He also gives many beautiful counsels regarding Christian virtues, lessons of obedience to superiors and of mutual charity. He bids the strong bear with the weak, and cautions Christians not to judge and condemn each other, neither to give scandal.
Then, exhorting them all to be "of one mind one towards another according to Jesus Christ," he promises to come and visit them, and concludes by invoking upon them the grace of God "to Whom be honour and glory for ever and ever."
Chapter V.
The time was approaching when St. Paul was to leave Corinth—not sailing thence to Jerusalem as he had planned, but returning by the way he had come, because he found that some of the unbelieving Jews had formed a scheme to destroy him while upon his journey.
For the space of a week the Apostle remained at Troas, and upon the last evening he had assembled the Christians together in an upper room—one of those dining-halls which the Latins termed cænacula.
The Scripture narrative tells us that they were there to "break bread," the name usually given in those days to the celebration of the Holy Mysteries. The Body and Blood of our Lord was received by those early Christians with extreme care and the profoundest reverence, but in that age the Church had not ordained that the reception of the Eucharist should take place in the morning and fasting. This rule prevailed at the close of the first century out of respect to so great a mystery. In the time of the Apostles the Communion was given at other parts of the day, and thus we understand the passage referring to this meeting of Christians upon the last evening of St. Paul's stay in Corinth.
An unusual crowd appears to have been assembled, and the heat was so great that the windows were left open. A young man named Eutychus, sitting in the recess of one of these windows, being overcome with sleep, fell through it to the ground. St. Paul at once descended, to find Eutychus, as it seemed, lifeless, but stretching himself upon the body, he besought God to manifest His power, and then returned to the upper room, and continued teaching till the day dawned.