fytmll Wimmxi^ Jibratg THE GIFT OF ..l'4^^Jl^)ra«dlu>tx^ 'SWoua/tC- .A..^i^.4-.ft5- *'.fc/()«:. The date shows when this volume was taken. To renew this book copy the call No. Jipd give to i*.' ■ ^^^ .. ' the >librar^an* y -. '---.,. \~?^ '^^^ '^^" TOME USE rules: < 1 . u ?;i!^ — -~^9' *" Books lubject to Recall. •' § instruction or research are returnable, within 4 weeks. „ ' ' Volumes of periodi- cals and of pamphlets are held in Uie library , as' much as possible. For special purposes they are given out for a. limited time.- Borrowers - should not use their library ^ "privileges for the bene- fit of other perrons. / ■ Books not needed'^ during recess periods should be returned to the library, or arrange- ments made for their return during borrow- er'sabsence, if wanted. Books needed by ' more than one person are held on the reserve . list. Books of special value and gift'books, wben the giver wishes ' it, are not allowed to . circulate. ' Readers are asked to report all cases of books marked or muti- lated. Do not deface books by marks and wrltlne-. Cornell University Library BS2655.P3 C43 Pastoral teaching of St. Paul .[J',^ ■|n|'|'s 3 1924 029 293 706 olln BS ?3 (Lf3 THE PASTORAL TEACHING OF ST. PAUL BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE SOCIAL TEACHING OF ST. PAUL. Price 3s. fid. THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, Fetter Lane, London, E.C. THE PASTORAL TEACHING OF ST. PAUL I HIS MINISTERIAL IDEALS W. EDWARD CHADWICK D.D. (Cambridge), BTSc. (Victoria) LATE FOUNDATION SCHOLAR OF JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE' VICAR OF ST. GILES', NORTHAMPTON AUTHOR OF 'THE SOCIAL TEACHING OF ST. I'AUL " : "THE FIRST CHURCH WORKERS" ETC. ETC. 'OvSels /mXKov IlaiXov rbv "Kpiarbv riydTrriv . 331 CHAPTER IX. ST. PAUL ON PROPHECY. The subject of New Testament prophecy demands more study than it has yet received .... 333 Contents xxi PAGE The prophecy, as the reUgion, of the Old and New Testa- ments in all essentials the same .... 334 Religion implies a revelation of the Divine Will : a universal religion implies a universal means of communication of that Will and a universal capacity for receiving it . 335 As the conception of religion rises, the appeal of religion is more and more to the highest human faculties . . 335 Evidence of the existence of "prophecy" throughout the period of the New Testament . . . • 337 Prophecy an expression, implying a revelation, of the will of God 338 By St. Paul it is always closely connected with the Holy Spirit and His gifts ..... 338 " Prophets " in St. Paul, always next after " apostles " . 340 "Prophecies" in i Tim. i. 18, "prophecy" in i Tim. iv. 14 . . .340 St. Paul on the use of prophecy : our need of more " spiritual " preaching . . . . . . -341 Detailed examination of prophecy in i Cor. xiv. 3-6, 24, 25, 32. [Parallel between prophets in the O.T. and scientific discoverers and teachers of to-day] . . • 34i Prophets in Ephesians : (a) ii. 20. The essential unity of the Church of (i) the O.T., (2) the N.T., (3) to-day : the Head in heaven : the body on earth : organs of expression of the will of the Head necessary now as ever, (b) iii. 5 ff. Revealers of the unfolding mystery : the mystery still being unfolded, therefore the revealer still necessary. {c) iv. II. The prophet's part in the equipment of the saints, this also necessary now, as always . . . 349 The need of more attention at the present time to the higher functions of ministry : we, partly from force of circum- stances, too apt to be absorbed in the lower . -353 CHAPTER X. ST. PAUL ON WISDOM. ■ " Wisdom," according to St. Paul, essential to the Christian, especially so for those in positions of responsibility : his insistence on this both direct and indirect . . 356 xxii Contents What is the true, the Divine " wisdom " ? special care needed in the use of the word . . . ■ ■ 35^ " Wisdom " in the O.T. and N.T. always implies ability and skill, which may be physical, mechanical, intellectual, moral .....•• 361 The need of wisdom by the Church and its ministers . . 363 The difference between the " wisdom of God " and the true wisdom of man ...... 3^4 True wisdom in man a moral quality implying humility and obedience .....•• 3^5 Passages showing that wisdom means skill in living : (a) from St. Paul, {b) from the Acts, {c) from the Gospels . . 366 Examination of i Cor. i. 22 ff., i. 30 ff. : St. Paul a Realist : the sources and tendencies of Nominalistic Ethics to-day . 369 The need for a more adequate " moralising " of religion. Col. ii. I flf. ; Eph. iii. 8. Christ the Divine Mystery, Truth, Ideal, and the Incarnation of the Divine Wisdom . 372 The " inexplorable wealth of the Christ " is " the treasures of wisdom " : the dispensation of these the task of the minister ....... 373 The revelation of the Divine Wisdom in the physical sphere, through the discoveries of science : the application of results to the service of man . . . -375 The need of similar efforts in the moral and spiritual sphere by Christ's ministers, promising similar results : the rendering of a still higher and greater service to man . 376 Discoveries in psychology and sociology : man's welfare dependent on knowledge of their laws : obedience to these laws (which are Divine) man's true wisdom . 376 The need of training for the clergy in these fields of know- ledge, and of more earnest study in them . . . 378 Right conduct the ultimate aim of the pastor : the need for him to give more adequate teaching upon the art of living, founded on a true science and philosophy of life . 379 [Additional Note on /xdvm ao<^& Qea in Rom. xvi. 27] . . 380 Epilogue ....... 383 Index to Scripture Quotations .... 387 INTRODUCTION THE PASTORAL TEACHING OF ST. PAUL INTRODUCTION. iva afyrios if 6 tov GeoC avdpairos, irpos nav epyov dyadbv i^pruTfiivos. — 2 TiM. iii. 17- carai (TKevos fls Tifirfv, rj-yiaiTixivov, f(j)(p7]aTov t& SecTTrorr], els irav €pyop dyaOou r]Totp.a(r[j.evov . — 2 TiM. ii. 21, T^v hiaKOviav (tov 7r\rjpo(ji6prj(rov . — 2 TiM. iv. 5- During recent years tlie standard of public opinion with regard to the qualifications necessary for a due discharge of the various functions of the Christian ministry, and also with regard to the responsibility which those should feel who enter this ministry, has steadily risen. This is apparent both within the Church and outside it. Within the Church, indeed within "all the Churches," we have witnessed a sharpening of conscience as to the standard of efficiency to be required from those permitted to discharge those sacred functions, upon whose adequate discharge 2 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul the welfare of the whole Christian body in great measure depends. Outside "the Churches" the Christian ministry is the subject of a criticism which every year seems to become more searching and more exacting. This criticism may be regarded as a demand that at least the immense responsibilities inevitably connected with this office shall be more fully realised. All this is entirely for good ; and the world can do the Church no greater service than to insist that both those who have entered the ministerial calling and those who are preparing to enter it should "demand of themselves." To help those who would try both to make and to meet this demand — that is, who desire to increase their ministerial efficiency — many efforts have been made, and new efforts are constantly being made by all sections of the Christian Church. There is an obvious reason for this. The popula- tion as a whole is becoming far better educated than in the past. It is therefore essential that if the Church, in the widest sense of the term, is to be a competent guide and teacher of the people, it must possess a ministry fully qualified to perform both these most important services. With the growing demand for efficiency in those who occupy any kind of a position of responsibility, inefficiency will, quite rightly, be no more en- dured in the Christian ministry than in any other responsible walk of life. Introduction 3 At the old universities, honour schools of theology have been established, and to some of the new universities a faculty of theology has already been attached. The various religious bodies now maintain a considerable number of theological colleges, both for graduates and non-graduates. The standard of knowledge required by the bishops from candidates for ordination has also to some extent been raised ; and recently, by different Churches and schools of thought, many earnest appeals have been made for more liberal pecuniary assistance in order to give a longer period of training with a view to obtaining a more scholarly race of ministers. Another evidence of this same movement is found in the large number of books upon Pastoral Theology or upon Ministerial Work which have been published in recent years. Some of these books are quite general, while others either deal with the work in particular spheres, or treat of particular functions which the Christian minister must discharge. Thus we have books upon the work in the town, the country, and the suburban parish : we have also books dealing more particularly with the studies, the preaching, the teaching, and the pastoral visitation of the clergy. Many of these books embody the lessons of long and wide experience, and most of them will be found exceedingly helpful not only by those about to enter the ministry, or by those 4 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul recently ordained, but also by older men. It is not sufficient to aim at, or even to reach ideals : these have also to be maintained. For the ministerial life, if it is to be maintained at a consistently high level, needs constant in- spiration and constant self-discipline ; and self- discipline presupposes self-examination. Again, self-examination, if it is to be efficacious, implies some high standard of reference external to ourselves. If it is true that " by our perseverance we shall win our souls," it is equally true that only by our own perseverance may we hope to win the souls of others. We need something more than the mere possession of clear and lofty principles, which may be regarded as rules for life and action : we need also to test constantly our own practice — in study, in teaching, and in dealing with individuals — by these principles. The true test of the value of any book upon the ministerial life or upon pastoral work is the help which it gives to us in doing this. Such a book should then furnish us both with inspirations to effort and with lofty standards of conduct. Consequently, in most books dealing with the ministerial office or with any particular function of this, we shall find that the rules or principles they contain are drawn more or less directly from the New Testament. The advice which the writers presume to give is based upon the teaching and example of our Lord and of His Introduction 5 apostles. This is inevitable if we regard our Lord as our one perfect and complete Ideal, and if we have any real belief in the inspiration of the New Testament. For the Christian minister the standard of our Lord must remain for all time the perfect or ideal standard ; and the teaching of the New Testament writers upon " the salvation of souls " must ever remain, not only our chief authority for this task, but an authority besides which all others sink into insignificance. Our Lord's earthly ministry, regarded as a discharge of the pastoral office, has in compara- tively recent years been examined and explained in more than one book of great value. The study of such books cannot fail to be useful to those engaged in ministerial work, for in our Lord's conduct and teaching we have clearly set before us once for all the primary motives and the fundamental principles which must always inspire and guide those who would really and permanently help their fellow-men. But our Lord's ministry in human form on earth was exercised within a somewhat limited circle, and the applications of His principles recorded in the Gospels are comparatively few in number. After a study of our Lord's own example, it is surely in the study of the lives and teaching of those whom He specially chose and com- missioned to carry on His work that we may hope to find further applications of His principles, 6 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul and especially when these men found themselves face to face with a greater variety of both needs and circumstances. Of no other among those specially commissioned by our Lord have we so full a knowledge as we have of St. Paul : ^ and no one among them more zealously discharged the various functions of the ministerial office : no one brought to it richer qualifications, not only of zeal — the characteristic quality of his nature — but of education, and of that breadth of sympathy which, humanly speak- ing, only large knowledge and a wide experience of life can give : lastly, no one saw more clearly the universal applicability of the principles of Christianity — that it contained a gospel for the world, that in it was enshrined a philosophy and rule of life for the whole human race, and that it must ultimately overstep all barriers of class and caste and nationality and race. In our two authorities for St. Paul's life and teaching — the Acts and his Epistles — we have an immense wealth of material for forming a clear conception of how he regarded the work to which he believed himself to have been divinely called, and to which, from the time of his conversion, he devoted all his energies. If anyone wishes to see how great this material is, let him read through the latter part of the Acts of the Apostles and then through ^ " Paulus ist die hellste Personlichkeit in der Geschichte des Urchristentums." Harnack, Das Wesen,-^. no. Introduction 7 St. Paul's Epistles with this object in view, and I venture to assert that he will be astonished to find how extraordinarily rich this material actually is, especially when we consider the limited extent of these various writings. The Acts of the Apostles ^ was evidently written by a warm admirer of St. Paul, by one whose hero St. Paul literally was. This does not necessarily imply that the writer of the Acts idealised ^ the portrait which he painted, it only implies that he watched carefully and untiringly every action and word of the man he so greatly loved and admired. We can also see how, not only from completeness of sympathy, but actually through being himself engaged in the same work,* the writer was able to understand St. Paul, to enter into his motives, to see why he acted as he did. The account of St. Paul's work in "Acts" is full of characteristic actions and sayings, it contains many minute details, sketched in by a single word or a phrase,* and often revealing 1 I assume that St. Luke was the author of "Acts.'' The evidence which has led two scholars of such eminence as Adolf Hamack and Sir W. M. Ramsay to this position may be seen clearly set forth in the Luke the Physician of the first, and in the Pauline and other Studies (pp. 191-200) of the second. ^ " The picture which he has given of St. Paul is not, according to the ideas of ancient days, such as a eulogist would draw, but is an historical portrait P Luke the Physician, p. 137. *> " He joined St. Paul at once in the capacity of a fellow worker." iXaXovnev. Acts xvi. 13. Luke the Physician, p. 147. St. Paul includes him among his trwepyol in Philem. 24. * e.g. a-uvelx"" '■? ^oy?- Acts xviii. 5. vg. instabat verbo. 8 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul more by implication than by elaborate description, yet telling us far more about him than we should have learnt from a whole page of description by a less well-informed or less sympathetic writer.^ St. Paul's work, as it is described for us both in the Acts and in his Epistles, was evidently a continuous warfare, not only against such opposi- tion as all must expect to meet who enter upon missionary work, but against misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and persecution from those who ought to have understood, even to have furthered his great purpose. Thus, besides having, as a Christian missionary and teacher, to preach and explain the gospel and to strengthen the faith of those who accepted it, St. Paul had constantly to meet such charges as those of inconsistency ^ and self-seeking. In addition to the direct and aggressive work of propagating Christianity St. Paul had again and again, to defend his own honour and purity of purpose.^ These personal attacks St. Paul refuted by a clear declaration of his motives, by an explanation ^ " No one has yet been able to draw a convincing portrait of St. Paul from his Epistles alone . . . the portrait given in the Acts of the Apostles has always remained a concurring factor, because the abundance of actual fact which is therein afforded still makes it possible to pass behind the external action to the inward motive." Luke the Physician, p. 139. ^ Ramsay, Galatians, p. 256 ff., St. Paul as a " Judaistic " preacher. * e.g. 2 Cor. i. 17, where the words eXa^pi'a, and to Nai vdi koI to Ou ov, and ii. 17, Kmrrikivovris tov \6yov tov Oeov, evidently repeat charges brought against him. Introduction 9 of his methods, and especially by revealing his life's history — including the history of his religious convictions.^ When principles were attributed to him which were not his, he replied by making known his real principles ; when his honesty was questioned, he answered by explaining his methods ; when his sincerity was impugned, he pointed to what he had done and suffered for the cause of Christ. In short, St. Paul was by his opponents driven to frequent apologiae^ pro vita sua which contain a remarkably full self-revelation. To this constant compulsory self-revelation we may say that we owe the greater part of our know- ledge of St. Paul's ministerial methods and ideals. St. Paul was the last man in the world to advertise himself gratuitously, or to regard anything he did as an opportunity for self- glorification : but, for the sake of the truth he preached, and for the sake of the souls of those to whom he ministered, he must refute charges which, though made against himself personally, would, if not refuted, injure the cause he had so much at heart. If I may for a moment anticipate a subject with ^ e.g. Gal. i. 13 -ii. 21, upon which vide Ramsay's notes: Phil. iii. 2 ff. 2 The most complete of these is undoubtedly the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. On the charges against St. Paul which occa- sioned it see Plummet's Introduction, p. xvii. f. It is because it is so largely concerned with refuting these charges that this Epistle contains perhaps our most valuable revelation of St. Paul's ministerial ideals. lo The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul which later I hope to deal more at length, I would say that in repelling these personal attacks and in writing about himself — a process necessitated by these attacks — St. Paul was placed in a dilemma in which many a Christian minister finds himself placed to-day. On the one hand he recognises that, compared with the necessity of spreading the gospel, his own importance is of no account. The work is everything, he is nothing. When the matter in hand concerns the propagation of the truth, the advancement of the cause of Christ, to consider the feelings of the individual worker as of any moment would be a direct contradiction of a principle which Christ laid down and upon which He always acted.^ On the other hand, human nature being as it is, by God's wisdom or ordering, St. Paul could not shut his eyes to the fact that it is the personal, indeed, if I may coin a word, the "particular-personal" influence which is of all instruments the strongest for effecting the purpose he wished to accomplish. And the paradox cannot be entirely resolved by saying that this personal influence means nothing more than the " particular - personal " influence sanctified, strengthened, and enlarged in or through Christ or the Holy Spirit. Such a theory will not explain the personal-magnetic influence of men like Mahomet, or Napoleon, or Bismarck. The solution demands another 1 e.g. Phil. ii. 5 ff., cp. St. Luke ix. 53 ff. Introduction 1 1 explanation. There does seem to be an influence of personality upon personality apart from religious or moral qualities, as well as one which is mainly due to the possession of these, or which may be enormously strengthened by these. And this purely personal influence does seem to be capable of being strengthened or increased. Herein lies one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all the responsibilities of life. For the sake of the cause of Christianity the Christian minister must actually strengthen this personal influence, this power by which he attaches others to himself. But while he does this he must recognise that he is enormously increasing his responsibility for using this influence in a right direction, and guiding it towards a right object beyond himself. While he seeks to attach others to himself he must see that he attaches both himself and them more firmly to Christ. But to resume my argument. For reasons too many to enumerate we shall find that, if we take those directly commissioned by our Lord, there is no one among these from whom we can learn what must be the ideals of the ministerial life, and the essential qualifications for pastoral work, as we can from St. Paul. A study of St. Paul's life and teaching, made for the purpose of learning these, has I believe another strong claim upon our attention at the present time :— 1 2 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul Every man who takes up earnestly and whole- heartedly the life and work of a minister of Christ sooner or later discovers, either by a growing knowledge of his own nature and endowments/ or from an increasingly intelligent perception into the particular circumstances in which he finds himself placed, that, while neither consciously nor willingly neglecting any essential or even im- portant duty, he yet comes, in practice, to pay special attention to the discharge of certain particular functions as of special value. Again, no careful student of the history of Christianity can fail to have noticed that at different times we find more or less importance attached to particular parts or aspects of the minister's work. At one time the chief stress is laid upon the work of dealing with the individual soul, upon bringing home to the individual conscience the sense of sin, and of the need of our standing individually in a position of right relationship to God. At another time we find special stress laid upon the idea of the Church as a Divine Society, as the ideal society in which the mutual relationships of men may find their perfect and complete realisation. At one time 1 Unusquisque igitur suum ingenium noverit, et ad id se applicet quod sibi aptum elegerit. Itaque quid sequatur, prius consideret . . . Quo etenim unumquemque suum ducit ingenium, aut quod officium decet, id majore impleter gratia. Sed id cum in omni vita difficile, turn in nostra actu difficillimum est. Ambrose, De Off. Ministr., Bk. i. cap. xliv. Introduction 13 the Church appears to be engrossed with questions of organisation ; at another time her chief interest seems to lie in the purity of her doctrine, or the orthodoxy of her teaching ; at yet another time she seems to be chiefly engaged in considering and defining her true relationship to the State or civil power. And what is true of the Church is, of course, specially true of her ministers — her official leaders, who are, natur- ally, also her spokesmen. At one time these seem to be primarily engaged in philanthropic effort, in trying to ameliorate the material conditions of the poor ; at another time they seem chiefly bent upon proving to the world the strength of their position according to the authority of historic continuity ; at another time their chief interest seems to centre in showing the importance of public worship being conducted according to ancient precedent, that is in the details of ceremonial being arranged after certain tradi- tional methods. From a careful study of St. Paul's life and writings, made in order to find inspiration and guidance for the ministerial life as a whole, I have no hesitation in asserting that some spheres or parts of ministerial activity do appear to have been regarded by him as of special importance ; and that, both directly and indirectly, he does seem to lay special stress on the necessity of the enthusiastic performance of certain functions of 14 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul the ministerial life. Thus we may, I think, say- that St. Paul does not forbid what I may term "specialising" in that life, and that we may, from his teaching and his example, find at least support for laying stress on the performance of particular duties, these being chosen by us, or commended to us partly through our own con- sciousness of particular gifts or endowments, partly by our consciousness of particular needs in the sphere in which we are working. I would go further than this, and would venture to urge that the ministerial functions upon which St. Paul seems to lay particular stress,-^ the activities which he seems to regard as of special importance, are such as the Church, if she is to be the true guide and helper of the people, stands to-day in peculiar need ; but which, in practice, the average minister at present seems only too apt to regard as of quite secondary importance. It has been stated that if we take the three great teachers of the New Testament, we shall find that in the early ages of the Church the greatest importance was attached to St. Peter, that during the Reformation the appeal was mainly to St. Paul, while in these later days the Church needs especially to meditate upon the teaching of St. John. There is doubtless a measure of truth in these ^ e.g. those in i Tim. iv. 13. IntroducHon 15 somewhat sweeping assertions, but they are far from containing the whole truth. It would be more correct to say that in no age can the Church afford to neglect any of the great presentations of the faith, and that she must at all times bear in mind the many-sidedness of the Christian life which is expressed in the New Testament, and is there presented to her as a perpetual admoni- tion. We may recall the saying of M. Renan, quoted by Matthew Arnold, "After having been for three hundred years . . . the Christian doctor par excellence, St. Paul is now coming to the end of his reign." But when we survey the needs of the present, and, as far as we can fore- see them, those of the immediate future, we shall be inclined to hope and believe that Matthew Arnold's own opinion is much more likely to be true : " The reign of the real St. Paul is only beginning, his fundamental ideas will have an influence in the future greater than any which they have yet had — an influence proportioned to their correspondence with a number of the deepest and most permanent facts of human nature itself"^ First and foremost among the " facts " of human nature we may put the needs of human character. And I believe that one reason of the great value of St. Paul's teaching arises from his clear insight into these needs, and also from his conviction 1 St. Paul and Protestantism, pp. i, 2. 