Title: The Life of St. Paul
Author: Stalker, James, 1848-1927
Language: English
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THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL

by

PROF. JAMES STALKER, D.D.

Author of "The Life of Jesus Christ"

With Foreword by

Wilbert W. White, D.D.
President of the Bible Teachers' Training School, New York

New and Revised Edition



New York ---- Chicago ---- Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1912, by
American Tract Society



CONTENTS


CHAPTER

       FOREWORD
    I. HIS PLACE IN HISTORY
   II. HIS UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR HIS WORK
  III. HIS CONVERSION
   IV. HIS GOSPEL
    V. THE WORK AWAITING THE WORKER
   VI. HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS
  VII. HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER
 VIII. PICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH
   IX. HIS GREAT CONTROVERSY
    X. THE END
       HINTS TO TEACHERS AND QUESTIONS FOR PUPILS



FOREWORD

By Wilbert W. White, D.D.

When asked to write a foreword to Dr. Stalker's "Life of St. Paul," I
thought of two things: first the impression which I had received from a
sermon that I heard Dr. Stalker preach a good many years ago in his own
pulpit in Glasgow, Scotland, and secondly, the honor conferred in this
privilege of writing a foreword to one of Dr. Stalker's books.

I felt sure before even glancing at the pages that I should be pleased
and profited by their perusal.

The first thing that I did was to glance over the pages for the
headings of chapters and the summaries of paragraphs.  I found the
arrangement admirable, and would advise those into whose hands this
fine volume may come to follow this plan.

The only sentence apart from the headings which I read in the aforesaid
preview was the last one in Chapter X, and that because the closing
words, "the best of friends," especially arrested my attention.

I wondered before I read this sentence if the author was saying of Paul
that he was going out of the world to the One who had been to him the
best of friends.  From this you may gather--what you like.  Only I felt
sure before reading the pages that Dr. Stalker would interpret Paul in
a manner such as I could enthusiastically approve.

And now having read the volume I heartily commend it.  It is the best
brief life of Paul of which I know.

Before reading the book I said to myself, I shall put down what I think
the writer will make the heart of the secret of Paul.  It was this: The
key to Paul's efficiency was his wholehearted persistent loyalty to
Christ, his Saviour and Friend.  He was not disobedient to the heavenly
vision.  He stood fast in the liberty wherewith Christ set him free.
He was three things all stated in one verse, and put thus: "I am
crucified with Christ--Christ liveth in me--I live in faith."

Here are some, a very few of many striking, true thoughts presented by
Dr. Stalker:

"Paul was the interpreter of Christ, saying what Christ Himself would
have said under the circumstances."

"Paul's entire theology was nothing but the explication of his own
conversion."

"In bringing Paul West, Providence gave to Europe a blessed priority,
and the fate of our continent was decided, when Paul crossed the
Aegean."

"A secret of Paul's success was his sense of having a mission and his
freedom alike from the bondage of bigotry and the bondage of liberty."

A writer recently gave me this thought about Paul: "What makes St. Paul
so interesting is his conception of the dimensions of life."

Back to Christ?  Yes, the whole world needs it, but the way to get back
to Christ is through the Apostolic interpretation of Christ in words
and life.  This is the only way, and Dr. Stalker's book is a great help
in this direction.



THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL


CHAPTER I

HIS PLACE IN HISTORY

Paragraphs 1-12.

  1, 2.  The Man Needed by the Time.
  3, 4.  A Type of Christian Character.
  5-8.   The Thinker of Christianity.
  9-12.  The Missionary of the Gentiles.


1.  The Man for the Time.--There are some men whose lives it is
impossible to study without receiving the impression that they were
expressly sent into the world to do a work required by the juncture of
history on which they fell.  The story of the Reformation, for example,
cannot be read by a devout mind without wonder at the providence by
which such great men as Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Knox were
simultaneously raised up in different parts of Europe to break the yoke
of the papacy and republish the gospel of grace.  When the Evangelical
Revival, after blessing England, was about to break into Scotland and
end the dreary reign of Moderatism, there was raised up in Thomas
Chalmers a mind of such capacity as completely to absorb the new
movement into itself, and of such sympathy and influence as to diffuse
it to every corner of his native land.


2.  This impression is produced by no life more than by that of the
Apostle Paul.  He was given to Christianity when it was in its most
rudimentary beginnings.  It was not, indeed, feeble, nor can any mortal
man be spoken of as indispensable to it; for it contained within itself
the vigor of a divine and immortal existence, which could not but have
unfolded itself in the course of time.  But, if we recognize that God
makes use of means which commend themselves even to our eyes as suited
to the ends He has in view, then we must say that the Christian
movement at the moment when Paul appeared upon the stage was in the
utmost need of a man of extraordinary endowments, who, becoming
possessed with its genius, should incorporate it with the general
history of the world; and in Paul it found the man it needed.


3.  A Type of Christian Character.--Christianity obtained in Paul an
incomparable type of Christian character.  It already, indeed,
possessed the perfect model of human character in the person of its
Founder.  But He was not as other men, because from the beginning He
had no sinful imperfection to struggle with; and Christianity still
required to show what it could make of imperfect human nature.  Paul
supplied the opportunity of exhibiting this.  He was naturally of
immense mental stature and force.  He would have been a remarkable man
even if he had never become a Christian.  The other apostles would have
lived and died in the obscurity of Galilee if they had not been lifted
into prominence by the Christian movement; but the name of Saul of
Tarsus would have been remembered still in some character or other even
if Christianity had never existed.  Christianity got the opportunity in
him of showing to the world the whole force it contained.  Paul was
aware of this himself, though he expressed it with perfect modesty,
when he said, "For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief
might Jesus Christ show forth all His long-suffering for an ensample of
them who should hereafter believe on Him to everlasting life."


4.  His conversion proved the power of Christianity to overcome the
strongest prejudices and to stamp its own type on a large nature by a
revolution both instantaneous and permanent.  Paul's was a personality
so strong and original that no other man could have been less expected
to sink himself in another; but, from the moment when he came into
contact with Christ, he was so overmastered with His influence that he
never afterward had any other desire than to be the mere echo and
reflection of Him to the world.

But, if Christianity showed its strength in making so complete a
conquest of Paul, it showed its worth no less in the kind of man it
made of him when he had given himself up to its influence.  It
satisfied the needs of a peculiarly hungry nature, and never to the
close of his life did he betray the slightest sense that this
satisfaction was abating.  His constitution was originally compounded
of fine materials, but the spirit of Christ, passing into these, raised
them to a pitch of excellence altogether unique.

Nor was it ever doubtful either to himself or to others that it was the
influence of Christ which made him what he was.  The truest motto for
his life would be his own saying, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth
in me."  Indeed, so perfectly was Christ formed in him that we can now
study Christ's character in his, and beginners may perhaps learn even
more of Christ from studying Paul's life than from studying Christ's
own.  In Christ Himself there was a blending and softening of all the
excellences which makes His greatness elude the glance of the beginner,
just as the very perfection of Raphael's painting makes it
disappointing to an untrained eye; whereas in Paul a few of the
greatest elements of Christian character were exhibited with a
decisiveness which no one can mistake, just as the most prominent
characteristics of the painting of Rubens can be appreciated by every
spectator.


5.  A Great Thinker.--Christianity obtained in Paul, secondly, a great
thinker.  This it specially needed at the moment.  Christ had departed
from the world, and those whom He had left to represent Him were
unlettered fishermen and, for the most part, men of no intellectual
mark.  In one sense this fact reflects a peculiar glory on
Christianity, for it shows that it did not owe its place as one of the
great influences of the world to the abilities of its human
representatives: not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of God,
was Christianity established in the earth.  Yet, as we look back now,
we can clearly see how essential it was that an apostle of a different
stamp and training should arise.


6.  Christ had manifested forth the glory of the Father once for all
and completed his atoning work.  But this was not enough.  It was
necessary that the meaning of his appearance should be explained to the
world.  Who was he who had been here? what precisely was it he had
done?  To these questions the original apostles could give brief
popular answers; but none of them had the intellectual reach or the
educational training necessary to put the answers into a form to
satisfy the intellect of the world.  Happily it is not essential to
salvation to be able to answer such questions with scientific accuracy.
There are tens of thousands who know and believe that Jesus was the Son
of God and died to take away sin and, trusting to Him as their Saviour,
are purified by faith, but who could not explain these statements at
any length without falling into mistakes in almost every sentence.
Yet, if Christianity was to make an intellectual as well as a moral
conquest of the world, it was necessary for the Church to have
accurately explained to her the full glory of her Lord and the meaning
of his saving work.

Of course Jesus had himself had in his mind a comprehension both of
what he was and of what he was doing which was luminous as the sun.
But it was one of the most pathetic aspects of his earthly ministry
that he could not tell all his mind to his followers.  They were not
able to bear it; they were too rude and limited to take it in.  He had
to carry his deepest thoughts out of the world with him unuttered,
trusting with a sublime faith that the Holy Ghost would lead his Church
to grasp them in the course of its subsequent development.  Even what
he did utter was very imperfectly understood.

There was one mind, it is true, in the original apostolic circle of the
finest quality and capable of soaring into the rarest altitudes of
speculation.  The words of Christ sank into the mind of John and, after
lying there for half a century, grew up into the wonderful forms we
inherit in his Gospel and Epistles.  But even the mind of John was not
equal to the exigency of the Church; it was too fine, mystical,
unusual.  His thoughts to this day remain the property only of the few
finest minds.  There was needed a thinker of broader and more massive
make to sketch the first outlines of Christian doctrine; and he was
found in Paul.


7.  Paul was a born thinker.  His mind was of majestic breadth and
force.  It was restlessly busy, never able to leave any object with
which it had to deal until it had pursued it back to its remotest
causes and forward into all its consequences.  It was not enough for
him to know that Christ was the Son of God: he had to unfold this
statement into its elements and understand precisely what it meant.  It
was not enough for him to believe that Christ died for sin: he had to
go farther and inquire why it was necessary that He should do so and
how His death took sin away.

But not only had he from nature this speculative gift: his talent was
trained by education.  The other apostles were unlettered men; but he
enjoyed the fullest scholastic advantages of the period.  In the
rabbinical school he learned how to arrange and state and defend his
ideas.  We have the issue of all this in his Epistles, which contain
the best explanation of Christianity possessed by the world.  The right
way to look at them is to regard them as the continuation of Christ's
own teaching.  They contain the thoughts which Christ carried away from
the earth with him unuttered.  Of course Jesus would have uttered them
differently and far better.  Paul's thoughts have everywhere the
coloring of his own mental peculiarities.  But the substance of them is
what Christ's must have been if he had himself given them expression.


8.  There was one great subject especially which Christ had to leave
unexplained--his own death.  He could not explain it before it had
taken place.  This became the leading topic of Paul's thinking--to show
why it was needed and what were its blessed results.  But, indeed,
there was no aspect of the appearance of Christ into which his
restlessly inquiring mind did not penetrate.  His thirteen Epistles,
when arranged in chronological order, show that his mind was constantly
getting deeper and deeper into the subject.  The progress of his
thinking was determined partly by the natural progress of his own
advance in the knowledge of Christ, for he always wrote straight out of
his own experience; and partly by the various forms of error which he
had at successive periods to encounter, and which became a providential
means of stimulating and developing his apprehension of the truth, just
as ever since in the Christian Church the rise of error has been the
means of calling forth the clearest statements of doctrine.  The ruling
impulse, however, of his thinking, as of his life, was ever Christ, and
it was his lifelong devotion to this exhaustless theme that made him
the Thinker of Christianity.


9.  The Missionary of the Gentiles.--Christianity obtained in Paul,
thirdly, the missionary of the Gentiles.  It is rare to find the
highest speculative power united with great practical activity; but
these were united in him.  He was not only the Church's greatest
thinker, but the very foremost worker she has ever possessed.  We have
been considering the speculative task which was awaiting him when he
joined the Christian community; but there was a no less stupendous
practical task awaiting him too.  This was the evangelization of the
Gentile world.


10.  One of the great objects of the appearance of Christ was to break
down the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile and make the
blessings of salvation the property of all men, without distinction of
race or language.  But he was not himself permitted to carry this
change into practical realization.  It was one of the strange
limitations of his earthly life that he was sent only to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel.  It can easily be imagined how congenial a task
it would have been to his intensely human heart to carry the gospel
beyond the limits of Palestine and make it known to nation after
nation; and--if it be not too bold to say so--this would certainly have
been his chosen career, had he been spared.  But he was cut off in the
midst of his days and had to leave this task to his followers.


11.  Before the appearance of Paul on the scene, the execution of this
task had been begun.  Jewish prejudice had been partially broken down,
the universal character of Christianity had been in some measure
realized, and Peter had admitted the first Gentiles into the Church by
baptism.  But none of the original apostles was equal to the emergency.
None of them was large-minded enough to grasp the idea of the perfect
equality of Jew and Gentile and apply it without flinching in all its
practical consequences; and none of them had the combination of gifts
necessary to attempt the conversion of the Gentile world on a large
scale.  They were Galilean fishermen, fit enough to teach and preach
within the bounds of their native Palestine.  But beyond Palestine lay
the great world of Greece and Rome--the world of vast populations, of
power and culture, of pleasure and business.  It needed a man of
unlimited versatility, of education, of immense human sympathy and
breadth, to go out there with the gospel message--a man who could not
only be a Jew to the Jews, but a Greek to the Greeks, a Roman to the
Romans, a barbarian to the barbarians--a man who could encounter not
only rabbis in their synagogues, but proud magistrates in their courts
and philosophers in the haunts of learning--a man who could face travel
by land and by sea, who could exhibit presence of mind in every variety
of circumstances, and would be cowed by no difficulties.  No man of
this size belonged to the original apostolic circle; but Christianity
needed such an one, and he was found in Paul.


12.  Originally attached more strictly than any of the other apostles
to the peculiarities and prejudices of Jewish exclusiveness, he cut his
way out of the jungle of these prepossessions, accepted the equality of
all men in Christ, and applied this principle relentlessly in all its
issues.  He gave his heart to the Gentile mission, and the history of
his life is the history of how true he was to his vocation.  There was
never such singleness of eye or wholeness of heart.  There was never
such superhuman and untiring energy.  There was never such an
accumulation of difficulties victoriously met and of sufferings
cheerfully borne for any cause.  In him Jesus Christ went forth to
evangelize the world, making use of his hands and feet, his tongue and
brain and heart, for doing the work which in His own bodily presence He
had not been permitted by the limits of His mission to accomplish.



CHAPTER II

HIS UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR HIS WORK

Paragraphs 13-36.

  14-16.  DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH.  His Love
          of Cities.  17, 18.  HOME.
  19-26.  EDUCATION.  19.  Roman citizenship; 20.  Tent-making;
          21, 22.  Knowledge of Greek Literature; 23-26.
          Rabbinical Training.  Gamaliel.  Knowledge of
          Old Testament.
  27-30.  MORAL AND RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT.
          28.  The Law; 29, 30.  Departure from and return to
          Jerusalem.
  31-33.  STATE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
          Stephen.  34-36.  THE PERSECUTOR.


13.  God's Plan.--Persons whose conversion takes place after they are
grown up are wont to look back upon the period of their life which has
preceded this event with sorrow and shame and to wish that an
obliterating hand might blot the record of it out of existence.  St.
Paul felt this sentiment strongly: to the end of his days he was
haunted by the specters of his lost years, and was wont to say that he
was the least of all the apostles, who was not worthy to be called an
apostle, because he had persecuted the Church of God.  But these somber
sentiments are only partially justifiable.  God's purposes are very
deep, and even in those who know Him not He may be sowing seeds which
will only ripen and bear fruit long after their godless career is over.
Paul would never have been the man he became or have done the work he
did, if he had not, in the years preceding his conversion, gone through
a course of preparation designed to fit him for his subsequent career.
He knew not what he was being prepared for; his own intentions about
his future were different from God's; but there is a divinity which
shapes our ends, and it was making him a polished shaft for God's
quiver, though he knew it not.


14.  Birth and Birthplace.--The date of Paul's birth is not exactly
known, but it can be settled with a closeness of approximation which is
sufficient for practical purposes.  When in the year 33 A.D. those who
stoned Stephen laid down their clothes at Paul's feet, he was "a young
man."  This term has, indeed, in Greek as much latitude as in English,
and may indicate any age from something under twenty to something over
thirty.  In this case it probably touched the latter rather than the
former limit; for there is reason to believe that at this time, or very
soon after, he was a member of the Sanhedrin--an office which no one
could hold who was under thirty years of age--and the commission he
received from the Sanhedrin immediately afterward to persecute the
Christians would scarcely have been entrusted to a very young man.
About thirty years after playing this sad part in Stephen's murder, in
the year 62 A.D., he was lying in a prison in Rome awaiting sentence of
death for the same cause for which Stephen had suffered, and, writing
one of the last of his Epistles, that to Philemon, he called himself an
old man.  This term also is one of great latitude, and a man who had
gone through so many hardships might well be old before his time; yet
he could scarcely have taken the name of "Paul the aged" before sixty
years of age.

These calculations lead us to the conclusion that he was born about the
same time as Jesus.  When the boy Jesus was playing in the streets of
Nazareth, the boy Paul was playing in the streets of his native town,
away on the other side of the ridges of Lebanon.  They seemed likely to
have totally diverse careers.  Yet, by the mysterious arrangement of
Providence, these two lives, like streams flowing from opposite
watersheds, were one day, as river and tributary, to mingle together.


15.  The place of his birth was Tarsus, the capital of the province of
Cilicia, in the southeast of Asia Minor.  It stood a few miles from the
coast, in the midst of a fertile plain, and was built upon both banks
of the river Cydnus, which descended to it from the neighboring Taurus
Mountains, on the snowy peaks of which the inhabitants of the town were
wont, on summer evenings, to watch from the flat roofs of their houses
the glow of the sunset.  Not far above the town the river poured over
the rocks in a vast cataract, but below this it became navigable, and
within the town its banks were lined with wharves, on which was piled
the merchandise of many countries, while sailors and merchants, dressed
in the costumes and speaking the languages of different races, were
constantly to be seen in the streets.  The town enjoyed an extensive
trade in timber, with which the province abounded, and in the long fine
hair of the goats kept in thousands on the neighboring mountains, which
was made into a coarse kind of cloth and manufactured into various
articles, among which tents, such as Paul was afterward employed in
sewing, formed an extensive article of merchandise all along the shores
of the Mediterranean.  Tarsus was also the center of a large transport
trade; for behind the town a famous pass, called the Cilician Gates,
led up through the mountains to the central countries of Asia Minor;
and Tarsus was the depot to which the products of these countries were
brought down, to be distributed over the East and the West.

The inhabitants of the city were numerous and wealthy.  The majority of
them were native Cilicians, but the wealthiest merchants were Greeks.
The province was under the sway of the Romans, the signs of whose
sovereignty could not be absent from the capital, although Tarsus
itself enjoyed the privilege of self-government.  The number and
variety of the inhabitants were still further increased by the fact
that, like the city of Glasgow, Tarsus was not only a center of
commerce, but also a seat of learning.  It was one of the three
principal university cities of the period, the other two being Athens
and Alexandria; and it was said to surpass its rivals in intellectual
eminence.  Students from many countries were to be seen in its streets,
a sight which could not but awaken in youthful minds thoughts about the
value and the aims of learning.


16.  Who does not see how fit a place this was for the Apostle of the
Gentiles to be born in?  As he grew up, he was being unawares prepared
to encounter men of every class and race, to sympathize with human
nature in all its varieties, and to look with tolerance upon the most
diverse habits and customs.  In after life he was always a lover of
cities.  Whereas his Master avoided Jerusalem and loved to teach on the
mountainside or the shore of the lake, Paul was constantly moving from
one great city to another.  Antioch, Ephesus, Athens, Corinth, Rome,
the capitals of the ancient world, were the scenes of his activity.
The words of Jesus are redolent of the country, and teem with pictures
of its still beauty or homely toil--the lilies of the field, the sheep
following the shepherd, the sower in the furrow, the fishermen drawing
their nets; but the language of Paul is impregnated with the atmosphere
of the city and alive with the tramp and hurry of the streets.  His
imagery is borrowed from scenes of human energy and monuments of
cultivated life--the soldier in full armor, the athlete in the arena,
the building of houses and temples, the triumphal procession of the
victorious general.  So lasting are the associations of the boy in the
life of the man.


17.  Paul's Home.--Paul had a certain pride in the place of his birth,
as he showed by boasting on one occasion that he was a citizen of no
mean city.  He had a heart formed by nature to feel the warmest glow of
patriotism.  Yet it was not for Cilicia and Tarsus that this fire
burned.  He was an alien in the land of his birth.  His father was one
of those numerous Jews who were scattered in that age over the cities
of the Gentile world, engaged in trade and commerce.  They had left the
Holy Land, but they did not forget it.  They never coalesced with the
populations among which they dwelt but, in dress, food, religion and
many other particulars remained a peculiar people.  As a rule, indeed,
they were less rigid in their religious views and more tolerant of
foreign customs than those Jews who remained in Palestine.  But Paul's
father was not one who had given way to laxity.  He belonged to the
straitest sect of his religion.  It is probable that he had not left
Palestine long before his son's birth, for Paul calls himself a Hebrew
of the Hebrews--a name which seems to have belonged only to the
Palestinian Jews and to those whose connection with Palestine had
continued very close.

Of his mother we hear absolutely nothing, but everything seems to
indicate that the home in which he was brought up was one of those out
of which nearly all eminent religious teachers have sprung--a home of
piety, of character, perhaps of somewhat stern principle, and of strong
attachment to the peculiarities of a religious people.  He was imbued
with its spirit.  Although he could not but receive innumerable and
imperishable impressions from the city he was born in, the land and the
city of his heart were Palestine and Jerusalem; and the heroes of his
young imagination were not Curtius and Horatius, Hercules and Achilles,
but Abraham and Joseph, Moses and David and Ezra.  As he looked back on
the past, it was not over the confused annals of Cilicia that he cast
his eyes, but he gazed up the clear stream of Jewish history to its
sources in Ur of the Chaldees; and, when he thought of the future, the
vision which rose on him was the kingdom of the Messiah, enthroned in
Jerusalem and ruling the nations with a rod of iron.


18.  The feeling of belonging to a spiritual aristocracy, elevated
above the majority of those among whom he lived, would be deepened in
him by what he saw of the religion of the surrounding population.
Tarsus was the center of a species of Baal-worship of an imposing but
unspeakably degrading character, and at certain seasons of the year it
was the scene of festivals, which were frequented by the whole
population of the neighboring regions, and were accompanied with orgies
of a degree of moral abominableness happily beyond the reach even of
our imaginations.  Of course a boy could not see the depths of this
mystery of iniquity, but he could see enough to make him turn from
idolatry with the scorn peculiar to his nation, and to make him regard
the little synagogue where his family worshiped the Holy One of Israel
as far more glorious than the gorgeous temples of the heathen; and
perhaps to these early experiences we may trace back in some degree
those convictions of the depths to which human nature can fall and its
need of an omnipotent redeeming force which afterward formed so
fundamental a part of his theology and gave such a stimulus to his work.


19.  Trade.--The time at length arrived for deciding what occupation
the boy was to follow--a momentous crisis in every life--and in this
case much was involved in the decision.  Perhaps the most natural
career for him would have been that of a merchant; for his father was
engaged in trade, the busy city offered splendid prizes to mercantile
ambition, and the boy's own energy would have guaranteed success.
Besides, his father had an advantage to give him specially useful to a
merchant: though a Jew, he was a Roman citizen, and this right would
have given his son protection, into whatever part of the Roman world he
might have had occasion to travel.  How the father got this right we
cannot tell; it might be bought, or won by distinguished service to the
state, or acquired in several other ways; at all events his son was
free-born.  It was a valuable privilege, and one which was to prove of
great use to Paul, though not in the way in which his father might have
been expected to desire him to make use of it.  But it was decided that
he was not to be a merchant.  The decision may have been due to his
father's strong religious views, or his mother's pious ambition, or his
own predilections; but it was resolved that he should go to college and
become a rabbi--that is, a minister, a teacher and a lawyer all in one.
It was a wise decision in view of the boy's spirit and capabilities,
and it turned out to be of infinite moment for the future of mankind.


20.  But, although he thus escaped the chances which seemed likely to
drift him into a secular calling, yet, before going away to prepare for
the sacred profession, he was to get some insight into business life;
for it was a rule among the Jews that every boy, whatever might be the
profession he was to follow, should learn a trade, as a resource in
time of need.  This was a rule with wisdom in it; for it gave
employment to the young at an age when too much leisure is dangerous,
and acquainted the wealthy and the learned in some degree with the
feelings of those who have to earn their bread with the sweat of their
brow.  The trade which he was put to was the commonest one in
Tarsus--the making of tents from the goat's-hair cloth for which the
district was celebrated.  Little did he or his father think, when he
began to handle the disagreeable material, of what importance this
handicraft was to be to him in subsequent years: it became the means of
his support during his missionary journeys, and, at a time when it was
essential that the propagators of Christianity should be above the
suspicion of selfish motives, enabled him to maintain himself in a
position of noble independence.


21.  Education.--It is a question natural to ask, whether, before
leaving home to go and get his training as a rabbi, Paul attended the
University of Tarsus.  Did he drink at the wells of wisdom which flow
from Mount Helicon before going to sit by those which spring from Mount
Zion?  From the fact that he makes two or three quotations from the
Greek poets it has been inferred that he was acquainted with the whole
literature of Greece.  But, on the other hand, it has been pointed out
that his quotations are brief and commonplace, such as any man who
spoke Greek would pick up and use occasionally; and the style and
vocabulary of his Epistles are not those of the models of Greek
literature, but of the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew
Scriptures, which was then in universal use among the Jews of the
Dispersion.  Probably his father would have considered it sinful to
allow his son to attend a heathen university.  Yet it is not likely
that he grew up in a great seat of learning without receiving any
influence from the academic tone of the place.  His speech at Athens
shows that he was able, when he chose, to wield a style much more
stately than that of his writings, and so keen a mind was not likely to
remain in total ignorance of the great monuments of the language which
he spoke.


