Bible Commentaries

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

1. Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God and Sosthenes our brother,

2. Unto the Church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:

3. Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

4. I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ;

5. That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge:

6. Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you:

7. So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ:

8. Who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

9. God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Apostle's Salutation

We could hardly understand the composition of the Church at Corinth from the opening of this letter. Judging indeed by the salutation, one would suppose that the Church at Corinth was a model church, rich in knowledge, eloquent in utterance, generous in charity, quite an example to all churches. Yet it was as rotten a constitution as can be found in all the annals of history, everything that was bad was in the Church at Corinth; probably there has been nothing like it since; it was indeed a mystery of iniquity; yet it was the Church of God, and it is described as composed of men who were "called to be saints," and the men were recognised as those who called upon the name of Jesus Christ the living Saviour of the world. And even the Apostle Paul, whose righteousness was neither to be threatened nor bribed, said, "I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ." There must be some explanation of these practical contradictions, of these perplexing mysteries. Let us approach the whole consideration calmly.

Corinth was a wonderful city. This was not the Corinth of olden time, the Corinth that flourished two centuries before Paul wrote; this was only a fifty-year old city, the Chicago of Greece, the city which Julius Cæsar had built upon the foundations of the old Corinth. It was in very deed a tumultuous city; the Greek was there, and the Roman, and the Jew; traders, from what would then be called under the whole heaven, were to be found at this seaport; various languages, various customs, ill-remembered traditions, dreams of the past, aspirations after the future, a consciousness that quite a colossus was bestriding the whole city of Greece,—all these things blended and combined and interplayed upon the imagination, the memory, and the consciousness of the Corinthian population. Corinth was subdued; it was a Roman footstool: and in this place there was a Church of God, there were sanctified men, there were praying souls; there were religious persons for whose spirit and purpose and beneficence the Apostle Paul thanked God every day. This must always be 1 Corinthians 1:4-7).

Here is a lesson in tactics. Sometimes we have to make a long carriage-drive to the house; sometimes we have all the road-making to do; it is well to make it broad and smooth. Sometimes we would do better with the people if we went with flowers in our hand, and with the sweet presentation dropped the word of hard instruction. There is a genius in the use of compliments. The wrestler lifts up his opponent that he may thrown him down. How rude some people are, and rough and senseless altogether: how wild in violence, how unfamiliar with human nature, how gifted with the insane genius of always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and of always saying what ought not to have been said at all! This is marvellous. When was human nature other than very marvellous?

Prayer

Father of our spirits, and God of all grace, we come with our morning hymn. We come to sing of thy goodness and thy mercy, which have followed us all the days of our life. Behold thou hast not left us alone; we have not known the meaning and the sorrow of desolation. Thou hast been a God nigh at hand, and not afar off; all the light of heaven has been thy smile, all the winds that blow over the earth have brought with them the fragrance of heaven. We will not therefore be dumb: we will praise the Lord with a loud voice; yea, we will rejoice exceedingly in the God of our salvation. Thou hast done great things for us whereof we are glad; when we have undertaken for ourselves we have failed: when we have rested in the Lord, and waited patiently for him and made a space in our life for the ministry of heaven, behold we have reaped in the seedtime, and in the harvest we have had the joy of summer, and even amid the snows of winter we have plucked a thousand flowers. Thou hast led us through the wilderness, and thy presence has made a garden of it; we will, therefore not be silent, we will lift up our voice gladly and praise the Lord for his manifold riches and goodness, for his wondrous patience, for his ineffable care. Thy grace has been greater than our sin, the black pebble of our guilt has sunk in the infinite ocean of thy love; we have learned concerning God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, that he is love, that he is righteousness, that he is merciful and kind to the unthankful and to the evil, not withholding his rain from the gardens of those who deny him, and from the fields of those who blaspheme his name. Jesus Christ thy Son has taught us to call thee our Father, and to find in thee all the best meaning of that term. Truly we know thou hast been near us; when our father and our mother forsake us, we will feel thine arms stealing round about us in the tenderness of omnipotence; when our way is dark and held up, yea bound round with rocks, then thou dost find a way for our feet and bring us into a wealthy place. We will no more be our own light and guide: there is no light in us, it is not in man that liveth to direct his way; we will abide in God, we will not disquiet ourselves by self-care, we will rest in the infinite love Guide us, O thou great Jehovah! Amen.