1 6 The Pastoral' Teaching of St. Paul that in the " Gospel," using the term as a synonym for Christianity, lies the divinely ordained means for their supply. But, leaving the general needs of human nature, let us first try to fix our attention upon what experience teaches us to be the specially urgent needs both of man and of society at the present time. Then let us consider what qualities seem to be most generally wanting in much of the ministerial work which is being done to-day. For this work should surely have as one of its primary objects the supply of these needs — that is, of those defects in character to whose absence so many of our personal and social difficulties are due. An earnest effort to answer these questions will, I think, convince us, first, that to a great extent it is just those functions of the ministerial office upon which St. Paul does lay so much stress, which will supply these needs ; and, second, that unfortunately these are the very functions in whose adequate discharge the majority, especially of the younger clergy, seem to be failing to qualify themselves. In consequence we find that neither the needs of the Church nor the needs of the world are receiving that due supply upon which efficiency, and so welfare, depends. I. First and foremost among present needs for the moral improvement of the people I should put that of "sound learning," of trustworthy Introduction ij knowledge, and this in regard mainly to four objects: — ist, our own nature; 2nd, God; 3rd, our present immediate circumstances (the condi- tion, and tendencies, and movements of the whole existing fabric of society and of social relation- ships) ; 4th, history/ No one can study St. Paul's writings without noticing the immense stress which he laid, both directly and indirectly, both by precept and example, upon the teaching function of the Christian ministry.^ Again, a true man's prayers reveal his deepest desires and his highest aspirations ; and a true man will make every effort to accomplish and effect what he prays for. In almost every one of St. Paul's prayers we find him making petition for growth in knowledge in his converts.^ And it is not always with regard to the amount or content of their knowledge that he prays, it is rather that growth^ in the apprehension of truth may proceed in them. I may mention in passing that more than once, when St. Paul speaks of 7i/wcri9 as a valuable or useful possession or instrument, '^ Out of 24 occurrences of yvapi^eiv in the N.T. 18 occur in St. Paul : of 29 iilstances of yvacris, 23 are in St. Paul : of 20 instances of eTrlyvaxns, 15 are in St. Paul : yivaxrKeLv occurs 48 times in St. Paul's Epistles. ^ Acts XV. 35, xviii. 11, xx. 20, xxi. 28, xxviii. 31 ; i Cor. iv. 17 ; Col. i. 28, iii. 16 ; I Tim. iv. 11, vi. 2, etc 2 e.^. Eph. i. 17, 18, iii. 18, 19 ; Phil. i. 9 ; Col. i. 9, 10. See chapter on "St. Paul's Prayers," p. 271. * e.g. Eph. iii. 19, yvwvai . . . yvaxreas, " to know that which never can be known " (Westcott) ; Phil. i. 9, fiaXKov koL /iaAXov jrepia-creiri iv iinyvaxrei ; Col. i. 10, av^avofievoi rfj iTriyvaxrei. 2 1 8 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul he leaves quite undefined the object of know- ledge ^ — a proof of his high regard for knowledge generally — as an endowment of the Christian life. To encourage growth in knowledge, and to assist it by dispensing the highest knowledge through adequate teaching, is evidently to St. Paul a primary responsibility of the Christian minister, indeed of every Christian.^ But who with any wide acquaintance with the actual condition of things would dare to assert that these obligations, first, of constantly acquiring and assimilating, and secondly, of dispensing and of qualifying them- selves to dispense the highest and most essential of all knowledge are generally recognised, or are, in any sense of the word, adequately discharged by Christian ministers to-day ? Of course we shall not fail to notice that in the stress which St. Paul lays upon the teaching function of the ministry he is only following closely in the foot- steps of our Lord. To the supreme importance which our Lord attached to the teaching office, especially by His own personal example, the gospel record is one continuous witness. 2. Another great need at the present time, if the work of the Christian minister is to be done efficiently, is that he shall be much more intimately 1 Rom. XV. 14 ; I Cor. i. S ; 2 Cor. vi. 6, viii. 7. * Eph. i. 17, Tryev/io . . . dnoKoki^lfeas. " It is a teaching Spirit rather than a teachable spirit which the Apostle asks that they may have." Arm. Robinson z« ioc. Introduction 19 acquainted, not merely with the external and material conditions, but with the thoughts and aspirations of all the various classes or sections of the community. I am quite ready to admit that the majority of the clergy know much of the lives and thoughts of those who attend a place of worship, even of the homes and conduct of that much larger number who do not. And these, it must be remembered, belong to all the various so-called " classes " or grades of society. But what is the knowledge possessed by the aver- age clergyman of the real intellectual difficulties of the great number of men who cannot accept Christianity as it is ordinarily presented to them in the pulpit? Or what is his knowledge of that very different class who seem to live for money, for pleasure, or society ? Or, again, what does he know of that apparently rapidly growing number of men, at the other extremity of the social world, who often spend at least some portion of Sunday in reading socialistic or " labour " literature, or in discussing problems of politics or economics ? Now if we study either the Acts or the Epistles carefully, and try to pierce below the surface of the writing, we are constantly struck with St. .Paul's intimate knowledge of the conditions, indeed of the " atmosphere " in which those are living whom he is addressing. And as our knowledge of the first century increases and we 20 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul are able to appreciate better the many allusions ^ in St. Paul's Epistles we shall probably add largely to the numerous proofs of this which we already possess. It was because St. Paul knew so deeply and so comprehensively the actual conditions of his age that he was able to use these very conditions so "wisely" in his great scheme of the Christianising of the Empire.^ Here again we may notice a likeness between St. Paul and our Lord, for the Evangelists frequently, both explicitly and implicitly, draw attention to our Lord's knowledge, not only of individuals,^ but of the thoughts,* the aspirations,® the peculiar temptations and sins * of the various sections of the community. 3. It has again and again been stated of recent years that while we have witnessed a wider diffusion of Christian sentiment, and, to some extent, a more general recognition of the claim of a Christian standard to be the standard of life, we have at the same time lost that sense of the deeper truths and the stronger convictions of Christianity which many of our forefathers ^ As a proof of the value of increased knowledge of the conditions of the first century let anyone read the Epistle to the Galatians, first by the aid of one of the older commentaries and then by the aid of Ramsay's Historical Co7nmentary on that Epistle. 2 See Ramsay's essay on "The Statesmanship of Paul" in his Pauline and other Studies. ^ e.g. St. John i. 48, ii. 24, vi. 64. * St. Luke vi. 8. « St. John vi. 15. ° St.-Matt. xxiii. 13, 15, 23, 27, 29. Introduction 2 1 possessed. We carefully survey, widely lament, and from time to time attack the patent evils of society, that is as "imperfections" which may be largely remedied by further legislation ; but we forget that these are only symptoms of a deep-seated disease. St. Paul will show us the futility of such a method by itself. To study him is to be constantly reminded of the stress which he lays upon the reality, the power, the deadly effects of sin} This want of the con- viction both of the reality and of the power of sin is the source of most of the evils which abound to-day. Beneath the "phenomena" of evil which were sufficiently patent in such cities as Antioch, or Corinth, or Ephesus, St. Paul saw, pointed to, and rebuked sin as the chief cause of them all. This cause must be removed, and for its permanent removal St. Paul was convinced that the only efficacious instrument was the gospel. Who would venture to assert that Christian ministers generally, either in preaching or teaching, lay the same stress now as St. Paul laid upon this fundamental cause of both personal and social evils ? Has it not been said, and with ^ "It is one thing to say that the times are out of joint, to reckon with men's selfishness and vanity and greed as disagree- able but inevitable instances of life, to admit our own foibles and frailties, and to say that we know we are not what we ought to be. It is quite another thing to take the candle from Christ and look sin, within us and without us, straight in the face. ... St. Paul says we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness." Bp. Talbot, Aspects of Christian Truth, p. 222. 22 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul much truth, that the general consciousness of sin has become greatly weakened ? Is the "ministry " wholly guiltless for this? Are we not all too ready to attack symptoms, and to blame cir- cumstances and environment, instead of boldly exposing and attacking the disease at its root ? 4. To-day we hear widespread complaints of the want of " spirit," of " energy," and of " power/' both in Christian life and in the work of the Churches. One of the outstanding features of St. Paul's teaching is the importance he attaches to the presence,-' the power, ^ the work^ of the Holy Spirit, which to him is the Spirit of Christ,* if not actually identical * with the Christ of faith. Is there, I ask, any absolutely a priori reason why the presence of the Holy Spirit should be less real, or the power of the Holy Spirit less strong, now than in St. Paul's day ? Once more, Is the ministry to-day sufficiently alive to the necessity of cultivating the conditions upon which both the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit seem to be dependent ? The chiefest , of all these is of course the careful maintenance of the closest possible union with Christ. When we hear the ministry blamed for want of " spiritual power," may it not be that the conditions whereby ^ Rom. viii. 14, 16 ; i Cor. iii. 16, vi. 19, xii. 13 ; 2 Cor. vi. 6, etc. ^ Rom. V. 5, viii. 26 ; i Cor. xii. 8 ; Gal. iii. 2, etc. ^ I Cor. ii. 10, 13 ; 2 Cor. iii. 3 ; Gal. v. 17, 22, 25, etc. * Rom. viii. 9 ; Gal. iv. 6. "2 Cor. iii. 17. Introduction 23 this power is assimilated, maintained, and dis- pensed, are wanting ? Upon these conditions we may learn much from St. Paul.^ 5. Lastly, I believe that a careful study of St. Paul's ministerial teaching and ideals may give us a more true sense of the real proportion^ of the relative importance among things which actually do interest, or should interest us. The following is a useful exercise for ministers of Christ : — First, to read slowly through an Epistle of St. Paul, noticing carefully, both in doctrine and ethics, the points upon which he lays special stress : secondly, to think over what we have spent time and energy upon during, say, the last month. The difference between St. Paul's "judgment values " and our own may be, indeed very probably will be, very great. But this difference will not consist chiefly in the objects to be attained ; it will be the difference in the means employed to attain these objects that will be found most striking. These five examples, in each of which it seems as if a return to St. Paul's teaching and methods of work is required to-day, form only a very small proportion of the lessons we may learn from a study of his ministerial ideals. Many other ^ Upon this subject there is much that will be found most useful in the chapter upon " The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus," in The Fifth Gospel, pp. 138 ff. 24 Th& Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul lessons will come before us in the course of the investigation contained in the following pages. I have chosen these five to show that an examina- tion of the Apostle's teaching, as a help to, and an inspiration for, our own ministerial life is at least worth attempting. How imperfect and in- complete the following study is, I know well. I trust, however, it may at least induce others to pursue still further this same investigation — one from which they cannot fail to reap a rich harvest of benefit, not only to themselves but for those among whom they are called to minister. CHAPTER I. THE MINISTER OF CHRIST A WORKMAN. CTTrovaatrov (reavTov toKifiov 7rapa(rr^(Tai rv ottXcov rrjs hucaiocrvvrfs. ^ It is not necessary to particularise, but we can hardly imagine St. Paul engaged in promoting dances or card parties to " meet the expenses" of the Church in Corinth. * It must be noticed that the Christian minister as a workman works both with and upon the conscience of those he tries to influence and form. Thus the conscience is both an instrument and material. Upon St. Paul's idea of the conscience see an excellent note in Sanday and Headlam's Romans, p. 60, in which the history of the conception of the avvetSrjo-ts is traced. The affinity of St. Paul's use to that of his Stoic contemporaries is noticed. Compare W. L. Davidson, TAe Stoic Creed, p. 144. 36 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul St. John the more surely shall we be convinced of the wealth of meaning contained in this one single word. It is at once the real and the ideal.^ Often in the New Testament the ideal is regarded as the only real.^ It is also the whole revelation of God to man.^ It is the abiding as opposed to the transitory, the perfect as contrasted with the imperfect, the substance as opposed to "that which is but the shadow of a shadow." It is the opposite to that which of itself opposes itself to the Divine. Then St. Paul does not limit the method of manifestation, any more than does the prophet in that striking phrase "Arise, shine," for both strength and light, alike necessary for manifestation, are granted unto thee. Again, this manifestation of the truth is intimately connected with our own personality — " commending ourselves." It is only the personal which affects to the fullest degree the personal. We speak of being "affected" or "moved" by the beauties of Nature and Art, we say that these "speak," or "appeal," to us. But, if we reflect, we shall find proof which will convince us that Nature 1 As "truth" is in Jesus (Eph. iv. 21), who is the Christ, so when by manifestation of the truth we commend ourselves, it is "Christ in us" which we commend to the conscience of men. ^ Phil. iii. 20 (virdpxei), cf. Heb. xi. 10 (tovs ^e/ieXtour). ^ For " it presents the right view of the ultimate relations of man, the world, and God " (Westcott). The Minister, of Christ a Workman 37 when described as really loved or "felt" has to a great extent been " personified." ^ To the old Greek Nature was full of personalities. To the Christian poet Nature has a soul, and is some- thing more than the mere garment of the divine. There is a " presence " in Nature. What is true of Nature is also true of Art, it is the artist in his art — in music or painting or sculpture or poetry — that affects us.^ It is the personal and never the mechanical, however cleverly contrived, which touches us. We must commend ourselves : ^ it is the sanctified person- ality which affects, and impresses, and influences for good. Neither our Lord nor His apostles offered truth apart from life. Our Lord con- stantly offered Himself; St. Paul, in a great measure, does the same. It is the immanence of the truth, which is not far from the immanence '^ In Wordsworth's Ode of Immortality it is (stanzas iii. and iv.) the Shepherd Boy, the Children, the Babe on his Mother's arm, that most touch the poet ; and note the " personification " of Nature in " Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind. And, even with something of a Mother's mind." 2 It is this thought of personality being revealed through art which makes many of Browning's poems so inspiring to the preacher, e.g. Fra Lippo Lippi — " Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God ! That sets you praising, — " compare his Andrea del Sarto and Abt Vogler. ^ The Ars Poetica contains many a valuable lesson for the 38 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul of the Divine — "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit " — which is mighty in effect. Lastly, the appeal is to the conscience.^ I will not enter here into the subject of St. Paul's psychology, a fruitful field of study, and one which hitherto, so far as I am aware, has hardly received the attention it deserves. Here I would only notice that the appeal must be directed to the highest faculty of man. History and experience (if examined) will be found alike full of records of failure on the part of well-meaning but ill-advised " good " people, preacher ; but few more true than that contained in the lines — "dulcia sunto Et quocunque volent animum auditoris agunto. Ut ridentibus arrident, ita flentibus adsunt Humani vultus : si vis me flere, dolendum est Primum ipsi tibi ; . . ." (99-103). Goethe, too, was right when he spoke of Das Menschenrecht, and then asked — " Wodurch bewegt er alle Herzen ? Wodurch besiegt er jedes Element? 1st es der Einklang nicht, der aus dem Busen bringt, Und in sein Herz die Welt zuriicke schlingt?" May I also commend a study of " The Prologue for the Theatre " in Faust to the preacher? From it he may get some useful hints. 1 A study of the " Conscience " in St. Paul would belong to a study of his ethical teaching and of his psychology. Much that is helpful will be found in the articles on " Conscience " and on "Psychology" in Hastings' Bib. Diet. Also in Lightfoot, Philifpians, p. 303. The parallel between the Stoic to ij-yc^oviKoi/ and the Conscience is interesting. W. L. Davidson in The Stoic Creed states, " the ' ruling faculty ' is conscience." The Minister of Christ a Workman 39 simply from forgetfulness or ignorance of this essential condition of success.-^ Then we must remember that in this reference to the conscience there is involved St. Paul's " doctrine of man " (another fruitful subject for study), but which I cannot stay to consider here, except to notice its similarity to our Lord's idea of man, especi- ally in one particular — viz. His belief in the possibilities of human nature. Would our Lord have died for man, would St. Paul have given up his life to the service of man, had they not believed in these ? This belief in man's possi- bilities is essential to the Christian minister, and must be carefully nourished by him ; for he will meet with only too numerous cases which tend "to shake his faith in human nature." Beside St. Paul's faith in man stands his faith in "the truth," when rightly commended, to win its way and to do its appointed work. There is one further essential condition of our work noticed in these words of St. Paul, and that is the consciousness of the presence of God ^ On the necessity of appealing to the higher faculties, see Mrs. Bosanquet's The Strength of the People, p. 2 ff. " Leaders like Cromwell, who insisted that you could not even make a good soldier of a man without appealing to his higher faculties, owe their success to their profound knowledge of human nature. Great religious teachers, who have put their faith in spiritual conviction and conversion, who have refused to accept anything less than the whole man, have achieved results which seem miraculous to those who are willing to compromise for a share in the souls they undertake to guide." 40 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul —"in the sight of God." The thought is a favourite one with St. Paul,^ and gives a dignity and solemnity to his work. The condition must be remembered by us, for we have only to connect anything with God in order to see how intrinsically important it is. We are thereby at once reminded that the final judgment upon both our motives and our actions, upon the choice of our weapons and the methods in which they are used, lies with God, as the final Judge of these. II. The Material upon which the Minister works. We must now consider this more closely, and while we do so we must bear in mind the con- ception of the minister as an " artist." Briefly, the material is human nature ; in one sense always the same, in another sense never the same : even the same "subject" is never for two days exactly the same. If we leave our material or our task, we cannot assume that in our absence others have not been working upon it ; indeed, they are always working upon it contemporane- ously with our own labour. And as our material ^ St. Paul uses it of his preaching, 2 Cor. ii. 17 ; of his pastoral care of his converts, 2 Cor. vii. 12 ; of his remembrance of them, I Thess. i. 3 ; of the quality of actions, i Tim. ii. 3. He charges Timothy, also, " in the sight of God," i Tim. vi. 13. The Minister of Christ a Workman 41 is different in nature and differs in itself from time to time, it constantly calls for different treatment and for the use of different'instruments. Then we must remember we do not find our material quite "in the rough." It has generally been worked upon by others before us, and we must take up the work, often with ifgly flaws and evidences of evil workmanship, at every stage of development. The thoughts which here suggest themselves are many. For the sake of clearness I will, as far as possible, confine myself mainly to two : first, that we must know as intimately as possible the nature of our material ; secondly, we must know, as well as we can, the stage of the development of the subject at the time we work. This latter condition implies that we know what other influences have worked, or are now work- ing, either in aid of or against our own purpose. St. Paul's knowledge of human nature was great in two ways. First, he knew it intimately as we find it everywhere and in all ages very much the same ; he knew "our common human nature." Secondly, he knew it as affected by various particular local influences, both past and present — influences of race, nationality, tradition, climate, politics, religion, and economic conditions. Of the qualities of what we mean by our common human nature he had a profound knowledge. Here again the likeness to our Lord is very striking. Our Lord's knowledge of 42 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul human nature not only struck but astonished^ His contemporaries. It has been the admiration of every careful student of the Gospels in all ages. To gauge St. Paul's knowledge of this subject we have only to read through any one Epistle, that is an Epistle addressed to the same hearers, and then try to count up the various traits of character implied, and the various influences of different kinds to which he proves that he knows these hearers to be subject. (a) St. Paul's knowledge of our common hum.an nature. (a) I Thess. chap, v.^ St. Paul wishes to warn, yet, from his knowledge of the human heart, he knows that an indirect method, one by which the need for thought may be suggested and self-examination provoked, is often far more efficacious than a direct rebuke or even exhorta- tion. The condition which in the opening verses he describes is an all too common one — a con- dition of which we ourselves are frequently quite unconscious, one of real danger, yet in which we imagine all is well. Briefly, the state is one of comparative insensibility to moral and spiritual 1 St. John i. 48, ii. 24, 25, etc. ^ Many of the exhortations in this chapter seem to be so pecuHarly suitable for those in a position of special responsibility that some of the older expositors have been led to believe that they were originally addressed to the elders of the Church in Thessalonica. The Minister of Christ a Workman 43 forces, and to the meaning of phenomena of which these forces are the cause. The moral and spiritual senses are neither watchful nor in action. For any Christian such a state is dangerous, for the Christian minister it is abso- lutely inexcusable. Yet it is a state in which many seem to live. The Apostle (in verse 11) closes his warning with a command to mutual encouragement and mutual edification. Here again we see the Apostle's knowledge of human nature. Continuous censoriousness and fault-finding detract from life, and may actually encourage us to dwell upon evil. There are multitudes of men and women who would be far more benefited by encouragement than by criticism, and by assist- ance in building up their character rather than by attention being drawn to their blemishes or deficiencies. The next paragraph (verses 12 ff.) is full of warnings and counsels, each witnessing to a deep knowledge of human nature. In verse 14, St. Paul recognises three distinct types of character, and the different treatment required by each. To supply this treatment continuously is not easy. Human nature soon tires of helping others, hence St. Paul writes irapaKoKoxuL^v^ which here seems to combine the idea of encouragement or "heartening" with that of exhortation. Of the 1 The significance of napaKoXeiv in the N.T. is often brought out by translating, "be the medium of, or act the part of, the Paraclete towards." 44 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul three types the first is that of those who have a tendency to get out of line or rank — the self- confident and self-willed, who find obedience to law and order a constant difficulty. These need " admonition." ^ Side by side with these is an exactly opposite class — those with little spirit ^ — who require a very different treatment, that of sympathy, help, and stimulus. Besides these there are the "weak," whom we must take hold of,^ and to whom we must give good support. But whatever be the particular failing in any character its rectification will require infinite patience.* In verse 1 5, against retaliation, we have an indication of the ethical standards with which St. Paul had to contend and whose insufficiency he had to prove.^ The same task is laid upon the Christian minister to-day. In the second clause of this verse is another striking proof of St. Paul's knowledge of human nature. " You must not retaliate, you must aim at what is ^ vovdereiv : in the N.T. eight times and always in St. Paul (including Acts XX. 31). The minister has to "apply his mind" towards such to get them to apply their mind towards themselves. ^ The difficulty of these is very clearly expressed in Prov. xviii. 14, oXtyd^^^ov fie avdpa Tis vTToltrei ; * As the Holy Spirit helpeth our weakness (Rom. viii. 26) we must support the weak. ^ fiaKpoBviiia, a favourite word with St. Paul, and an essential quality of character for the ministry. " Long-tempered " gives the meaning. (On the need of perfect control of temper see Chrysos. de Sacerdot. iii. 13.) » Among the Jews as indicated in St. Matt. v. 43 ff. : among the Greeks as expressed in Soph. Antig. 