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I. THE ESSENTIAL OFFENCE, OF THE CROSS MUST NOT BE EVADED. The doctrine of a crucified Christ with its correspending duty of crucified affections will ever provoke the hostility of "the carnal mind." Offence is inevitable where disaffection rules. "Love or hatred" is the sole alternative. Our mission is, "Christ and Him crucified" — not Christ and Him Judaised, or philosophised, or adumbrated in a myth, or held in reserve, or the Shibboleth of a faction. Far from St. Paul was the least suppression of the faith in deference to the fashion of the world or the fury of his adversaries. If "to the Jew he became as a Jew, it was to gain the Jew," etc. His evangelical theology coupled with his chivalrous life of toil present the safest comment upon the mingled courtesy, charity, and policy of his injunction — "Give none offence, neither to the Jews," etc.

II. WHAT ARE THE CIRCUMSTANTIAL AFFRONTS THAT MUST BE AVOIDED? The Jew, the Gentile, and the Church present the three types of those several relations of the world to religion, and whose spiritual interests may be gratuitously obstructed by ministrational offensiveness.

1. Ritualism.

(1) This was "the rock of offence on which Zion stumbled" and lost her standing.

(a) The Jew gloried in his descent from Abraham; but St. Paul did not ridicule the pretension, but, pointing it in its right direction to the faith of Christ, courteously conceded "then are ye Abraham's seed," etc.

(b) The Jew rested in the law. Paul "bare them record, they had a zeal for God," etc., because "the law was their schoolmaster to bring them to Christ."(c) The Jew stood upon his circumcision. Was it asked, "What profit was there of circumcision?" The reply was, "Much every way," except indeed in their own way, but in such a way as they would be more disposed to listen to as "the more, excellent way."(2) Apply this apostolic gauge to our own modes of dealing with modern Jews.

(a) Take the English Jew; his national and hereditary dislike of Christianity is not likely to be propitiated by our too general indifference to the means of his conversion, which strikes him as irresistibly at variance with our evangelical premises.

(b) Take the spirit of ritualism as embodied in Romanism. To unchurch Rome — the communion of a Borromeo, Fenelon, and Pascal — is not the spirit which acknowledged their prototypes, "who are Israelites."The civil concession of her antiquity pleads the conciliatory parallel, "whose are the Fathers." The graceful recognition of her early evangelising labours finds a gentler precedent in the admission, "of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came," than in the loose ignoring of all old better times. Neither is it an obstacle, but rather ancillary to our argument to let her share the honour of having had "committed unto her the oracles of God." Rome must be vanquished by her own instruments. The Christianity in her Vulgate will yet displace the Popery in her creeds.

2. Rationalism.

(1) There can be no antagonism between reason and faith. Christianity and science are both from the same Author, and it robs Him of part of His glory to take either away. Deal with such particles of truth as exist in rationalistic or socialistic writings, as Paul did with the inscription on the Athenian altar, or the maxims of a Menander or Aratus. He "disputed daily in the school of one Tyrannus," but "gave no offence to the Gentiles."(2) But the text includes the unconverted, and there is a risk of gratuitously offending the mere worldling by the style, as well as matter of preaching. Do not blacken poor human nature darker than she is. Look upon the young keeper of the commandments as Jesus "looked and loved him."(3) The Church of God. The really enlightened children of God are susceptible of offence from an incautious ministry. There is such a contingency as "making my weak brother to offend" in various shapes. We may scandalise, damage, or discourage a fellow-Christian by the class of amusements in which ourselves or families fraternise with the world, or by the inconsiderate denouncement of all recreation; by showing respect of persons in the way of sparing the follies of the rich, and bearing hard upon the vices of the poor, or contrasting the assiduity of pastoral attention to the former, with a comparative neglect of the latter; by careless. partial, imperfect or indistinct statements of truth; by an obvious disparity between our public preaching and personal conversation; by any inattention to the commoner charities, morals, and civilities of life, as if Christianity contained no such precepts as "use hospitality," "be courteous," "render unto all their dues."

(J. B. Owen, M.A.)

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KJV: Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God:

WEB: Give no occasions for stumbling, either to Jews, or to Greeks, or to the assembly of God;