1 Corinthians 1:9-17

9. God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

10. Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

11. For it has been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.

12. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.

13. Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?

14. I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius;

15. Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name.

16. And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other.

17. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.

The Apostle's Appeal

We have noticed how frequently and fervently the Apostle Paul cites the name of Jesus Christ; it is quite as remarkable how he uses with emphasis and unction the name of God. We read of "the will of God"; "the Church of God"; "my God"; "the grace of God"; "God is faithful": the whole confidence is thus put in God. If a miracle is to be wrought, it is by God alone the miracle can be accomplished. This introduction is specifically and uniquely religious. The Apostle is not going to be merely eloquent or argumentative; he is going to base his standing upon the Eternal; he will have a rock under his feet; on no bog of his own making will he venture to stand when he delivers his great appeal to the Corinthian Church. "God will do this" is his constant declaration. If you wonder how the miracle is to be accomplished, the answer is "God will do it"; if you ask how you, so far gone in all evil, are to be brought home and made secure, the answer 1 Corinthians 1:13

How comprehensive were all the questions put by the Apostle Paul! How instinctively and therefore instantaneously he always went to the root of the matter! He knew nothing about evasion or double-dealing of any kind; he had no part or lot in anonymous insinuations or statements. We have seen that he gave up his authority for assuring the Corinthians that there were divisions and contentions of many kinds in that tumultuous Church. Now he draws the attention of the Church to the one all-determining inquiry, What is Christ's relation to the Church? Everything must stand or fall by the reply to that inquiry. One only wonders that this was a Church at all. That is the mystery of grace. This is a departure from our little mechanical prejudiced conceptions of a Church. We have seen what culture did for Greece, if Corinth may be taken as representing that classic land. Culture led away from God. Culture had its prayer; but in the streets of Corinth public, prayer was offered that the gods would increase the number of the prostitutes. Culture without humility, culture without a cross shadowing it, what is it but selfishness, vanity, idolatry? Yet Paul finds a Church here, calling it the Church of God. We are too pedantic in our classification. We should look at the manhood rather than at the mere circumstances limiting and qualifying it. The king is not named by any one appellation. Charles the First was not the king; the king was within him. He was still to be prayed for as the king. We look at his little doings, his mischief-makings, his vanities, ambitions, tergiversations, and grow eloquent in our condemnation about him. But all that has nothing to do with the king; the king is there, whether for the moment he be devil or angel; both these classifying terms must be dropped, and the term "king," royal and significant, must stand, whoever for the moment the man may be who debases the office. So with the Church of God; we must look at the ideal Church, at the thing signified. We are not the Church, else what a poor Church it were! Take out littleness and ignorance, our selfishness and vanity, our bigotry and self-idolatry, and how the enemy might make merry over us as the Church! How he might fling our prayers in our face, and echo our songs with a suggestive cadence! The fool would not be foolish only, but unjust. He does not know whereof he affirms. The Church of God is within; an invisible, spiritual, ideal germ: an outline shaped in clouds, and yet to be realised as it were in the granite and rocks of eternity. So the man is within the man. Say not you will judge the poor creature by his conduct, for then no gaol would be large enough to hold so much wickedness; then no asylum would be large enough to accommodate such overflowing and immeasurable imbecility. You do not see the man; only God sees him: he is better than he appears to be, if sometimes he is worse than the surface would enable us to conclude. So we repeat the sacred doctrine we have already ventured to lay down that God is judge: he knows whether we are his kings and priests and Church, or whether we are refuse and offal, living and hopeless offences.