643. The Minister of Christ a Workman 45 beneficial towards one another and towards all." Some natures will rise to the duty of acting beneficially towards those within the community —whether of the family or the congregation ^ — but they cannot rise to that higher philanthropy which does not ask " What claim have they upon me ? " {p) Rom. xiv. This chapter is again a striking witness to St. Paul's knowledge of human nature, and of his skill in dealing with it for good. His subject here is "over-scrupulous- ness " ; his exhortation is to mutual tolerance between those who think differently upon a matter in itself of no vital importance. Yet experience teaches us that it is from such matters that often wide-spread ruin ensues. Both in the pains he takes to deal with this dispute and in the manner in which he deals with it, St. Paul shows his intimate knowledge of human nature. He knows the value of peace and unity for the progress of the gospel ; and he knows that fre- quently the most bitter dissensions and the greatest hindrances to Christian work have their origin in matters which are in themselves of very small importance. The advice in verse i is that of an expert in ^ Parochial or congregational selfishness is a tendency, a defect in professing Christians against which every minister should strive. 46 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul character study. The " weak " or over-scrupulous are to be received into full Christian fellowship ; they have done nothing wrong : but when so received do not let them be the subject of perpetual criticism. St. Paul knew how easy it is to be half generous, to be partially liberal- minded, to give, and yet at the same time to take away.'^ To bring the "weak" into an atmosphere of criticism will not tend to their edification — the only end for which they can have been rightly received. In verse 5 we have another example of St. Paul's insight. He knows the unwillingness of most people to take the trouble to " think out " a difficulty. A dislike to mental exertion is far more common than a dislike to physical exertion. Very few professing Christians will take the trouble to "think out" their "faith." To provoke and encourage thought must be one of the chief aims of the preacher and teacher. Refusal to "think hard" will account for most of the prejudices and not a little of the opposition with which the pastor meets. In verse 10 the natural tendencies of the "weak" and the "strong" are sharply opposed. The narrow- minded are all too apt to "judge," and with them to judge usually means to condemn. The ^ Chrysostom has in another connection some excellent advice on this spirit {de Sacerd. iii. l6), "Kv hi tis ra fikv fKeivmv jxfi Xaii^avr/ k.tX., and he aptly quotes the words of Ecclus. xviii. 15-17, t4kvov cv dyadols fir] b&s fiafwv, koL iv jracrg fldtrei \vnr)v Xoyav k.t.X. The Minister of Christ a Workman 47 broad-minded are equally inclined to "despise" the scruples or difficulties of the narrow. This, as St. Paul indicates, is tantamount to despising the possessor of these scruples. And St. Paul would know that it is he that is void of under- standing who despiseth his neighbour.-' We never hear of our Lord despising^ any man. He was often grieved and sometimes angry, but never contemptuous. Nor do we read of St. Paul ever despising anyone,^ though his life was one long battle against narrow - mindedness, and against the bigotry and prejudice that will not see. The Christian pastor's duty is to save, and he will hardly be earnest to save that which he despises. It is the thought of the intrinsic preciousness of man which rules in the New Testament. In verse 13 we have yet another proof of St. Paul's clear insight into human nature. There are those who are weak from other causes than narrow-mindedness. Human nature is subject to a strange variety of tempta- tions ; one of the most difficult things for some people to realise is how what they themselves can use with absolute immunity can actually be a danger to others. But, surely, having realised this, to refrain from its use is of all forms of 1 Prov. xi. 12. The Heb. is H3, the LXX has fWKTripi^ei. ^ This is the spirit of the Pharisees (Luke xviii. 9) and of Herod (xxiii. 11). ' On the contrary, see Rom. ix. i ff. 48 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul self-denial the most useful. Only, instead of abstaining, we are often tempted to question whether we are called to give up what in itself is not in essence evil, or to say " Let us teach them by our moderation to use this wisely," forgetting, through our comparative ignorance of human nature, that what is no temptation to ourselves may be an absolutely invincible danger to them. In all the many exhortations which we find towards the close of each of his Epistles, and often more implicitly than explicitly, St. Paul shows his deep insight into human nature, into its narrowness and its breadth, its weakness and its strength. This insight is absolutely essential for the Christian pastor, and the want of it is one of the most common of all causes of failure in ministerial work. Whence can this insight be gained? Here, again, St. Paul will teach us. The first requisite is a deep knowledge of self, such as we find in Rom. vii. (which I cannot help regarding as largely autobiographical), and in other parts of St. Paul's letters, especially in Second Corinthians. The other requisite is a deep and broad sympathy with others, a sympathy founded on the widest possible knowledge, which issues in an ability to feel with others, rather than merely for them, and to see life from their point of view. The two powers, first of large versatility. The Minister of Christ a Workman 49 and secondly of careful spiritual and moral "diagnosis,"^ must be most diligently cultivated. St. Paul possessed both to a very high degree. This deep and extensive knowledge of human nature is one of the chief causes of the immense value of St. Paul's writings to those whose life's work is dealing with the souls of others. To obtain it is a chief reason for constant and careful study of other writings which exhibit the same characteristic. We shall find this insight into human nature pre-eminently in the Psalms, and, if to a somewhat lesser degree, in the Prophets. One side, if not the highest or deepest, is re- presented in Proverbs, also in Sirach and in Wisdom. Outside the Bible we shall find Marcus Aurelius, Dante, Shakespeare, Bunyan, Goethe, Browning, Thackeray, and George Eliot, all worthy of study. For it is not without reason that these writers have been favourites with many of the greatest preachers. (j8) St. Paul's knowledge of local and other peculiarities. This is another proof of St. Paul's intimate knowledge of the material upon which he worked, I mean his knowledge of the peculiarities of the different populations to whom he ministered or wrote — peculiarities arising from differences in ^ This is an art which the physician of souls must cultivate as essential for his efficiency. 4 50 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul such formative influences as race, religion, political experiences and position, trade, and education. Of course St. Paul's own education and experiences fitted him to appreciate and assimilate rapidly these various peculiarities. The ability to do this is most valuable, and that we may strengthen this ability, by giving wide intellectual and political interests, is one of the chief reasons why, previous to and beneath a theological training, a broad general education should be regarded as an essential preparation for the Christian ministry. It was because of the sympathy resulting from his wide knowledge of Judaism, Hellenism, and of Roman Imperialism, from his being entirely at home in, and thoroughly conversant with, the ideas and ideals of these three worlds of thought, that St. Paul could, in the best sense of the words, become all things to all men. The most frequently quoted instances of St. Paul's power of differential treatment are his speeches in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch, to the Lycaonian peasants, and to the Athenians. But these alone give us an entirely inadequate conception of the wonderful versatility and adaptability of the Apostle. To three such very different audiences most speakers of any ability and with much practice would have spoken quite differently. It is rather in the minutiae or details of his appeals and in the illustrations of his arguments that we find the strongest evidence of St. Paul's ability to make The Minister of Christ a Workman 51 use of local interests and idiosyncrasies. To appreciate this power fully, as well as to appreciate the pains which St. Paul took to employ it to advantage, we require, besides an intimate know- ledge of his speeches and epistles, an equally intimate knowledge of the particular conditions of those to whom each of these was addressed. We must know how these people lived and were governed, under what religious and political influences they were living, upon what they mainly occupied their energies, and about what they were chiefly thinking. We must, in short, be able to throw ourselves into the atmosphere and environment in which they were. Until within recent years our knowledge of the con- ditions of St. Paul's time has not been sufficient to enable us to do this at all adequately. We have known the broad features of its political and religious positions, but it is only lately that we have obtained such a knowledge of the details of life in various localities that we can appreciate, not only allusions made to these, but arguments strengthened by reference to them, on the part of St. Paul. As an illustration of how our increasing know- ledge of the first century enables us to appreciate St. Paul's teaching more fully, I would draw atten- tion to the many notes in Professor Ramsay's Historical Commentary on Galatians, where light is again and again thrown upon the reason for 52 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul St. Paul's use of certain expressions. That reason we can now see was St. Paul's intimate knowledge of the life and customs of the cities in which " the Churches of Galatia " were situated. A few examples must suffice : — {a) Ramsay compares St. Paul's language and arguments in Gal. iii. 7, "Ye perceive therefore that they which be of faith, the same are sons of Abraham," with those in Rom. iv. 11 f., " that he might be the father (et? to ehat avrbv irarepa) of all them that believe, though they be in uncircumcision . . . and the father' of circum- cision to them ..." He then points out that to the Galatians St. Paul uses a metaphor drawn from Greek law, i.e., that " it was specially and fundamentally on religious (01 e'/c iria-Tewi) grounds that the Greek heir and son was adopted to continue the family cultus."^ "For the Romans he employs a different metaphor, founded on the customary usage of the word pater. ... A man may be described as \!a.t pater of all to whom his qualifications constitute him a guide and leader and protector."^ {b) Gal. iii. 15 ff. "An illustration from the facts of society, as it existed in the Galatian cities, is here stated."^ "Let me take an illustration, brethren, from daily experience. Though it be but a man's Will, yet when it hath ' passed through ■ Historical Commentary on Galatians, p. 341. 'P-343- 'P. 349- The Minister of Christ a JVorkman 53 the Record Office of the city ' no one can make it ineffective, or add fresh clauses thereto." " The Galatian Will, like God's Word, is irrevocable and unalterable : it comes into operation as soon as the conditions are performed by the heir."-' It was quite different in Roman law, where a form of Will secret and revocable had come into use. [c] Gal. iii. (23-25). "The Law has played the part of a ' servant responsible for our safety, and charged to keep us out of bad company.' ^ . . . When St. Paul compared the Law to b. paidagogos, ... he chose an illustration which would be clear to his Galatian readers. . . . This also throws some light upon the social organisation in the Galatian cities, for it places us in the midst of Greek city life, as it was in the better period of Greek history." [d) Gal. V. 19 ff. The list of "the works of the flesh." Ramsay writes:* "In the list of fifteen faults there are three groups, corresponding to three different kinds of influence likely to affect recent South Galatian converts from paganism. Such converts were likely to be led astray by habits and ways of thought to which they had been brought up, owing to (i) the national religion, (2) their position in a municipality, (3) the customs of society in Hellenistic cities." He then pro- ceeds to show that the sins which St. Paul enumerates are exactly those most likely to be ^ Historical Commentary on Galatians, p. 351. 2 P. 381 f. 3 P. 446 f. 54 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul fostered by the old Anatolian religion ; how, within the city life, there was special temptation to jealousy and strife ; and how the last two sins mentioned are just those "most closely connected with the society and manners of the Graeco- Asiatic cities." Other instances of St. Paul's evidently intimate knowledge of thelife of the Galatians, and of his care- ful use of this knowledge, will be found on pp. 370, 393, 395, 443 of Professor Ramsay's ContTnentary . What he has done in this way for the Galatian Epistle, other commentators {e.g. Bishop Light- foot in his Philippians) have done, though less thoroughly, for other Epistles of St. Paul. But, as I said above, as our knowledge of the details of life both in Rome and in various provincial cities during the second half of the first century increases, our proofs of St. Paul's intimate ac- quaintance with the local religious and political peculiarities of these cities, that is of the idio- syncrasies of the particular human material upon which he was working, will be much increased. If the Christian minister to-day would employ his energies to the best advantage he must take the trouble to acquire a similarly intimate know- ledge of those among whom he works. This is of course especially necessary for the foreign missionary, and probably much of the want of success in foreign missionary work in the past has been due to forgetfulness of this essential The Minister of Christ a Workman 55 condition. Nor is such knowledge less necessary for pastoral work at home. If we hope for success, we shall not appeal in exactly the same way to the educated and the uneducated, to the old and the young, to townspeople and country-folk, to the landsman and the sailor. More than this, each similar class of society, except perhaps the most highly educated, exhibits striking differences in dif- ferent parts of our own country, otherwise what do we mean by the "characteristics" of the Northerner, the Midlander, and the Southerner? The explana- tion of these differences is to be sought partly in racial distinctions, but much more in the effects of environment. I use the term in its fullest sense, and it must certainly include such influences as those of climate and occupation : and we must not think of the effects of environment only in the present, but of its influence upon past genera- tions, and so again, indirectly, upon the present. For the environments of past generations are at least a factor in what we term hereditary in- fluences. For example, the general physique of the men of to-day in any particular locality is at least partially due to the climate, occupation, and manner of life of past generations. Also en- vironment supplies and, to some extent, limits ideas which influence conduct, and tend to form character. Let me say in passing that I believe every Christian minister should have some clear if elementary knowledge of the principles of 56 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul psychology, and of the psychology of society. By this knowledge his powers of dealing with individuals and also of teaching will be immensely increased. If carefully put into practice, even an elementary knowledge^ of this science will save him from much waste of energy, from almost countless mistakes. When St. Paul illustrated and enforced his appeals to the Galatians by analogies drawn from customs with which they were familiar he was but using the method of "association of ideas," which every scientific teacher (one who has studied psychology) knows to be the best, if not the only possible method of implanting new ideas. The true pastor will take great pains to find out what his people are thinking about, he will discover what is familiar to them. Then by carefully attaching his teaching to the familiar he will gradually obtain admission for ideas which are comparatively, or even entirely, unfamiliar. This careful study of the thoughts and ideas of others serves another purpose. It enables us to sympathise with those we would influence. And sympathy is ever the true key to influence. I have dwelt at some length on this subject, because only those who have studied the reason know why so much preaching and teaching, upon which infinite pains have been bestowed, is so ineffective. It is because the meaning of much of ^ For gaining this, John Adams' Primer on Teaching, or James' Talks to Teachers on Psychology, will both be found useful. The Minister of Christ a Workman 57 it remains unknown to the hearers, and it remains so because they have not already the ideas necessary to assimilate what is placed before them. The psychologist knows, as St. Paul knew, that it is the new in connection with the familiar, the mixture of new and old, which rouses and maintains interest — one essential condition for all successful teaching. If we study St. Paul's speeches at Antioch, at Athens, or before Herod Agrippa, we shall see that in each case he commences with that which is familiar and then proceeds from that which is familiar towards that which is comparatively strange to his hearers. We shall see the same skill employed in his letters, in which again and again he obtains admission for new truth by carefully connecting it with ideas which were evidently familiar. St. Paul is a master of method. III. The Object of the Minister as A Workman. Lastly, the wise and true workman will have a clear conception of his object. As he stands before his material he will know exactly what he wishes to produce out of it. The model ^ to which he works will be before him, visible to the eye of his imagination, which is not always different from that of the eye of faith. All this is eminendy ^ 2 Cor. iii. 1 8, Tr\v airfiv etKova lUTajiopfpoijieBa . . . 58 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul true of St. Paul. He knew exactly what he wished to accomplish.^ He was perfectly clear about his object, as the following passages will show : — (a) Gal. iv. 19. " My little children, with whom I once more travail until ye shall have attained to the fully formed life of the Christian." St. Paul's object is here quite clearly defined by the words, A'6;^/'t? o5 iJi,opa>6f} XpicTTo<; iv vfuv. St. Paul here likens himself to the mother, his Galatian converts are like an immature embryo. "In the Christian, Christ is to inhabit the heart (Eph. iii. 17), in him there is to be the vov<; of Christ (i Cor. ii. 16), the Trvevfia of Christ (Rom. viii. 9), the a-TrXdry^va of Christ (Phil. i. 8), and the body and its members are to be the body and members of Christ ( I Cor. vi. 13, 15)."^ (d) Col. i. 28. " That we may present every man perfect in Christ." Here, again, St. Paul quite clearly defines his object, iravra avdpwirov reXetov iv Xpiarw. And the words which follow should not be forgotten, et? o Kal Kotrim ayQ}vi^6p,evo<; k.t.X., " to effect which I toil laboriously, struggling," etc. We may also notice that while in the passage in Gal. iv. 19 the end was " Christ in us," here it is ^ I Cor. ix. 26, ovTccis Tp4xa> a>s ovk abrjkas ..." Scio quid petam et quomodo, qui liquido currit, metam recta spectat et recta petit." Bengel. ^ Meyer in loc. {E. T.^.i^b ff.). The whole of Meyer's long note on this verse is excellent. As a useful warning against what may, unconsciously, take place in our work, Bengel's words, " Christus, non Paulus in Galatis formandus,'' may usefully be remembered. The Minister of Christ a Workman 59 "us in Christ." The Christian minister must remember both these aspects of his purpose. Again, St. Paul's words here recall the words of Christ in St. Matt. v. 48, " Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." The standard with both our Lord and St. Paul is infinitely high, and the truth contained in the paradox, " If you would succeed you must aim at the impossible," must not be forgotten. From these two passages we may describe St. Paul's object as Christian maturity and Christian perfection. Both these passages, I think, refer to individual Christians, each of whom is to be brought onwards towards perfection. My third example shall again deal with the individual, but now as a member of a society, and as inconceivable apart from the society. (c) Eph. iv. 13. Here we have the object of all Christian "ministering" (in its widest sense) and of all Christian living thus described : " Till we all (together) attain unto the unity of the faith and of the (full) knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ," and in verse 15 — a continuation of the same somewhat prolonged sentence — the object is again defined, " That we may grow up in all things unto Him which is the head — even Christ." I may say at once that the passage in which these sentences occur is vital for any adequate 6o The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul knowledge of the Pauline idea of the object of the Christian ministry. As I shall deal with the passage at length in another connection, I will here confine myself to its bearing upon the object of the ministry. This is defined as an attainment in common (ol 7rdvre<;) unto three ends, each of which is preceded by the same preposition (ek), which are co-ordinate, and each of which further defines or amplifies the others. We may take the expression eii dvBpa reXeiov as central, and we must notice the almost paradoxical ol iravre's . . . ei's avSpa reXeiov, where oi •irdvTe<} is not "every one," or "all of us," but "all of us together." The individuals are to grow as the body grows. We may compare the growth of each member of the physical organism during the growing of the whole. In this growth o/, and inio, a corporate unity there is no loss of individu- ality, but actually a deepening and strengthening of it. To this we may compare the growing in- dividuality of both the features and the character of a child. The analogy of the growth of the human body is probably in the Apostle's mind ; but the further we try to press this analogy, the more do we realise its incompleteness. Then the growth of each member contributes not only to the growth, but to the unity of the body. [The minister to- day may learn this lesson from St. Paul, — that a want of unity in an organisation or among a body of individuals is a sign of want of growth, of The Minister of Christ a Workman 6i immaturity in one or more of the separate parts or members ; they have not all grown together.] Then the idea of unity implies diversity, for not only each individual but the individuality of each individual has something to contribute to the perfect, the ideal unity ; and this ideal unity is conditioned by, i.e. is dependent upon, faith in, and [full] knowledge of, the Son of God. Ei IlavXos irapaKoKS) vfias. — 2 COR. X. I. A VERY helpful way of learning St. Paul's concep- tion of his work as a minister of Christ is to study, either together or in quick succession, the various addresses or salutations with which his Epistles open. By carefully combining these we may learn much about how he regarded his position, his Divine call, and his qualifications for the work he was trying to do. We may also learn how he thought of those whom he was seeking to influence and teach. These opening salutations are, in the various Epistles, very differently expressed. This shows that they are not mere formal addresses or rhetorical introductions, but that each has been carefully chosen, either to express some particular aspect of the relationship which must exist between himself and his readers, or to remind them at once of some particular truth to which he felt it was necessary to draw their attention. I cannot notice every detail of all these addresses. 64 The Pastor and his Pastorate 65 Two of the most full are those found at the head of the First Epistle to the Corinthians and the Epistle to the Romans. To these two I purpose mainly to confine my attention. I. The Minister's Conception of Himself. The personal name at the opening of every Epistle reminds us of a fact to which I have already referred, namely, that it is of the essence of Christianity, which in this respect is at one with the Old Testament, that the communication of the Divine message and of the Divine power shall proceed largely through a human personality. The great saying of St. John, "the Word became flesh," has more than a single personal applica- tion. Here the personal name — in St Paul's case the post-conversion name — suggests the whole personality in its completeness ; and, of course, the personal implies the moral. Hence we may say that the Christian message and the Christian influence proceed from a Moral Person- ality, through a moral personality, with the object of moralising more perfectly other personalities. In this connection we see the wisdom of the authors of our English Church Catechism in placing the personal name in the forefront. Here is a definite personality brought into special covenant with God, to be enriched by Him, to be led to recognise its responsibilities, both in- 5 66 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul dividual and social (for baptism is admission into a society), in regard to faith, obedience, duty, and communion with God. The " sacramental " nature of the human personality when consecrated to God's service is an interesting thought. The Church's definition of a sacrament is almost an exact definition of what the personality of a Christian and especially of a Christian minister ought to be. It should, as manifested in conduct,^ be an outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace by which it is endowed ; ^ it should be such that it can be regarded as a Divine gift,^ bringing strengthening and refreshment to others;* as such it may be said to have been ordained by Christ Himself to convey the light of His presence,* and His power,^ indeed His life,* to others. The sanctified and consecrated human nature is a means and channel of the Divine '^ St. Paul was not only an instrument in preaching the gospel but also, in his own person, the strongest testimony to its power (Lightfoot on Gal.i. i6). St. Paul also asserts that the fact that Christ lives in us (Gal. ii. 20) should be manifest ; and that the Galatians received him my XpHTTov '\r]iiaTa v/iZv in Rom. xii. I will include these. * We have only to read St. Paul's Epistles in chronological order to see that his education was always proceeding. ' Such as that found in an appendix to Westcott and Hort's Greek Testament. 68 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul the history, the literature, the aspirations, and the causes of failure of the nation from which he sprang. Of what he had evidently learnt as a " Tarsian " he makes little less use. For instance, again and again he introduces ideas which, if not directly derived from, were strangely parallel ^ to, those of the Stoic philosophy. These from their familiarity would catch the ear, and so at once claim the sympathetic attention of his Hellenic hearers. His knowledge of all that " the Empire " meant to one who was evidently proud of his Roman citizenship was also continually employed to suggest an ana- logy and so point a lesson for those by whom this same knowledge would also be possessed.