22.  There were other impressions, too, which the learned Tarsus
probably made upon him: its university was famous for those petty
disputes and rivalries which sometimes ruffle the calm of academical
retreats; and it is possible that the murmur of these, with which the
air was often filled, may have given the first impulse to that scorn
for the tricks of the rhetorician and the windy disputations of the
sophist which form so marked a feature in some of his writings.  The
glances of young eyes are clear and sure, and even as a boy he may have
perceived how small may be the souls of men and how mean their lives,
when their mouths are filled with the finest phraseology.


23.  The college for the education of Jewish rabbis was in Jerusalem,
and thither Paul was sent about the age of thirteen.  His arrival in
the Holy City may have happened in the same year in which Jesus, at the
age of twelve, first visited it, and the overpowering emotions of the
boy from Nazareth at the first sight of the capital of his race may be
taken as an index of the unrecorded experience of the boy from Tarsus.
To every Jewish child of a religious disposition Jerusalem was the
center of all things; the footsteps of prophets and kings echoed in the
streets; memories sacred and sublime clung to its walls and buildings;
and it shone in the glamor of illimitable hopes.


24.  It chanced that at this time the college of Jerusalem was presided
over by one of the most noted teachers the Jews have ever possessed.
This was Gamaliel, at whose feet Paul tells us he was brought up.  He
was called by his contemporaries the Beauty of the Law, and is still
remembered among the Jews as the Great Rabbi.  He was a man of lofty
character and enlightened mind, a Pharisee strongly attached to the
traditions of the fathers, yet not intolerant or hostile to Greek
culture, as were some of the narrower Pharisees.  The influence of such
a man on an open mind like Paul's must have been very great; and,
although for a time the pupil became an intolerant zealot, yet the
master's example may have had something to do with the conquest he
finally won over prejudice.


25.  The course of instruction which a rabbi had to undergo was
lengthened and peculiar.  It consisted entirely of the study of the
Scriptures and the comments of the sages and masters upon them.  The
words of Scripture and the sayings of the wise were committed to
memory; discussions were carried on about disputed points; and by a
rapid fire of questions, which the scholars were allowed to put as well
as the masters, the wits of the students were sharpened and their views
enlarged.  The outstanding qualities of Paul's intellect, which were
conspicuous in his subsequent life--his marvelous memory, the keenness
of his logic, the super-abundance of his ideas, and his original way of
taking up every subject--first displayed themselves in this school, and
excited, we may well believe, the warm interest of his teacher.


26.  He himself learned much here which was of great moment in his
subsequent career.  Although he was to be specially the missionary of
the Gentiles, he was also a great missionary to his own people.  In
every city he visited where there were Jews he made his first public
appearance in the synagogue.  There his training as a rabbi secured him
an opportunity of speaking, and his familiarity with Jewish modes of
thought and reasoning enabled him to address his audiences in the way
best fitted to secure their attention.  His knowledge of the Scriptures
enabled him to adduce proofs from an authority which his hearers
acknowledged to be supreme.

Besides, he was destined to be the great theologian of Christianity and
the principal writer of the New Testament.  Now the New grew out of the
Old; the one is in all its parts the prophecy and the other the
fulfillment.  But it required a mind saturated not only with
Christianity, but with the Old Testament, to bring this out; and, at
the age when the memory is most retentive, Paul acquired such a
knowledge of the Old Testament that everything it contains was at his
command: its phraseology became the language of his thinking; he
literally writes in quotations, and he quotes from all parts with equal
facility--from the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.  Thus was the
warrior equipped with the armor and the weapons of the Spirit before he
knew in what cause he was to use them.


27.  His Religious Life.--Meantime what was his moral and religious
state?  He was learning to be a religious teacher; was he himself
religious?  Not all who are sent to college by their parents to prepare
for the sacred office are so, and in every city of the world the path
of youth is beset with temptations which may ruin life at its very
beginning.  Some of the greatest teachers of the Church, such as St.
Augustine, have had to look back on half their life blotted and scarred
with vice or crime.  No such fall defaced Paul's early years.  Whatever
struggles with passion may have raged in his own breast, his conduct
was always pure.  Jerusalem was no very favorable place, in that age,
for virtue.  It was the Jerusalem against whose external sanctity, but
internal depravity, our Lord a few years afterward hurled such
withering invectives; it was the very seat of hypocrisy, where an able
youth might easily have learned how to win the rewards of religion,
while escaping its burdens.  But Paul was preserved amidst these
perils, and could afterward claim that he had lived in Jerusalem from
the first in all good conscience.


28.  He had brought with him from home the conviction, which forms the
basis of a religious life, that the one prize which makes life worth
living is the love and favor of God.  This conviction grew into a
passionate longing as he advanced in years, and he asked his teachers
how the prize was to be won.  Their answer was ready--By the keeping of
the law.  It was a terrible answer; for the Law meant not only what we
understand by the term, but also the ceremonial law of Moses and the
thousand and one rules added to it by the Jewish teachers, the
observance of which made life a purgatory to a tender conscience.

But Paul was not the man to shrink from difficulties.  He had set his
heart upon winning God's favor, without which this life appeared to him
a blank and eternity the blackness of darkness; and, if this was the
way to the goal, he was willing to tread it.  Not only, however, were
his personal hopes involved in this, the hopes of his nation depended
on it too; for it was the universal belief of his people that the
Messiah would only come to a nation keeping the law, and it was even
said that, if one man kept it perfectly for a single day, his merit
would bring to the earth the King for whom they were waiting.  Paul's
rabbinical training, then, culminated in the desire to win this prize
of righteousness, and he left the halls of sacred learning with this as
the purpose of his life.  The lonely student's resolution was momentous
for the world; for he was first to prove amidst secret agonies that
this way of salvation was false, and then to teach his discovery to
mankind.


29.  At Jerusalem.--We cannot tell in what year Paul's education at the
college of Jerusalem was finished or where he went immediately
afterward.  The young rabbis, after completing their studies, scattered
in the same way as our own divinity students do, and began practical
work in different parts of the Jewish world.  He may have gone back to
his native Cilicia and held office in some synagogue there.  At all
events, he was for some years at a distance from Jerusalem and
Palestine; for these were the very years in which fell the movement of
John the Baptist and the ministry of Jesus, and it is certain that Paul
could not have been in the vicinity without being involved in both of
these movements either as a friend or as a foe.


30.  But before long he returned to Jerusalem.  It was as natural for
the highest rabbinical talent to gravitate in those times to Jerusalem
as it is for the highest literary and commercial talent to gravitate in
our day to the metropolis.  He arrived in the capital of Judaism very
soon after the death of Jesus; and we can easily imagine the
representations of that event and of the career thereby terminated
which he would receive from his Pharisaic friends.

We have no reason to suppose that as yet he had any doubts about his
own religion.  We gather, indeed, from his writings that he had already
passed through severe mental conflicts.  Although the conviction still
stood fast in his mind that the blessedness of life was attainable only
in the favor of God, yet his efforts to reach this coveted position by
the observance of the law had not satisfied him.  On the contrary, the
more he strove to keep the law the more active became the motions of
sin within him; his conscience was becoming more oppressed with the
sense of guilt, and the peace of a soul at rest in God was a prize
which eluded his grasp.

Still he did not question the teaching of the synagogue.  To him as yet
this was of one piece with the history of the Old Testament, whence
looked down on him the figures of the saints and prophets, which were a
guarantee that the system they represented must be divine, and behind
which he saw the God of Israel revealing himself in the giving of the
law.  The reason why he had not attained to peace and fellowship with
God was, he believed, because he had not struggled enough with the evil
of his nature or honored enough the precepts of the law.  Was there no
service by which he could make up for all deficiencies and win that
grace at last in which the great of old had stood?  This was the temper
of mind in which he returned to Jerusalem, and learned with
astonishment and indignation of the rise of a sect which believed that
Jesus who had been crucified was the Messiah of the Jewish people.


31.  State of the Christian Church.--Christianity was as yet only two
or three years old, and was growing very quietly in Jerusalem.
Although those who had heard it preached at Pentecost had carried the
news of it to their homes in many quarters, its public representatives
had not yet left the city of its birth.  At first the authorities had
been inclined to persecute it, and checked its teachers when they
appeared in public.  But they had changed their minds and, acting under
the advice of Gamaliel, resolved to neglect it, believing that it would
die out, if let alone.  The Christians, on the other hand, gave as
little offence as possible; in the externals of religion they continued
to be strict Jews and zealous of the law, attending the temple worship,
observing the Jewish ceremonies and respecting the ecclesiastical
authorities.

It was a kind of truce, which allowed Christianity a little space for
secret growth.  In their upper rooms the brethren met to break bread
and pray to their ascended Lord.  It was the most beautiful spectacle.
The new faith had alighted among them like an angel, and was shedding
purity on their souls from its wings and breathing over their humble
gatherings the spirit of peace.  Their love to each other was
unbounded; they were filled with the inspiring sense of discovery; and,
as often as they met, their invisible Lord was in their midst.  It was
like heaven upon earth.  While Jerusalem around them was going on in
its ordinary course of worldliness and ecclesiastical asperity, these
few humble souls were felicitating themselves with a secret which they
knew to contain within it the blessedness of mankind and the future of
the world.


32.  But the truce could not last, and these scenes of peace were soon
to be invaded with terror and bloodshed.  Christianity could not keep
such a truce; for there is in it a world-conquering force, which impels
it at all risks to propagate itself, and the fermentation of the new
wine of gospel liberty was sure sooner or later to burst the forms of
the Jewish law.

At length a man arose in the Church in whom these aggressive tendencies
embodied themselves.  This was Stephen, one of the seven deacons who
had been appointed to watch over the temporal affairs of the Christian
society.  He was a man full of the Holy Ghost and possessed of
capabilities which the brevity of his career only permitted to suggest
but not to develop themselves.  He went from synagogue to synagogue,
preaching the Messiahship of Jesus and announcing the advent of freedom
from the yoke of the law.  Champions of Jewish orthodoxy encountered
him, but were not able to withstand his eloquence and holy zeal.
Foiled in argument, they grasped at other weapons, stirring up the
authorities and the populace to murderous fanaticism.


33.  Stephen.--One of the synagogues in which these disputations took
place was that of the Cilicians, the countrymen of Paul.  May he have
been a rabbi in this synagogue and one of Stephen's opponents in
argument?  At all events, when the argument of logic was exchanged for
that of violence, he was in the front.  When the witnesses who cast the
first stones at Stephen were stripping for their work, they laid down
their garments at his feet.  There, on the margin of that wild scene,
in the field of judicial murder, we see his figure, standing a little
apart and sharply outlined against the mass of persecutors unknown to
fame--the pile of many-colored robes at his feet, and his eyes bent
upon the holy martyr, who is kneeling in the article of death and
praying: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."


34.  The Persecutor.--His zeal on this occasion brought Paul
prominently under the notice of the authorities.  It probably procured
him a seat in the Sanhedrin, where we find him soon afterward giving
his vote against the Christians.  At all events, it led to his being
entrusted with the work of utterly uprooting Christianity, which the
authorities now resolved upon.  He accepted their proposal; for he
believed it to be God's work.  He saw more clearly than any one else
what was the drift of Christianity; and it seemed to him destined, if
unchecked, to overturn all that he considered most sacred.  The repeal
of the law was in his eyes the obliteration of the one way of
salvation, and faith in a crucified Messiah blasphemy against the
divinest hope of Israel.  Besides, he had a deep personal interest in
the task.  Hitherto he had been striving to please God, but always felt
his efforts to come short; here was a chance of making up for all
arrears by one splendid act of service.  This was the iron of agony in
his soul which gave edge and energy to his zeal.  In any case he was
not a man to do things by halves; and he flung himself headlong into
his task.


35.  Terrible were the scenes which ensued.  He flew from synagogue to
synagogue, and from house to house, dragging forth men and women, who
were cast into prison and punished.  Some appear to have been put to
death, and--darkest trait of all--others were compelled to blaspheme
the name of the Saviour.  The Church at Jerusalem was broken in pieces,
and such of its members as escaped the rage of the persecutor were
scattered over the neighboring provinces and countries.


36.  It may seem too venturesome to call this the last stage of Paul's
unconscious preparation for his apostolic career.  But so indeed it
was.  In entering on the career of a persecutor he was going on
straight in the line of the creed in which he had been brought up; and
this was its reduction to absurdity.  Besides, through the gracious
working of Him whose highest glory it is out of evil still to bring
forth good, there sprang out of these sad doings in the mind of Paul an
intensity of humility, a willingness to serve even the least of the
brethren of those whom he had abused, and a zeal to redeem lost time by
the parsimonious use of what was left, which became permanent spurs to
action in his subsequent career.



CHAPTER III

HIS CONVERSION

Paragraphs 37-50.

  37, 38.  Severity of the Persecution.
  39-42.   Kicking against the Goad.
  43, 44.  The Vision of Christ.
  45-48.   Effect of his Conversion on his Thinking.
  49, 50.  Its Effect on his Destiny.


37.  Severity of the Persecution.--It was the persecutor's hope utterly
to exterminate Christianity.  But little did he understand its genius.
It thrives on persecution.  Prosperity has often been fatal to it,
persecution never.  "They that were scattered abroad went everywhere
preaching the word."  Hitherto the Church had been confined within the
walls of Jerusalem; but now all over Judaea and Samaria, and in distant
Phoenicia and Syria, the beacon of the gospel began in many a town and
village to twinkle through the darkness, and twos and threes met
together in upper rooms to impart to each other their joy in the Holy
Ghost.


38.  We can imagine with what rage the tidings of these outbreaks of
the fanaticism which he had hoped to stamp out would fill the
persecutor.  But he was not the person to be balked, and he resolved to
hunt up the objects of his hatred even in their most obscure and
distant hiding-places.  In one strange city after another he
accordingly appeared, armed with the apparatus of the inquisitor, to
carry his sanguinary purpose out.  Having heard that Damascus, the
capital of Syria, was one of the places where the fugitives had taken
refuge, and that they were carrying on their propaganda among the
numerous Jews of that city, he went to the high priest, who had
jurisdiction over the Jews outside as well as inside Palestine, and got
letters empowering him to seize and bind and bring to Jerusalem all of
the new way of thinking whom he might find there.


39.  Kicking Against the Goad.--As we see him start on this journey,
which was to be so momentous, we naturally ask what was the state of
his mind.  His was a noble nature and a tender heart; but the work he
was engaged in might be supposed to be congenial only to the most
brutal of mankind.  Had his mind, then, been visited with no
compunctions?  Apparently not.  We are told that, as he was ranging
through strange cities in pursuit of his victims, he was exceedingly
mad against them; and, as he was setting out to Damascus, he was still
breathing out threatenings and slaughter.  He was sheltered against
doubt by his reverence for the objects which the heresy imperiled; and,
if he had to outrage his natural feelings in the bloody work, was not
his merit all the greater?


40.  But on this journey doubt at last invaded his mind.  It was a long
journey of over a hundred and sixty miles; with the slow means of
locomotion then available, it would occupy at least six days; and a
considerable portion of it lay across a desert, where there was nothing
to distract the mind from its own reflections.  In this enforced
leisure doubts arose.  What else can be meant by the word with which
the Lord saluted him: "It is hard for thee to kick against the goad!"
The figure of speech is borrowed from a custom of Eastern countries:
the ox-driver wields a long pole, at the end of which is fixed a piece
of sharpened iron, with which he urges the animal to go on or stand
still or change its course; and, if it is refractory, it kicks against
the goad, injuring and infuriating itself with the wounds it receives.
This is a vivid picture of a man wounded and tortured by compunctions
of conscience.  There was something in him rebelling against the course
of inhumanity on which he was embarked and suggesting that he was
fighting against God.


41.  It is not difficult to conceive whence these doubts arose.  He was
a scholar of Gamaliel, the advocate of humanity and tolerance, who had
counseled the Sanhedrin to leave the Christians alone.  He was himself
too young yet to have hardened his heart to all the disagreeables of
such ghastly work.  Highly strung as was his religious zeal, nature
could not but speak out at last.  But probably his compunctions were
chiefly awakened by the character and behavior of the Christians.  He
had heard the noble defense of Stephen and seen his face in the
council-chamber shining like that of an angel.  He had seen him
kneeling on the field of execution and praying for his murderers.
Doubtless, in the course of the persecution he had witnessed many
similar scenes.  Did these people look like enemies of God?  As he
entered their homes to drag them forth to prison, he got glimpses of
their social life.  Could such spectacles of purity and love be
products of the powers of darkness?  Did not the serenity with which
his victims went to meet their fate look like the very peace which he
had long been sighing for in vain?

Their arguments, too, must have told on a mind like his.  He had heard
Stephen proving from the Scriptures that it behooved the Messiah to
suffer; and the general tenor of the earliest Christian apologetic
assures us that many of the accused must on their trial have appealed
to passages like the fifty-third of Isaiah, where a career is predicted
for the Messiah startlingly like that of Jesus of Nazareth.  He heard
incidents of Christ's life from their lips which betokened a personage
very different from the picture sketched for him by his Pharisaic
informants: and the sayings of their Master which the Christians quoted
did not sound like the utterances of the fanatic he conceived Jesus to
have been.


42.  Such may have been some of the reflections which agitated the
traveler as he moved onward, sunk in gloomy thought.  But might not
these be mere suggestions of temptation--the morbid fancies of a
wearied mind, or the whispers of a wicked spirit attempting to draw him
off from the service of Heaven?  The sight of Damascus, shining out
like a gem in the heart of the desert, restored him to himself.  There,
in the company of sympathetic rabbis and in the excitement of effort,
he would dispel from his mind these fancies bred of solitude.  So
onward he pressed, and the sun of noonday, from which all but the most
impatient travelers in the East take refuge in a long siesta, looked
down upon him still urging forward his course toward the city gate.


43.  The Vision of Christ.--The news of Saul's coming had arrived at
Damascus before him; and the little flock of Christ was praying that,
if it were possible, the progress of the wolf, who was on his way to
spoil the fold, might be arrested.  Nearer and nearer, however, he
drew; he had reached the last stage of his journey; and at the sight of
the place which contained his victims his appetite grew keener for the
prey.  But the Good Shepherd had heard the cries of the trembling flock
and went forth to face the wolf on their behalf.  Suddenly at midday,
as Paul and his company were riding forward beneath the blaze of the
Syrian sun, a light which dimmed even that fierce glare shone round
about them, a shock vibrated through the atmosphere, and in a moment
they found themselves prostrate upon the ground.  The rest was for Paul
alone: a voice sounded in his ears, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
Me?" and, as he looked up and asked the radiant Figure that had spoken,
"Who art Thou, Lord?" the answer was, "I am Jesus, whom thou art
persecuting."


44.  The language in which he ever afterward spoke of this event
forbids us to think that it was a mere vision of Jesus he saw.  He
ranks it as the last of the appearances of the risen Saviour to His
disciples, and places it on the same level as the appearances to Peter,
to James, to the eleven, and to the five hundred.  It was, in fact,
Christ Jesus in the vesture of His glorified humanity, who for once had
left the spot, wherever it may be in the spaces of the universe, where
now he sits on His mediatorial throne, in order to show Himself to this
elect disciple; and the light which outshone the sun was no other than
the glory in which His humanity is there enveloped.  An incidental
evidence of this was supplied in the words which were addressed to
Paul.  They were spoken in the Hebrew, or rather the Aramaic
tongue--the same language in which Jesus had been wont to address the
multitudes by the Lake and converse with His disciples in the desert
solitudes; and, as in the days of His flesh He was wont to open His
mouth in parables, so now He clothed His rebuke in a striking metaphor:
"It is hard for thee to kick against the goad."


45.  Effect on Paul's Thought.--It would be impossible to exaggerate
what took place in the mind of Paul in this single instant.  It is but
a clumsy way we have of dividing time by the revolution of the clock
into minutes and hours, days and years, as if each portion so measured
were of the same size as another of equal length.  This may suit well
enough for the common ends of life, but there are finer measurements
for which it is quite misleading.  The real size of any space of time
is to be measured by the amount it contains of the soul's experience;
no one hour is exactly equal to another, and there are single hours
which are larger than months.  So measured, this one moment of Paul's
life was perhaps larger than all his previous years.  The glare of
revelation was so intense that it might well have scorched the eye of
reason or burnt out life itself, as the external light dazzled the eyes
of his body into blindness.

When his companions recovered themselves and turned to their leader,
they discovered that he had lost his sight, and they had to take him by
the hand and lead him into the city.  What a change was there!  Instead
of the proud Pharisee riding through the streets with the pomp of an
inquisitor, a stricken man, trembling, groping, clinging to the hand of
his guide, arrives at the house of entertainment amidst the
consternation of those who receive him and, getting hastily to a room
where he can ask them to leave him alone, sinks down there in the
darkness.


46.  But, though it was dark without, it was bright within.  The
blindness had been sent for the purpose of secluding him from outward
distractions and enabling him to concentrate himself on the objects
presented to the inner eye.  For the same reason he neither ate nor
drank for three days.  He was too absorbed in the thoughts which
crowded on him thick and fast.


47.  In these three days, it may be said with confidence, he got at
least a partial hold of all the truths he afterward proclaimed to the
world; for his whole theology is nothing but the explication of his own
conversion.  First of all, his whole previous life fell down in
fragments at his feet.  It had been of one piece, and wonderfully
complete.  It had appeared to himself to be a consistent deduction from
the highest revelation he knew and, in spite of its imperfections, to
lie in the line of the will of God.  But, instead of this, it had been
rushing in diametrical opposition against the will and revelation of
God, and had now been brought to a stop and broken in pieces by the
collision.  That which had appeared to him the perfection of service
and obedience had involved his soul in the guilt of blasphemy and
innocent blood.  Such had been the issue of seeking righteousness by
the works of the law.  At the very moment when his righteousness seemed
at last to be turning to the whiteness so long desired, it was caught
in the blaze of this revelation and whirled away in shreds of shriveled
blackness.  It had been a mistake, then, from first to last.
Righteousness was not to be obtained by the law, but only guilt and
doom.  This was the unmistakable conclusion, and it became the one pole
of Paul's theology.


48.  But, while his theory of life thus fell in pieces with a crash
that might by itself have shaken his reason, in the same moment an
opposite experience befell him.  Not in wrath and vengeance did Jesus
of Nazareth appear to him, as He might have been expected to appear to
the deadly enemy of His cause.  His first word might have been a demand
for retribution, and His first might have been His last.  But, instead
of this, His face had been full of divine benignity and His words full
of considerateness for His persecutor.  In the very moment when the
divine strength cast him down on the ground he felt himself encompassed
by the divine love.  This was the prize he had all his lifetime been
struggling for in vain, and now he grasped it in the very moment in
which he discovered that his struggles had been fightings against God;
he was lifted up from his fall in the arms of God's love; he was
reconciled and accepted forever.  As time went on, he was more and more
assured of this.  In Christ he found without effort of his own the
peace and the moral strength he had striven for in vain.  And this
became the other pole of his theology--that righteousness and strength
are found in Christ without man's effort by mere trust in God's grace
and acceptance of His gift.  There were a hundred other things involved
in these two which it required time to work out; but within these two
poles the system of Paul's thinking ever afterward revolved.


49.  Effect on his Future.--The three dark days were not done before he
knew one thing more--that his life was to be devoted to the
proclamation of these discoveries.  In any case this must have been.
Paul was a born propagandist and could not have become the possessor of
such revolutionary truth without spreading it.  Besides, he had a warm
heart, that could be deeply moved with gratitude; and, when Jesus, whom
he had blasphemed and tried to blot out of the memory of the world,
treated him with such divine benignity, giving him back his forfeited
life and placing him in that position which had always appeared to him
the prize of life, he could not but put himself at His service with all
his powers.  He was an ardent patriot, the hope of the Messiah having
long occupied for him the whole horizon of the future; and, when he
knew that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah of his people and the
Saviour of the world, it followed as a matter of course that he must
spend his life in making this known.


50.  But this destiny was also clearly announced to him from the
outside.  Ananias, probably the leading man in the small Christian
community at Damascus, was informed, in a vision, of the change which
had happened to Paul, and was sent to restore his sight and admit him
into the Christian Church by baptism.

Nothing could be more beautiful than the way in which this servant of
God approached the man who had come to the city to take his life.  As
soon as he learned the state of the case, he forgave and forgot all the
crimes of his enemy and sprang to clasp him in the arms of Christian
love.  Certain as may have been the assurance which in the inner world
of the mind Paul had in those three days received of forgiveness, it
must have been to him a most welcome reassurance when, on opening his
eyes again upon the external world, he was met with no contradiction of
the visions he had been looking on, but the first object he saw was a
human face bending over him with looks of forgiveness and perfect love.
He learned from Ananias the future the Saviour had appointed him: he
had been apprehended by Christ in order to be a vessel to bear His name
to Gentiles and kings and to the children of Israel.  He accepted the
mission with limitless devotion; and from that hour to the hour of his
death he had but one ambition--to apprehend that for which he had been
apprehended of Christ Jesus.



CHAPTER IV

HIS GOSPEL

Paragraphs 51-67.

  51-53.  SOJOURN IN ARABIA.
  54-58.  FAILURE OF MAN'S RIGHTEOUSNESS.
          56.  Failure of the Gentiles.  57.  Failure of the
          Jews.  58.  The Fall the ultimate Cause of Failure.
  59-65.  THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD.  The New Adam.  The New Man.
  66, 67. LEADING PECULIARITIES OF THE PAULINE GOSPEL.


