orinth, the other great city of Achaia; and he tells us himself that
he arrived there in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.

106. Corinth.--There was in Corinth enough of the spirit of Athens to
prevent these feelings from being easily assuaged. Corinth was to
Athens very much what Glasgow is to Edinburgh. The one was the
commercial, the other the intellectual capital of the country. Even
the situations of the two places in Greece resembled in some respects
those of these two cities in Scotland. But the Corinthians also were
full of disputatious curiosity and intellectual hauteur. Paul dreaded
the same kind of reception as he had met with in Athens. Could it be
that these were people for whom the gospel had no message? This was
the staggering question which was making him tremble. There seemed to
be nothing in them on which the gospel could take hold: they appeared
to feel no wants which it could satisfy.

107. There were other elements of discouragement in Corinth. It was
the Paris of ancient times--a city rich and luxurious, wholly abandoned
to sensuality. Vice displayed itself without shame in forms which
struck deadly despair into Paul's pure Jewish mind. Could men be
rescued from the grasp of such monstrous vices? Besides, the
opposition of the Jews rose here to unusual virulence. He was
compelled at length to depart from the synagogue altogether, and did so
with expressions of strong feeling. Was the soldier of Christ going to
be driven off the field and forced to confess that the gospel was not
suited for cultured Greece? It looked like it.

108. But the tide turned. At the critical moment Paul was visited
with one of those visions which were wont to be vouchsafed to him at
the most trying and decisive crises of his history. The Lord appeared
to him in the night, saying, "Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not
thy peace; for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt
thee; for I have much people in this city." The apostle took courage
again, and the causes of discouragement began to clear away. The
opposition of the Jews was broken, when they hurried him with mob
violence before the Roman governor, Gallio, but were dismissed from the
tribunal with ignominy and disdain. The very president of the
synagogue became a Christian, and conversions multiplied among the
native Corinthians. Paul enjoyed the solace of living under the roof
of two leal-hearted friends of his