^ But many a Christian minister who has con- siderable endowments is slow or unskilled in using these. On the other hand, St. Paul's readiness to do this must evoke our admiration. By readiness I do not mean anxiety to claim privileges, but the aptitude which comes from the thoroughly disciplined and versatile mind, and which is always alert to seize an opportunity. Almost at the same moment we may see St. Paul making use of very different factors in his endow- ment. I will take two instances of this : — ^ Some of these parallels are pointed out in Lightfoot's Philip- piatis, p. 287 ff. See also W. L. Davidson, The Stoic Creed, p. 165, etc. Also Johannes Weiss, Die Christliche Freiheit. ^ On this subject see Bp. Westcott's Some Thoughts from the Ordinal, pp. 12 fF., beginning, " Christ . . . calls us through the cir- cumstances of our life," etc. The Pastor and his Pastorate 69 ("i) From the scene described at the end of Acts xxi. and in xxii., when his Hfe was in im- minent peril from the violence of the Jewish mob in the Temple court. Here within -the space of a very short time we see St. Paul claiming his rights as a Roman citizen/ conversing in Greek with a provincial official,^ and addressing in "Hebrew"* a hostile Jewish audience in such a manner as to obtain complete silence. (2) Within the space of the comparatively short Epistle to the Philippians we again find St. Paul using to the full various factors of his endowment, whenever any of these will further his purpose, strengthen his argument, or help to obtain more consideration for an appeal. Writing from Rome to a Roman Colonia, he refers with pride to the progress of the gospel in the irpaiTcopiov ; * he bids his converts behave worthily as " citizens " (a^ia)<; . . . iroXiTeveaOe) ® of the gospel of Christ ; and he bids them remember that their commonwealth {TroKkeviia) is in heaven.® In chapter iii. he reminds (possibly) another section of his readers at Philippi that he was "circum- cised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews: as touching the law a Pharisee." But in this ^ Acts xxii. 25, el avBpconov 'Vmjiaiov koI atcaraKpiTov 'i^eariv Vfiiv lia(rTi^eiv ; ^ 8c C01J 'EXXiji'tCTTt yLvaxTKeis ; ^ 7rpo(rc(f)a>vria-ev Ty 'EppatSa SiaXeKTa. * Phil. i. 1 3. " Phil. i. 27. " Phil. iii. 20, 70 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul same Epistle he is all the time conscious that he is writing to those who not only spoke, but were accustomed to think, in Greek, and who would appreciate the meaning of v-napyei (used of the ■iroXiTevfia). Lastly, we may say that the rich and varied list of the moral virtues which are to be realised in life is thoroughly cosmopolitan : things ev(j)r]/j,a and the exaltation of aperi] would appeal to the Greek, things a-e/Mva would remind some of the old-fashioned Roman atmosphere which was still a tradition ; ^ things SiKaia would appeal to the erstwhile Jew.^ The noble exhortation in Rom. xii. i ff. is undoubtedly addressed to every Christian : for that reason it should not appeal less, but more strongly to the Christian minister.^ The "body" is to be presented to God, and in the explana- tion we give to the term " body " {a-a)fj,a)* we must remember the words ttjv XoyiKriv Xarpeiav vfiSsv. Thus we may define the offering of the body 1 The loss of things avBpamos . . . — I COR. iv. I. At,aLpi XeiToupyoj occurs in St. Paul, of civil rulers, in Rom. xiii. 6 (ministers of . . . service), of St. Paul himself in Rom. xv. 16 (minister), and of Epaphroditus in Phil. ii. 25 (minister). buiKoveiv does not occur in the LXX : hiaKovia (representing iHi or n-\^) occurs in Esth. vi. 3, 5, and in i Mace. xi. 58 : hiaKovos, representing the same roots, occurs in Esth. i. 10, ii. 2, vi. i, 3, 5, Prov. X. 4, and in 4 Mace. ix. 17. hovkos is common in the LXX., and so is Ttais, for " servant." ii8 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul ployed of those who are useful to God through their usefulness to men ; and also of those who are, if in different ways, useful to men through their usefulness to God on man's behalf.^ I do not think that in the New Testament service to God by Christians (on earth) is ever conceived of as unrelated to man's needs. Certainly by the New Testament teachers true or real service to man is always regarded in its relation to God, or to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This close blending, if not absolute unity, of the Divine and human pur- poses of service is one of the most characteristic features of religious life and work. St. Paul has certainly "no sympathy with that kind of religion " — mere profession of desire to serve God, or contentment with merely attending divine worship — " that does not make people practical." At the same time he constantly teaches us that in order to confer permanent benefit on others, the service we render them must proceed from the highest motive and be directed to the highest end.^ ^ The following words of Ambrose seem worth recalling : " Ergo quia quod utile, id etiam justum : justum est ut serviamus Christo. . . . De hac igitur tractandum est utilitate quae sit plena honestatis, sicut ipsis verbis definivit apostolus dicens : Hoc autem ad utilitatem vestram dice" (i Cor. vii. 35). De Officiis Ministr. 11. vi. ^ To-day undoubtedly we do see much excellent philanthropic work being done, from an ethical motive and with ethical results, and which yet appears to be almost if not entirely apart from Conceptions of Ministry 119 This union of Divine and human service or ministry is frequently expressed or implied in the Ordination Services : e.g., the deacons are to " exercise their ministry duly to the honour of God and the edifying of His Church " ; one petition in the Litany runs, " that they may duly execute their office to the edifying of Thy Church and the glory of Thy Holy Name " ; also the first question to the deacons contains the thought of serving God for (i) the promoting of His glory and (2) the edifying of His people. Then it is important that we should remember that we do not work either for or among isolated individuals, but for citizens and subjects living under a definite order of society, in the midst of which we have received our call, and to which order we have a responsibility ; also that by the very maintenance of this order there' is found for us an opportunity whereby God may be glorified.-^ Thus there is also a service of religious convictions. Upon this phenomenon see an admirable paragraph in Illingworth's Christian Character, p. loi f. "The existence of men who lead noble lives, devoted to the service of their fellows, without any conscious reference to God, presents a problem by which many minds are seriously perplexed. . . . These men possess, without knowing it, what really is, if one may use the expression, the most important element in the love of God " (the love of one's neighbour), " and solely in virtue of that possession can live for the service of mankind," etc. etc. The whole paragraph should be studied. 1 I Tim. ii. i fF. Note the object, Iva ^pe^ov koI ^a-vxiov /S/oi/ Sidycoiicv K.T.X. Friction causes loss of energy and prevents pro- gress. The necessity for self-defence prevents the expenditure of 1 20 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul God through the service of Society, and a service of Society which tends ad majorem Dei gloriam. But when we consider the special connotations with which the two groups of words are em- ployed in the New Testament (as also in Greek literature), we shall find that there is a differ- ence in the relationships implied, also, to some extent, in the nature of the service and in the manner in which it is rendered. The writers of the New Testament wrote in a world which was permeated with the institu- tion of slavery. Many of their hearers and readers were slaves themselves, all were perfectly familiar with the ideas and customs connected with slavery. To many of our hearers these ideas and customs are more or less unfamiliar. Hence many expressions in the New Testament or referring to slavery are to these either difficult or unintelligible. Thus, except when minister- ing to a highly educated congregation, the ex- pository preacher to-day must frequently explain to his hearers something of the social conditions and customs of the world in which the apostles worked. Otherwise many passages will fail to have the same force and suggestiveness which they had to their first hearers.^ energy on higher objects. Throughout St. Paul's Epistles we have exhortations towards the cultivation of " the peaceful temper" ! ^ e.g. I Cor. vii. 22, 23 ; Gal. vi. i, etc. etc. Conceptions of Ministry 1 2 1 The radical difference between lovko'i and BidKovo<; may be stated thus: — (i) " Bov\o<; is opposed to ikev0€po eBuatv aTrofrroXos rfjv SiaKovtav fiov 124 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul sible positions in the Church at the present time. St. Paul does not speak of "magnifying his office " as the words are too often under- stood : what he asserts is that by his untiring labours in bringing the light of truth to the heathen, he lifts up and throws a light upon^ the special work and special object of his own ministry ; he causes it to be respected by show- ing its world-wide necessity and influence. In laying such stress upon " service," and all it implies, St. Paul is only following very closely the example of our Lord. We must remember, of course, in considering our Lord's teaching on this subject that we cannot confine ourselves to passages in which He gives direct exhortation. Besides such passages we shall find much indirect exhortation to service, for instance in the exhorta- tions He gave on the many occasions when He chose some form of service (whether discharged or undischarged) to represent or illustrate His teaching upon " the Kingdom of Heaven." ^ Why was this.? Was it not because, whatever his position, the recognition in practice by every man (inasmuch as he is a man) of the truth that he is called upon to render some form of service is essential.-* This assumes that he wishes to live 1 The idea of glorify always seems to involve the ideas, — first, of that of exaltation, and secondly, that of light thrown upon that which is lifted up. ^ St. Matt. xiii. 27-28, xviii. 23 ff., xxi. 34 ff., xxii. 2 ff., xxiv. 45 ff., etc. etc. Conceptions of Ministry 1 25 the life he was meant to live, and that he would live as a citizen of the Kingdom of God ? Every man, in virtue of his humanity, has a faculty for service, consequently he has a responsibility for finding an opportunity for the exercise of that faculty. When we pass from the teaching of our Lord in the Gospels to the teaching of St. Paul in his Epistles, we pass from frequent mention of the Kingdom to frequent mention of the Church ; but between the two conceptions there is this similarity — life or membership in both equally involves service. In our Lord's great saying,- " The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister,"^ He is not pointing to the purpose of His own life only; by the term He uses of Himself He shows that He is declaring what should be the purpose of every human life in virtue of its humanity. The same truth of the universal obligation to some form of service is implied in St. Paul's teaching, e.g. in Rom. xii. i ff., where the thought of service is raised to a lofty plane by the metaphor of sacrifice, and by the use of the word XajpeCav ; ^ again in i Cor. xii. (especially in verse 7, where St. Paul states that to each man is given the manifestation of the ^ St. Mark x. 45, kox yap 6 vlos tov av6pi>nov ovk rfKOev diaKovrj- Srjvai dWa SiaKovrjcai. 2 "The Christian sacrifice implies continued activity ... it must be a service to God such as befits the reason." Sanday and Headlam, Romans ; in loc. 1 26 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul Spirit (a form of xa/ot?), t/jo? to a-vfi^ipov. By this endowment an addition is made to a man's power of helpfulness, which is to be used, not only for his own profit, but for the profit of all.^ A close connection between our Lord's teaching and that of St. Paul may be seen thus : — Our Lord, as we have just noticed, constantly speaks of " the Kingdom," St. Paul frequently of " the Church " : now, if the Church is to be a great instrument in the establishment of the Kingdom, and if member- ship in the Church is to train for and to exemplify citizenship in the Kingdom, then (bearing in mind our Lord's teaching) we can understand how membership in the Church must involve some form of service. For, ideally, life in the Ecclesia is only human life as it should be.^ But if membership in the Church implies some form of service, then a position of special responsibility in the Church must imply the exercise of service to a high degree. Hence it is doubly important that those who are called to discharge a special function in the Ecclesia should remember that the render- ing of service is the one claim to respect, and the only justification for the exercise of authority.^ I now proceed to consider St. Paul's use of 1 It will be noticed that the object of irpos to trvfi-cjyepov is undefined. 2 Hort, Christian Ecclesia, pp. 228, 229. Note especially the words, " The Ecclesia as . . . set forth by St. Paul is realised, as it were, in those monotonous homelinesses of daily living- . ..." = St. Matt. XX. 26. Conceptions of Ministry 1 27 these terms as more particularly descriptive of his own position and work, that is as indicating his conceptions of these. I. SouXo? {and its cognates). In Rom. i. i, St. Paul writes as "a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, a called apostle," etc. Attention has rightly been drawn to the Old Testament use of the "servant of the Lord" as applied to the prophets,^ or to Moses, Joshua, David, etc., and to worshippers generally. But, while St. Paul's letters are full of ideas borrowed from the Old Testament,^ and while to him the Christian society was certainly the true Israel, — the society in direct and lawful descent, and the one which showed the true evolution or development from the Israel of the old dispensation, — the word ^ovKo'i has to him a deeper meaning than any attached to the servant of the Lord in the Old Testament. With St. Paul the meaning is rather, Christ hath purchased me for His service. It is for Him and ^ e.g. Amos iii. 7 ; Jer. vii. 25 ; Ezra ix. 11 (in each case SoOXos and in Heb. ijj;). While 155; is in the Heb. by far the commonest original of our word " servant," the representatives of both in the LXX vary frequently between SoCXor, Trais, Bepdirav (especially freq. of Moses), etc. 2 See Sanday and Headlam's note in Romans, p. 3. " It is noticeable how quietly St. Paul steps into the place of the prophets and leaders of the Old Covenant, and how quietly he substitutes the name of his own Master in a connection hitherto reserved for that of Jehovah." 1 28 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul His cause I labour. It is wholly as His property, as one rendering service to Him, that I address you.^ The only occurrence of SoCXos in St. Paul's Epistles as used of himself and his fellow- helpers in regard to those to whom they minister is in 2 Cor. iv. 5, "for we proclaim not ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your bond- servants for Jesus' sake " (where hovKowi is, of course, most strongly qualified by htk 'Irjo-oDv). This passage certainly most clearly asserts St. Paul's entire self-negation on behalf of the gospel and of his converts. He wishes these to under- stand that there is no true service which he and his fellow-workers are not prepared to do in Christ's behalf for them. This aspect of service needs careful considera- tion in connection with common experiences of Christ's ministers to-day. A study of St. Paul's language and methods will show us in what sense we may and may not be the "servants'' (Soi5\od?) of those to whom we minister. St. Paul's words about becoming "all things to all men"^ are frequently stretched far beyond their legitimate application. The earnest effort to put oneself in the place of another, and to view a matter from 1 " The liberty of the Gospel is the silver side of the same shield whose side of gold is an unconditional vassalage to the liberating Lord," etc. Moule, Romans (in Expositor's ffiblej, p. il. ^ I Cor. ix. 22, 23. Conceptions of Ministry 1 29 his point of sight — a task so often demanded, yet so difficult to accomplish — is a very different thing from what St. Paul so sternly repudiates when he says, " If I were still trying to please men I should not be a bond-servant of Christ."^ The slave of men will think only of pleasing men ; the slave of Christ thinks only of pleasing Christ. We can be the servants of men only so far as our service of them is entirely compatible with true service of Christ. His attitude towards Christ must be the primary consideration of every Christian, but particularly so of the Christian in a position of special responsibility. A helpful passage, and one of wider application than ap- pears on the surface, is that where St. Paul says, "Not after the standard [Ka-ra) of eye-service as men-pleasers, but as bond-servants of Christ doing the will of God, serving heartily {Ik ylrvxv's) with cheerfulness as to the Lord and not to men."^ Here we learn that we actually serve Christ through service rendered to those who, in the order of civil society or of the Church, are placed in a position of authority over us. The moment that in our ministerial life or work service of men becomes separable, even in thought, from service of Christ, and still more when such service of men becomes open to the charge of seeking self-advantage, it ceases to be a service which the true Bov\o<; Xpia-rov can render. 1 Gal. i. 10 (XpioToi fioCXoy). ^ Eph. vi. 6, 7. 9 130 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul The following instances of St. Paul's use of ZoxSKewiv are interesting : — Gal. V. 13. " For ye brethren were called with a view to freedom (e-n-' iKevOepia), only not such free- dom (t^v eKevdepLav) as has for its object an oppor- tunity for fleshly indulgence, but by means of the love (which is characteristic of Christianity) (Sta tt}? dr/dTTTj'i) be as bond-servants (BovXevere) to one another." The object of Christianity is freedom^ — an essential condition for such a development of character as Christianity presupposes : but this freedom may all too easily be abused and lost. Phil. ii. 22. "His approvedness ye know; that as a child to a father so with me he did service for (the furtherance of) the gospel." St. Paul is speaking of Timothy with' high praise. St. Paul does not say "as a son does service to his father," but in the relationship of a son to a father has he served^ wt^A me. The older minister felt he had to the younger the relation of a father ; the younger realised this position. St. Paul wisely does not speak of Timothy serving ^ There is an interesting parallel between the effects of Chris- tianity and education ; both are destined to produce freedom. But by Christianity the forces liberated are also consecrated to a high purpose. Frequently we may see where there is little education and yet some true Christianity the latter becomes a wonderful substitute for the former ; see Harnack, Tke Social Gospel, pp. 106-111, especially the words, "A truly religious man will always be an educated man, though he may happen to possess little ' culture.' " ^ Notice that hovkivHv here is absolute. Conceptions of Ministry 131 him ; but of each — one in the position of a father and the other of a son — serving (Christ) together for the gospel. Here is a lesson both to older and younger ministers who serve together as chief and assistant. Phil. ii. 6 ff. " Reflect in your minds the mind of Christ, Who while subsisting with the essential attributes of God . . . emptied Himself by taking the essential attributes of a bond- servant,^ ..." i.e. set no bounds to His humility. He "assumed" the characteristic attributes of a bond-servant. Not in the mere form, but in His "spirit of service," must Christ be an Example to us. Here is a warning to all in a position of social responsibility to-day. Never was it more common than now (while what is termed "the democracy " is flattered and being told that it is "coming to its own") to assume the "guise" of a servant, to speak servilely, and to do out- ward acts of service with a secondary motive, and to do all this without any real desire to make any Christian self-sacrifice, without any intention of becoming hovXoi for the sake of some ^ On the meaning of t^opcfirj, see Lightfoot, and Vincent in loc. Note also the following comment of Bengal : " In ea Dei forma extabat filius Dei ab aeterno : neque, quum in carne venit, in ea esse desiit, sed potius, quod ad humanam naturam attinet, coepit in ilia extare.'' Also the two following comments : — " Service thus becomes glorious, and manhood is recognised as the appropriate means for the manifestation of Divine life.'' " He has emptied Himself to prove to an unbelieving world the power of real human goodness." Jordan, The Philippian Gospel, y^. 109, no. 132 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul infinitely high purpose. Against this simulation of service we must ever be on our guard, for it prevents all true service (as Christ rendered it) for Christ's sake. 2. BiaKovoi; [and its cognates). We turn now to consider St. Paul's use of this second family of words, and we notice at once how comprehensive to him was the range of possible Christian "ministration" or service, how wide was the view he took of its possible applications. Because every Christian, whether holding a position of special responsibility or not, must be inspired with the spirit of Christ, and must take Christ for the pattern of his life, he must there- fore fulfil the "function" of haKovia;'^ though he may do this in a great variety of ways. The well-known words of our Lord should always be remembered, and should always be applicable to the Christian minister, "For verily the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." ^ With this passage we must combine the words 1 Note carefully Hort, Christian Ecdesia, pp. 202-208. ^ Professor Swete's note on St. Mark x. 45 [Commentary, pp. 225, 226) should be carefully studied. All I would venture to add to it is to suggest that kA before hovvai is epexegetic, and I would translate " even to the giving his life," etc., showing that there was to be no limit to the self-sacrifice of service. Conceptions of Ministry 133 in St. Luke's Gospel (xxii. 26), " I am in the midst of you as he that serveth." ^ As we study the application of our Lord's spirit and example in the apostolic writings we notice how wide an application is given to these. We notice our Lord's wisdom in leaving wholly undefined the particular directions and methods in which "ministry" was to be rendered to Him or to men on His behalf. It is in the Ecclesia as in the human body, " There are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit ; and there are diversi- ties of ministrations (hiaKovtwv) and the same Lord; and there are diversities of workings but the same God, who worketh all things in all." ^ It is not that SiaKoviai can be either delegated or confined to men holding positions of responsi- bility, or can be predicated only of men holding a particular kind of position in the Ecclesia. And as I have already shown, there are men who have to occupy more than one kind of position, and who have to discharge more than one function. Indeed, there is no function which can be discharged, there is no work which can be done for Christ, or for men for His sake, which cannot be regarded as a BiuKovia. The discharge of the function of an apostle was a 1 o)s o StaKovmv. It should be noticed that both here and in St. Mark x. 45, SiaKovetv is used absolutely. Nothing is said as to the object, or method, or reason of service. The spirit of service is the all-essential matter. ^ I Cor. xii. 4 f. 134 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul Biaicovta. As Dr. Hort points out/ when the apostles appointed the seven deacons, they did not cease to discharge a SiuKovla, they only sought for opportunity to discharge more effectually the special BiuKoviat of preaching, teaching, and prayer.^ St. Paul's apostleship, the fulfilment of his Divine commission, was one long SiaKovta^ which involved a multitude of various StaKovtai, e.g. preaching, distributing alms, etc. Again, viewing his life's work as a whole, it was a ministry with certain qualities or characteristics, e.g. it was a ministry ToO IIvev/jbaTo<; (2 Cor. iii. 8) ; tjj? St,Katocnjvr}<; (2 Cor. iii. 9) ; T^? KaTaX\ajr)<; (2 Cor. V. 1 8).* There is a use of the word in Eph. iv. 12 which from this point of view deserves special examination. The chapter as a whole "deals with the ground, the growth, and the character of the Christian life " ; * while the more immediate context treats of " the unity and harmonious growth of the Christian body."® St. Paul shows that this unity and growth are due to the com- bination and ministry of all the members. But while a xdpi<} has been given to every member,® at the same time to the body as a whole certain special gifts have been given. These gifts are 1 Christian Ecclesia, p. 206. ^ Acts vi. 4 (jfl SiaKovia tov Xoyou). ^ 2 Cor. iv. I, vi. 3. * It is well for the Christian minister to-day to examine his own ministry in order to see that it possesses these essential qualities. ^ Westcott, Ephesians, p. 56. Conceptions of Ministry 1 35 endowed men, who are endowed with the ability to discharge certain special functions, but the use of these endowments has a nearer -^ common purpose and also a further^ common purpose, this latter being described in a twofold way. In other words, under Divine influence certain men have given themselves to Christ : He endows these men and "gives them back endowed to the Church " for a special purpose. This purpose is (i) " with a view to the perfecting (or equipment) of the saints," (2) in order that each saint {i.e. Christian) may take part in the work,^ which he, in virtue of both his saintship and his humanity, must do ; that work is the work of " ministry." It is only by the constant addition of men who in their lives satisfy this condition that the Body of the Christ, the Ideal Society, will be built up. We must notice that St. Paul's idea of the nearer purpose of endowed men exactly coin- cides with what we know to have been our Lord's method of dealing with those whom He trained for the building up of the Ideal Society. St. Paul regards the Divinely ordered nearer purpose of those ordained to perform special functions* in ^ The one, the " equipping," being marked by tt/jos ; the other, the "work of ministering" and "the building up," etc., by «s . . . ds. [The work of ministering and the building up of the body of the Christ proceed simultaneously : in fact they are inseparable.] ^Notice that this work of "ministering" is incumbent upon every professing Christian in virtue of the example of Christ. ^ The functions of the apostle, evangelist, etc. 1 36 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul and for the body to be the equipment unto per- fection of every believer ; ^ with a view to enabling that believer to take part in the work of minister- ing, so as to make him a useful and active member of the Society. And to what did our Lord mainly devote the years of His ministry on earth but ttjoo? t-oi' KarapTta-fihv ^ of those who, in obedience to His call, had dedicated themselves to Him and His purpose? The wisdom of His method was proved by its success — the rapid growth of the Christian society in its earliest days. But this work of KaTdpTia-i<} demands very considerable qualifications. And often it is from the lack of these qualifications that the work is so badly done. He that would equip others must himself be equipped to a very high degree of efficiency. I do not wish to press the point unduly, but all the functions suggested by the words apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, if they are to be adequately discharged, demand a very considerable intellectual equip- ment. Far too much has been made of the absence of intellectual equipment in the first Christian teachers : their writings, which certainly are not the productions of illiterate men, prove ^ See Latham's Pastor Pastorum, A. B. Bruce's Training of the Twelve. ^ By^laying stress on this intellectual endowment, I would not for a moment minimise the importance of another kind of equipment equally or even more important — the "moral-spiritual." Conceptions of Ministry 137 this. When Christ gave to His Church such men as the one who could write this Epistle, or the Gospel and Epistles of St. John, or the Epistle to the Hebrews, or St. Luke's Gospel and the Acts, He gave men who possessed not only very- considerable intellectual powers, but who knew how to use those powers. It will be well for Christian pastors and teachers to think of the equipment demanded to-day of those who are appointed to equip the men who are to practise medicine, or law, or who are to take part in scientific work. What then must be the equip- ment of the Christian minister who is called to equip other Christians to be really ^ useful members of a society charged with the loftiest and most comprehensive purposes ! I must not consider at length the verses which follow, but they are full of implications of the high standard required for the adequate Christian life. I may, however, notice the three aspects of Christian progress mentioned in verse 13 : — " The first is intellectual, where faith and knowledge combine to create unity in the soul, the object of both being the Son of God. The second is personal maturity." (Surely the perfection of all that true manhood should imply.) "The third is the conformity of 1 The minister of every parish or congregation should be able to train men and women to become efficient Sunday-school teachers or workers among the poor. To do this adequately demands a considerable intellectual equipment. 1 38 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul each member to the standard of Christ " ^ — the highest of all standards. In its obedience to St. Paul's principles for training citizens the State is to-day far wiser than the Church. The demand of the world to-day is for efficiency, which is not very different from " capability to perform an ep'^ov SiaKoviaP's Krjpiera-ovTos, "without a preacher." 1 Krjpva-crav. ^ St. Mark i. 14. Conceptions of Ministry 147 assumption, one which investigation into the real state of the case proves to be far from justified. IV. Prophet. In I Cor. xiv. 6, St. Paul asks, " What shall I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of revelation, or of knowledge, or of prophesying, or of teaching?" In the ist verse of the same chapter St. Paul bids the Corinthians to desire with special earnestness "to prophesy." In the 3rd verse he asserts that "he that prophesieth speaketh unto men edification, and exhortation (or encouragement), and consolation," also that " he that prophesieth edifieth the Church." These passages are sufficient to show that St. Paul set an exceptionally high value upon the function of prophesying, and also that he exercised the gift. As this subject is of excep- tional importance, first in connection with St. Paul's own work, secondly in connection with ministerial work generally in the apostolic and succeeding ages, and thirdly in connection with the work of the Christian ministry to-day, I have made "prophecy" the subject of a separate chapter. V. Preacher. As I have also made St. Paul's preaching the subject of a special chapter, I need not say more 148 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul about it here than to remind my readers that in the Acts and in his Epistles the words "preach" and "preacher," as found in both the Authorised and Revised Versions, represent more than one word in the original Greek. In some places the word " preach " may represent tcnpia-aeLv, and "preacher" represent Kripv^. In other passages "preach" may represent a part of the meaning of the word evajye\i^ea-6ai, as in Rom. i. 15, I Cor. i. 17, Gal. i. 9. In Rom. xv. 19 it repre- sents a part of vXripovv ; in Gal. iii. 8, a part of irpoevar/yeXi^ecrdai, ; in I Cor. ix. 1 4 (in the A.V.), a part of KaToyyeWeiv. St. Paul was before everything else a preacher. In the course of his missionary labours he was constantly preaching. As a preacher in our sense of the term he was sometimes a herald, sometimes an evangelist, sometimes a prophet, sometimes a teacher. His preaching included the discharge of all these various functions. So it is with the Christian preacher to-day. In the same sermon each of these different works may need to be fulfilled. VI. Teacher (StSaffxaXos). An adequate treatment of St. Paul as a teacher — an inquiry into the methods and contents of his teaching — would require a volume to itself. Here I can only hope to give the chief thoughts which a study of his teaching suggests. Conceptions of Ministry 149 Only twice,^ as I have already noticed, does St. Paul speak of himself as a teacher, only once ^ is he definitely called a teacher by another. In I Cor. iv. 17, Col. i. 28, and in Acts xx. 20 he speaks of himself as teaching ; in Acts xv. 35, xviii. II, xxi. 21, 28, and in xxviii. 31 he is described by others as teaching. It is. difficult to treat St. Paul's discharge of the function of teaching by itself, for with him as with the Christian minister to-day this work is not isolated. As apostle, as herald, as evangelist, and as prophet, he would constantly be teaching. Regarded more narrowly, we may say that the teacher's work is twofold. First, to try to enforce discipline in life — to obtain and to maintain the conditions without which it is not possible to gain the attention of those he would teach to the ideas he would place before them ; secondly, to set forth, explain, and gain admission for these ideas. This is probably why the functions of "pastor" and "teacher" are so closely joined in Eph. iv. 11,* and why "pastor" precedes teacher ; for teaching is impossible without some measure of discipline. Fortunately we are learning how important it is for the teacher to be also a disciplinarian : though in this latter capacity the younger clergy ^ I Tim. ii. ^ and 2 Tim. i. 11. ^ Acts xiii. i. * roiir hi TroifUvas koi SiSaa-KoKovs. The Other words are joined simply by Se. 150 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul are still often grievously wanting. More than thirty years of constant experience in large day and Sunday schools, and much work in them in conjunction with many of my younger brethren, are my reasons for these statements. What proportion of men at their ordination, or even when they obtain a parish of their own, could be described in any way as BiSaicTtKol,? How many men after years of ministerial life still continue to be quite unable to teach ? And yet what work is more important ? I need not refer to our Lord, for as the " Prince of teachers," as the One from whom, more than any other who ever lived, we may learn what teaching is. He has been the subject of many volumes. We may not perhaps blame the recently ordained severely if they are not experts in teaching, but we must blame the system which places men in a certain position without in any way ensuring that they have received at least some instruction or training in one of the most important duties attached to that position. We must especially blame the man who years after ordination is still unable to teach, for by study and practice he might have trained himself to do this. I believe it is, at least pardy, because men find themselves to be such inefficient teachers that many of them, instead of making themselves efficient, actually cease entirely from teaching. It is not, as a rule, that men do not know enough, at any rate when they are ordained ; Conceptions of Ministry 151 though many a man, from ceasing to study, loses i}aax freshness of knowledge which is essential for successful teaching. But they have never been taught how to obtain the conditions in which they can teach, and how to obtain an entrance into the minds of their scholars for the knowledge they wish to impart. There is evei-y reason to suppose that in the future far greater responsibility for teaching will devolve upon the clergy.^ The giving of religious instruction will more and more rest with them. And as efficiency increases in secular education those whom we teach will be more and more able to appreciate (or to despise) the religious teaching which is offered to them. But the clergy have not- only to teach, they have to train others to teach. They ought to be capable of giving adequate instruction upon both the science and art of teaching, because the efficiency of the great multitude of almost wholly untrained Sunday-school teachers depends upon the efficiency of the clergy to train them. The fact that our Lord tells us that one of the offices of the Holy Spirit is to teach ^ should, for two reasons, impress us with the importance of being able to teach, first because it shows us the sacredness of the calling of the religious ^ Through the gradual abolition of all denominational, if not religious, teaching in day schools. * St. John xiv. 26, hiha^fi. 1 52 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul teacher, and secondly because it proves to us the sacredness of that which we have to teach. I have already laid stress upon how St. Paul again and again shows us that the various ofifices of the Holy Spirit^ are performed through men who, by Him, are filled with the ability to discharge these offices. In this way the Spirit through the Church carries on the work of Christ. Hence our teaching must be regarded as nothing less than the carrying on of the teaching work of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. In I Cor. ii. 6 ff , St. Paul speaks of what he imparted to his hearers, and then states that these truths were revealed to him through the Spirit (8ta ToO irveviMTo BiSaKTOK irvevfiaTO'i) : "applying spiritual methods to explain spiritual truths."^ St. Paul then proceeds : " For the natural (•v/ru^j^tKo?) man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are /icapia to him," etc. The 1 I Cor. xii. 4 ff. ^ This I understand of the Holy Spirit aiding the consecrated human faculty to do the same. * Lightfoot in loc. Conceptions of Ministry 153 argument here used by St. Paul might have been used by a modern psychologist, who would say, " Before a pupil can be expected to assimi- late or understand an idea the teacher must be careful to see that he has something to understand or assimilate with." Here is a valuable hint to preachers, especially to uneducated congregations. The foregoing is only one of many instances in which St. Paul seems to have anticipated the results of modern scientific investigation.-^ The lesson to the religious teacher should be clear. He must seek and obtain the presence and help of God's Holy Spirit — the Spirit of wisdom,^ of understanding, and of knowledge,* and the subjects of his teaching must be to. ^ddi^ TOW Qeov. The grammar, history, geography, and antiquities of the Bible are not these : and it is so easy to forget that knowledge adoui the Bible is not " religious " knowledge. Above all, the Christian teacher must be careful to prepare men, by helping to impart to them a spiritual nature so that they may be fit to receive spiritual teaching. The following references to teaching by St. Paul are worthy of careful attention : — In Rom. ii. 21, St. Paul, imbued with the spirit 1 See further in my Social Teaching of St. Paul, pp. 92 ff. and iS4ff. ^ On the meaning of "wisdom" see chapter on " Wisdom," p. 356. ^ See Professor G. A. Smith on Isa. xi. 2 ff., in his Isaiah, vol. i. p. 187 {Expositor's Bible), where he writes : " The Spirits of the Lord mentioned by Isaiah are prevaihngly intellectual." 1 54 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul of the true teacher, asks indignantly, "Thou who teachest another, teachest thou not thyself ? " The passage deals with the boasting of the Jews about their superiority in the possession of know- ledge of God, and of revelation from God. The description of the Jewish teacher is striking. He is one who is confident that he perceives God's will ; he is confident also in his trained judgment, in his highly educated taste, of his capability, among good things,^ of choosing the best, of his sufficiency as a guide to the blind, a light to those in darkness, a corrector to those lacking sense or judgment, as a teacher of the immature, etc. Having drawn this picture of entire self-satisfaction, St. Paul pertinently asks, "Thou therefore that teachest another, teacheth thou not thyself ? " This passage by itself is sufficient to prove that St. Paul was a great teacher. We must notice first his full descrip- tion, from the true teacher's point of view, of what the teacher must try to do : secondly, his strong implicit rebuke of the folly of under- estimating the attainments or capacity of those to be taught^ — a fatal error, yet one commonly made in practice : lastly, St. Paul lays his finger ^ " Non modo prae malis bona sed in bonis optima." Bengel on Phil. i. lo. ^ There are some excellent warnings against this in Blunt's Duties of the Parish Priest, pp. 149 ff. If these warnings were needed in 1856, when that excellent book was published, they are much more needed to-day. Conceptions of Ministry 155 upon what is probably the most common of all causes of failure on the teacher's part, namely, self-satisfaction with his own capabilities, and therefore no effort to improve these. The picture is, of course, practically identical with that of the Pharisees in the Gospels, upon whose unfitness for their position, and consequent harmfulness to the higher life of the people, our Lord speaks so strongly. In Eph. iv. 20 ff. we see how closely St. Paul connected Christian conduct with Christian teaching : — " But ye did not so learn the Christ, if at least it was He whom ye heard, and it was in fellowship -^ with Him ye were further taught, even as there is [essentially] truth in Jesus,^ that ye put away the old man, having regard to your former manner of life, according to the lusts of deceit, and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that ye put on the new man," etc. Upon this passage these three notes of Bishop Westcott's should be carefully remembered : — ( i ) On ehihaydiyre in verse 21. "Ye were further taught, as ye were then enabled to receive further instruction " ; implying that continuous instruction was then the experience of the Christian convert. (2) On verse 23. " Two things are required for the '^ Verse 21, the eV avra : "in Him" (probably as the sphere of instruction). 2 Who is the Truth ; and who came to bear witness to the Truth, Cf. also St. John i. 14, irX^/)i;s ddrjdetas. 156 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul positive formation of the Christian character — the continuous and progressive renewal of our highest faculty" (intellectual), "and the decisive acceptance of the new man " (practical). (3) " The spirit by which man holds communion with God has a place in his higher reason. The spirit, when quickened, furnishes new principles to the vovi, by which it is delivered from lubTaioTr)';!' We must remember that "ideas'' are motive powers which are conveyed into a man by teaching. We must also remember that spiritual ideas (the source of which is God's Holy Spirit — the Teacher) conveyed by teaching into a man become the power of the Holy Spirit in the life whereby conduct is changed. We may also say that for a healthy progressive life we need a constant fresh supply of the highest mental stimulus'' in the form of spiritual teaching. Doctrine or teaching is the inspiration or motive power, it is also the controlling or regulative power, of conduct. In Col. ii. 6ff., St. Paul speaks of what must be the result of Christian teaching. Bishop Lightfoot paraphrases this passage thus : " Let your con- viction and conduct be in perfect accordance with the doctrines and precepts of the gospel, as it was taught to you." For several reasons this passage is an interesting one. Its meaning seems to be : As ye received (from your teachers) the Christ, ' dvav€ov iv & i/ias ro TTvevfia to ayiov edcTO cnia-noTrovs. — ACTS XX. 28. rj ovK aKoveis ti cj>rj(rt rois Trpecr^vrtpois 'K(f)€(ria>v to tov Xpiarov (TKevos TO ckXcktov. — Chrysostom, De Sacerdot. iv. 8. In any attempt to describe St. Paul's conception of the Ministerial or Pastoral Office his address to the elders at Miletus demands very careful treatment. I shall not enter at length into the question of the genuineness of the speech.^ The similarity of both its teaching and its language (vocabulary and mode of expression) to the teaching and language of St. Paul's letters,^ and especially, as we might expect, to those of the Pastoral Epistles, must strike every careful reader. ' Recently, in his Luke the Physician {E.T. pp. 138, 139), Harnack has spoken most strongly in favour of it? genuineness. ^ A very striking list of the similarities between this address and the Epistle to the Ephesians is given in Westcott's Ephesians, p. xlix. Harnack says : " This whole discourse calls to mind the Epistles to the Thessalonians." 195 196 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul But the similarities of language are not at all those we should expect to find if the speech was the work of a clever forger, that is of one who, with St. Paul's letters before him, composed the speech for the occasion which seemed to demand it. In that case we should have had identical expressions consisting of several consecutive words. What we actually find is a distinctly Pauline vocabulary and a body of Pauline doc- trine, but hardly an instance of what may be termed a quotation. To regard it as a clever compilation makes a far greater demand upon our credulity than does a belief in its genuine- ness. The wealth of teaching connected with pastoral work which the address contains, when we con- sider its brevity, is extraordinary. If ever the salient points were seized in a brief report (and we must regard the speech before us as no more than this) we may well believe they have been seized here. Let me say at once that this speech may be extremely useful to the working pastor, as a mirror for self-examination, as a standard whereby he may test his own aims and conduct. In reading it we must remember that St. Paul knew intimately ^ the Church to whose responsible officers it was addressed. Here, as always, in- sight was the true key to foresight.^ It was 1 Verses 20, 25, 31. ^ This power in our Lord, seen in His insight into the real con- Address to the Ephesian Elders 197 because St. Paul knew so well the actual condi- tions at Ephesus that he could warn so clearly and so usefully with regard to the future. The true pastor is a watchman^ as well as a prophet ; indeed, because he is a watchman he can be a prophet. He sees the origins of possibilities of dangers within, he detects the first signs of the approach of these from outside. If the Church is to influence and guide the world she must in insight be superior to, and in foresight in advance of, the world. Intense and minute study of actual conditions is essential for insight : loftiness and breadth of vision must be added for fore- sight. The true statesman, it has been said, is not content to be abreast of his time, he will be in advance of it. We must not be satisfied with meeting the movements of those who would oppose us, we must "head" them. For one reason the speech is of peculiar im- portance. Apart from the Pastoral Epistles, it contains the only extant advice of St. Paul ad- dressed directly to those holding an office or position of special responsibility in the Church. In St. Paul's Epistles (other than the Pastorals) he deals only implicitly and indirectly with the duties of those who have to exercise a special ditions in Jerusalem— the temper of its ecclesiastical rulers and people — accounts for His tears and prophecy over the city (St. Luke xix. 41 ff.). 1 Ordination Service for Priests. 198 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul function in the Ecclesia. Here a body of such men is directly addressed upon the responsibihties which their position involves. In the speech, as so often in St. Paul's utter- ances, it is difficult to discover any formal arrangement, or even any logical sequence of thought. That the contents should be largely autobiographical, drawn from personal experience, and that the choice of these should appear to be, to a great extent, governed by feeling and emotion, are evidences in favour of Pauline authorship. It seems possible to gather the main contents under three heads : — 1. References to his own ministry in the past,^ especially as it was known to his hearers from their personal experience of his labours during the three years he was working in Ephesus and the neighbourhood : — Vv. 18-21, 25, 27, 31, 33-35. 2. A forecast of the immediate future : — {a) As regards himself, vv. 22-24. {(5) As regards his hearers,^ vv. 25, 29, 30. 3. Short and earnest exhortations as to their attitude towards themselves and towards the Church in which they had responsibility : — Vv. 28, 31, 32,^35. 1 Cp. I Cor. iv. 16, xi. I ; i Thess. i. S fF., etc. ^ This includes a forecast of conditions he saw about to arise in Ephesus. * In the form of a prayer. Address to the Ephesian Elders 199 The only way in which to deal adequately with a passage so full of both teaching and suggestiveness, and at the same time so com- pressed in its language, will be to consider it word by word. Verses 18, 19. "Ye yourselves know that from the first day I set foot in Asia what my conduct (ttw?) was with you all the time, rendering service to the Lord with all humility and tears and trials which befell me from the deliberate plottings of the Jews." St. Paul commences his address with an appeal to their personal knowledge of his conduct as a bond-service^ to the Lord, which is in entire accordance with his appeals elsewhere. Experience shows the power of this method of appeal, and above all of the necessity of our so living that such an appeal can be fear- lessly made. The powers of personal example and of personal self-sacrifice are certainly by far the strongest of all influences upon others. The personal, as I have shown elsewhere, is the channel of the spiritual and the moral, and the supply of these will depend upon the nature of the medium.^ St. Paul's chief anxiety for the Church in Ephesus arises from the inevitable weakening of its defences through the necessary ^ Note the early position of hmk^vav : cp. the early position of hovKoi in Rom. i. i ; Gal. i. lo ; Phil. i. i ; Tit. i. i. ^ The traditional saying of our Lord's — " Be ye approved money- changers." 200 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul withdrawal of his own personality. And it must not be forgotten that the power of personal example is generally proportionate to its cost, for self-sacrifice alone is fruitful. The conditions under which his own service had been rendered, and the difficulties under which he had laboured, St. Paul gathers up under three heads : first, "humility";^ secondly, "tears"; thirdly, "trials from the plottings of the Jews." ^ The constant self-discipline of humility, sorrow for sin and its results, and frequent opposition (sometimes amounting to almost persecution) are still among the conditions amid which the minister of Christ must often render service to his Master. (i) It is not always easy for one who often, from force of circumstances {e.g. in a working- class parish or in a country village), is in a very real sense the persona of the place to exercise humility ; but the cultivation of this virtue is essential for ministerial work, and failure in in- fluence is only too often due chiefly to its absence. In Eph. iv. 2, St. Paul places it first among the virtues which must characterise the Christian calling. In Phil. ii. 3 it is stated to be the essential spirit of the Incarnate Christ. (2) Sorrow for sin and for the results of sin is another condition in which the minister of ' Ta7reivo(f)oiTivri, a Pauline word ; in N.T. here, five times in St. Paul, and in i Pet. v. 5. 2 eni^ovXais, Acts ix. 24, xx. 3, xxiii. 30, all of the Jews. Address to the Ephesian Elders 201 Christ must live and serve : it is the counterpart to joy in the Lord, joy in increase of righteous- ness : it also arises from "the love of souls," for sin harms and destroys these.^ (3) The word ireipaa-fjiwv^ here is almost a euphemism to describe St. Paul's experiences at the hands of those who everywhere dogged his footsteps and sought to take his life. It describes rather the aspect in which he wished to view the troubles which they caused him, than the nature of the troubles themselves. Service of Christ is a warfare in which, of necessity, many wounds must be received. Well is it for us if we can regard these wounds as "trials" from a Divine source for some good purpose : ^ this is especially difficult when we are conscious of what ein^ovKri really signifies, that is " will in action directed against us." The moral effect upon ourselves of opposition so directed against us needs to be very carefully watched. Verse 20. St. Paul continues to appeal to their experience, but he now passes from his personal life to his ministerial work. ["Ye yourselves know] how that I shrank from declaring to you 1 See further in the chapter on " The Love of Souls," pp. 221 ff. 2 The use of the word in i Cor. x. 13 (and in i Pet. i. 6) makes its meaning clear. * " Tunsionibus, pressuris Expoliti lapides Suis coaptantur locis Per manum artificis," 202 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul nothing of the things profitable to you, and teaching you publicly and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." These words contain a wonderfully condensed summary of the chief activities of St. Paul's ministry. He "announced"^ and he taught (publicly and privately), and in both he gave his testimony. We must notice that both words (ai'a77et\ot kclI SiBd^ai) Speak of the positiveness of the message. This, as we know from many passages in his Epistles, was St. Paul's method. His description of his work in Col. i. 28 as a proclamation (KarayyiXKo/iev), and as teaching every man, offers a close parallel. He tells the Corinthians that he preached Christ crucified ; ^ that his speech and his preaching ^ were not in persuasive words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. He tells the Galatians that before their eyes he had placarded (irpoeypd^ri) Christ crucified.* Then he asks them whether he had become their enemy because he tells them the truth.® In verse 27 of this same chapter St. Paul repeats ^ avayyOiXfiv in St. John xvi. 13, 14, 15, is used of the work of the Holy Spirit, another proof that the Christian minister has to do the Spirit's work. In St. John xvi. 25 it is used of Christ. 