{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_21828/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_21828","id":"gutenberg_21828","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21828","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Biographies","Category: History - Religious","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Paul, the Apostle, Saint"],"text":"E-text prepared by Al Haines\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this\n      file which includes the original illustration (map).\n      See 21828-h.htm or 21828-h.zip:\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/8/2/21828/21828-h/21828-h.htm)\n      or\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/8/2/21828/21828-h.zip)\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE LIFE OF ST. PAUL\n\nby\n\nPROF. JAMES STALKER, D.D.\n\nAuthor of \"The Life of Jesus Christ\"\n\nWith Foreword by\n\nWilbert W. White, D.D.\nPresident of the Bible Teachers' Training School, New York\n\nNew and Revised Edition\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNew York ---- Chicago ---- Toronto\nFleming H. Revell Company\nLondon and Edinburgh\n\nCopyright, 1912, by\nAmerican Tract Society\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nCHAPTER\n\n       FOREWORD\n    I. HIS PLACE IN HISTORY\n   II. HIS UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR HIS WORK\n  III. HIS CONVERSION\n   IV. HIS GOSPEL\n    V. THE WORK AWAITING THE WORKER\n   VI. HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS\n  VII. HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER\n VIII. PICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH\n   IX. HIS GREAT CONTROVERSY\n    X. THE END\n       HINTS TO TEACHERS AND QUESTIONS FOR PUPILS\n\n\n\n\nFOREWORD\n\nBy Wilbert W. White, D.D.\n\nWhen asked to write a foreword to Dr. Stalker's \"Life of St. Paul,\" I\nthought of two things: first the impression which I had received from a\nsermon that I heard Dr. Stalker preach a good many years ago in his own\npulpit in Glasgow, Scotland, and secondly, the honor conferred in this\nprivilege of writing a foreword to one of Dr. Stalker's books.\n\nI felt sure before even glancing at the pages that I should be pleased\nand profited by their perusal.\n\nThe first thing that I did was to glance over the pages for the\nheadings of chapters and the summaries of paragraphs.  I found the\narrangement admirable, and would advise those into whose hands this\nfine volume may come to follow this plan.\n\nThe only sentence apart from the headings which I read in the aforesaid\npreview was the last one in Chapter X, and that because the closing\nwords, \"the best of friends,\" especially arrested my attention.\n\nI wondered before I read this sentence if the author was saying of Paul\nthat he was going out of the world to the One who had been to him the\nbest of friends.  From this you may gather--what you like.  Only I felt\nsure before reading the pages that Dr. Stalker would interpret Paul in\na manner such as I could enthusiastically approve.\n\nAnd now having read the volume I heartily commend it.  It is the best\nbrief life of Paul of which I know.\n\nBefore reading the book I said to myself, I shall put down what I think\nthe writer will make the heart of the secret of Paul.  It was this: The\nkey to Paul's efficiency was his wholehearted persistent loyalty to\nChrist, his Saviour and Friend.  He was not disobedient to the heavenly\nvision.  He stood fast in the liberty wherewith Christ set him free.\nHe was three things all stated in one verse, and put thus: \"I am\ncrucified with Christ--Christ liveth in me--I live in faith.\"\n\nHere are some, a very few of many striking, true thoughts presented by\nDr. Stalker:\n\n\"Paul was the interpreter of Christ, saying what Christ Himself would\nhave said under the circumstances.\"\n\n\"Paul's entire theology was nothing but the explication of his own\nconversion.\"\n\n\"In bringing Paul West, Providence gave to Europe a blessed priority,\nand the fate of our continent was decided, when Paul crossed the\nAegean.\"\n\n\"A secret of Paul's success was his sense of having a mission and his\nfreedom alike from the bondage of bigotry and the bondage of liberty.\"\n\nA writer recently gave me this thought about Paul: \"What makes St. Paul\nso interesting is his conception of the dimensions of life.\"\n\nBack to Christ?  Yes, the whole world needs it, but the way to get back\nto Christ is through the Apostolic interpretation of Christ in words\nand life.  This is the only way, and Dr. Stalker's book is a great help\nin this direction.\n\n\n\n\nTHE LIFE OF ST. PAUL\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nHIS PLACE IN HISTORY\n\nParagraphs 1-12.\n\n  1, 2.  The Man Needed by the Time.\n  3, 4.  A Type of Christian Character.\n  5-8.   The Thinker of Christianity.\n  9-12.  The Missionary of the Gentiles.\n\n\n1.  The Man for the Time.--There are some men whose lives it is\nimpossible to study without receiving the impression that they were\nexpressly sent into the world to do a work required by the juncture of\nhistory on which they fell.  The story of the Reformation, for example,\ncannot be read by a devout mind without wonder at the providence by\nwhich such great men as Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Knox were\nsimultaneously raised up in different parts of Europe to break the yoke\nof the papacy and republish the gospel of grace.  When the Evangelical\nRevival, after blessing England, was about to break into Scotland and\nend the dreary reign of Moderatism, there was raised up in Thomas\nChalmers a mind of such capacity as completely to absorb the new\nmovement into itself, and of such sympathy and influence as to diffuse\nit to every corner of his native land.\n\n\n2.  This impression is produced by no life more than by that of the\nApostle Paul.  He was given to Christianity when it was in its most\nrudimentary beginnings.  It was not, indeed, feeble, nor can any mortal\nman be spoken of as indispensable to it; for it contained within itself\nthe vigor of a divine and immortal existence, which could not but have\nunfolded itself in the course of time.  But, if we recognize that God\nmakes use of means which commend themselves even to our eyes as suited\nto the ends He has in view, then we must say that the Christian\nmovement at the moment when Paul appeared upon the stage was in the\nutmost need of a man of extraordinary endowments, who, becoming\npossessed with its genius, should incorporate it with the general\nhistory of the world; and in Paul it found the man it needed.\n\n\n3.  A Type of Christian Character.--Christianity obtained in Paul an\nincomparable type of Christian character.  It already, indeed,\npossessed the perfect model of human character in the person of its\nFounder.  But He was not as other men, because from the beginning He\nhad no sinful imperfection to struggle with; and Christianity still\nrequired to show what it could make of imperfect human nature.  Paul\nsupplied the opportunity of exhibiting this.  He was naturally of\nimmense mental stature and force.  He would have been a remarkable man\neven if he had never become a Christian.  The other apostles would have\nlived and died in the obscurity of Galilee if they had not been lifted\ninto prominence by the Christian movement; but the name of Saul of\nTarsus would have been remembered still in some character or other even\nif Christianity had never existed.  Christianity got the opportunity in\nhim of showing to the world the whole force it contained.  Paul was\naware of this himself, though he expressed it with perfect modesty,\nwhen he said, \"For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief\nmight Jesus Christ show forth all His long-suffering for an ensample of\nthem who should hereafter believe on Him to everlasting life.\"\n\n\n4.  His conversion proved the power of Christianity to overcome the\nstrongest prejudices and to stamp its own type on a large nature by a\nrevolution both instantaneous and permanent.  Paul's was a personality\nso strong and original that no other man could have been less expected\nto sink himself in another; but, from the moment when he came into\ncontact with Christ, he was so overmastered with His influence that he\nnever afterward had any other desire than to be the mere echo and\nreflection of Him to the world.\n\nBut, if Christianity showed its strength in making so complete a\nconquest of Paul, it showed its worth no less in the kind of man it\nmade of him when he had given himself up to its influence.  It\nsatisfied the needs of a peculiarly hungry nature, and never to the\nclose of his life did he betray the slightest sense that this\nsatisfaction was abating.  His constitution was originally compounded\nof fine materials, but the spirit of Christ, passing into these, raised\nthem to a pitch of excellence altogether unique.\n\nNor was it ever doubtful either to himself or to others that it was the\ninfluence of Christ which made him what he was.  The truest motto for\nhis life would be his own saying, \"I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth\nin me.\"  Indeed, so perfectly was Christ formed in him that we can now\nstudy Christ's character in his, and beginners may perhaps learn even\nmore of Christ from studying Paul's life than from studying Christ's\nown.  In Christ Himself there was a blending and softening of all the\nexcellences which makes His greatness elude the glance of the beginner,\njust as the very perfection of Raphael's painting makes it\ndisappointing to an untrained eye; whereas in Paul a few of the\ngreatest elements of Christian character were exhibited with a\ndecisiveness which no one can mistake, just as the most prominent\ncharacteristics of the painting of Rubens can be appreciated by every\nspectator.\n\n\n5.  A Great Thinker.--Christianity obtained in Paul, secondly, a great\nthinker.  This it specially needed at the moment.  Christ had departed\nfrom the world, and those whom He had left to represent Him were\nunlettered fishermen and, for the most part, men of no intellectual\nmark.  In one sense this fact reflects a peculiar glory on\nChristianity, for it shows that it did not owe its place as one of the\ngreat influences of the world to the abilities of its human\nrepresentatives: not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of God,\nwas Christianity established in the earth.  Yet, as we look back now,\nwe can clearly see how essential it was that an apostle of a different\nstamp and training should arise.\n\n\n6.  Christ had manifested forth the glory of the Father once for all\nand completed his atoning work.  But this was not enough.  It was\nnecessary that the meaning of his appearance should be explained to the\nworld.  Who was he who had been here? what precisely was it he had\ndone?  To these questions the original apostles could give brief\npopular answers; but none of them had the intellectual reach or the\neducational training necessary to put the answers into a form to\nsatisfy the intellect of the world.  Happily it is not essential to\nsalvation to be able to answer such questions with scientific accuracy.\nThere are tens of thousands who know and believe that Jesus was the Son\nof God and died to take away sin and, trusting to Him as their Saviour,\nare purified by faith, but who could not explain these statements at\nany length without falling into mistakes in almost every sentence.\nYet, if Christianity was to make an intellectual as well as a moral\nconquest of the world, it was necessary for the Church to have\naccurately explained to her the full glory of her Lord and the meaning\nof his saving work.\n\nOf course Jesus had himself had in his mind a comprehension both of\nwhat he was and of what he was doing which was luminous as the sun.\nBut it was one of the most pathetic aspects of his earthly ministry\nthat he could not tell all his mind to his followers.  They were not\nable to bear it; they were too rude and limited to take it in.  He had\nto carry his deepest thoughts out of the world with him unuttered,\ntrusting with a sublime faith that the Holy Ghost would lead his Church\nto grasp them in the course of its subsequent development.  Even what\nhe did utter was very imperfectly understood.\n\nThere was one mind, it is true, in the original apostolic circle of the\nfinest quality and capable of soaring into the rarest altitudes of\nspeculation.  The words of Christ sank into the mind of John and, after\nlying there for half a century, grew up into the wonderful forms we\ninherit in his Gospel and Epistles.  But even the mind of John was not\nequal to the exigency of the Church; it was too fine, mystical,\nunusual.  His thoughts to this day remain the property only of the few\nfinest minds.  There was needed a thinker of broader and more massive\nmake to sketch the first outlines of Christian doctrine; and he was\nfound in Paul.\n\n\n7.  Paul was a born thinker.  His mind was of majestic breadth and\nforce.  It was restlessly busy, never able to leave any object with\nwhich it had to deal until it had pursued it back to its remotest\ncauses and forward into all its consequences.  It was not enough for\nhim to know that Christ was the Son of God: he had to unfold this\nstatement into its elements and understand precisely what it meant.  It\nwas not enough for him to believe that Christ died for sin: he had to\ngo farther and inquire why it was necessary that He should do so and\nhow His death took sin away.\n\nBut not only had he from nature this speculative gift: his talent was\ntrained by education.  The other apostles were unlettered men; but he\nenjoyed the fullest scholastic advantages of the period.  In the\nrabbinical school he learned how to arrange and state and defend his\nideas.  We have the issue of all this in his Epistles, which contain\nthe best explanation of Christianity possessed by the world.  The right\nway to look at them is to regard them as the continuation of Christ's\nown teaching.  They contain the thoughts which Christ carried away from\nthe earth with him unuttered.  Of course Jesus would have uttered them\ndifferently and far better.  Paul's thoughts have everywhere the\ncoloring of his own mental peculiarities.  But the substance of them is\nwhat Christ's must have been if he had himself given them expression.\n\n\n8.  There was one great subject especially which Christ had to leave\nunexplained--his own death.  He could not explain it before it had\ntaken place.  This became the leading topic of Paul's thinking--to show\nwhy it was needed and what were its blessed results.  But, indeed,\nthere was no aspect of the appearance of Christ into which his\nrestlessly inquiring mind did not penetrate.  His thirteen Epistles,\nwhen arranged in chronological order, show that his mind was constantly\ngetting deeper and deeper into the subject.  The progress of his\nthinking was determined partly by the natural progress of his own\nadvance in the knowledge of Christ, for he always wrote straight out of\nhis own experience; and partly by the various forms of error which he\nhad at successive periods to encounter, and which became a providential\nmeans of stimulating and developing his apprehension of the truth, just\nas ever since in the Christian Church the rise of error has been the\nmeans of calling forth the clearest statements of doctrine.  The ruling\nimpulse, however, of his thinking, as of his life, was ever Christ, and\nit was his lifelong devotion to this exhaustless theme that made him\nthe Thinker of Christianity.\n\n\n9.  The Missionary of the Gentiles.--Christianity obtained in Paul,\nthirdly, the missionary of the Gentiles.  It is rare to find the\nhighest speculative power united with great practical activity; but\nthese were united in him.  He was not only the Church's greatest\nthinker, but the very foremost worker she has ever possessed.  We have\nbeen considering the speculative task which was awaiting him when he\njoined the Christian community; but there was a no less stupendous\npractical task awaiting him too.  This was the evangelization of the\nGentile world.\n\n\n10.  One of the great objects of the appearance of Christ was to break\ndown the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile and make the\nblessings of salvation the property of all men, without distinction of\nrace or language.  But he was not himself permitted to carry this\nchange into practical realization.  It was one of the strange\nlimitations of his earthly life that he was sent only to the lost sheep\nof the house of Israel.  It can easily be imagined how congenial a task\nit would have been to his intensely human heart to carry the gospel\nbeyond the limits of Palestine and make it known to nation after\nnation; and--if it be not too bold to say so--this would certainly have\nbeen his chosen career, had he been spared.  But he was cut off in the\nmidst of his days and had to leave this task to his followers.\n\n\n11.  Before the appearance of Paul on the scene, the execution of this\ntask had been begun.  Jewish prejudice had been partially broken down,\nthe universal character of Christianity had been in some measure\nrealized, and Peter had admitted the first Gentiles into the Church by\nbaptism.  But none of the original apostles was equal to the emergency.\nNone of them was large-minded enough to grasp the idea of the perfect\nequality of Jew and Gentile and apply it without flinching in all its\npractical consequences; and none of them had the combination of gifts\nnecessary to attempt the conversion of the Gentile world on a large\nscale.  They were Galilean fishermen, fit enough to teach and preach\nwithin the bounds of their native Palestine.  But beyond Palestine lay\nthe great world of Greece and Rome--the world of vast populations, of\npower and culture, of pleasure and business.  It needed a man of\nunlimited versatility, of education, of immense human sympathy and\nbreadth, to go out there with the gospel message--a man who could not\nonly be a Jew to the Jews, but a Greek to the Greeks, a Roman to the\nRomans, a barbarian to the barbarians--a man who could encounter not\nonly rabbis in their synagogues, but proud magistrates in their courts\nand philosophers in the haunts of learning--a man who could face travel\nby land and by sea, who could exhibit presence of mind in every variety\nof circumstances, and would be cowed by no difficulties.  No man of\nthis size belonged to the original apostolic circle; but Christianity\nneeded such an one, and he was found in Paul.\n\n\n12.  Originally attached more strictly than any of the other apostles\nto the peculiarities and prejudices of Jewish exclusiveness, he cut his\nway out of the jungle of these prepossessions, accepted the equality of\nall men in Christ, and applied this principle relentlessly in all its\nissues.  He gave his heart to the Gentile mission, and the history of\nhis life is the history of how true he was to his vocation.  There was\nnever such singleness of eye or wholeness of heart.  There was never\nsuch superhuman and untiring energy.  There was never such an\naccumulation of difficulties victoriously met and of sufferings\ncheerfully borne for any cause.  In him Jesus Christ went forth to\nevangelize the world, making use of his hands and feet, his tongue and\nbrain and heart, for doing the work which in His own bodily presence He\nhad not been permitted by the limits of His mission to accomplish.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nHIS UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR HIS WORK\n\nParagraphs 13-36.\n\n  14-16.  DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH.  His Love\n          of Cities.  17, 18.  HOME.\n  19-26.  EDUCATION.  19.  Roman citizenship; 20.  Tent-making;\n          21, 22.  Knowledge of Greek Literature; 23-26.\n          Rabbinical Training.  Gamaliel.  Knowledge of\n          Old Testament.\n  27-30.  MORAL AND RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT.\n          28.  The Law; 29, 30.  Departure from and return to\n          Jerusalem.\n  31-33.  STATE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.\n          Stephen.  34-36.  THE PERSECUTOR.\n\n\n13.  God's Plan.--Persons whose conversion takes place after they are\ngrown up are wont to look back upon the period of their life which has\npreceded this event with sorrow and shame and to wish that an\nobliterating hand might blot the record of it out of existence.  St.\nPaul felt this sentiment strongly: to the end of his days he was\nhaunted by the specters of his lost years, and was wont to say that he\nwas the least of all the apostles, who was not worthy to be called an\napostle, because he had persecuted the Church of God.  But these somber\nsentiments are only partially justifiable.  God's purposes are very\ndeep, and even in those who know Him not He may be sowing seeds which\nwill only ripen and bear fruit long after their godless career is over.\nPaul would never have been the man he became or have done the work he\ndid, if he had not, in the years preceding his conversion, gone through\na course of preparation designed to fit him for his subsequent career.\nHe knew not what he was being prepared for; his own intentions about\nhis future were different from God's; but there is a divinity which\nshapes our ends, and it was making him a polished shaft for God's\nquiver, though he knew it not.\n\n\n14.  Birth and Birthplace.--The date of Paul's birth is not exactly\nknown, but it can be settled with a closeness of approximation which is\nsufficient for practical purposes.  When in the year 33 A.D. those who\nstoned Stephen laid down their clothes at Paul's feet, he was \"a young\nman.\"  This term has, indeed, in Greek as much latitude as in English,\nand may indicate any age from something under twenty to something over\nthirty.  In this case it probably touched the latter rather than the\nformer limit; for there is reason to believe that at this time, or very\nsoon after, he was a member of the Sanhedrin--an office which no one\ncould hold who was under thirty years of age--and the commission he\nreceived from the Sanhedrin immediately afterward to persecute the\nChristians would scarcely have been entrusted to a very young man.\nAbout thirty years after playing this sad part in Stephen's murder, in\nthe year 62 A.D., he was lying in a prison in Rome awaiting sentence of\ndeath for the same cause for which Stephen had suffered, and, writing\none of the last of his Epistles, that to Philemon, he called himself an\nold man.  This term also is one of great latitude, and a man who had\ngone through so many hardships might well be old before his time; yet\nhe could scarcely have taken the name of \"Paul the aged\" before sixty\nyears of age.\n\nThese calculations lead us to the conclusion that he was born about the\nsame time as Jesus.  When the boy Jesus was playing in the streets of\nNazareth, the boy Paul was playing in the streets of his native town,\naway on the other side of the ridges of Lebanon.  They seemed likely to\nhave totally diverse careers.  Yet, by the mysterious arrangement of\nProvidence, these two lives, like streams flowing from opposite\nwatersheds, were one day, as river and tributary, to mingle together.\n\n\n15.  The place of his birth was Tarsus, the capital of the province of\nCilicia, in the southeast of Asia Minor.  It stood a few miles from the\ncoast, in the midst of a fertile plain, and was built upon both banks\nof the river Cydnus, which descended to it from the neighboring Taurus\nMountains, on the snowy peaks of which the inhabitants of the town were\nwont, on summer evenings, to watch from the flat roofs of their houses\nthe glow of the sunset.  Not far above the town the river poured over\nthe rocks in a vast cataract, but below this it became navigable, and\nwithin the town its banks were lined with wharves, on which was piled\nthe merchandise of many countries, while sailors and merchants, dressed\nin the costumes and speaking the languages of different races, were\nconstantly to be seen in the streets.  The town enjoyed an extensive\ntrade in timber, with which the province abounded, and in the long fine\nhair of the goats kept in thousands on the neighboring mountains, which\nwas made into a coarse kind of cloth and manufactured into various\narticles, among which tents, such as Paul was afterward employed in\nsewing, formed an extensive article of merchandise all along the shores\nof the Mediterranean.  Tarsus was also the center of a large transport\ntrade; for behind the town a famous pass, called the Cilician Gates,\nled up through the mountains to the central countries of Asia Minor;\nand Tarsus was the depot to which the products of these countries were\nbrought down, to be distributed over the East and the West.\n\nThe inhabitants of the city were numerous and wealthy.  The majority of\nthem were native Cilicians, but the wealthiest merchants were Greeks.\nThe province was under the sway of the Romans, the signs of whose\nsovereignty could not be absent from the capital, although Tarsus\nitself enjoyed the privilege of self-government.  The number and\nvariety of the inhabitants were still further increased by the fact\nthat, like the city of Glasgow, Tarsus was not only a center of\ncommerce, but also a seat of learning.  It was one of the three\nprincipal university cities of the period, the other two being Athens\nand Alexandria; and it was said to surpass its rivals in intellectual\neminence.  Students from many countries were to be seen in its streets,\na sight which could not but awaken in youthful minds thoughts about the\nvalue and the aims of learning.\n\n\n16.  Who does not see how fit a place this was for the Apostle of the\nGentiles to be born in?  As he grew up, he was being unawares prepared\nto encounter men of every class and race, to sympathize with human\nnature in all its varieties, and to look with tolerance upon the most\ndiverse habits and customs.  In after life he was always a lover of\ncities.  Whereas his Master avoided Jerusalem and loved to teach on the\nmountainside or the shore of the lake, Paul was constantly moving from\none great city to another.  Antioch, Ephesus, Athens, Corinth, Rome,\nthe capitals of the ancient world, were the scenes of his activity.\nThe words of Jesus are redolent of the country, and teem with pictures\nof its still beauty or homely toil--the lilies of the field, the sheep\nfollowing the shepherd, the sower in the furrow, the fishermen drawing\ntheir nets; but the language of Paul is impregnated with the atmosphere\nof the city and alive with the tramp and hurry of the streets.  His\nimagery is borrowed from scenes of human energy and monuments of\ncultivated life--the soldier in full armor, the athlete in the arena,\nthe building of houses and temples, the triumphal procession of the\nvictorious general.  So lasting are the associations of the boy in the\nlife of the man.\n\n\n17.  Paul's Home.--Paul had a certain pride in the place of his birth,\nas he showed by boasting on one occasion that he was a citizen of no\nmean city.  He had a heart formed by nature to feel the warmest glow of\npatriotism.  Yet it was not for Cilicia and Tarsus that this fire\nburned.  He was an alien in the land of his birth.  His father was one\nof those numerous Jews who were scattered in that age over the cities\nof the Gentile world, engaged in trade and commerce.  They had left the\nHoly Land, but they did not forget it.  They never coalesced with the\npopulations among which they dwelt but, in dress, food, religion and\nmany other particulars remained a peculiar people.  As a rule, indeed,\nthey were less rigid in their religious views and more tolerant of\nforeign customs than those Jews who remained in Palestine.  But Paul's\nfather was not one who had given way to laxity.  He belonged to the\nstraitest sect of his religion.  It is probable that he had not left\nPalestine long before his son's birth, for Paul calls himself a Hebrew\nof the Hebrews--a name which seems to have belonged only to the\nPalestinian Jews and to those whose connection with Palestine had\ncontinued very close.\n\nOf his mother we hear absolutely nothing, but everything seems to\nindicate that the home in which he was brought up was one of those out\nof which nearly all eminent religious teachers have sprung--a home of\npiety, of character, perhaps of somewhat stern principle, and of strong\nattachment to the peculiarities of a religious people.  He was imbued\nwith its spirit.  Although he could not but receive innumerable and\nimperishable impressions from the city he was born in, the land and the\ncity of his heart were Palestine and Jerusalem; and the heroes of his\nyoung imagination were not Curtius and Horatius, Hercules and Achilles,\nbut Abraham and Joseph, Moses and David and Ezra.  As he looked back on\nthe past, it was not over the confused annals of Cilicia that he cast\nhis eyes, but he gazed up the clear stream of Jewish history to its\nsources in Ur of the Chaldees; and, when he thought of the future, the\nvision which rose on him was the kingdom of the Messiah, enthroned in\nJerusalem and ruling the nations with a rod of iron.\n\n\n18.  The feeling of belonging to a spiritual aristocracy, elevated\nabove the majority of those among whom he lived, would be deepened in\nhim by what he saw of the religion of the surrounding population.\nTarsus was the center of a species of Baal-worship of an imposing but\nunspeakably degrading character, and at certain seasons of the year it\nwas the scene of festivals, which were frequented by the whole\npopulation of the neighboring regions, and were accompanied with orgies\nof a degree of moral abominableness happily beyond the reach even of\nour imaginations.  Of course a boy could not see the depths of this\nmystery of iniquity, but he could see enough to make him turn from\nidolatry with the scorn peculiar to his nation, and to make him regard\nthe little synagogue where his family worshiped the Holy One of Israel\nas far more glorious than the gorgeous temples of the heathen; and\nperhaps to these early experiences we may trace back in some degree\nthose convictions of the depths to which human nature can fall and its\nneed of an omnipotent redeeming force which afterward formed so\nfundamental a part of his theology and gave such a stimulus to his work.\n\n\n19.  Trade.--The time at length arrived for deciding what occupation\nthe boy was to follow--a momentous crisis in every life--and in this\ncase much was involved in the decision.  Perhaps the most natural\ncareer for him would have been that of a merchant; for his father was\nengaged in trade, the busy city offered splendid prizes to mercantile\nambition, and the boy's own energy would have guaranteed success.\nBesides, his father had an advantage to give him specially useful to a\nmerchant: though a Jew, he was a Roman citizen, and this right would\nhave given his son protection, into whatever part of the Roman world he\nmight have had occasion to travel.  How the father got this right we\ncannot tell; it might be bought, or won by distinguished service to the\nstate, or acquired in several other ways; at all events his son was\nfree-born.  It was a valuable privilege, and one which was to prove of\ngreat use to Paul, though not in the way in which his father might have\nbeen expected to desire him to make use of it.  But it was decided that\nhe was not to be a merchant.  The decision may have been due to his\nfather's strong religious views, or his mother's pious ambition, or his\nown predilections; but it was resolved that he should go to college and\nbecome a rabbi--that is, a minister, a teacher and a lawyer all in one.\nIt was a wise decision in view of the boy's spirit and capabilities,\nand it turned out to be of infinite moment for the future of mankind.\n\n\n20.  But, although he thus escaped the chances which seemed likely to\ndrift him into a secular calling, yet, before going away to prepare for\nthe sacred profession, he was to get some insight into business life;\nfor it was a rule among the Jews that every boy, whatever might be the\nprofession he was to follow, should learn a trade, as a resource in\ntime of need.  This was a rule with wisdom in it; for it gave\nemployment to the young at an age when too much leisure is dangerous,\nand acquainted the wealthy and the learned in some degree with the\nfeelings of those who have to earn their bread with the sweat of their\nbrow.  The trade which he was put to was the commonest one in\nTarsus--the making of tents from the goat's-hair cloth for which the\ndistrict was celebrated.  Little did he or his father think, when he\nbegan to handle the disagreeable material, of what importance this\nhandicraft was to be to him in subsequent years: it became the means of\nhis support during his missionary journeys, and, at a time when it was\nessential that the propagators of Christianity should be above the\nsuspicion of selfish motives, enabled him to maintain himself in a\nposition of noble independence.