Amongst the deprivations and general debasements of the Church at Corinth there was one which may be designated by the term Party Spirit—"Every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ." There were denominations within the denomination. Within an apparently united Church there were all kinds of sects, all degrees of animosity, all temperatures of virulence. Paul will not have this. He will at all events extricate himself from this prostitution of his name. Saying nothing of Apollos or Cephas, he says, "Was Paul crucified for you?" No man came so near to being crucified for the Church. How he approaches the Son of God! In self-surrender, in pious obliteration, how nearly he is on the very Cross of his Lord! Yet between Paul's crucifixion and Christ's there lies an infinite distance of significance. There can be but one Christ; his robe is seamless, his crown fits no other brow; he is the one Lord, he cannot be divided. Yet every day we are trying to divide him. Party spirit was not the blemish of Corinthian ecclesiastical society alone; party spirit is rife to-day. Party spirit is not truthful. A religious party man cannot speak the truth. When he is most vehement he is most perjured. Who can tell exactly what his opponent believes? and who can state in words, which his opponent would accept, his opponent's exact position? Or who, by some happy chance hitting upon the very words, can utter those words in the tone which an opponent would adopt and endorse? The party man need not intentionally tell lies; he simply can hardly help doing so. His prejudice beclouds his vision, his bias turns him away with a kind of significant haughtiness or revulsion from the man whom he is attempting to represent. We have heard a theologian declare that there is a band of men newly risen who declare that it is safe for men to die in their sins. This statement has been made by a man of celebrity, by a man of capacious and ardent mind. Now refer the statement to the parties implicated and say, Do you teach that it is safe for men to die in their sins? They redden with anger, they flush with indignant shame, that such a travesty of their views should have been perpetrated. Yet they are all honourable men. The accuser did not mean to falsify, but his prejudice was larger than his reason, his fury overwhelmed his temper, and he showed how dangerous a thing it is to pick out words for other men when the attempt is to express the deepest convictions of the soul. It is not safe for men to die in their sins; it is not safe for men to live in their sins; it is not safe for men to have any sympathetic relation to sin. How tremendous the blasphemy to insinuate that any Christian man could suppose that it was safe for men to die in their sins! If this calumny has not yet defiled our English communications, let us be grateful that we are separated from it at least by the width of the Atlantic. Party spirit is not sincere. This is the more notable because it appears to be awfully in earnest. Sincerity is a larger term than may at first be supposed; it involves and connotes many elements of judgment, honesty, sense of what is due to 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

