as it were incidentally (since they were very familiar to his hearers) in connexion with that fraternal spirit which is the main subject of his discourse in both letters. The Seven Gifts of Service are mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans so that men may acquire community of spirit, may desire to serve rather than to shine:[1] the Nine Gifts of Office and the Nine Talents are mentioned in order to prevent the vice of rivalry in the exercise of these 'grace-gifts'; for, he says, if one member is honoured, all the members are honoured with it, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body. The whole passage in the First Epistle to the Corinthians is in fact devoted to the great social thesis of the body and its members, and culminates in the panegyric on Charity.
You will notice also that the power of writing infallible books is not included in any of the gifts or works of inspiration, nor is the power of issuing infallible bulls. We need not then be worried because the First Gospel is less accurate than S. Mark, or because S. Luke sometimes accepted accounts of events at which he was not present, which had
- ↑ Bishop Gore, St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, II, 112. 'We linger lovingly, wistfully,' he says, 'on the picture of the corporate life of a Christian community. Has it vanished from the earth, this real fraternal living …?' and he goes on to point out what a 'really fraternal, self-governing, and mutually co-operative community the Mediaeval English parish was.'