2 I Cor. i. 23, KTipicrcronev, do the work of a herald. ^ I Cor. ii. 4, TO KTipvyiid /xow, " The contents of my proclama- tion." * Gal. iii. i. ^ Gal. iv. 16. Address to the Ephesian Elders 203 the words, " I shrank not from announcing," or "proclaiming," and then defines the subject of his proclamation as "the whole counsel of God." By these words I understand the entire revela- tion of God's counsel with reference to action.^ The point I would here press is St. Paul's emphasis upon the need of proclaiming all that is profitable for his hearers, that is the whole of God's counsel. St. Paul could have saved himself much had he been content to proclaim only what was palatable to his hearers, had he indeed withheld just that part of God's purpose which was especially distasteful to them. The temptation to the preacher to omit the un- palatable, especially if its proclamation is likely to have unpleasant consequences to himself, is often stronger than he cares to admit even in his own ^heart. St. Paul seems to have feared that after his departure only a part of the message might be given in the Church in Ephesus ; this would be the source of the danger described in verse 30 (avSioe? XaXoOi'Tes Sie<7Tpafi/j.evay Proclamation and teaching must go together. It is not by argument, by exposure of the un- truthfulness of other messages, by disputation, it is by proclamation, that the preacher must seek to win men to Christ. It is more than possible 1 Westcott on Eph. i. ii. On the need of preaching the whole truth, see Maclaren, Colossians, p. 141 f. A partial or one-sided proclamation of truth is a very fruitful source of heresy. 204 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul to confuse (and weary) our hearers by placing before them several interpretations or messages, and then by exposing the untruthfulness or weak- ness of all but one, to seek to bring them to believe this. Such a method may have its place in the lecture-room, it is altogether un- suitable for the pulpit. Both the announcing and the teaching are described by hiaiiapTvp6iievo6v, this last duty must not be forgotten. Because if we treat a person differently from what we treat others, he should know the reason of our conduct.^ A second temptation in rebuking others is to think only of the offence, of the wrong done, and to forget the particular nature or circumstances [e.g: temptations) of the wrong-doer in question. The success of one physician over another in effecting a cure is not always due to a superior scientific knowledge of the nature and usual course or action of the disease. It is often rather due to greater insight into the nature and character of the patient. If the study of char- acter and of the idiosyncrasies of human nature is essential to the physician of the body, it is still more essential to those who would act as physicians of souls.^ That St. Paul was a keen and careful student of character, and that he knew well that " medicamentum, quod hunc ^ " Scire debet, cur id fiat," says Bengel. ^ The greater attention being paid by the medical profession to the study of psychology should be an example to the clergy. Cp. Chrysostom (£>e Sacerd. ii. 4), " Sia tovto ttoXX^j Set r^s (Tuveo-etos ra TroLfievi Koi fivpiav ov, irpbs to nepuTKOTreiv iravToBev ttjv Trjs '^vx^s e^LV." The Love of Souls 239 morbum imminuit, alteri vires jungit,"^ we have many proofs. For example, his exhortation in I Thess. V. 14, "Admonish the disorderly, en- courage the faint-hearted, support the weak," and also his whole treatment of the strong and weak brethren in Rom. xiv. and xv., are proofs of this. There is one other temptation to the minister which I must notice, viz. to consider actions to be seriously wrong because they are unpleasant to him, or cause him serious personal inconvenience, or pecuniary loss, or even because they wound his personal pride. He is even apt to measure their wickedness by the degree of their personal unpleasantness. The apparent magnitude of objects, especially of mental objects, and even of sins and "offences," varies according to their nearness or distance from ourselves. There is much to be learnt from St. Paul's words, ovk i/ie \e\vTrr}Kev, in 2 Cor. ii. 5. Thus the true pastor, who loves souls, who is inspired by the spirit of the Paster Bonus, will neither be blind to the sins of his flock, nor will he fail to rebuke these when he sees that rebuke is necessary. But in this, as in all other efforts on their behalf, his method will be governed by this golden rule of St. Paul, Omnia ad aedificationem fiant. But a true love of souls will do more than 1 Greg. Regul. Pastoral. Pars. iii. Prolog. The whole of the third part of Gregory's manual is an amplification of this exhorta- tion. 240 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul rebuke blemishes, it will warn against dangers and seek to remove these ; ^ it will also teach, so that life may enjoy increased means and oppor- tunities for development. With the pastor's efforts to warn and to teach I have already dealt. Here I need only add that no true pastor will be content with a mere general admonition, such as that given in a sermon. He will, from his knowledge of his flock, know where from time to time a word of personal warning, one given in a kindly and sympathetic spirit, is necessary. Here, too, as in public admonition, he will do it eV irda-y a-o(j)ia. The chief point to remember is that in all our efforts to help and to save souls, from " the love of souls," we must keep our object and purpose absolutely clear. That object is to help men to grow into the likeness of Christ — to realise Christ in their lives, and this, we must impress upon them, can only be done by the putting away of sin.^ Hence sin is the deadly enemy of the true Christian pastor ; and 'sin may be viewed under many aspects, for it takes many forms.^ ^ " The Church has been too content to do ambulance work. The office of the Good Samaritan is thoroughly Christian, but we must do all we can to make the road from Jericho to Jerusalem more safe for the traveller." Shailer Mathews, T/ie Church and the Changing Order. ^ Heb. ix. 26. By us, as by Christ, this can only be accom- plished at the cost of personal self-sacrifice, which we can only make "in Him." ^ After giving (on p. 231) a list of terms for sin, Trench {N.T. The Love of Souls 241 This is not a treatise upon either the ethics or the doctrine (the theology) of St. Paul. It is outside the range of my purpose to deal, except indirectly, with these, and they cannot be separated except as phenomena and explanation. I cannot therefore enter upon a study of St. Paul's doctrine of "sin," or "salvation," or "redemption," or "reconciliation," or "justification," or "sanctifica- tion," or "grace." But the pastor who would learn how to combat sin will not be ignorant of any of these, for a knowledge of each doctrine, and skill in the application of each, is a valuable weapon in the hand of the Christian warrior. When St. Paul attacked sin he did so "with a very definite theology at his back." The Christian teacher, like the officer in the army, needs to-day a "scientific training": he must know the nature of the weapons of his warfare, and he must be trained to use them skilfully. In one sense these weapons are the same to-day as they have been in all the ages of the Christian warfare.-' But in another sense they have changed and developed, as have the weapons and the tactics of the enemy, from age to age.^ Here we can see an analogy with the development of the weapons used in physical warfare and with Synonyms) remarks : '' A mournfully numerous group of words which it would be only too easy to make larger still." ^ Eph. vi. 10 fF. ^ To the student of history many of our present enemies are " old foes with a new face." 16 242 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul the weapons used by the physician and surgeon in their warfare against disease. What we have to remember is that the love of souls implies not only the reality of sin but the warfare against sin. It is forgetfulness of these two truths which makes much of our so-called philanthropy so ineffective. A careful study of the ist chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans will show us that to St. Paul the love of souls (those "in Rome" are "Beloved of God" and "called to be saints") is quite unthinkable apart from a warfare against the dangers from sin which encompass men living in the world. St. Paul's object is to produce in men that "obedience" which proceeds from faith in Christ. This obedience is at once the condition of the righteous or ideal life, and a synonym for that life. St. Paul longs to visit the Christians in Rome ; he wants to help them ; he is ready to preach the gospel to them, for the gospel is the Divinely appointed power unto salvation (moral safety or safety from sin'^), because therein a Divine righteousness is being revealed. At once St. Paul, in his letter, turns to the other side of experience — " the wrath of God is also now being revealed " — as clear as the daylight to those who ^ " The fundamental idea contained in a-arrjpia is the removal of dangers menacing to life, and the consequent placing of life in conditions favourable to free and healthy expansion." In the N.T. crcoTrjpia " covers the whole range of the Messianic deliverance." Sanday and Headlam, Romans, pp. 23, 24. The Love of Souls 243 will see — "against every kind and instance of acre^eia against God and of ahiKla against man, against men who hinder the Truth from doing its appointed work."^ If, then, our hearts are filled as was St. Paul's with a true love of souls, with an earnest desire to see men and women what they may become, and if we are convinced that only through faith in Christ, leading to obedience to Christ, and issuing in union with Christ, can they become so, then we must not only proclaim God's wrath upon sin, we must in word and in deed fight against sin with all our powers. Suppose we could remove from our parishes the drink, the impurity, the dishonesty, the oppression, the idleness, and other evils which are simply and solely the results of sin ; in other words, suppose we could remove the evils which are not inevitable, we should then hardly recognise the places in which we live.^ Conditions which at present are a veritable hell, and lives which actually now seem to be literally living in hell, and upon which " the wrath of God " seems to have " come to the uttermost,"^ would both be transformed. ^ " Men held down the truth in unrighteousness, they restrained it from having free course in their hearts and in the world, because of the painful moral obligations which it involves." ^ To help to bring about these changes must be the reason for the clergy taking part in work which has for its object the improve- ment of the conditions of the people. * I Thess. ii. i6. 244 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul Are we, from our "love of souls," as careful as St. Paul was to state both sides of the Divine revelation ? Is our warfare against sin as earnest as our teaching about righteousness ? When we see rich and influential men making fortunes out of the means and the promotion of sin, are we brave enough to speak to them of " the wrath of God " ? When sin, with all its attendant misery, enters our own homes, we are indeed wroth with those who have caused its entrance there. Are we equally inimical to what is around us de- stroying the souls committed to our pastoral care ? Dare we speak to-day in the strain and with the accent with which St. Paul wrote in the 2nd chapter of the Epistle to the Romans ? Dare we speak to men who promote sin of their "treasuring up for themselves wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God"? Truly, in his love for souls, in his hatred of sin, and in his warfare against all that is destructive of the souls for whom Christ died, St. Paul is (if we will only learn from him) a wonderful inspira- tion and example. CHAPTER VI. FIRST CORINTHIANS XIII.— THE MOTIVE POWER OF MINISTRY. fielvare iv rjj dyaTrr] TJ} e/ij. — JOHN xv. 9. avTtj ifTTiV fj €VTo\fi Tf ififj tva dyavare dWrjXovs Ka6a>s fjydTrrjira vnds. — John xv. 12. Si volumus commendare nos Deo, caritatem habeamus. — Ambrose, De Off. Ministr. ii. 27. There are certain chapters in St. Paul's Epistles which acquire a clearer and deeper meaning when we read them in the light of his pastoral spirit^ and as the result of his ministerial experience. Such a chapter is this 13th of First Corinthians. The chapter must be studied in close connection with those which immediately precede and follow it — the 1 2th and the 14th — for these three chapters have one subject, the endowment of the Church and its members. In the 1 2th chapter, whilst the unity of the 1 The spirit which has been defined as " the love of souls," or as " the enthusiasm of humanity." See the previous chapter on " The Love of Souls," p. 221 ff. 246 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul Ecclesia is constantly asserted, the prevailing thought is of the diversities (Statpeo-et?), first of gifts or endowments {xapto-fiara), secondly of services (BiaKovcai), thirdly of effectual opera- tions (Ivepr^rjfiaTa). But the highest endow- ments may be so utilised, and the most earnest service of various kinds may be so pursued, as to have a selfish object ; while the more effectual our operations the greater is often the danger of their ministering to personal pride. The possessor of some fine endowment in a high degree may cultivate that endowment as an end in itself. We know what the pursuit of art simply for "art's sake " means. Ceaseless activity in any kind of service may actually become a fetish, and in itself a cause of self-esteem ; ^ while effectiveness may be exercised in opposition to Christ as well as on His behalf Again, there are such things as rivalries of gifts, and between methods or forms of service. We have all seen the undue deprecia- tion of one, the unwise exaltation of another. Indeed, the history of the troubles of the Church from its earliest days is a painful commentary upon the exercise of the gifts and activities described in this 12th chapter, regardless of one essential condition. The final words of that chapter demand attention. St. Paul asserts that although the ^ Preachers will boast of the number of the sermons they have preached, pastors of the number of calls they have paid ! The Motive Power of Ministry 247 lowest gifts have their place in the Church, and whilst opportunity may be found for exercising them, it is our duty to aim at possessing the highest.-^ Then, again, whilst every personal endowment is a "gift" of God, we must re- member that our own effort is necessary, if we would fully participate in the higher endowments. We are also responsible for the right use of all. Finally St. Paul adds, " And I proceed to show you a way beyond all comparison^ the best." By "way" I think St. Paul means a determining and impelling and controlling principle and motive. What he is demanding is the Christianising, that is the highest moralising of the gifts by their being motived, inspired, and consecrated by Love. It is not necessary to dwell upon the meaning of arfdirrj.^ The chief point to remember is that here love is not regarded as a "gift" to be compared with other gifts, it is rather a spirit, or temper,* in which all gifts are to be used or exercised. St. Paul constantly speaks of the Christian as a man or woman " in Christ,"^ or as one in whom Christ dwells. If love is a synonym 1 Possibly St. Stephen may be cited as an example. ^ Ka& VTrep^oXrjv odov. ^ See especially Sanday and Headlam, Romans, pp. 376, 377. Note that " love is the correlative in the moral world to what faith is in the religious life.'' * Christianity itself has been defined as a certain " temper.'' ° Upon this expression, so common in St. Paul, and whose meaning is so vital for understanding his teaching, see Deissmann's Die neutestajnentliche Formel " in Christojesu." 248 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul for the spirit and motive of Christ, when we say- that all these gifts have to be exercised and used with, or in, love, we mean that they have to be exercised "in Christ." Just as to be "in Christ " infinitely moralises the whole life, so to exercise a gift "in love" infinitely moralises its use and exercise. Verse i. " If I speak with the tongues of men, even of angels, and have not love, I have become (mere) sounding brass or a clanging cymbal." St. Paul's first application of his great principle refers to the use of " tongues " — a gift of ecstatic, and probably highly emotional utterance, and evidently very highly prized by the Corinthians. St. Paul at once refuses to consider the gift apart from the personality through which it is exercised. If that personality is not motived by love the speaker has become a mere instrument of sound without moral (or spiritual) character. Two applications at once suggest themselves : first, to what is termed popular preaching, however eloquent and clever, which does not proceed from a Christianised heart, which is not inspired by the love of souls, and whose object is not the salvation or edification of men ; secondly, to the emotional singing of hymns whose words, if studied carefully apart from the music, are seen to be either heresy or nonsense, if they do not come perilously near to blasphemy. Verse 2. " Even if I have [the gift of] prophecy The Motive Power of Ministry 249 and know all the mysteries and the whole of knowledge, even if I have such complete faith as [to be able] to remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing." St. Paul here passes on to the higher gifts : first, of prophecy, revelation, and knowledge (the powers of interpretation and exhortation depending on spiritual insight and large possessions of knowledge) ; secondly, of faith, which may be regarded as conferring personal ability or influence to so great a degree as to enable one " to ac- complish the apparently impossible." ^ The world may bestow great praise upon me and my achievements, but, in the judgment of God, by Whom alone true appraisement is possible, I am without significance, I am of no value, if the all- important spirit and motive and purpose be wanting. The need of moralising, of consecrat- ing to Christ's service the highest powers and possessions of the intellect, as well as all that personal influence can mean, is a lesson which this age must learn. That such spiritual ^ endowments as prophecy and faith can be misused should cause the minister of Christ deep reflection. Yet St. Paul is only asserting what our Lord taught in the Sermon on the Mount.® There our Lord implies that we may both prophesy and do mighty works (by the power of faith) actually " in His Name," 1 Meyer in loc. ^ Chap. xii. 9 and 10. ^ St. Matt. vii. 21, 22. 250 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul without doing the will of God. To do that will as He did it we must be inspired by His spirit of love. Verse 3. "Even if I 'dole out in food' the whole of my substance, even if I sacrifice my body, that I may boast,^ and have not love, I am in no way profited." ^ Now St. Paul passes to a counterfeit of love. Actions which externally seem to be the very mirror of what Christ did may be of no profit to us. The history of Christendom will supply many an example and proof of the truth which St. Paul here states. We may dole out all we possess, we may even sacrifice our physical life ; what are termed " charity " and asceticism may be pursued actually without limit, yet, if our motive be wrong, if the personality through which these are accomplished be unmoralised by love, the doer shall be " without profit." The warning in these words of St. Paul is capable of wide application for the ministerial life. " Charity " and asceticism are practically indispensable character- making instruments, and by continual practice we may train ourselves to the exercise of both to a high degree ; but the moment they have reference to self as their ultimate purpose, they cease to be 1 Westcott and Hort with i< A B read Iva Kavxfiimi (so marg. of R.V.) : parallels to St. Paul's language about boasting will be found in Ignatius, ad Polycarp, cap. v., also in Clem, ad Cor. xxxviii. ^ The change from ov6iv tlju to ouSev ax^eXoC/iot should be noticed. The Motive Power of Ministry 251 of moral value. Those who have had much to do with either the collection or distribution of " charity " know how often it is given as a salve to conscience, because the donor " feels happier for having given." To give from a sense of duty is very different. But to bestow charity that it may minister to our satisfaction, or, possibly, that our action in so doing may win for us the approbation of others or public recognition, is fatal to ourselves. Charity was given, asceticism was practised, even martyrdom was actually courted in the early ages as passports to heaven. This view of charity may have passed into the Church from the later Judaism, in which almsgiving actually became a synonym for righteousness.-^ The propitiatory value of asceticism in itself, even of self-immola- tion or desire for martyrdom, were ideas which the Church assimilated from heathenism. From self-sacrifice for the sake of others, inspired by a genuine love for God and man, these practices were in spirit widely different. Verses 4-7. " Love suffereth long, is kind. Love is never^ envious, never boastful, never puffed up, never behaves unbecomingly, is never self- seeking, never exasperated, never reckoneth up her wrongs, never rejoiceth at unrighteousness, but ^ See Hatch's Essays in Biblical Greek, pp. 49-5 r, where both the O.T. and N.T. uses are fully discussed. ^ By the insertion of " never " and " always," we get the full force of the present tenses. 252 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul rejoiceth with the truth. [Love] is always bearing, always believing, always hoping, always patient." These four verses must be taken together. In them " Love " is personified, much in the same way as " Wisdom " is personified in Proverbs viii., but with a difference. The qualities of wisdom are intellectual and moral, those of love are entirely moral, ^ and are the qualities specially characteristic of the human nature of our Lord.^ This last fact is the keynote to St. Paul's teaching and that which makes love in this chapter synonymous with "Christianity." Our ministerial life must be modelled upon the ministerial life of Jesus, it must be wholly inspired by His spirit, His motive power, and final purpose ; hence the qualities — the ethical virtues — described and suggested in these verses, are the virtues with which our life as His ministers must be suffused and which we must, in conduct, express. This makes every one of these assertions of St. Paul of quite exceptional importance. Yet though there is in the passage no direct reference to intellectual gifts, the qualities here enumerated are essential ^ An interesting example of the moralising of every faculty and function of life by Christianity. ^ " We have but to substitute ' Jesus ' for ' love,' the person for the thing personified, and Paul's panegyric becomes a simple and perfect description of the historic Jesus. As a literal portrayal of the character of Jesus it cannot be surpassed." The Fifth Gospel, p. 153. The Motive Power of Ministry 253 for a truly Christian use of such gifts, and probably, as he was writing, St. Paul had in his mind the want of these qualities in the way the members of the Corinthian Church used their intellectual endowments. St. Paul's words should always remind us of "how close a connection , subsists between the right and effective use of intellectual gifts and the moral and spiritual state of the heart." ^ When we turn to a consideration of the actual words used by St. Paul, we notice at once how difficult it is, except by paraphrase, to give in English an adequate rendering of the original. The Divine nature and origin of ixaKpoQvfila is asserted in St. Luke xviii. 7.^ If we might use the word, as we use its opposite, it is "long- tempered." To this somewhat passive quality is added the active ^9'^'^'^°'^'^'^^ which is also referred to as a Divine quality in Tit, iii. 4. Both these qualities must frequently be exercised by the minister of Christ when he is sorely tempted to act otherwise.* No one knew better than St. Paul the trial of dealing 1 T. C. Edwards in loc. ^ The moral character of the Father and Christ are one. St. John X. 30, xiv. 9. 3 The words occur together in Gal. v. 22. " Longanimis est in malo ab aliis profecto ; benignus, in bono ad alios propagando." Bengel in loc. * Chrysostom (De Sacerdotio, iii. 13) has some excellent advice on the necessity for the minister of Christ being one who is not easily made angry. 254 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul with cLToiroi avQpwTToi} The life of our Lord is one long witness to the virtues here attributed by St. Paul to love. Those who have had long and wide experience of the ministerial life, and who are quite honest with themselves, know how peculiarly liable it is to the next four temptations to which St. Paul asserts that love does not succumb. 57 ar/d-Trrj ov ^rfKol, ov irepirepeveTai^ ov ^vaiovTai, ovk acr-^^iiovd. " Love never envies." To some men what is termed "success" seems to come early and in large measure, and sometimes, especially in the English Church (where "patronage" is in so many different and (occasionally) irrespon- sible hands), what is apt to be regarded as "success" cannot always be said to be deserved. Then the hard and earnest worker who toils, often for many years, with little or no " recog- nition " of his work, may be tempted to " envy. Of the next two words the first seems mainly to refer to manner and the second to disposition. Both are the tertiptations of the successful, or of those who presume upon olr are proud of their position. The first might be rendered " soundeth its own praises," or " acts with ^ 2 Thess. iii. 2. ^ Vulg., "non agit perperam.'' About the exact significance of the word there seems to be some doubt. In Marc. Aurel. v. 5 Tr€p7repeve(rdai follows dpeiXKev((Tdai. The Motive Power of Ministry 255 ostentation," and perhaps especially in the way of speech : the second seems , rather to have reference to the feeling of which the speech or manner is the expression; "conceited" is prob- ably not a bad English representative for the original. Unfortunately, the clergy in country villages or poor parishes are constantly tempted mentally to measure themselves with those whose advantages have been very small ; they rarely have the opportunity of coming into close contact with those who in education and attain- ments are greatly superior to themselves. They must remember the law which seems to state that it is dangerous to a man's character for him to live almost entirely in the society of those whom he is tempted to regard as beneath him.-^ To live for long with impunity in this position requires a peculiarly careful self- discipline. Of all men he should maintain through the best literature a constant converse with intellects and powers greater than his own. The last word of the four, aaxnfiovel, is one of wide application.