51.  Sojourn in Arabia.--When a man has been suddenly converted, as
Paul was, he is generally driven by a strong impulse to make known what
has happened to him.  Such testimony is very impressive; for it is that
of a soul which is receiving its first glimpses of the realities of the
unseen world, and there is a vividness about the report it gives of
them which produces an irresistible sense of reality.  Whether Paul
yielded at once to this impulse or not we cannot say with certainty.
The language of the book of Acts, where it is said that "straightway he
preached Christ in the synagogues," would lead us to suppose so.  But
we learn from his own writings that there was another powerful impulse
influencing him at the same time; and it is uncertain which of the two
he obeyed first.  This other impulse was the wish to retreat into
solitude and think out the meaning and issues of that which had
befallen him.  It cannot be wondered at that he felt this to be a
necessity.  He had believed his former creed intensely and staked
everything on it; to see it suddenly shattered in pieces must have
shaken him severely.  The new truth which had been flashed upon him was
so far-reaching and revolutionary that it could not be taken in at once
in all its bearings.  Paul was a born thinker; it was not enough for
him to experience anything; he required to comprehend it and fit it
into the structure of his convictions.

Immediately, therefore, after his conversion he went away, he tells us,
into Arabia.  He does not, indeed, say for what purpose he went; but,
as there is no record of his preaching in that region and this
statement occurs in the midst of a vehement defense of the originality
of his gospel, we may conclude with considerable certainty that he went
into retirement for the purpose of grasping in thought the details and
the bearings of the revelation he had been put in possession of.  In
lonely contemplation he worked them out; and, when he returned to
mankind, he was in possession of that view of Christianity which was
peculiar to himself and formed the burden of his preaching during the
subsequent years.


52.  There is some doubt as to the precise place of his retirement,
because Arabia is a word of vague and variable significance.  But most
probably it denotes the Arabia of the Wanderings, the principal feature
of which was Mount Sinai.  This was a spot hallowed by great memories
and by the presence of other great men of revelation.  Here Moses had
seen the burning bush and communed with God on the top of the mountain.
Here Elijah had roamed in his season of despair and drunk anew at the
wells of inspiration.  What place could be more appropriate for the
meditations of this successor of these men of God?  In the valleys
where the manna fell and under the shadows of the peaks which had
burned beneath the feet of Jehovah he pondered the problem of his life.

It is a great example.  Originality in the preaching of the truth
depends on the solitary intuition of it.  Paul enjoyed the special
inspiration of the Holy Ghost; but this did not render the concentrated
activity of his own thinking unnecessary but only lent it peculiar
intensity; and the clearness and certainty of his gospel were due to
these months of sequestered thought.  His retirement may have lasted a
year or more; for between his conversion and his final departure from
Damascus, to which he returned from Arabia, three years intervened; and
one of them at least was spent in this way.


53.  We have no detailed record of what the outlines of his gospel were
till a period long subsequent to this; but, as these, when first they
are traceable, are a mere cast of the features of his conversion, and,
as his mind was working so long and powerfully on the interpretation of
that event at this period, there can be no doubt that the gospel
sketched in the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians was
substantially the same as he preached from the first; and we are safe
in inferring from these writings our account of his Arabian meditations.


54.  Failure of Man's Righteousness.--The starting-point of Paul's
thinking was still, as it had been from his childhood, the conviction,
inherited from pious generations, that the true end and felicity of man
lay in the enjoyment of the favor of God.  This was to be attained
through righteousness; only the righteous could God be at peace with
and favor with His love.  To attain righteousness must, therefore, be
the chief end of man.


55.  But man had failed to attain righteousness and had thereby come
short of the favor of God, and exposed himself to the divine wrath.
Paul proves this by taking a vast survey of the history of mankind in
pre-Christian times in its two great sections--the Gentile and the
Jewish.


56.  The Gentiles failed.  It might, indeed, be supposed that they had
not the preliminary conditions for entering on the pursuit of
righteousness at all, because they did not enjoy the advantage of a
special revelation.  But Paul holds that even the heathen know enough
of God to be aware of the obligation to follow after righteousness.
There is a natural revelation of God in His works and in the human
conscience sufficient to enlighten men as to this duty.  But the
heathen, instead of making use of this light, wantonly extinguished it.
They were not willing to retain God in their knowledge and to fetter
themselves with the restraints which a pure knowledge of Him imposed.
They corrupted the idea of God in order to feel at ease in an immoral
life.  The revenge of nature came upon them in the darkening and
confusion of their intellects.  They fell into such insensate folly as
to change the glorious and incorruptible nature of God into the images
of men and beasts, birds and reptiles.  This intellectual degeneracy
was followed by still deeper moral degeneracy.  God, when they forsook
Him, let them go; and, when His restraining grace was removed, down
they rushed into the depths of moral putridity.  Lust and passion got
the mastery of them, and their life became a mass of moral disease.  In
the end of the first chapter of Romans the features of their condition
are sketched in colors that might be borrowed from the abode of devils,
but were literally taken, as is too plainly proved by the pages even of
Gentile historians, from the condition of the cultured heathen nations
at that time.  This, then, was the history of one half of mankind: it
had utterly fallen from righteousness and exposed itself to the wrath
of God, which is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of
men.


57.  The Jews were the other half of the world.  Had they succeeded
where the Gentiles had failed?  They enjoyed, indeed, great advantages
over the heathen; for they possessed the oracles of God, in which the
divine nature was exhibited in a form which rendered it inaccessible to
human perversion, and the divine law was written with equal plainness
in the same form.  But had they profited by these advantages?  It is
one thing to know the law and another thing to do it; but it is doing,
not knowing, which is righteousness.  Had they, then, fulfilled the
will of God, which they knew?

Paul had lived in the same Jerusalem in which Jesus assailed the
corruption and hypocrisy of scribes and Pharisees; he had looked
closely at the lives of the representative men of his nation; and he
does not hesitate to charge the Jews in mass with the very same sins as
the Gentiles; nay, he says that through them the name of God was
blasphemed among the Gentiles.  They boasted of their knowledge and
were the bearers of the torch of truth, the fierce blaze of which
exposed the sins of the heathen; but their religion was a bitter
criticism of the conduct of others; they forgot to examine their own
conduct by the same light; and, while they were repeating, Do not
steal, Do not commit adultery, and a multitude of other commandments,
they were indulging in these sins themselves.  What good in these
circumstances did their knowledge do them?  It only condemned them the
more; for their sin was against light.  While the heathen knew so
little that their sins were comparatively innocent, the sins of the
Jews were conscious and presumptuous.  Their boasted superiority was
therefore inferiority.  They were more deeply condemned than the
Gentiles they despised, and exposed to a heavier curse.


58.  The truth is, Gentiles and Jews had both failed for the same
reason.  Trace these two streams of human life back to their sources
and you come at last to a point where they are not two streams but one;
and, before the bifurcation took place, something had happened which
predetermined the failure of both.  In Adam all fell, and from him all,
both Gentiles and Jews, inherited a nature too weak for the arduous
attainment of righteousness; human nature is carnal now, not spiritual,
and, therefore, unequal to this supreme spiritual achievement.

The law could not alter this; it had no creative power to make the
carnal spiritual.  On the contrary, it aggravated the evil.  It
actually multiplied offenses; for its clear and full description of
sins, which would have been an incomparable guide to a sound nature,
turned into temptation for a morbid one.  The very knowledge of sin
tempts to its commission; the very command not to do anything is to a
diseased nature a reason for doing it.  This was the effect of the law:
it multiplied and aggravated transgressions.  And this was God's
intention.  Not that He was the author of sin; but, like a skillful
physician, who has sometimes to use appliances to bring a sore to a
head before he heals it, He allowed the heathen to go their own way and
gave the Jews the law, that the sin of human nature might exhibit all
its inherent qualities, before He intervened to heal it.  The healing,
however, was His real purpose all the time: He concluded all under sin,
that He might have mercy upon all.


59.  The Righteousness of God.--Man's extremity was God's opportunity;
not, indeed, in the sense that, one way of salvation having failed.
God devised another.  The law had never, in His intention, been a way
of salvation.  It was only a means of illustrating the need of
salvation.  But the moment when this demonstration was complete was the
signal for God to produce His method, which He had kept locked in His
counsel through the generations of human probation.  It had never been
His intention to permit man to fail of his true end.  Only He allowed
time to prove that fallen man could never reach righteousness by his
own efforts; and, when the righteousness of man had been demonstrated
to be a failure, He brought forth His secret--the righteousness of God.

This was Christianity; this was the sum and issue of the mission of
Christ--the conferring upon man, as a free gift, of that which is
indispensable to his blessedness, but which he had failed himself to
attain.  It is a divine act; it is grace; and man obtains it by
acknowledging that he has failed himself to attain it and by accepting
it from God; it is got by faith only.  It is "the righteousness of God,
by the faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe."


60.  Those who thus receive it enter at once into that position of
peace and favor with God in which human felicity consists and which was
the goal aimed at by Paul when he was striving for righteousness by the
law.  "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace
wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God."  It is a
sunny life of joy, peace and hope which those lead who have come to
know this gospel.  There may be trials in it; but, when a man's life is
reposing in the attainment of its true end, trials are light and all
things work together for good.


61.  This righteousness of God is for all the children of men--not for
the Jews only, but for the Gentiles also.  The demonstration of man's
inability to attain righteousness was made, in accordance with the
divine purpose, in both sections of the human race; and its completion
was the signal for the exhibition of God's grace to both alike.  The
work of Christ was not for the children of Abraham, but for the
children of Adam.  "As in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made
alive."  The Gentiles did not need to undergo circumcision and to keep
the law in order to obtain salvation; for the law was no part of
salvation; it belonged entirely to the preliminary demonstration of
man's failure; and, when it had accomplished this service, it was ready
to vanish away.  The only human condition of obtaining God's
righteousness is faith; and this is as easy for Gentile as Jew.

This was an inference from Paul's own experience.  It was not as a Jew,
but as a man, that he had been dealt with in his conversion.  No
Gentile could have been less entitled to obtain salvation by merit than
he had been.  So far from the law raising him a single step toward
salvation, it had removed him to a greater distance from God than any
Gentile, and cast him into a deeper condemnation.  How, then, could it
profit the Gentiles to be placed in this position?  In obtaining the
righteousness in which he was now rejoicing he had done nothing which
was not competent to any human being.


62.  It was this universal love of God revealed in the gospel which
inspired Paul with unbounded admiration for Christianity.  His
sympathies had been cabined, cribbed, confined in a narrow conception
of God; the new faith uncaged his heart and let it forth into the free
and sunny air.  God became a new God to him.  He calls his discovery
the mystery which had been hidden from ages and generations, but had
been revealed to him and his fellow-apostles.  It seemed to him to be
the secret of the ages and to be destined to usher in a new era, far
better than any the world had ever seen.  What kings and prophets had
not known had been revealed to him.  It had burst on him like the dawn
of a new creation.  God was now offering to every man the supreme
felicity of life--that righteousness which had been the vain endeavor
of the past ages.


63.  This secret of the new epoch had not, indeed, been entirely
unanticipated in the past.  It had been "witnessed by the law and the
prophets."  The law could bear witness to it only negatively by
demonstrating its necessity.  But the prophets anticipated it more
positively.  David, for example, described "the blessedness of the man
unto whom God imputed righteousness without works."  Still more clearly
had Abraham anticipated it.  He was a justified man; and it was by
faith, not by works, that He was justified--"he believed God, and it
was imputed unto him for righteousness."  The law had nothing to do
with his justification, for it was not in existence for four centuries
afterward.  Nor had circumcision anything to do with it, for he was
justified before this rite was instituted.  In short, it was as a man,
not as a Jew, that he was dealt with by God, and God might deal with
any human being in the same way.  It had once made the thorny road of
legal righteousness sacred to Paul to think that Abraham and the
prophets had trodden it before him; but now he knew that their life of
religious joy and psalms of holy calm were inspired by quite different
experiences, which were now diffusing the peace of heaven through his
heart also.  But only the first streaks of dawn had been descried by
them; the perfect day had broken in his own time.


64.  The Old Adam and the New.--Paul's discovery of this way of
salvation was an actual experience; he simply knew that Christ, in the
moment when He met him, had placed him in that position of peace and
favor with God which he had long sighed for in vain, and, as time went
on, he felt more and more that in this position he was enjoying the
true blessedness of life.  His mission henceforth must be to herald
this discovery in its simple and concrete reality under the name of the
Righteousness of God.  But a mind like his could not help inquiring how
it was that the possession of Christ did so much for him.  In the
Arabian wilderness he pondered over this question, and the gospel he
subsequently preached contained a luminous answer to it.


65.  From Adam his children derive a sad double heritage--a debt of
guilt, which they cannot reduce, but are constantly increasing, and a
carnal nature, which is incapable of righteousness.  These are the two
features of the religious condition of fallen man, and they are the
double source of all his woes.

But Christ is a new Adam, a new head of humanity, and those who are
connected with Him by faith become heirs of a double heritage of a
precisely opposite kind.  On the one hand, just as through our birth in
the first Adam's line we get inevitably entangled in guilt, like a
child born into a family which is drowned in debt, so through our birth
in the line of the second Adam we get involved in a boundless heritage
of merit, which Christ, as the Head of His family, makes the common
property of its members.  This extinguishes the debt of our guilt and
makes us rich in Christ's righteousness.  "As by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made
righteous."  On the other hand, just as Adam transmitted to his
posterity a carnal nature, alien to God and unfit for righteousness, so
the new Adam imparts to the race of which He is the Head a spiritual
nature, akin to God and delighting in righteousness.

The nature of man, according to Paul, normally consists of three
sections--body, soul and spirit.  In his original constitution these
occupied definite relations of superiority and subordination to one
another, the spirit being supreme, the body undermost, and the soul
occupying the middle position.  But the fall disarranged this order,
and all sin consists in the usurpation by the body or the soul of the
place of the spirit.  In fallen man these two inferior sections of
human nature, which together form what Paul calls the Flesh, or that
side of human nature which looks toward the world and time, have taken
possession of the throne and completely rule the life, while the
spirit, the side of man which looks toward God and eternity, has been
dethroned and reduced to a condition of inefficiency and death.  Christ
restores the lost predominance of the spirit of man by taking
possession of it by his own Spirit.  His Spirit dwells in the human
spirit, vivifying it and sustaining it in such growing strength that it
becomes more and more the sovereign part of the human constitution.
The man ceases to be carnal and becomes spiritual; he is led by the
Spirit of God and becomes more and more harmonious with all that is
holy and divine.

The flesh does not, indeed, easily submit to the loss of supremacy.  It
clogs and obstructs the spirit and fights to regain possession of the
throne.  Paul has described this struggle in sentences of terrible
vividness, in which all generations of Christians have recognized the
features of their deepest experience.  But the issue of the struggle is
not doubtful.  Sin shall not again have dominion over those in whom
Christ's Spirit dwells, or dislodge them from their standing in the
favor of God.  "Neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities
nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor
depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."


66.  The Pauline Gospel.--Such are the bare outlines of the gospel
which Paul brought back with him from the Arabian solitudes and
afterward preached with unwearied enthusiasm.  It could not but be
mixed up in his mind and in his writings with the peculiarities of his
own experience as a Jew, and these make it difficult for us to grasp
his system in some of its details.  The belief in which he was brought
up, that no man could be saved without becoming a Jew, and the notions
about the law from which he had to cut himself free, lie very distant
from our modern sympathies; yet his theology could not shape itself in
his mind except in contrast to these misconceptions.  This became
subsequently still more inevitable when his own old errors met him as
the watchwords of a party within the Christian Church itself, against
which he had to wage a long and relentless war.  Though this conflict
forced his views into the clearest expression, it encumbered them with
references to feelings and beliefs which are now dead to the interest
of mankind.  But, in spite of these drawbacks, the Gospel of Paul
remains a possession of incalculable value to the human race.  Its
searching investigation of the failure and the wants of human nature,
its wonderful unfolding of the wisdom of God in the education of the
pre-Christian world, and its exhibition of the depth and universality
of the divine love are among the profoundest elements of revelation.


67.  But it is in its conception of Christ that Paul's gospel wears its
imperishable crown.  The Evangelists sketched in a hundred traits of
simple and affecting beauty the fashion of the earthly life of the man
Christ Jesus, and in these the model of human conduct will always have
to be sought; but to Paul was reserved the task of making known, in its
heights and depths, the work which the Son of God accomplished as the
Saviour of the race.  He scarcely ever refers to the incidents of
Christ's earthly life, although here and there he betrays that he knew
them well.  To him Christ was ever the glorious Being, shining with the
splendor of heaven, who appeared to him on the way to Damascus, and the
Saviour who caught him up into the heavenly peace and joy of a new
life.  When the Church of Christ thinks of her Head as the deliverer of
the soul from sin and death, as a spiritualizing presence ever with her
and at work in every believer, and as the Lord over all things who will
come again without sin unto salvation, it is in forms of thought given
her by the Holy Ghost through the instrumentality of this apostle.



CHAPTER V

THE WORK AWAITING THE WORKER

Paragraphs 68-78.

  68-70.  Eight years of Comparative Inactivity at Tarsus.
          Gentiles admitted to Christian Church.
  71, 72. Paul discovered by Barnabas and brought to
          Antioch.  His Work there.
  73-78.  THE KNOWN WORLD OF THAT PERIOD.
          75.  The Greeks; 76.  The Romans; 77.  The Jews;
          78.  Barbarians and Slaves.


68.  Years of Inactivity.--Paul was now in possession of his gospel and
was aware that it was to be the mission of his life to preach it to the
Gentiles; but he had still to wait a long time before his peculiar
career commenced.  We hear scarcely anything of him for seven or eight
years; and yet we can only guess what may have been the reasons of
Providence for imposing on His servant so long a time of waiting.


69.  There may have been personal reasons for it connected with Paul's
own spiritual history; because waiting is a common instrument of
providential discipline for those to whom exceptional work has been
appointed.  A public reason may have been that he was too obnoxious to
the Jewish authorities to be tolerated yet in those scenes where
Christian activity commanded any notice.  He had attempted to preach in
Damascus, where his conversion had taken place, but was immediately
forced to flee from the fury of the Jews; and, going thence to
Jerusalem and beginning to testify as a Christian, he found the place
in two or three weeks too hot to hold him.  No wonder; how could the
Jews be expected to allow the man who had so lately been the chief
champion of their religion to preach the faith which they had employed
him to destroy?  When he fled from Jerusalem, he bent his steps to his
native Tarsus, where for years he remained in obscurity.  No doubt he
testified for Christ there to his own family, and there are some
indications that he carried on evangelistic operations in his native
province of Cilicia: but, if he did so, his work may be said to have
been that of a man in hiding, for it was not in the central or even in
a visible stream of the new religious movement.


70.  These are but conjectural reasons for the obscurity of those
years.  But there was one undoubted reason for the delay of Paul's
career of the greatest possible importance.  In this interval took
place that revolution--one of the most momentous in the history of
mankind--by which the Gentiles were admitted to equal privileges with
the Jews in the Church of Christ.  This change proceeded from the
original circle of apostles, in Jerusalem, and Peter, the chief of the
apostles, was the instrument of it.  By the vision of the sheet of
clean and unclean beasts, which he saw at Joppa, he was prepared for
the part he was to play in this transaction, and he admitted the
Gentile Cornelius, of Caesarea, and his family to the Church by baptism
without circumcision.  This was an innovation involving boundless
consequences.  It was a necessary preliminary to Paul's mission-work,
and subsequent events were to show how wise was the divine arrangement
that the first Gentile entrants into the Church should be admitted by
the hands of Peter rather than by those of Paul.


71.  As soon as this event had taken place, the arena was clear for
Paul's career, and a door was immediately opened for his entrance upon
it.  Almost simultaneously with the baptism of the Gentile family at
Caesarea a great revival broke out among the Gentiles of the city of
Antioch, the capital of Syria.  The movement had been begun by
fugitives driven by persecution from Jerusalem, and it was carried on
with the sanction of the apostles, who sent Barnabas, one of their
trusted coadjutors, from Jerusalem to superintend it.

This man knew Paul.  When Paul first came to Jerusalem after his
conversion and assayed to join himself to the Christians there, they
were all afraid of him, suspecting the teeth and claws of the wolf
beneath the fleece of the sheep.  But Barnabas rose superior to these
fears and suspicions and, having taken the new convert and heard his
story, believed in him and persuaded the rest to receive him.  The
intercourse thus begun only lasted a week or two at that time, as Paul
had to leave Jerusalem; but Barnabas had received a profound impression
of his personality and did not forget him.  When he was sent down to
superintend the revival at Antioch, he soon found himself embarrassed
with its magnitude and in need of assistance; and the idea occurred to
him that Paul was the man he wanted.  Tarsus was not far off, and
thither he went to seek him.  Paul accepted his invitation and returned
with him to Antioch.


72.  The hour he had been waiting for had struck, and he threw himself
into the work of evangelizing the Gentiles with the enthusiasm of a
great nature that found itself at last in its proper sphere.  The
movement at once responded to the pressure of such a hand; the
disciples became so numerous and prominent that the heathen gave them a
new name--that name of "Christians," which has ever since continued to
be the badge of faith in Christ--and Antioch, a city of half a million
inhabitants, became the headquarters of Christianity instead of
Jerusalem.  Soon a large church was formed, and one of the
manifestations of the zeal with which it was pervaded was a proposal,
which gradually shaped itself into an enthusiastic resolution, to send
forth a mission to the heathen.  As a matter of course, Paul was
designated for this service.


73.  The Known World of that Period.--As we see him thus brought at
length face to face with the task of his life, let us pause to take a
brief survey of the world which he was setting out to conquer.  Nothing
less was what he aimed at.  In Paul's time the known world was so small
a place, that it did not seem impossible even for a single man to make
a spiritual conquest of it; and it had been wonderfully prepared for
the new force which was about to assail it.


74.  It consisted of a narrow disc of land surrounding the
Mediterranean Sea.  That sea deserved at that time the name it bears,
for the world's center of gravity, which has since shifted to other
latitudes, lay in it.  The interest of human life was concentrated in
the southern countries of Europe, the portion of western Asia and the
strip of northern Africa which form its shores.  In this little world
there were three cities which divided between them the interest of
those ages.  These were Rome, Athens and Jerusalem, the capitals of the
three races--the Romans, the Greeks and the Jews--which in every sense
ruled that old world.  It was not that each of them had mastered a
third part of the circle of civilization, but each of them had in turn
diffused itself over the whole of it, and either still held its grip or
at least had left imperishable traces of its presence.


75.  The Greeks were the first to take possession of the world.  They
were the people of cleverness and genius, the perfect masters of
commerce, literature and art.  In very early ages they displayed the
instinct for colonization and sent forth their sons to find new abodes
on the east and the west, far from their native home.  At length there
arose among them one who concentrated in himself the strongest
tendencies of the race and by force of arms extended the dominion of
Greece to the borders of India.  The vast empire of Alexander the Great
split into pieces at his death; but a deposit of Greek life and
influence remained in all the countries over which the deluge of his
conquering armies had swept.  Greek cities, such as Antioch in Syria
and Alexandria in Egypt, flourished all over the East; Greek merchants
abounded in every center of trade; Greek teachers taught the literature
of their country in many lands; and--what was most important of
all--the Greek language became the general vehicle for the
communication of the more serious thought between nation and nation.
Even the Jews in New Testament times read their own Scriptures in a
Greek version, the original Hebrew having become a dead language.
Perhaps the Greek is the most perfect tongue the world has known, and
there was a special providence in its universal diffusion before
Christianity needed a medium of international communication.  The New
Testament was written in Greek, and, wherever the apostles of
Christianity traveled, they were able to make themselves understood in
this language.


76.  The turn of the Romans came next to obtain possession of the
world.  Originally a small clan in the neighborhood of the city from
which they derived their name, they gradually extended and strengthened
themselves and acquired such skill in the arts of war and government
that they became irresistible conquerors and marched forth in every
direction to make themselves masters of the globe.  They subdued Greece
itself and, flowing eastward, seized upon the countries which Alexander
and his successors had ruled.  The whole known world, indeed, became
theirs from the Straits of Gibraltar to the utmost East.  They did not
possess the genius or geniality of the Greeks; their qualities were
strength and justice; and their arts were not those of the poet and the
thinker, but those of the soldier and the judge.  They broke down the
divisions between the tribes of men and compelled them to be friendly
toward each other, because they were all alike prostrate beneath one
iron rule.  They pierced the countries with roads, which connected them
with Rome and were such solid triumphs of engineering skill that some
of them remain to this day.  Along these highways the message of the
gospel ran.  Thus the Romans also proved to be pioneers for
Christianity, for their authority in so many countries afforded to its
first publishers facility of movement and protection from the arbitrary
justice of local tribunals.


77.  Meanwhile the third nation of antiquity had also completed its
conquest of the world.  Not by force of arms did the Jews diffuse
themselves, as the Greeks and Romans had done.  For centuries, indeed,
they had dreamed of the coming of a warlike hero, whose prowess should
outshine that of the most celebrated Gentile conquerors.  But he never
came: and their occupation of the centers of civilization had to take
place in a more silent way.

There is no change in the habits of any nation more striking than that
which passed over the Jewish race in that interval of four centuries
between Malachi and Matthew of which we have no record in the sacred
Scriptures.  In the Old Testament we see the Jews pent within the
narrow limits of Palestine, engaged mainly in agricultural pursuits and
jealously guarding themselves from intermingling with foreign nations.
In the New Testament we find them still, indeed, clinging with a
desperate tenacity to Jerusalem and to the idea of their own
separateness; but their habits and abodes have been completely changed:
they have given up agriculture and betaken themselves with
extraordinary eagerness and success to commerce; and with this object
in view they have diffused themselves everywhere--over Africa, Asia,
Europe--and there is not a city of any importance where they are not to
be found.  By what steps this extraordinary change came about it were
hard to tell and long to trace.  But it had taken place; and this
turned out to be a circumstance of extreme importance for the early
history of Christianity.

Wherever the Jews were settled, they had their synagogues, their sacred
Scriptures, their uncompromising belief in the One true God.  Not only
so: their synagogues everywhere attracted proselytes from the
surrounding Gentile populations.  The heathen religions were at that
period in a state of utter collapse.  The smaller nations had lost
faith in their deities, because they had not been able to defend them
from the victorious Greeks and Romans.  But the conquerors had for
other reasons equally lost faith in their own gods.  It was an age of
skepticism, religious decay and moral corruption.  But there are always
natures which must possess a faith in which they can trust.  These were
in search of a religion, and many of them found refuge from the coarse
and incredible myths of the gods of polytheism in the purity and
monotheism of the Jewish creed.  The fundamental ideas of this creed
are also the foundations of the Christian faith.  Wherever the
messengers of Christianity traveled, they met with people with whom
they had many religious conceptions in common.  Their first sermons
were delivered in synagogues, their first converts were Jews and
proselytes.  The synagogue was the bridge by which Christianity crossed
over to the heathen.


78.  Such, then, was the world which Paul was setting out to conquer.
It was a world everywhere pervaded with these three influences.  But
there were two other elements of population which require to be kept in
mind, as both of them supplied numerous converts to the early
preachers: they were the original inhabitants of the various countries;
and there were the slaves, who were either captives taken in war or
their descendants, and were liable to be shifted from place to place,
being sold according to the necessities or caprices of their masters.
A religion the chief boast of which it was to preach glad tidings to
the poor could not neglect these down-trodden classes, and, although
the conflict of Christianity with the forces of the time which had
possession of the fate of the world naturally attracts attention, it
must not be forgotten that its best triumph has always consisted in the
sweetening and brightening of the lot of the humble.



CHAPTER VI

HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS

Paragraphs 70-114.

  79-88.  THE FIRST JOURNEY.  79, 80.  His Companions.
          81.  Cyprus.  Change of his Name.  82-87.
          The Mainland of Asia Minor.  83.  Desertion of Mark.
          84.  Antioch-in-Pisidia and Iconium.  86-87.  Lystra
          and Derbe.  88.  Return.
  89-108.  THE SECOND JOURNEY.  90, 91.  Separation
          from Barnabas.  92, 93.  Unrecorded Half of
          the Journey.  94-96.  Crossing to Europe.  97-108.
          Greece.  97-101.  Macedonia.  99.  Women and the
          Gospel.  100.  Liberality of Churches.  102-108.
          Achaia.  103-105.  Athens.  106-108.  Corinth.
  109-114.  THE THIRD JOURNEY.  Ephesus, Polemic
          against Superstition.


THE FIRST JOURNEY

79.  Paul's Companions.--From the beginning it had been the wont of the
preachers of Christianity not to go alone on their expeditions, but two
by two.  Paul improved on this practise by going generally with two
companions, one of them being a younger man, who perhaps took charge of
the traveling arrangements.  On his first journey his comrades were
Barnabas and John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas.


80.  We have already seen that Barnabas may be called the discoverer of
Paul; and, when they set out on this journey together, he was probably
in a position to act as Paul's patron; for he enjoyed much
consideration in the Christian community.  Converted apparently on the
day of Pentecost, he had played a leading part in the subsequent
events.  He was a man of high social position, a landed proprietor in
the island of Cyprus; and he sacrificed all to the new movement into
which he had been drawn.  In the outburst of enthusiasm which led the
first Christians to share their property with one another, he sold his
estate and laid the money at the apostles' feet.  He was constantly
employed thereafter in the work of preaching, and he had so remarkable
a gift of eloquence that he was called the Son of Exhortation.  An
incident which occurred at a later stage of this journey gives us a
glimpse of the appearance of the two men.  When the inhabitants of
Lystra mistook them for gods, they called Barnabas Jupiter and Paul
Mercury.  Now, in ancient art Jupiter was always represented as a tall,
majestic and benignant figure, while Mercury was the small, swift
messenger of the father of gods and men.  Probably it appeared,
therefore, that the large, gracious, paternal Barnabas was the head and
director of the expedition, while Paul, little and eager, was the
subordinate.  The direction in which they set out, too, was the one
which Barnabas might naturally have been expected to choose.  They went
first to Cyprus, the island where his property had been and many of his
friends still were.  It lay eighty miles to the southwest of Seleucia,
the seaport of Antioch, and they might reach it on the very day they
left their headquarters.


81.  Cyprus--Change of Name.--But, although Barnabas appeared to be the
leader, the good man probably knew already that the humble words of the
Baptist might be used by himself with reference to his companion, "He
must increase, but I must decrease."  At all events, as soon as their
work began in earnest, this was shown to be the relation between them.
After going through the length of the island, from east to west,
evangelizing, they arrived at Paphos, its chief town, and there the
problems they had come out to face met them in the most concentrated
form.

Paphos was the seat of the worship of Venus, the goddess of love, who
was said to have been born of the foam of the sea at this very spot;
and her worship was carried on with the wildest licentiousness.  It was
a picture in miniature of Greece sunk in moral decay.  Paphos was also
the seat of the Roman government, and in the pro-consular chair sat a
man, Sergius Paulus, whose noble character but utter lack of certain
faith formed a companion picture of the inability of Rome at that epoch
to meet the deepest necessities of her best sons.  In the proconsular
court, playing upon the inquirer's credulity, a Jewish sorcerer and
quack, named Elymas, was flourishing, whose arts were a picture of the
lowest depths to which the Jewish character could sink.  The whole
scene was a kind of miniature of the world the evils of which the
missionaries had set forth to cure.

In the presence of these exigencies Paul unfolded for the first time
the mighty powers which lay in him.  An access of the Spirit seizing
him and enabling him to overcome all obstacles, he covered the Jewish
magician with disgrace, converted the Roman governor, and founded in
the town a Christian church in opposition to the Greek shrine.  From
that hour Barnabas sank into the second place and Paul took his natural
position as the head of the mission.  We no longer read, as heretofore,
of "Barnabas and Saul," but always of "Paul and Barnabas."  The
subordinate had become the leader; and, as if to mark that he had
become a new man and taken a new place, he was no longer called by the
Jewish name of Saul, which up to this point he had borne, but by the
name of Paul, which has ever since been his designation among
Christians.


82.  The Mainland of Asia.--The next move was as obviously the choice
of the new leader as the first one had been due to Barnabas.  They
struck across the sea to Perga, a town near the middle of the southern
coast of Asia Minor, then right up, a hundred miles, into the mainland,
and thence eastward to a point almost straight north of Tarsus.  This
route carried them in a kind of half circuit through the districts of
Pamphylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia, which border, to the west and north,
on Cilicia, Paul's native province; so that, if it be the case that he
had evangelized Cilicia already, he was now merely extending his labors
to the nearest surrounding regions.


83.  At Perga, the starting-point of this second half of the journey, a
misfortune befell the expedition: John Mark deserted his companions and
sailed for home.  It may be that the new position assumed by Paul had
given him offense, though his generous uncle felt no such grudge at
that which was the ordinance of nature and of God.  But it is more
likely that the cause of his withdrawal was dismay at the dangers upon
which they were about to enter.  These were such as might well strike
terror even into resolute hearts.  Behind Perga rose the snow-clad
peaks of the Taurus Mountains, which had to be penetrated through
narrow passes, where crazy bridges spanned the rushing torrents, and
the castles of robbers, who watched for passing travelers to pounce
upon, were hidden in positions so inaccessible that even the Roman army
had not been able to exterminate them.  When these preliminary dangers
were surmounted, the prospect beyond was anything but inviting: the
country to the north of the Taurus was a vast tableland, more elevated
than the summits of the highest mountains in this country, and
scattered over with solitary lakes, irregular mountain masses and
tracts of desert, where the population was rude and spoke an almost
endless variety of dialects.  These things terrified Mark, and he drew
back.  But his companions took their lives in their hand and went
forward.  To them it was enough that there were multitudes of perishing
souls there, needing the salvation of which they were the heralds; and
Paul knew that there were scattered handfuls of his own people in these
remote regions of the heathen.


84.  Can we conceive what their procedure was like in the towns they
visited?  It is difficult, indeed, to picture it to ourselves.  As we
try to see them with the mind's eye entering any place, we naturally
think of them as the most important personages in it; to us their entry
is as august as if they had been carried on a car of victory.  Very
different, however, was the reality.  They entered a town as quietly
and as unnoticed as any two strangers who may walk into one of our
towns any morning.  Their first care was to get a lodging; and then
they had to seek for employment, for they worked at their trade
wherever they went.  Nothing could be more commonplace.  Who could
dream that this travel-stained man, going from one tentmaker's door to
another, seeking for work, was carrying the future of the world beneath
his robe!

When the Sabbath came round, they would cease from toil, like the other
Jews in the place, and repair to the synagogue.  They joined in the
psalms and prayers with the other worshipers and listened to the
reading of the Scriptures.  After this the presiding elder might ask if
any one present had a word of exhortation to deliver.  This was Paul's
opportunity.  He would rise and, with outstretched hand, begin to
speak.  At once the audience recognized the accents of the cultivated
rabbi: and the strange voice won their attention.  Taking up the
passages which had been read, he would soon be moving forward on the
stream of Jewish history, till he led up to the astounding announcement
that the Messiah hoped for by their fathers and promised by their
prophets had come; and he had been sent among them as His apostle.
Then would follow the story of Jesus; it was true, He had been rejected
by the authorities of Jerusalem and crucified, but this could be shown
to have taken place in accordance with prophecy; and His resurrection
from the dead was an infallible proof that He had been sent of God: now
He was exalted a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance unto Israel
and the remission of sins.

We can easily imagine the sensation produced by such a sermon from such
a preacher and the buzz of conversation which would arise among the
congregation after the dismissal of the synagogue.  During the week it
would become the talk of the town: and Paul was willing to converse at
his work or in the leisure of the evening with any who might desire
further information.  Next Sabbath the synagogue would be crowded, not
with Jews only, but Gentiles also, who were curious to see the
strangers; and Paul now unfolded the secret that salvation by Jesus
Christ was as free to Gentiles as to Jews.  This was generally the
signal for the Jews to contradict and blaspheme; and, turning his back
on them, Paul addressed himself to the Gentiles.  But meantime the
fanaticism of the Jews was roused, who either stirred up the mob or
secured the interest of the authorities against the strangers; and in a
storm of popular tumult or by the breath of authority the messengers of
the gospel were swept out of the town.  This was what happened at
Antioch in Pisidia, their first halting-place in the interior of Asia
Minor; and it was repeated in a hundred instances in Paul's subsequent
life.


85.  Sometimes they did not get off so easily.  At Lystra, for example,
they found themselves in a population of rude heathens, who were at
first so charmed with Paul's winning words and impressed with the
appearance of the preachers that they took them for gods and were on
the point of offering sacrifice to them.  This filled the missionaries
with horror, and they rejected the intentions of the crowd with
unceremonious haste.  A sudden revolution in the popular sentiment
ensued, and Paul was stoned and cast out of the city apparently dead.


86.  Such were the scenes of excitement and peril through which they
had to pass in this remote region.  But their enthusiasm never flagged;
they never thought of turning back, but, when they were driven out of
one city, moved forward to another.  And, total as their discomfitures
sometimes appeared, they quitted no city without leaving behind them a
little band of converts--perhaps a few Jews, a few more proselytes, and
a number of Gentiles.  The gospel found those for whom it was
intended--penitents burdened with sin, souls dissatisfied with the
world and their ancestral religion, hearts yearning for divine sympathy
and love; "as many as were ordained to eternal life believed;" and
these formed in every city the nucleus of a Christian church.  Even at
Lystra, where the defeat seemed so utter, a little group of faithful
hearts gathered round the mangled body of the apostle outside the city
gates; Eunice and Lois were there with tender womanly ministrations;
and young Timothy, as he looked down on the pale and bleeding face,
felt his heart forever knit to the hero who had courage to suffer to
the death for his faith.


87.  In the intense love of such hearts Paul received compensation for
suffering and injustice.  If, as some suppose, the people of this
region formed part of the Galatian churches, we see from his Epistle to
them the kind of love they gave him.  They received him, he says, as an
angel of God, nay, as Jesus Christ Himself; they were ready to have
plucked out their eyes and given them to him.  They were people of rude
kindness and headlong impulses; their native religion was one of
excitement and demonstrativeness, and they carried these
characteristics into the new faith they had adopted.  They were filled
with joy and the Holy Ghost, and the revival spread on every hand with
great rapidity, till the word, sounding out from the little Christian
communities, was heard all along the slopes of Taurus and down the
glens of the Cestrus and Halys.

Paul's warm heart could not but enjoy such an outburst of affection.
He responded to it by giving in return his own deep love.  The towns
mentioned in their itinerary are the Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra,
and Derbe; but, when at the last of them he had finished his course and
the way lay open to him to descend by the Cilician Gates to Tarsus and
thence get back to Antioch, he preferred to return by the way he had
come.  In spite of the most imminent danger he revisited all these
places to see his dear converts again and cheer them in face of
persecution; and he ordained elders in every city to watch over the
churches in his absence.


88.  The Return.--At length the missionaries descended again from these
uplands to the southern coast and sailed back to Antioch, from which
they had set out.  Worn with toil and suffering, but flushed with the
joy of success, they appeared among those who had sent them forth and
had doubtless been following them with their prayers; and, like
discoverers returned from the finding of a new country, they related
the miracles of grace they had witnessed in the strange world of the
heathen.


THE SECOND JOURNEY

89.  In his first journey Paul may be said to have been only trying his
wings; for his course, adventurous though it was, only swept in a
limited circle round his native province.  In his second journey he
performed a far more distant and perilous flight.  Indeed, this journey
was not only the greatest he achieved but perhaps the most momentous
recorded in the annals of the human race.  In its issues it far
outrivaled the expedition of Alexander the Great, when he carried the
arms and civilization of Greece into the heart of Asia, or that of
Caesar, when he landed on the shores of Britain, or even the voyage of
Columbus, when he discovered a new world.  Yet, when he set out on it,
he had no idea of the magnitude which it was to assume or even the
direction which it was to take.  After enjoying a short rest at the
close of the first journey, he said to his fellow-missionary, "Let us
go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached
the word of the Lord and see how they do."  It was the parental longing
to see his spiritual children which was drawing him; but God had far
more extensive designs, which opened up before him as he went forward.


90.  Separation from Barnabas.--Unfortunately the beginning of this
journey was marred by a dispute between the two friends who meant to
perform it together.  The occasion of their difference was the offer of
John Mark to accompany them.  No doubt when this young man saw Paul and
Barnabas returning safe and sound from the undertaking which he had
deserted, he recognized what a mistake he had made; and he now wished
to retrieve his error by rejoining them.  Barnabas naturally wished to
take his nephew, but Paul absolutely refused.  The one missionary, a
man of easy kindliness, urged the duty of forgiveness and the effect
which a rebuff might have on a beginner; while the other, full of zeal
for God, represented the danger of making so sacred a work in any way
dependent on one who could not be relied upon, for "confidence in an
unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth or a foot out
of joint."

We cannot now tell which of them was in the right or if both were
partly wrong.  Both of them, at all events, suffered for it: Paul had
to part in anger from the man to whom he probably owed more than to any
other human being; and Barnabas was separated from the grandest spirit
of the age.


91.  They never met again.  This was not due, however, to an
unchristian continuation of the quarrel; for the heat of passion soon
cooled down and the old love returned.  Paul mentions Barnabas with
honor in his writings, and in the very last of his Epistles he sends
for Mark to come to him at Rome, expressly adding that he is profitable
to him for ministry--the very thing he had disbelieved about him
before.  In the meantime, however, their difference separated them.
They agreed to divide between them the region they had evangelized
together.  Barnabas and Mark went away to Cyprus; and Paul undertook to
visit the churches on the mainland.  As companion he took with him
Silas, or Silvanus, in the place of Barnabas; and he had not proceeded
far on his new journey when he met with one to take the place of Mark.
This was Timothy, a convert he had made at Lystra in his first journey;
he was youthful and gentle; and he continued a faithful companion and a
constant comfort to the apostle to the end of his life.


92.  Unrecorded Work.--In pursuance of the purpose with which he had
set out, Paul began this journey by revisiting the churches in the
founding of which he had taken part.  Beginning at Antioch and
proceeding in a northwesterly direction, he did this work in Syria,
Cilicia and other parts, till he reached the center of Asia Minor,
where the primary object of his journey was completed.  But, when a man
is on the right road, all sorts of opportunities open up before him.
When he had passed through the provinces which he had visited before,
new desires to penetrate still farther began to fire his mind, and
Providence opened up the way.

He still went forward in the same direction through Phrygia and
Galatia.  Bithynia, a large province lying along the shore of the Black
Sea, and Asia, a densely populated province in the west of Asia Minor,
seemed to invite him and he wished to enter them.  But the Spirit who
guided his footsteps indicated, by some means unknown to us, that these
provinces were shut to him in the meantime; and, pushing onward in the
direction in which his divine Guide permitted him to go, he found
himself at Troas, a town on the northwest coast of Asia Minor.


93.  Thus he had traveled from Antioch in the south-east to Troas in
the northwest of Asia Minor, a distance as far as from Land's End to
John O' Groat's, evangelizing all the way.  It must have taken months,
perhaps even years.  Yet of this long, laborious period we possess no
details whatever, except such features of his intercourse with the
Galatians as may be gathered from the Epistle to that church.  The
truth is that, thrilling as are the notices of Paul's career given in
the Acts, this record is a very meager and imperfect one, and his life
was far fuller of adventure, of labors and sufferings for Christ, than
even Luke's narrative would lead us to suppose.  The plan of the Acts
is to tell only what was most novel and characteristic in each journey,
while it passes over, for instance, all his repeated visits to the same
scenes.  There are thus great blanks in the history, which were in
reality as full of interest as the portions of his life which are fully
described.

Of this there is a startling proof in an Epistle which he wrote within
the period covered by the Acts of the Apostles.  His argument calling
upon him to enumerate some of his outstanding adventures, "Are they
ministers of Christ?" he asks, "I am more; in labors more abundant, in
stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.  Of the
Jews five times received I forty stripes save one.  Thrice was I beaten
with rods.  Once was I stoned.  Thrice I suffered shipwreck.  A night
and a day have I been in the deep.  In journeyings often, in perils of
water, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in
perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the
wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in
weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in
fastings often, in cold and nakedness."

Now, of the items of this extraordinary catalogue the book of Acts
mentions very few: of the five Jewish scourgings it notices not one, of
the three Roman beatings only one; the one stoning it records, but not
one of the three shipwrecks, for the shipwreck so fully detailed in the
Acts happened later.  It was no part of the design of Luke to
exaggerate the figure of the hero he was painting; his brief and modest
narrative comes far short even of the reality; and, as we pass over the
few simple words into which he condenses the story of months or years,
our imagination requires to be busy, filling up the outline with toils
and pains at least equal to those the memory of which he has preserved.


94.  Crossing to Europe.--It would appear that Paul reached Troas under
the direction of the guiding Spirit without being aware whither his
steps were next to be turned.  But could he doubt what the divine
intention was when, gazing across the silver streak of the Hellespont,
he beheld the shores of Europe on the other side?  He was now within
the charmed circle where for ages civilization had had her home; and he
could not be entirely ignorant of those stories of war and enterprise
and those legends of love and valor which have made it forever bright
and dear to the heart of mankind.

At only four miles' distance lay the Plain of Troy, where Europe and
Asia encountered each other in the struggle celebrated in Homer's
immortal song.  Not far off Xerxes, sitting on a marble throne,
reviewed the three millions of Asiatics with which he meant to bring
Europe to his feet.  On the other side of that narrow strait lay Greece
and Rome, the centers from which issued the learning, the commerce and
the armies which governed the world.  Could his heart, so ambitious for
the glory of Christ, fail to be fired with the desire to cast himself
upon these strongholds, or could he doubt that the Spirit was leading
him forward to this enterprise?  He knew that Greece, with all her
wisdom, lacked that knowledge which makes wise unto salvation, and that
the Romans, though they were the conquerors of this world, did not know
the way of winning an inheritance in the world that is to come; but in
his breast he carried the secret which they both required.


95.  It may have been such thoughts, dimly moving in his mind, that
projected themselves into the vision which he saw at Troas; or was it
the vision which first awakened the idea of crossing to Europe?  As he
lay asleep, with the murmur of the Aegean in his ears, he saw a man
standing on the opposite coast, on which he had been looking before he
went to rest, beckoning and crying, "Come over into Macedonia and help
us."  That figure represented Europe, and its cry for help Europe's
need of Christ.  Paul recognized in it a divine summons; and the very
next sunset which bathed the Hellespont in its golden light shone upon
his figure seated on the deck of a ship the prow of which was moving
toward the shore of Macedonia.


96.  In this passage of Paul, from Asia to Europe, a great providential
decision was taking effect, of which, as children of the West, we
cannot think without the profoundest thankfulness.  Christianity arose
in Asia and among an Oriental people; and it might have been expected
to spread first among those races to which the Jews were most akin.
Instead of coming west, it might have gone eastward.  It might have
penetrated into Arabia and taken possession of those regions where the
faith of the False Prophet now holds sway.  It might have visited the
wandering tribes of Central Asia and, piercing its way down through the
passes of the Himalayas, reared its temples on the banks of the Ganges,
the Indus and the Godavery.  It might have traveled farther east to
deliver the swarming millions of China from the cold secularism of
Confucius.  Had it done so, missionaries from India and Japan might
have been coming to England and America at the present day to tell the
story of the Cross.  But Providence conferred on Europe a blessed
priority, and the fate of our continent was decided when Paul crossed
the Aegean.


97.  Macedonia.--As Greece lay nearer than Rome to the shore of Asia,
its conquest for Christ was the great achievement of his second
missionary journey.  Like the rest of the world it was at that time
under the sway of Rome, and the Romans had divided it into two
provinces--Macedonia in the north and Achaia in the south.  Macedonia
was, therefore, the first scene of Paul's Greek mission.  It was
traversed from east to west by a great Roman road, along which the
missionary moved, and the places where we have accounts of his labors
are Philippi, Thessalonica and Beroea.


98.  The Greek character in this northern province was much less
corrupted than in the more polished society to the south.  In the
Macedonian population there still lingered something of the vigor and
courage which four centuries before had made its soldiers the
conquerors of the world.  The churches which Paul founded here gave him
more comfort than any he established elsewhere.  There are none of his
Epistles more cheerful and cordial than those to the Thessalonians and
the Philippians; and, as he wrote the latter late in life, the
perseverance of the Macedonians in adhering to the gospel must have
been as remarkable as the welcome they gave it at the first.  At Beroea
he even met with a generous and open-minded synagogue of Jews--the
rarest occurrence in his experience.


99.  Women and the Gospel.--A prominent feature of the work in
Macedonia was the part taken in it by women.  Amid the general decay of
religions throughout the world at this period, many women everywhere
sought satisfaction for their religious instincts in the pure faith of
the synagogue.  In Macedonia, perhaps on account of its sound morality,
these female proselytes were more numerous than elsewhere; and they
pressed in large numbers into the Christian Church.  This was a good
omen; it was a prophecy of the happy change in the lot of women which
Christianity was to produce in the nations of the West.  If man owes
much to Christ, woman owes still more.  He has delivered her from the
degradation of being man's slave and plaything and raised her to be his
friend and his equal before Heaven; while, on the other hand, a new
glory has been added to Christ's religion by the fineness and dignity
with which it is invested when embodied in the female character.

These things were vividly illustrated in the earliest footsteps of
Christianity on our continent.  The first convert in Europe was a
woman, at the first Christian service held on European soil the heart
of Lydia being opened to receive the truth; and the change which passed
upon her prefigured what woman in Europe was to become under the
influence of Christianity.  In the same town of Philippi there was
seen, too, at the same time an equally representative image of the
condition of woman in Europe before the gospel reached it, in a poor
girl, possessed of a spirit of divination and held in slavery by men
who were making gain out of her misfortune, whom Paul restored to
sanity.  Her misery and degradation were a symbol of the disfiguration,
as Lydia's sweet and benevolent Christian character was of the
transfiguration of womanhood.


100.  Liberality of the Churches.--Another feature which prominently
marked the Macedonian churches was a spirit of liberality.  They
insisted on supplying the bodily wants of the missionaries; and, even
after Paul had left them, they sent gifts to meet his necessities in
other towns.  Long afterward, when he was a prisoner at Rome, they
deputed Epaphroditus, one of their teachers, to carry thither similar
gifts to him and to act as his attendant.  Paul accepted the generosity
of these loyal hearts, though in other places he would work his fingers
to the bone and forego his natural rest rather than accept similar
favors.  Nor was their willingness to give due to superior wealth.  On
the contrary, they gave out of deep poverty.  They were poor to begin
with, and they were made poorer by the persecutions which they had to
endure.  These were very severe after Paul left, and they lasted long.
Of course they had broken first of all on Paul himself.  Though he was
so successful in Macedonia, he was swept out of every town at last like
the off-scourings of all things.  It was generally by the Jews that
this was brought about.  They either fanaticized the mob against him,
or accused him before the Roman authorities of introducing a new
religion or disturbing the peace or proclaiming a king who would be a
rival to Caesar.  They would neither go into the kingdom of heaven
themselves nor suffer others to enter.


101.  But God protected His servant.  At Philippi He delivered him from
prison by a physical miracle and by a miracle of grace still more
marvelous wrought upon his cruel jailor; and in other towns He saved
him by more natural means.  In spite of bitter opposition, churches
were founded in city after city, and from these the glad tidings
sounded out over the whole province of Macedonia.


102.  Achaia.--When, leaving Macedonia, Paul proceeded south into
Achaia, he entered the real Greece--the paradise of genius and renown.
The memorials of the country's greatness rose around him on his
journey.  As he quitted Beroea, he could see behind him the snowy peaks
of Mount Olympus, where the deities of Greece had been supposed to
dwell.  Soon he was sailing past Thermopylae, where the immortal Three
Hundred stood against the barbarian myriads; and, as his voyage neared
its close, he saw before him the island of Salamis, where again the
existence of Greece was saved from extinction by the valor of her sons.


103.  Athens.--His destination was Athens, the capital of the country.
As he entered the city, he could not be insensible to the great
memories which clung to its streets and monuments.  Here the human mind
had blazed forth with a splendor it has never exhibited elsewhere.  In
the golden age of its history Athens possessed more men of the very
highest genius than have ever lived in any other city.  To this day
their names invest it with glory.  Yet even in Paul's day the living
Athens was a thing of the past.  Four hundred years had elapsed since
its golden age, and in the course of these centuries it had experienced
a sad decline.  Philosophy had degenerated into sophistry, art into
dilettanteism, oratory into rhetoric, poetry into versemaking.  It was
a city living on its past.  Yet it still had a great name and was full
of culture and learning of a kind.  It swarmed with so-called
philosophers of different schools, and with teachers and professors of
every variety of knowledge; and thousands of strangers of the wealthy
class, collected from all parts of the world, lived there for study or
the gratification of their intellectual tastes.  It still represented
to an intelligent visitor one of the great factors in the life of the
world.


104.  With the amazing versatility which enabled him to be all things
to all men, Paul adapted himself to this population also.  In the
market-place, the lounge of the learned, he entered into conversation
with students and philosophers, as Socrates had been wont to do on the
same spot five centuries before.  But he found even less appetite for
the truth than the wisest of the Greeks had met with.  Instead of the
love of truth an insatiable intellectual curiosity possessed the
inhabitants.  This made them willing enough to tolerate the advances of
any one bringing before them a new doctrine; and, as long as Paul was
merely developing the speculative part of his message, they listened to
him with pleasure.  Their interest seemed to deepen, and at last a
multitude of them conveyed him to Mars' Hill, in the very center of the
splendors of their city, and requested a full statement of his faith.
He complied with their wishes and in the magnificent speech he there
made them, gratified their peculiar tastes to the full, as in sentences
of the noblest eloquence he unfolded the great truths of the unity of
God and the unity of man, which lie at the foundation of Christianity.
But, when he advanced from these preliminaries to touch the consciences
of his audience and address them about their own salvation, they
departed in a body and left him talking.


105.  He quitted Athens and never returned to it.  Nowhere else had he
so completely failed.  He had been accustomed to endure the most
violent persecution and to rally from it with a light heart.  But there
is something worse than persecution to a fiery faith like his, and he
had to encounter it here: his message roused neither interest nor
opposition.  The Athenians never thought of persecuting him; they
simply did not care what the babbler said; and this cold disdain cut
him more deeply than the stones of the mob or the lictors' rods.  Never
perhaps was he so much depressed.  When he left Athens, he moved on to
Corinth, the other great city of Achaia; and he tells us himself that
he arrived there in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.


106.  Corinth.--There was in Corinth enough of the spirit of Athens to
prevent these feelings from being easily assuaged.  Corinth was to
Athens very much what Glasgow is to Edinburgh.  The one was the
commercial, the other the intellectual capital of the country.  Even
the situations of the two places in Greece resembled in some respects
those of these two cities in Scotland.  But the Corinthians also were
full of disputatious curiosity and intellectual hauteur.  Paul dreaded
the same kind of reception as he had met with in Athens.  Could it be
that these were people for whom the gospel had no message?  This was
the staggering question which was making him tremble.  There seemed to
be nothing in them on which the gospel could take hold: they appeared
to feel no wants which it could satisfy.


107.  There were other elements of discouragement in Corinth.  It was
the Paris of ancient times--a city rich and luxurious, wholly abandoned
to sensuality.  Vice displayed itself without shame in forms which
struck deadly despair into Paul's pure Jewish mind.  Could men be
rescued from the grasp of such monstrous vices?  Besides, the
opposition of the Jews rose here to unusual virulence.  He was
compelled at length to depart from the synagogue altogether, and did so
with expressions of strong feeling.  Was the soldier of Christ going to
be driven off the field and forced to confess that the gospel was not
suited for cultured Greece?  It looked like it.


108.  But the tide turned.  At the critical moment Paul was visited
with one of those visions which were wont to be vouchsafed to him at
the most trying and decisive crises of his history.  The Lord appeared
to him in the night, saying, "Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not
thy peace; for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt
thee; for I have much people in this city."  The apostle took courage
again, and the causes of discouragement began to clear away.  The
opposition of the Jews was broken, when they hurried him with mob
violence before the Roman governor, Gallio, but were dismissed from the
tribunal with ignominy and disdain.  The very president of the
synagogue became a Christian, and conversions multiplied among the
native Corinthians.  Paul enjoyed the solace of living under the roof
of two leal-hearted friends of his own race and his own occupation,
Aquila and Priscilla.  He remained a year and a half in the city and
founded one of the most interesting of his churches, thus planting the
standard of the cross in Achaia also and proving that the gospel was
the power of God unto salvation even in the headquarters of the world's
wisdom.


THE THIRD JOURNEY

109.  It must have been a thrilling story Paul had to tell at Jerusalem
and Antioch when he returned from his second journey; but he had no
disposition to rest on his laurels, and it was hot long before he set
out on his third journey.


110.  In Asia.--It might have been expected that, having in his second
journey planted the gospel in Greece, he would in his third have made
Home his principal aim.  But, if the map be referred to, it will be
observed that, in the midst, between the regions of Asia Minor which he
evangelized during his first journey and the provinces of Greece in
which he planted churches in his second journey, there was a
hiatus--the populous province of Asia, in the west of Asia Minor.  It
was on this region that he descended in his third journey.  Staying for
no less than three years in Ephesus, its capital, he effectively filled
up the gap and connected together the conquests of his former
campaigns.  This journey included, indeed, at its beginning, a
visitation of all the churches formerly founded in Asia Minor and, at
its close, a flying visit to the churches of Greece; but, true to his
plan of dwelling only on what was new in each journey, the author of
the Acts has supplied us only with the details relating to Ephesus.


111.  Ephesus.--This city was at that time the Liverpool of the
Mediterranean.  It possessed a splendid harbor, in which was
concentrated the traffic of the sea which was then the highway of the
nations; and, as Liverpool has behind her the great towns of
Lancashire, so had Ephesus behind and around her such cities as those
mentioned along with her in the epistles to the churches in the book of
Revelation--Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and
Laodicea.  It was a city of vast wealth, and it was given over to every
kind of pleasure, the fame of its theater and race-course being
world-wide.


112.  But Ephesus was still more famous as a sacred city.  It was a
seat of the worship of the goddess Diana, whose temple was one of the
most celebrated shrines of the ancient world.  This temple was
enormously rich and harbored great numbers of priests.  At certain
seasons of the year it was a resort for flocks of pilgrims from the
surrounding regions; and the inhabitants of the town flourished by
ministering in various ways to this superstition.  The goldsmiths drove
a trade in little silver models of the image of the goddess which the
temple contained and which was said to have fallen from heaven.  Copies
of the mystic characters engraven on this ancient relic were sold as
charms.  The city swarmed with wizards, fortune-tellers, interpreters
of dreams and other gentry of the like kind, who traded on the
mariners, merchants and pilgrims who frequented the port.


113.  Paul's work had therefore to assume the form of a polemic against
superstition.  He wrought such astonishing miracles in the name of
Jesus that some of the Jewish palterers with the invisible world
attempted to cast out devils by invoking the same name; but the attempt
issued in their signal discomfiture.  Other professors of magical arts
were converted to the Christian faith and burnt their books.  The
vendors of superstitious objects saw their trade slipping through their
fingers.  To such an extent did this go at one of the festivals of the
goddess that the silversmiths, whose traffic in little images had been
specially smitten, organized a riot against Paul, which took place in
the theater and was so successful that he was forced to quit the city.


114.  But he did not go before Christianity was firmly established in
Ephesus, and the beacon of the gospel was twinkling brightly on the
Asian coast, in response to that which was shining from the shores of
Greece on the other side of the Aegean.  We have a monument of his
success in the churches lying all around Ephesus which St. John
addressed a few years afterward in the Apocalypse; for they were
probably the indirect fruit of Paul's labors.  But we have a far more
astonishing monument of it in the Epistle to the Ephesians.  This is
perhaps the profoundest book in existence; yet its author evidently
expected the Ephesians to understand it.  If the orations of
Demosthenes, with their closely packed arguments between the
articulations of which even a knife cannot be thrust, be a monument of
the intellectual greatness of the Greece which listened to them with
pleasure; if the plays of Shakspeare, with their deep views of life and
their obscure and complex language, be a testimony to the strength of
mind of the Elizabethan Age, which could enjoy such solid fare in a
place of entertainment; then the Epistle to the Ephesians, which sounds
the lowest depths of Christian doctrine and scales the loftiest heights
of Christian experience, is a testimony to the proficiency which Paul's
converts had attained under his preaching in the capital of Asia.



CHAPTER VII

HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER

Paragraphs 115-127.

  115-119.  HIS WRITINGS.  115, 116.  Principal Literary
            Period.  117.  Form of his Writings.  118.  His
            Style.  119.  Inspiration.
  120-127.  HIS CHARACTER.  121.  Combination of
            Natural and Spiritual.
  122-127.  Characteristics.  122.  Physique; 123.  Enterprise;
            124.  Influence over Men; 128.  Unselfishness;
            126.  Sense of having a Mission; 127.  Personal
            Devotion to Christ.


115.  Principal Literary Period.--It has been mentioned that the third
missionary journey closed with a flying visit to the churches of
Greece.  This visit lasted several months; but in the Acts it is passed
over in two or three verses.  Probably it was little marked with those
exciting incidents which naturally tempt the biographer into detail.
Yet we know from other sources that it was nearly the most important
part of Paul's life; for during this half-year he wrote the greatest of
all his Epistles, that to the Romans, and two others only less
important--that to the Galatians and the Second to the Corinthians.


116.  We have thus alighted on the portion of his life most signalized
by literary work.  Overpowering as is the impression of the
remarkableness of this man produced by following him, as we have been
doing, as he hurries from province to province, from continent to
continent, over land and sea, in pursuit of the object to which he was
devoted, this impression is immensely deepened when we remember that he
was at the same time the greatest thinker of his age, if not of any
age, and, in the midst of his outward labors, was producing writings
which have ever since been among the mightiest intellectual forces of
the world, and are still growing in their influence.

In this respect he rises sheer above all other evangelists and
missionaries.  Some of them may have approached him in certain
respects--Xavier or Livingstone in the world-conquering instinct, St.
Bernard or Whitefield in earnestness and activity.  But few of these
men added a single new idea to the world's stock of beliefs, whereas
Paul, while at least equaling them in their own special line, gave to
mankind a new world of thought.  If his Epistles could perish, the loss
to literature would be the greatest possible with only one
exception--that of the Gospels which record the life, the sayings and
the death of our Lord.  They have quickened the mind of the Church as
no other writings have done, and scattered in the soil of the world
hundreds of seeds the fruits of which are now the general possession of
mankind.  Out of them have been brought the watchwords of progress in
every reformation which the Church has experienced.  When Luther awoke
Europe from the slumber of centuries, it was a word of Paul which he
uttered with his mighty voice: and when, one hundred years ago, our own
country was revived from almost universal spiritual death, she was
called by the voices of men who had rediscovered the truth for
themselves in the pages of Paul.


117.  Form of his Writings.--Yet in penning his Epistles Paul may
himself have had little idea of the part they were to play in the
future.  They were drawn out of him simply by the exigencies of his
work.  In the truest sense of the word they were letters, written to
meet particular occasions, not formal writings, carefully designed and
executed with a view to fame or to futurity.  Letters of the right kind
are, before everything else, products of the heart; and it was the
eager heart of Paul, yearning for the weal of his spiritual children or
alarmed by the dangers to which they were exposed, that produced all
his writings.  They were part of his day's work.  Just as he flew over
sea and land to revisit his converts, or sent Timothy or Titus to carry
them his counsels and bring news of how they fared, so, when these
means were not available, he would send a letter with the same design.


118.  His Style.--This may seem to detract from the value of these
writings.  We may be inclined to wish that, instead of having the
course of his thinking determined by the exigencies of so many special
occasions and his attention distracted by so many minute particulars,
he had been able to concentrate the force of his mind on one perfect
book and expound his views on the high subjects which occupied his
thoughts in a systematic form.  It cannot be maintained that Paul's
Epistles are models of style.  They were written far too hurriedly for
this; and the last thing he thought of was to polish his periods.
Often, indeed, his ideas, by the mere virtue of their fineness and
beauty, run into forms of exquisite language, or there is in them such
a sustained throb of emotion that they shape themselves spontaneously
into sentences of noble eloquence.  But oftener his language is rugged
and formless; no doubt it was the first which came to hand for
expressing what he had to say.  He begins sentences and omits to finish
them; he goes off into digressions and forgets to pick up the line of
thought he has dropped; he throws out his ideas in lumps instead of
fusing them into mutual coherence.

Nowhere perhaps will there be found so exact a parallel to the style of
Paul as in the Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell.  In the
Protector's brain there lay the best and truest thoughts about England
and her complicated affairs which existed at the time in that island;
but, when he tried to express them in speech or letter, there issued
from his mind the most extraordinary mixture of exclamations,
questions, arguments soon losing themselves in the sands of words,
unwieldy parentheses, and morsels of beautiful pathos or subduing
eloquence.  Yet, as you read these amazing utterances, you come by
degrees to feel that you are getting to see the very heart and soul of
the Puritan Era, and that you would rather be beside this man than any
other representative of the period.  You see the events and ideas of
the time in the very process of birth.

Perhaps, indeed, a certain formlessness is a natural accompaniment of
the very highest originality.  The perfect expression and orderly
arrangement of ideas is a later process; but, when great thoughts are
for the first time coming forth, there is a kind of primordial
roughness about them, as if the earth out of which they are arising
were still clinging to them: the polishing of the gold comes late and
has to be preceded by the heaving of the ore out of the bowels of
nature.  Paul in his writings is hurling forth the original ore of
truth.  We owe to him hundreds of ideas which were never uttered before.

After the original man has got his idea out, the most commonplace
scribe may be able to express it for others better than he, though he
could never have originated it.  So throughout the writings of Paul
there are materials which others may combine into systems of theology
and ethics, and it is the duty of the Church to do so.  But his
Epistles permit us to see revelation in the very process of birth.  As
we read them closely, we seem to be witnessing the creation of a world
of truth, as the angels wondered to see the firmament evolving itself
out of chaos and the multitudinous earth spreading itself forth in the
light.  Minute as are the details he has often to deal with, the whole
of his vast view of the truth is recalled in his treatment of every one
of them, as the whole sky is mirrored in a single drop of dew.  What
could be a more impressive proof of the fecundity of his mind than the
fact that, amid the innumerable distractions of a second visit to his
Greek converts, he should have written in half a year three such books
as Romans, Galatians and Second Corinthians?


119.  His Inspiration.--It was God by His Spirit who communicated this
revelation of truth to Paul.  Its own greatness and divineness supply
the best proof that it could have had no other origin.  But none the
less did it break in upon Paul with the joy and pain of original
thought; it came to him through his experience; it drenched and dyed
every fiber of his mind and heart; and the expression which it found in
his writings was in accordance with his peculiar genius and
circumstances.


120.  The Man Revealed in his Letters.--It would be easy to suggest
compensations in the form of Paul's writings for the literary qualities
they lack.  But one of these so outweighs all others that it is
sufficient by itself to justify in this case the ways of God.  In no
other literary form could we, to the same extent, in the writings have
got the man.  Letters are the most personal form of literature.  A man
may write a treatise or a history or even a poem and hide his
personality behind it; but letters are valueless unless the writer
shows himself.  Paul is constantly visible in his letters.  You can
feel his heart throbbing in every chapter he ever wrote.  He has
painted his own portrait--not only that of the outward man, but of his
innermost feelings--as no one else could have painted it.  It is not
from Luke, admirable as is the picture drawn in the Acts of the
Apostles, that we learn what the true Paul was, but from Paul himself.
The truths he reveals are all seen embodied in the man.  As there are
some preachers who are greater than their sermons, and the principal
gain of their hearers, in listening to them, is obtained in the
inspiring glimpses they obtain of a great and sanctified personality,
so the best thing in the writings of Paul is Paul himself, or rather
the grace of God in him.


121.  His character presented a wonderful combination of the natural
and the spiritual.  From nature he had received a strongly marked
individuality; but the change which Christianity produces was no less
obvious in him.  In no saved man's character is it possible to separate
nicely what is due to nature from what is due to grace; for nature and
grace blend sweetly in the redeemed life.  In Paul the union of the two
was singularly complete; yet it was always clear that there were two
elements in him of diverse origin; and this is, indeed, the key to a
successful estimate of his character.


122.  Physique.--To begin with what was most simply natural--his
physique was an important condition of his career.  As want of ear may
make a musical career impossible or a failure of eyesight stop the
progress of a painter, so the missionary life is impossible without a
certain degree of physical stamina.  To any one reading by itself the
catalogue of Paul's sufferings and observing the elasticity with which
he rallied from the severest of them and resumed his labors, it would
naturally occur that he must have been a person of Herculean mold.  On
the contrary, he appears to have been little of stature, and his bodily
presence was weak.  This weakness seems to have been sometimes
aggravated by disfiguring disease; and he felt keenly the
disappointment which he knew his bodily presence would excite among
strangers; for every preacher who loves his work would like to preach
the gospel with all the graces which conciliate the favor of hearers to
an orator.  God, however, used his very weakness, beyond his hopes, to
draw out the tenderness of his converts; and so, when he was weak, then
he was strong, and he was able to glory even in his infirmities.

There is a theory, which has obtained extensive currency, that the
disease he suffered from was violent ophthalmia, causing disagreeable
redness of the eyelids.  But its grounds are very slender.  He seems,
on the contrary, to have had a remarkable power of fascinating and
cowing an enemy with the keenness of his glance, as in the story of
Elymas the sorcerer, which reminds us of the tradition about Luther,
that his eyes sometimes so glowed and sparkled that bystanders could
scarcely look on them.

There is no foundation whatever for an idea of some recent biographers
of Paul that his bodily constitution was excessively fragile and
chronically afflicted with shattering nervous disease.  No one could
have gone through his labors or suffered the stoning, the scourgings
and other tortures he endured without having an exceptionally tough and
sound constitution.  It is true that he was sometimes worn out with
illness and torn down with the acts of violence to which he was
exposed; but the rapidity of his recovery on such occasions proves what
a large fund of bodily force he had to draw upon.  And who can doubt
that, when his face was melted with tender love in beseeching men to be
reconciled to God or lighted up with enthusiasm in the delivery of his
message, it must have possessed a noble beauty far above mere
regularity of feature?


123.  Enterprise.--There was a good deal that was natural in another
element of his character on which much depended--his spirit of
enterprise.  There are many men who like to grow where they are born;
to have to change into new circumstances and make acquaintance with new
people is intolerable to them.  But there are others who have a kind of
vagabondism in the blood; they are the persons intended by nature for
emigrants and pioneers; and, if they take to the work of the ministry,
they make the best missionaries.

In modern times no missionary has had this consecrated spirit of
adventure in the same degree as that great Scotchman, David
Livingstone.  When he first went to Africa, he found the missionaries
clustered in the south of the continent, just within the fringe of
heathenism; they had their houses and gardens, their families, their
small congregations of natives; and they were content.  But he moved at
once away beyond the rest into the heart of heathenism, and dreams of
more distant regions never ceased to haunt him, till at length he began
his extraordinary tramps over thousands of miles where no missionary
had ever been before; and, when death overtook him, he was still
pressing forward.

Paul's was a nature of the same stamp, full of courage and adventure.
The unknown in the distance, instead of dismaying, drew him on.  He
could not bear to build on other men's foundations, but was constantly
hastening to virgin soil, leaving churches behind for others to build
up.  He believed that, if he lit the lamp of the gospel here and there
over vast areas, the light would spread in his absence by its own
virtue.  He liked to count the leagues he had left behind him, but his
watchword was ever Forward.  In his dreams he saw men beckoning him to
new countries; he had always a long unfulfilled program in his mind;
and, as death approached, he was still thinking of journeys into the
remotest corners of the known world.


124.  Influence Over Men.--Another element of his character near akin
to the one just mentioned was his influence over men.  There are those
to whom it is painful to have to accost a stranger even on pressing
business; and most men are only quite at home in their own set--among
men of the same class or profession as themselves.  But the life he had
chosen brought Paul into contact with men of every kind, and he had
constantly to be introducing to strangers the business with which he
was charged.  He might be addressing a king or a consul the one hour
and a roomful of slaves or common soldiers the next.  One day he had to
speak in the synagogue of the Jews, another among a crowd of Athenian
philosophers, another to the inhabitants of some provincial town far
from the seats of culture.  But he could adapt himself to every man and
every audience.  To the Jews he spoke as a rabbi out of the Old
Testament Scriptures; to the Greeks he quoted the words of their own
poets; and to the barbarians he talked of the God who giveth rain from
heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.

When a weak or insincere man attempts to be all things to all men, he
ends by being nothing to anybody.  But, living on this principle, Paul
found entrance for the gospel everywhere, and at the same time won for
himself the esteem and love of those to whom he stooped.  If he was
bitterly hated by enemies, there was never a man more intensely loved
by his friends.  They received him as an angel of God, or even as Jesus
Christ himself, and were ready to pluck out their eyes and give them to
him.  One church was jealous of another getting too much of him.  When
he was not able to pay a visit at the time he had promised, they were
furious, as if he had done them a wrong.  When he was parting from
them, they wept sore and fell on his neck and kissed him.  Numbers of
young men were continually about him, ready to go on his errands.  It
was the largeness of his manhood which was the secret of this
fascination; for to a big nature all resort, feeling that in its
neighborhood it is well with them.


125.  Unselfishness.--This popularity was partly, however, due to
another quality which shone conspicuously in his character--the spirit
of unselfishness.  This is the rarest quality in human nature, and it
is the most powerful of all in its influence on others, where it exists
in purity and strength.  Most men are so absorbed in their own
interests and so naturally expect others to be the same that, if they
see any one who appears to have no interests of his own to serve but is
willing to do as much for the sake of others as the generality do for
themselves, they are at first incredulous, suspecting that he is only
hiding his designs beneath the cloak of benevolence; but, if he stand
the test and his unselfishness prove to be genuine, there is no limit
to the homage they are prepared to pay him.  As Paul appeared in
country after country and city after city, he was at first a complete
enigma to those whom he approached.  They formed all sorts of
conjectures as to his real design.  Was it money he was seeking, or
power, or something darker and less pure?  His enemies never ceased to
throw out such insinuations.  But those who got near him and saw the
man as he was, who knew that he refused money and worked with his hands
day and night to keep himself above the suspicion of mercenary motives,
who heard him pleading with them one by one in their homes and
exhorting them with tears to a holy life, who saw the sustained
personal interest he took in every one of them--these could not resist
the proofs of his disinterestedness or deny him their affection.

There never was a man more unselfish; he had literally no interest of
his own to live for.  Without family ties, he poured all the affections
of his big nature, which might have been given to wife and children,
into the channels of his work.  He compares his tenderness toward his
converts to that of a nursing-mother to her children; he pleads with
them to remember that he is their father who has begotten them in the
gospel.  They are his glory and crown, his hope and joy and crown of
rejoicing.  Eager as he was for new conquests, he never lost his hold
upon those he had won.  He could assure his churches that he prayed and
gave thanks for them night and day, and he remembered his converts by
name at the throne of grace.  How could human nature resist
disinterestedness like this?  If Paul was a conqueror of the world, he
conquered it by the power of love.


126.  His Mission.--The two most distinctively Christian features of
his character have still to be mentioned.  One of these was the sense
of having a divine mission to preach Christ, which he was bound to
fulfill.  Most men merely drift through life, and the work they do is
determined by a hundred indifferent circumstances; they might as well
be doing anything else, or they would prefer, if they could afford it,
to be doing nothing at all.  But, from the time when he became a
Christian, Paul knew that he had a definite work to do; and the call he
had received to it never ceased to ring like a tocsin in his soul.
"Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel;" this was the impulse which
drove him on.  He felt that he had a world of new truths to utter and
that the salvation of mankind depended on their utterance.  He knew
himself called to make Christ known to as many of his fellow-creatures
as his utmost exertions could enable him to reach.  It was this which
made him so impetuous in his movements, so blind to danger, so
contemptuous of suffering.  "None of these things move me, neither
count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with
joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to
testify the gospel of the grace of God."  He lived with the account
which he would have to give at the judgment-seat of Christ ever in his
eye, and his heart was revived in every hour of discouragement by the
vision of the crown of life which, if he proved faithful, the Lord; the
righteous Judge, would place upon his head.


127.  Devotion to Christ.--The other peculiarly Christian quality which
shaped his career was personal devotion to Christ.  This was the
supreme characteristic of the man, and from first to last the
mainspring of his activities.  From the moment of his first meeting
with Christ he had but one passion; his love to his Saviour burned with
more and more brightness to the end.  He delighted to call himself the
slave of Christ, and had no ambition except to be the propagator of His
ideas and the continuer of His influence.

He took up this idea of being Christ's representative with startling
boldness.  He says the heart of Christ is beating in his bosom toward
his converts; he says the mind of Christ is thinking in his brain; he
says that he is continuing the work of Christ and filling up that which
was lacking in His sufferings; he says the wounds of Christ are
reproduced in the scars upon his body; he says he is dying that others
may live, as Christ died for the life of the world.  But it was in
reality the deepest humility which lay beneath these bold expressions.
He had the sense that Christ had done everything for him; He had
entered into him, casting out the old Paul and ending the old life, and
had begotten a new man, with new designs, feelings and activities.  And
it was his deepest longing that this process should go on and become
complete--that his old self should vanish quite away, and that the new
self, which Christ had created in His own image and still sustained,
should become so predominant that, when the thoughts of his mind were
Christ's thoughts, the words on his lips Christ's words, the deeds he
did Christ's deeds, and the character he wore Christ's character, he
might be able to say, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."



CHAPTER VIII

PICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH

Paragraphs 128-144.

  128, 129.  THE EXTERIOR AND THE INTERIOR VIEW OF HISTORY.
  130-143.   A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN A HEATHEN CITY.  131.  The
             Place of Meeting.  132, 133.  The Persons Present.
             134-137.  The Services.  138-148.  Abuses and
             Irregularities.  139, 140.  Of Domestic Life.
             141-143.  Inside the Church.
  144.       INFERENCES.


128.  History Without and Within.--A holiday visitor to a foreign city
walks through the streets, guidebook in hand, looking at monuments,
churches, public buildings and the outsides of the houses, and in this
way is supposed to be made acquainted with the town; but, on
reflection, he will find that he has scarcely learned anything about
it, because he has not been inside the houses.  He does not know how
the people live--not even what kind of furniture they have or what kind
of food they eat--not to speak of far deeper matters, such as how they
love, what they admire and pursue, and whether they are content with
their lot.

In reading history one is often at a loss in the same way.  It is only
the outside of life that is made visible.  It is as if the eye were
carried along the external surface of a tree, instead of seeing a
cross-section of its substance.  The pomp and glitter of the court, the
wars waged and the victories won, the changes in the constitution and
the rise and fall of administrations, are faithfully recorded; but the
reader feels that he would learn far more of the real history of the
time if he could see for one hour what was happening beneath the roofs
of the peasant, the shopkeeper, the clergyman and the noble.

Even in Scripture-history there is the same difficulty.  In the
narrative of the Acts of the Apostles we receive thrilling accounts of
the external details of Paul's history; we are carried rapidly from
city to city and informed of the incidents which accompanied the
founding of the various churches; but we cannot help wishing sometimes
to stop and learn what one of these churches was like inside.  In
Paphos or Iconium, in Thessalonica or Beroea or Corinth, how did things
go on after Paul left?  What were the Christians like, and what was the
aspect of their worship?


129.  Happily it is possible to obtain this interior view of things.
As Luke's narrative describes the outside of Paul's career, so Paul's
own Epistles permit us to see its deeper aspects.  They rewrite the
history on a different plane.  This is especially the case with those
Epistles written at the close of his third journey, which cast a flood
of light back upon the period covered by all his journeys.  In addition
to the three Epistles already mentioned as having been written at this
time, there is another belonging to the same part of his life--the
First to the Corinthians--which may be said to transport us, as on a
magician's mantle, back over two thousand years and, stationing us in
mid-air above a great Greek city, in which there was a Christian
church, to take the roof off the meeting-house of the Christians and
permit us to see what was going on within.


130.  A Christian Gathering in Corinth.--It is a strange spectacle we
witness from this coigne of vantage.  It is Sabbath evening, but of
course the heathen city knows of no Sabbath.  The day's work at the
busy seaport is over, and the streets are thronged with gay revelers
intent on a night of pleasure, for it is the wickedest city of that
wicked ancient world.  Hundreds of merchants and sailors from foreign
parts are lounging about.  The gay young Roman, who has come across to
this Paris for a bout of dissipation, drives his light chariot through
the streets.  If it is near the time of the annual games, there are
groups of boxers, runners, charioteers and wrestlers, surrounded by
their admirers and discussing their chances of winning the coveted
crowns.  In the warm genial climate old and young are out of doors
enjoying the evening hour, while the sun, going down over the Adriatic,
is casting its golden light upon the palaces and temples of the wealthy
city.


131.  Meanwhile the little company of Christians has been gathering
from all directions to their place of worship; for it is the hour of
their stated assembly.  The place of meeting itself does not rise very
clearly before our view.  But at all events it is no gorgeous temple
like those by which it is surrounded; it has not even the pretensions
of the neighboring synagogue.  It may be a large room in a private
house or the wareroom of some Christian merchant cleared for the
occasion.


132.  Glance round the benches and look at the faces.  You at once
discern one marked distinction among them: some have the peculiar
facial contour of the Jew, while the rest are Gentiles of various
nationalities; and the latter are the majority.  But look closer still
and you notice another distinction: some wear the ring which denotes
that they are free, while others are slaves; and the latter
preponderate.  Here and there among the Gentile members there is one
with the regular features of the born Greek, perhaps shaded with the
pale thoughtfulness of the philosopher or distinguished with the
self-confidence of wealth; but not many great, not many mighty, not
many noble are there; the majority belong to what in this pretentious
city would be reckoned the foolish, the weak, the base and despised
things of this world; they are slaves, whose ancestors did not breathe
the pellucid air of Greece but roamed in savage hordes on the banks of
the Danube or the Don.


133.  But observe one thing besides on all the faces present--the
terrible traces of their past life.  In a modern Christian congregation
one sees in the faces on every hand that peculiar cast of feature which
Christian nurture, inherited through many centuries, has produced; and
it is only here and there that a face may be seen in the lines of which
is written the tale of debauchery or crime.  But in this Corinthian
congregation these awful hieroglyphics are everywhere.  "Know ye not,"
Paul writes to them, "that the unrighteous shall not inherit the
kingdom of God?  Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters,
nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
nor thieves, nor covetous, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom
of God.  And such were some of you."  Look at that tall, sallow-faced
Greek: he has wallowed in the mire of Circe's swine-pens.  Look at that
low-browed Scythian slave: he has been a pickpocket and a jail-bird.
Look at that thin-nosed, sharp-eyed Jew: he has been a Shylock, cutting
his pound of flesh from the gilded youth of Corinth.

Yet there has been a great change.  Another story besides the tale of
sin is written on these countenances.  "But ye are washed, but ye are
sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by
the Spirit of our God."  Listen, they are singing; it is the fortieth
Psalm: "He took me from the fearful pit and from the miry clay."  What
pathos they throw into the words, what joy overspreads their faces!
They know themselves to be monuments of free grace and dying love.


134.  The Services.--But suppose them now all gathered; how does their
worship proceed?  There was this difference between their services and
most of ours, that instead of one man conducting them--offering their
prayers, preaching, and giving out the psalms--all the men present were
at liberty to contribute their part.  There may have been a leader or
chairman; but one member might read a portion of Scripture, another
offer prayer, a third deliver an address, a fourth raise a hymn, and so
on.  Nor does there seem to have been any fixed order in which the
different parts of the service occurred; any member might rise and lead
away the company into praise or prayer or meditation, as he felt
prompted.


135.  This peculiarity was due to another great difference between them
and us.  The members were endowed with very extraordinary gifts.  Some
of them had the power of working miracles, such as the healing of the
sick.  Others possessed a strange gift called the gift of tongues.  It
is not quite clear what it was; but it seems to have been a kind of
tranced utterance, in which the speaker poured out an impassioned
rhapsody by which his religious feeling received both expression and
exaltation.  Some of those who possessed this gift were not able to
tell others the meaning of what they were saying, while others had this
additional power; and there were those who, though not speaking with
tongues themselves, were able to interpret what the inspired speakers
were saying.  Then again, there were members who possessed the gift of
prophecy--a very valuable endowment.  It was not the power of
predicting future events, but a gift of impassioned eloquence, the
effects of which were sometimes marvelous: when an unbeliever entered
the assembly and listened to the prophets, he was seized with
uncontrollable emotion, the sins of his past life rose up before him,
and, falling on his face, he confessed that God was among them of a
truth.  Other members exercised gifts more like those we are ourselves
acquainted with, such as the gift of teaching or the gift of
management.  But in all cases there appears to have been a kind of
immediate inspiration, so that what they did was not the effect of
calculation or preparation, but of a strong present impulse.


136.  These phenomena are so remarkable that, if narrated in a history,
they would put a severe strain on belief.  But the evidence for them is
incontrovertible; for no man, writing to people about their own
condition, invents a mythical description of their circumstances; and
besides, Paul was writing to restrain rather than encourage these
manifestations.  They show with what mighty force, at its first
entrance into the world, Christianity took possession of the spirits
which it touched.  Each believer received, generally at his baptism,
when the hands of the baptizer were laid on him, his special gift,
which, if he remained faithful to it, he continued to exercise.  It was
the Holy Spirit, poured forth without stint, that entered into the
spirits of men and distributed these gifts among them severally as He
willed; and each member had to make use of his gift for the benefit of
the whole body.


137.  After the services just described were over, the members sat down
together to a love-feast, which was wound up with the breaking of bread
in the Lord's Supper; and then, after a fraternal kiss, they parted to
their homes.  It was a memorable scene, radiant with brotherly love and
alive with outbreaking spiritual power.  As the Christians wended their
way homeward through the careless groups of the heathen city, they were
conscious of having experienced that which eye had not seen nor ear
heard.


138.  Abuses and Irregularities.--But truth demands that the dark side
of the picture be shown as well as the bright one.  There were abuses
and irregularities in the Church which it is exceedingly painful to
recall.  These were due to two things--the antecedents of the members
and the mixture in the Church of Jewish and Gentile elements.  If it be
remembered how vast was the change which most of the members had made
in passing from the worship of the heathen temples to the pure and
simple worship of Christianity, it will not excite surprise that their
old life still clung to them or that they did not clearly distinguish
which things needed to be changed and which might continue as they had
been.


139.  Yet it startles us to learn that some of them were living in
gross sensuality, and that the more philosophical defended this on
principle.  One member, apparently a person of wealth and position, was
openly living in a connection which would have been a scandal even
among heathens, and, though Paul had indignantly written to have him
excommunicated, the Church had failed to obey, affecting to
misunderstand the order.  Others had been allured back to take part in
the feasts in the idol temples, notwithstanding their accompaniments of
drunkenness and revelry.  They excused themselves with the plea that
they no longer ate the feast in honor of the gods, but only as an
ordinary meal, and argued that they would have to go out of the world
if they were not sometimes to associate with sinners.


140.  It is evident that these abuses belonged to the Gentile section
of the Church.  In the Jewish section, on the other hand, there were
strange doubts and scruples about the same subjects.  Some, for
instance, revolted with the loose behavior of their Gentile brethren,
had gone to the opposite extreme, denouncing marriage altogether and
raising anxious questions as to whether widows might marry again,
whether a Christian married to a heathen wife ought to put her away,
and other points of the same nature.  While some of the Gentile
converts were participating in the idol feasts, some of the Jewish ones
had scruples about buying in the market the meat which had been offered
in sacrifice to idols, and looked with censure on their brethren who
allowed themselves this freedom.


141.  These difficulties belonged to the domestic life of the
Christians; but, in their public meetings also, there were grave
irregularities.  The very gifts of the Spirit were perverted into
instruments of sin; for those possessed of the more showy gifts, such
as miracles and tongues, were too fond of displaying them, and turned
them into grounds of boasting.  This led to confusion and even uproar;
for sometimes two or three of those who spoke with tongues would be
pouring forth their unintelligible utterances at once, so that, as Paul
said, if any stranger had entered their meeting, he would have
concluded that they were all mad.  The prophets spoke at wearisome
length, and too many pressed forward to take part in the services.
Paul had sternly to rebuke these extravagances, insisting on the
principle that the spirits of the prophets were subject to the
prophets, and that, therefore, the spiritual impulse was no apology for
disorder.


142.  But there were still worse things inside the Church.  Even the
sacredness of the Lord's Supper was profaned.  It seems that the
members were in the habit of taking with them to church the bread and
wine which were needed for this sacrament; but the wealthy brought
abundant and choice supplies and, instead of waiting for their poorer
brethren and sharing their provisions with them, began to eat and drink
so gluttonously that the table of the Lord actually resounded with
drunkenness and riot.


143.  One more dark touch must be added to this sad picture.  In spite
of the brotherly kiss with which their meetings closed, they had fallen
into mutual rivalry and contention.  No doubt this was due to the
heterogeneous elements brought together in the Church; but it had been
allowed to go to great lengths.  Brother went to law with brother in
the heathen courts instead of seeking the arbitration of a Christian
friend.  The body of the members was split up into four theological
factions.  Some called themselves after Paul himself.  These treated
the scruples of the weaker brethren about meats and other things with
scorn.  Others took the name of Apollonians from Apollos, an eloquent
teacher from Alexandria, who visited Corinth between Paul's second and
third journeys.  These were the philosophical party; they denied the
doctrine of the resurrection, because it was absurd to suppose that the
scattered atoms of the dead body could ever be united again.  The third
party took the name of Peter, or Cephas, as in their Hebrew purism they
preferred to call him.  These were narrow-minded Jews, who objected to
the liberality of Paul's views.  The fourth party affected to be above
all parties and called themselves simply Christians.  Like many
despisers of the sects since then, who have used the name of Christian
in the same way, these were the most bitterly sectarian of all and
rejected Paul's authority with malicious scorn.


144.  Inferences.--Such is the checkered picture of one of Paul's
churches given in one of his own Epistles; and it shows several things
with much impressiveness.  It shows, for instance, how exceptional,
even in that age, his own mind and character were, and what a blessing
his gifts and graces of good sense, of large sympathy blended with
conscientious firmness, of personal purity and honor, were to the
infant Church.  It shows that it is not behind but in front that we
have to look for the golden age of Christianity.  It shows how perilous
it is to assume that the prevalence of any ecclesiastical usage at that
time must constitute a rule for all times.  Everything of this kind was
evidently at the experimental stage.  Indeed, in the latest writings of
Paul we find the picture of a very different state of things, in which
the worship and discipline of the Church were far more fixed and
orderly.  It is not for a pattern of the machinery of a church we ought
to go back to this early time, but for a spectacle of fresh and
transforming spiritual power.  This is what will always attract to the
Apostolic Age the longing eyes of Christians; the power of the Spirit
was energizing in every member, the tides of fresh emotion swelled in
every breast, and all felt that the dayspring of a new revelation had
visited them; life, love, light were diffusing themselves everywhere.
Even the vices of the young Church were the irregularities of abundant
life, for the lack of which the lifeless order of many a subsequent
generation has been a poor compensation.



CHAPTER IX

HIS GREAT CONTROVERSY

Paragraphs 145-162.

  146-148.  THE QUESTION AT ISSUE.
  149-153.  THE SETTLEMENT OF IT.  149, 150.  By
            Peter; 151.  By Paul; 152, 153.  By the Council of
            Jerusalem.  154-156.  Attempt to unsettle it.  157,
            158.  Paul crushes the Judaizers.  159-162.  A
            subordinate Branch of the Question: the Relation of
            Christian Jews to the Law.


145.  The version of the apostle's life supplied in his own letters is
largely occupied with a controversy which cost him much pain and took
up much of his time for many years, but of which Luke says little.  At
the date when Luke wrote, it was a dead controversy, and it belonged to
a different plane from that along which his story moves.  But at the
time when it was raging, it tried Paul far more than tiresome journeys
or angry seas.  It was at its hottest about the close of his third
journey, and the Epistles already mentioned as having been written then
may be said to have been evoked by it.  The Epistle to the Galatians
especially was a thunderbolt hurled against his opponents in this
controversy; and its burning sentences show how profoundly he was moved
by the subject.


146.  The Question at Issue.--The question at issue was whether the
Gentiles were required to become Jews before they could be true
Christians; or, in other words, whether they had to be circumcised in
order to be saved.


147.  It had pleased God in the primitive times to choose the Jewish
race from among the nations and make it the repository of salvation;
and, till the advent of Christ, those from other nations who wished to
become partakers of the true religion had to seek entrance as
proselytes within the sacred enclosure of Israel.  Having thus destined
this race to be the guardians of revelation, God had to separate them
very completely from all other nations and from all other aims which
might have distracted their attention from the sacred trust which had
been committed to them.  For this purpose he regulated their whole life
with rules and arrangements intended to make them a peculiar people,
different from all other races of the earth.  Every detail of their
life--their forms of worship, their social customs, their dress, their
food--was prescribed for them; and all these prescriptions were
embodied in that vast legal instrument which they called the Law.  The
rigorous prescription of so many things which are naturally left to
free choice was a heavy yoke upon the chosen people; it was a severe
discipline to the conscience, and such it was felt to be by the more
earnest spirits of the nation.

But others saw in it a badge of pride; it made them feel that they were
the select of the earth and superior to all other people; and, instead
of groaning under the yoke, as they would have done if their
consciences had been very tender, they multiplied the distinctions of
the Jew, swelling the volume of the prescriptions of the law with
stereotyped customs of their own.  To be a Jew appeared to them the
mark of belonging to the aristocracy of the nations; to be admitted to
the privileges of this position was in their eyes the greatest honor
which could be conferred on one who did not belong to the commonwealth
of Israel.  Their thoughts were all pent within the circle of this
national conceit.  Even their hopes about the Messiah were colored with
these prejudices; they expected Him to be the hero of their own nation,
and the extension of His kingdom they conceived as a crowding of the
other nations within the circle of their own through the gateway of
circumcision.  They expected that all the converts of the Messiah would
undergo this national rite and adopt the life prescribed in the Jewish
law and tradition; in short, their conception of Messiah's reign was a
world of Jews.


148.  Such undoubtedly was the tenor of popular sentiment in Palestine
when Christ came; and multitudes of those who accepted Jesus as the
Messiah and entered the Christian Church had this set of conceptions as
their intellectual horizon.  They had become Christians, but they had
not ceased to be Jews; they still attended the temple worship; they
prayed at the stated hours, they fasted on the stated days, they
dressed in the style of the Jewish ritual; they would have thought
themselves defiled by eating with uncircumcised Gentiles; and they had
no thought but that, if Gentiles became Christians, they would be
circumcised and adopt the style and customs of the Jewish nation.


149.  The Settlement.--The question was settled by the direct
intervention of God in the case of Cornelius, the centurion of
Caesarea.  When the messengers of Cornelius were on their way to the
Apostle Peter at Joppa, God showed that leader among the apostles, by
the vision of the sheet full of clean and unclean beasts, that the
Christian Church was to contain circumcised and uncircumcised alike.
In obedience to this heavenly sign Peter accompanied the centurion's
messengers to Caesarea and saw such evidences that the household of
Cornelius had already, without circumcision, received the distinctively
Christian endowments of faith and the Holy Ghost, that he could not
hesitate to baptize them as being Christians already.  When he returned
to Jerusalem, his proceedings created wonder and indignation among the
Christians of the strictly Jewish persuasion; but he defended himself
by recounting the vision of the sheet and by an appeal to the clear
fact that these uncircumcised Gentiles were proved by their possession
of faith and of the Holy Ghost to have been already Christians.


150.  This incident ought to have settled the question once for all;
but the pride of race and the prejudices of a lifetime are not easily
subdued.  Although the Christians of Jerusalem reconciled themselves to
Peter's conduct in this single case, they neglected to extract from it
the universal principle which it implied; and even Peter himself, as we
shall subsequently see, did not fully comprehend what was involved in
his own conduct.


151.  Meanwhile, however, the question had been settled in a far
stronger and more logical mind than Peter's.  Paul at this time began
his apostolic work at Antioch, and soon afterward went forth with
Barnabas upon his first great missionary expedition into the Gentile
world; and, wherever they went, he admitted heathens into the Christian
Church without circumcision.

Paul in thus acting did not copy Peter.  He had received his gospel
directly from heaven.  In the solitudes of Arabia, in the years
immediately after his conversion, he had thought this subject out and
come to far more radical conclusions about it than had yet entered the
minds of any of the rest of the apostles.  To him far more than to any
of them the law had been a yoke of bondage; he saw that it was only a
stern preparation for Christianity, not a part of it; indeed, there was
in his mind a deep gulf of contrast between the misery and curse of the
one state and the joy and freedom of the other.  To his mind to impose
the yoke of the law on the Gentiles would have been to destroy the very
genius of Christianity; it would have been the imposition of conditions
of salvation totally different from that which he knew to be the one
condition of it in the gospel.

These were the deep reasons which settled this question in this great
mind.  Besides, as a man who knew the world and whose heart was set on
winning the Gentile nations to Christ, he felt far more strongly than
did the Jews of Jerusalem, with their provincial horizon, how fatal
such conditions as they meant to impose would be to the success of
Christianity outside Judaea.  The proud Romans, the highminded Greeks,
would never have consented to be circumcised and to cramp their life
within the narrow limits of Jewish tradition; a religion hampered with
such conditions could never have become the universal religion.


152.  But, when Paul and Barnabas came back from their first missionary
tour to Antioch, they found that a still more decisive settlement of
this question was required; for Christians of the strictly Jewish sort
were coming down from Jerusalem to Antioch and telling the Gentile
converts that, unless they were circumcised, they could not be saved.
In this way they were filling them with alarm, lest they might be
omitting something on which the welfare of their souls depended, and
they were confusing their minds as to the simplicity of the gospel.  To
quiet these disturbed consciences it was resolved by the church at
Antioch to appeal to the leading apostles at Jerusalem, and Paul and
Barnabas were sent thither to procure a decision.  This was the origin
of what is called the Council of Jerusalem, at which this question was
authoritatively settled.

The decision of the apostles and elders was in harmony with Paul's
practice: the Gentiles were not to be required to be circumcised; only
they were enjoined to abstain from meat offered in sacrifice to idols,
from fornication, and from blood.  To these conditions Paul consented.
He did not, indeed, see any harm in eating meat which had been used in
idolatrous sacrifices, when it was exposed for sale in the market; but
the feasts upon such meat in the idol temples, which were often
followed by wild outbreaks of sensuality, alluded to in the prohibition
of fornication, were temptations against which the converts from
heathenism required to be warned.  The prohibition of blood--that is,
of eating meat killed without the blood being drained off--was a
concession to extreme Jewish prejudice, which, as it involved no
principle, he did not think it necessary to oppose.


153.  So the agitating question appeared to be settled by an authority
so august that none could question it.  If Peter, John and James, the
pillars of the church at Jerusalem, as well as Paul and Barnabas, the
heads of the Gentile mission, arrived at a unanimous decision, all
consciences might be satisfied and all opposing mouths stopped.


154.  Attempt to Unsettle.--It fills us with amazement to discover that
even this settlement was not final.  It would appear that, even at the
time when it was come to, it was fiercely opposed by some who were
present at the meeting where it was discussed; and, although the
authority of the apostles determined the official note which was sent
to the distant churches, the Christian community at Jerusalem was
agitated with storms of angry opposition to it.  Nor did the opposition
soon die down.  On the contrary, it waxed stronger and stronger.  It
was fed from abundant sources.  Fierce national pride and prejudice
sustained it; probably it was nourished by self-interest, because the
Jewish Christians would live on easier terms with the non-Christian
Jews the loss the difference between them was understood to be;
religious conviction, rapidly warming into fanaticism, strengthened it;
and very soon it was reinforced by all the rancor of hatred and the
zeal of propagandism.  For to such a height did this opposition rise
that the party which was inflamed with it at length resolved to send
out propagandists to visit the Gentile churches one by one and, in
contradiction to the official apostolic rescript, warn them that they
were imperilling their souls by omitting circumcision, and could not
enjoy the privileges of true Christianity unless they kept the Jewish
law.


155.  For years and years these emissaries of a narrow-minded
fanaticism, which believed itself to be the only genuine Christianity,
diffused themselves over all the churches founded by Paul throughout
the Gentile world.  Their work was not to found churches of their own;
they had none of the original pioneer ability of their great rival.
Their business was to steal into the Christian communities he had
founded and win them to their own narrow views.  They haunted Paul's
footsteps wherever he went, and for many years were a cause to him of
unspeakable pain.  They whispered to his converts that his version of
the gospel was not the true one, and that his authority was not to be
trusted.  Was he one of the twelve apostles?  Had he kept company with
Christ?  They represented themselves as having brought the true form of
Christianity from Jerusalem, the sacred headquarters; and they did not
scruple to profess that they had been sent from the apostles there.
They distorted the very noblest parts of Paul's conduct to their
purpose.  For instance, his refusal to accept money for his services
they imputed to a sense of his own lack of authority: the real apostles
always received pay.  In the same way they misconstrued his abstinence
from marriage.  They were men not without ability for the work they had
undertaken: they had smooth, insinuating tongues, they could assume an
air of dignity, and they did not stick at trifles.


156.  Unfortunately they were by no means without success.  They
alarmed the consciences of Paul's converts and poisoned their minds
against him.  The Galatian church especially fell a prey to them; and
the Corinthian church allowed its mind to be turned against its
founder.  But, indeed, the defection was more or less pronounced
everywhere.  It seemed as if the whole structure which Paul had reared
with years of labor was to be thrown to the ground.  For this was what
he believed to be happening.  Though these men called themselves
Christians, Paul utterly denied their Christianity.  Theirs was not
another gospel; if his converts believed it, he assured them they were
fallen from grace; and in the most solemn terms he pronounced a curse
on those who were thus destroying the temple of God which he had built.


157.  Paul Crushes the Judaizers.--He was not, however, the man to
allow such seduction to go on among his converts without putting forth
the most strenuous efforts to counteract it.  He hurried, when he
could, to see the churches which were being tampered with; he sent
messengers to bring them back to their allegiance; above all, he wrote
letters to those in peril--letters in which the extraordinary powers of
his mind were exerted to the utmost.  He argued the subject out with
all the resources of logic and Scripture; he exposed the seducers with
a keenness which cut like steel and overwhelmed them with sallies of
sarcastic wit; he flung himself at his converts' feet and with all the
passion and tenderness of his mighty heart implored them to be true to
Christ and to himself.  We possess the records of these anxieties in
our New Testament; and it fills us with gratitude to God and a strange
tenderness to Paul himself to think that out of his heart-breaking
trial there has come such a precious heritage to us.


158.  It is comforting to know that he was successful.  Persevering as
his enemies were, he was more than a match for them.  Hatred is strong,
but stronger still is love.  In his later writings the traces of his
opposition are slender or entirely absent.  It had given way before the
crushing force of his polemic, and its traces had been swept off the
soil of the Church.  Had the event been otherwise, Christianity would
have been a river lost in the sands of prejudice near its very source;
it would have been at the present day a forgotten Jewish sect instead
of the religion of the world.


