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Let us inquire —

I. RESPECTING CORINTH.

1. Greece, in the time of the Roman dictators, had become worn out, corrupt, and depopulated. It was necessary, therefore, to repeople it and to reinvigorate its constitution with new blood. So Caesar sent to his re-erected city freedmen of Rome.

(1) The new population thus was Roman and democratic; and it held within it all the advantages of a democracy, such, for instance, as unshackled thought: but also its vices, when men sprang up crying, "I am of Paul, and I of Apollos."(2) The population was also commercial. This was necessitated by the site of Corinth. Not by an imperial fiat, but by natural circumstances, Corinth became the emporium of trade. And so its aristocracy was one not of birth, but of wealth. They had not the calm dignity of ancient lineage, nor the intellectual culture of a manufacturing population. The danger of a mere trading existence is, that it leaves the soul engaged in the task of money getting; and measuring the worthiness of all things by what they are worth, too often worships mammon instead of God.

(3) In addition to this, there was also the demoralising influences of a trading seaport. Men from all quarters met in Corinth. Men, when they mix, corrupt each other; each contributes his own vices and each loses his own excellences. Exactly as our young English men and women on their return from foreign countries learn to sneer at the rigidity of English purity, yet never learn instead even that urbanity and hospitality which foreigners have as a kind of equivalent for the laxity of their morals. Such as I have described it was the moral state of Corinth. The city was the hotbed of the world's evil, in which every noxious plant, indigenous or transplanted, rapidly grew and flourished, till Corinth became a proverbial name for moral corruption.

2. Another element was the Greek population. To understand this we must make a distinction. Greece was tainted to the core. Her ancient patriotism and valour were no more. Her statesmen and poets had died with her disgrace. Foreign conquest had broken her spirit. Loss of liberty had ended in loss of manhood. The last and most indispensable element of goodness had perished, for hope was dead. They buried themselves in stagnancy. But amid this universal degeneracy there were two classes.

(1) The uncultivated and the poor, to whom the ancient glories of their land were yet dear, to whom the old religion was true and living still, just as in England now the faith in witchcraft, spells, and the magical virtue of baptismal water, banished from the towns, survives and lingers among our rural population. At this period it was with that portion of heathenism alone that Christianity came in contact, to meet a foe.

(2) Very different, however, was the state of the cultivated and the rich. They had lost their religion, and that being lost, there arose a craving for "Wisdom," in the sense of intellectual speculation. The enthusiasm which had been stimulated by the noble eloquence of patriotism now preyed on glittering rhetoric. Men spent their days in tournaments of speeches. They would not even listen to a sermon from St. Paul unless it were clothed in dazzling words and full of brilliant thought. They were in a state not uncommon now with fine intellects whose action is cramped. That was another difficulty with which Christianity had to deal.

3. The next thing which influenced Corinthian society was Roman provincial government — an influence, however, favourable to Christianity. The doctrine of Christ has not as yet come into direct antagonism with heathenism. Persecution always arose first on the part of the Jews; and, indeed, until it became evident that in Christianity there was a Power before which all the principalities of evil must perish, the Roman magistrates interposed their authority between the Christians and their fierce enemies. A signal instance of this is related in this chapter.

4. The last element in this complex community was the Jews. In their way they were religious, i.e., strenuous believers in the virtue of ordinances. God only existed to them for the benefit of the Jewish nation. To them a Messiah must be a World-Prince. To them a new revelation could only be substantiated by marvels and miracles, and St. Paul describes the difficulty which this tendency put in the way of the progress of the gospel among them in the words, "The Jews require a sign."

II. RESPECTING THE APOSTLE PAUL. For his work the apostle was assisted and prepared —

1. By the fellowship of Aquila and Priscilla. Such an one as Paul thrown alone upon a teeming, busy, commercial population would have felt crushed. His spirit had been pressed within him at Athens, but that was not so oppressive as the sight of human masses, crowding, hurrying, driving together, all engaged in getting rich, or in seeking mere sensual enjoyment. In this crisis providential arrangements had prepared for him the companionship of Priscilla and Aquila.

2. He was sustained by manual work. He wrought with his friends as a tent maker. For by the rabbinical law, all Jews were taught a trade. So, too, it was the custom of the monastic institutions to compel every brother to work. A wise provision! In a life of gaiety or merely thoughtful existence, woe and trial to the spirit that has nothing for the hands to do! Misery to him who emancipates himself from the universal law, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." Evil thoughts, despondency, sensual feeling, sin in every shape is before him, to beset and madden, often to ruin him.

3. By the experience he had gained in Athens. There the apostle had met the philosophers on their own ground. His speech was triumphant as oratory, as logic, and as a specimen of philosophic thought; but in its bearing on conversion it was unsuccessful. Taught by this experience, he came to Corinth and preached no longer to the wise, the learned, or the rich. God had chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith. St. Paul no longer confronted the philosopher on his own ground, or tried to accommodate the gospel to his tastes: "I determined to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." We know the result — the Church of Corinth, the largest and noblest harvest ever given to ministerial toil.

(F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

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KJV: After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth;

WEB: After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth.