NEW LIGHTS on THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 187, 12 August 1867, Page 2

NEW LIGHTS on THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.

To the Editor of the Nelson Evening Maii>. God's Word gives life, but these men's carnal comments Create but doubts, obscuring to the truth, And oft, alas ! givedeath." Sir—What is likely to be the effect of the following passage which occurs in the pamphlet which I have noticed in your last two issues ? —" Turn t3 the Corinthian converts, what disorders, what divisions, what sins —saying that the dead rise not; one committing inceßt of a most depraved sort, yet a child of God, for mark hia restoration. Now in all this evil'where does the Apostle utter any threat or give the least hint of soul danger? Quite the contrary, as witness the first chapter of

the Epistle to that Church; he addressed them as the saved of the Lord, before he proceeds to point out to them their various errors and most unchristian conduct ? " I find that much as St Paul wished to visit Corinth he did not choose to go thither till he was informed of the state of the Church there and of the reception he was likely to meet with among them. Though much had been reformed, so many irregularities still remained that, to avoid the necessity of using the rod of apostolic correction, he determined to postpone his visit for a year, hopiug in the meantime that the advice and reproof given in his first letter would continue to operate upon their minds and gradually produce a still further reformation. The public solemn expulsion of the guilty offender referred to above shows plainly that the Apostle's strong expressions^ of disapprobation were regarded not only as " hints" but as most positive declarations of the "soul's danger" by continuing iusin; and iv the true spirit of the Gospel, the offender having been brought to a proper sense of his sinfulness, the Apostle advises the Corinthians to restore him to the communion, of the Church. Iv justice to so important a subject the author ought to have more clearly stated this, and not let it appear as if the vilest depravity "by no means deprives the guilty delinquent of his right to be considered a " child of God and saved of the Lord." There are many other points which I wished to notice, but I have already trespassed too much upon your space. With every desire to give the author of this tract full credit for his anxiety to correct " popular errors," I must confess that his work falls short of the demands of the age and the spirit of genuiue Christian faith. I am, etc., A Truth-seeker. August 10th, 1867.