\n\n\n21.  Education.--It is a question natural to ask, whether, before\nleaving home to go and get his training as a rabbi, Paul attended the\nUniversity of Tarsus.  Did he drink at the wells of wisdom which flow\nfrom Mount Helicon before going to sit by those which spring from Mount\nZion?  From the fact that he makes two or three quotations from the\nGreek poets it has been inferred that he was acquainted with the whole\nliterature of Greece.  But, on the other hand, it has been pointed out\nthat his quotations are brief and commonplace, such as any man who\nspoke Greek would pick up and use occasionally; and the style and\nvocabulary of his Epistles are not those of the models of Greek\nliterature, but of the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew\nScriptures, which was then in universal use among the Jews of the\nDispersion.  Probably his father would have considered it sinful to\nallow his son to attend a heathen university.  Yet it is not likely\nthat he grew up in a great seat of learning without receiving any\ninfluence from the academic tone of the place.  His speech at Athens\nshows that he was able, when he chose, to wield a style much more\nstately than that of his writings, and so keen a mind was not likely to\nremain in total ignorance of the great monuments of the language which\nhe spoke.\n\n\n22.  There were other impressions, too, which the learned Tarsus\nprobably made upon him: its university was famous for those petty\ndisputes and rivalries which sometimes ruffle the calm of academical\nretreats; and it is possible that the murmur of these, with which the\nair was often filled, may have given the first impulse to that scorn\nfor the tricks of the rhetorician and the windy disputations of the\nsophist which form so marked a feature in some of his writings.  The\nglances of young eyes are clear and sure, and even as a boy he may have\nperceived how small may be the souls of men and how mean their lives,\nwhen their mouths are filled with the finest phraseology.\n\n\n23.  The college for the education of Jewish rabbis was in Jerusalem,\nand thither Paul was sent about the age of thirteen.  His arrival in\nthe Holy City may have happened in the same year in which Jesus, at the\nage of twelve, first visited it, and the overpowering emotions of the\nboy from Nazareth at the first sight of the capital of his race may be\ntaken as an index of the unrecorded experience of the boy from Tarsus.\nTo every Jewish child of a religious disposition Jerusalem was the\ncenter of all things; the footsteps of prophets and kings echoed in the\nstreets; memories sacred and sublime clung to its walls and buildings;\nand it shone in the glamor of illimitable hopes.\n\n\n24.  It chanced that at this time the college of Jerusalem was presided\nover by one of the most noted teachers the Jews have ever possessed.\nThis was Gamaliel, at whose feet Paul tells us he was brought up.  He\nwas called by his contemporaries the Beauty of the Law, and is still\nremembered among the Jews as the Great Rabbi.  He was a man of lofty\ncharacter and enlightened mind, a Pharisee strongly attached to the\ntraditions of the fathers, yet not intolerant or hostile to Greek\nculture, as were some of the narrower Pharisees.  The influence of such\na man on an open mind like Paul's must have been very great; and,\nalthough for a time the pupil became an intolerant zealot, yet the\nmaster's example may have had something to do with the conquest he\nfinally won over prejudice.\n\n\n25.  The course of instruction which a rabbi had to undergo was\nlengthened and peculiar.  It consisted entirely of the study of the\nScriptures and the comments of the sages and masters upon them.  The\nwords of Scripture and the sayings of the wise were committed to\nmemory; discussions were carried on about disputed points; and by a\nrapid fire of questions, which the scholars were allowed to put as well\nas the masters, the wits of the students were sharpened and their views\nenlarged.  The outstanding qualities of Paul's intellect, which were\nconspicuous in his subsequent life--his marvelous memory, the keenness\nof his logic, the super-abundance of his ideas, and his original way of\ntaking up every subject--first displayed themselves in this school, and\nexcited, we may well believe, the warm interest of his teacher.\n\n\n26.  He himself learned much here which was of great moment in his\nsubsequent career.  Although he was to be specially the missionary of\nthe Gentiles, he was also a great missionary to his own people.  In\nevery city he visited where there were Jews he made his first public\nappearance in the synagogue.  There his training as a rabbi secured him\nan opportunity of speaking, and his familiarity with Jewish modes of\nthought and reasoning enabled him to address his audiences in the way\nbest fitted to secure their attention.  His knowledge of the Scriptures\nenabled him to adduce proofs from an authority which his hearers\nacknowledged to be supreme.\n\nBesides, he was destined to be the great theologian of Christianity and\nthe principal writer of the New Testament.  Now the New grew out of the\nOld; the one is in all its parts the prophecy and the other the\nfulfillment.  But it required a mind saturated not only with\nChristianity, but with the Old Testament, to bring this out; and, at\nthe age when the memory is most retentive, Paul acquired such a\nknowledge of the Old Testament that everything it contains was at his\ncommand: its phraseology became the language of his thinking; he\nliterally writes in quotations, and he quotes from all parts with equal\nfacility--from the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.  Thus was the\nwarrior equipped with the armor and the weapons of the Spirit before he\nknew in what cause he was to use them.\n\n\n27.  His Religious Life.--Meantime what was his moral and religious\nstate?  He was learning to be a religious teacher; was he himself\nreligious?  Not all who are sent to college by their parents to prepare\nfor the sacred office are so, and in every city of the world the path\nof youth is beset with temptations which may ruin life at its very\nbeginning.  Some of the greatest teachers of the Church, such as St.\nAugustine, have had to look back on half their life blotted and scarred\nwith vice or crime.  No such fall defaced Paul's early years.  Whatever\nstruggles with passion may have raged in his own breast, his conduct\nwas always pure.  Jerusalem was no very favorable place, in that age,\nfor virtue.  It was the Jerusalem against whose external sanctity, but\ninternal depravity, our Lord a few years afterward hurled such\nwithering invectives; it was the very seat of hypocrisy, where an able\nyouth might easily have learned how to win the rewards of religion,\nwhile escaping its burdens.  But Paul was preserved amidst these\nperils, and could afterward claim that he had lived in Jerusalem from\nthe first in all good conscience.\n\n\n28.  He had brought with him from home the conviction, which forms the\nbasis of a religious life, that the one prize which makes life worth\nliving is the love and favor of God.  This conviction grew into a\npassionate longing as he advanced in years, and he asked his teachers\nhow the prize was to be won.  Their answer was ready--By the keeping of\nthe law.  It was a terrible answer; for the Law meant not only what we\nunderstand by the term, but also the ceremonial law of Moses and the\nthousand and one rules added to it by the Jewish teachers, the\nobservance of which made life a purgatory to a tender conscience.\n\nBut Paul was not the man to shrink from difficulties.  He had set his\nheart upon winning God's favor, without which this life appeared to him\na blank and eternity the blackness of darkness; and, if this was the\nway to the goal, he was willing to tread it.  Not only, however, were\nhis personal hopes involved in this, the hopes of his nation depended\non it too; for it was the universal belief of his people that the\nMessiah would only come to a nation keeping the law, and it was even\nsaid that, if one man kept it perfectly for a single day, his merit\nwould bring to the earth the King for whom they were waiting.  Paul's\nrabbinical training, then, culminated in the desire to win this prize\nof righteousness, and he left the halls of sacred learning with this as\nthe purpose of his life.  The lonely student's resolution was momentous\nfor the world; for he was first to prove amidst secret agonies that\nthis way of salvation was false, and then to teach his discovery to\nmankind.\n\n\n29.  At Jerusalem.--We cannot tell in what year Paul's education at the\ncollege of Jerusalem was finished or where he went immediately\nafterward.  The young rabbis, after completing their studies, scattered\nin the same way as our own divinity students do, and began practical\nwork in different parts of the Jewish world.  He may have gone back to\nhis native Cilicia and held office in some synagogue there.  At all\nevents, he was for some years at a distance from Jerusalem and\nPalestine; for these were the very years in which fell the movement of\nJohn the Baptist and the ministry of Jesus, and it is certain that Paul\ncould not have been in the vicinity without being involved in both of\nthese movements either as a friend or as a foe.\n\n\n30.  But before long he returned to Jerusalem.  It was as natural for\nthe highest rabbinical talent to gravitate in those times to Jerusalem\nas it is for the highest literary and commercial talent to gravitate in\nour day to the metropolis.  He arrived in the capital of Judaism very\nsoon after the death of Jesus; and we can easily imagine the\nrepresentations of that event and of the career thereby terminated\nwhich he would receive from his Pharisaic friends.\n\nWe have no reason to suppose that as yet he had any doubts about his\nown religion.  We gather, indeed, from his writings that he had already\npassed through severe mental conflicts.  Although the conviction still\nstood fast in his mind that the blessedness of life was attainable only\nin the favor of God, yet his efforts to reach this coveted position by\nthe observance of the law had not satisfied him.  On the contrary, the\nmore he strove to keep the law the more active became the motions of\nsin within him; his conscience was becoming more oppressed with the\nsense of guilt, and the peace of a soul at rest in God was a prize\nwhich eluded his grasp.\n\nStill he did not question the teaching of the synagogue.  To him as yet\nthis was of one piece with the history of the Old Testament, whence\nlooked down on him the figures of the saints and prophets, which were a\nguarantee that the system they represented must be divine, and behind\nwhich he saw the God of Israel revealing himself in the giving of the\nlaw.  The reason why he had not attained to peace and fellowship with\nGod was, he believed, because he had not struggled enough with the evil\nof his nature or honored enough the precepts of the law.  Was there no\nservice by which he could make up for all deficiencies and win that\ngrace at last in which the great of old had stood?  This was the temper\nof mind in which he returned to Jerusalem, and learned with\nastonishment and indignation of the rise of a sect which believed that\nJesus who had been crucified was the Messiah of the Jewish people.\n\n\n31.  State of the Christian Church.--Christianity was as yet only two\nor three years old, and was growing very quietly in Jerusalem.\nAlthough those who had heard it preached at Pentecost had carried the\nnews of it to their homes in many quarters, its public representatives\nhad not yet left the city of its birth.  At first the authorities had\nbeen inclined to persecute it, and checked its teachers when they\nappeared in public.  But they had changed their minds and, acting under\nthe advice of Gamaliel, resolved to neglect it, believing that it would\ndie out, if let alone.  The Christians, on the other hand, gave as\nlittle offence as possible; in the externals of religion they continued\nto be strict Jews and zealous of the law, attending the temple worship,\nobserving the Jewish ceremonies and respecting the ecclesiastical\nauthorities.\n\nIt was a kind of truce, which allowed Christianity a little space for\nsecret growth.  In their upper rooms the brethren met to break bread\nand pray to their ascended Lord.  It was the most beautiful spectacle.\nThe new faith had alighted among them like an angel, and was shedding\npurity on their souls from its wings and breathing over their humble\ngatherings the spirit of peace.  Their love to each other was\nunbounded; they were filled with the inspiring sense of discovery; and,\nas often as they met, their invisible Lord was in their midst.  It was\nlike heaven upon earth.  While Jerusalem around them was going on in\nits ordinary course of worldliness and ecclesiastical asperity, these\nfew humble souls were felicitating themselves with a secret which they\nknew to contain within it the blessedness of mankind and the future of\nthe world.\n\n\n32.  But the truce could not last, and these scenes of peace were soon\nto be invaded with terror and bloodshed.  Christianity could not keep\nsuch a truce; for there is in it a world-conquering force, which impels\nit at all risks to propagate itself, and the fermentation of the new\nwine of gospel liberty was sure sooner or later to burst the forms of\nthe Jewish law.\n\nAt length a man arose in the Church in whom these aggressive tendencies\nembodied themselves.  This was Stephen, one of the seven deacons who\nhad been appointed to watch over the temporal affairs of the Christian\nsociety.  He was a man full of the Holy Ghost and possessed of\ncapabilities which the brevity of his career only permitted to suggest\nbut not to develop themselves.  He went from synagogue to synagogue,\npreaching the Messiahship of Jesus and announcing the advent of freedom\nfrom the yoke of the law.  Champions of Jewish orthodoxy encountered\nhim, but were not able to withstand his eloquence and holy zeal.\nFoiled in argument, they grasped at other weapons, stirring up the\nauthorities and the populace to murderous fanaticism.\n\n\n33.  Stephen.--One of the synagogues in which these disputations took\nplace was that of the Cilicians, the countrymen of Paul.  May he have\nbeen a rabbi in this synagogue and one of Stephen's opponents in\nargument?  At all events, when the argument of logic was exchanged for\nthat of violence, he was in the front.  When the witnesses who cast the\nfirst stones at Stephen were stripping for their work, they laid down\ntheir garments at his feet.  There, on the margin of that wild scene,\nin the field of judicial murder, we see his figure, standing a little\napart and sharply outlined against the mass of persecutors unknown to\nfame--the pile of many-colored robes at his feet, and his eyes bent\nupon the holy martyr, who is kneeling in the article of death and\npraying: \"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.\"\n\n\n34.  The Persecutor.--His zeal on this occasion brought Paul\nprominently under the notice of the authorities.  It probably procured\nhim a seat in the Sanhedrin, where we find him soon afterward giving\nhis vote against the Christians.  At all events, it led to his being\nentrusted with the work of utterly uprooting Christianity, which the\nauthorities now resolved upon.  He accepted their proposal; for he\nbelieved it to be God's work.  He saw more clearly than any one else\nwhat was the drift of Christianity; and it seemed to him destined, if\nunchecked, to overturn all that he considered most sacred.  The repeal\nof the law was in his eyes the obliteration of the one way of\nsalvation, and faith in a crucified Messiah blasphemy against the\ndivinest hope of Israel.  Besides, he had a deep personal interest in\nthe task.  Hitherto he had been striving to please God, but always felt\nhis efforts to come short; here was a chance of making up for all\narrears by one splendid act of service.  This was the iron of agony in\nhis soul which gave edge and energy to his zeal.  In any case he was\nnot a man to do things by halves; and he flung himself headlong into\nhis task.\n\n\n35.  Terrible were the scenes which ensued.  He flew from synagogue to\nsynagogue, and from house to house, dragging forth men and women, who\nwere cast into prison and punished.  Some appear to have been put to\ndeath, and--darkest trait of all--others were compelled to blaspheme\nthe name of the Saviour.  The Church at Jerusalem was broken in pieces,\nand such of its members as escaped the rage of the persecutor were\nscattered over the neighboring provinces and countries.\n\n\n36.  It may seem too venturesome to call this the last stage of Paul's\nunconscious preparation for his apostolic career.  But so indeed it\nwas.  In entering on the career of a persecutor he was going on\nstraight in the line of the creed in which he had been brought up; and\nthis was its reduction to absurdity.  Besides, through the gracious\nworking of Him whose highest glory it is out of evil still to bring\nforth good, there sprang out of these sad doings in the mind of Paul an\nintensity of humility, a willingness to serve even the least of the\nbrethren of those whom he had abused, and a zeal to redeem lost time by\nthe parsimonious use of what was left, which became permanent spurs to\naction in his subsequent career.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nHIS CONVERSION\n\nParagraphs 37-50.\n\n  37, 38.  Severity of the Persecution.\n  39-42.   Kicking against the Goad.\n  43, 44.  The Vision of Christ.\n  45-48.   Effect of his Conversion on his Thinking.\n  49, 50.  Its Effect on his Destiny.\n\n\n37.  Severity of the Persecution.--It was the persecutor's hope utterly\nto exterminate Christianity.  But little did he understand its genius.\nIt thrives on persecution.  Prosperity has often been fatal to it,\npersecution never.  \"They that were scattered abroad went everywhere\npreaching the word.\"  Hitherto the Church had been confined within the\nwalls of Jerusalem; but now all over Judaea and Samaria, and in distant\nPhoenicia and Syria, the beacon of the gospel began in many a town and\nvillage to twinkle through the darkness, and twos and threes met\ntogether in upper rooms to impart to each other their joy in the Holy\nGhost.\n\n\n38.  We can imagine with what rage the tidings of these outbreaks of\nthe fanaticism which he had hoped to stamp out would fill the\npersecutor.  But he was not the person to be balked, and he resolved to\nhunt up the objects of his hatred even in their most obscure and\ndistant hiding-places.  In one strange city after another he\naccordingly appeared, armed with the apparatus of the inquisitor, to\ncarry his sanguinary purpose out.  Having heard that Damascus, the\ncapital of Syria, was one of the places where the fugitives had taken\nrefuge, and that they were carrying on their propaganda among the\nnumerous Jews of that city, he went to the high priest, who had\njurisdiction over the Jews outside as well as inside Palestine, and got\nletters empowering him to seize and bind and bring to Jerusalem all of\nthe new way of thinking whom he might find there.\n\n\n39.  Kicking Against the Goad.--As we see him start on this journey,\nwhich was to be so momentous, we naturally ask what was the state of\nhis mind.  His was a noble nature and a tender heart; but the work he\nwas engaged in might be supposed to be congenial only to the most\nbrutal of mankind.  Had his mind, then, been visited with no\ncompunctions?  Apparently not.  We are told that, as he was ranging\nthrough strange cities in pursuit of his victims, he was exceedingly\nmad against them; and, as he was setting out to Damascus, he was still\nbreathing out threatenings and slaughter.  He was sheltered against\ndoubt by his reverence for the objects which the heresy imperiled; and,\nif he had to outrage his natural feelings in the bloody work, was not\nhis merit all the greater?\n\n\n40.  But on this journey doubt at last invaded his mind.  It was a long\njourney of over a hundred and sixty miles; with the slow means of\nlocomotion then available, it would occupy at least six days; and a\nconsiderable portion of it lay across a desert, where there was nothing\nto distract the mind from its own reflections.  In this enforced\nleisure doubts arose.  What else can be meant by the word with which\nthe Lord saluted him: \"It is hard for thee to kick against the goad!\"\nThe figure of speech is borrowed from a custom of Eastern countries:\nthe ox-driver wields a long pole, at the end of which is fixed a piece\nof sharpened iron, with which he urges the animal to go on or stand\nstill or change its course; and, if it is refractory, it kicks against\nthe goad, injuring and infuriating itself with the wounds it receives.\nThis is a vivid picture of a man wounded and tortured by compunctions\nof conscience.  There was something in him rebelling against the course\nof inhumanity on which he was embarked and suggesting that he was\nfighting against God.\n\n\n41.  It is not difficult to conceive whence these doubts arose.  He was\na scholar of Gamaliel, the advocate of humanity and tolerance, who had\ncounseled the Sanhedrin to leave the Christians alone.  He was himself\ntoo young yet to have hardened his heart to all the disagreeables of\nsuch ghastly work.  Highly strung as was his religious zeal, nature\ncould not but speak out at last.  But probably his compunctions were\nchiefly awakened by the character and behavior of the Christians.  He\nhad heard the noble defense of Stephen and seen his face in the\ncouncil-chamber shining like that of an angel.  He had seen him\nkneeling on the field of execution and praying for his murderers.\nDoubtless, in the course of the persecution he had witnessed many\nsimilar scenes.  Did these people look like enemies of God?  As he\nentered their homes to drag them forth to prison, he got glimpses of\ntheir social life.  Could such spectacles of purity and love be\nproducts of the powers of darkness?  Did not the serenity with which\nhis victims went to meet their fate look like the very peace which he\nhad long been sighing for in vain?\n\nTheir arguments, too, must have told on a mind like his.  He had heard\nStephen proving from the Scriptures that it behooved the Messiah to\nsuffer; and the general tenor of the earliest Christian apologetic\nassures us that many of the accused must on their trial have appealed\nto passages like the fifty-third of Isaiah, where a career is predicted\nfor the Messiah startlingly like that of Jesus of Nazareth.  He heard\nincidents of Christ's life from their lips which betokened a personage\nvery different from the picture sketched for him by his Pharisaic\ninformants: and the sayings of their Master which the Christians quoted\ndid not sound like the utterances of the fanatic he conceived Jesus to\nhave been.\n\n\n42.  Such may have been some of the reflections which agitated the\ntraveler as he moved onward, sunk in gloomy thought.  But might not\nthese be mere suggestions of temptation--the morbid fancies of a\nwearied mind, or the whispers of a wicked spirit attempting to draw him\noff from the service of Heaven?  The sight of Damascus, shining out\nlike a gem in the heart of the desert, restored him to himself.  There,\nin the company of sympathetic rabbis and in the excitement of effort,\nhe would dispel from his mind these fancies bred of solitude.  So\nonward he pressed, and the sun of noonday, from which all but the most\nimpatient travelers in the East take refuge in a long siesta, looked\ndown upon him still urging forward his course toward the city gate.\n\n\n43.  The Vision of Christ.--The news of Saul's coming had arrived at\nDamascus before him; and the little flock of Christ was praying that,\nif it were possible, the progress of the wolf, who was on his way to\nspoil the fold, might be arrested.  Nearer and nearer, however, he\ndrew; he had reached the last stage of his journey; and at the sight of\nthe place which contained his victims his appetite grew keener for the\nprey.  But the Good Shepherd had heard the cries of the trembling flock\nand went forth to face the wolf on their behalf.  Suddenly at midday,\nas Paul and his company were riding forward beneath the blaze of the\nSyrian sun, a light which dimmed even that fierce glare shone round\nabout them, a shock vibrated through the atmosphere, and in a moment\nthey found themselves prostrate upon the ground.  The rest was for Paul\nalone: a voice sounded in his ears, \"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou\nMe?\" and, as he looked up and asked the radiant Figure that had spoken,\n\"Who art Thou, Lord?\" the answer was, \"I am Jesus, whom thou art\npersecuting.\"\n\n\n44.  The language in which he ever afterward spoke of this event\nforbids us to think that it was a mere vision of Jesus he saw.  He\nranks it as the last of the appearances of the risen Saviour to His\ndisciples, and places it on the same level as the appearances to Peter,\nto James, to the eleven, and to the five hundred.  It was, in fact,\nChrist Jesus in the vesture of His glorified humanity, who for once had\nleft the spot, wherever it may be in the spaces of the universe, where\nnow he sits on His mediatorial throne, in order to show Himself to this\nelect disciple; and the light which outshone the sun was no other than\nthe glory in which His humanity is there enveloped.  An incidental\nevidence of this was supplied in the words which were addressed to\nPaul.  They were spoken in the Hebrew, or rather the Aramaic\ntongue--the same language in which Jesus had been wont to address the\nmultitudes by the Lake and converse with His disciples in the desert\nsolitudes; and, as in the days of His flesh He was wont to open His\nmouth in parables, so now He clothed His rebuke in a striking metaphor:\n\"It is hard for thee to kick against the goad.\"\n\n\n45.  Effect on Paul's Thought.--It would be impossible to exaggerate\nwhat took place in the mind of Paul in this single instant.  It is but\na clumsy way we have of dividing time by the revolution of the clock\ninto minutes and hours, days and years, as if each portion so measured\nwere of the same size as another of equal length.  This may suit well\nenough for the common ends of life, but there are finer measurements\nfor which it is quite misleading.  The real size of any space of time\nis to be measured by the amount it contains of the soul's experience;\nno one hour is exactly equal to another, and there are single hours\nwhich are larger than months.  So measured, this one moment of Paul's\nlife was perhaps larger than all his previous years.  The glare of\nrevelation was so intense that it might well have scorched the eye of\nreason or burnt out life itself, as the external light dazzled the eyes\nof his body into blindness.\n\nWhen his companions recovered themselves and turned to their leader,\nthey discovered that he had lost his sight, and they had to take him by\nthe hand and lead him into the city.  What a change was there!  Instead\nof the proud Pharisee riding through the streets with the pomp of an\ninquisitor, a stricken man, trembling, groping, clinging to the hand of\nhis guide, arrives at the house of entertainment amidst the\nconsternation of those who receive him and, getting hastily to a room\nwhere he can ask them to leave him alone, sinks down there in the\ndarkness.\n\n\n46.  But, though it was dark without, it was bright within.  The\nblindness had been sent for the purpose of secluding him from outward\ndistractions and enabling him to concentrate himself on the objects\npresented to the inner eye.  For the same reason he neither ate nor\ndrank for three days.  He was too absorbed in the thoughts which\ncrowded on him thick and fast.\n\n\n47.  In these three days, it may be said with confidence, he got at\nleast a partial hold of all the truths he afterward proclaimed to the\nworld; for his whole theology is nothing but the explication of his own\nconversion.  First of all, his whole previous life fell down in\nfragments at his feet.  It had been of one piece, and wonderfully\ncomplete.  It had appeared to himself to be a consistent deduction from\nthe highest revelation he knew and, in spite of its imperfections, to\nlie in the line of the will of God.  But, instead of this, it had been\nrushing in diametrical opposition against the will and revelation of\nGod, and had now been brought to a stop and broken in pieces by the\ncollision.  That which had appeared to him the perfection of service\nand obedience had involved his soul in the guilt of blasphemy and\ninnocent blood.  Such had been the issue of seeking righteousness by\nthe works of the law.  At the very moment when his righteousness seemed\nat last to be turning to the whiteness so long desired, it was caught\nin the blaze of this revelation and whirled away in shreds of shriveled\nblackness.  It had been a mistake, then, from first to last.\nRighteousness was not to be obtained by the law, but only guilt and\ndoom.  This was the unmistakable conclusion, and it became the one pole\nof Paul's theology.\n\n\n48.  But, while his theory of life thus fell in pieces with a crash\nthat might by itself have shaken his reason, in the same moment an\nopposite experience befell him.  Not in wrath and vengeance did Jesus\nof Nazareth appear to him, as He might have been expected to appear to\nthe deadly enemy of His cause.  His first word might have been a demand\nfor retribution, and His first might have been His last.  But, instead\nof this, His face had been full of divine benignity and His words full\nof considerateness for His persecutor.  In the very moment when the\ndivine strength cast him down on the ground he felt himself encompassed\nby the divine love.  This was the prize he had all his lifetime been\nstruggling for in vain, and now he grasped it in the very moment in\nwhich he discovered that his struggles had been fightings against God;\nhe was lifted up from his fall in the arms of God's love; he was\nreconciled and accepted forever.  As time went on, he was more and more\nassured of this.  In Christ he found without effort of his own the\npeace and the moral strength he had striven for in vain.  And this\nbecame the other pole of his theology--that righteousness and strength\nare found in Christ without man's effort by mere trust in God's grace\nand acceptance of His gift.  There were a hundred other things involved\nin these two which it required time to work out; but within these two\npoles the system of Paul's thinking ever afterward revolved.\n\n\n49.  Effect on his Future.--The three dark days were not done before he\nknew one thing more--that his life was to be devoted to the\nproclamation of these discoveries.  In any case this must have been.\nPaul was a born propagandist and could not have become the possessor of\nsuch revolutionary truth without spreading it.  Besides, he had a warm\nheart, that could be deeply moved with gratitude; and, when Jesus, whom\nhe had blasphemed and tried to blot out of the memory of the world,\ntreated him with such divine benignity, giving him back his forfeited\nlife and placing him in that position which had always appeared to him\nthe prize of life, he could not but put himself at His service with all\nhis powers.  He was an ardent patriot, the hope of the Messiah having\nlong occupied for him the whole horizon of the future; and, when he\nknew that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah of his people and the\nSaviour of the world, it followed as a matter of course that he must\nspend his life in making this known.\n\n\n50.  But this destiny was also clearly announced to him from the\noutside.  Ananias, probably the leading man in the small Christian\ncommunity at Damascus, was informed, in a vision, of the change which\nhad happened to Paul, and was sent to restore his sight and admit him\ninto the Christian Church by baptism.\n\nNothing could be more beautiful than the way in which this servant of\nGod approached the man who had come to the city to take his life.  As\nsoon as he learned the state of the case, he forgave and forgot all the\ncrimes of his enemy and sprang to clasp him in the arms of Christian\nlove.  Certain as may have been the assurance which in the inner world\nof the mind Paul had in those three days received of forgiveness, it\nmust have been to him a most welcome reassurance when, on opening his\neyes again upon the external world, he was met with no contradiction of\nthe visions he had been looking on, but the first object he saw was a\nhuman face bending over him with looks of forgiveness and perfect love.\nHe learned from Ananias the future the Saviour had appointed him: he\nhad been apprehended by Christ in order to be a vessel to bear His name\nto Gentiles and kings and to the children of Israel.  He accepted the\nmission with limitless devotion; and from that hour to the hour of his\ndeath he had but one ambition--to apprehend that for which he had been\napprehended of Christ Jesus.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nHIS GOSPEL\n\nParagraphs 51-67.\n\n  51-53.  SOJOURN IN ARABIA.\n  54-58.  FAILURE OF MAN'S RIGHTEOUSNESS.\n          56.  Failure of the Gentiles.  57.  Failure of the\n          Jews.  58.  The Fall the ultimate Cause of Failure.\n  59-65.  THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD.  The New Adam.  The New Man.\n  66, 67. LEADING PECULIARITIES OF THE PAULINE GOSPEL.\n\n\n51.  Sojourn in Arabia.--When a man has been suddenly converted, as\nPaul was, he is generally driven by a strong impulse to make known what\nhas happened to him.  Such testimony is very impressive; for it is that\nof a soul which is receiving its first glimpses of the realities of the\nunseen world, and there is a vividness about the report it gives of\nthem which produces an irresistible sense of reality.  Whether Paul\nyielded at once to this impulse or not we cannot say with certainty.\nThe language of the book of Acts, where it is said that \"straightway he\npreached Christ in the synagogues,\" would lead us to suppose so.  But\nwe learn from his own writings that there was another powerful impulse\ninfluencing him at the same time; and it is uncertain which of the two\nhe obeyed first.  This other impulse was the wish to retreat into\nsolitude and think out the meaning and issues of that which had\nbefallen him.  It cannot be wondered at that he felt this to be a\nnecessity.  He had believed his former creed intensely and staked\neverything on it; to see it suddenly shattered in pieces must have\nshaken him severely.  The new truth which had been flashed upon him was\nso far-reaching and revolutionary that it could not be taken in at once\nin all its bearings.  Paul was a born thinker; it was not enough for\nhim to experience anything; he required to comprehend it and fit it\ninto the structure of his convictions.\n\nImmediately, therefore, after his conversion he went away, he tells us,\ninto Arabia.  He does not, indeed, say for what purpose he went; but,\nas there is no record of his preaching in that region and this\nstatement occurs in the midst of a vehement defense of the originality\nof his gospel, we may conclude with considerable certainty that he went\ninto retirement for the purpose of grasping in thought the details and\nthe bearings of the revelation he had been put in possession of.  In\nlonely contemplation he worked them out; and, when he returned to\nmankind, he was in possession of that view of Christianity which was\npeculiar to himself and formed the burden of his preaching during the\nsubsequent years.\n\n\n52.  There is some doubt as to the precise place of his retirement,\nbecause Arabia is a word of vague and variable significance.  But most\nprobably it denotes the Arabia of the Wanderings, the principal feature\nof which was Mount Sinai.  This was a spot hallowed by great memories\nand by the presence of other great men of revelation.  Here Moses had\nseen the burning bush and communed with God on the top of the mountain.\nHere Elijah had roamed in his season of despair and drunk anew at the\nwells of inspiration.  What place could be more appropriate for the\nmeditations of this successor of these men of God?  In the valleys\nwhere the manna fell and under the shadows of the peaks which had\nburned beneath the feet of Jehovah he pondered the problem of his life.\n\nIt is a great example.  Originality in the preaching of the truth\ndepends on the solitary intuition of it.  Paul enjoyed the special\ninspiration of the Holy Ghost; but this did not render the concentrated\nactivity of his own thinking unnecessary but only lent it peculiar\nintensity; and the clearness and certainty of his gospel were due to\nthese months of sequestered thought.  His retirement may have lasted a\nyear or more; for between his conversion and his final departure from\nDamascus, to which he returned from Arabia, three years intervened; and\none of them at least was spent in this way.\n\n\n53.  We have no detailed record of what the outlines of his gospel were\ntill a period long subsequent to this; but, as these, when first they\nare traceable, are a mere cast of the features of his conversion, and,\nas his mind was working so long and powerfully on the interpretation of\nthat event at this period, there can be no doubt that the gospel\nsketched in the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians was\nsubstantially the same as he preached from the first; and we are safe\nin inferring from these writings our account of his Arabian meditations.\n\n\n54.  Failure of Man's Righteousness.--The starting-point of Paul's\nthinking was still, as it had been from his childhood, the conviction,\ninherited from pious generations, that the true end and felicity of man\nlay in the enjoyment of the favor of God.  This was to be attained\nthrough righteousness; only the righteous could God be at peace with\nand favor with His love.  To attain righteousness must, therefore, be\nthe chief end of man.\n\n\n55.  But man had failed to attain righteousness and had thereby come\nshort of the favor of God, and exposed himself to the divine wrath.\nPaul proves this by taking a vast survey of the history of mankind in\npre-Christian times in its two great sections--the Gentile and the\nJewish.\n\n\n56.  The Gentiles failed.  It might, indeed, be supposed that they had\nnot the preliminary conditions for entering on the pursuit of\nrighteousness at all, because they did not enjoy the advantage of a\nspecial revelation.  But Paul holds that even the heathen know enough\nof God to be aware of the obligation to follow after righteousness.\nThere is a natural revelation of God in His works and in the human\nconscience sufficient to enlighten men as to this duty.  But the\nheathen, instead of making use of this light, wantonly extinguished it.\nThey were not willing to retain God in their knowledge and to fetter\nthemselves with the restraints which a pure knowledge of Him imposed.\nThey corrupted the idea of God in order to feel at ease in an immoral\nlife.  The revenge of nature came upon them in the darkening and\nconfusion of their intellects.  They fell into such insensate folly as\nto change the glorious and incorruptible nature of God into the images\nof men and beasts, birds and reptiles.  This intellectual degeneracy\nwas followed by still deeper moral degeneracy.  God, when they forsook\nHim, let them go; and, when His restraining grace was removed, down\nthey rushed into the depths of moral putridity.  Lust and passion got\nthe mastery of them, and their life became a mass of moral disease.  In\nthe end of the first chapter of Romans the features of their condition\nare sketched in colors that might be borrowed from the abode of devils,\nbut were literally taken, as is too plainly proved by the pages even of\nGentile historians, from the condition of the cultured heathen nations\nat that time.  This, then, was the history of one half of mankind: it\nhad utterly fallen from righteousness and exposed itself to the wrath\nof God, which is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of\nmen.\n\n\n57.  The Jews were the other half of the world.  Had they succeeded\nwhere the Gentiles had failed?  They enjoyed, indeed, great advantages\nover the heathen; for they possessed the oracles of God, in which the\ndivine nature was exhibited in a form which rendered it inaccessible to\nhuman perversion, and the divine law was written with equal plainness\nin the same form.  But had they profited by these advantages?  It is\none thing to know the law and another thing to do it; but it is doing,\nnot knowing, which is righteousness.  Had they, then, fulfilled the\nwill of God, which they knew?\n\nPaul had lived in the same Jerusalem in which Jesus assailed the\ncorruption and hypocrisy of scribes and Pharisees; he had looked\nclosely at the lives of the representative men of his nation; and he\ndoes not hesitate to charge the Jews in mass with the very same sins as\nthe Gentiles; nay, he says that through them the name of God was\nblasphemed among the Gentiles.  They boasted of their knowledge and\nwere the bearers of the torch of truth, the fierce blaze of which\nexposed the sins of the heathen; but their religion was a bitter\ncriticism of the conduct of others; they forgot to examine their own\nconduct by the same light; and, while they were repeating, Do not\nsteal, Do not commit adultery, and a multitude of other commandments,\nthey were indulging in these sins themselves.  What good in these\ncircumstances did their knowledge do them?  It only condemned them the\nmore; for their sin was against light.  While the heathen knew so\nlittle that their sins were comparatively innocent, the sins of the\nJews were conscious and presumptuous.  Their boasted superiority was\ntherefore inferiority.  They were more deeply condemned than the\nGentiles they despised, and exposed to a heavier curse.\n\n\n58.  The truth is, Gentiles and Jews had both failed for the same\nreason.  Trace these two streams of human life back to their sources\nand you come at last to a point where they are not two streams but one;\nand, before the bifurcation took place, something had happened which\npredetermined the failure of both.  In Adam all fell, and from him all,\nboth Gentiles and Jews, inherited a nature too weak for the arduous\nattainment of righteousness; human nature is carnal now, not spiritual,\nand, therefore, unequal to this supreme spiritual achievement.\n\nThe law could not alter this; it had no creative power to make the\ncarnal spiritual.  On the contrary, it aggravated the evil.  It\nactually multiplied offenses; for its clear and full description of\nsins, which would have been an incomparable guide to a sound nature,\nturned into temptation for a morbid one.  The very knowledge of sin\ntempts to its commission; the very command not to do anything is to a\ndiseased nature a reason for doing it.  This was the effect of the law:\nit multiplied and aggravated transgressions.  And this was God's\nintention.  Not that He was the author of sin; but, like a skillful\nphysician, who has sometimes to use appliances to bring a sore to a\nhead before he heals it, He allowed the heathen to go their own way and\ngave the Jews the law, that the sin of human nature might exhibit all\nits inherent qualities, before He intervened to heal it.  The healing,\nhowever, was His real purpose all the time: He concluded all under sin,\nthat He might have mercy upon all.\n\n\n59.  The Righteousness of God.--Man's extremity was God's opportunity;\nnot, indeed, in the sense that, one way of salvation having failed.\nGod devised another.  The law had never, in His intention, been a way\nof salvation.  It was only a means of illustrating the need of\nsalvation.  But the moment when this demonstration was complete was the\nsignal for God to produce His method, which He had kept locked in His\ncounsel through the generations of human probation.  It had never been\nHis intention to permit man to fail of his true end.  Only He allowed\ntime to prove that fallen man could never reach righteousness by his\nown efforts; and, when the righteousness of man had been demonstrated\nto be a failure, He brought forth His secret--the righteousness of God.\n\nThis was Christianity; this was the sum and issue of the mission of\nChrist--the conferring upon man, as a free gift, of that which is\nindispensable to his blessedness, but which he had failed himself to\nattain.  It is a divine act; it is grace; and man obtains it by\nacknowledging that he has failed himself to attain it and by accepting\nit from God; it is got by faith only.  It is \"the righteousness of God,\nby the faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe.\"\n\n\n60.  Those who thus receive it enter at once into that position of\npeace and favor with God in which human felicity consists and which was\nthe goal aimed at by Paul when he was striving for righteousness by the\nlaw.  \"Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our\nLord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace\nwherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.\"  It is a\nsunny life of joy, peace and hope which those lead who have come to\nknow this gospel.  There may be trials in it; but, when a man's life is\nreposing in the attainment of its true end, trials are light and all\nthings work together for good.\n\n\n61.  This righteousness of God is for all the children of men--not for\nthe Jews only, but for the Gentiles also.  The demonstration of man's\ninability to attain righteousness was made, in accordance with the\ndivine purpose, in both sections of the human race; and its completion\nwas the signal for the exhibition of God's grace to both alike.  The\nwork of Christ was not for the children of Abraham, but for the\nchildren of Adam.  \"As in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made\nalive.\"  The Gentiles did not need to undergo circumcision and to keep\nthe law in order to obtain salvation; for the law was no part of\nsalvation; it belonged entirely to the preliminary demonstration of\nman's failure; and, when it had accomplished this service, it was ready\nto vanish away.  The only human condition of obtaining God's\nrighteousness is faith; and this is as easy for Gentile as Jew.\n\nThis was an inference from Paul's own experience.  It was not as a Jew,\nbut as a man, that he had been dealt with in his conversion.  No\nGentile could have been less entitled to obtain salvation by merit than\nhe had been.  So far from the law raising him a single step toward\nsalvation, it had removed him to a greater distance from God than any\nGentile, and cast him into a deeper condemnation.  How, then, could it\nprofit the Gentiles to be placed in this position?  In obtaining the\nrighteousness in which he was now rejoicing he had done nothing which\nwas not competent to any human being.\n\n\n62.  It was this universal love of God revealed in the gospel which\ninspired Paul with unbounded admiration for Christianity.  His\nsympathies had been cabined, cribbed, confined in a narrow conception\nof God; the new faith uncaged his heart and let it forth into the free\nand sunny air.  God became a new God to him.  He calls his discovery\nthe mystery which had been hidden from ages and generations, but had\nbeen revealed to him and his fellow-apostles.  It seemed to him to be\nthe secret of the ages and to be destined to usher in a new era, far\nbetter than any the world had ever seen.  What kings and prophets had\nnot known had been revealed to him.  It had burst on him like the dawn\nof a new creation.  God was now offering to every man the supreme\nfelicity of life--that righteousness which had been the vain endeavor\nof the past ages.\n\n\n63.  This secret of the new epoch had not, indeed, been entirely\nunanticipated in the past.  It had been \"witnessed by the law and the\nprophets.\"  The law could bear witness to it only negatively by\ndemonstrating its necessity.  But the prophets anticipated it more\npositively.  David, for example, described \"the blessedness of the man\nunto whom God imputed righteousness without works.\"  Still more clearly\nhad Abraham anticipated it.  He was a justified man; and it was by\nfaith, not by works, that He was justified--\"he believed God, and it\nwas imputed unto him for righteousness.\"  The law had nothing to do\nwith his justification, for it was not in existence for four centuries\nafterward.  Nor had circumcision anything to do with it, for he was\njustified before this rite was instituted.  In short, it was as a man,\nnot as a Jew, that he was dealt with by God, and God might deal with\nany human being in the same way.  It had once made the thorny road of\nlegal righteousness sacred to Paul to think that Abraham and the\nprophets had trodden it before him; but now he knew that their life of\nreligious joy and psalms of holy calm were inspired by quite different\nexperiences, which were now diffusing the peace of heaven through his\nheart also.  But only the first streaks of dawn had been descried by\nthem; the perfect day had broken in his own time.\n\n\n64.  The Old Adam and the New.--Paul's discovery of this way of\nsalvation was an actual experience; he simply knew that Christ, in the\nmoment when He met him, had placed him in that position of peace and\nfavor with God which he had long sighed for in vain, and, as time went\non, he felt more and more that in this position he was enjoying the\ntrue blessedness of life.  His mission henceforth must be to herald\nthis discovery in its simple and concrete reality under the name of the\nRighteousness of God.  But a mind like his could not help inquiring how\nit was that the possession of Christ did so much for him.  In the\nArabian wilderness he pondered over this question, and the gospel he\nsubsequently preached contained a luminous answer to it.\n\n\n65.  From Adam his children derive a sad double heritage--a debt of\nguilt, which they cannot reduce, but are constantly increasing, and a\ncarnal nature, which is incapable of righteousness.  These are the two\nfeatures of the religious condition of fallen man, and they are the\ndouble source of all his woes.\n\nBut Christ is a new Adam, a new head of humanity, and those who are\nconnected with Him by faith become heirs of a double heritage of a\nprecisely opposite kind.  On the one hand, just as through our birth in\nthe first Adam's line we get inevitably entangled in guilt, like a\nchild born into a family which is drowned in debt, so through our birth\nin the line of the second Adam we get involved in a boundless heritage\nof merit, which Christ, as the Head of His family, makes the common\nproperty of its members.  This extinguishes the debt of our guilt and\nmakes us rich in Christ's righteousness.  \"As by one man's disobedience\nmany were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made\nrighteous.\"  On the other hand, just as Adam transmitted to his\nposterity a carnal nature, alien to God and unfit for righteousness, so\nthe new Adam imparts to the race of which He is the Head a spiritual\nnature, akin to God and delighting in righteousness.\n\nThe nature of man, according to Paul, normally consists of three\nsections--body, soul and spirit.  In his original constitution these\noccupied definite relations of superiority and subordination to one\nanother, the spirit being supreme, the body undermost, and the soul\noccupying the middle position.  But the fall disarranged this order,\nand all sin consists in the usurpation by the body or the soul of the\nplace of the spirit.  In fallen man these two inferior sections of\nhuman nature, which together form what Paul calls the Flesh, or that\nside of human nature which looks toward the world and time, have taken\npossession of the throne and completely rule the life, while the\nspirit, the side of man which looks toward God and eternity, has been\ndethroned and reduced to a condition of inefficiency and death.  Christ\nrestores the lost predominance of the spirit of man by taking\npossession of it by his own Spirit.  His Spirit dwells in the human\nspirit, vivifying it and sustaining it in such growing strength that it\nbecomes more and more the sovereign part of the human constitution.\nThe man ceases to be carnal and becomes spiritual; he is led by the\nSpirit of God and becomes more and more harmonious with all that is\nholy and divine.\n\nThe flesh does not, indeed, easily submit to the loss of supremacy.  It\nclogs and obstructs the spirit and fights to regain possession of the\nthrone.  Paul has described this struggle in sentences of terrible\nvividness, in which all generations of Christians have recognized the\nfeatures of their deepest experience.  But the issue of the struggle is\nnot doubtful.  Sin shall not again have dominion over those in whom\nChrist's Spirit dwells, or dislodge them from their standing in the\nfavor of God.  \"Neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities\nnor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor\ndepth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the\nlove of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.\"\n\n\n66.  The Pauline Gospel.--Such are the bare outlines of the gospel\nwhich Paul brought back with him from the Arabian solitudes and\nafterward preached with unwearied enthusiasm.  It could not but be\nmixed up in his mind and in his writings with the peculiarities of his\nown experience as a Jew, and these make it difficult for us to grasp\nhis system in some of its details.  The belief in which he was brought\nup, that no man could be saved without becoming a Jew, and the notions\nabout the law from which he had to cut himself free, lie very distant\nfrom our modern sympathies; yet his theology could not shape itself in\nhis mind except in contrast to these misconceptions.  This became\nsubsequently still more inevitable when his own old errors met him as\nthe watchwords of a party within the Christian Church itself, against\nwhich he had to wage a long and relentless war.  Though this conflict\nforced his views into the clearest expression, it encumbered them with\nreferences to feelings and beliefs which are now dead to the interest\nof mankind.  But, in spite of these drawbacks, the Gospel of Paul\nremains a possession of incalculable value to the human race.  Its\nsearching investigation of the failure and the wants of human nature,\nits wonderful unfolding of the wisdom of God in the education of the\npre-Christian world, and its exhibition of the depth and universality\nof the divine love are among the profoundest elements of revelation.\n\n\n67.  But it is in its conception of Christ that Paul's gospel wears its\nimperishable crown.  The Evangelists sketched in a hundred traits of\nsimple and affecting beauty the fashion of the earthly life of the man\nChrist Jesus, and in these the model of human conduct will always have\nto be sought; but to Paul was reserved the task of making known, in its\nheights and depths, the work which the Son of God accomplished as the\nSaviour of the race.  He scarcely ever refers to the incidents of\nChrist's earthly life, although here and there he betrays that he knew\nthem well.  To him Christ was ever the glorious Being, shining with the\nsplendor of heaven, who appeared to him on the way to Damascus, and the\nSaviour who caught him up into the heavenly peace and joy of a new\nlife.  When the Church of Christ thinks of her Head as the deliverer of\nthe soul from sin and death, as a spiritualizing presence ever with her\nand at work in every believer, and as the Lord over all things who will\ncome again without sin unto salvation, it is in forms of thought given\nher by the Holy Ghost through the instrumentality of this apostle.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE WORK AWAITING THE WORKER\n\nParagraphs 68-78.\n\n  68-70.  Eight years of Comparative Inactivity at Tarsus.\n          Gentiles admitted to Christian Church.\n  71, 72. Paul discovered by Barnabas and brought to\n          Antioch.  His Work there.\n  73-78.  THE KNOWN WORLD OF THAT PERIOD.\n          75.  The Greeks; 76.  The Romans; 77.  The Jews;\n          78.  Barbarians and Slaves.\n\n\n68.  Years of Inactivity.--Paul was now in possession of his gospel and\nwas aware that it was to be the mission of his life to preach it to the\nGentiles; but he had still to wait a long time before his peculiar\ncareer commenced.  We hear scarcely anything of him for seven or eight\nyears; and yet we can only guess what may have been the reasons of\nProvidence for imposing on His servant so long a time of waiting.\n\n\n69.  There may have been personal reasons for it connected with Paul's\nown spiritual history; because waiting is a common instrument of\nprovidential discipline for those to whom exceptional work has been\nappointed.  A public reason may have been that he was too obnoxious to\nthe Jewish authorities to be tolerated yet in those scenes where\nChristian activity commanded any notice.  He had attempted to preach in\nDamascus, where his conversion had taken place, but was immediately\nforced to flee from the fury of the Jews; and, going thence to\nJerusalem and beginning to testify as a Christian, he found the place\nin two or three weeks too hot to hold him.  No wonder; how could the\nJews be expected to allow the man who had so lately been the chief\nchampion of their religion to preach the faith which they had employed\nhim to destroy?  When he fled from Jerusalem, he bent his steps to his\nnative Tarsus, where for years he remained in obscurity.  No doubt he\ntestified for Christ there to his own family, and there are some\nindications that he carried on evangelistic operations in his native\nprovince of Cilicia: but, if he did so, his work may be said to have\nbeen that of a man in hiding, for it was not in the central or even in\na visible stream of the new religious movement.\n\n\n70.  These are but conjectural reasons for the obscurity of those\nyears.  But there was one undoubted reason for the delay of Paul's\ncareer of the greatest possible importance.  In this interval took\nplace that revolution--one of the most momentous in the history of\nmankind--by which the Gentiles were admitted to equal privileges with\nthe Jews in the Church of Christ.  This change proceeded from the\noriginal circle of apostles, in Jerusalem, and Peter, the chief of the\napostles, was the instrument of it.  By the vision of the sheet of\nclean and unclean beasts, which he saw at Joppa, he was prepared for\nthe part he was to play in this transaction, and he admitted the\nGentile Cornelius, of Caesarea, and his family to the Church by baptism\nwithout circumcision.  This was an innovation involving boundless\nconsequences.  It was a necessary preliminary to Paul's mission-work,\nand subsequent events were to show how wise was the divine arrangement\nthat the first Gentile entrants into the Church should be admitted by\nthe hands of Peter rather than by those of Paul.\n\n\n71.  As soon as this event had taken place, the arena was clear for\nPaul's career, and a door was immediately opened for his entrance upon\nit.  Almost simultaneously with the baptism of the Gentile family at\nCaesarea a great revival broke out among the Gentiles of the city of\nAntioch, the capital of Syria.  The movement had been begun by\nfugitives driven by persecution from Jerusalem, and it was carried on\nwith the sanction of the apostles, who sent Barnabas, one of their\ntrusted coadjutors, from Jerusalem to superintend it.\n\nThis man knew Paul.  When Paul first came to Jerusalem after his\nconversion and assayed to join himself to the Christians there, they\nwere all afraid of him, suspecting the teeth and claws of the wolf\nbeneath the fleece of the sheep.  But Barnabas rose superior to these\nfears and suspicions and, having taken the new convert and heard his\nstory, believed in him and persuaded the rest to receive him.  The\nintercourse thus begun only lasted a week or two at that time, as Paul\nhad to leave Jerusalem; but Barnabas had received a profound impression\nof his personality and did not forget him.  When he was sent down to\nsuperintend the revival at Antioch, he soon found himself embarrassed\nwith its magnitude and in need of assistance; and the idea occurred to\nhim that Paul was the man he wanted.  Tarsus was not far off, and\nthither he went to seek him.  Paul accepted his invitation and returned\nwith him to Antioch.\n\n\n72.  The hour he had been waiting for had struck, and he threw himself\ninto the work of evangelizing the Gentiles with the enthusiasm of a\ngreat nature that found itself at last in its proper sphere.  The\nmovement at once responded to the pressure of such a hand; the\ndisciples became so numerous and prominent that the heathen gave them a\nnew name--that name of \"Christians,\" which has ever since continued to\nbe the badge of faith in Christ--and Antioch, a city of half a million\ninhabitants, became the headquarters of Christianity instead of\nJerusalem.  Soon a large church was formed, and one of the\nmanifestations of the zeal with which it was pervaded was a proposal,\nwhich gradually shaped itself into an enthusiastic resolution, to send\nforth a mission to the heathen.  As a matter of course, Paul was\ndesignated for this service.\n\n\n73.  The Known World of that Period.--As we see him thus brought at\nlength face to face with the task of his life, let us pause to take a\nbrief survey of the world which he was setting out to conquer.  Nothing\nless was what he aimed at.  In Paul's time the known world was so small\na place, that it did not seem impossible even for a single man to make\na spiritual conquest of it; and it had been wonderfully prepared for\nthe new force which was about to assail it.\n\n\n74.  It consisted of a narrow disc of land surrounding the\nMediterranean Sea.  That sea deserved at that time the name it bears,\nfor the world's center of gravity, which has since shifted to other\nlatitudes, lay in it.  The interest of human life was concentrated in\nthe southern countries of Europe, the portion of western Asia and the\nstrip of northern Africa which form its shores.  In this little world\nthere were three cities which divided between them the interest of\nthose ages.  These were Rome, Athens and Jerusalem, the capitals of the\nthree races--the Romans, the Greeks and the Jews--which in every sense\nruled that old world.  It was not that each of them had mastered a\nthird part of the circle of civilization, but each of them had in turn\ndiffused itself over the whole of it, and either still held its grip or\nat least had left imperishable traces of its presence.\n\n\n75.  The Greeks were the first to take possession of the world.  They\nwere the people of cleverness and genius, the perfect masters of\ncommerce, literature and art.  In very early ages they displayed the\ninstinct for colonization and sent forth their sons to find new abodes\non the east and the west, far from their native home.  At length there\narose among them one who concentrated in himself the strongest\ntendencies of the race and by force of arms extended the dominion of\nGreece to the borders of India.  The vast empire of Alexander the Great\nsplit into pieces at his death; but a deposit of Greek life and\ninfluence remained in all the countries over which the deluge of his\nconquering armies had swept.  Greek cities, such as Antioch in Syria\nand Alexandria in Egypt, flourished all over the East; Greek merchants\nabounded in every center of trade; Greek teachers taught the literature\nof their country in many lands; and--what was most important of\nall--the Greek language became the general vehicle for the\ncommunication of the more serious thought between nation and nation.\nEven the Jews in New Testament times read their own Scriptures in a\nGreek version, the original Hebrew having become a dead language.\nPerhaps the Greek is the most perfect tongue the world has known, and\nthere was a special providence in its universal diffusion before\nChristianity needed a medium of international communication.  The New\nTestament was written in Greek, and, wherever the apostles of\nChristianity traveled, they were able to make themselves understood in\nthis language.\n\n\n76.  The turn of the Romans came next to obtain possession of the\nworld.  Originally a small clan in the neighborhood of the city from\nwhich they derived their name, they gradually extended and strengthened\nthemselves and acquired such skill in the arts of war and government\nthat they became irresistible conquerors and marched forth in every\ndirection to make themselves masters of the globe.  They subdued Greece\nitself and, flowing eastward, seized upon the countries which Alexander\nand his successors had ruled.  The whole known world, indeed, became\ntheirs from the Straits of Gibraltar to the utmost East.  They did not\npossess the genius or geniality of the Greeks; their qualities were\nstrength and justice; and their arts were not those of the poet and the\nthinker, but those of the soldier and the judge.  They broke down the\ndivisions between the tribes of men and compelled them to be friendly\ntoward each other, because they were all alike prostrate beneath one\niron rule.  They pierced the countries with roads, which connected them\nwith Rome and were such solid triumphs of engineering skill that some\nof them remain to this day.  Along these highways the message of the\ngospel ran.  Thus the Romans also proved to be pioneers for\nChristianity, for their authority in so many countries afforded to its\nfirst publishers facility of movement and protection from the arbitrary\njustice of local tribunals.\n\n\n77.  Meanwhile the third nation of antiquity had also completed its\nconquest of the world.  Not by force of arms did the Jews diffuse\nthemselves, as the Greeks and Romans had done.  For centuries, indeed,\nthey had dreamed of the coming of a warlike hero, whose prowess should\noutshine that of the most celebrated Gentile conquerors.  