What is termed a whole body of theology might be gathered from this first chapter. Here we find God, Christ, the Church, the mystery of the Cross, and the fact of redemption. Why does the Apostle gather all these great doctrines around him, so compendiously and so severally? What is his business? We have not seen him in this urgent mood before; usually he has taken time to his work, but he is in it before we imagine he has begun it. He is excited. The excitement of love is upon him, and that is the keenest excitement of all. His charity is offended, his excellence of heart is annoyed, his sense of right is assailed. He has heard that the people in the Church at Corinth are setting up parties, cultivating small bigotries, multiplying contemptible sects. This the Apostle will never consent to. He says, This is wrong, this is contrary to the spirit of the Cross; sectarianism and Christ cannot live together; party spirit and the Crucifixion are as opposed to one another as darkness is to light. So he gathers all his thunders and lightnings, all his majestic conceptions of God, humanity, truth, destiny; he will not attempt to overthrow this by some wind of contempt, he will come down upon it as from eternity and destroy it in the name of the Lord. There must somewhere be a point of rest There must be some fixed quantities in this stupendous universe, else what is to become of it? We are saved by the points of rest, by the centres of tranquillity. Foolish mariner he, who says he will take a ship over the Atlantic by the help of the moon. Yet the moon is a fair orb, the moon has been praised to her face by audacious yet reverent poetry; hardly a boy but has said something sweet to the moon and about the moon; the moon has been called a banner of silver hung out in the sky; classical names have been attached to her; yet no mariner ever took his course across the water by that banner of silver. Not that he has any objection to the orb itself; there is nothing objectionable in the moon. It is not aggressive, but it is changeable. That is the reason. Yonder in the north is a point of light you can always rely upon; the captain lays hold of it, and gets home. That is what men will not do. They will run after any moon; they call its changeableness variety: whereas when the soul is interested it is treachery. I suppose there will be moon-worshippers until the end of time. When the Apostle has any great argument to state and apply he stands upon a rock, he puts out his hands towards the north star, to the quiet eternal planets, and then things may swing around him as they like, but he will not swing in them, except in so far as he has hold of the things that abide. He has such a conception of Christ that he will not be disturbed by partisanship and party quarrels at Corinth or anywhere else. He will cling to Christ; he will say, "What does Christ mean? what is the meaning of the Cross? what is the purpose of God in the gift of his Son? and thus he will fix his attention upon things polar, immutable. Thus, unless we have a right conception of eternity we can never make a proper use of time. Time is nothing by itself; there is no sense or reason or rhythm in it: the whole value of it is in its relation to something greater than itself, and something which it dimly and feebly typifies. If we do not know eternity we do not know time. If we do not know astronomy we do not know geography, except as an invention in the painting of lines and sections and circles, and distributions of properties which may be changed tomorrow by some sudden battle. Dean Alford tells of a quaint old Cambridge preacher who said in his pulpit, his throne of power, "Eternity is like a great clock, the pendulum of which says "tick" in one century, and "tack" in another: now, said he," erecting himself and facing the scholars of Cambridge, "go home and calculate the length of the pendulum." What are our little calculations about if they do not come out of eternity and return to eternity, and if they do not bring to bear things abiding upon things transient? This is the wise philosophy of life: the one thing that abides amid all the party creations and controversies is the Cross of Christ. That will keep us all steady, solid, right.

The Apostle refers to certain people, with a little tone of sarcasm in his voice. Sometimes he could be very ruthless in criticism and crushing in condemnation. The old Saul would occasionally revive in him. Once he was writing so carefully and quietly, and suddenly the old Saul of Tarsus flamed up in him, and he said to his young correspondent, "There are certain people that are going about talking nonsense in the Church, whose mouths must be stopped." That was Saul; that was an old plan of his! So now he says, "Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world?" Where are these men when you want them most. You do not know, and they do not know. They are of no use. Yet how the wise man can shake his head and look as if he knew a great deal! He will be of no service to you in the hour and article of death. He will be wise enough then to get out of the way. Yet some young minds are victimised by the "wise," who live upon their own consciousness, who keep their manufactories of nonsense within themselves, and turn it out in endless rolls,—men who never risked anything for the world's bettering; men who never did anything but talk, so as to prove how little they had to talk about. They had no text. What is the sermon if it be not the text magnified, amplified, and in a sense illuminated? But these men have no text; therefore what they say has no authority; it issues from no throne, and returns to no tribunal; it is an empty noisy wind. "Where is the scribe?" the man of the inkhorn, the grammarian, the letter-monger, the man who will discourse vehemently, so vehemently at least as the infinite coldness of his little nature will permit him, about a semicolon. The poor little scribe loses his rest because he cannot settle whether the comma should be before the word or after the word, or whether there should not be an apostrophe before the s in some cases. How his mind is troubled about that! how grave he looks! how wrinkled he is! how he stoops about the shoulders! Why? Because he is a scribe, a grammarian, a man of syntax; a great parser, but nothing at poetry. "Where is the disputer of this world?"—the man of controversy, the man who loves an argument, the man who is always looking round to see whom he can argue with: where is he, in view of the Cross, in view of the great necessities of life, in view of the solemn, impending, inevitable future? Where are they? Nowhere. These men are troublers of society. It is easy to ask questions, to suggest difficulties, to multiply the stumbling-blocks that lie in the way of honest progress. The mind, when it is most truly and Divinely excited, may easily be turned aside by some temptations, shot upon it so quickly that there is no time to reason with it; but the turning aside is but for a moment; because the excitement is Divine it will return, pursue its way, and complete its purpose. The Apostle had to deal, let us see carefully, with the wise, with the scribe, and with the disputer of this world. These classes still live. They will live to the end of time, and to the end of time they will be unblessed by men whose hunger they cannot feed and whose thirst they cannot assuage.

