pure; and that
therefore, to be free from the body would be entire, perfect,
Christian emancipation. And so came in that strange, wrong doctrine,
exhibited in Corinth, where immortality was taught separate from, and
in opposition to, the doctrine of the resurrection. And afterwards
they went on with their conclusions about liberty, to maintain that
the body, justified by the sacrifice of Christ, was no longer capable
of sin; and that in the evil which was done by the body, the soul had
taken no part. And therefore sin was to them but as a name, from which
a Christian conscience was to be freed altogether. So that when one of
their number had fallen into grievous sin, and had committed
fornication, "such as was not so much as named among the Gentiles," so
far from being humbled by it, they were "puffed up," as if they were
exhibiting to the world an enlightened, true, perfect
Christianity--separate from all prejudices.

To such a society and to such a state of mind, the Apostle Paul
preached in all its length, breadth, and fulness, the humbling
doctrines of the Cross of Christ. He taught that knowledge was one
thing--that charity was _another_ thing; that "knowledge puffeth up,
but charity buildeth up." He reminded them that love was the
perfection of knowledge. In other words, his teaching came to this:
there are two kinds of knowledge; the one the knowledge of the
intellect, the other the knowledge of the heart. Intellectually, God
never can be known. He must be known by Love--for, "if any man love
God, the same is known of Him." Here then, we have arrived in another
way, at precisely the same conclusion at which we arrived last Sunday.
Here are two kinds of knowledge, secular knowledge and Christian
knowledge; and Christian knowledge is this--to know by Love.

Let us now consider the remainder of the chapter, which treats of the
law of Christian conscience. You will observe that it divides itself
into two branches--the first containing an exposition of the law
itself, and the second the Christian applications which flow out of
this exposition.

I. The way in which the apostle expounds the law of Christian
conscience is this:--Guilt is contracted by the soul, in so far as it
sins against and transgresses the law of God by doing that which it
believes to be wrong: not so much what _is_ wrong as what _appears_ to
_it_ to be wrong. This is the doctrine distinctly laid down in the 7t