But he never\ncame: and their occupation of the centers of civilization had to take\nplace in a more silent way.\n\nThere is no change in the habits of any nation more striking than that\nwhich passed over the Jewish race in that interval of four centuries\nbetween Malachi and Matthew of which we have no record in the sacred\nScriptures.  In the Old Testament we see the Jews pent within the\nnarrow limits of Palestine, engaged mainly in agricultural pursuits and\njealously guarding themselves from intermingling with foreign nations.\nIn the New Testament we find them still, indeed, clinging with a\ndesperate tenacity to Jerusalem and to the idea of their own\nseparateness; but their habits and abodes have been completely changed:\nthey have given up agriculture and betaken themselves with\nextraordinary eagerness and success to commerce; and with this object\nin view they have diffused themselves everywhere--over Africa, Asia,\nEurope--and there is not a city of any importance where they are not to\nbe found.  By what steps this extraordinary change came about it were\nhard to tell and long to trace.  But it had taken place; and this\nturned out to be a circumstance of extreme importance for the early\nhistory of Christianity.\n\nWherever the Jews were settled, they had their synagogues, their sacred\nScriptures, their uncompromising belief in the One true God.  Not only\nso: their synagogues everywhere attracted proselytes from the\nsurrounding Gentile populations.  The heathen religions were at that\nperiod in a state of utter collapse.  The smaller nations had lost\nfaith in their deities, because they had not been able to defend them\nfrom the victorious Greeks and Romans.  But the conquerors had for\nother reasons equally lost faith in their own gods.  It was an age of\nskepticism, religious decay and moral corruption.  But there are always\nnatures which must possess a faith in which they can trust.  These were\nin search of a religion, and many of them found refuge from the coarse\nand incredible myths of the gods of polytheism in the purity and\nmonotheism of the Jewish creed.  The fundamental ideas of this creed\nare also the foundations of the Christian faith.  Wherever the\nmessengers of Christianity traveled, they met with people with whom\nthey had many religious conceptions in common.  Their first sermons\nwere delivered in synagogues, their first converts were Jews and\nproselytes.  The synagogue was the bridge by which Christianity crossed\nover to the heathen.\n\n\n78.  Such, then, was the world which Paul was setting out to conquer.\nIt was a world everywhere pervaded with these three influences.  But\nthere were two other elements of population which require to be kept in\nmind, as both of them supplied numerous converts to the early\npreachers: they were the original inhabitants of the various countries;\nand there were the slaves, who were either captives taken in war or\ntheir descendants, and were liable to be shifted from place to place,\nbeing sold according to the necessities or caprices of their masters.\nA religion the chief boast of which it was to preach glad tidings to\nthe poor could not neglect these down-trodden classes, and, although\nthe conflict of Christianity with the forces of the time which had\npossession of the fate of the world naturally attracts attention, it\nmust not be forgotten that its best triumph has always consisted in the\nsweetening and brightening of the lot of the humble.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nHIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS\n\nParagraphs 70-114.\n\n  79-88.  THE FIRST JOURNEY.  79, 80.  His Companions.\n          81.  Cyprus.  Change of his Name.  82-87.\n          The Mainland of Asia Minor.  83.  Desertion of Mark.\n          84.  Antioch-in-Pisidia and Iconium.  86-87.  Lystra\n          and Derbe.  88.  Return.\n  89-108.  THE SECOND JOURNEY.  90, 91.  Separation\n          from Barnabas.  92, 93.  Unrecorded Half of\n          the Journey.  94-96.  Crossing to Europe.  97-108.\n          Greece.  97-101.  Macedonia.  99.  Women and the\n          Gospel.  100.  Liberality of Churches.  102-108.\n          Achaia.  103-105.  Athens.  106-108.  Corinth.\n  109-114.  THE THIRD JOURNEY.  Ephesus, Polemic\n          against Superstition.\n\n\nTHE FIRST JOURNEY\n\n79.  Paul's Companions.--From the beginning it had been the wont of the\npreachers of Christianity not to go alone on their expeditions, but two\nby two.  Paul improved on this practise by going generally with two\ncompanions, one of them being a younger man, who perhaps took charge of\nthe traveling arrangements.  On his first journey his comrades were\nBarnabas and John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas.\n\n\n80.  We have already seen that Barnabas may be called the discoverer of\nPaul; and, when they set out on this journey together, he was probably\nin a position to act as Paul's patron; for he enjoyed much\nconsideration in the Christian community.  Converted apparently on the\nday of Pentecost, he had played a leading part in the subsequent\nevents.  He was a man of high social position, a landed proprietor in\nthe island of Cyprus; and he sacrificed all to the new movement into\nwhich he had been drawn.  In the outburst of enthusiasm which led the\nfirst Christians to share their property with one another, he sold his\nestate and laid the money at the apostles' feet.  He was constantly\nemployed thereafter in the work of preaching, and he had so remarkable\na gift of eloquence that he was called the Son of Exhortation.  An\nincident which occurred at a later stage of this journey gives us a\nglimpse of the appearance of the two men.  When the inhabitants of\nLystra mistook them for gods, they called Barnabas Jupiter and Paul\nMercury.  Now, in ancient art Jupiter was always represented as a tall,\nmajestic and benignant figure, while Mercury was the small, swift\nmessenger of the father of gods and men.  Probably it appeared,\ntherefore, that the large, gracious, paternal Barnabas was the head and\ndirector of the expedition, while Paul, little and eager, was the\nsubordinate.  The direction in which they set out, too, was the one\nwhich Barnabas might naturally have been expected to choose.  They went\nfirst to Cyprus, the island where his property had been and many of his\nfriends still were.  It lay eighty miles to the southwest of Seleucia,\nthe seaport of Antioch, and they might reach it on the very day they\nleft their headquarters.\n\n\n81.  Cyprus--Change of Name.--But, although Barnabas appeared to be the\nleader, the good man probably knew already that the humble words of the\nBaptist might be used by himself with reference to his companion, \"He\nmust increase, but I must decrease.\"  At all events, as soon as their\nwork began in earnest, this was shown to be the relation between them.\nAfter going through the length of the island, from east to west,\nevangelizing, they arrived at Paphos, its chief town, and there the\nproblems they had come out to face met them in the most concentrated\nform.\n\nPaphos was the seat of the worship of Venus, the goddess of love, who\nwas said to have been born of the foam of the sea at this very spot;\nand her worship was carried on with the wildest licentiousness.  It was\na picture in miniature of Greece sunk in moral decay.  Paphos was also\nthe seat of the Roman government, and in the pro-consular chair sat a\nman, Sergius Paulus, whose noble character but utter lack of certain\nfaith formed a companion picture of the inability of Rome at that epoch\nto meet the deepest necessities of her best sons.  In the proconsular\ncourt, playing upon the inquirer's credulity, a Jewish sorcerer and\nquack, named Elymas, was flourishing, whose arts were a picture of the\nlowest depths to which the Jewish character could sink.  The whole\nscene was a kind of miniature of the world the evils of which the\nmissionaries had set forth to cure.\n\nIn the presence of these exigencies Paul unfolded for the first time\nthe mighty powers which lay in him.  An access of the Spirit seizing\nhim and enabling him to overcome all obstacles, he covered the Jewish\nmagician with disgrace, converted the Roman governor, and founded in\nthe town a Christian church in opposition to the Greek shrine.  From\nthat hour Barnabas sank into the second place and Paul took his natural\nposition as the head of the mission.  We no longer read, as heretofore,\nof \"Barnabas and Saul,\" but always of \"Paul and Barnabas.\"  The\nsubordinate had become the leader; and, as if to mark that he had\nbecome a new man and taken a new place, he was no longer called by the\nJewish name of Saul, which up to this point he had borne, but by the\nname of Paul, which has ever since been his designation among\nChristians.\n\n\n82.  The Mainland of Asia.--The next move was as obviously the choice\nof the new leader as the first one had been due to Barnabas.  They\nstruck across the sea to Perga, a town near the middle of the southern\ncoast of Asia Minor, then right up, a hundred miles, into the mainland,\nand thence eastward to a point almost straight north of Tarsus.  This\nroute carried them in a kind of half circuit through the districts of\nPamphylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia, which border, to the west and north,\non Cilicia, Paul's native province; so that, if it be the case that he\nhad evangelized Cilicia already, he was now merely extending his labors\nto the nearest surrounding regions.\n\n\n83.  At Perga, the starting-point of this second half of the journey, a\nmisfortune befell the expedition: John Mark deserted his companions and\nsailed for home.  It may be that the new position assumed by Paul had\ngiven him offense, though his generous uncle felt no such grudge at\nthat which was the ordinance of nature and of God.  But it is more\nlikely that the cause of his withdrawal was dismay at the dangers upon\nwhich they were about to enter.  These were such as might well strike\nterror even into resolute hearts.  Behind Perga rose the snow-clad\npeaks of the Taurus Mountains, which had to be penetrated through\nnarrow passes, where crazy bridges spanned the rushing torrents, and\nthe castles of robbers, who watched for passing travelers to pounce\nupon, were hidden in positions so inaccessible that even the Roman army\nhad not been able to exterminate them.  When these preliminary dangers\nwere surmounted, the prospect beyond was anything but inviting: the\ncountry to the north of the Taurus was a vast tableland, more elevated\nthan the summits of the highest mountains in this country, and\nscattered over with solitary lakes, irregular mountain masses and\ntracts of desert, where the population was rude and spoke an almost\nendless variety of dialects.  These things terrified Mark, and he drew\nback.  But his companions took their lives in their hand and went\nforward.  To them it was enough that there were multitudes of perishing\nsouls there, needing the salvation of which they were the heralds; and\nPaul knew that there were scattered handfuls of his own people in these\nremote regions of the heathen.\n\n\n84.  Can we conceive what their procedure was like in the towns they\nvisited?  It is difficult, indeed, to picture it to ourselves.  As we\ntry to see them with the mind's eye entering any place, we naturally\nthink of them as the most important personages in it; to us their entry\nis as august as if they had been carried on a car of victory.  Very\ndifferent, however, was the reality.  They entered a town as quietly\nand as unnoticed as any two strangers who may walk into one of our\ntowns any morning.  Their first care was to get a lodging; and then\nthey had to seek for employment, for they worked at their trade\nwherever they went.  Nothing could be more commonplace.  Who could\ndream that this travel-stained man, going from one tentmaker's door to\nanother, seeking for work, was carrying the future of the world beneath\nhis robe!\n\nWhen the Sabbath came round, they would cease from toil, like the other\nJews in the place, and repair to the synagogue.  They joined in the\npsalms and prayers with the other worshipers and listened to the\nreading of the Scriptures.  After this the presiding elder might ask if\nany one present had a word of exhortation to deliver.  This was Paul's\nopportunity.  He would rise and, with outstretched hand, begin to\nspeak.  At once the audience recognized the accents of the cultivated\nrabbi: and the strange voice won their attention.  Taking up the\npassages which had been read, he would soon be moving forward on the\nstream of Jewish history, till he led up to the astounding announcement\nthat the Messiah hoped for by their fathers and promised by their\nprophets had come; and he had been sent among them as His apostle.\nThen would follow the story of Jesus; it was true, He had been rejected\nby the authorities of Jerusalem and crucified, but this could be shown\nto have taken place in accordance with prophecy; and His resurrection\nfrom the dead was an infallible proof that He had been sent of God: now\nHe was exalted a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance unto Israel\nand the remission of sins.\n\nWe can easily imagine the sensation produced by such a sermon from such\na preacher and the buzz of conversation which would arise among the\ncongregation after the dismissal of the synagogue.  During the week it\nwould become the talk of the town: and Paul was willing to converse at\nhis work or in the leisure of the evening with any who might desire\nfurther information.  Next Sabbath the synagogue would be crowded, not\nwith Jews only, but Gentiles also, who were curious to see the\nstrangers; and Paul now unfolded the secret that salvation by Jesus\nChrist was as free to Gentiles as to Jews.  This was generally the\nsignal for the Jews to contradict and blaspheme; and, turning his back\non them, Paul addressed himself to the Gentiles.  But meantime the\nfanaticism of the Jews was roused, who either stirred up the mob or\nsecured the interest of the authorities against the strangers; and in a\nstorm of popular tumult or by the breath of authority the messengers of\nthe gospel were swept out of the town.  This was what happened at\nAntioch in Pisidia, their first halting-place in the interior of Asia\nMinor; and it was repeated in a hundred instances in Paul's subsequent\nlife.\n\n\n85.  Sometimes they did not get off so easily.  At Lystra, for example,\nthey found themselves in a population of rude heathens, who were at\nfirst so charmed with Paul's winning words and impressed with the\nappearance of the preachers that they took them for gods and were on\nthe point of offering sacrifice to them.  This filled the missionaries\nwith horror, and they rejected the intentions of the crowd with\nunceremonious haste.  A sudden revolution in the popular sentiment\nensued, and Paul was stoned and cast out of the city apparently dead.\n\n\n86.  Such were the scenes of excitement and peril through which they\nhad to pass in this remote region.  But their enthusiasm never flagged;\nthey never thought of turning back, but, when they were driven out of\none city, moved forward to another.  And, total as their discomfitures\nsometimes appeared, they quitted no city without leaving behind them a\nlittle band of converts--perhaps a few Jews, a few more proselytes, and\na number of Gentiles.  The gospel found those for whom it was\nintended--penitents burdened with sin, souls dissatisfied with the\nworld and their ancestral religion, hearts yearning for divine sympathy\nand love; \"as many as were ordained to eternal life believed;\" and\nthese formed in every city the nucleus of a Christian church.  Even at\nLystra, where the defeat seemed so utter, a little group of faithful\nhearts gathered round the mangled body of the apostle outside the city\ngates; Eunice and Lois were there with tender womanly ministrations;\nand young Timothy, as he looked down on the pale and bleeding face,\nfelt his heart forever knit to the hero who had courage to suffer to\nthe death for his faith.\n\n\n87.  In the intense love of such hearts Paul received compensation for\nsuffering and injustice.  If, as some suppose, the people of this\nregion formed part of the Galatian churches, we see from his Epistle to\nthem the kind of love they gave him.  They received him, he says, as an\nangel of God, nay, as Jesus Christ Himself; they were ready to have\nplucked out their eyes and given them to him.  They were people of rude\nkindness and headlong impulses; their native religion was one of\nexcitement and demonstrativeness, and they carried these\ncharacteristics into the new faith they had adopted.  They were filled\nwith joy and the Holy Ghost, and the revival spread on every hand with\ngreat rapidity, till the word, sounding out from the little Christian\ncommunities, was heard all along the slopes of Taurus and down the\nglens of the Cestrus and Halys.\n\nPaul's warm heart could not but enjoy such an outburst of affection.\nHe responded to it by giving in return his own deep love.  The towns\nmentioned in their itinerary are the Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra,\nand Derbe; but, when at the last of them he had finished his course and\nthe way lay open to him to descend by the Cilician Gates to Tarsus and\nthence get back to Antioch, he preferred to return by the way he had\ncome.  In spite of the most imminent danger he revisited all these\nplaces to see his dear converts again and cheer them in face of\npersecution; and he ordained elders in every city to watch over the\nchurches in his absence.\n\n\n88.  The Return.--At length the missionaries descended again from these\nuplands to the southern coast and sailed back to Antioch, from which\nthey had set out.  Worn with toil and suffering, but flushed with the\njoy of success, they appeared among those who had sent them forth and\nhad doubtless been following them with their prayers; and, like\ndiscoverers returned from the finding of a new country, they related\nthe miracles of grace they had witnessed in the strange world of the\nheathen.\n\n\nTHE SECOND JOURNEY\n\n89.  In his first journey Paul may be said to have been only trying his\nwings; for his course, adventurous though it was, only swept in a\nlimited circle round his native province.  In his second journey he\nperformed a far more distant and perilous flight.  Indeed, this journey\nwas not only the greatest he achieved but perhaps the most momentous\nrecorded in the annals of the human race.  In its issues it far\noutrivaled the expedition of Alexander the Great, when he carried the\narms and civilization of Greece into the heart of Asia, or that of\nCaesar, when he landed on the shores of Britain, or even the voyage of\nColumbus, when he discovered a new world.  Yet, when he set out on it,\nhe had no idea of the magnitude which it was to assume or even the\ndirection which it was to take.  After enjoying a short rest at the\nclose of the first journey, he said to his fellow-missionary, \"Let us\ngo again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached\nthe word of the Lord and see how they do.\"  It was the parental longing\nto see his spiritual children which was drawing him; but God had far\nmore extensive designs, which opened up before him as he went forward.\n\n\n90.  Separation from Barnabas.--Unfortunately the beginning of this\njourney was marred by a dispute between the two friends who meant to\nperform it together.  The occasion of their difference was the offer of\nJohn Mark to accompany them.  No doubt when this young man saw Paul and\nBarnabas returning safe and sound from the undertaking which he had\ndeserted, he recognized what a mistake he had made; and he now wished\nto retrieve his error by rejoining them.  Barnabas naturally wished to\ntake his nephew, but Paul absolutely refused.  The one missionary, a\nman of easy kindliness, urged the duty of forgiveness and the effect\nwhich a rebuff might have on a beginner; while the other, full of zeal\nfor God, represented the danger of making so sacred a work in any way\ndependent on one who could not be relied upon, for \"confidence in an\nunfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth or a foot out\nof joint.\"\n\nWe cannot now tell which of them was in the right or if both were\npartly wrong.  Both of them, at all events, suffered for it: Paul had\nto part in anger from the man to whom he probably owed more than to any\nother human being; and Barnabas was separated from the grandest spirit\nof the age.\n\n\n91.  They never met again.  This was not due, however, to an\nunchristian continuation of the quarrel; for the heat of passion soon\ncooled down and the old love returned.  Paul mentions Barnabas with\nhonor in his writings, and in the very last of his Epistles he sends\nfor Mark to come to him at Rome, expressly adding that he is profitable\nto him for ministry--the very thing he had disbelieved about him\nbefore.  In the meantime, however, their difference separated them.\nThey agreed to divide between them the region they had evangelized\ntogether.  Barnabas and Mark went away to Cyprus; and Paul undertook to\nvisit the churches on the mainland.  As companion he took with him\nSilas, or Silvanus, in the place of Barnabas; and he had not proceeded\nfar on his new journey when he met with one to take the place of Mark.\nThis was Timothy, a convert he had made at Lystra in his first journey;\nhe was youthful and gentle; and he continued a faithful companion and a\nconstant comfort to the apostle to the end of his life.\n\n\n92.  Unrecorded Work.--In pursuance of the purpose with which he had\nset out, Paul began this journey by revisiting the churches in the\nfounding of which he had taken part.  Beginning at Antioch and\nproceeding in a northwesterly direction, he did this work in Syria,\nCilicia and other parts, till he reached the center of Asia Minor,\nwhere the primary object of his journey was completed.  But, when a man\nis on the right road, all sorts of opportunities open up before him.\nWhen he had passed through the provinces which he had visited before,\nnew desires to penetrate still farther began to fire his mind, and\nProvidence opened up the way.\n\nHe still went forward in the same direction through Phrygia and\nGalatia.  Bithynia, a large province lying along the shore of the Black\nSea, and Asia, a densely populated province in the west of Asia Minor,\nseemed to invite him and he wished to enter them.  But the Spirit who\nguided his footsteps indicated, by some means unknown to us, that these\nprovinces were shut to him in the meantime; and, pushing onward in the\ndirection in which his divine Guide permitted him to go, he found\nhimself at Troas, a town on the northwest coast of Asia Minor.\n\n\n93.  Thus he had traveled from Antioch in the south-east to Troas in\nthe northwest of Asia Minor, a distance as far as from Land's End to\nJohn O' Groat's, evangelizing all the way.  It must have taken months,\nperhaps even years.  Yet of this long, laborious period we possess no\ndetails whatever, except such features of his intercourse with the\nGalatians as may be gathered from the Epistle to that church.  The\ntruth is that, thrilling as are the notices of Paul's career given in\nthe Acts, this record is a very meager and imperfect one, and his life\nwas far fuller of adventure, of labors and sufferings for Christ, than\neven Luke's narrative would lead us to suppose.  The plan of the Acts\nis to tell only what was most novel and characteristic in each journey,\nwhile it passes over, for instance, all his repeated visits to the same\nscenes.  There are thus great blanks in the history, which were in\nreality as full of interest as the portions of his life which are fully\ndescribed.\n\nOf this there is a startling proof in an Epistle which he wrote within\nthe period covered by the Acts of the Apostles.  His argument calling\nupon him to enumerate some of his outstanding adventures, \"Are they\nministers of Christ?\" he asks, \"I am more; in labors more abundant, in\nstripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.  Of the\nJews five times received I forty stripes save one.  Thrice was I beaten\nwith rods.  Once was I stoned.  Thrice I suffered shipwreck.  A night\nand a day have I been in the deep.  In journeyings often, in perils of\nwater, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in\nperils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the\nwilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in\nweariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in\nfastings often, in cold and nakedness.\"\n\nNow, of the items of this extraordinary catalogue the book of Acts\nmentions very few: of the five Jewish scourgings it notices not one, of\nthe three Roman beatings only one; the one stoning it records, but not\none of the three shipwrecks, for the shipwreck so fully detailed in the\nActs happened later.  It was no part of the design of Luke to\nexaggerate the figure of the hero he was painting; his brief and modest\nnarrative comes far short even of the reality; and, as we pass over the\nfew simple words into which he condenses the story of months or years,\nour imagination requires to be busy, filling up the outline with toils\nand pains at least equal to those the memory of which he has preserved.\n\n\n94.  Crossing to Europe.--It would appear that Paul reached Troas under\nthe direction of the guiding Spirit without being aware whither his\nsteps were next to be turned.  But could he doubt what the divine\nintention was when, gazing across the silver streak of the Hellespont,\nhe beheld the shores of Europe on the other side?  He was now within\nthe charmed circle where for ages civilization had had her home; and he\ncould not be entirely ignorant of those stories of war and enterprise\nand those legends of love and valor which have made it forever bright\nand dear to the heart of mankind.\n\nAt only four miles' distance lay the Plain of Troy, where Europe and\nAsia encountered each other in the struggle celebrated in Homer's\nimmortal song.  Not far off Xerxes, sitting on a marble throne,\nreviewed the three millions of Asiatics with which he meant to bring\nEurope to his feet.  On the other side of that narrow strait lay Greece\nand Rome, the centers from which issued the learning, the commerce and\nthe armies which governed the world.  Could his heart, so ambitious for\nthe glory of Christ, fail to be fired with the desire to cast himself\nupon these strongholds, or could he doubt that the Spirit was leading\nhim forward to this enterprise?  He knew that Greece, with all her\nwisdom, lacked that knowledge which makes wise unto salvation, and that\nthe Romans, though they were the conquerors of this world, did not know\nthe way of winning an inheritance in the world that is to come; but in\nhis breast he carried the secret which they both required.\n\n\n95.  It may have been such thoughts, dimly moving in his mind, that\nprojected themselves into the vision which he saw at Troas; or was it\nthe vision which first awakened the idea of crossing to Europe?  As he\nlay asleep, with the murmur of the Aegean in his ears, he saw a man\nstanding on the opposite coast, on which he had been looking before he\nwent to rest, beckoning and crying, \"Come over into Macedonia and help\nus.\"  That figure represented Europe, and its cry for help Europe's\nneed of Christ.  Paul recognized in it a divine summons; and the very\nnext sunset which bathed the Hellespont in its golden light shone upon\nhis figure seated on the deck of a ship the prow of which was moving\ntoward the shore of Macedonia.\n\n\n96.  In this passage of Paul, from Asia to Europe, a great providential\ndecision was taking effect, of which, as children of the West, we\ncannot think without the profoundest thankfulness.  Christianity arose\nin Asia and among an Oriental people; and it might have been expected\nto spread first among those races to which the Jews were most akin.\nInstead of coming west, it might have gone eastward.  It might have\npenetrated into Arabia and taken possession of those regions where the\nfaith of the False Prophet now holds sway.  It might have visited the\nwandering tribes of Central Asia and, piercing its way down through the\npasses of the Himalayas, reared its temples on the banks of the Ganges,\nthe Indus and the Godavery.  It might have traveled farther east to\ndeliver the swarming millions of China from the cold secularism of\nConfucius.  Had it done so, missionaries from India and Japan might\nhave been coming to England and America at the present day to tell the\nstory of the Cross.  But Providence conferred on Europe a blessed\npriority, and the fate of our continent was decided when Paul crossed\nthe Aegean.\n\n\n97.  Macedonia.--As Greece lay nearer than Rome to the shore of Asia,\nits conquest for Christ was the great achievement of his second\nmissionary journey.  Like the rest of the world it was at that time\nunder the sway of Rome, and the Romans had divided it into two\nprovinces--Macedonia in the north and Achaia in the south.  Macedonia\nwas, therefore, the first scene of Paul's Greek mission.  It was\ntraversed from east to west by a great Roman road, along which the\nmissionary moved, and the places where we have accounts of his labors\nare Philippi, Thessalonica and Beroea.\n\n\n98.  The Greek character in this northern province was much less\ncorrupted than in the more polished society to the south.  In the\nMacedonian population there still lingered something of the vigor and\ncourage which four centuries before had made its soldiers the\nconquerors of the world.  The churches which Paul founded here gave him\nmore comfort than any he established elsewhere.  There are none of his\nEpistles more cheerful and cordial than those to the Thessalonians and\nthe Philippians; and, as he wrote the latter late in life, the\nperseverance of the Macedonians in adhering to the gospel must have\nbeen as remarkable as the welcome they gave it at the first.  At Beroea\nhe even met with a generous and open-minded synagogue of Jews--the\nrarest occurrence in his experience.\n\n\n99.  Women and the Gospel.--A prominent feature of the work in\nMacedonia was the part taken in it by women.  Amid the general decay of\nreligions throughout the world at this period, many women everywhere\nsought satisfaction for their religious instincts in the pure faith of\nthe synagogue.  In Macedonia, perhaps on account of its sound morality,\nthese female proselytes were more numerous than elsewhere; and they\npressed in large numbers into the Christian Church.  This was a good\nomen; it was a prophecy of the happy change in the lot of women which\nChristianity was to produce in the nations of the West.  If man owes\nmuch to Christ, woman owes still more.  He has delivered her from the\ndegradation of being man's slave and plaything and raised her to be his\nfriend and his equal before Heaven; while, on the other hand, a new\nglory has been added to Christ's religion by the fineness and dignity\nwith which it is invested when embodied in the female character.\n\nThese things were vividly illustrated in the earliest footsteps of\nChristianity on our continent.  The first convert in Europe was a\nwoman, at the first Christian service held on European soil the heart\nof Lydia being opened to receive the truth; and the change which passed\nupon her prefigured what woman in Europe was to become under the\ninfluence of Christianity.  In the same town of Philippi there was\nseen, too, at the same time an equally representative image of the\ncondition of woman in Europe before the gospel reached it, in a poor\ngirl, possessed of a spirit of divination and held in slavery by men\nwho were making gain out of her misfortune, whom Paul restored to\nsanity.  Her misery and degradation were a symbol of the disfiguration,\nas Lydia's sweet and benevolent Christian character was of the\ntransfiguration of womanhood.\n\n\n100.  Liberality of the Churches.--Another feature which prominently\nmarked the Macedonian churches was a spirit of liberality.  They\ninsisted on supplying the bodily wants of the missionaries; and, even\nafter Paul had left them, they sent gifts to meet his necessities in\nother towns.  Long afterward, when he was a prisoner at Rome, they\ndeputed Epaphroditus, one of their teachers, to carry thither similar\ngifts to him and to act as his attendant.  Paul accepted the generosity\nof these loyal hearts, though in other places he would work his fingers\nto the bone and forego his natural rest rather than accept similar\nfavors.  Nor was their willingness to give due to superior wealth.  On\nthe contrary, they gave out of deep poverty.  They were poor to begin\nwith, and they were made poorer by the persecutions which they had to\nendure.  These were very severe after Paul left, and they lasted long.\nOf course they had broken first of all on Paul himself.  Though he was\nso successful in Macedonia, he was swept out of every town at last like\nthe off-scourings of all things.  