See how the Apostle describes the whole method and economy of God in regard to this matter. How will the Lord God proceed? First, "by the foolishness of preaching." We all know this to be a misrepresentation of the Apostle's meaning. The foolishness is not in the preaching as an art or practice; the foolishness is in the thing that is preached,—by the foolishness of the preaching of Christ, by the foolish way of proceeding, by setting up a Cross as the answer to human sin: such stupendous folly was never seen by man before,—that God should die, that God should make an atonement to himself, that God should through weakness find the way to power, and through distress and trouble infinite find the way to rest and peace. This is like the Lord's way of proceeding in everything. Given a certain set of circumstances to know how God will Acts , and we have to draw up the course of his action. Now, when we have written with the patience and criticism of the scribe, compare what we have written with what we should see in Providence: what could be more different, more contrastive, more mutually annihilative? This is the way of the Lord. It is not seen only in the Cross of Christ, in the foolishness of the thing that is preached; it is seen everywhere, in all history, in all providence, in every day's history. We should proceed straightly, we should proceed promptly: by our very littleness we have a trick of energy. We want everything settled before sundown. So does the Lord, only his sundown is a long way off. There is no sundown; what we call sundown is but a momentary expression of convenience; the sun goes on his beaming way even after we think the sun has set. God has a day to work in, and before the day ends his purpose will be completed in righteousness. Let us wait; let us learn that patience is often the best prayer, that longsuffering is often the only theology we want. Then God proceeds by the disappointment of prejudice; because the wise ought to have some little word in this matter; the scribe really ought to be asked to dip his pen if it were only once; the disputer ought to have a little space created for him that he might enter into his argument with some degree and show of pomp. And yet the Lord sweeps them aside, and will have none of them. This was the way with the Lord Jesus Christ. He never allowed a scribe to open his mouth, except that he might have an opportunity of rebuking him, and showing him how little title he had to be described as a writer of the mysteries of the kingdom of God. No Pharisee would Jesus Christ call so long as he remained a Pharisee; no disputer would he permit to enter into his ministry. Men who are in the ministry of Christ have simply to repeat their lesson; to tell what their Lord told them, but to tell it in the language of the day. The liberty is not to change the message, but to vary its delivery. God proceeds by way of rebuking vanity:—"For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called." Can God do without them? He can do without us all. The darkness and the light are both alike to him. He does not need any one of us.

