o this
present hour, we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and _are
buffetted_, and have _no certain dwelling place, and labor working
with our own hands_. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we
suffer it; being defamed, we entreat; we are made as _the filth of
the world_, and are THE OFFSCOURING OF ALL THINGS unto this day."[23]
Are these the men who practised or countenanced slavery? _With
such a temper, they_ WOULD NOT; _in such circumstances, they_ COULD
NOT. Exposed to "tribulation, distress, and persecution;" subject to
famine and nakedness, to peril and the sword; "killed all the day
long; accounted as sheep for the slaughter,"[24] they would have made
but a sorry figure at the _great-house_ or slave-market.

[Footnote 23: 1 Cor. iv. 11-13.]

[Footnote 24: Rom. viii. 35, 36.]

Nor was the condition of the brethren, generally, better than that of
the apostles. The position of the apostles doubtless entitled them to
the strongest opposition, the heaviest reproaches, the fiercest
persecution. But derision and contempt must have been the lot of
Christians generally. Surely we cannot think so ill of primitive
Christianity as to suppose that believers, generally, refused to
share in the trials and sufferings of their leaders; as to suppose
that while the leaders submitted to manual labor, to buffeting, to be
reckoned the filth of the world, to be accounted as sheep for the
slaughter, his brethren lived in affluence, ease, and honor!
despising manual labor and living upon the sweat of unrequited toil!
But on this point we are not left to mere inference and conjecture.
The apostle Paul in the plainest language explains the ordination of
Heaven. "But _God hath_ CHOSEN the foolish things of the world to
confound the wise; and God hath CHOSEN the weak things of the world
to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world,
and things which are despised hath God CHOSEN, yea, and THINGS WHICH
ARE NOT, to bring to nought things that are."[25] Here we may well
notice,

1. That it was not by _accident_, that the primitive churches were
made up of such elements, but the result of the DIVINE CHOICE--an
arrangement of His wise and gracious Providence. The inference is
natural, that this ordination was co-extensive with the triumphs of
Christianity. It was nothing new or strange, that Jehovah had
concealed his glory "from the wise and prudent, and had revealed it
unto babes," or th