159.  Christian Jews and the Law.--Up to this point the course of this
ancient controversy can be clearly traced.  But there is another branch
of it about the course of which it is far from easy to arrive at with
certainty.  What was the relation of the Christian Jews to the law,
according to the teaching and preaching of Paul?  Was it their duty to
abandon the practices by which they had been wont to regulate their
lives and abstain from circumcising their children or teaching them to
keep the law?  This would appear to be implied in Paul's principles.
If Gentiles could enter the kingdom without keeping the law, it could
not be necessary for Jews to keep it.  If the law was a severe
discipline intended to drive men to Christ, its obligations fell away
when this purpose was fulfilled.  The bondage of tutelage ceased as
soon as the son entered on the actual possession of his inheritance.


160.  It is certain, however, that the other apostles and the mass of
the Christians of Jerusalem did not for many a day realize this.  The
apostles had agreed not to demand from the Gentile Christians
circumcision and the keeping of the law.  But they kept it themselves
and expected all Jews to keep it.  This involved a contradiction of
ideas, and it led to unhappy practical consequences.  If it had
continued or been yielded to by Paul, it would have split up the Church
into two sections, one of which would have looked down upon the other.
For it was part of the strict observance of the law to refuse to eat
with the uncircumcised; and the Jews would have refused to sit at the
same table with those whom they acknowledged to be their Christian
brethren.  This unseemly contradiction actually came to pass in a
prominent instance.  The Apostle Peter, chancing on one occasion to be
in the heathen city of Antioch, at first mingled freely in social
intercourse with the Gentile Christians.  But some of the stricter
sort, coming thither from Jerusalem, so cowed him that he withdrew from
the Gentile table and held aloof from his fellow-Christians.  Even
Barnabas was carried away by the same tyranny of bigotry.  Paul alone
was true to the principles of gospel freedom, withstanding Peter to the
face and exposing the inconsistency of his conduct.


161.  Paul never, indeed, carried on a polemic against circumcision and
the keeping of the law among born Jews.  This was reported of him by
his enemies; but it was a false report.  When he arrived in Jerusalem
at the close of his third missionary journey, the Apostle James and the
elders informed him of the damage which this representation was doing
to his good name and advised him publicly to disprove it.  The words in
which they made this appeal to him are very remarkable.  "Thou seest,
brother," they said, "how many thousands of Jews there are who believe;
and they are all zealous of the law; and they are informed of thee that
thou teachest all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses,
saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to
walk after the customs.  Do therefore this that we say to thee: We have
four men who have a vow on them.  Take them and purify thyself with
them, and be at charges with them, that they may shave their heads; and
all may know that those things whereof they were informed concerning
thee are nothing, but thou thyself also walkest orderly and keepest the
law."

Paul complied with this appeal and went through the rite which James
recommended.  This clearly proves that he never regarded it as part of
his work to dissuade born Jews from living as Jews.  It may be thought
that he ought to have done so--that his principles required a stern
opposition to everything associated with the dispensation which had
passed away.  He understood them differently, however, and had a good
reason to render for the line he pursued.

We find him advising those who were called into the kingdom of Christ
being circumcised not to become uncircumcised, and those called in
uncircumcision not to submit to circumcision; and the reason he gives
is that circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing.  The
distinction was nothing more to him, in a religious point of view, than
the distinction of sex or the distinction of slave and master.  In
short, it had no religious significance at all.  If, however, a man
professed Jewish modes of life as a mark of his nationality, Paul had
no quarrel with him; indeed, in some degree he preferred them himself.
He stickled as little against mere forms as for them; only, if they
stood between the soul and Christ or between a Christian and his
brethren, then he was their uncompromising opponent.  But he knew that
liberty may be made an instrument of oppression as well as bondage,
and, therefore, in regard to meats, for instance, he penned those noble
recommendations of self-denial for the sake of weak and scrupulous
consciences which are among the most touching testimonies to his utter
unselfishness.


162.  Indeed, we have here a man of such heroic size that it is no easy
matter to define him.  Along with the clearest vision of the lines of
demarcation between the old and the new in the greatest crisis of human
history and an unfaltering championship of principle when real issues
were involved, we see in him the most genial superiority to mere formal
rules and the utmost consideration for the feelings of those who did
not see as he saw.  By one huge blow he had cut himself free from the
bigotry of bondage; but he never fell into the bigotry of liberty, and
had always far loftier aims in view than the mere logic of his own
position.



CHAPTER X

THE END

Paragraphs 163-189.

  163, 164.  RETURN TO JERUSALEM.  Prophecy of
             Approaching Imprisonment.
  165-168.   ARREST.  166.  Tumult in Temple; 167.  Paul
             before the Sanhedrim; 168.  Plot of Zealots.
  169-172.   IMPRISONMENT AT CAESAREA.  170.
             Providential Reason for this Confinement.  171.
             Paul's later Gospel.  172.  His Ethics.
  173-176.   JOURNEY TO ROME.  173.  Appeal to
             Caesar.  174.  Voyage to Italy.  175.  Arrival in
             Rome.
  176-182.   FIRST IMPRISONMENT AT ROME.  176.
             Trial delayed.  177-182.  Occupations of a Prisoner.
             178.  His Guards Converted; 180.  Visits of Apostolic
             Helpers; 181.  Messengers from his Churches; 182.
             His Writings.
  183-188.   LAST SCENES.  185.  Release from Prison;
             New Journeys.  186.  Second Imprisonment at Rome.
             187, 188.  Trial and Death.
  189.       EPILOGUE.


163.  Return to Jerusalem.--After completing his brief visit to Greece
at the close of his third missionary journey, Paul returned to
Jerusalem.  He must by this time have been nearly sixty years of age;
and for twenty years he had been engaged in almost superhuman labors.
He had been traveling and preaching incessantly, and carrying on his
heart a crushing weight of cares.  His body had been worn with disease
and mangled with punishments and abuse; and his hair must have been
whitened, and his face furrowed with the lines of age.  As yet,
however, there were no signs of his body breaking down, and his spirit
was still as keen as ever in its enthusiasm for the service of Christ.

His eye was specially directed to Rome, and, before leaving Greece, he
sent word to the Romans that they might expect to see him soon.  But,
as he was hurrying toward Jerusalem along the shores of Greece and
Asia, the signal sounded that his work was nearly done, and the shadow
of approaching death fell across his path.  In city after city the
persons in the Christian communities who were endowed with the gift of
prophecy foretold that bonds and imprisonment were awaiting him, and,
as he came nearer to the close of his journey, these warnings became
more loud and frequent.  He felt their solemnity; his was a brave
heart, but it was too humble and reverent not to be overawed with the
thought of death and judgment.  He had several companions with him, but
he sought opportunities of being alone.  He parted from his converts as
a dying man, telling them that they would see his face no more.  But,
when they entreated him to turn back and avoid the threatened danger,
he gently pushed aside their loving arms, and said, "What mean ye to
weep and to break my heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but
also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus."


164.  We do not know what business he had on hand which so peremptorily
demanded his presence in Jerusalem.  He had to deliver up to the
apostles a collection on behalf of their poor saints, which he had been
exerting himself to gather in the Gentile churches; and it may have
been of importance that he should discharge this service in person.  Or
he may have been solicitous to procure from the apostles a message for
his Gentile churches, giving an authoritative contradiction to the
insinuations of his enemies as to the unapostolic character of his
gospel.  At all events there was some imperative call of duty summoning
him, and, in spite of the fear of death and the tears of friends, he
went forward to his fate.


165.  Paul's Arrest.--It was the feast of Pentecost when he arrived in
the city of his fathers, and, as usual at such seasons, Jerusalem was
crowded with hundreds of thousands of pilgrim Jews from all parts of
the world.  Among these there could not but be many who had seen him at
the work of evangelization in the cities of the heathen and come into
collision with him there.  Their rage against him had been checked in
foreign lands by the interposition of Gentile authority; but might they
not, if they met with him in the Jewish capital, wreak on him their
vengeance with the support of the whole population?


166.  This was actually the danger into which he fell.  Certain Jews
from Ephesus, the principal scene of his labors during his third
journey, recognized him in the temple and, crying out that here was the
heretic who blasphemed the Jewish nation, law and temple, brought about
him in an instant a raging sea of fanaticism.  It is a wonder he was
not torn limb from limb on the spot; but superstition prevented his
assailants from defiling with blood the court of the Jews, in which he
was caught, and, before they got him hustled into the court of the
Gentiles, where they would soon have despatched him, the Roman guard,
whose sentries were pacing the castle-ramparts which overlooked the
temple-courts, rushed down and took him under their protection; and,
when their captain learned that he was a Roman citizen, his safety was
secured.


167.  But the fanaticism of Jerusalem was now thoroughly aroused, and
it raged against the protection which surrounded Paul like an angry
sea.  The Roman captain on the day after the apprehension took him down
to the Sanhedrin in order to ascertain the charge against him; but the
sight of the prisoner created such an uproar that he had to hurry him
away, lest he should be torn in pieces.  Strange city and strange
people!  There was never a nation which produced sons more richly
dowered with gifts to make her name immortal; there was never a city
whose children clung to her with a more passionate affection; yet, like
a mad mother, she tore the very goodliest of them in pieces and dashed
them mangled from her breast.  Jerusalem was now within a few years of
her destruction; here was the last of her inspired and prophetic sons
come to visit her for the last time, with boundless love to her in his
heart; but she would have murdered him; and only the shields of the
Gentiles saved him from her fury.


168.  Forty zealots banded themselves together under a curse to snatch
Paul even from the midst of the Roman swords; and the Roman captain was
only able to foil their plot by sending him under a heavy escort down
to Caesarea.  This was a Roman city on the Mediterranean coast; it was
the residence of the Roman governor of Palestine and the headquarters
of the Roman garrison; and in it the apostle was perfectly safe from
Jewish violence.


169.  Imprisonment at Caesarea.--Here he remained in prison for two
years.  The Jewish authorities attempted again and again either to
procure his condemnation by the governor or to get him delivered up to
themselves, to be tried as an ecclesiastical offender; but they failed
to convince the governor that Paul had been guilty of any crime of
which he could take cognizance or to persuade him to hand over a Roman
citizen to their tender mercies.  The prisoner ought to have been
released, but his enemies were so vehement in asserting that he was a
criminal of the deepest dye that he was detained on the chance of new
evidence turning up against him.  Besides, his release was prevented by
the expectation of the corrupt governor, Felix, that the life of the
leader of a religious sect might be purchased from him with a bribe.
Felix was interested in his prisoner and even heard him gladly, as
Herod had listened to the Baptist.


170.  Paul was not kept in close confinement; he had at least the range
of the barracks in which he was detained.  There we can imagine him
pacing the ramparts on the edge of the Mediterranean, and gazing
wistfully across the blue waters in the direction of Macedonia, Achaia
and Ephesus, where his spiritual children were pining for him or
perhaps encountering dangers in which they sorely needed his presence.

It was a mysterious providence which thus arrested his energies and
condemned the ardent worker to inactivity.  Yet we can see now the
reason for it.  Paul was needing rest.  After twenty years of incessant
evangelization he required leisure to garner the harvest of experience.
During all that time he had been preaching that view of the gospel
which at the beginning of his Christian career he had thought out,
under the influence of the revealing Spirit, in the solitudes of
Arabia.  But he had now reached a stage when, with leisure to think, he
might penetrate into more recondite regions of the truth as it is in
Jesus.  And it was so important that he should have this leisure that,
in order to secure it.  God even permitted him to be shut up in prison.


171.  Paul's Later Gospel.--During these two years he wrote nothing; it
was a time of internal mental activity and silent progress.  But, when
he began to write again, the results of it were at once discernible.
The Epistles written after this imprisonment have a mellower tone and
set forth a profounder view of doctrine than his earlier writings.
There is no contradiction, indeed, or inconsistency between his earlier
and later views: in Ephesians and Colossians he builds on the broad
foundations laid in Romans and Galatians.  But the superstructure is
loftier and more imposing.  He dwells less on the work of Christ and
more on His person; less on the justification of the sinner and more on
the sanctification of the saint.

In the gospel revealed to him in Arabia he had set Christ forth as
dominating mundane history, and shown His first coming to be the point
toward which the destinies of Jews and Gentiles had been tending.  In
the gospel revealed to him at Caesarea the point of view is
extra-mundane: Christ is represented as the reason for the creation of
all things, and as the Lord of angels and of worlds, to whose second
coming the vast procession of the universe is moving forward--of whom,
and through whom, and to whom are all things.

In the earlier Epistles the initial act of the Christian life--the
justification of the soul--is explained with exhaustive elaboration:
but in the later Epistles it is on the subsequent relations to Christ
of the person who has been already justified that the apostle chiefly
dwells.  According to his teaching, the whole spectacle of the
Christian life is due to a union between Christ and the soul; and for
the description of this relationship he has invented a vocabulary of
phrases and illustrations: believers are in Christ, and Christ is in
them: they have the same relation to Him as the stones of a building to
the foundation-stone, as the branches to the tree, as the members to
the head, as a wife to her husband.  This union is ideal, for the
divine mind in eternity made the destiny of Christ and the believer
one; it is legal, for their debts and merits are common property; it is
vital, for the connection with Christ supplies the power of a holy and
progressive life; it is moral, for, in mind and heart, in character and
conduct, Christians are constantly becoming more and more identical
with Christ.


172.  His Ethics.--Another feature of these later Epistles is the
balance between their theological and their moral teaching.  This is
visible even in the external structure of the greatest of them, for
they are nearly equally divided into two parts, the first of which is
occupied with doctrinal statements and the second with moral
exhortations.  The ethical teaching of Paul spreads itself over all
parts of the Christian life; but it is not distinguished by a
systematic arrangement of the various kinds of duties, although the
domestic duties are pretty fully treated.  Its chief characteristic
lies in the motives which it brings to bear upon conduct.

To Paul Christian morality was emphatically a morality of motives.  The
whole history of Christ, not in the details of His earthly life, but in
the great features of his redemptive journey from heaven to earth and
from earth back to heaven again, as seen from the extramundane
standpoint of these Epistles, is a series of examples to be copied by
Christians in their daily conduct.  No duty is too small to illustrate
one or other of the principles which inspired the divinest acts of
Christ.  The commonest acts of humility and beneficence are to be
imitations of the condescension which brought Him from the position of
equality with God to the obedience of the cross; and the ruling motive
of the love and kindness practised by Christians to one another is to
be the recollection of their common connection with Him.


173.  Appeal to Caesar.--After Paul's imprisonment had lasted for two
years, Felix was succeeded in the governorship of Palestine by Festus.
The Jews had never ceased to intrigue to get Paul into their hands, and
they at once assailed the new ruler with further importunities.  As
Festus seemed to be wavering, Paul availed himself of his privilege of
appeal as a Roman citizen and demanded to be sent to Rome and tried at
the bar of the emperor.  This could not be refused him; and a prisoner
had to be sent to Rome at once after such an appeal was taken.  Very
soon, therefore, Paul was shipped off under the charge of Roman
soldiers and in the company of many other prisoners on their way to the
same destination.


174.  Voyage to Italy.--The journal of the voyage has been preserved in
the Acts of the Apostles and is acknowledged to be the most valuable
document in existence concerning the seamanship of ancient times.  It
is also a precious document of Paul's life; for it shows how his
character shone out in a novel situation.  A ship is a kind of
miniature of the world.  It is a floating island, in which there are
the government and the governed.  But the government is, like that of
states, liable to sudden social upheavals, in which the ablest man is
thrown to the top.  This was a voyage of extreme perils, which required
the utmost presence of mind and power of winning the confidence and
obedience of those on board.  Before it was ended Paul was virtually
both the captain of the ship and the general of the soldiers; and all
on board owed to him their lives.


175.  Arrival in Rome.--At length the dangers of the deep were left
behind; and Paul found himself approaching the capital of the Roman
world by the Appian Road, the great highway by which Rome was entered
by travelers from the East.  The bustle and noise increased as he
neared the city, and the signs of Roman grandeur and renown multiplied
at every step.  For many years he had been looking forward to seeing
Rome, but he had always thought of entering it in a very different
guise from that which now he wore.  He had always thought of Rome as a
successful general thinks of the central stronghold of the country he
is subduing, who looks eagerly forward to the day when he will direct
the charge against its gates.  Paul was engaged in the conquest of the
world for Christ, and Rome was the final position he had hoped to carry
in his Master's name.  Years ago he had sent to it the famous
challenge, "I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome
also; for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power
of God unto salvation to every one that believeth."  But now, when he
found himself actually at its gates and thought of the abject condition
in which he was--an old, gray-haired, broken man, a chained prisoner
just escaped from shipwreck--his heart sank within him, and he felt
dreadfully alone.

At the right moment, however, a little incident took place which
restored him to himself: at a small town forty miles out of Rome he was
met by a little band of Christian brethren, who, hearing of his
approach, had come out to welcome him; and, ten miles farther on, he
came upon another group, who had come out for the same purpose.
Self-reliant as he was, he was exceedingly sensitive to human sympathy,
and the sight of these brethren and their interest in him completely
revived him.  He thanked God and took courage; his old feelings came
back in their wonted strength; and, when, in the company of these
friends, he reached that shoulder of the Alban Hills from which the
first view of the city is obtained, his heart swelled with the
anticipation of victory; for he knew he carried in his breast the force
which would yet lead captive that proud capital.

It was not with the step of a prisoner, but with that of a conqueror,
that he passed at length beneath the city gate.  His road lay along
that very Sacred Way by which many a Roman general had passed in
triumph to the Capitol, seated on a car of victory, followed by the
prisoners and spoils of the enemy, and surrounded with the plaudits of
rejoicing Rome.  Paul looked little like such a hero: no car of victory
carried him, he trode the causewayed road with wayworn foot; no medals
or ornaments adorned his person, a chain of iron dangled from his
wrist; no applauding crowds welcomed his approach, a few humble friends
formed all his escort; yet never did a more truly conquering footstep
fall on the pavement of Rome or a heart more confident of victory pass
within her gates.

176.  Imprisonment.--Meanwhile, however, it was not to the Capitol his
steps were bent, but to a prison; and he was destined to lie in prison
long, for his trial did not come on for two years.  The law's delays
have been proverbial in all countries and at all eras; and the law of
imperial Rome was not likely to be free from this reproach during the
reign of Nero, a man of such frivolity that any engagement of pleasure
or freak of caprice was sufficient to make him put off the most
important call of business.  The imprisonment, it is true, was of the
mildest description.  It may have been that the officer who brought him
to Rome spoke a good word for the man who had saved his life during the
voyage, or the officer to whom he was handed over, and who is known in
profane history as a man of justice and humanity, may have inquired
into his case and formed a favorable opinion of his character; but at
all events Paul was permitted to hire a house of his own and live in it
in perfect freedom, with the single exception that a soldier, who was
responsible for his person, was his constant attendant.


177.  Occupation in Prison.--This was far from the condition which such
an active spirit would have coveted.  He would have liked to be moving
from synagogue to synagogue in the immense city, preaching in its
streets and squares, and founding congregation after congregation among
the masses of its population.  Another man, thus arrested in a career
of ceaseless movement and immured within prison walls, might have
allowed his mind to stagnate in sloth and despair.  But Paul behaved
very differently.  Availing himself of every possibility of the
situation, he converted his one room into a center of far-reaching
activity and beneficence.  On the few square feet of space allowed him
he erected a fulcrum with which he moved the world, establishing within
the walls of Nero's capital a sovereignty more extensive than his own.


178.  Even the most irksome circumstance of his lot was turned to good
account.  This was the soldier by whom he was watched.  To a man of
Paul's eager temperament and restlessness of mood this must often have
been an intolerable annoyance; and, indeed, in the letters written
during this imprisonment he is constantly referring to his chain, as if
it were never out of his mind.  But he did not suffer this irritation
to blind him to the opportunity of doing good presented by the
situation.  Of course his attendant was changed every few hours, as one
soldier relieved another upon guard.  In this way there might be six or
eight with him every four-and-twenty hours.  They belonged to the
imperial guard, the flower of the Roman army.

Paul could not sit for hours beside another man without speaking of the
subject which lay nearest his heart.  He spoke to these soldiers about
their immortal souls and the faith of Christ.  To men accustomed to the
horrors of Roman warfare and the manners of Roman barracks nothing
could be more striking than a life and character like his; and the
result of these conversations was that many of them became changed men,
and a revival spread through the barracks and penetrated into the
imperial household itself.  His room was sometimes crowded with these
stern, bronzed faces, glad to see him at other times than those when
duty required them to be there.  He sympathized with them and entered
into the spirit of their occupation; indeed, he was full of the spirit
of the warrior himself.

We have an imperishable relic of these visits in an outburst of
inspired eloquence which he dictated at this period: "Put on the whole
armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the
devil; for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.  Wherefore
take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand
in the evil day and, having done all, to stand.  Stand therefore,
having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate
of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel
of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be
able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.  And take the helmet
of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."
That picture was drawn from the life, from the armor of the soldiers in
his room; and perhaps these ringing sentences were first poured into
the ears of his warlike auditors before they were transferred to the
Epistle in which they have been preserved.


179.  Visitors.--But he had other visitors.  All who took an interest
in Christianity in Rome, both Jews and Gentiles, gathered to him.
Perhaps there was not a day of the two years of his imprisonment but he
had such visitors.  The Roman Christians learned to go to that room as
to an oracle or shrine.  Many a Christian teacher got his sword
sharpened there; and new energy began to diffuse itself through the
Christian circles of the city.  Many an anxious father brought his son,
many a friend his friend, hoping that a word from the apostle's lips
might waken the sleeping conscience.  Many a wanderer, stumbling in
there by chance, came out a new man.  Such an one was Onesimus, a slave
from Colossae, who arrived in Rome as a runaway, but was sent back to
his Christian master, Philemon, no longer as a slave, but as a brother
beloved.


180.  Still more interesting visitors came.  At all periods of his life
he exercised a strong fascination over young men.  They were attracted
by the manly soul within him, in which they found sympathy with their
aspirations and inspiration for the noblest work.  These youthful
friends, who were scattered over the world in the work of Christ,
flocked to him at Rome.  Timothy and Luke, Mark and Aristarchus,
Tychicus and Epaphras, and many more came, to drink afresh at the well
of his ever-springing wisdom and earnestness.  And he sent them forth
again, to carry messages to his churches or bring him news of their
condition.


181.  Of his spiritual children in the distance he never ceased to
think.  Daily he was wandering in imagination among the glens of
Galatia and along the shores of Asia and Greece; every night he was
praying for the Christians of Antioch and Ephesus, of Philippi and
Thessalonica and Corinth.  Nor were gratifying proofs awanting that
they were remembering him.  Now and then there would appear in his
lodging a deputy from some distant church, bringing the greetings of
his converts or, perhaps, a contribution to meet his temporal wants, or
craving his decision on some point of doctrine or practice about which
difficulty had arisen.  These messengers were not sent empty away: they
carried warm-hearted messages of golden words of counsel from their
apostolic friend.

Some of them carried far more.  When Epaphroditus, a deputy from the
church at Philippi, which had sent to their dear father in Christ an
offering of love, was returning home, Paul sent with him, in
acknowledgment of their kindness, the Epistle to the Philippians, the
most beautiful of all his letters, in which he lays bare his very heart
and every sentence glows with love more tender than a woman's.  When
the slave Onesimus was sent back to Colossae, he received, as the
branch of peace to offer to his master, the exquisite little Epistle to
Philemon, a priceless monument of Christian courtesy.  He carried, too,
a letter addressed to the church of the town in which his master lived,
the Epistle to the Colossians.

The composition of these Epistles was by far the most important part of
Paul's varied prison activity; and he crowned this labor with the
writing of the Epistle to the Ephesians, which is perhaps the
profoundest and sublimest book in the world.  The Church of Christ has
derived many benefits from the imprisonment of the servants of God; the
greatest book of uninspired religious genius, the Pilgrim's Progress,
was written in a jail; but never did there come to the Church a greater
mercy in the disguise of misfortune than when the arrest of Paul's
bodily activities at Caesarea and Rome supplied him with the leisure
needed to reach the depths of truth sounded in the Epistle to the
Ephesians.


182.  His Writings.--It may have seemed a dark dispensation of
providence to Paul himself that the course of life he had pursued so
long was so completely changed; but God's thoughts are higher than
man's thoughts and His ways than man's ways; and He gave Paul grace to
overcome the temptations of his situation and do far more in his
enforced inactivity for the welfare of the world and the permanence of
his own influence than he could have done by twenty years of wandering
missionary work.  Sitting in his room, he gathered within the sounding
cavity of his sympathetic heart the sighs and cries of thousands far
away, and diffused courage and help in every direction from his own
inexhaustible resources.  He sank his mind deeper and deeper in
solitary thought, till, smiting the rock in the dim depth to which he
had descended, he caused streams to gush forth which are still
gladdening the city of God.


183.  Release from Prison.--The book of Acts suddenly breaks off with a
brief summary of Paul's two years' imprisonment at Rome.  Is this
because there was no more to tell?  When his trial came on, did it
issue in his condemnation and death?  Or did he get out of prison and
resume his old occupations?  Where Luke's lucid narrative so suddenly
deserts us, tradition comes in proffering its doubtful aid.  It tells
us that he was acquitted on his trial and let out of prison; that he
resumed his travels, visiting Spain among other places; but that before
long he was arrested again and sent back to Rome, where he died a
martyr's death at the cruel hands of Nero.


184.  New Journeys.--Happily, however, we are not altogether dependent
on the precarious aid of tradition.  We have writings of Paul's own
undoubtedly subsequent to the two years of his first imprisonment.
These are what are called the Pastoral Epistles--the Epistles to
Timothy and Titus.  In these we see that he regained his liberty and
resumed his employment of revisiting his old churches and founding new
ones.  His footsteps cannot, indeed, be any longer traced with
certainty.  We find him back at Ephesus and Troas; we find him in
Crete, an island at which he touched on his voyage to Rome and in which
he may then have become interested; we find him exploring new territory
in the northern parts of Greece.  We see him once more, like the
commander of an army who sends his aides-de-camp all over the field of
battle, sending out his young assistants to organize and watch over the
churches.


