Strange Survivals: Some Chapters in the History of Man

by S. Baring-Gould

During the course of his second missionary journey, St. Paul came to Corinth, and abode there eighteen months, during which time he laboured to spread the Gospel. He addressed himself first to the Jews residing in Corinth, but roused so great an opposition that he turned to the Greeks, and succeeded so well in gathering about him a crowd of persons who made profession of conviction, that the Jews seized and dragged him before Gallio, the Roman proconsul, accusing him of opposition to the law of Moses. But the Governor put the whole matter from him, as one out of his jurisdiction, if not beneath his notice. Shortly after St. Paul departed to Syria by ship.

It is worth considering the quality of the converts made at Corinth, that we may understand what followed. Corinth, the capital of Achaia, was noted for its wealth and luxury. It was the place for the performance of the Isthmean games, in which boxing, horse-racing, and musical contests formed the great attraction. It was the Newmarket of Greece, and swarmed with those doubtful characters, of low intellect and depraved morals, who generally congregate about the race-course, the boxing-ring, and the music-hall. The heathen orator, Dio Chrysostom, who lived at the same time as St. Paul, says of Corinth that it was verily the most licentious of all the cities that ever were, and that ever had been.

It was to the people of such a city that St. Paul addressed himself, and amongst whom he met with a certain amount of success. He tells us himself to what class the bulk of his converts belonged. There were “not many wise men after the flesh,” that is, very few of the philosophers, the only representatives of a higher life and clear intelligence, the only men who struggled after a knowledge of God, and for pure morality. They stood aloof. There were also “not many mighty,” few in authority; “not many noble,” few of the respectable citizens. In fact, he got his converts from the riff-raff of an utterly vicious town. We must bear this in mind.

A community of believers gathered from among the inhabitants of Corinth must have presented phenomena deserving special attention. Surrounded by the prevailing immorality, open, flagrant, stalking the streets, they had ceased from earliest infancy to blush at evil sights, and words, and thoughts. They were tainted to the heart’s core. At the same time they were an excitable people, with high-strung nervous temperaments, such as are found in a nursery of the arts, where the sense of physical not of moral beauty is cultivated.

Such persons were ready, for the sake of its novelty, to embrace the new religion preached in their midst. They ran after the new preacher as they ran to hear a new singer; they took up his doctrine as they took up a new philosophy, for the sake of its newness. They rushed into the Church as they elbowed their way into the theatre. As to realising the purity, the self-denial that Christianity requires—of that they had not the faintest idea.

The profession of Christianity subdued these converts for a while—for a few months; but though regenerate in baptism, the old “phronema sarkos” remained like a sleeping leopard waiting its time to awake, stretch itself, and seek its prey. Regeneration is not a magic spell; it is an initiation, not an act. St. Paul was in Corinth eighteen months only, and in this short time it was impossible for him to establish the Church on firm foundations. Besides, he was an initiator and not by any means an organiser.

He had not been long gone before the natural result of an indiscriminate conversion made itself apparent, and St. Paul had to write to the young Church at Corinth a letter which has been lost or suppressed. This was followed by a second, and that by a third, and we have got only the two latter. Probably, the Church of Corinth thought it best to put the first in the fire and not publish its shame. But the second and third—the first and second, as we call them—throw a tolerably clear light on the state of this Church.

There were dissensions in it, and no wonder; then scandal, and, again,—no wonder. Of the dissensions I need not speak.

First among the scandals came the Love Feasts. The feast was instituted in order that all the faithful might meet, and eat and drink together, the rich contributing the provisions and sitting down with the poor. It is not to be confounded with the Holy Eucharist, which was something quite distinct. The Love Feast took place at night, the Eucharist in the early morning.

However excellent in intention the institution might be, in a very short time it was abused. The well-to-do brought food and wine with them, and ate and drank by themselves, apart from the slaves and the members whom poverty prevented from contributing. The poor were compelled to look hungrily on, while the rich brethren, having more than sufficed, indulged to excess. One was hungry, and another was drunken.