It was generally by the Jews that\nthis was brought about.  They either fanaticized the mob against him,\nor accused him before the Roman authorities of introducing a new\nreligion or disturbing the peace or proclaiming a king who would be a\nrival to Caesar.  They would neither go into the kingdom of heaven\nthemselves nor suffer others to enter.\n\n\n101.  But God protected His servant.  At Philippi He delivered him from\nprison by a physical miracle and by a miracle of grace still more\nmarvelous wrought upon his cruel jailor; and in other towns He saved\nhim by more natural means.  In spite of bitter opposition, churches\nwere founded in city after city, and from these the glad tidings\nsounded out over the whole province of Macedonia.\n\n\n102.  Achaia.--When, leaving Macedonia, Paul proceeded south into\nAchaia, he entered the real Greece--the paradise of genius and renown.\nThe memorials of the country's greatness rose around him on his\njourney.  As he quitted Beroea, he could see behind him the snowy peaks\nof Mount Olympus, where the deities of Greece had been supposed to\ndwell.  Soon he was sailing past Thermopylae, where the immortal Three\nHundred stood against the barbarian myriads; and, as his voyage neared\nits close, he saw before him the island of Salamis, where again the\nexistence of Greece was saved from extinction by the valor of her sons.\n\n\n103.  Athens.--His destination was Athens, the capital of the country.\nAs he entered the city, he could not be insensible to the great\nmemories which clung to its streets and monuments.  Here the human mind\nhad blazed forth with a splendor it has never exhibited elsewhere.  In\nthe golden age of its history Athens possessed more men of the very\nhighest genius than have ever lived in any other city.  To this day\ntheir names invest it with glory.  Yet even in Paul's day the living\nAthens was a thing of the past.  Four hundred years had elapsed since\nits golden age, and in the course of these centuries it had experienced\na sad decline.  Philosophy had degenerated into sophistry, art into\ndilettanteism, oratory into rhetoric, poetry into versemaking.  It was\na city living on its past.  Yet it still had a great name and was full\nof culture and learning of a kind.  It swarmed with so-called\nphilosophers of different schools, and with teachers and professors of\nevery variety of knowledge; and thousands of strangers of the wealthy\nclass, collected from all parts of the world, lived there for study or\nthe gratification of their intellectual tastes.  It still represented\nto an intelligent visitor one of the great factors in the life of the\nworld.\n\n\n104.  With the amazing versatility which enabled him to be all things\nto all men, Paul adapted himself to this population also.  In the\nmarket-place, the lounge of the learned, he entered into conversation\nwith students and philosophers, as Socrates had been wont to do on the\nsame spot five centuries before.  But he found even less appetite for\nthe truth than the wisest of the Greeks had met with.  Instead of the\nlove of truth an insatiable intellectual curiosity possessed the\ninhabitants.  This made them willing enough to tolerate the advances of\nany one bringing before them a new doctrine; and, as long as Paul was\nmerely developing the speculative part of his message, they listened to\nhim with pleasure.  Their interest seemed to deepen, and at last a\nmultitude of them conveyed him to Mars' Hill, in the very center of the\nsplendors of their city, and requested a full statement of his faith.\nHe complied with their wishes and in the magnificent speech he there\nmade them, gratified their peculiar tastes to the full, as in sentences\nof the noblest eloquence he unfolded the great truths of the unity of\nGod and the unity of man, which lie at the foundation of Christianity.\nBut, when he advanced from these preliminaries to touch the consciences\nof his audience and address them about their own salvation, they\ndeparted in a body and left him talking.\n\n\n105.  He quitted Athens and never returned to it.  Nowhere else had he\nso completely failed.  He had been accustomed to endure the most\nviolent persecution and to rally from it with a light heart.  But there\nis something worse than persecution to a fiery faith like his, and he\nhad to encounter it here: his message roused neither interest nor\nopposition.  The Athenians never thought of persecuting him; they\nsimply did not care what the babbler said; and this cold disdain cut\nhim more deeply than the stones of the mob or the lictors' rods.  Never\nperhaps was he so much depressed.  When he left Athens, he moved on to\nCorinth, the other great city of Achaia; and he tells us himself that\nhe arrived there in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.\n\n\n106.  Corinth.--There was in Corinth enough of the spirit of Athens to\nprevent these feelings from being easily assuaged.  Corinth was to\nAthens very much what Glasgow is to Edinburgh.  The one was the\ncommercial, the other the intellectual capital of the country.  Even\nthe situations of the two places in Greece resembled in some respects\nthose of these two cities in Scotland.  But the Corinthians also were\nfull of disputatious curiosity and intellectual hauteur.  Paul dreaded\nthe same kind of reception as he had met with in Athens.  Could it be\nthat these were people for whom the gospel had no message?  This was\nthe staggering question which was making him tremble.  There seemed to\nbe nothing in them on which the gospel could take hold: they appeared\nto feel no wants which it could satisfy.\n\n\n107.  There were other elements of discouragement in Corinth.  It was\nthe Paris of ancient times--a city rich and luxurious, wholly abandoned\nto sensuality.  Vice displayed itself without shame in forms which\nstruck deadly despair into Paul's pure Jewish mind.  Could men be\nrescued from the grasp of such monstrous vices?  Besides, the\nopposition of the Jews rose here to unusual virulence.  He was\ncompelled at length to depart from the synagogue altogether, and did so\nwith expressions of strong feeling.  Was the soldier of Christ going to\nbe driven off the field and forced to confess that the gospel was not\nsuited for cultured Greece?  It looked like it.\n\n\n108.  But the tide turned.  At the critical moment Paul was visited\nwith one of those visions which were wont to be vouchsafed to him at\nthe most trying and decisive crises of his history.  The Lord appeared\nto him in the night, saying, \"Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not\nthy peace; for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt\nthee; for I have much people in this city.\"  The apostle took courage\nagain, and the causes of discouragement began to clear away.  The\nopposition of the Jews was broken, when they hurried him with mob\nviolence before the Roman governor, Gallio, but were dismissed from the\ntribunal with ignominy and disdain.  The very president of the\nsynagogue became a Christian, and conversions multiplied among the\nnative Corinthians.  Paul enjoyed the solace of living under the roof\nof two leal-hearted friends of his own race and his own occupation,\nAquila and Priscilla.  He remained a year and a half in the city and\nfounded one of the most interesting of his churches, thus planting the\nstandard of the cross in Achaia also and proving that the gospel was\nthe power of God unto salvation even in the headquarters of the world's\nwisdom.\n\n\nTHE THIRD JOURNEY\n\n109.  It must have been a thrilling story Paul had to tell at Jerusalem\nand Antioch when he returned from his second journey; but he had no\ndisposition to rest on his laurels, and it was hot long before he set\nout on his third journey.\n\n\n110.  In Asia.--It might have been expected that, having in his second\njourney planted the gospel in Greece, he would in his third have made\nHome his principal aim.  But, if the map be referred to, it will be\nobserved that, in the midst, between the regions of Asia Minor which he\nevangelized during his first journey and the provinces of Greece in\nwhich he planted churches in his second journey, there was a\nhiatus--the populous province of Asia, in the west of Asia Minor.  It\nwas on this region that he descended in his third journey.  Staying for\nno less than three years in Ephesus, its capital, he effectively filled\nup the gap and connected together the conquests of his former\ncampaigns.  This journey included, indeed, at its beginning, a\nvisitation of all the churches formerly founded in Asia Minor and, at\nits close, a flying visit to the churches of Greece; but, true to his\nplan of dwelling only on what was new in each journey, the author of\nthe Acts has supplied us only with the details relating to Ephesus.\n\n\n111.  Ephesus.--This city was at that time the Liverpool of the\nMediterranean.  It possessed a splendid harbor, in which was\nconcentrated the traffic of the sea which was then the highway of the\nnations; and, as Liverpool has behind her the great towns of\nLancashire, so had Ephesus behind and around her such cities as those\nmentioned along with her in the epistles to the churches in the book of\nRevelation--Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and\nLaodicea.  It was a city of vast wealth, and it was given over to every\nkind of pleasure, the fame of its theater and race-course being\nworld-wide.\n\n\n112.  But Ephesus was still more famous as a sacred city.  It was a\nseat of the worship of the goddess Diana, whose temple was one of the\nmost celebrated shrines of the ancient world.  This temple was\nenormously rich and harbored great numbers of priests.  At certain\nseasons of the year it was a resort for flocks of pilgrims from the\nsurrounding regions; and the inhabitants of the town flourished by\nministering in various ways to this superstition.  The goldsmiths drove\na trade in little silver models of the image of the goddess which the\ntemple contained and which was said to have fallen from heaven.  Copies\nof the mystic characters engraven on this ancient relic were sold as\ncharms.  The city swarmed with wizards, fortune-tellers, interpreters\nof dreams and other gentry of the like kind, who traded on the\nmariners, merchants and pilgrims who frequented the port.\n\n\n113.  Paul's work had therefore to assume the form of a polemic against\nsuperstition.  He wrought such astonishing miracles in the name of\nJesus that some of the Jewish palterers with the invisible world\nattempted to cast out devils by invoking the same name; but the attempt\nissued in their signal discomfiture.  Other professors of magical arts\nwere converted to the Christian faith and burnt their books.  The\nvendors of superstitious objects saw their trade slipping through their\nfingers.  To such an extent did this go at one of the festivals of the\ngoddess that the silversmiths, whose traffic in little images had been\nspecially smitten, organized a riot against Paul, which took place in\nthe theater and was so successful that he was forced to quit the city.\n\n\n114.  But he did not go before Christianity was firmly established in\nEphesus, and the beacon of the gospel was twinkling brightly on the\nAsian coast, in response to that which was shining from the shores of\nGreece on the other side of the Aegean.  We have a monument of his\nsuccess in the churches lying all around Ephesus which St. John\naddressed a few years afterward in the Apocalypse; for they were\nprobably the indirect fruit of Paul's labors.  But we have a far more\nastonishing monument of it in the Epistle to the Ephesians.  This is\nperhaps the profoundest book in existence; yet its author evidently\nexpected the Ephesians to understand it.  If the orations of\nDemosthenes, with their closely packed arguments between the\narticulations of which even a knife cannot be thrust, be a monument of\nthe intellectual greatness of the Greece which listened to them with\npleasure; if the plays of Shakspeare, with their deep views of life and\ntheir obscure and complex language, be a testimony to the strength of\nmind of the Elizabethan Age, which could enjoy such solid fare in a\nplace of entertainment; then the Epistle to the Ephesians, which sounds\nthe lowest depths of Christian doctrine and scales the loftiest heights\nof Christian experience, is a testimony to the proficiency which Paul's\nconverts had attained under his preaching in the capital of Asia.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nHIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER\n\nParagraphs 115-127.\n\n  115-119.  HIS WRITINGS.  115, 116.  Principal Literary\n            Period.  117.  Form of his Writings.  118.  His\n            Style.  119.  Inspiration.\n  120-127.  HIS CHARACTER.  121.  Combination of\n            Natural and Spiritual.\n  122-127.  Characteristics.  122.  Physique; 123.  Enterprise;\n            124.  Influence over Men; 128.  Unselfishness;\n            126.  Sense of having a Mission; 127.  Personal\n            Devotion to Christ.\n\n\n115.  Principal Literary Period.--It has been mentioned that the third\nmissionary journey closed with a flying visit to the churches of\nGreece.  This visit lasted several months; but in the Acts it is passed\nover in two or three verses.  Probably it was little marked with those\nexciting incidents which naturally tempt the biographer into detail.\nYet we know from other sources that it was nearly the most important\npart of Paul's life; for during this half-year he wrote the greatest of\nall his Epistles, that to the Romans, and two others only less\nimportant--that to the Galatians and the Second to the Corinthians.\n\n\n116.  We have thus alighted on the portion of his life most signalized\nby literary work.  Overpowering as is the impression of the\nremarkableness of this man produced by following him, as we have been\ndoing, as he hurries from province to province, from continent to\ncontinent, over land and sea, in pursuit of the object to which he was\ndevoted, this impression is immensely deepened when we remember that he\nwas at the same time the greatest thinker of his age, if not of any\nage, and, in the midst of his outward labors, was producing writings\nwhich have ever since been among the mightiest intellectual forces of\nthe world, and are still growing in their influence.\n\nIn this respect he rises sheer above all other evangelists and\nmissionaries.  Some of them may have approached him in certain\nrespects--Xavier or Livingstone in the world-conquering instinct, St.\nBernard or Whitefield in earnestness and activity.  But few of these\nmen added a single new idea to the world's stock of beliefs, whereas\nPaul, while at least equaling them in their own special line, gave to\nmankind a new world of thought.  If his Epistles could perish, the loss\nto literature would be the greatest possible with only one\nexception--that of the Gospels which record the life, the sayings and\nthe death of our Lord.  They have quickened the mind of the Church as\nno other writings have done, and scattered in the soil of the world\nhundreds of seeds the fruits of which are now the general possession of\nmankind.  Out of them have been brought the watchwords of progress in\nevery reformation which the Church has experienced.  When Luther awoke\nEurope from the slumber of centuries, it was a word of Paul which he\nuttered with his mighty voice: and when, one hundred years ago, our own\ncountry was revived from almost universal spiritual death, she was\ncalled by the voices of men who had rediscovered the truth for\nthemselves in the pages of Paul.\n\n\n117.  Form of his Writings.--Yet in penning his Epistles Paul may\nhimself have had little idea of the part they were to play in the\nfuture.  They were drawn out of him simply by the exigencies of his\nwork.  In the truest sense of the word they were letters, written to\nmeet particular occasions, not formal writings, carefully designed and\nexecuted with a view to fame or to futurity.  Letters of the right kind\nare, before everything else, products of the heart; and it was the\neager heart of Paul, yearning for the weal of his spiritual children or\nalarmed by the dangers to which they were exposed, that produced all\nhis writings.  They were part of his day's work.  Just as he flew over\nsea and land to revisit his converts, or sent Timothy or Titus to carry\nthem his counsels and bring news of how they fared, so, when these\nmeans were not available, he would send a letter with the same design.\n\n\n118.  His Style.--This may seem to detract from the value of these\nwritings.  We may be inclined to wish that, instead of having the\ncourse of his thinking determined by the exigencies of so many special\noccasions and his attention distracted by so many minute particulars,\nhe had been able to concentrate the force of his mind on one perfect\nbook and expound his views on the high subjects which occupied his\nthoughts in a systematic form.  It cannot be maintained that Paul's\nEpistles are models of style.  They were written far too hurriedly for\nthis; and the last thing he thought of was to polish his periods.\nOften, indeed, his ideas, by the mere virtue of their fineness and\nbeauty, run into forms of exquisite language, or there is in them such\na sustained throb of emotion that they shape themselves spontaneously\ninto sentences of noble eloquence.  But oftener his language is rugged\nand formless; no doubt it was the first which came to hand for\nexpressing what he had to say.  He begins sentences and omits to finish\nthem; he goes off into digressions and forgets to pick up the line of\nthought he has dropped; he throws out his ideas in lumps instead of\nfusing them into mutual coherence.\n\nNowhere perhaps will there be found so exact a parallel to the style of\nPaul as in the Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell.  In the\nProtector's brain there lay the best and truest thoughts about England\nand her complicated affairs which existed at the time in that island;\nbut, when he tried to express them in speech or letter, there issued\nfrom his mind the most extraordinary mixture of exclamations,\nquestions, arguments soon losing themselves in the sands of words,\nunwieldy parentheses, and morsels of beautiful pathos or subduing\neloquence.  Yet, as you read these amazing utterances, you come by\ndegrees to feel that you are getting to see the very heart and soul of\nthe Puritan Era, and that you would rather be beside this man than any\nother representative of the period.  You see the events and ideas of\nthe time in the very process of birth.\n\nPerhaps, indeed, a certain formlessness is a natural accompaniment of\nthe very highest originality.  The perfect expression and orderly\narrangement of ideas is a later process; but, when great thoughts are\nfor the first time coming forth, there is a kind of primordial\nroughness about them, as if the earth out of which they are arising\nwere still clinging to them: the polishing of the gold comes late and\nhas to be preceded by the heaving of the ore out of the bowels of\nnature.  Paul in his writings is hurling forth the original ore of\ntruth.  We owe to him hundreds of ideas which were never uttered before.\n\nAfter the original man has got his idea out, the most commonplace\nscribe may be able to express it for others better than he, though he\ncould never have originated it.  So throughout the writings of Paul\nthere are materials which others may combine into systems of theology\nand ethics, and it is the duty of the Church to do so.  But his\nEpistles permit us to see revelation in the very process of birth.  As\nwe read them closely, we seem to be witnessing the creation of a world\nof truth, as the angels wondered to see the firmament evolving itself\nout of chaos and the multitudinous earth spreading itself forth in the\nlight.  Minute as are the details he has often to deal with, the whole\nof his vast view of the truth is recalled in his treatment of every one\nof them, as the whole sky is mirrored in a single drop of dew.  What\ncould be a more impressive proof of the fecundity of his mind than the\nfact that, amid the innumerable distractions of a second visit to his\nGreek converts, he should have written in half a year three such books\nas Romans, Galatians and Second Corinthians?\n\n\n119.  His Inspiration.--It was God by His Spirit who communicated this\nrevelation of truth to Paul.  Its own greatness and divineness supply\nthe best proof that it could have had no other origin.  But none the\nless did it break in upon Paul with the joy and pain of original\nthought; it came to him through his experience; it drenched and dyed\nevery fiber of his mind and heart; and the expression which it found in\nhis writings was in accordance with his peculiar genius and\ncircumstances.\n\n\n120.  The Man Revealed in his Letters.--It would be easy to suggest\ncompensations in the form of Paul's writings for the literary qualities\nthey lack.  But one of these so outweighs all others that it is\nsufficient by itself to justify in this case the ways of God.  In no\nother literary form could we, to the same extent, in the writings have\ngot the man.  Letters are the most personal form of literature.  A man\nmay write a treatise or a history or even a poem and hide his\npersonality behind it; but letters are valueless unless the writer\nshows himself.  Paul is constantly visible in his letters.  You can\nfeel his heart throbbing in every chapter he ever wrote.  He has\npainted his own portrait--not only that of the outward man, but of his\ninnermost feelings--as no one else could have painted it.  It is not\nfrom Luke, admirable as is the picture drawn in the Acts of the\nApostles, that we learn what the true Paul was, but from Paul himself.\nThe truths he reveals are all seen embodied in the man.  As there are\nsome preachers who are greater than their sermons, and the principal\ngain of their hearers, in listening to them, is obtained in the\ninspiring glimpses they obtain of a great and sanctified personality,\nso the best thing in the writings of Paul is Paul himself, or rather\nthe grace of God in him.\n\n\n121.  His character presented a wonderful combination of the natural\nand the spiritual.  From nature he had received a strongly marked\nindividuality; but the change which Christianity produces was no less\nobvious in him.  In no saved man's character is it possible to separate\nnicely what is due to nature from what is due to grace; for nature and\ngrace blend sweetly in the redeemed life.  In Paul the union of the two\nwas singularly complete; yet it was always clear that there were two\nelements in him of diverse origin; and this is, indeed, the key to a\nsuccessful estimate of his character.\n\n\n122.  Physique.--To begin with what was most simply natural--his\nphysique was an important condition of his career.  As want of ear may\nmake a musical career impossible or a failure of eyesight stop the\nprogress of a painter, so the missionary life is impossible without a\ncertain degree of physical stamina.  To any one reading by itself the\ncatalogue of Paul's sufferings and observing the elasticity with which\nhe rallied from the severest of them and resumed his labors, it would\nnaturally occur that he must have been a person of Herculean mold.  On\nthe contrary, he appears to have been little of stature, and his bodily\npresence was weak.  This weakness seems to have been sometimes\naggravated by disfiguring disease; and he felt keenly the\ndisappointment which he knew his bodily presence would excite among\nstrangers; for every preacher who loves his work would like to preach\nthe gospel with all the graces which conciliate the favor of hearers to\nan orator.  God, however, used his very weakness, beyond his hopes, to\ndraw out the tenderness of his converts; and so, when he was weak, then\nhe was strong, and he was able to glory even in his infirmities.\n\nThere is a theory, which has obtained extensive currency, that the\ndisease he suffered from was violent ophthalmia, causing disagreeable\nredness of the eyelids.  But its grounds are very slender.  He seems,\non the contrary, to have had a remarkable power of fascinating and\ncowing an enemy with the keenness of his glance, as in the story of\nElymas the sorcerer, which reminds us of the tradition about Luther,\nthat his eyes sometimes so glowed and sparkled that bystanders could\nscarcely look on them.\n\nThere is no foundation whatever for an idea of some recent biographers\nof Paul that his bodily constitution was excessively fragile and\nchronically afflicted with shattering nervous disease.  No one could\nhave gone through his labors or suffered the stoning, the scourgings\nand other tortures he endured without having an exceptionally tough and\nsound constitution.  It is true that he was sometimes worn out with\nillness and torn down with the acts of violence to which he was\nexposed; but the rapidity of his recovery on such occasions proves what\na large fund of bodily force he had to draw upon.  And who can doubt\nthat, when his face was melted with tender love in beseeching men to be\nreconciled to God or lighted up with enthusiasm in the delivery of his\nmessage, it must have possessed a noble beauty far above mere\nregularity of feature?\n\n\n123.  Enterprise.--There was a good deal that was natural in another\nelement of his character on which much depended--his spirit of\nenterprise.  There are many men who like to grow where they are born;\nto have to change into new circumstances and make acquaintance with new\npeople is intolerable to them.  But there are others who have a kind of\nvagabondism in the blood; they are the persons intended by nature for\nemigrants and pioneers; and, if they take to the work of the ministry,\nthey make the best missionaries.\n\nIn modern times no missionary has had this consecrated spirit of\nadventure in the same degree as that great Scotchman, David\nLivingstone.  When he first went to Africa, he found the missionaries\nclustered in the south of the continent, just within the fringe of\nheathenism; they had their houses and gardens, their families, their\nsmall congregations of natives; and they were content.  But he moved at\nonce away beyond the rest into the heart of heathenism, and dreams of\nmore distant regions never ceased to haunt him, till at length he began\nhis extraordinary tramps over thousands of miles where no missionary\nhad ever been before; and, when death overtook him, he was still\npressing forward.\n\nPaul's was a nature of the same stamp, full of courage and adventure.\nThe unknown in the distance, instead of dismaying, drew him on.  He\ncould not bear to build on other men's foundations, but was constantly\nhastening to virgin soil, leaving churches behind for others to build\nup.  He believed that, if he lit the lamp of the gospel here and there\nover vast areas, the light would spread in his absence by its own\nvirtue.  He liked to count the leagues he had left behind him, but his\nwatchword was ever Forward.  In his dreams he saw men beckoning him to\nnew countries; he had always a long unfulfilled program in his mind;\nand, as death approached, he was still thinking of journeys into the\nremotest corners of the known world.\n\n\n124.  Influence Over Men.--Another element of his character near akin\nto the one just mentioned was his influence over men.  There are those\nto whom it is painful to have to accost a stranger even on pressing\nbusiness; and most men are only quite at home in their own set--among\nmen of the same class or profession as themselves.  But the life he had\nchosen brought Paul into contact with men of every kind, and he had\nconstantly to be introducing to strangers the business with which he\nwas charged.  He might be addressing a king or a consul the one hour\nand a roomful of slaves or common soldiers the next.  One day he had to\nspeak in the synagogue of the Jews, another among a crowd of Athenian\nphilosophers, another to the inhabitants of some provincial town far\nfrom the seats of culture.  But he could adapt himself to every man and\nevery audience.  To the Jews he spoke as a rabbi out of the Old\nTestament Scriptures; to the Greeks he quoted the words of their own\npoets; and to the barbarians he talked of the God who giveth rain from\nheaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.\n\nWhen a weak or insincere man attempts to be all things to all men, he\nends by being nothing to anybody.  But, living on this principle, Paul\nfound entrance for the gospel everywhere, and at the same time won for\nhimself the esteem and love of those to whom he stooped.  If he was\nbitterly hated by enemies, there was never a man more intensely loved\nby his friends.  They received him as an angel of God, or even as Jesus\nChrist himself, and were ready to pluck out their eyes and give them to\nhim.  One church was jealous of another getting too much of him.  When\nhe was not able to pay a visit at the time he had promised, they were\nfurious, as if he had done them a wrong.  When he was parting from\nthem, they wept sore and fell on his neck and kissed him.  Numbers of\nyoung men were continually about him, ready to go on his errands.  It\nwas the largeness of his manhood which was the secret of this\nfascination; for to a big nature all resort, feeling that in its\nneighborhood it is well with them.\n\n\n125.  Unselfishness.--This popularity was partly, however, due to\nanother quality which shone conspicuously in his character--the spirit\nof unselfishness.  This is the rarest quality in human nature, and it\nis the most powerful of all in its influence on others, where it exists\nin purity and strength.  Most men are so absorbed in their own\ninterests and so naturally expect others to be the same that, if they\nsee any one who appears to have no interests of his own to serve but is\nwilling to do as much for the sake of others as the generality do for\nthemselves, they are at first incredulous, suspecting that he is only\nhiding his designs beneath the cloak of benevolence; but, if he stand\nthe test and his unselfishness prove to be genuine, there is no limit\nto the homage they are prepared to pay him.  As Paul appeared in\ncountry after country and city after city, he was at first a complete\nenigma to those whom he approached.  They formed all sorts of\nconjectures as to his real design.  Was it money he was seeking, or\npower, or something darker and less pure?  His enemies never ceased to\nthrow out such insinuations.  But those who got near him and saw the\nman as he was, who knew that he refused money and worked with his hands\nday and night to keep himself above the suspicion of mercenary motives,\nwho heard him pleading with them one by one in their homes and\nexhorting them with tears to a holy life, who saw the sustained\npersonal interest he took in every one of them--these could not resist\nthe proofs of his disinterestedness or deny him their affection.\n\nThere never was a man more unselfish; he had literally no interest of\nhis own to live for.  Without family ties, he poured all the affections\nof his big nature, which might have been given to wife and children,\ninto the channels of his work.  He compares his tenderness toward his\nconverts to that of a nursing-mother to her children; he pleads with\nthem to remember that he is their father who has begotten them in the\ngospel.  They are his glory and crown, his hope and joy and crown of\nrejoicing.  Eager as he was for new conquests, he never lost his hold\nupon those he had won.  He could assure his churches that he prayed and\ngave thanks for them night and day, and he remembered his converts by\nname at the throne of grace.  How could human nature resist\ndisinterestedness like this?  If Paul was a conqueror of the world, he\nconquered it by the power of love.\n\n\n126.  His Mission.--The two most distinctively Christian features of\nhis character have still to be mentioned.  One of these was the sense\nof having a divine mission to preach Christ, which he was bound to\nfulfill.  Most men merely drift through life, and the work they do is\ndetermined by a hundred indifferent circumstances; they might as well\nbe doing anything else, or they would prefer, if they could afford it,\nto be doing nothing at all.  But, from the time when he became a\nChristian, Paul knew that he had a definite work to do; and the call he\nhad received to it never ceased to ring like a tocsin in his soul.\n\"Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel;\" this was the impulse which\ndrove him on.  He felt that he had a world of new truths to utter and\nthat the salvation of mankind depended on their utterance.  He knew\nhimself called to make Christ known to as many of his fellow-creatures\nas his utmost exertions could enable him to reach.  It was this which\nmade him so impetuous in his movements, so blind to danger, so\ncontemptuous of suffering.  \"None of these things move me, neither\ncount I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with\njoy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to\ntestify the gospel of the grace of God.\"  He lived with the account\nwhich he would have to give at the judgment-seat of Christ ever in his\neye, and his heart was revived in every hour of discouragement by the\nvision of the crown of life which, if he proved faithful, the Lord; the\nrighteous Judge, would place upon his head.\n\n\n127.  Devotion to Christ.--The other peculiarly Christian quality which\nshaped his career was personal devotion to Christ.  This was the\nsupreme characteristic of the man, and from first to last the\nmainspring of his activities.  From the moment of his first meeting\nwith Christ he had but one passion; his love to his Saviour burned with\nmore and more brightness to the end.  He delighted to call himself the\nslave of Christ, and had no ambition except to be the propagator of His\nideas and the continuer of His influence.\n\nHe took up this idea of being Christ's representative with startling\nboldness.  He says the heart of Christ is beating in his bosom toward\nhis converts; he says the mind of Christ is thinking in his brain; he\nsays that he is continuing the work of Christ and filling up that which\nwas lacking in His sufferings; he says the wounds of Christ are\nreproduced in the scars upon his body; he says he is dying that others\nmay live, as Christ died for the life of the world.  But it was in\nreality the deepest humility which lay beneath these bold expressions.\nHe had the sense that Christ had done everything for him; He had\nentered into him, casting out the old Paul and ending the old life, and\nhad begotten a new man, with new designs, feelings and activities.  And\nit was his deepest longing that this process should go on and become\ncomplete--that his old self should vanish quite away, and that the new\nself, which Christ had created in His own image and still sustained,\nshould become so predominant that, when the thoughts of his mind were\nChrist's thoughts, the words on his lips Christ's words, the deeds he\ndid Christ's deeds, and the character he wore Christ's character, he\nmight be able to say, \"I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nPICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH\n\nParagraphs 128-144.\n\n  128, 129.  THE EXTERIOR AND THE INTERIOR VIEW OF HISTORY.\n  130-143.   A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN A HEATHEN CITY.  131.  The\n             Place of Meeting.  132, 133.  The Persons Present.\n             134-137.  The Services.  138-148.  Abuses and\n             Irregularities.  139, 140.  Of Domestic Life.\n             141-143.  Inside the Church.\n  144.       INFERENCES.\n\n\n128.  History Without and Within.--A holiday visitor to a foreign city\nwalks through the streets, guidebook in hand, looking at monuments,\nchurches, public buildings and the outsides of the houses, and in this\nway is supposed to be made acquainted with the town; but, on\nreflection, he will find that he has scarcely learned anything about\nit, because he has not been inside the houses.  He does not know how\nthe people live--not even what kind of furniture they have or what kind\nof food they eat--not to speak of far deeper matters, such as how they\nlove, what they admire and pursue, and whether they are content with\ntheir lot.\n\nIn reading history one is often at a loss in the same way.  It is only\nthe outside of life that is made visible.  It is as if the eye were\ncarried along the external surface of a tree, instead of seeing a\ncross-section of its substance.  The pomp and glitter of the court, the\nwars waged and the victories won, the changes in the constitution and\nthe rise and fall of administrations, are faithfully recorded; but the\nreader feels that he would learn far more of the real history of the\ntime if he could see for one hour what was happening beneath the roofs\nof the peasant, the shopkeeper, the clergyman and the noble.\n\nEven in Scripture-history there is the same difficulty.  In the\nnarrative of the Acts of the Apostles we receive thrilling accounts of\nthe external details of Paul's history; we are carried rapidly from\ncity to city and informed of the incidents which accompanied the\nfounding of the various churches; but we cannot help wishing sometimes\nto stop and learn what one of these churches was like inside.  In\nPaphos or Iconium, in Thessalonica or Beroea or Corinth, how did things\ngo on after Paul left?  What were the Christians like, and what was the\naspect of their worship?\n\n\n129.  Happily it is possible to obtain this interior view of things.\nAs Luke's narrative describes the outside of Paul's career, so Paul's\nown Epistles permit us to see its deeper aspects.  They rewrite the\nhistory on a different plane.  This is especially the case with those\nEpistles written at the close of his third journey, which cast a flood\nof light back upon the period covered by all his journeys.  In addition\nto the three Epistles already mentioned as having been written at this\ntime, there is another belonging to the same part of his life--the\nFirst to the Corinthians--which may be said to transport us, as on a\nmagician's mantle, back over two thousand years and, stationing us in\nmid-air above a great Greek city, in which there was a Christian\nchurch, to take the roof off the meeting-house of the Christians and\npermit us to see what was going on within.\n\n\n130.  A Christian Gathering in Corinth.--It is a strange spectacle we\nwitness from this coigne of vantage.  It is Sabbath evening, but of\ncourse the heathen city knows of no Sabbath.  The day's work at the\nbusy seaport is over, and the streets are thronged with gay revelers\nintent on a night of pleasure, for it is the wickedest city of that\nwicked ancient world.  Hundreds of merchants and sailors from foreign\nparts are lounging about.  The gay young Roman, who has come across to\nthis Paris for a bout of dissipation, drives his light chariot through\nthe streets.  If it is near the time of the annual games, there are\ngroups of boxers, runners, charioteers and wrestlers, surrounded by\ntheir admirers and discussing their chances of winning the coveted\ncrowns.  In the warm genial climate old and young are out of doors\nenjoying the evening hour, while the sun, going down over the Adriatic,\nis casting its golden light upon the palaces and temples of the wealthy\ncity.\n\n\n131.  Meanwhile the little company of Christians has been gathering\nfrom all directions to their place of worship; for it is the hour of\ntheir stated assembly.  The place of meeting itself does not rise very\nclearly before our view.  But at all events it is no gorgeous temple\nlike those by which it is surrounded; it has not even the pretensions\nof the neighboring synagogue.  It may be a large room in a private\nhouse or the wareroom of some Christian merchant cleared for the\noccasion.\n\n\n132.  Glance round the benches and look at the faces.  You at once\ndiscern one marked distinction among them: some have the peculiar\nfacial contour of the Jew, while the rest are Gentiles of various\nnationalities; and the latter are the majority.  But look closer still\nand you notice another distinction: some wear the ring which denotes\nthat they are free, while others are slaves; and the latter\npreponderate.  Here and there among the Gentile members there is one\nwith the regular features of the born Greek, perhaps shaded with the\npale thoughtfulness of the philosopher or distinguished with the\nself-confidence of wealth; but not many great, not many mighty, not\nmany noble are there; the majority belong to what in this pretentious\ncity would be reckoned the foolish, the weak, the base and despised\nthings of this world; they are slaves, whose ancestors did not breathe\nthe pellucid air of Greece but roamed in savage hordes on the banks of\nthe Danube or the Don.\n\n\n133.  But observe one thing besides on all the faces present--the\nterrible traces of their past life.  In a modern Christian congregation\none sees in the faces on every hand that peculiar cast of feature which\nChristian nurture, inherited through many centuries, has produced; and\nit is only here and there that a face may be seen in the lines of which\nis written the tale of debauchery or crime.  But in this Corinthian\ncongregation these awful hieroglyphics are everywhere.  \"Know ye not,\"\nPaul writes to them, \"that the unrighteous shall not inherit the\nkingdom of God?  Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters,\nnor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,\nnor thieves, nor covetous, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom\nof God.  And such were some of you.\"  Look at that tall, sallow-faced\nGreek: he has wallowed in the mire of Circe's swine-pens.  Look at that\nlow-browed Scythian slave: he has been a pickpocket and a jail-bird.\nLook at that thin-nosed, sharp-eyed Jew: he has been a Shylock, cutting\nhis pound of flesh from the gilded youth of Corinth.\n\nYet there has been a great change.  Another story besides the tale of\nsin is written on these countenances.  \"But ye are washed, but ye are\nsanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by\nthe Spirit of our God.\"  Listen, they are singing; it is the fortieth\nPsalm: \"He took me from the fearful pit and from the miry clay.\"  What\npathos they throw into the words, what joy overspreads their faces!\nThey know themselves to be monuments of free grace and dying love.\n\n\n134.  The Services.--But suppose them now all gathered; how does their\nworship proceed?  There was this difference between their services and\nmost of ours, that instead of one man conducting them--offering their\nprayers, preaching, and giving out the psalms--all the men present were\nat liberty to contribute their part.  There may have been a leader or\nchairman; but one member might read a portion of Scripture, another\noffer prayer, a third deliver an address, a fourth raise a hymn, and so\non.  Nor does there seem to have been any fixed order in which the\ndifferent parts of the service occurred; any member might rise and lead\naway the company into praise or prayer or meditation, as he felt\nprompted.\n\n\n135.  This peculiarity was due to another great difference between them\nand us.  The members were endowed with very extraordinary gifts.  Some\nof them had the power of working miracles, such as the healing of the\nsick.  Others possessed a strange gift called the gift of tongues.  It\nis not quite clear what it was; but it seems to have been a kind of\ntranced utterance, in which the speaker poured out an impassioned\nrhapsody by which his religious feeling received both expression and\nexaltation.  Some of those who possessed this gift were not able to\ntell others the meaning of what they were saying, while others had this\nadditional power; and there were those who, though not speaking with\ntongues themselves, were able to interpret what the inspired speakers\nwere saying.  Then again, there were members who possessed the gift of\nprophecy--a very valuable endowment.  It was not the power of\npredicting future events, but a gift of impassioned eloquence, the\neffects of which were sometimes marvelous: when an unbeliever entered\nthe assembly and listened to the prophets, he was seized with\nuncontrollable emotion, the sins of his past life rose up before him,\nand, falling on his face, he confessed that God was among them of a\ntruth.  Other members exercised gifts more like those we are ourselves\nacquainted with, such as the gift of teaching or the gift of\nmanagement.  But in all cases there appears to have been a kind of\nimmediate inspiration, so that what they did was not the effect of\ncalculation or preparation, but of a strong present impulse.\n\n\n136.  These phenomena are so remarkable that, if narrated in a history,\nthey would put a severe strain on belief.  But the evidence for them is\nincontrovertible; for no man, writing to people about their own\ncondition, invents a mythical description of their circumstances; and\nbesides, Paul was writing to restrain rather than encourage these\nmanifestations.  They show with what mighty force, at its first\nentrance into the world, Christianity took possession of the spirits\nwhich it touched.  Each believer received, generally at his baptism,\nwhen the hands of the baptizer were laid on him, his special gift,\nwhich, if he remained faithful to it, he continued to exercise.  It was\nthe Holy Spirit, poured forth without stint, that entered into the\nspirits of men and distributed these gifts among them severally as He\nwilled; and each member had to make use of his gift for the benefit of\nthe whole body.\n\n\n137.  After the services just described were over, the members sat down\ntogether to a love-feast, which was wound up with the breaking of bread\nin the Lord's Supper; and then, after a fraternal kiss, they parted to\ntheir homes.  It was a memorable scene, radiant with brotherly love and\nalive with outbreaking spiritual power.  As the Christians wended their\nway homeward through the careless groups of the heathen city, they were\nconscious of having experienced that which eye had not seen nor ear\nheard.\n\n\n138.  Abuses and Irregularities.--But truth demands that the dark side\nof the picture be shown as well as the bright one.  There were abuses\nand irregularities in the Church which it is exceedingly painful to\nrecall.  These were due to two things--the antecedents of the members\nand the mixture in the Church of Jewish and Gentile elements.  If it be\nremembered how vast was the change which most of the members had made\nin passing from the worship of the heathen temples to the pure and\nsimple worship of Christianity, it will not excite surprise that their\nold life still clung to them or that they did not clearly distinguish\nwhich things needed to be changed and which might continue as they had\nbeen.\n\n\n139.  Yet it startles us to learn that some of them were living in\ngross sensuality, and that the more philosophical defended this on\nprinciple.  One member, apparently a person of wealth and position, was\nopenly living in a connection which would have been a scandal even\namong heathens, and, though Paul had indignantly written to have him\nexcommunicated, the Church had failed to obey, affecting to\nmisunderstand the order.  Others had been allured back to take part in\nthe feasts in the idol temples, notwithstanding their accompaniments of\ndrunkenness and revelry.  They excused themselves with the plea that\nthey no longer ate the feast in honor of the gods, but only as an\nordinary meal, and argued that they would have to go out of the world\nif they were not sometimes to associate with sinners.\n\n\n140.  It is evident that these abuses belonged to the Gentile section\nof the Church.  In the Jewish section, on the other hand, there were\nstrange doubts and scruples about the same subjects.  Some, for\ninstance, revolted with the loose behavior of their Gentile brethren,\nhad gone to the opposite extreme, denouncing marriage altogether and\nraising anxious questions as to whether widows might marry again,\nwhether a Christian married to a heathen wife ought to put her away,\nand other points of the same nature.  While some of the Gentile\nconverts were participating in the idol feasts, some of the Jewish ones\nhad scruples about buying in the market the meat which had been offered\nin sacrifice to idols, and looked with censure on their brethren who\nallowed themselves this freedom.\n\n\n141.  These difficulties belonged to the domestic life of the\nChristians; but, in their public meetings also, there were grave\nirregularities.  The very gifts of the Spirit were perverted into\ninstruments of sin; for those possessed of the more showy gifts, such\nas miracles and tongues, were too fond of displaying them, and turned\nthem into grounds of boasting.  This led to confusion and even uproar;\nfor sometimes two or three of those who spoke with tongues would be\npouring forth their unintelligible utterances at once, so that, as Paul\nsaid, if any stranger had entered their meeting, he would have\nconcluded that they were all mad.  The prophets spoke at wearisome\nlength, and too many pressed forward to take part in the services.\nPaul had sternly to rebuke these extravagances, insisting on the\nprinciple that the spirits of the prophets were subject to the\nprophets, and that, therefore, the spiritual impulse was no apology for\ndisorder.\n\n\n142.  But there were still worse things inside the Church.  Even the\nsacredness of the Lord's Supper was profaned.  It seems that the\nmembers were in the habit of taking with them to church the bread and\nwine which were needed for this sacrament; but the wealthy brought\nabundant and choice supplies and, instead of waiting for their poorer\nbrethren and sharing their provisions with them, began to eat and drink\nso gluttonously that the table of the Lord actually resounded with\ndrunkenness and riot.\n\n\n143.  One more dark touch must be added to this sad picture.  In spite\nof the brotherly kiss with which their meetings closed, they had fallen\ninto mutual rivalry and contention.  No doubt this was due to the\nheterogeneous elements brought together in the Church; but it had been\nallowed to go to great lengths.  Brother went to law with brother in\nthe heathen courts instead of seeking the arbitration of a Christian\nfriend.  The body of the members was split up into four theological\nfactions.  Some called themselves after Paul himself.  These treated\nthe scruples of the weaker brethren about meats and other things with\nscorn.  Others took the name of Apollonians from Apollos, an eloquent\nteacher from Alexandria, who visited Corinth between Paul's second and\nthird journeys.  These were the philosophical party; they denied the\ndoctrine of the resurrection, because it was absurd to suppose that the\nscattered atoms of the dead body could ever be united again.  The third\nparty took the name of Peter, or Cephas, as in their Hebrew purism they\npreferred to call him.  These were narrow-minded Jews, who objected to\nthe liberality of Paul's views.  The fourth party affected to be above\nall parties and called themselves simply Christians.  Like many\ndespisers of the sects since then, who have used the name of Christian\nin the same way, these were the most bitterly sectarian of all and\nrejected Paul's authority with malicious scorn.\n\n\n144.  Inferences.--Such is the checkered picture of one of Paul's\nchurches given in one of his own Epistles; and it shows several things\nwith much impressiveness.  It shows, for instance, how exceptional,\neven in that age, his own mind and character were, and what a blessing\nhis gifts and graces of good sense, of large sympathy blended with\nconscientious firmness, of personal purity and honor, were to the\ninfant Church.  It shows that it is not behind but in front that we\nhave to look for the golden age of Christianity.  It shows how perilous\nit is to assume that the prevalence of any ecclesiastical usage at that\ntime must constitute a rule for all times.  Everything of this kind was\nevidently at the experimental stage.  Indeed, in the latest writings of\nPaul we find the picture of a very different state of things, in which\nthe worship and discipline of the Church were far more fixed and\norderly.  It is not for a pattern of the machinery of a church we ought\nto go back to this early time, but for a spectacle of fresh and\ntransforming spiritual power.  This is what will always attract to the\nApostolic Age the longing eyes of Christians; the power of the Spirit\nwas energizing in every member, the tides of fresh emotion swelled in\nevery breast, and all felt that the dayspring of a new revelation had\nvisited them; life, love, light were diffusing themselves everywhere.\nEven the vices of the young Church were the irregularities of abundant\nlife, for the lack of which the lifeless order of many a subsequent\ngeneration has been a poor compensation.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nHIS GREAT CONTROVERSY\n\nParagraphs 145-162.\n\n  146-148.  THE QUESTION AT ISSUE.\n  149-153.  THE SETTLEMENT OF IT.  149, 150.  By\n            Peter; 151.  By Paul; 152, 153.  By the Council of\n            Jerusalem.  154-156.  Attempt to unsettle it.  157,\n            158.  Paul crushes the Judaizers.  159-162.  A\n            subordinate Branch of the Question: the Relation of\n            Christian Jews to the Law.\n\n\n145.  The version of the apostle's life supplied in his own letters is\nlargely occupied with a controversy which cost him much pain and took\nup much of his time for many years, but of which Luke says little.  At\nthe date when Luke wrote, it was a dead controversy, and it belonged to\na different plane from that along which his story moves.  But at the\ntime when it was raging, it tried Paul far more than tiresome journeys\nor angry seas.  It was at its hottest about the close of his third\njourney, and the Epistles already mentioned as having been written then\nmay be said to have been evoked by it.  The Epistle to the Galatians\nespecially was a thunderbolt hurled against his opponents in this\ncontroversy; and its burning sentences show how profoundly he was moved\nby the subject.\n\n\n146.  The Question at Issue.--The question at issue was whether the\nGentiles were required to become Jews before they could be true\nChristians; or, in other words, whether they had to be circumcised in\norder to be saved.\n\n\n147.  It had pleased God in the primitive times to choose the Jewish\nrace from among the nations and make it the repository of salvation;\nand, till the advent of Christ, those from other nations who wished to\nbecome partakers of the true religion had to seek entrance as\nproselytes within the sacred enclosure of Israel.  Having thus destined\nthis race to be the guardians of revelation, God had to separate them\nvery completely from all other nations and from all other aims which\nmight have distracted their attention from the sacred trust which had\nbeen committed to them.  For this purpose he regulated their whole life\nwith rules and arrangements intended to make them a peculiar people,\ndifferent from all other races of the earth.  Every detail of their\nlife--their forms of worship, their social customs, their dress, their\nfood--was prescribed for them; and all these prescriptions were\nembodied in that vast legal instrument which they called the Law.  The\nrigorous prescription of so many things which are naturally left to\nfree choice was a heavy yoke upon the chosen people; it was a severe\ndiscipline to the conscience, and such it was felt to be by the more\nearnest spirits of the nation.\n\nBut others saw in it a badge of pride; it made them feel that they were\nthe select of the earth and superior to all other people; and, instead\nof groaning under the yoke, as they would have done if their\nconsciences had been very tender, they multiplied the distinctions of\nthe Jew, swelling the volume of the prescriptions of the law with\nstereotyped customs of their own.  To be a Jew appeared to them the\nmark of belonging to the aristocracy of the nations; to be admitted to\nthe privileges of this position was in their eyes the greatest honor\nwhich could be conferred on one who did not belong to the commonwealth\nof Israel.  Their thoughts were all pent within the circle of this\nnational conceit.  Even their hopes about the Messiah were colored with\nthese prejudices; they expected Him to be the hero of their own nation,\nand the extension of His kingdom they conceived as a crowding of the\nother nations within the circle of their own through the gateway of\ncircumcision.  They expected that all the converts of the Messiah would\nundergo this national rite and adopt the life prescribed in the Jewish\nlaw and tradition; in short, their conception of Messiah's reign was a\nworld of Jews.\n\n\n148.  Such undoubtedly was the tenor of popular sentiment in Palestine\nwhen Christ came; and multitudes of those who accepted Jesus as the\nMessiah and entered the Christian Church had this set of conceptions as\ntheir intellectual horizon.  They had become Christians, but they had\nnot ceased to be Jews; they still attended the temple worship; they\nprayed at the stated hours, they fasted on the stated days, they\ndressed in the style of the Jewish ritual; they would have thought\nthemselves defiled by eating with uncircumcised Gentiles; and they had\nno thought but that, if Gentiles became Christians, they would be\ncircumcised and adopt the style and customs of the Jewish nation.\n\n\n149.  The Settlement.--The question was settled by the direct\nintervention of God in the case of Cornelius, the centurion of\nCaesarea.  When the messengers of Cornelius were on their way to the\nApostle Peter at Joppa, God showed that leader among the apostles, by\nthe vision of the sheet full of clean and unclean beasts, that the\nChristian Church was to contain circumcised and uncircumcised alike.\nIn obedience to this heavenly sign Peter accompanied the centurion's\nmessengers to Caesarea and saw such evidences that the household of\nCornelius had already, without circumcision, received the distinctively\nChristian endowments of faith and the Holy Ghost, that he could not\nhesitate to baptize them as being Christians already.  When he returned\nto Jerusalem, his proceedings created wonder and indignation among the\nChristians of the strictly Jewish persuasion; but he defended himself\nby recounting the vision of the sheet and by an appeal to the clear\nfact that these uncircumcised Gentiles were proved by their possession\nof faith and of the Holy Ghost to have been already Christians.\n\n\n150.  This incident ought to have settled the question once for all;\nbut the pride of race and the prejudices of a lifetime are not easily\nsubdued.  Although the Christians of Jerusalem reconciled themselves to\nPeter's conduct in this single case, they neglected to extract from it\nthe universal principle which it implied; and even Peter himself, as we\nshall subsequently see, did not fully comprehend what was involved in\nhis own conduct.\n\n\n151.  Meanwhile, however, the question had been settled in a far\nstronger and more logical mind than Peter's.  Paul at this time began\nhis apostolic work at Antioch, and soon afterward went forth with\nBarnabas upon his first great missionary expedition into the Gentile\nworld; and, wherever they went, he admitted heathens into the Christian\nChurch without circumcision.\n\nPaul in thus acting did not copy Peter.  He had received his gospel\ndirectly from heaven.  In the solitudes of Arabia, in the years\nimmediately after his conversion, he had thought this subject out and\ncome to far more radical conclusions about it than had yet entered the\nminds of any of the rest of the apostles.  To him far more than to any\nof them the law had been a yoke of bondage; he saw that it was only a\nstern preparation for Christianity, not a part of it; indeed, there was\nin his mind a deep gulf of contrast between the misery and curse of the\none state and the joy and freedom of the other.  To his mind to impose\nthe yoke of the law on the Gentiles would have been to destroy the very\ngenius of Christianity; it would have been the imposition of conditions\nof salvation totally different from that which he knew to be the one\ncondition of it in the gospel.\n\nThese were the deep reasons which settled this question in this great\nmind.  Besides, as a man who knew the world and whose heart was set on\nwinning the Gentile nations to Christ, he felt far more strongly than\ndid the Jews of Jerusalem, with their provincial horizon, how fatal\nsuch conditions as they meant to impose would be to the success of\nChristianity outside Judaea.  The proud Romans, the highminded Greeks,\nwould never have consented to be circumcised and to cramp their life\nwithin the narrow limits of Jewish tradition; a religion hampered with\nsuch conditions could never have become the universal religion.\n\n\n152.  But, when Paul and Barnabas came back from their first missionary\ntour to Antioch, they found that a still more decisive settlement of\nthis question was required; for Christians of the strictly Jewish sort\nwere coming down from Jerusalem to Antioch and telling the Gentile\nconverts that, unless they were circumcised, they could not be saved.\nIn this way they were filling them with alarm, lest they might be\nomitting something on which the welfare of their souls depended, and\nthey were confusing their minds as to the simplicity of the gospel.  To\nquiet these disturbed consciences it was resolved by the church at\nAntioch to appeal to the leading apostles at Jerusalem, and Paul and\nBarnabas were sent thither to procure a decision.  This was the origin\nof what is called the Council of Jerusalem, at which this question was\nauthoritatively settled.\n\nThe decision of the apostles and elders was in harmony with Paul's\npractice: the Gentiles were not to be required to be circumcised; only\nthey were enjoined to abstain from meat offered in sacrifice to idols,\nfrom fornication, and from blood.  To these conditions Paul consented.\nHe did not, indeed, see any harm in eating meat which had been used in\nidolatrous sacrifices, when it was exposed for sale in the market; but\nthe feasts upon such meat in the idol temples, which were often\nfollowed by wild outbreaks of sensuality, alluded to in the prohibition\nof fornication, were temptations against which the converts from\nheathenism required to be warned.  The prohibition of blood--that is,\nof eating meat killed without the blood being drained off--was a\nconcession to extreme Jewish prejudice, which, as it involved no\nprinciple, he did not think it necessary to oppose.\n\n\n153.  So the agitating question appeared to be settled by an authority\nso august that none could question it.  If Peter, John and James, the\npillars of the church at Jerusalem, as well as Paul and Barnabas, the\nheads of the Gentile mission, arrived at a unanimous decision, all\nconsciences might be satisfied and all opposing mouths stopped.\n\n\n154.  Attempt to Unsettle.--It fills us with amazement to discover that\neven this settlement was not final.  It would appear that, even at the\ntime when it was come to, it was fiercely opposed by some who were\npresent at the meeting where it was discussed; and, although the\nauthority of the apostles determined the official note which was sent\nto the distant churches, the Christian community at Jerusalem was\nagitated with storms of angry opposition to it.  Nor did the opposition\nsoon die down.  On the contrary, it waxed stronger and stronger.  It\nwas fed from abundant sources.  Fierce national pride and prejudice\nsustained it; probably it was nourished by self-interest, because the\nJewish Christians would live on easier terms with the non-Christian\nJews the loss the difference between them was understood to be;\nreligious conviction, rapidly warming into fanaticism, strengthened it;\nand very soon it was reinforced by all the rancor of hatred and the\nzeal of propagandism.  For to such a height did this opposition rise\nthat the party which was inflamed with it at length resolved to send\nout propagandists to visit the Gentile churches one by one and, in\ncontradiction to the official apostolic rescript, warn them that they\nwere imperilling their souls by omitting circumcision, and could not\nenjoy the privileges of true Christianity unless they kept the Jewish\nlaw.\n\n\n155.  For years and years these emissaries of a narrow-minded\nfanaticism, which believed itself to be the only genuine Christianity,\ndiffused themselves over all the churches founded by Paul throughout\nthe Gentile world.  Their work was not to found churches of their own;\nthey had none of the original pioneer ability of their great rival.\nTheir business was to steal into the Christian communities he had\nfounded and win them to their own narrow views.  They haunted Paul's\nfootsteps wherever he went, and for many years were a cause to him of\nunspeakable pain.  They whispered to his converts that his version of\nthe gospel was not the true one, and that his authority was not to be\ntrusted.  Was he one of the twelve apostles?  Had he kept company with\nChrist?  They represented themselves as having brought the true form of\nChristianity from Jerusalem, the sacred headquarters; and they did not\nscruple to profess that they had been sent from the apostles there.\nThey distorted the very noblest parts of Paul's conduct to their\npurpose.  For instance, his refusal to accept money for his services\nthey imputed to a sense of his own lack of authority: the real apostles\nalways received pay.  In the same way they misconstrued his abstinence\nfrom marriage.  They were men not without ability for the work they had\nundertaken: they had smooth, insinuating tongues, they could assume an\nair of dignity, and they did not stick at trifles.\n\n\n156.  