^ We may yield to the ^ A frequent instance of this is seen in Europeans who live among and have to deal with what are termed the inferior races. ^ Under this head we may place a whole gradually-descending group of tendencies, from simple thoughtlessness to the most aggravated and worst forms of impurity and lust. The root- idea of ava by fua inhonesta ; in Rom. i. 27, r^v dcrj^iMavvrjv is translated turpitudinem. There is a warning of Chrysostom (though used in a different connection) which it is well for a pastor to bear in mind in all intercourse with women, TrXeiarrjs ovv KCLVTOuda Set rrfs aKpi^nas, atrre ^rj Trjv Tijs 0}cf>eXelas VTVoQeo'iv /iEifovof nirco yeviirdai ^rjjiias d(popiiT]v {De Sacerdotio, iii. 18). For a much wider use of do-x'j/iooTjj'j), see Plato, Repub. iii. 401 A. (where it is opposed to both a-a>(f>ptov and dyados). See an admirable chapter in Bishop Moule's To my Younger Brethren, on " The Daily Walk with Others " (ii.), where he writes : "We clergy are trusted to an extraordinary degree in personal intercourse with female parishioners. . . . Do not think a strong word of caution in this matter out of place and out of scale. Carelessness of even appearances here may wreck a life ; it may certainly blight an influence." ^ Non studet sibi, nee sibi ab aliis studeri postulat. Bengel. The Motive Power of Ministry 257 Phil. ii. 5 ff., and which follows the ex- hortation "not looking each of you to his own things," is the ideal example of this activity of love. In this Epistle {x. 33) St. Paul puts before us his own practice, " not seeking mine own profit, but that of the many." To make a ministry for Christ an occasion for self- profit or self-advancement is at once to make it un- christlike. The world, from its familiarity with the object of self-profit, is quick to detect this spirit in the ministry. Where it is detected the pure love for Christ and righteousness is questioned. The influence of the ministry for good is weakened, if not lost. Secondly, " Love is never easily provoked," i.e. to anger. For the wrath of a man worketh not the righteousness of God,^ whose promotion and increase is the object of those who work for Christ. Again and again is ministerial work spoiled and ministerial influence lessened by faults of temper.^ Herein lies one of the ^ Jas. iii. 20. " The thought that it is God's righteousness brings out the absurdity of man's hoping to effect it by mere passion." Mayor in loc. ^ See an admirable address by the late Dean Church on "Temper," dehvered to the Junior Clergy Society, and printed in Cathedral and University Sermons, pp. 194 ff. We may also remember these words of Chrysostom. " 6vims de aypios e'is T€ Tov K.ev o-vXKnTovpyovuTav axTxrjfuxTvvcus, itivBos eVl toXs firjiiepims, enaivav tpais, rifles irodos (tovto Sfj TO fioKiora iravrav ttjv avBpatreiav iKTpaxrjKi^ov i^X^")- ^^ Sacerd. iii. 9. 26o The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul attack spheres which should be strongholds for Christ. The opposite spirit of mind is always to rejoice with the truth. These words suggest many applications. It may not be over- refinement to see a contrast in xaLpu and (Tvv')(aLpei, the first being personal and selfish, the second the feeling of true joy, social joy. Again, the opposition of aBiKla and a\i]9eia is suggestive.^ Here, as so often in the New Testament, aXi]0ei,a approaches in meaning "the ideal" — that which is meant to be. If St. Paul, as we may well suppose, was familiar with Christ's designation of Himself as the " Truth," the words at once suggest mutual, combined rejoicing at the onward progress of the work and cause of Christ, whatever that progress may personally cost us.^ Another application is as follows: — The "truth" may have an in- tellectual reference. We may have "pinned our faith " to some theory or doctrine or interpreta- tion. Further knowledge, gained by others, may have thrown at least a doubt, if it has not wholly discredited our own interpretation. It may require no small amount of self-sacrifice and humility on our part to own that we are wrong, to give up our views which may have become widely known, and upon which, in all good faith and earnestness, we may have laid much stress in 1 oKriBeia and dSiKia are contrasted in Rom. ii. 8. 2 St. John iii. 26 ff. The Motive Power of Ministry 261 public. But the Truth, and the progress of the Truth, must be first, and unselfishness — true love — bids us, not merely give up our own views, but actually rejoice, though at our own discomfiture, that Truth has been advanced. I must not give other applications, though many a curious page of history supplies evidence of the apparent inability of men called to the ministry of Christ, and having a desire to further its work, to "rejoice with the truth." In verse 7 we have four more activities of love. It always "bears," always trusts, always hopes, is always patient. In each case the rarfge of love's activity, whether intensively or extensively conceived, is defined by iravra. Love has no limit, it neither knows nor makes exceptions, ariyei is doubtless capable of a double interpretation — either "hides" or "bears not resentment" (vulg. suffert). This latter interpretation is probably correct. If so, then the difference between it and vtrofievei will be that between refusing to be crushed by a superimposed weight and refusing to cease holding out against some opposing force. The verse may be said to emphasise the strength of love under four aspects, thus " Love carries an infinite burden, has infinite faith, infinite hope, infinite endurance." All these four virtues are essential requisites for ministerial work. With- out these, service to Christ cannot be adequately rendered. The four words which follow gather 262 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul up the results of the four virtues, and express these as one, 17 arfdirr) ovBiiroTe TTtTTTei. The strength of love is infinite, therefore love never faileth. The four previous clauses may be otherwise expressed thus : — To the burden it will bear, to the faith it possesses, to the hope which inspires it, to the endurance it exercises, love refuses to put a limit. We remember how St. Peter once asked our Lord about the limit of our forgiveness, and the answer he received.-^ Here again causes of failure to live the true life of Christian service are clearly revealed. We either shun or sink under' burdens far too easily ; we need an increase of faith — based upon an increased knowledge of God in Christ; we are not sufficiently "hope- ful " ; ^ the limit of our patience and endurance is far too soon reached. To understand the words "love never faileth" we must remember that the same man who wrote them wrote also, " I can do all things in Him Who strengtheheth me."^ These words must be understood to imply the imperishable nature of the strength of Christ. Love is as imperishable as its source. Christ is love personified, and as long as the Person remains so must that which 1 St. Matt, xviii. 2i ff. ^ If I may paraphrase a well-known saying of Bishop Lightfoot's : A wider knowledge of what God has done among men, for them and through them, should be a " rare cordial " to those who are inclined to have little hope. 3 Phil. iv. 13. The Motive Power of Ministry 263 He personifies. " I and my Father are one," and " God is love." So the chain is complete. The exhortation may be quite simply expressed, We must have more of Christ, more of the Divine in our ministry, and therefore in ourselves. Verse 8. " But whether there be prophecies, they shall be brought to an end ; ^ whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, it (too) shall be brought to an end." The permanence of love, the essential nature and characteristic of Christ, is here contrasted with the temporal nature of the charismata, which, as various gifts and manifestations and modes of operation of the One Spirit (of Christ), are temporal according to the special need of each. At the Parousia the need for all these will have passed. Then, we may believe, the Divine Love will find other modes and other channels for its expression. For the sake of his argument St. Paul is probably using the strongest examples of which he could think. The Corinthians knew how highly he prized prophecy, indeed more than any other of the %a/3io-/iOTa properly so called.^ He knew how highly they prized the "glosso- laliae." Of the essential value, indeed necessity, of r/v&ai Koi KaTekrifju^drfv ^ (by the urging, impelling, constraining, attracting power of love) ; so he adds. Verse 12. " For now we see through * a mirror ■* Meyer states the difference between e(j)p6vovv and ekoyi^ofiriv to be that between "device and endeavour" on the one side and the reflective intelligence (Verstandesthatigkeit) on the other. 2 Phil. iii. 12. ^ The image is behind the mirror, so God is behind nature, and 268 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul obscurely (in a riddle), but then face to face ; now I know imperfectly, but then I shall know ^ as I am known." These words express a very noble creed — the faith in which every earnest seeker after truth lives and works. And let us remember that this belief in the ultimate attainment of truth is again founded on conviction of the Divine Love. Only through the power of love will the process of truth seeking be so pursued that the object desired will be attained. This faith implies two conditions — humility ^ and love, which were perfectly fulfilled in Him who is the Truth, and Who, inspired by love, humbled Himself to come among men to "bear witness to the Truth." This faith must govern the life and conduct of every minister of Christ, and in both his life and his conduct these two conditions must be satisfied. And with him love of the truth must be seen to be synonymous with love of man, for both are love for the ideal for man, realised in man. Verse 13. "And so faith, hope, love continue ; [only] these three, and of these the greatest is love." ^ human life ; we see Him through the most perfect of all mirrors — the human life of Jesus. Cp. Rom. i. 20. ^ Especially with reference to a moral knowledge in eVi'-yvcBo-ir, see Westcott, Ephestans, p. 23. 2 " A life devoted to truth is a life of vanities abased and ambitions forsworn.'' Dr. Hort, The Way, the Truth, and the Life. * " Amor proximo plus prodest, quam fides et spes per se. Ac Deus non HxaXwc fides aut spes absolute, amordi\aXw.'' Bengel in loc. The Motive Power of Ministry 269 If faith means "trust," then our faith in God will be greater hereafter than now. And as faith grows so will hope in which it issues, for we cannot but believe that the future will be what the present must be, a state of progress ; and progress implies hope, as hope is the condition of progress. Love will abide, for love is eternal, for God is love. For ourselves these final words of the chapter, like so many other sayings of St. Paul, must be a standard and a mirror whereby we may examine ourselves.^ These are the three "theological" ^ " To see the beauty, fruitfulness, and sufficiency of love is easy, but to have it as the mainspring of our own life most difficult, indeed the greatest of all our attainments. This we instinctively recognise as the true test of our condition." M. Dods, First Corinthians, p. 308. In one of the most beautiful pictures in the Purgatorio (Canto XXX. 22 fif.), where Beatrice and Dante meet in the Earthly Paradise, and Beatrice is clothed with the colours of the three " Theological " Virtues, it is interesting to notice that the sight and presence of Beatrice (who may represent Theology) seems to awaken in Dante the consciousness and exercise of these virtues. E lo spirito mio . . . Per occulta virtu che da lei mosse D'antico amor senti la gran potenza. Tosto che nella vista mi percosse L'alta virtvi, che gik m'avea trafitto Prima ch'io fuor di puerizia fosse, Volsimi alia sinistra col rispitto Col quale il fantolin corre alia mamma Quando ha paura o quando egli e'affitto. Here L'alta virtili may well be "hope," and rispitto seems to mean "trust." 270 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul virtues, and we must see that they remain with us and are in us. Apart from them we cannot do our work for Christ. We must have faith in God and in man, in man's possibiHties and in God's purpose for man. We must have hope. Where it is wanting, or where it seems to be growing faint, there we must be shutting our eyes to what justifies it. Love is the one foundation and the one reason for our ministry ; it is the one motive power for all our service. CHAPTER VII. THE PRAYERS OF ST. PAUL. dSidKeiTTTOos irpocrevxecrSe. — I ThESS. v. 1 7. T^ TTpotrev^fTj n poiTKapTcpovvres — ROM. xii. I3. dSiaXfiVrojs pvelav vpS>v noiov/iai irdvTOTe eVt tSiv irpoaev^&v fiov. — Rom. i. 9. I80V yap TT po(Teixerai. — ACTS ix. II. The prayers of every true Christian, could we hear them, would be of the nature of a self- revelation. They would reveal his conception of God, the quality of his faith in God, also his ideas of the possibilities of those for whom he prayed, including himself They would be a revelation of his thoughts, his convictions, his aspirations, his intentions, his hopes, and also of his efforts. The true Christian prays before he works ; he prays for guidance, direction, and control, as well as for success. He also prays, while he works, for a constant renewal of strength to persevere. To him prayer and work are inseparable, for both are of the nature of communion with the Divine Will. In both prayer and work he loses himself; he merges his personality in the Divine purpose, but 272 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul only to find himself privileged to further that purpose more effectually. The greater a man's feeling of responsibility in life, and the more real his faith in God's guidance and strength, the more earnest will be his prayers. All this must be specially true of the Christian minister, with his greater responsibilities, and his life dedicated to the learning, making known, and the promotion of God's purpose in the world. It was certainly true in a very special degree of St. Paul. The immense change of spirit which came over him at his conversion is thus described, " Behold he prayeth." The words are extremely suggestive. Read in connection with their context they seem to say, "His whole attitude towards both God and man is changed." Not that Saul, the Pharisee, had been unused to pray. Like every pious Jew he had, probably three times daily, been accustomed to repeat at least the substance of the Shemoneh Esreh} Nor would it be right to say that until his conversion St. Paul's prayers had been " conventional." Saul the Pharisee was far too earnest a man for that to be true of him. Perhaps the change in his prayers may be best explained by remembering his altered views of " righteous- i ms'j; nj'iD*'. Upon this see Schiirer, History of the Jewish People, E.T. div. ii. vol. ii. pp. 85 fif., where a translation is given. See also Westcott, Hebrews, pp. 206 fF., where also is a translation. The Prayers of St. Paul 273 ness " ^ the word which describes a man's con ception of the right attitude to God. Still it would probably be true to say that had we asked St. Paul the meaning of the words addressed to Ananias ^ he would have replied, " Then for the first time I knew what real prayer meant, what it was intended to be." The similarity in such fundamental traits as zeal, earnestness, and reality of St. Paul's character after and before his conversion, needs no proof Indeed many of the objects of his prayers in these two very different periods of his life were probably identical. It was his spirit which became changed when his conceptions of God's nature and of His relation to men (as these were revealed to him in Jesus Christ) were so entirely altered. I shall not enter upon an investigation into the Jewish, or early Christian conceptions of prayer, or into the customs of prayer in St. Paul's day. But before examining the prayers in St. Paul's Epistles, I would try to point out briefly, first, St. Paul's conception of " prayer," and secondly the stress which he laid upon it, — the importance he attached to it. I. In Acts xxii. 17, 18, St. Paul speaks of himself as having been praying in the temple ; * immediately afterwards he states how, while he was so engaged, the Lord Jesus spoke to him.* 1 Phil. iii. 9. ^ Acts ix. il. ' rr pocrevxofievov fiov iv rm Upa, * ISelv ovtov Xeyovrd fwi, 18 274 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul Here prayer is regarded as a colloquy with the Divine. In I Thess. i. 2, 3, we seem to have a wide interpretation given to prayer, ' ' We give thanks to God unceasingly for you all, making mention of you at the time of (eTrt) our prayers ... in the presence of our God and Father." ^ The words " making mention" in Eph. i. 16 are immediately followed by " That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . may grant to you a spirit of wisdom ..." Hence " making mention " may be held to imply intercession ^ for something for those of whom he " makes mention." Thus "prayer" as used by St. Paul may be said to include thanks- giving, intercession, and consciousness of the presence of God, and of other's needs. It is well known that the Shemoneh Esreh, with the substance or foundation of which, as I have said, St. Paul must have been familiar, is called the prayer,* and that it includes praise (blessing), confession of faith, prayer for know- ledge, wisdom, understanding, etc., also supplica- tion, and also execrations, though these last may be later than St. Paul's time. In Rom. viii. 26, St. Paul speaks of the co-operation of the Holy Spirit in prayer, " The 1 Bengel's note is 'i\t,irpoa6iv = coram. constr. cum recordantes. ^ See Armitage Robinson's note on fiveiav iroLoifievos, Ephesians, p. 149- 5 n^flfin. The Prayers of St. Paul 275 Spirit also helpeth our infirmity, for we know not how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself maketh intercessions for us, etc." In verse 7 of the same chapter we have the mind which is inimical to God ; in verse 9 we are told of those in whom the Spirit may dwell ; in verse 14 ff. we read " as many as are ledby the Spirit of God, these are sons of God, etc." Putting these verses together we conclude that the chief object of prayer is to do the will of God. In I Cor. xiv.-^ i4ff we read of the connection between prayer and the understanding : verse 14 seems to give an instance of what St. Paul means by "the edifying of the Church,"^ and both bless- ing and thanksgiving ^ may, in the light of the passages previously quoted, be regarded as parts of " praying." All these instances show that St. Paul attached a wide meaning to what we term prayer. 2. The stress which St. Paul laid upon prayer, how important he considered it, is clear from the following passages : — ( 1 ) Among the activities absolutely incumbent upon the Christian, described in the picture of the practical Christian life in Rom. xii., we have, " As far as your prayer is concerned be devoted." * (2) Immediately following the description of the ^ Trpoaev^ofiai 8e koi t£ vol. ^ axapnos to be understood actively, iirjSevos a^eXovfiivov (Basil). ' w. 16, 17. See Westcott on the " Biblical Idea of Blessing," Hebrews, p. 2og. * TTj irpoa-ei'xrj irpoa-KapTfpoiivTcs : the datives are datives of relation. 276 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul armour of the Christian warrior in Eph. vi. 1 1 ff., we have (in verse 1 8 f. ) a rule for the use of this armour/ It must be used in a certain spirit. The Christian soldier " must use the vital powers and instruments of warfare, which he has received, in increasing prayer." ^ The spirit of prayer must rule the whole aggressive Christian conduct, and more especially the wielding of the word of God. The passage, as indicating the prayerful spirit which must govern the " ministry of the word," is rich in suggestiveness. Bishop Westcott points out how " the universality of the duty as to mode, times, persons, is enforced by Trao-???, iravrl, irda-T], irdvTcov ; and how we have " the nature of the prayer " defined as " constant, spiritual, resolute, and manifold." Other examples of St. Paul's insistence upon the duty and necessity of the practice of prayer will be found in Phil. iv. 6 ; Col. iv. 2, 12, etc. In his wide application of the nature of prayer, and in his earnest teaching of the necessity for it at all times, St. Paul supplies useful admonition to ourselves. It is so easy, amid the stress of what is termed ' ' work, " to forget the one condition whereby the Divine, or " spiritual " power in our work may be retained. We think, and contrive. ^ 8ia Trairrjs npotrevx^s nai fieijoTms ; the first is addressed to God only, and includes the element of devotion ; the second is general in its application, and includes some general request. ^ Westcott in loc. The Prayers of St. Paul 277 and study, and toil ; we meet with what the world calls failure and success ; we exercise the intellect, and pour out in large measure our physical strength ; with an increasing number of men their pastoral work is certainly the conscientious discharge of a professional calling ; but without constant prayer, — regular communing with God and reference of all to Him, — the " virtue," the essentially Divine quality of our work, must be wanting. The Divine nature and the unique responsibility of our labours are forgotten. We are then apt to represent ourselves rather than our Master, for it is much easier to profess to speak in His Name than actually to do so, which implies that He is indeed speaking through us. We may say " thus saith the Lord," but men easily detect whether we have striven to obtain the means whereby so to speak, whether when we come to speak to them, we come from " the presence of the Lord."^ I now pass to a brief consideration of some of St. Paul's prayers. (i) Rom. i. 8-12 : " First I offer thanks to my God through Jesus Christ (Who as mediator ^ Cf. Aug. De Doctr. Christ, iv. 15 " et haec se posse, si potuerit, et in quantum potuerit, pietate magis orationum, quam oratorum facultate non dubitet, ut orando pro se, ac pro illis, quos est adlocuturus, sit orator ante quam dictor. Ipsa hora jam ut dicat accedens, prius quam exserat proferentem linguam, ad Deum levet animam sitientem, ut eructet quod biberit, vel quod impleverit fundat." 278 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul presents all our prayers and praises) about you all, because your faith (your Christianity or allegiance to Christ) is being announced in all the world (I hear of it everywhere). For God is my witness, to Whom I render holy service in my spirit (the living inner sphere of that service which is no mere outward form) in preaching the good news of His Son (the out- ward sphere in which the spiritual service is rendered), how unceasingly 1 make mention of you at (the time of) my prayers, beseeching (Him) if somehow now at last a way shall be prospered to me in the will of God to come to you. For I am longing to see you in order to impart to you some spiritual gift of grace,^ with a view to your (further) establishment (in the Christian faith and life) ; that is, that I may be mutually encouraged among you, each of us by the other's faith, yours and mine." The thoughts helpful to the pastor from this self- revelation of the Apostle's heart and aims are many : First, and not least important, is the tone of thankfulness and encouragement, a tone we must cultivate and express whenever possible. From force of circumstances we are often tempted to forget to look upon the brighter side. Secondly, we must notice the clear defini- tions of the spheres of service: (i) our moral self-consciousness : our service must be a heart- The Prayers of St. Paul 279 service, which includes a mind-service and a will- service ; (2) all that has to do with the propaga- tion of the gospel. We may recall St. Paul's definition of his office in verse i "as separated to the gospel," therefore his life was dedicated to (the purpose of) the gospel : we may compare 2 Cor. X. 14, "we were the first to come unto you in (the cause of) the gospel " ; ^ Phil. iv. 3, "they laboured with me in the (furtherance of the) gospel " ; also i Thess. iii. 2, " our brother and God's minister in (the work of) the gospel." Thirdly, we may notice St. Paul's habit of re- membering, in his prayers, those for whom he worked. To pray for a work or a person is to connect these with the Divine ; and this cannot fail to increase the sense of our responsibility towards them ; for anything we can connect with the Divine must be sacred and therefore important. Fourthly, the object of the visit St. Paul wished to make was to impart some "spiritual gift of grace." As from the Apostle, so from every minister of Christ, there should proceed "virtue." Christ's promise of living water proceeding from the believer ^ was true of St. Paul : it must be true of us. The minister of Christ "must himself become a centre and abounding source of spiritual influence and bless- ing to others." Here the object of our efforts is ^ So R.V. marg. (see Plummer's note in loc.) 2 St. John vii. 38. 28o The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul clearly set forth — the enlargement and strengthen- ing of the Christianity of those among whom we work. Lastly, the final sentence is very interest- ing, especially if read as a corrective to what has immediately preceded it.^ St. Paul does not wish his readers to feel that he is assuming a position of spiritual or official superiority to them. He knows of the dependence of the teacher on the taught, of the preacher on his hearers, of the worker upon those for whom he works. ^ The fulness of meaning in ffvixirapaKkirfBrivai, must on no account be lost. What was true of Christ^ is true of His ministers. Their work, at least to some extent, is dependent on the spiritual atmo- sphere, and on the faith of those for whom they work. They are able to give in proportion to what they receive. St. Paul is not ashamed of making this clear. His very assertion of it may be regarded as a delicate hint to his readers that they also have a responsibility towards him. We, too, must insist on the fact that the prosperity of the great cause for which, by their Christian profession, both minister and people are pledged to strive, depends upon their co- operation, upon the encouragement they give to ^ See Sanday and Headlam's note in loc. We may say that both pastor and people, teacher and taught, contribute to the atmosphere in which work is done. The physical analogy of an invigorating or " bracing " atmosphere is suggestive. 2 " We can only give back in rain what we receive in dew.'' * ovK iSvvaTO fKfi TTOt^crat oi/Sf/^lav hivafuv, St. Mark vi. 5- The Prayers of St. Paul 281 each other. This truth the pastor must not fail to set clearly before those over whom he has oversight. I would next consider the two great prayers found in the Epistle to the Ephesians — the first in chapter i. (vv. 15-19), the second in chapter iii. (vv. 14-19). These prayers must be considered together, for the second is certainly comple- mentary to the first, if it is not an actual resump- tion of it. i. (15-19). " For this cause I also having heard of the faith which is among you in the Lord Jesus, and which (is manifest) towards all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you when I pray, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of [the] Glory,^ may grant to you a spirit of wisdom and revealing^ in the knowledge of Him, that, having the eyes of your heart {i.e. mind) enlightened, ye may know what is the hope of His calling, what the wealth of the glory of His inheritance in the ^ Sd|);s is not unconnected with a:oia nicht zu erreichen ; sie ist die Gabe, das Rechte und Verkehrte zu unterscheiden, (ro(/>i'o die Fahigkeit, iiberhaupt die Wirkenden Krafte, deren Gesetze und Effecte zu begreifen, um darnach das eigene Leben zu ordnen." 