185.  But this was not to last long.  An event had happened immediately
after his release from prison which could not but influence his fate.
This was the burning of Rome--an appalling disaster, the glare of which
even at this distance makes the heart shudder.  It was probably a mad
freak of the malicious monster who then wore the imperial purple.  But
Nero saw fit to attribute it to the Christians, and instantly the most
atrocious persecution broke out against them.  Of course the fame of
this soon spread over the Roman world; and it was not likely that the
foremost apostle of Christianity could long escape.  Every Roman
governor knew that he could not do the emperor a more pleasing service
than by sending to him Paul in chains.


186.  Second Imprisonment.--It was not long, accordingly, before Paul
was lying once more in prison at Rome; and it was no mild imprisonment
this time, but the worst known to the law.  No troops of friends now
filled his room; for the Christians of Rome had been massacred or
scattered, and it was dangerous for any one to avow himself a
Christian.  We have a letter written from his dungeon, the last he ever
wrote, the Second Epistle to Timothy, which affords us a glimpse of
unspeakable pathos into the circumstances of the prisoner.  He tells us
that one part of his trial is already over.  Not a friend stood by him
as he faced the bloodthirsty tyrant who sat on the judgment-seat.  But
the Lord stood by him and enabled him to make the emperor and the
spectators in the crowded basilica hear the sound of the gospel.  The
charge against him had broken down.  But he had no hope of escape.
Other stages of the trial had yet to come, and he knew that evidence to
condemn him would either be discovered or manufactured.

The letter betrays the miseries of his dungeon.  He prays Timothy to
bring a cloak he had left at Troas, to defend him from the damp of the
cell and the cold of the winter.  He asks for his books and parchments,
that he may relieve the tedium of his solitary hours with the studies
he had always loved.  But, above all, he beseeches Timothy to come
himself; for he was longing to feel the touch of a friendly hand and
see the face of a friend yet once again before he died.

Was the brave heart then conquered at last?  Read the Epistle and see.
How does it begin?  "I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not
ashamed; for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is
able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day."
How does it end?  "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my
departure is at hand.  I have fought a good fight, I have finished my
course, I have kept the faith.  Henceforth there is laid up for me a
crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give
me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them that love His
appearing."  That is not the strain of the vanquished.


187.  Trial.--There can be little doubt that he appeared again at
Nero's bar, and this time the charge did not break down.  In all
history there is not a more startling illustration of the irony of
human life than this scene of Paul at the bar of Nero.  On the
judgment-seat, clad in the imperial purple, sat a man who in a bad
world had attained the eminence of being the very worst and meanest
being in it--a man stained with every crime, the murderer of his own
mother, of his wives and of his best benefactors; a man whose whole
being was so steeped in every namable and unnamable vice that body and
soul of him were, as some one said at the time, nothing but a compound
of mud and blood; and in the prisoner's dock stood the best man the
world contained, his hair whitened with labors for the good of men and
the glory of God.  Such was the occupant of the seat of justice, and
such the man who stood in the place of the criminal.


188.  Death.--The trial ended, Paul was condemned and delivered over to
the executioner.  He was led out of the city with a crowd of the lowest
rabble at his heels.  The fatal spot was reached; he knelt beside the
block; the headsman's axe gleamed in the sun and fell; and the head of
the apostle of the world rolled down in the dust.


189.  So sin did its uttermost and its worst.  Yet how poor and empty
was its triumph!  The blow of the axe only smote off the lock of the
prison and let the spirit go forth to its home and to its crown.  The
city falsely called eternal dismissed him with execration from her
gates; but ten thousand times ten thousand welcomed him in the same
hour at the gates of the city which is really eternal.  Even on earth
Paul could not die.  He lives among us to-day with a life a hundredfold
more influential than that which throbbed in his brain whilst the
earthly form which made him visible still lingered on the earth.
Wherever the feet of them who publish the glad tidings go forth
beautiful upon the mountains, he walks by their side as an inspirer and
a guide; in ten thousand churches every Sabbath and on a thousand
thousand hearths every day his eloquent lips still teach that gospel of
which he was never ashamed; and, wherever there are human souls
searching for the white flower of holiness or climbing the difficult
heights of self-denial, there he whose life was so pure, whose devotion
to Christ was so entire, and whose pursuit of a single purpose was so
unceasing, is welcomed as the best of friends.



HINTS TO TEACHERS AND QUESTIONS FOR PUPILS

Teacher's Apparatus.--English theology has no juster cause for pride
than the books it has produced on the Life of Paul.  Perhaps there is
no other subject in which it has so outdistanced all rivals.  Conybeare
and Howson's _Life and Epistles of St. Paul_ will probably always keep
the foremost place; in many respects it is nearly perfect; and a
teacher who has mastered it will be sufficiently equipped for his work
and require no other help.  The works of Lewin and Farrar are written
on the same lines; the former is rich in maps of countries and plans of
towns; and the strong point of the latter is the analysis of Paul's
writings--the exposition of the mind of Paul.  Sir William Ramsay has
made the whole subject peculiarly his own by the enthusiasm and labors
of a lifetime.  The German books are not nearly so valuable.
Hausrath's _The Apostle Paul_ is a brilliant performance, but it is as
weak in handling the deeper things as it is strong in coloring up the
external and picturesque features of the subject.  Baur's work is an
amazingly clever _tour de force_, but it is not so much a
well-proportioned picture of the apostle as a prolonged paradox thrown
down as a challenge to the learned.  The latest large German work,
Clemen's _Paulus_, proceeds on the principle that the miracle is
untrue, and the effect may be sufficiently seen in the account it gives
of the first visit to Philippi.  In Weinal's _Paulus_, pp. 312, 313,
there appears a forbidding picture of the effects produced by the
teaching of the subject in the author's country; in our country, on the
contrary, it has long been among the most attractive subjects for both
teachers and students.  Adolphe Monod's _Saint Paul_, a series of five
discourses, is an inquiry into the secret of the apostle's life,
written with deep sympathy and glowing eloquence; and Renan's work,
with the same title, gives, with unrivaled brilliance, a picture of the
world in which the apostle lived, if not of the apostle himself.  There
are books on the subject which do honor to American scholarship from
the pens of Cone, Gilbert, Bacon and A. T. Robertson, the last
mentioned with a valuable bibliography.  But the best help is to be
found in the original sources themselves--the cameolike pictures of
Luke and the self-revelations of Paul's Epistles.  The latter
especially, read in the fresh translation of Conybeare, will show the
apostle to any one who has eyes to see.  Johnstone's wall-map of Paul's
journey is indispensable in the class-room.



CHAPTER I

Paragraph 2.  Subject of class essay--Paul and the other Apostles:
Points of Connection and Contrast.

5.  Subject of class essay--Relation of Christianity to Learning and
Intellectual Gifts: its Use of them and its Independence of them.


9.  _Quote passages of Scripture in which Paul's destination to be the
missionary of the Gentiles is expressed._



CHAPTER II

On the external features of the period embraced in this chapter compare
the corresponding pages of Hausrath; on the internal features see
Principal Rainy's lecture on Paul in _The Evangelical Succession
Lectures_, vol. i.

14.  On the chronology of Paul's life see the notes at the end of
Conybeare and Howson, and Farrar, ii. 623.

The principal dates may be given at this stage from Conybeare and
Howson, for reference throughout:

  A.D.
  36.  Conversion.
  38.  Flight to Tarsus.
  44.  Brought to Antioch by Barnabas.
  48.  First Missionary Journey.
  50.  Council at Jerusalem.
  51-54.  Second Missionary Journey.  1 and 2 _Thessalonians_
       written at Corinth.
  54-58.  Third Missionary Journey.
  57.  1 _Corinthians_ written at Ephesus; 2 _Corinthians_, in
       Macedonia; _Galatians_, at Corinth.
  58.  _Romans_ written at Corinth.  Arrest at Jerusalem.
  59.  In prison at Caesarea.
  60.  Voyage to Rome.
  62.  _Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians_,
       written at Rome.
  63.  Release from prison.
  67.  1 _Timothy_ and _Titus_ written.
  68.  In prison again at Rome.  2 _Timothy_.  Death.

With these may be compared some of Ramsay's dates--the conversion, 33;
First Missionary Journey, 47-49; Second, 50-53; Third, 53-57; Voyage to
Rome, 59, 60; Trial and Acquittal, 61; Second Trial, 67.

Whereas Conybeare and Howson consider Galatians to have been written,
in close conjunction with Romans, at Corinth during the Fourth
Missionary Journey, Ramsay believes it to have been written at Antioch
before this journey commenced; and, whereas the older authorities
suppose it to be addressed to Galatians evangelized by Paul during the
Second Missionary Journey, though no details of such a conquest are
found in Acts, Ramsay holds the recipients of the Epistle to have been
the churches in the interior of Asia Minor evangelized during the First
Missionary Journey, the regions of Phrygia and Lycaonia in which these
were situated forming at that time part of the Province of Galatia, the
boundaries of which had been extended.  This is the South Galatian
theory, the fullest statement and defence of which will be found in
Hastings' _Dictionary of the Bible_, vol. v.

15.  The goat's-hair cloth was called "cilicium," from the name of the
province.

16.  Dean Howson's _Metaphors of St. Paul_.  Also Hausrath, p. 15.

18.  Compare the long lists of sins frequent in the Epistle.

23.  Subject for class essay: Paul's First Sight of Jerusalem.

27.  A startling picture of the state of society in Jerusalem might be
constructed from the materials supplied in Matt. xxiii.

28.  Detailed comparison of the experience of Paul with that of Luther:
their early religious ideas; the state of religion around them; their
failure to find peace and their sufferings of conscience; their
discovery of the righteousness of God.

On the religious associations of Paul's early life see the first 100
pages of Reuss' _Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age_.

31.  On the history of Christianity between the death of Christ and the
conversion of St. Paul see Dykes' _From Jerusalem to Antioch_.

34.  The question whether Paul was married.  His views on the place of
woman.

35.  Perhaps Acts xxvi. 11 may not imply that any of the Christians
yielded to his endeavors to make them blaspheme.


15.  _What was the Latin name for a town enjoying the political
privileges possessed by Tarsus?_

16.  _What are Paul's principal metaphors?_

17.  _Where does he make this boast?_

19.  _What was the Latin name for the Roman citizenship, and what
privileges did it include?  On what occasions is Paul recorded to have
used it?  On what occasions might he have been expected to use it, when
he omitted to do so?  What reasons may be given for the omission?_

20.  _Name friends of Paul who were engaged in the same trade as he._

21.  _Give Paul's quotations from the Greek poets.  Do you know the
authors he quoted from?  Explain Septuagint and Diaspora._

22.  _Where does Paul refer to the sophists and rhetoricians?_

26.  _Make a collection of Paul's quotations from the Old Testament,
showing whence each of them was taken._

28.  _What does Paul mean by the Law?_

32.  _Trace out the points of contact between the language and views of
Stephen's speech and those of Paul.  Explain--_

  "_Si Stephanus non orasset_,
  _Ecclesia Paulum non haberet._"

34.  _Where is it said that Paul voted in the Sanhedrim?_

45.  _Collect Paul's references to the persecution and bring out how
severe it was._



CHAPTER III

On Paul's mental processes before and at the time of his conversion see
Principal Rainy's lecture, already quoted.

The conversion of Paul is one of the strong apologetic positions of
Christianity.  See this worked out in Lyttelton's _Conversion of St.
Paul_.  But it might be worked out afresh on more modern lines.

40.  Principal Rainy, in the lecture above referred to, says that he
sees no evidence of such a conflict as this in Paul's mind; but what,
then, is the meaning of "It is hard for thee to kick against the
pricks"?

41.  The general tenor of the earliest Christian apologetic, as it is
to be found in the speeches of the Acts of the Apostles.

44.  Nothing could be more alien to the spirit of the New Testament
than to turn this round the other way, and, assuming that what Paul saw
was only a vision, argue that the other appearances of Christ, because
they are put on the same level, may have been only visions too.  This
is a mere stroke of dialectical cleverness, which shows no regard to
the obvious intention of the writers.


_There are three accounts of the conversion of Paul in the Acts.  What
is the significance of this reduplication in so small a book?
Enumerate the differences between these accounts, and explain them._

38.  _Prove that the first Christians called Christianity_ THE WAY,
_and explain the signification of this name._



CHAPTER IV

On the subject of this chapter see the works on Pauline Theology by
Pfleiderer, Bruce, Du Bose, Titius and Stevens, also the relevant
portions of any of the Handbooks of New Testament Theology--Weiss,
Reuss, Schmid, van Oosterzee, Beyschlag, Holtzmann, and Stevens.
Weiss' exposition is among the most solid and trustworthy.  He divides
Paulinism into four sections:--

I.  THE EARLIEST GOSPEL OF PAUL DURING THE HEATHEN MISSION (gathered
from Thessalonians).  One chapter--the Gospel as the Way of Deliverance
from Judgment.

II.  THE DOCTRINAL SYSTEM OF THE FOUR GREAT DOCTRINAL AND CONTROVERSIAL
EPISTLES (Corinthians, Romans, Galatians).  Ch. i. Universal Sinfulness
of Man; ch. ii. Heathenism and Judaism; ch. iii. Prophecy and
Fulfilment; ch. iv. Christology; ch. v. Redemption and Justification;
ch. vi. The New Life; ch. vii. The Doctrine of Predestination; ch.
viii. The Doctrine of the Church; ch. ix. The Last Things.

III.  THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE DOCTRINE IN THE EPISTLES WRITTEN IN PRISON
(Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, Philemon).  Ch. i. The Pauline
Foundations; ch. ii. Further Development of Doctrine.

IV.  THE TEACHING OF THE PASTORAL EPISTLES.  One chapter--Christianity
as Doctrine.

51.  Subject for class essay.  The Sources of St. Paul's Theology.

52.  Luther in the Wartburg.

54-65.  As these paragraphs are nothing but a paraphrase of Rom.
i.-viii., pupils ought to be asked to compare with them the
corresponding paragraphs of the Epistle.

56.  Compare Tholuck, The Moral Character of Heathendom.

65.  On Paul's Psychology see the monograph of Simon and the Handbooks
of Biblical Psychology by Delitzsch and Beck: also Heard, _The
Tripartite Nature of Man_, Laidlaw, _The Bible Doctrine of Man_, and
Dickson, _St. Paul's Use of the Terms Flesh and Spirit_.

67.  Compare Somerville, _St. Paul's Conception of Christ_, and
Knowling, _The Testimony of St. Paul to Christ_.


51.  _Where does Paul mention his journey to Arabia?_

56.  _What is the connection between moral and intellectual degeneracy?_

62.  _Where does Paul speak of the Gospel as a "mystery," and what does
he mean by this word?_

65.  _Does Paul divide human nature into two or into three sections?
Do you know the theological names for these alternatives?  Does Paul
regard the unregenerate man as possessing the part of human nature
which he calls "spirit"?_

67.  _Enumerate the incidents of Christ's earthly life referred to by
Paul._



CHAPTER V

On this subject see the first two chapters of Conybeare and Howson;
_New Testament Times_ of Hausrath or Schürer; Fairweather, _From the
Exile to the Advent_, Moss, _From Malachi to Matthew_.

72.  Subject of class essay: The Origin and Significance of the name
"Christian."


72.  _By what other names were the Christians called in New Testament
times, among themselves or among their enemies?_

78.  _What did the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews severally
contribute to Christianity?_



CHAPTER VI

The aim of this Handbook, as of _The Life of Jesus Christ_ in the same
series, being to show at a single glance the general course of the life
and the principal objects it touched, a good many details have been
omitted.  This is especially the case in this chapter and in chapter x.
The omissions cause those great features to stand out more prominently
which details are apt to obscure.  In this chapter an endeavor has been
made to show in this way what were the different regions into which the
apostle traveled, and what the peculiarities and the extent of the work
he did in each.  But in an extended Bible Class course the lessons will
naturally go more into detail, and perhaps the incidents which took
place in each town may generally form a lesson.  Here, therefore, and
at the beginning of chap. x., a few hints may be given of the
viewpoints for the lessons, in so far as these are not already supplied
in the text.

  Acts xiii. 1-12.  First Footsteps of Christian Missions.
    "    "   14-52.  _Antioch_.  Paul's Missionary Method.
    "   xiv. 1-6.  _Iconium_.  Among the Jews.
    "    "   6-20. _Lystra_.  Among the Heathens.
    "    "   21-28. Paul as a Pastor.
    "    xv. Paul as an Ecclesiastic.
  Acts  xvi. 1-6. The New Companion.
   "     "   6-10. Opening up Virgin Soil.
   "     "   12-40. _Philippi_.  Transfiguration and Disfiguration
                    of Humanity.
   "   xvii. 1-9. _Thessalonica_.  An Honorable Reproach.
   "    "    10-14. _Beroea_.  Rare Freedom from Prejudice.
   "    "    15-34. _Athens_.  The Gospel and Intellectual
                    Curiosity.
   "  xviii. 1-3. _Corinth_.  Paul's earthly Home.
   "    "    4-17. The Missionary's Discouragements
                   and Encouragements.
   "    "    23-28. A polished Shaft in God's Quiver.
   "    xix. _Ephesus_.  See the text.  Also, Conflict of
             Christianity with Vested Interests and
             Mob Violence.


79.  Howson's _Companions of St. Paul_.

81.  A minute inspection of Acts xiii. 9 will confirm the view here
given of the change of name, though it is difficult to get rid of the
idea that the conversion of the governor, who bore the same name, had
something to do with it.

84.  On the worship of the synagogue see Farrar's _Life of Christ_, i.
220.

89.  On the Council of Jerusalem, which took place between the first
and second journeys, see ch. ix.

93.  What is here said of the plan of the Acts explains still more
strikingly the meagerness of the record of the third journey.

97.  Beroea was to the south of the Via Egnatia.

99.  Subject of class essay: The Influence of Christianity on the Lot
of Woman.

103.  Subject of class essay: Paul at Athens.

104.  Subject of class essay: Paul and Socrates.

113.  A strong argument against the mythical theory of the miracles of
our Lord may be constructed from the paucity of the miracles attributed
to Paul.  If that age naturally wove miraculous legends round great
names, why did it not encircle Paul with a continuous web of miracle?
and why does the New Testament admit that the Baptist worked no miracle?

114.  See Ramsay, _Letters to the Seven Churches_.


79.  _Give a list of Paul's companions and friends mentioned in the New
Testament._

84.  _What were the charges generally brought against him before the
authorities?_

91.  _Where in his writings does he mention Barnabas and Mark?_

93.  _Give the places in Acts where the items of this catalogue are
recorded._

94.  _Mention other classical associations of this region._

98.  _What two kings of Macedonia are famous in history?_

102.  _Expand these allusions to Greek history._

103.  _Give a number of the names associated with the golden age of
Athens and mention what they were famous for._

108.  _Find out all the visions mentioned in Paul's life, and prove
that they were given him at the crises of his history._

110.  _Distinguish our Asia and Asia Minor from the Asia of the New
Testament._



CHAPTER VII

In the chronological table, p. 138, the dates of the Epistles have
already been given and the points of the history indicated where they
come in.  It is a pity the Epistles are not arranged in chronological
order in our Bibles.  Their characteristics may be mentioned:

  1 and 2 _Thessalonians_.  Simple beginnings.  Attitude
      to Christ's second coming.
  1 _Corinthians_.  Picture of an apostolic church.
  2 _Corinthians_.  Paul's portrait of himself.
  _Galatians_.  Vehement polemic against Judaizers.
  _Romans_.  Paul's gospel.
  _Philemon_.  Example of Christian courtesy.
  _Colossians_ and _Ephesians_.  Paul's later gospel.
  _Philippians_.  Picture of Roman imprisonment.
  1 _Timothy_ and _Titus_.  Form of the church.
  2 _Timothy_.  The last scenes.

Ramsay places _Galatians_ before 1 and 2 _Corinthians_; compare p. 139
above.

116.  Compare Shaw, _The Pauline Epistles_.

118.  On Paul's style see Farrar's Excursus at the close of vol. i.
The comparison of it to that of Thucydides is more dignified than that
of the text, but less true.

119.  Inspiration did not interfere with natural characteristics of
style.  It made the writer not less but more himself, while of course
it imparted to the products of his pen a divine value and authority.

120-127.  Howson's _Character of St. Paul_; Speer, _The Man Paul_;
Hausrath, 45-57; Baur's remarks (ii. 294 ff.) on his intellectual
character are very good.  But the principal sources are 2 Corinthians
and Acts xx.

122.  Farrar's treatment of Paul's bodily infirmities is a serious blot
on his book; for these are obtruded with a frequency and exaggeration
which produce an impression quite different from that made by the
references to them in Scripture.  This is still truer of Baring-Gould's
_Study of St. Paul_.  For a treatment of the same subject, realistic,
but full of sympathy and delicacy, see Monod.  Ramsay is of opinion
that the "thorn in the flesh" was chronic malarial fever.


122 ff.  _Illustrate these paragraphs fully from Scripture._

128.  _Compare Paul with Livingstone and other missionaries._



CHAPTER VIII

On this subject compare Neander's _Planting of Christianity_, Book ii.,
ch. 7, and Schaff's _Church History_; also Bannerman's _Church of
Christ_.  This chapter is only a piecing together of the information
scattered through 1 Corinthians.  It would be well to get pupils to
seek out the passages of the Epistle which correspond to the different
paragraphs.  A picture of a Pauline church of a later date might be
compiled in the same way from the Pastoral Epistles.

136.  The doctrine of the Holy Spirit was revealed "at sundry times and
in divers manners," and the complete doctrine is to be obtained by
uniting the representations of the various writers of Scripture.  In
the New Testament there are four phases--1. In the Synoptical Gospels
the Holy Spirit is set forth in His influence on the human nature of
Christ; 2. in the Acts and Paul, as the power for founding the Church
and converting the world; 3. in Paul as the principle of the new life
of Christians; 4. in John as the Comforter.

138.  Compare the irregularities of other periods of vast change,
_e.g._, the Reformation.

144.  On the extent to which an authoritative ecclesiastical system is
given in the New Testament compare _Jus Divinum Presbyterii_ and
Hooker's _Ecclesiastical Polity_.

130.  _Give the names of the principal games of ancient times, derived
from the places where they were held._

131.  _Where are churches mentioned as meeting in the houses of
individuals?_

132.  _Explain the words "barbarian," "Scythian," in Col. iii. 11._

135.  _What modern divine endeavored to revive these phenomena, and
what is the name of the church he founded?  What is the meaning of the
word "charism"?  Were the tongues of Pentecost the same as those of 1
Corinthians?  Give instances in which New Testament prophets did
predict future events._



CHAPTER IX

The criticism which seeks to disintegrate the New Testament writings
and set the apostles against one another is founded on a revival of the
claim of the Judaizers that their propaganda had the sanction of Peter
and the other original apostles.  In a Handbook like this it is
impossible to discuss at any length the Tübingen Theory.  But some of
its points are silently met in the text; and the whole theory is
answered by an attempt to give a view of the course of the controversy
which covers all the facts.  The distinction drawn in paragraphs 159
ff. between the central question in dispute and a subordinate aspect of
the controversy will be found to clear up many intricacies.  Compare
Sorley's _Jewish Christians and Judaism_.

This chapter is full of references to passages in Acts and Galatians,
which pupils ought to be asked to produce.



CHAPTER X

Viewpoints for lessons on details omitted or only lightly referred to
in the text:

  Acts   xx.  4-16.  Paul the Hirer of Laborers for Christ's
              Vineyard: the Unwearied Preacher (_Troas_).
   "     "    17-38.  The Man of Heart (_Miletus_).
   "   xxii.  Final Effort to save his Country.
   "  xxiii.  1-10.  In the Dock where he had placed others.
   "  xxiii.  22-27.  The Preacher of Righteousness.
   "   xxvi.  The Inspired Student.
   "  xxvii.  Paul as a Ruler of Men.
   " xxviii.  The benevolence of Nature and that of Grace (_Malta_).

171.  See notes on ch. iv., p. 141.

The authenticity of Ephesians and Colossians can only be denied by
ignoring the impression of majesty and profundity which they have made
on the greatest minds.  (See the Introductions in Meyer and Alford.)
What other mind of those ages except Paul's could have erected a
structure so magnificent on the very foundations of the Epistle to the
Romans? or in what other mind was there such a union of the doctrinal
and the ethical?

In John's writings the relation of believers to Christ is illustrated
by a far higher comparison: it is compared to the union of Father and
Son in the Deity.

172.  See Ernesti: _The Ethic of Paul_; also Juncker.

174.  See Smith's _Voyage of St. Paul_; also Sir William Ramsay's
article on Roads and Travel in Hastings' _Dictionary of the Bible_,
vol. v.

176.  Burrus, the Praetorian Prefect.  So Conybeare and Howson; but
Ramsay, following Mommsen, holds the officer to have been the princeps
peregrinorum, whose quarters lay on the Coelian Hill.

On the various kinds of imprisonment in Roman law see Ramsay's _Roman
Antiquities_, ch. ix.

177-182.  The materials for this account of Paul's prison life at Rome
are chiefly gathered from the Epistle to the Philippians.

184.  On the genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles see essay by Findley
in Sabatier's _The Apostle Paul_.  The comparative lack of doctrinal
matter in them is accounted for by the fact that they were written to
ministers well acquainted with his doctrinal system.

188.  At Tre Fontane, to the south of Rome, the traditional scene of
the execution is still pointed out; and not far off stands St.
Paul's-outside-the-Walls, one of the most gorgeous churches in the
world.


164.  _Trace out the different collections which Paul is recorded to
have been engaged with._

166.  _What were the courts of the temple; and what was the name of the
Roman fortress which overlooked them?_

171.  _How often does the phrase "in Christ" (or "in" with pronouns
referring to Christ) occur in Ephesians?_

172.  _Give examples from Paul's writings of the application of great
principles to small duties._

175.  _Give the names and localities of other great Roman roads.
Describe a Roman triumph._

179.  _Narrate the story of Onesimus, gathering it from the Epistle to
Philemon._

184.  _Explain the name of the Pastoral Epistles._





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