but their spirit that was faulty. With whatever purpose of
annoyance they were animated, they did 'preach Christ,' and Paul
superbly brushes aside all that was antagonistic to him personally, in
his triumphant recognition that the one thing needful _was_ spoken, even
from unworthy motives and with a malicious purpose. The situation here
revealed, strange though it appears with our ignorance of the facts, is
but too like much of what meets us still. Do we not know denominational
rivalries which infuse a bitter taint of envy and strife into much
evangelistic earnestness, and is the spectacle of a man preaching Christ
with a taint of sidelong personal motives quite unknown to this day? We
may press the question still more closely home and ask ourselves if we
are entirely free from the influence of such a spirit. No man who knows
himself and has learned how subtly lower motives blend themselves with
the highest will be in haste to answer these questions with an
unconditional 'No,' and no man who looks on the sad spectacle of
competing Christian communities and knows anything of the methods of
competition that are in force, will venture to deny that there are still
those who preach Christ of envy and strife.

It comes, then, to be a testing question for each of us, have we learned
from Paul this lesson of tolerance, which is not the result of cold
indifference, but the outcome of fiery enthusiasm and of a clear
recognition of the one thing needful? Granted that there is preaching
from unworthy motives and modes of work which offend our tastes and
prejudices, and that there are types of evangelistic earnestness which
have errors mixed up with them, are we inclined to say 'Nevertheless
Christ is proclaimed, and therein I rejoice, Yea, and will rejoice'?
Much chaff may be blended with the seeds sown; the chaff will lie inert
and the seed will grow. Such tolerance is the very opposite of the
carelessness which comes from languid indifference. The one does not
mind what a man preaches because it has no belief in any of the things
preached, and to it one thing is as good as another, and none are of any
real consequence. The other proceeds from a passionate belief that the
one thing which sinful men need to hear is the great message that Christ
has lived and died for them, and therefore, it puts all else on one side
and cares nothing for jangling notes that may come in, if only above
them the music of His name sounds out clear and