Unfortunately they were by no means without success.  They\nalarmed the consciences of Paul's converts and poisoned their minds\nagainst him.  The Galatian church especially fell a prey to them; and\nthe Corinthian church allowed its mind to be turned against its\nfounder.  But, indeed, the defection was more or less pronounced\neverywhere.  It seemed as if the whole structure which Paul had reared\nwith years of labor was to be thrown to the ground.  For this was what\nhe believed to be happening.  Though these men called themselves\nChristians, Paul utterly denied their Christianity.  Theirs was not\nanother gospel; if his converts believed it, he assured them they were\nfallen from grace; and in the most solemn terms he pronounced a curse\non those who were thus destroying the temple of God which he had built.\n\n\n157.  Paul Crushes the Judaizers.--He was not, however, the man to\nallow such seduction to go on among his converts without putting forth\nthe most strenuous efforts to counteract it.  He hurried, when he\ncould, to see the churches which were being tampered with; he sent\nmessengers to bring them back to their allegiance; above all, he wrote\nletters to those in peril--letters in which the extraordinary powers of\nhis mind were exerted to the utmost.  He argued the subject out with\nall the resources of logic and Scripture; he exposed the seducers with\na keenness which cut like steel and overwhelmed them with sallies of\nsarcastic wit; he flung himself at his converts' feet and with all the\npassion and tenderness of his mighty heart implored them to be true to\nChrist and to himself.  We possess the records of these anxieties in\nour New Testament; and it fills us with gratitude to God and a strange\ntenderness to Paul himself to think that out of his heart-breaking\ntrial there has come such a precious heritage to us.\n\n\n158.  It is comforting to know that he was successful.  Persevering as\nhis enemies were, he was more than a match for them.  Hatred is strong,\nbut stronger still is love.  In his later writings the traces of his\nopposition are slender or entirely absent.  It had given way before the\ncrushing force of his polemic, and its traces had been swept off the\nsoil of the Church.  Had the event been otherwise, Christianity would\nhave been a river lost in the sands of prejudice near its very source;\nit would have been at the present day a forgotten Jewish sect instead\nof the religion of the world.\n\n\n159.  Christian Jews and the Law.--Up to this point the course of this\nancient controversy can be clearly traced.  But there is another branch\nof it about the course of which it is far from easy to arrive at with\ncertainty.  What was the relation of the Christian Jews to the law,\naccording to the teaching and preaching of Paul?  Was it their duty to\nabandon the practices by which they had been wont to regulate their\nlives and abstain from circumcising their children or teaching them to\nkeep the law?  This would appear to be implied in Paul's principles.\nIf Gentiles could enter the kingdom without keeping the law, it could\nnot be necessary for Jews to keep it.  If the law was a severe\ndiscipline intended to drive men to Christ, its obligations fell away\nwhen this purpose was fulfilled.  The bondage of tutelage ceased as\nsoon as the son entered on the actual possession of his inheritance.\n\n\n160.  It is certain, however, that the other apostles and the mass of\nthe Christians of Jerusalem did not for many a day realize this.  The\napostles had agreed not to demand from the Gentile Christians\ncircumcision and the keeping of the law.  But they kept it themselves\nand expected all Jews to keep it.  This involved a contradiction of\nideas, and it led to unhappy practical consequences.  If it had\ncontinued or been yielded to by Paul, it would have split up the Church\ninto two sections, one of which would have looked down upon the other.\nFor it was part of the strict observance of the law to refuse to eat\nwith the uncircumcised; and the Jews would have refused to sit at the\nsame table with those whom they acknowledged to be their Christian\nbrethren.  This unseemly contradiction actually came to pass in a\nprominent instance.  The Apostle Peter, chancing on one occasion to be\nin the heathen city of Antioch, at first mingled freely in social\nintercourse with the Gentile Christians.  But some of the stricter\nsort, coming thither from Jerusalem, so cowed him that he withdrew from\nthe Gentile table and held aloof from his fellow-Christians.  Even\nBarnabas was carried away by the same tyranny of bigotry.  Paul alone\nwas true to the principles of gospel freedom, withstanding Peter to the\nface and exposing the inconsistency of his conduct.\n\n\n161.  Paul never, indeed, carried on a polemic against circumcision and\nthe keeping of the law among born Jews.  This was reported of him by\nhis enemies; but it was a false report.  When he arrived in Jerusalem\nat the close of his third missionary journey, the Apostle James and the\nelders informed him of the damage which this representation was doing\nto his good name and advised him publicly to disprove it.  The words in\nwhich they made this appeal to him are very remarkable.  \"Thou seest,\nbrother,\" they said, \"how many thousands of Jews there are who believe;\nand they are all zealous of the law; and they are informed of thee that\nthou teachest all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses,\nsaying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to\nwalk after the customs.  Do therefore this that we say to thee: We have\nfour men who have a vow on them.  Take them and purify thyself with\nthem, and be at charges with them, that they may shave their heads; and\nall may know that those things whereof they were informed concerning\nthee are nothing, but thou thyself also walkest orderly and keepest the\nlaw.\"\n\nPaul complied with this appeal and went through the rite which James\nrecommended.  This clearly proves that he never regarded it as part of\nhis work to dissuade born Jews from living as Jews.  It may be thought\nthat he ought to have done so--that his principles required a stern\nopposition to everything associated with the dispensation which had\npassed away.  He understood them differently, however, and had a good\nreason to render for the line he pursued.\n\nWe find him advising those who were called into the kingdom of Christ\nbeing circumcised not to become uncircumcised, and those called in\nuncircumcision not to submit to circumcision; and the reason he gives\nis that circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing.  The\ndistinction was nothing more to him, in a religious point of view, than\nthe distinction of sex or the distinction of slave and master.  In\nshort, it had no religious significance at all.  If, however, a man\nprofessed Jewish modes of life as a mark of his nationality, Paul had\nno quarrel with him; indeed, in some degree he preferred them himself.\nHe stickled as little against mere forms as for them; only, if they\nstood between the soul and Christ or between a Christian and his\nbrethren, then he was their uncompromising opponent.  But he knew that\nliberty may be made an instrument of oppression as well as bondage,\nand, therefore, in regard to meats, for instance, he penned those noble\nrecommendations of self-denial for the sake of weak and scrupulous\nconsciences which are among the most touching testimonies to his utter\nunselfishness.\n\n\n162.  Indeed, we have here a man of such heroic size that it is no easy\nmatter to define him.  Along with the clearest vision of the lines of\ndemarcation between the old and the new in the greatest crisis of human\nhistory and an unfaltering championship of principle when real issues\nwere involved, we see in him the most genial superiority to mere formal\nrules and the utmost consideration for the feelings of those who did\nnot see as he saw.  By one huge blow he had cut himself free from the\nbigotry of bondage; but he never fell into the bigotry of liberty, and\nhad always far loftier aims in view than the mere logic of his own\nposition.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nTHE END\n\nParagraphs 163-189.\n\n  163, 164.  RETURN TO JERUSALEM.  Prophecy of\n             Approaching Imprisonment.\n  165-168.   ARREST.  166.  Tumult in Temple; 167.  Paul\n             before the Sanhedrim; 168.  Plot of Zealots.\n  169-172.   IMPRISONMENT AT CAESAREA.  170.\n             Providential Reason for this Confinement.  171.\n             Paul's later Gospel.  172.  His Ethics.\n  173-176.   JOURNEY TO ROME.  173.  Appeal to\n             Caesar.  174.  Voyage to Italy.  175.  Arrival in\n             Rome.\n  176-182.   FIRST IMPRISONMENT AT ROME.  176.\n             Trial delayed.  177-182.  Occupations of a Prisoner.\n             178.  His Guards Converted; 180.  Visits of Apostolic\n             Helpers; 181.  Messengers from his Churches; 182.\n             His Writings.\n  183-188.   LAST SCENES.  185.  Release from Prison;\n             New Journeys.  186.  Second Imprisonment at Rome.\n             187, 188.  Trial and Death.\n  189.       EPILOGUE.\n\n\n163.  Return to Jerusalem.--After completing his brief visit to Greece\nat the close of his third missionary journey, Paul returned to\nJerusalem.  He must by this time have been nearly sixty years of age;\nand for twenty years he had been engaged in almost superhuman labors.\nHe had been traveling and preaching incessantly, and carrying on his\nheart a crushing weight of cares.  His body had been worn with disease\nand mangled with punishments and abuse; and his hair must have been\nwhitened, and his face furrowed with the lines of age.  As yet,\nhowever, there were no signs of his body breaking down, and his spirit\nwas still as keen as ever in its enthusiasm for the service of Christ.\n\nHis eye was specially directed to Rome, and, before leaving Greece, he\nsent word to the Romans that they might expect to see him soon.  But,\nas he was hurrying toward Jerusalem along the shores of Greece and\nAsia, the signal sounded that his work was nearly done, and the shadow\nof approaching death fell across his path.  In city after city the\npersons in the Christian communities who were endowed with the gift of\nprophecy foretold that bonds and imprisonment were awaiting him, and,\nas he came nearer to the close of his journey, these warnings became\nmore loud and frequent.  He felt their solemnity; his was a brave\nheart, but it was too humble and reverent not to be overawed with the\nthought of death and judgment.  He had several companions with him, but\nhe sought opportunities of being alone.  He parted from his converts as\na dying man, telling them that they would see his face no more.  But,\nwhen they entreated him to turn back and avoid the threatened danger,\nhe gently pushed aside their loving arms, and said, \"What mean ye to\nweep and to break my heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but\nalso to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.\"\n\n\n164.  We do not know what business he had on hand which so peremptorily\ndemanded his presence in Jerusalem.  He had to deliver up to the\napostles a collection on behalf of their poor saints, which he had been\nexerting himself to gather in the Gentile churches; and it may have\nbeen of importance that he should discharge this service in person.  Or\nhe may have been solicitous to procure from the apostles a message for\nhis Gentile churches, giving an authoritative contradiction to the\ninsinuations of his enemies as to the unapostolic character of his\ngospel.  At all events there was some imperative call of duty summoning\nhim, and, in spite of the fear of death and the tears of friends, he\nwent forward to his fate.\n\n\n165.  Paul's Arrest.--It was the feast of Pentecost when he arrived in\nthe city of his fathers, and, as usual at such seasons, Jerusalem was\ncrowded with hundreds of thousands of pilgrim Jews from all parts of\nthe world.  Among these there could not but be many who had seen him at\nthe work of evangelization in the cities of the heathen and come into\ncollision with him there.  Their rage against him had been checked in\nforeign lands by the interposition of Gentile authority; but might they\nnot, if they met with him in the Jewish capital, wreak on him their\nvengeance with the support of the whole population?\n\n\n166.  This was actually the danger into which he fell.  Certain Jews\nfrom Ephesus, the principal scene of his labors during his third\njourney, recognized him in the temple and, crying out that here was the\nheretic who blasphemed the Jewish nation, law and temple, brought about\nhim in an instant a raging sea of fanaticism.  It is a wonder he was\nnot torn limb from limb on the spot; but superstition prevented his\nassailants from defiling with blood the court of the Jews, in which he\nwas caught, and, before they got him hustled into the court of the\nGentiles, where they would soon have despatched him, the Roman guard,\nwhose sentries were pacing the castle-ramparts which overlooked the\ntemple-courts, rushed down and took him under their protection; and,\nwhen their captain learned that he was a Roman citizen, his safety was\nsecured.\n\n\n167.  But the fanaticism of Jerusalem was now thoroughly aroused, and\nit raged against the protection which surrounded Paul like an angry\nsea.  The Roman captain on the day after the apprehension took him down\nto the Sanhedrin in order to ascertain the charge against him; but the\nsight of the prisoner created such an uproar that he had to hurry him\naway, lest he should be torn in pieces.  Strange city and strange\npeople!  There was never a nation which produced sons more richly\ndowered with gifts to make her name immortal; there was never a city\nwhose children clung to her with a more passionate affection; yet, like\na mad mother, she tore the very goodliest of them in pieces and dashed\nthem mangled from her breast.  Jerusalem was now within a few years of\nher destruction; here was the last of her inspired and prophetic sons\ncome to visit her for the last time, with boundless love to her in his\nheart; but she would have murdered him; and only the shields of the\nGentiles saved him from her fury.\n\n\n168.  Forty zealots banded themselves together under a curse to snatch\nPaul even from the midst of the Roman swords; and the Roman captain was\nonly able to foil their plot by sending him under a heavy escort down\nto Caesarea.  This was a Roman city on the Mediterranean coast; it was\nthe residence of the Roman governor of Palestine and the headquarters\nof the Roman garrison; and in it the apostle was perfectly safe from\nJewish violence.\n\n\n169.  Imprisonment at Caesarea.--Here he remained in prison for two\nyears.  The Jewish authorities attempted again and again either to\nprocure his condemnation by the governor or to get him delivered up to\nthemselves, to be tried as an ecclesiastical offender; but they failed\nto convince the governor that Paul had been guilty of any crime of\nwhich he could take cognizance or to persuade him to hand over a Roman\ncitizen to their tender mercies.  The prisoner ought to have been\nreleased, but his enemies were so vehement in asserting that he was a\ncriminal of the deepest dye that he was detained on the chance of new\nevidence turning up against him.  Besides, his release was prevented by\nthe expectation of the corrupt governor, Felix, that the life of the\nleader of a religious sect might be purchased from him with a bribe.\nFelix was interested in his prisoner and even heard him gladly, as\nHerod had listened to the Baptist.\n\n\n170.  Paul was not kept in close confinement; he had at least the range\nof the barracks in which he was detained.  There we can imagine him\npacing the ramparts on the edge of the Mediterranean, and gazing\nwistfully across the blue waters in the direction of Macedonia, Achaia\nand Ephesus, where his spiritual children were pining for him or\nperhaps encountering dangers in which they sorely needed his presence.\n\nIt was a mysterious providence which thus arrested his energies and\ncondemned the ardent worker to inactivity.  Yet we can see now the\nreason for it.  Paul was needing rest.  After twenty years of incessant\nevangelization he required leisure to garner the harvest of experience.\nDuring all that time he had been preaching that view of the gospel\nwhich at the beginning of his Christian career he had thought out,\nunder the influence of the revealing Spirit, in the solitudes of\nArabia.  But he had now reached a stage when, with leisure to think, he\nmight penetrate into more recondite regions of the truth as it is in\nJesus.  And it was so important that he should have this leisure that,\nin order to secure it.  God even permitted him to be shut up in prison.\n\n\n171.  Paul's Later Gospel.--During these two years he wrote nothing; it\nwas a time of internal mental activity and silent progress.  But, when\nhe began to write again, the results of it were at once discernible.\nThe Epistles written after this imprisonment have a mellower tone and\nset forth a profounder view of doctrine than his earlier writings.\nThere is no contradiction, indeed, or inconsistency between his earlier\nand later views: in Ephesians and Colossians he builds on the broad\nfoundations laid in Romans and Galatians.  But the superstructure is\nloftier and more imposing.  He dwells less on the work of Christ and\nmore on His person; less on the justification of the sinner and more on\nthe sanctification of the saint.\n\nIn the gospel revealed to him in Arabia he had set Christ forth as\ndominating mundane history, and shown His first coming to be the point\ntoward which the destinies of Jews and Gentiles had been tending.  In\nthe gospel revealed to him at Caesarea the point of view is\nextra-mundane: Christ is represented as the reason for the creation of\nall things, and as the Lord of angels and of worlds, to whose second\ncoming the vast procession of the universe is moving forward--of whom,\nand through whom, and to whom are all things.\n\nIn the earlier Epistles the initial act of the Christian life--the\njustification of the soul--is explained with exhaustive elaboration:\nbut in the later Epistles it is on the subsequent relations to Christ\nof the person who has been already justified that the apostle chiefly\ndwells.  According to his teaching, the whole spectacle of the\nChristian life is due to a union between Christ and the soul; and for\nthe description of this relationship he has invented a vocabulary of\nphrases and illustrations: believers are in Christ, and Christ is in\nthem: they have the same relation to Him as the stones of a building to\nthe foundation-stone, as the branches to the tree, as the members to\nthe head, as a wife to her husband.  This union is ideal, for the\ndivine mind in eternity made the destiny of Christ and the believer\none; it is legal, for their debts and merits are common property; it is\nvital, for the connection with Christ supplies the power of a holy and\nprogressive life; it is moral, for, in mind and heart, in character and\nconduct, Christians are constantly becoming more and more identical\nwith Christ.\n\n\n172.  His Ethics.--Another feature of these later Epistles is the\nbalance between their theological and their moral teaching.  This is\nvisible even in the external structure of the greatest of them, for\nthey are nearly equally divided into two parts, the first of which is\noccupied with doctrinal statements and the second with moral\nexhortations.  The ethical teaching of Paul spreads itself over all\nparts of the Christian life; but it is not distinguished by a\nsystematic arrangement of the various kinds of duties, although the\ndomestic duties are pretty fully treated.  Its chief characteristic\nlies in the motives which it brings to bear upon conduct.\n\nTo Paul Christian morality was emphatically a morality of motives.  The\nwhole history of Christ, not in the details of His earthly life, but in\nthe great features of his redemptive journey from heaven to earth and\nfrom earth back to heaven again, as seen from the extramundane\nstandpoint of these Epistles, is a series of examples to be copied by\nChristians in their daily conduct.  No duty is too small to illustrate\none or other of the principles which inspired the divinest acts of\nChrist.  The commonest acts of humility and beneficence are to be\nimitations of the condescension which brought Him from the position of\nequality with God to the obedience of the cross; and the ruling motive\nof the love and kindness practised by Christians to one another is to\nbe the recollection of their common connection with Him.\n\n\n173.  Appeal to Caesar.--After Paul's imprisonment had lasted for two\nyears, Felix was succeeded in the governorship of Palestine by Festus.\nThe Jews had never ceased to intrigue to get Paul into their hands, and\nthey at once assailed the new ruler with further importunities.  As\nFestus seemed to be wavering, Paul availed himself of his privilege of\nappeal as a Roman citizen and demanded to be sent to Rome and tried at\nthe bar of the emperor.  This could not be refused him; and a prisoner\nhad to be sent to Rome at once after such an appeal was taken.  Very\nsoon, therefore, Paul was shipped off under the charge of Roman\nsoldiers and in the company of many other prisoners on their way to the\nsame destination.\n\n\n174.  Voyage to Italy.--The journal of the voyage has been preserved in\nthe Acts of the Apostles and is acknowledged to be the most valuable\ndocument in existence concerning the seamanship of ancient times.  It\nis also a precious document of Paul's life; for it shows how his\ncharacter shone out in a novel situation.  A ship is a kind of\nminiature of the world.  It is a floating island, in which there are\nthe government and the governed.  But the government is, like that of\nstates, liable to sudden social upheavals, in which the ablest man is\nthrown to the top.  This was a voyage of extreme perils, which required\nthe utmost presence of mind and power of winning the confidence and\nobedience of those on board.  Before it was ended Paul was virtually\nboth the captain of the ship and the general of the soldiers; and all\non board owed to him their lives.\n\n\n175.  Arrival in Rome.--At length the dangers of the deep were left\nbehind; and Paul found himself approaching the capital of the Roman\nworld by the Appian Road, the great highway by which Rome was entered\nby travelers from the East.  The bustle and noise increased as he\nneared the city, and the signs of Roman grandeur and renown multiplied\nat every step.  For many years he had been looking forward to seeing\nRome, but he had always thought of entering it in a very different\nguise from that which now he wore.  He had always thought of Rome as a\nsuccessful general thinks of the central stronghold of the country he\nis subduing, who looks eagerly forward to the day when he will direct\nthe charge against its gates.  Paul was engaged in the conquest of the\nworld for Christ, and Rome was the final position he had hoped to carry\nin his Master's name.  Years ago he had sent to it the famous\nchallenge, \"I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome\nalso; for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power\nof God unto salvation to every one that believeth.\"  But now, when he\nfound himself actually at its gates and thought of the abject condition\nin which he was--an old, gray-haired, broken man, a chained prisoner\njust escaped from shipwreck--his heart sank within him, and he felt\ndreadfully alone.\n\nAt the right moment, however, a little incident took place which\nrestored him to himself: at a small town forty miles out of Rome he was\nmet by a little band of Christian brethren, who, hearing of his\napproach, had come out to welcome him; and, ten miles farther on, he\ncame upon another group, who had come out for the same purpose.\nSelf-reliant as he was, he was exceedingly sensitive to human sympathy,\nand the sight of these brethren and their interest in him completely\nrevived him.  He thanked God and took courage; his old feelings came\nback in their wonted strength; and, when, in the company of these\nfriends, he reached that shoulder of the Alban Hills from which the\nfirst view of the city is obtained, his heart swelled with the\nanticipation of victory; for he knew he carried in his breast the force\nwhich would yet lead captive that proud capital.\n\nIt was not with the step of a prisoner, but with that of a conqueror,\nthat he passed at length beneath the city gate.  His road lay along\nthat very Sacred Way by which many a Roman general had passed in\ntriumph to the Capitol, seated on a car of victory, followed by the\nprisoners and spoils of the enemy, and surrounded with the plaudits of\nrejoicing Rome.  Paul looked little like such a hero: no car of victory\ncarried him, he trode the causewayed road with wayworn foot; no medals\nor ornaments adorned his person, a chain of iron dangled from his\nwrist; no applauding crowds welcomed his approach, a few humble friends\nformed all his escort; yet never did a more truly conquering footstep\nfall on the pavement of Rome or a heart more confident of victory pass\nwithin her gates.\n\n176.  Imprisonment.--Meanwhile, however, it was not to the Capitol his\nsteps were bent, but to a prison; and he was destined to lie in prison\nlong, for his trial did not come on for two years.  The law's delays\nhave been proverbial in all countries and at all eras; and the law of\nimperial Rome was not likely to be free from this reproach during the\nreign of Nero, a man of such frivolity that any engagement of pleasure\nor freak of caprice was sufficient to make him put off the most\nimportant call of business.  The imprisonment, it is true, was of the\nmildest description.  It may have been that the officer who brought him\nto Rome spoke a good word for the man who had saved his life during the\nvoyage, or the officer to whom he was handed over, and who is known in\nprofane history as a man of justice and humanity, may have inquired\ninto his case and formed a favorable opinion of his character; but at\nall events Paul was permitted to hire a house of his own and live in it\nin perfect freedom, with the single exception that a soldier, who was\nresponsible for his person, was his constant attendant.\n\n\n177.  Occupation in Prison.--This was far from the condition which such\nan active spirit would have coveted.  He would have liked to be moving\nfrom synagogue to synagogue in the immense city, preaching in its\nstreets and squares, and founding congregation after congregation among\nthe masses of its population.  Another man, thus arrested in a career\nof ceaseless movement and immured within prison walls, might have\nallowed his mind to stagnate in sloth and despair.  But Paul behaved\nvery differently.  Availing himself of every possibility of the\nsituation, he converted his one room into a center of far-reaching\nactivity and beneficence.  On the few square feet of space allowed him\nhe erected a fulcrum with which he moved the world, establishing within\nthe walls of Nero's capital a sovereignty more extensive than his own.\n\n\n178.  Even the most irksome circumstance of his lot was turned to good\naccount.  This was the soldier by whom he was watched.  To a man of\nPaul's eager temperament and restlessness of mood this must often have\nbeen an intolerable annoyance; and, indeed, in the letters written\nduring this imprisonment he is constantly referring to his chain, as if\nit were never out of his mind.  But he did not suffer this irritation\nto blind him to the opportunity of doing good presented by the\nsituation.  Of course his attendant was changed every few hours, as one\nsoldier relieved another upon guard.  In this way there might be six or\neight with him every four-and-twenty hours.  They belonged to the\nimperial guard, the flower of the Roman army.\n\nPaul could not sit for hours beside another man without speaking of the\nsubject which lay nearest his heart.  He spoke to these soldiers about\ntheir immortal souls and the faith of Christ.  To men accustomed to the\nhorrors of Roman warfare and the manners of Roman barracks nothing\ncould be more striking than a life and character like his; and the\nresult of these conversations was that many of them became changed men,\nand a revival spread through the barracks and penetrated into the\nimperial household itself.  His room was sometimes crowded with these\nstern, bronzed faces, glad to see him at other times than those when\nduty required them to be there.  He sympathized with them and entered\ninto the spirit of their occupation; indeed, he was full of the spirit\nof the warrior himself.\n\nWe have an imperishable relic of these visits in an outburst of\ninspired eloquence which he dictated at this period: \"Put on the whole\narmor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the\ndevil; for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against\nprincipalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of\nthis world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.  Wherefore\ntake unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand\nin the evil day and, having done all, to stand.  Stand therefore,\nhaving your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate\nof righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel\nof peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be\nable to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.  And take the helmet\nof salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.\"\nThat picture was drawn from the life, from the armor of the soldiers in\nhis room; and perhaps these ringing sentences were first poured into\nthe ears of his warlike auditors before they were transferred to the\nEpistle in which they have been preserved.\n\n\n179.  Visitors.--But he had other visitors.  All who took an interest\nin Christianity in Rome, both Jews and Gentiles, gathered to him.\nPerhaps there was not a day of the two years of his imprisonment but he\nhad such visitors.  The Roman Christians learned to go to that room as\nto an oracle or shrine.  Many a Christian teacher got his sword\nsharpened there; and new energy began to diffuse itself through the\nChristian circles of the city.  Many an anxious father brought his son,\nmany a friend his friend, hoping that a word from the apostle's lips\nmight waken the sleeping conscience.  Many a wanderer, stumbling in\nthere by chance, came out a new man.  Such an one was Onesimus, a slave\nfrom Colossae, who arrived in Rome as a runaway, but was sent back to\nhis Christian master, Philemon, no longer as a slave, but as a brother\nbeloved.\n\n\n180.  Still more interesting visitors came.  At all periods of his life\nhe exercised a strong fascination over young men.  They were attracted\nby the manly soul within him, in which they found sympathy with their\naspirations and inspiration for the noblest work.  These youthful\nfriends, who were scattered over the world in the work of Christ,\nflocked to him at Rome.  Timothy and Luke, Mark and Aristarchus,\nTychicus and Epaphras, and many more came, to drink afresh at the well\nof his ever-springing wisdom and earnestness.  And he sent them forth\nagain, to carry messages to his churches or bring him news of their\ncondition.\n\n\n181.  Of his spiritual children in the distance he never ceased to\nthink.  Daily he was wandering in imagination among the glens of\nGalatia and along the shores of Asia and Greece; every night he was\npraying for the Christians of Antioch and Ephesus, of Philippi and\nThessalonica and Corinth.  Nor were gratifying proofs awanting that\nthey were remembering him.  Now and then there would appear in his\nlodging a deputy from some distant church, bringing the greetings of\nhis converts or, perhaps, a contribution to meet his temporal wants, or\ncraving his decision on some point of doctrine or practice about which\ndifficulty had arisen.  These messengers were not sent empty away: they\ncarried warm-hearted messages of golden words of counsel from their\napostolic friend.\n\nSome of them carried far more.  When Epaphroditus, a deputy from the\nchurch at Philippi, which had sent to their dear father in Christ an\noffering of love, was returning home, Paul sent with him, in\nacknowledgment of their kindness, the Epistle to the Philippians, the\nmost beautiful of all his letters, in which he lays bare his very heart\nand every sentence glows with love more tender than a woman's.  When\nthe slave Onesimus was sent back to Colossae, he received, as the\nbranch of peace to offer to his master, the exquisite little Epistle to\nPhilemon, a priceless monument of Christian courtesy.  He carried, too,\na letter addressed to the church of the town in which his master lived,\nthe Epistle to the Colossians.