The Apostle proceeds to a very suggestive climax:—"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise: and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are." "Hath God chosen"; then we should omit the word "and," and read "things which are not": he does not introduce this as another element, but he sums up the whole policy of God in these words—"things which are not"; base things, things which are despised, hath God chosen—things which are not, to bring to nought things that are. His providence is a continual miracle. If we could see a battering-ram, and see the wall that was to be shaken down, we should begin a process of calculation—for we are all scribes—and say, The instrument is equal to the occasion; the wall is so high, so broad; the instrument is so large, and so energetic, and the momentum is calculable in mathematical terms: now proceed. This is not God's way. We see the thing to be shattered, but we do not see the energy that shatters it; but down goes the wall, away goes the mighty rampart, the stubborn bastion—all down! What did it? A breath from eternity. What saith the Apostle?—"Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble." Then there are some wise, mighty, noble. Circumstances do not always go against the aristocratic and the eminent; men should not necessarily condemn them because they are great, after the pattern of this world's greatness. Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, one of the greatest workers in the Christian field in her day, said with characteristic sweetness, "I owe my salvation to the letter "m"; blessed be God," said that sweet soul, "It does not say, "any" mighty, "any" noble; it says "many" mighty, "many" noble: I owe my salvation to the letter "m."" If it had been "not any noble" where would the Countess have been? Yet how differently we act towards those who are wise and mighty and noble! How we fawn upon them; how we call upon them, even if we have to go to the side door! We have lost our Christian dignity. This spirit was well rebuked by one illustrious clergyman in his day. He was the son of a peer. He could not help that; do not blame him; his consent was not asked. But the lady parishioner upon whom he called would hear of his ancestry and pedigree and birth and advantages. Said the truly great man when the palaver was over, "Madam, I am surprised that you should talk about such frivolities: I have come to speak to you upon matters of eternity." There he was wise, there he was mighty, there he was noble. There is a nobility which men cannot help having, nor are they to be condemned because they possess it; it may be only a nobility of name, or it may be a nobility of name justified by nobility of character, and if not so justified, then the nobility becomes, not a decoration, but a disgrace Let every man justify his nobility, and the world will not withhold from him the palm which is due to faithfulness, integrity, and industry. Thus Paul will drive off the wise, the scribe the disputer, the mighty, the noble, all nominal claimants, patrons and dividers, and he will have nothing seen but Christ; for, said he, as long as the Church looks at Christ it will be unable to see those distributions of rank or power, and take part in those mean controversies, which are characteristic of earth and time and sense. There is a beautiful scene. What you look upon is a silver lake, not a ripple on its smooth face, and the light that is in it is the sun; see how the sun lies in the depths of the lake as in an under sky: does the lake create the sun, or only reflect it? That is what the Church does: it does not create the Cross, it reflects it; it does not originate the Atonement, it accepts it; it does not invent Christ, it receives him and adores him. What a wondrous landscape is that on the canvas! what hill and dale, and wood and water, and light and shade! what painted music! what poetry! Did the artist create the landscape, or only paint it? He only painted it. That is what the Church does. All that is beautiful in the Church is but a transcript, a writing, a transference of something heavenly into an earthly image and symbol and visibility. Does the husbandman create the harvest, or only reap it? Does the seedman create the seed, or only sow it? What does the preacher make? The sermon, not the text. Why this suppression of human vanity? why this snubbing of the wise, the scribe, the disputer, the mighty, the noble? The reason is given in these words, "that no flesh should glory in his presence." The moment we begin to glory we begin to weaken. Self-consciousness lives upon its disease, and eats up its own vitals. Let a man live in himself, for himself, upon himself, and he will consume himself. We were made truly for one another. Call upon the Eternal Father, the Eternal Christ, the Eternal Spirit. In God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost we find what alone can satisfy our appetences, if those appetences are allowed to express themselves in their natural destined aspiration. If we are living upon anything else, then we have ill-treated our organism. If aught but God can satisfy the human heart, the human heart has played traitor to God, and has abandoned the fountain and origin of life and grace. There is an argument in this distaste for God; there is a whole history in this aversion from the Holy One. Let men dispute as they may, whether Adam fell or did not fall, every man knows that he himself has fallen low enough. The self-fall can never be denied.

Paul says in one word you have everything you want in Christ—"of him"—that is, of God—"are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption": word upon word to express the redundance of the provision which is made in Christ for the education, the progress, and the sanctification of the human heart. Do you want wisdom? It is in Christ. Righteousness? It is in Christ. Sanctification? It is in Christ Redemption—full, complete, involving the overthrow of the last enemy and the inheritance of immortality? It is in Christ, "That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." We have no need to go to the wise, because we have wisdom in Christ; we have no need to go the scribe, because we have righteousness in the Cross; we have no need to go to the disputer of this world, because we have sanctification and redemption in the Cross. Everything we want is there. Why should men roam in quest of the true riches? Here they are, here at the Cross, here in the wounded Lamb of God. Let us abide here. Let us risk our all on Christ. Lord, abide with us!