From Olivet to Patmos; The First Christian Century in Picture and Story (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 Excerpt: ...the centre of worldly wealth, where, one would suppose, there was likely to be even less opportunity for the gospel to enter in. But Paul was divinely guided in his resolve to go to Corinth, for there he was to enter upon one of the most fruitful periods of a richly fruitful life. VIII. The city of Corinth at the time when Paul visited it has been aptly called "the Vanity Fair of the Roman world." It was wealthy and corrupt beyond all other cities, given no less to pleasure than to money-getting, thronged by sailors and idlers and traffickers from all parts of the world, most of whom felt as irresponsible as to the moral quality of their actions as men away from home are apt to feel. There was also in this wealthy and busy city an enormous proportion of slaves, a class who in the nature of things can hardly have any moral standard of their own, and the possession of whom tends to foster immorality in their masters. Corinth had been nearly destroyed by the Romans about two hundred years before this, and had lain in ruins for nearly a century; but it had been rebuilt by Julius Caesar, and was now one of the most gorgeously magnificent cities in the Roman Empire. The products of all quarters of the world came into its splendid harbors on both sides of the isthmus; here the Isthmian games were celebrated, and the wild beast fights which in refined and cultured Athens would never have been tolerated; here, in short, heathenism was rampant, and corruption and vice so prevalent that Paul, in writing to the Corinthian church years after this, qualified his admonition that they were to keep aloof from vicious people with the admission that in that case they would have to go out of the world. We must remember that the Jews with all their faults were never g...