1 Corinthians 12:12-26

b. The various gifts should harmonize the Church into one body, 1 Corinthians 12:12-26 .

The semblance between the human body and the body politic or social is so striking, and pregnant with so many lessons of loyalty, peace, and patriotism, that it has been popular in all ages. The apologue of Menenius Agrippa, as given by Livy in the early history of Rome, is memorable in literature. The common people, wearied with the tyranny of the aristocracy, and determined no longer to feed its greediness, had seceded from Rome, when Menenius related to them how the limbs of the human body rebelled against the lazy belly, and refused to work for it any longer until want of nourishment and digestion taught them that the refusing to feed the centre was to starve the whole. Applied to the sacred organism, the Church, Paul here uses the same parable to soothe the rivalries between the different possessors of charisms.