of a
more extreme character. The danger of shattering the solid front of the
Christian church against surrounding heathenism was keenly felt by Paul,
as nearly every one of his epistles testifies. How serious it was at
Corinth is shown by the long passage (chaps, i.-iv.) in which he points
out that sectarianism is a mark not of superior but of inferior maturity
and devotion.

Other difficulties arose from various causes. The influences of the
heathen world, from which most of the Corinthian Christians had come and
to which their friends and neighbours belonged, were always with them,
and the problems created by these relations were very numerous.
Christianity had brought over and had even intensified the moral code of
Judaism, and, especially in the relations of the sexes, this brought a
strain upon the naturalistic impulses and lower standards of converts
trained in a different system.

Again, there were law-suits in the ordinary courts, a natural result of
the frictions and strains of an oriental trading community. To Paul this
was abhorrent, and here too he urges a complete break with their past.
With regard to the social customs of meals at which meat that had been
offered in heathen sacrifices was a part, and of feasts actually at
heathen temples, doubtful questions arose. Was it a denial of the faith
to eat such food or not? Mixed marriages, too, had their problems; ought
the believing wife to separate herself? Ought the believing husband to
insist that his heathen wife stay with him against her will? And,
further, in the case of slaves, does the consciousness of Christian
manhood give a new motive for trying to gain worldly freedom? In all
these matters Paul gives sensible advice. There were clearly two groups
of Christians, the "weak," or scrupulous, whose principle was to
abstain, and the "strong," or free, who maintained that the morally
insignificant must not usurp a place to which it has no right. Paul
sides with neither, but follows two principles, one that the church and
its members must be kept pure, the other that the moral welfare not only
of the individual but of his neighbour must be the controlling motive.

Not due so much to heathen influences as to the natural tendencies of
imperfect and passionate human nature were other conditions. The most
striking incident here, and one which gave Paul much concern, was the
case of a man who after his father's death had married his own
stepmother ("the case