\n\nThe composition of these Epistles was by far the most important part of\nPaul's varied prison activity; and he crowned this labor with the\nwriting of the Epistle to the Ephesians, which is perhaps the\nprofoundest and sublimest book in the world.  The Church of Christ has\nderived many benefits from the imprisonment of the servants of God; the\ngreatest book of uninspired religious genius, the Pilgrim's Progress,\nwas written in a jail; but never did there come to the Church a greater\nmercy in the disguise of misfortune than when the arrest of Paul's\nbodily activities at Caesarea and Rome supplied him with the leisure\nneeded to reach the depths of truth sounded in the Epistle to the\nEphesians.\n\n\n182.  His Writings.--It may have seemed a dark dispensation of\nprovidence to Paul himself that the course of life he had pursued so\nlong was so completely changed; but God's thoughts are higher than\nman's thoughts and His ways than man's ways; and He gave Paul grace to\novercome the temptations of his situation and do far more in his\nenforced inactivity for the welfare of the world and the permanence of\nhis own influence than he could have done by twenty years of wandering\nmissionary work.  Sitting in his room, he gathered within the sounding\ncavity of his sympathetic heart the sighs and cries of thousands far\naway, and diffused courage and help in every direction from his own\ninexhaustible resources.  He sank his mind deeper and deeper in\nsolitary thought, till, smiting the rock in the dim depth to which he\nhad descended, he caused streams to gush forth which are still\ngladdening the city of God.\n\n\n183.  Release from Prison.--The book of Acts suddenly breaks off with a\nbrief summary of Paul's two years' imprisonment at Rome.  Is this\nbecause there was no more to tell?  When his trial came on, did it\nissue in his condemnation and death?  Or did he get out of prison and\nresume his old occupations?  Where Luke's lucid narrative so suddenly\ndeserts us, tradition comes in proffering its doubtful aid.  It tells\nus that he was acquitted on his trial and let out of prison; that he\nresumed his travels, visiting Spain among other places; but that before\nlong he was arrested again and sent back to Rome, where he died a\nmartyr's death at the cruel hands of Nero.\n\n\n184.  New Journeys.--Happily, however, we are not altogether dependent\non the precarious aid of tradition.  We have writings of Paul's own\nundoubtedly subsequent to the two years of his first imprisonment.\nThese are what are called the Pastoral Epistles--the Epistles to\nTimothy and Titus.  In these we see that he regained his liberty and\nresumed his employment of revisiting his old churches and founding new\nones.  His footsteps cannot, indeed, be any longer traced with\ncertainty.  We find him back at Ephesus and Troas; we find him in\nCrete, an island at which he touched on his voyage to Rome and in which\nhe may then have become interested; we find him exploring new territory\nin the northern parts of Greece.  We see him once more, like the\ncommander of an army who sends his aides-de-camp all over the field of\nbattle, sending out his young assistants to organize and watch over the\nchurches.\n\n\n185.  But this was not to last long.  An event had happened immediately\nafter his release from prison which could not but influence his fate.\nThis was the burning of Rome--an appalling disaster, the glare of which\neven at this distance makes the heart shudder.  It was probably a mad\nfreak of the malicious monster who then wore the imperial purple.  But\nNero saw fit to attribute it to the Christians, and instantly the most\natrocious persecution broke out against them.  Of course the fame of\nthis soon spread over the Roman world; and it was not likely that the\nforemost apostle of Christianity could long escape.  Every Roman\ngovernor knew that he could not do the emperor a more pleasing service\nthan by sending to him Paul in chains.\n\n\n186.  Second Imprisonment.--It was not long, accordingly, before Paul\nwas lying once more in prison at Rome; and it was no mild imprisonment\nthis time, but the worst known to the law.  No troops of friends now\nfilled his room; for the Christians of Rome had been massacred or\nscattered, and it was dangerous for any one to avow himself a\nChristian.  We have a letter written from his dungeon, the last he ever\nwrote, the Second Epistle to Timothy, which affords us a glimpse of\nunspeakable pathos into the circumstances of the prisoner.  He tells us\nthat one part of his trial is already over.  Not a friend stood by him\nas he faced the bloodthirsty tyrant who sat on the judgment-seat.  But\nthe Lord stood by him and enabled him to make the emperor and the\nspectators in the crowded basilica hear the sound of the gospel.  The\ncharge against him had broken down.  But he had no hope of escape.\nOther stages of the trial had yet to come, and he knew that evidence to\ncondemn him would either be discovered or manufactured.\n\nThe letter betrays the miseries of his dungeon.  He prays Timothy to\nbring a cloak he had left at Troas, to defend him from the damp of the\ncell and the cold of the winter.  He asks for his books and parchments,\nthat he may relieve the tedium of his solitary hours with the studies\nhe had always loved.  But, above all, he beseeches Timothy to come\nhimself; for he was longing to feel the touch of a friendly hand and\nsee the face of a friend yet once again before he died.\n\nWas the brave heart then conquered at last?  Read the Epistle and see.\nHow does it begin?  \"I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not\nashamed; for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is\nable to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.\"\nHow does it end?  \"I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my\ndeparture is at hand.  I have fought a good fight, I have finished my\ncourse, I have kept the faith.  Henceforth there is laid up for me a\ncrown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give\nme at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them that love His\nappearing.\"  That is not the strain of the vanquished.\n\n\n187.  Trial.--There can be little doubt that he appeared again at\nNero's bar, and this time the charge did not break down.  In all\nhistory there is not a more startling illustration of the irony of\nhuman life than this scene of Paul at the bar of Nero.  On the\njudgment-seat, clad in the imperial purple, sat a man who in a bad\nworld had attained the eminence of being the very worst and meanest\nbeing in it--a man stained with every crime, the murderer of his own\nmother, of his wives and of his best benefactors; a man whose whole\nbeing was so steeped in every namable and unnamable vice that body and\nsoul of him were, as some one said at the time, nothing but a compound\nof mud and blood; and in the prisoner's dock stood the best man the\nworld contained, his hair whitened with labors for the good of men and\nthe glory of God.  Such was the occupant of the seat of justice, and\nsuch the man who stood in the place of the criminal.\n\n\n188.  Death.--The trial ended, Paul was condemned and delivered over to\nthe executioner.  He was led out of the city with a crowd of the lowest\nrabble at his heels.  The fatal spot was reached; he knelt beside the\nblock; the headsman's axe gleamed in the sun and fell; and the head of\nthe apostle of the world rolled down in the dust.\n\n\n189.  So sin did its uttermost and its worst.  Yet how poor and empty\nwas its triumph!  The blow of the axe only smote off the lock of the\nprison and let the spirit go forth to its home and to its crown.  The\ncity falsely called eternal dismissed him with execration from her\ngates; but ten thousand times ten thousand welcomed him in the same\nhour at the gates of the city which is really eternal.  Even on earth\nPaul could not die.  He lives among us to-day with a life a hundredfold\nmore influential than that which throbbed in his brain whilst the\nearthly form which made him visible still lingered on the earth.\nWherever the feet of them who publish the glad tidings go forth\nbeautiful upon the mountains, he walks by their side as an inspirer and\na guide; in ten thousand churches every Sabbath and on a thousand\nthousand hearths every day his eloquent lips still teach that gospel of\nwhich he was never ashamed; and, wherever there are human souls\nsearching for the white flower of holiness or climbing the difficult\nheights of self-denial, there he whose life was so pure, whose devotion\nto Christ was so entire, and whose pursuit of a single purpose was so\nunceasing, is welcomed as the best of friends.\n\n\n\n\nHINTS TO TEACHERS AND QUESTIONS FOR PUPILS\n\nTeacher's Apparatus.--English theology has no juster cause for pride\nthan the books it has produced on the Life of Paul.  Perhaps there is\nno other subject in which it has so outdistanced all rivals.  Conybeare\nand Howson's _Life and Epistles of St. Paul_ will probably always keep\nthe foremost place; in many respects it is nearly perfect; and a\nteacher who has mastered it will be sufficiently equipped for his work\nand require no other help.  The works of Lewin and Farrar are written\non the same lines; the former is rich in maps of countries and plans of\ntowns; and the strong point of the latter is the analysis of Paul's\nwritings--the exposition of the mind of Paul.  Sir William Ramsay has\nmade the whole subject peculiarly his own by the enthusiasm and labors\nof a lifetime.  The German books are not nearly so valuable.\nHausrath's _The Apostle Paul_ is a brilliant performance, but it is as\nweak in handling the deeper things as it is strong in coloring up the\nexternal and picturesque features of the subject.  Baur's work is an\namazingly clever _tour de force_, but it is not so much a\nwell-proportioned picture of the apostle as a prolonged paradox thrown\ndown as a challenge to the learned.  The latest large German work,\nClemen's _Paulus_, proceeds on the principle that the miracle is\nuntrue, and the effect may be sufficiently seen in the account it gives\nof the first visit to Philippi.  In Weinal's _Paulus_, pp. 312, 313,\nthere appears a forbidding picture of the effects produced by the\nteaching of the subject in the author's country; in our country, on the\ncontrary, it has long been among the most attractive subjects for both\nteachers and students.  Adolphe Monod's _Saint Paul_, a series of five\ndiscourses, is an inquiry into the secret of the apostle's life,\nwritten with deep sympathy and glowing eloquence; and Renan's work,\nwith the same title, gives, with unrivaled brilliance, a picture of the\nworld in which the apostle lived, if not of the apostle himself.  There\nare books on the subject which do honor to American scholarship from\nthe pens of Cone, Gilbert, Bacon and A. T. Robertson, the last\nmentioned with a valuable bibliography.  But the best help is to be\nfound in the original sources themselves--the cameolike pictures of\nLuke and the self-revelations of Paul's Epistles.  The latter\nespecially, read in the fresh translation of Conybeare, will show the\napostle to any one who has eyes to see.  Johnstone's wall-map of Paul's\njourney is indispensable in the class-room.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nParagraph 2.  Subject of class essay--Paul and the other Apostles:\nPoints of Connection and Contrast.\n\n5.  Subject of class essay--Relation of Christianity to Learning and\nIntellectual Gifts: its Use of them and its Independence of them.\n\n\n9.  _Quote passages of Scripture in which Paul's destination to be the\nmissionary of the Gentiles is expressed._\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nOn the external features of the period embraced in this chapter compare\nthe corresponding pages of Hausrath; on the internal features see\nPrincipal Rainy's lecture on Paul in _The Evangelical Succession\nLectures_, vol. i.\n\n14.  On the chronology of Paul's life see the notes at the end of\nConybeare and Howson, and Farrar, ii. 623.\n\nThe principal dates may be given at this stage from Conybeare and\nHowson, for reference throughout:\n\n  A.D.\n  36.  Conversion.\n  38.  Flight to Tarsus.\n  44.  Brought to Antioch by Barnabas.\n  48.  First Missionary Journey.\n  50.  Council at Jerusalem.\n  51-54.  Second Missionary Journey.  1 and 2 _Thessalonians_\n       written at Corinth.\n  54-58.  Third Missionary Journey.\n  57.  1 _Corinthians_ written at Ephesus; 2 _Corinthians_, in\n       Macedonia; _Galatians_, at Corinth.\n  58.  _Romans_ written at Corinth.  Arrest at Jerusalem.\n  59.  In prison at Caesarea.\n  60.  Voyage to Rome.\n  62.  _Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians_,\n       written at Rome.\n  63.  Release from prison.\n  67.  1 _Timothy_ and _Titus_ written.\n  68.  In prison again at Rome.  2 _Timothy_.  Death.\n\nWith these may be compared some of Ramsay's dates--the conversion, 33;\nFirst Missionary Journey, 47-49; Second, 50-53; Third, 53-57; Voyage to\nRome, 59, 60; Trial and Acquittal, 61; Second Trial, 67.\n\nWhereas Conybeare and Howson consider Galatians to have been written,\nin close conjunction with Romans, at Corinth during the Fourth\nMissionary Journey, Ramsay believes it to have been written at Antioch\nbefore this journey commenced; and, whereas the older authorities\nsuppose it to be addressed to Galatians evangelized by Paul during the\nSecond Missionary Journey, though no details of such a conquest are\nfound in Acts, Ramsay holds the recipients of the Epistle to have been\nthe churches in the interior of Asia Minor evangelized during the First\nMissionary Journey, the regions of Phrygia and Lycaonia in which these\nwere situated forming at that time part of the Province of Galatia, the\nboundaries of which had been extended.  This is the South Galatian\ntheory, the fullest statement and defence of which will be found in\nHastings' _Dictionary of the Bible_, vol. v.\n\n15.  The goat's-hair cloth was called \"cilicium,\" from the name of the\nprovince.\n\n16.  Dean Howson's _Metaphors of St. Paul_.  Also Hausrath, p. 15.\n\n18.  Compare the long lists of sins frequent in the Epistle.\n\n23.  Subject for class essay: Paul's First Sight of Jerusalem.\n\n27.  A startling picture of the state of society in Jerusalem might be\nconstructed from the materials supplied in Matt. xxiii.\n\n28.  Detailed comparison of the experience of Paul with that of Luther:\ntheir early religious ideas; the state of religion around them; their\nfailure to find peace and their sufferings of conscience; their\ndiscovery of the righteousness of God.\n\nOn the religious associations of Paul's early life see the first 100\npages of Reuss' _Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age_.\n\n31.  On the history of Christianity between the death of Christ and the\nconversion of St. Paul see Dykes' _From Jerusalem to Antioch_.\n\n34.  The question whether Paul was married.  His views on the place of\nwoman.\n\n35.  Perhaps Acts xxvi. 11 may not imply that any of the Christians\nyielded to his endeavors to make them blaspheme.\n\n\n15.  _What was the Latin name for a town enjoying the political\nprivileges possessed by Tarsus?_\n\n16.  _What are Paul's principal metaphors?_\n\n17.  _Where does he make this boast?_\n\n19.  _What was the Latin name for the Roman citizenship, and what\nprivileges did it include?  On what occasions is Paul recorded to have\nused it?  On what occasions might he have been expected to use it, when\nhe omitted to do so?  What reasons may be given for the omission?_\n\n20.  _Name friends of Paul who were engaged in the same trade as he._\n\n21.  _Give Paul's quotations from the Greek poets.  Do you know the\nauthors he quoted from?  Explain Septuagint and Diaspora._\n\n22.  _Where does Paul refer to the sophists and rhetoricians?_\n\n26.  _Make a collection of Paul's quotations from the Old Testament,\nshowing whence each of them was taken._\n\n28.  _What does Paul mean by the Law?_\n\n32.  _Trace out the points of contact between the language and views of\nStephen's speech and those of Paul.  Explain--_\n\n  \"_Si Stephanus non orasset_,\n  _Ecclesia Paulum non haberet._\"\n\n34.  _Where is it said that Paul voted in the Sanhedrim?_\n\n45.  _Collect Paul's references to the persecution and bring out how\nsevere it was._\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nOn Paul's mental processes before and at the time of his conversion see\nPrincipal Rainy's lecture, already quoted.\n\nThe conversion of Paul is one of the strong apologetic positions of\nChristianity.  See this worked out in Lyttelton's _Conversion of St.\nPaul_.  But it might be worked out afresh on more modern lines.\n\n40.  Principal Rainy, in the lecture above referred to, says that he\nsees no evidence of such a conflict as this in Paul's mind; but what,\nthen, is the meaning of \"It is hard for thee to kick against the\npricks\"?\n\n41.  The general tenor of the earliest Christian apologetic, as it is\nto be found in the speeches of the Acts of the Apostles.\n\n44.  Nothing could be more alien to the spirit of the New Testament\nthan to turn this round the other way, and, assuming that what Paul saw\nwas only a vision, argue that the other appearances of Christ, because\nthey are put on the same level, may have been only visions too.  This\nis a mere stroke of dialectical cleverness, which shows no regard to\nthe obvious intention of the writers.\n\n\n_There are three accounts of the conversion of Paul in the Acts.  What\nis the significance of this reduplication in so small a book?\nEnumerate the differences between these accounts, and explain them._\n\n38.  _Prove that the first Christians called Christianity_ THE WAY,\n_and explain the signification of this name._\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nOn the subject of this chapter see the works on Pauline Theology by\nPfleiderer, Bruce, Du Bose, Titius and Stevens, also the relevant\nportions of any of the Handbooks of New Testament Theology--Weiss,\nReuss, Schmid, van Oosterzee, Beyschlag, Holtzmann, and Stevens.\nWeiss' exposition is among the most solid and trustworthy.  He divides\nPaulinism into four sections:--\n\nI.  THE EARLIEST GOSPEL OF PAUL DURING THE HEATHEN MISSION (gathered\nfrom Thessalonians).  One chapter--the Gospel as the Way of Deliverance\nfrom Judgment.\n\nII.  THE DOCTRINAL SYSTEM OF THE FOUR GREAT DOCTRINAL AND CONTROVERSIAL\nEPISTLES (Corinthians, Romans, Galatians).  Ch. i. Universal Sinfulness\nof Man; ch. ii. Heathenism and Judaism; ch. iii. Prophecy and\nFulfilment; ch. iv. Christology; ch. v. Redemption and Justification;\nch. vi. The New Life; ch. vii. The Doctrine of Predestination; ch.\nviii. The Doctrine of the Church; ch. ix. The Last Things.\n\nIII.  THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE DOCTRINE IN THE EPISTLES WRITTEN IN PRISON\n(Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, Philemon).  Ch. i. The Pauline\nFoundations; ch. ii. Further Development of Doctrine.\n\nIV.  THE TEACHING OF THE PASTORAL EPISTLES.  One chapter--Christianity\nas Doctrine.\n\n51.  Subject for class essay.  The Sources of St. Paul's Theology.\n\n52.  Luther in the Wartburg.\n\n54-65.  As these paragraphs are nothing but a paraphrase of Rom.\ni.-viii., pupils ought to be asked to compare with them the\ncorresponding paragraphs of the Epistle.\n\n56.  Compare Tholuck, The Moral Character of Heathendom.\n\n65.  On Paul's Psychology see the monograph of Simon and the Handbooks\nof Biblical Psychology by Delitzsch and Beck: also Heard, _The\nTripartite Nature of Man_, Laidlaw, _The Bible Doctrine of Man_, and\nDickson, _St. Paul's Use of the Terms Flesh and Spirit_.\n\n67.  Compare Somerville, _St. Paul's Conception of Christ_, and\nKnowling, _The Testimony of St. Paul to Christ_.\n\n\n51.  _Where does Paul mention his journey to Arabia?_\n\n56.  _What is the connection between moral and intellectual degeneracy?_\n\n62.  _Where does Paul speak of the Gospel as a \"mystery,\" and what does\nhe mean by this word?_\n\n65.  _Does Paul divide human nature into two or into three sections?\nDo you know the theological names for these alternatives?  Does Paul\nregard the unregenerate man as possessing the part of human nature\nwhich he calls \"spirit\"?_\n\n67.  _Enumerate the incidents of Christ's earthly life referred to by\nPaul._\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nOn this subject see the first two chapters of Conybeare and Howson;\n_New Testament Times_ of Hausrath or Schuerer; Fairweather, _From the\nExile to the Advent_, Moss, _From Malachi to Matthew_.\n\n72.  Subject of class essay: The Origin and Significance of the name\n\"Christian.\"\n\n\n72.  _By what other names were the Christians called in New Testament\ntimes, among themselves or among their enemies?_\n\n78.  _What did the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews severally\ncontribute to Christianity?_\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nThe aim of this Handbook, as of _The Life of Jesus Christ_ in the same\nseries, being to show at a single glance the general course of the life\nand the principal objects it touched, a good many details have been\nomitted.  This is especially the case in this chapter and in chapter x.\nThe omissions cause those great features to stand out more prominently\nwhich details are apt to obscure.  In this chapter an endeavor has been\nmade to show in this way what were the different regions into which the\napostle traveled, and what the peculiarities and the extent of the work\nhe did in each.  But in an extended Bible Class course the lessons will\nnaturally go more into detail, and perhaps the incidents which took\nplace in each town may generally form a lesson.  Here, therefore, and\nat the beginning of chap. x., a few hints may be given of the\nviewpoints for the lessons, in so far as these are not already supplied\nin the text.\n\n  Acts xiii. 1-12.  First Footsteps of Christian Missions.\n    \"    \"   14-52.  _Antioch_.  Paul's Missionary Method.\n    \"   xiv. 1-6.  _Iconium_.  Among the Jews.\n    \"    \"   6-20. _Lystra_.  Among the Heathens.\n    \"    \"   21-28. Paul as a Pastor.\n    \"    xv. Paul as an Ecclesiastic.\n  Acts  xvi. 1-6. The New Companion.\n   \"     \"   6-10. Opening up Virgin Soil.\n   \"     \"   12-40. _Philippi_.  Transfiguration and Disfiguration\n                    of Humanity.\n   \"   xvii. 1-9. _Thessalonica_.  An Honorable Reproach.\n   \"    \"    10-14. _Beroea_.  Rare Freedom from Prejudice.\n   \"    \"    15-34. _Athens_.  The Gospel and Intellectual\n                    Curiosity.\n   \"  xviii. 1-3. _Corinth_.  Paul's earthly Home.\n   \"    \"    4-17. The Missionary's Discouragements\n                   and Encouragements.\n   \"    \"    23-28. A polished Shaft in God's Quiver.\n   \"    xix. _Ephesus_.  See the text.  Also, Conflict of\n             Christianity with Vested Interests and\n             Mob Violence.\n\n\n79.  Howson's _Companions of St. Paul_.\n\n81.  A minute inspection of Acts xiii. 9 will confirm the view here\ngiven of the change of name, though it is difficult to get rid of the\nidea that the conversion of the governor, who bore the same name, had\nsomething to do with it.\n\n84.  On the worship of the synagogue see Farrar's _Life of Christ_, i.\n220.\n\n89.  On the Council of Jerusalem, which took place between the first\nand second journeys, see ch. ix.\n\n93.  What is here said of the plan of the Acts explains still more\nstrikingly the meagerness of the record of the third journey.\n\n97.  Beroea was to the south of the Via Egnatia.\n\n99.  Subject of class essay: The Influence of Christianity on the Lot\nof Woman.\n\n103.  Subject of class essay: Paul at Athens.\n\n104.  Subject of class essay: Paul and Socrates.\n\n113.  A strong argument against the mythical theory of the miracles of\nour Lord may be constructed from the paucity of the miracles attributed\nto Paul.  If that age naturally wove miraculous legends round great\nnames, why did it not encircle Paul with a continuous web of miracle?\nand why does the New Testament admit that the Baptist worked no miracle?\n\n114.  See Ramsay, _Letters to the Seven Churches_.\n\n\n79.  _Give a list of Paul's companions and friends mentioned in the New\nTestament._\n\n84.  _What were the charges generally brought against him before the\nauthorities?_\n\n91.  _Where in his writings does he mention Barnabas and Mark?_\n\n93.  _Give the places in Acts where the items of this catalogue are\nrecorded._\n\n94.  _Mention other classical associations of this region._\n\n98.  _What two kings of Macedonia are famous in history?_\n\n102.  _Expand these allusions to Greek history._\n\n103.  _Give a number of the names associated with the golden age of\nAthens and mention what they were famous for._\n\n108.  _Find out all the visions mentioned in Paul's life, and prove\nthat they were given him at the crises of his history._\n\n110.  _Distinguish our Asia and Asia Minor from the Asia of the New\nTestament._\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nIn the chronological table, p. 138, the dates of the Epistles have\nalready been given and the points of the history indicated where they\ncome in.  It is a pity the Epistles are not arranged in chronological\norder in our Bibles.  Their characteristics may be mentioned:\n\n  1 and 2 _Thessalonians_.  Simple beginnings.  Attitude\n      to Christ's second coming.\n  1 _Corinthians_.  Picture of an apostolic church.\n  2 _Corinthians_.  Paul's portrait of himself.\n  _Galatians_.  Vehement polemic against Judaizers.\n  _Romans_.  Paul's gospel.\n  _Philemon_.  Example of Christian courtesy.\n  _Colossians_ and _Ephesians_.  Paul's later gospel.\n  _Philippians_.  Picture of Roman imprisonment.\n  1 _Timothy_ and _Titus_.  Form of the church.\n  2 _Timothy_.  The last scenes.\n\nRamsay places _Galatians_ before 1 and 2 _Corinthians_; compare p. 139\nabove.\n\n116.  Compare Shaw, _The Pauline Epistles_.\n\n118.  On Paul's style see Farrar's Excursus at the close of vol. i.\nThe comparison of it to that of Thucydides is more dignified than that\nof the text, but less true.\n\n119.  Inspiration did not interfere with natural characteristics of\nstyle.  It made the writer not less but more himself, while of course\nit imparted to the products of his pen a divine value and authority.\n\n120-127.  Howson's _Character of St. Paul_; Speer, _The Man Paul_;\nHausrath, 45-57; Baur's remarks (ii. 294 ff.) on his intellectual\ncharacter are very good.  But the principal sources are 2 Corinthians\nand Acts xx.\n\n122.  Farrar's treatment of Paul's bodily infirmities is a serious blot\non his book; for these are obtruded with a frequency and exaggeration\nwhich produce an impression quite different from that made by the\nreferences to them in Scripture.  This is still truer of Baring-Gould's\n_Study of St. Paul_.  For a treatment of the same subject, realistic,\nbut full of sympathy and delicacy, see Monod.  Ramsay is of opinion\nthat the \"thorn in the flesh\" was chronic malarial fever.\n\n\n122 ff.  _Illustrate these paragraphs fully from Scripture._\n\n128.  _Compare Paul with Livingstone and other missionaries._\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nOn this subject compare Neander's _Planting of Christianity_, Book ii.,\nch. 7, and Schaff's _Church History_; also Bannerman's _Church of\nChrist_.  This chapter is only a piecing together of the information\nscattered through 1 Corinthians.  It would be well to get pupils to\nseek out the passages of the Epistle which correspond to the different\nparagraphs.  A picture of a Pauline church of a later date might be\ncompiled in the same way from the Pastoral Epistles.\n\n136.  The doctrine of the Holy Spirit was revealed \"at sundry times and\nin divers manners,\" and the complete doctrine is to be obtained by\nuniting the representations of the various writers of Scripture.  In\nthe New Testament there are four phases--1. In the Synoptical Gospels\nthe Holy Spirit is set forth in His influence on the human nature of\nChrist; 2. in the Acts and Paul, as the power for founding the Church\nand converting the world; 3. in Paul as the principle of the new life\nof Christians; 4. in John as the Comforter.\n\n138.  Compare the irregularities of other periods of vast change,\n_e.g._, the Reformation.\n\n144.  On the extent to which an authoritative ecclesiastical system is\ngiven in the New Testament compare _Jus Divinum Presbyterii_ and\nHooker's _Ecclesiastical Polity_.\n\n130.  _Give the names of the principal games of ancient times, derived\nfrom the places where they were held._\n\n131.  _Where are churches mentioned as meeting in the houses of\nindividuals?_\n\n132.  _Explain the words \"barbarian,\" \"Scythian,\" in Col. iii. 11._\n\n135.  _What modern divine endeavored to revive these phenomena, and\nwhat is the name of the church he founded?  What is the meaning of the\nword \"charism\"?  Were the tongues of Pentecost the same as those of 1\nCorinthians?  Give instances in which New Testament prophets did\npredict future events._\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nThe criticism which seeks to disintegrate the New Testament writings\nand set the apostles against one another is founded on a revival of the\nclaim of the Judaizers that their propaganda had the sanction of Peter\nand the other original apostles.  In a Handbook like this it is\nimpossible to discuss at any length the Tuebingen Theory.  But some of\nits points are silently met in the text; and the whole theory is\nanswered by an attempt to give a view of the course of the controversy\nwhich covers all the facts.  The distinction drawn in paragraphs 159\nff. between the central question in dispute and a subordinate aspect of\nthe controversy will be found to clear up many intricacies.  Compare\nSorley's _Jewish Christians and Judaism_.\n\nThis chapter is full of references to passages in Acts and Galatians,\nwhich pupils ought to be asked to produce.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nViewpoints for lessons on details omitted or only lightly referred to\nin the text:\n\n  Acts   xx.  4-16.  Paul the Hirer of Laborers for Christ's\n              Vineyard: the Unwearied Preacher (_Troas_).\n   \"     \"    17-38.  The Man of Heart (_Miletus_).\n   \"   xxii.  Final Effort to save his Country.\n   \"  xxiii.  1-10.  In the Dock where he had placed others.\n   \"  xxiii.  22-27.  The Preacher of Righteousness.\n   \"   xxvi.  The Inspired Student.\n   \"  xxvii.  Paul as a Ruler of Men.\n   \" xxviii.  The benevolence of Nature and that of Grace (_Malta_).\n\n171.  See notes on ch. iv., p. 141.\n\nThe authenticity of Ephesians and Colossians can only be denied by\nignoring the impression of majesty and profundity which they have made\non the greatest minds.  (See the Introductions in Meyer and Alford.)\nWhat other mind of those ages except Paul's could have erected a\nstructure so magnificent on the very foundations of the Epistle to the\nRomans? or in what other mind was there such a union of the doctrinal\nand the ethical?\n\nIn John's writings the relation of believers to Christ is illustrated\nby a far higher comparison: it is compared to the union of Father and\nSon in the Deity.\n\n172.  See Ernesti: _The Ethic of Paul_; also Juncker.\n\n174.  See Smith's _Voyage of St. Paul_; also Sir William Ramsay's\narticle on Roads and Travel in Hastings' _Dictionary of the Bible_,\nvol. v.\n\n176.  Burrus, the Praetorian Prefect.  So Conybeare and Howson; but\nRamsay, following Mommsen, holds the officer to have been the princeps\nperegrinorum, whose quarters lay on the Coelian Hill.\n\nOn the various kinds of imprisonment in Roman law see Ramsay's _Roman\nAntiquities_, ch. ix.\n\n177-182.  The materials for this account of Paul's prison life at Rome\nare chiefly gathered from the Epistle to the Philippians.\n\n184.  On the genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles see essay by Findley\nin Sabatier's _The Apostle Paul_.  The comparative lack of doctrinal\nmatter in them is accounted for by the fact that they were written to\nministers well acquainted with his doctrinal system.\n\n188.  At Tre Fontane, to the south of Rome, the traditional scene of\nthe execution is still pointed out; and not far off stands St.\nPaul's-outside-the-Walls, one of the most gorgeous churches in the\nworld.\n\n\n164.  _Trace out the different collections which Paul is recorded to\nhave been engaged with._\n\n166.  _What were the courts of the temple; and what was the name of the\nRoman fortress which overlooked them?_\n\n171.  _How often does the phrase \"in Christ\" (or \"in\" with pronouns\nreferring to Christ) occur in Ephesians?_\n\n172.  _Give examples from Paul's writings of the application of great\nprinciples to small duties._\n\n175.  _Give the names and localities of other great Roman roads.\nDescribe a Roman triumph._\n\n179.  _Narrate the story of Onesimus, gathering it from the Epistle to\nPhilemon._\n\n184.  _Explain the name of the Pastoral Epistles._","title":"The Life of St. Paul","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":45153}