Paul's day, was continually
suffering discouragement and continually needed reinforcing. And the
reinforcement must be 'supernatural.' It is the divine love of the
Spirit possessing us which alone can give it vigour. When we are full
of the divine consolation, then it is that we are least inclined to be
critical, and most disposed 'to receive one another, as Christ also
received us, to the glory of God.' For this is the thought we are to
have constantly in view, when we find people 'aggravating'--Christ
received us, and made the best of those whom 'God gave him,' in spite
of the infinite annoyances which we men, even the apostles, caused Him;
He dealt with us with infinite patience; He made us welcome; He
'received us.'

In fact, the reason why the connexion of thought in this passage seems
obscure to us, is probably in part that we have ceased to think of the
real fellowship of the naturally unlike--fellowship in all that makes
up human life--as a necessary part of the Christian religion. But to
St. Paul there was no Christianity without the reality of catholic
brotherhood.

{166}

2. St. Paul here, as in writing to the Corinthians[3], shows himself
specially anxious that Gentile Christians should not think they could
make light of the Old Testament, or imagine that 'Christ was the end of
the law' in any such sense as would make the books of the old covenant
superfluous under the new. Their value, he insists, remains permanent.
When he is writing to the Corinthians, he finds it in the moral
warnings--the warnings of divine judgement upon the chosen people--of
which the history is full. In this epistle he is thinking chiefly of
the lessons of 'endurance' and divine 'encouragements,' which histories
and prophets provide. In his epistle to Timothy[4] he thinks of the
books as instruments by the use of which the minister or representative
of God may become fully educated and equipped for all the purposes of
moral supervision and discipline. They can thus educate and equip him,
St. Paul {167} teaches, because they were originally written under the
influence of a divine inspiration; but it is only when faith has
finally attained its true object in Jesus Christ that their real
meaning becomes apparent. And this last principle is implied in almost
all his use of the Old Testament.

It is a comfort to perceive that none of the elements of permanent
value, which St. Paul discerns in the Old Testament, are the le