unrivalled in fulness and colour, of the life of a Pauline
church, while the Second Epistle, written out of strong feeling, gives a
revelation of the innermost feelings and characteristic temperament of
Paul himself, such as is not elsewhere to be found. Dealing, as both
epistles do, with concrete problems of morals and with such tendencies
of thought and life as find their parallel in all times, they are full
of instruction to the modern Church; and this instruction increases in
effectiveness the better we come to understand ancient modes of thought
in their diversity from our own.

Lofty and vivid expression of the apostle's thought on the highest
themes is also to be found here--witness the "Hymn to Love" (1 Cor.
xiii.), the declaration of the resurrection (1 Cor. xv. 51-57), or the
list of signatures of the true servant of God (2 Cor. vi. 3-10). In
important historical statements, also, these epistles stand second to
none, not even to Galatians--as may be indicated by a reference to the
words about the institution of the Lord's supper (1 Cor. xi. 23-26) and
the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. xv. 1-8); or to the
autobiographical utterances in which Paul explains that he was once a
persecutor of Christians (1 Cor. xv. 9), mentions his escape from
Damascus (2 Cor. xi. 32 f.), describes his coming to Corinth (1 Cor. ii.
1 ff.), enumerates his sufferings for the Gospel (2 Cor. xi. 16-31),
tells of his visions (2 Cor. xii. 1-9). In the Corinthian epistles we
come in contact, as nowhere else, with the man Paul and his daily life.

The history of Paul's relations with Corinth can be made out from the
Acts and the Epistles with considerable clearness. The chronology of
Paul's life is not at any point surely determinable within a range of
less than five years, but it must have been in the autumn of one of the
years A.D. 49-53 (the usual chronology has fixed on A.D. 52) that the
arrival of Paul in Corinth took place as described in Acts xviii. 1. In
his so-called second missionary journey Paul had been driven by
irresistible inner impulses to push on into Greece the missionary work
already begun in Asia Minor. First he preached in the province of
Macedonia, where the work opened auspiciously at Philippi, Thessalonica
and Beroea; then, apparently driven out by the violent opposition of the
Jews, he moved on to Achaea, and after rather unsuccessful attempts to
secure converts among the philosophers of Athens cam