St. Paul makes his argument for the unity and permanence of the Scriptures and their suitableness for the ages in which they were notwritten depend upon the fact that the events which they recorded were sacraments of God's presence. And he makes this assertion the ground of direct moral exhortations against idolatry, against fornication, against murmuring, against that sin of tempting God in which all other sins may be included. In other words, the use of the Scriptures for what we should call the most plain practical purposes, as warnings against direct open crimes, as preservatives of a right inward temper, is deduced from what many at first sight would reject as a strange and fantastical estimate of their character.
I. I am sure that if the Scriptures are losing their hold on us, the cause of that enormous mischief lies very greatly in our confused apprehensions respecting what is called their direct and what is called their spiritual signification. The critic entrenches himself in philological laws and maxims, boldly maintaining that if the Bible history is a history it must bear to be tried by these. The sufferer on a sick-bed feels that the words speak directly to him or to her, and that that speech must be true, whatever becomes of the other. Each is liable to special narrownesses and temptations. The student quickly discerns the morbid and self-concentrated tendencies of the more devotional reader. The devotional reader feels instinctively how merely antiquarian the student is apt to be, how little he understands the wants of human beings. Neither is sufficiently alive to his own perils; neither sufficiently understands how much he needs the help of the other.
II. It is evident from this passage and from those which follow it, that St. Paul is speaking to the Corinthians expressly as a Church cemented by sacraments. He teaches that the passage through the Red Sea was a sign that the invisible God had taken the Jewish nation to be a people of inheritance to Himself. His object was to convince the Corinthians that they were not under a different spiritual government and constitution from that under which the Jewish fathers had lived. In all its principles and method it was the same. He who administered it was the same. The Christ whom Paul had preached to them as taking flesh, as dying, as rising, as ascending, was that Christ, that Angel of the Covenant, that Son of God, who had led the Hebrew people in a pillar of cloud by day, who had followed them by night in a pillar of fire.
III. When we trace the Bible as the progressive history of God's revelations to a family, a nation, and to mankind, we shall understand more what support there is in it for us as men, what awful admonitions to us as men whom God has claimed, not as servants, but as sons. The sacraments told the Corinthians that they must not be content with the present or with the past, that God intended them for a more perfect communion with Him, that He intended to manifest Himself fully to the world. No lower belief, no feebler hope, can assuredly sustain us, upon whom the ends of the world are come. The Sacrifice has been made that we might look onward to that day, which is to wind up all the revelations and all the sacraments of God, when His servants shall see His face and His name shall be in their foreheads.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. i., p. 21.
References: 1 Corinthians 10:11. Homilist,1st series, vol. vii., p. 188. 1 Corinthians 10:11; 1 Corinthians 10:12. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. v., p. 31. 1 Corinthians 10:12. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. i., No. 22; J. Gleadall, Church of England Pulpit,vol. v., p. 47; E. J. Hardy, Faint, yet Pursuing,p. 190; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 74; J. W. Colenso, Village Sermons,p. 28. 1 Corinthians 10:13. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. vii., p. 25; Caleb Morris, Preacher's Lantern,vol. iii., p. 373; F. W. Farrar, Silence and Voices of God,p. 101. 1 Corinthians 10:15. Homilist,3rd series, vol. i., p. 327; J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 156; J. H. Hitchens, Ibid.,vol. xvi., p. 420. 1 Corinthians 10:16. A. Barry, Cheltenham College Sermons,p. 36; Sermons on the Catechism,p. 264. 1 Corinthians 10:17. G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to my Friends,p. 177; C. P. Reichel, Church of England Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 306. 1 Corinthians 10:18. R. S. Candlish, The Gospel of Forgiveness,p. 356. 1 Corinthians 10:21. J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 241. 1 Corinthians 10:23. Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxx., p. 267. 1 Corinthians 10:24. Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 250.