic Church into which we have been, by God's infinite mercy,
baptized, and wherein we have been educated.

For, and now I entreat you to listen to me carefully, you who have sound
heads and earnest hearts, ready and willing to know the truth about God
and yourselves, if St Paul looked at the Corinthians in this light, may
not God have looked at them in the same light? If St Paul accepted them
for the sake of the good which was in them, in spite of all their faults,
may not God have accepted them for the sake of the good which was in
them, in spite of all their faults? and may not He accept us likewise? I
think it must be so. For was not St Paul an inspired apostle? and are
not these words of his inspired by the Holy Spirit of God? But if so,
then the Spirit of God must have looked at these Corinthians in the same
light as St Paul, and therefore God must do likewise, because the Holy
Spirit is God. Must it not be so? Can we suppose that God would take
one view of these Corinthians, and then inspire St Paul to take another
view? What does being inspired mean at all, save having the mind of
Christ and of God,--being taught to see men and things as God sees them,
to feel for them and think of them as God does? If inspiration does not
mean that, what does it mean? Therefore, I think, we have a right to
believe that St Paul's words express the mind of God concerning these
Corinthians; that God was p