298 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul consequence, first, of being filled with the know- ledge of the Divine will ; and secondly, of using this knowledge in a way which is described as " with all wisdom and spiritual understanding." The art or practice of life, that is conduct, is one which needs both skill generally and sanctified intelligence. This skill assumes the knowledge of God's will ; it also assumes that this knowledge is applied under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit. This " skill " is absolutely essential for a useful ministerial life, but it is often wanting even where knowledge is present. Briefly, St. Paul's desire for his readers — which also expresses his own aspiration — is knowledge of God's will applied under the Spirit's sanctify- ing guidance, so that our conduct shall be worthy of Christ with the aim of being well pleasing to God. Our life's walk must be in entire agree- ment with our profession.-' It must be well pleasing to God, as is the conduct of children who desire to do their father's will. As Dr. Maclaren says : " This is the unique glory and power of Christian ethics, that it brings in this tender personal element to transmute the coldness ^ Compare the fifth question in the ordination of priests. Prayer and Holy Scripture may be regarded as primary sources for learning God's will. The study of the World and the Flesh is study, not so much of a wrong subject, but study pursued in a wrong spirit and from a wrong attitude. " There is absolutely no trace in Paul's thought of that later tendency to divide life into sacred and secular, to limit the religious life to a part of human nature." The Fifth Gospel, p. 146. The Prayers of St. Paul 299 of duty into the warmth of gratitude."^ The last words supply two tests or standards of conduct. First, is it worthy of Christ, our one sufficient standard of conduct? Secondly, is it strictly according to God's will as that will is revealed to us ? The special need of entire Christlikeness in ministerial conduct, and the constant need of asking, "Is this or that action or plan worthy of Him ? " must not be forgotten. We cannot hold Him up to others unless we copy Him ourselves. After apeaKeiav come three participial clauses^ which, from their symmetrical arrangement, may be regarded as descriptive of conditions of the true life-walk. The first asserts that the Christ- like life must be rich in effect. But if it is to be fruitful it must be enriched by that which will enable it so to be. For example, teaching (so-called) often ceases to be fruitful or effective because the teacher has ceased to acquire know- ledge. The conduct of each age is a product of the knowledge of each age. With the growth of the knowledge of God's will new forms of the service of God should be suggested. Unless we keep abreast of the knowledge of our age we cannot "serve our generation." The second clause, " strengthened with all strength," etc., points to another side of human (and ministerial) experience. Knowing and doing 1 Colossians, p. 44. ^ I accept Bishop Lightfoot's punctuation. 300 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul are not the whole of Hfe. We have also to bear and to be patient. Endurance and long-suffering are virtues which the minister of Christ must manifest, like his Master. Both demand strength in large measure. This strength must be sought from God, the source of all strength. Of the might of God's glory ^ we have abundant evi- dence, and this might is the measure of the strength available for us. We specially need this strength, for our endurance and long-suffering must not only be manifested, they must be ac- companied with joy. Our endurance must not be that of despair, nor our long-suffering that of exhaustion. Both must be accompanied with cheerfulness. To manifest this under such conditions makes upon us an exceptional demand.^ The third clause tells us our life must be one of thankfulness, for our position (and our work) is a privilege, and as such it must be regarded. We have been made competent (or sufficient) to obtain the portion of the lot of those who are sanctified, and this in the kingdom of light. Here, as so often by St. Paul, the ideal is treated as the actual. The reason for this is given by ^ " The ' glory ' here, as frequently, stands for the majesty or the power, or the goodness of God, as manifested to men." Light- foot in loc. ^ This is specially applicable to the sometimes exhausting labour of pastoral visitation. We must, if possible, take a cheerful spirit to the sick, the suffering, and the oppressed. The Prayers of St. Paul 301 iKavfoa-avTi. Upon US, through a Divine endow- ment, have the possibiHties been bestowed.^ These final words (for St. Paul now, as in other cases, passes from prayer to meditation) seem specially applicable to the ministry. Our work is often hard ; it is apt to be full of difficulties, discouragements, and disappointments, and upon these we are apt to dwell. But there is another aspect of our work. We live and work in what is, comparatively, a region of light, and our lot, to some extent, is among consecrated men, though many of these need to be reminded what conse- cration must involve. Our work is also a privi- lege, for we share it with Christ and with all His faithful followers. For this work we have received a sufficient endowment, if we use and improve it. For all this there is surely much reason for thankfulness. In the first chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians (verses 9-1 1) there is a short prayer which sets forth a very beautiful ideal of the Christian life, and in which, again, St. Paul seems to reveal an aim he had placed before himself. This prayer may also well express the aspiration of those who, as ministers of Christ, would follow in the Apostle's steps. The prayer which may 1 The thought is explained by a reference to 2 Cor. iii. 5, 6. " Our ' sufficiency ' (^ iKavoTi^s t][imv) is from God, who also hath made us sufficient {iKavaaiv) as ministers of a new covenant." 302 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul actually be said to represent St. Paul's view of Christianity^ runs thus: "And this is the pur- port of my prayer, that your love ^ may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all per- ception ; that ye may approve the things that are excellent ; that ye may be pure and not causing others to stumble against * the day of Christ ; filled with the fruit of righteousness, which is through Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God." The ministerial life must be a Christian life to a very high degree. Its characteristic virtue must be love, and, in this life of abounding love, there must be advanced moral knowledge and intense keenness of moral perception. In a very true sense love sharpens all the faculties, whereas selfishness and want of sympathy blunts them all. Few virtues are more essential to him who has the care and guidance of souls than the moral aiaQt)ai'i. It will hardly exist without eVtVi/mcrt?, which it applies to the finer details of the individual life. It also fulfils itself in the various phases of Christian tact,* a quality which it is easy to despise, but which more often than not means that effort is being made to understand the feelings and point 1 Jordan, The Philippian Gospel, p. 60. 2 dydjrr], used here absolutely as a synonym for " Christianity." ^ els. * That gentleness of touch (from Lat. tango) — Quam manibus osseis tangit Crystallianam phialam frangit. The Prayers of St. Paul 303 of view of others. The cultivation of moral a'iiad7]cri<;, of which ayaTTt], as well as iiriyvcoa-i^ is an essential preliminary condition, may be regarded as a paramount necessity in the useful ministerial life. The emotional, the intellectual, and the aesthetic faculties will all be cultivated in the well- balanced life, but they will all be consecrated to a moral end — to the increase of righteousness. We constantly meet with men who are com- parative failures simply from the lack of develop- ment of one or other of these essential factors in the Christian life, which is the really human life at its best. Enthusiasm is essential, but so are also intelligence and taste, and much enthusiasm to-day is at least misapplied, and fails to be permanently effective because it lacks these essential complementary conditions. If I may digress for a moment I would draw attention to the fact that in all these prayers St. Paul lays especial stress upon the cultivation of certain endowments of human nature, he seems to pay particular attention to the cultivation of powers. In this, of course, he emphasises the utilitarian aspect of the Christian life as a hiaKovla. Beneath this lies a deep truth. We are apt to dwell on ends and results ; St. Paul dwells on processes, and on the powers or faculties by means of which these processes take place. Here we see the immense stress he lays upon character, and upon the value of human nature in 304 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul itself. No lesson is more important for this age. As mechanical contrivances have taken the place of handicraft for producing certain results, the character in work and the moral effect of the work upon the worker are both being lost. There is no longer place or opportunity for either. The photograph has taken the place of the portrait ; the furniture, the carving, the decoration of our houses and public buildings are now the products of machinery : one and all lack character. The same evil has infected our religious work. Elaborate organisation takes the place of personal dealing ; and admirably, though mechanically, performed services, the place of preaching and teaching. Individuality, and so character, is here as elsewhere being crushed out by machinery. In verse 10 St. Paul passes to the object of eVt- 71/0)0- ts and iraaa a1,a-dr)at<:. Both are essential for all the constant and important decisions which we are called upon to make daily. Life has been defined as a continuous series of moral choosings. We must always be testing and approving or rejecting, — approving " after examination had " of the absolutely best, and rejecting all beneath this. Character is both made and discerned in this process. Right choice both demands and makes character ; and conduct is the expression of the choices we have made. St. Paul's standard of conduct is high. It must be flawless in itself; it must be harmless with regard to The Prayers of St. Paul 305 others ; it must be the conduct of those who are preparing for the day of Christ. In verse 1 1 St. Paul sums up the secret, and aim, and result of such a life. It is a life filled with fruitfulness which is the product of righteousness. In this word righteousness, which is here used in a somewhat unusual sense, we seem to have an implicit exhortation to the necessity of moralising all the faculties of life, the emotional, intellectual, aesthetic powers ; which is yet another reminder that the character of the process is not less im- portant than that of the result. The words tov Sia 'Itjo-ov Xpia-Tov State how these faculties may be moralised — by the presence and power of Christ in the life, by vital union with Him. Then, and only then, will the true aim of all human endeavour be realised — the manifestation and ex- altation of the essential nature of God and the right appreciation of this by man. There is no saying the minister of Christ needs more carefully to remember than this — Gloria Dei Vivens homo. 20 CHAPTER VIII. ST. PAUL ON PREACHING. ajreoTciKev jtie Xpiarbs . . . evayyiki^eirQm. — I COR. i. 17- ovai yap jiol iuTiv iav fir/ €vayyeX.lrirev(ov avBp&nois XoXei oIkoSo/i^v koI wapaKXrjcnv kol irapanvBiav. — I COR. xiv. 3. d 8e irpo€Teiav . , . 340 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul not expressly mentioned, that "His work is re- cognised in the formation of the Church."^ We must not fail to notice that in four instances, where St. Paul mentions those who exercise ministerial functions in the Church, or on its behalf, he places " prophets " immediately after "apostles." As the directness of the Divine commission is the peculiar endowment of the apostle, so the Divine inspiration is the special mark of the prophet. In this connection we may notice the expressions,^ " This charge I commit to thee, my child Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that by them thou mayest war the good warfare " ; and " Neglect not the gift that is in thee which was given thee by prophecy with the laying-on of the hands of the ministry." In both these cases I believe that "prophecies" and "by prophecy" refer to utterances revealing the will of God's Holy Spirit, — probably fervid exhortations given by those present, — which might be regarded as the channel of the %a/3to-;iia which was given from a Divine source to Timothy for his work. From all these passages we may conclude that the " prophets " of the Apostolic Church were men who were in exceptionally close communion with the Holy Spirit,* and also that by "prophecy" ^ Westcott, Ephesians, p. 58. ' '^ Tim. i. 18, iv. 14. ^ Though the closeness of this communion probably varied from time to time. S^. Paul on Prophecy 341 is meant an utterance of the will of God (a revelation), or a speech conveying a spiritual influence from God,^ ministered or uttered to the Church or to individuals^ by men who were prophets. All this proves the truth of Dr. Davidson's contention that "there is no ground for supposing that New Testament prophecy should differ from that of the Old Testament ; indeed, the truth of his assertion of "the manifest identity of Old and New Testament prophecy."^ I will now consider what St. Paul teaches us of the use of prophecy, and at the same time I shall try to show how a certain kind of preaching to-day may be calculated to supply for us what in the Churches of the Apostolic age was supplied by prophecy. This short study may, I hope, direct some towards supplying the need of more " spiritual " preaching, and to the urgent necessity on the part of the preacher for seeking a closer and stronger communion with God's Holy Spirit, and for deeper inspiration by Him. This com- munion and inspiration are absolutely essential for the preacher, if the most important objects of his mission are to be attained. St. Paul asserts in \ Cor. xiv. 3 that he that prophesieth — one prophesying — speaks, i.e. con- veys through his words, oIkoSo/mjv koX irapaKXtjo-lv KoX ^ Words are the vehicles of ideas, which may be regarded as motive powers. 2 e.g. Timothy. ^ O.T. Prophecy, p. ii8. 342 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul irapaixvOiav, which the R.V. translates " edification and comfort and consolation." This rendering is unfortunate; for to-day " comfort " ^ and "con- solation " have become practically synonymous. If we translate nrapaKk-qaiv by " encouragement" in the sense of "heartening" or strengthening, we may retain "consolation" for irapafivdlav,^ and understand by it the help of sympathy which is the special need of those who are weak or broken in spirit. Each of those three helps may be regarded as spiritual. That which is spiritual is " born of the Spirit," and nrapa.KXrja-i'i, as the word implies, is the special function of the Paraclete. Then "building up" in i Pet. ii. 5 is directly ' connected with the thought of a " spiritual " house and "spiritual" sacrifices; while the action of the Holy Spirit in producing irapafivQia is closely connected with that described in Rom. viii. 26 as " helping our infirmity." The point upon which I would lay special stress is that the preacher to-day, like the prophet of old,* must 1 It was different when Ps. cxlvii. 13 was rendered, He "com- forteth " the locks of Thy gates. 2 irapajivBia only occurs here in the N.T. ; napafiiOiov only in Phil. ii. I, where it is gentle, persuasive power, such as the consoler uses to assuage sorrow, napafidela-dai occurs in John xi. 19, 31, where it is used of the consolation offered by the Jews to Martha and Mary. In i Thess. ii. 1 1 it is the fatherly sympathy offered to the immature ; in i Thess. v. 14 it is the sympathy to be extended to the faint-hearted (at Thessalonica probably mourners). ^"The prophet's function most nearly corresponded to that of the preacher among ourselves." Davidson, O.T. Prophecy, p. 106, vS/. Paul on Prophecy 343 make these three objects his, and to do this he must be a " Spirit-filled " man, who can, by im- parting the influence of the Spirit, actually do the Holy Spirit's work. St. Paul next tells us (in verse 4) that he that prophesieth edifieth the Church, that is, a Chris- tian assembly or congregation, so that the prophet has a social mission.^ In verse 6 St. Paul asks, "What shall I profit you unless my utterance take the form of reve- lation, knowledge, prophecy, or teaching? In considering this verse we must remember that St. Paul has in his mind both a likeness and a contrast. The one who speaks with tongues and the one who prophesies are alike under the influence of the Spirit, and therefore in a more or less ecstatic state ; ^ but the one who prophesies is employing the gift or possession of the Spirit much more usefully. We must lay stress upon the words " What shall it profit you ? " which contain a caution very necessary for the preacher. He may have in his mind a sermon which may have upon both himself and his congregation an effect similar to the one which the glossolaliae seem to have had upon the Corinthians — both speakers and hearers. The preacher may be very proud 1 This may be said to be the main work of the Old Testament prophets. ^ This does not imply a mechanical use of the prophet by the Spirit. O.T. Prophecy, p. 126. 344 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul of this sermon, in its composition he may have "soared to the heights," it may actually have edified himself, it may be destined to produce admiration, even a measure of wonder and ex- citement in his hearers ; ^ but when he remembers that to each one the Spirit is given for profit (tt/so? to crvfi(f)epov) quite generally, he will see the necessity of ruthlessly putting aside this sermon in favour of one which will more nearly satisfy the conditions which St. Paul lays down. In this 6th verse St. Paul may be said to be speaking of the means or channels of profit. He names four of these, which may be divided into two pairs — revelation being evidently the source of prophecy, as knowledge is of teaching ; indeed we may say that just as teaching assumes know- ledge, so does prophecy assume revelation. From this an important question arises, for some have asserted that with the close of Revela- tion the very possibility of prophecy naturally ceased. They would say with Davidson " Prophecy did not confine itself merely to inter- preting, it added," and they would ask, what can w6 add to the contents of revelation contained in ^ Chrysostom's advice to the preacher is useful, "/i^ roivvv luyre 6 TTjS 8i8adri took place." He compares I Cor. ii. 10, dia tov wevfiaTos. Sf. Paul on Prophecy 351 phrase is illuminating : "to those whom God charged with an authoritative office and endowed with spiritual insight/ But we must not overlook verse 4. "Whereby ye may be able, as ye read, to perceive my understanding in the mystery of the Christ, which was not made known in other generations to the sons of men as now it has been revealed," etc. The particular mystery of the Christ to which St. Paul here refers was the incorporation of the Gentiles — the essential mystery of the Christ [or Messianic] society, or purpose^ or dispensation in that age. But this mystery does not exhaust the mysterious (in the true sense of the word) in connection with that society. There are mysteries connected with the ideal society (which is at once human and divine) still waiting to be revealed through some divinely chosen and equipped instrument whereby God's Holy Spirit may speak to men. We must also notice the stress here laid upon the office of the understanding both in vorjtrai and in ri]v avveaiv fiov. St. Paul was a prophet in regard to this particular revelation ; as such he uses his understanding and demands that his hearers shall use theirs. By those who believe that God is to-day, in a very special sense and in many various ways ^ Bishop Vi^estcott could not mean to suggest (as the sentence seems to do) that he regarded the apostles and prophets as identical ! ^ tov xpi'<^"i is adjectival. 352 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul (voKvTpdTrmia Koi crvvi(r€i ; ii. 3, rfjs La Tov Koa-fiov tovtov). Every one of these passages may be said to imply not only the existence, but the need of the exercise of another kind of wisdom — that termed in i. 30, a-o^'ia a-irb 0eov, in ii. 7 &eov trocjiuiv, or the real wisdom implied in "va yevi^rat a-o^6v n/MaTaTcov. Here I think Aristotle is to some extent parting company with the New Testament conception. But when we come to the words, " Wherefore Anaxagoras and Thales and such men are said to be wise but not prudent (roix; TotovTov<; a-o^oii^ fiev (j)povlfiov<; S' oii (fyaeriv elvai) when they are seen to be ignorant of their own interests, and are reputed to know things extraordinary, surprising, difficult, and superhuman, but useless [ay^prja-ra), because they have no human good in view " — when we come to this conception of a-o(f)M and 0-0(^09, we have, I think, travelled far from the New Testament idea of wisdom. In using the words " wise, wisdom," etc., in connection with the teaching of the New Testa- ment, or in connection with Christian teaching generally, we need .to be specially careful, because it is so easy either for the writer or speaker to use these words in a sense foreign to their biblical meaning, or for a reader or hearer so to understand them. The two following extracts will show this : — 360 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul " Wisdom is the power of regarding things as they are in themselves, and understanding the power of discerning their true relations as they come before us. Wisdom deals properly with that which is spiritual and moral — with principles : under- standing with that which is earthly and intellectual, with embodiments. . . . Wisdom . . . deals with that which is : understanding deals with that which is presented to us. Wisdom is the support of faith, and understanding is the preparation for action."^ " So Wisdom and the Spirit of Wisdom is the great Light of God which explains to each man his life and his work, as far as he can understand it, and enables him to see his part and his duty towards that Body to which the Holy Spirit makes Himself mind and heart." ^ I am quite ready to admit that these statements are capable of being so interpreted as not to be in opposition to the usual New Testament sense of wisdom. Though I think the statement that " wisdom deals with principles,^ understanding with that which is earthly," is at least liable to be seriously misunderstood, as is also the statement that " wisdom is the great Light of God," without some complementary assertion that wisdom is the ^ Westcott, Gifts for Ministry, pp. 19, 20. ^ Benson, The Seven Gifts, pp. 15, 16. ^ How far is this due to Augustine's definition of o-ot^i'a as " intel- lectualis cognitio (?) seternarum rerum " ? This seems to have influenced Armitage Robinson's definition on p. 30 of his Ephesians, " Wisdom is the knowledge which sees into the heart of things." St Paul on Wisdom 361 ability to work in that Light. Briefly, there appears to me in both extracts a tendency to regard wisdom rather as the essential nature of some thing/ than as defining the " how " of some action, even if that action be mental (intellectual), or moral, or spiritual. It is quite right to speak of wisdom as a possession in the same sense as sight and hearing are possessions. But it would be better to liken wisdom, as a possession, to the ability to run well, or to swim well, for these are possessions in the sense of qualities, they are " powers " rather than merely entities.^ What I would urge is that throughout the Bible, in the Old and New Testaments alike (except perhaps in a few cases in the Apocrypha, where we have at least traces of the influence of Aristotelian or post-Aristotelian philosophy), " wisdom " never loses its original meaning of ability, or skill, or cleverness, and that in every case where the words a-o(j>6<; and ao^la occur we shall do well at least to keep clearly in mind the ^ Compare Lightfoot on Eph. i. 8. " While o-o0ia is the insight into the true nature of things, (ppovrjms is the abiUty to discern modes of action : while cro(pia is theoretical, ippovrjcns is practical." If " insight " means general mental ability skilfully used this is right, but not otherwise. I should in place of the final words read, While o-o^i'a is general (ability or skill), (j)p6vri(ns is an application of this. 2 A " power," or a skilful plan, I presume, may be an " objective thing." Only if it can be so regarded am I able to agree with Prof. Davidson's statement, " This, which is wisdom, the objective thing, is the theme of Wisdom, the Preacher." Biblical and Literary Essays, p. 79. 362 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul interpretation of the first as " capable," " skilled," " skilful," or " clever," and of the second as " ability," "skill," or " cleverness " ; though we must remember that there is a moral and an intellectual skilfulness as well as a physical or mechanical one. The " wise " man of the Bible is not the mere/£ij- sessor of some higher kind of knowledge, or of some complete philosophy of the universe ; ^ though the possession of knowledge is a condition of wisdom and is essential for its exercise. The chief or ultimate object of the Bible writers is not to produce correctness of thought, or to give ex- planations of the deep problems — either of human life or of the universe. The purpose of the Bible is not primarily to enunciate or explain a philo- sophy, but to produce righteous conduct, that is, true skill in the art of right living. This is the key to the Bible's conception of wisdom for man. The source of the New Testament meaning and use of 0-0^09 and ao<^ia lies in the Old Testament, not in the Greek philosophers. The New Testa- ment writers were Jews who still, to a great extent, thought in Hebrew, even if they wrote in Greek. I do not assert that there are no passages in the Bible in which ao^ia does not 1 e.g. like Thales and Anaxagoras in Aristotle. It is interesting to notice in connection with the thought of philosophy that ia) towards those outside the Church." Christian conduct, as watched by the world, and in its contact with the world, requires skill in the art of living : skill comes from careful practice, from discipline based on adequate knowledge, i Cor. i. 17. "Not in wisdom of words, lest the Cross of the Christ should be made void " ; that is, not with display of rhetorical skill or cleverness of dialectic, which may claim the chief attention of the hearers and actually exhaust it ; and so the lesson of self- renunciation, the principle of the Christ (society), should be lost sight of. i Cor. i. 21. "For since, owing to the method chosen by God to carry out the purpose He had determined, the world, through its self-chosen skill (tis method of clever- ness), recognised not God, it was God's good pleasure through the (in the opinion of the world) foolishness of the contents of the proclamation^ to save (to put into the right path) those who accepted and obeyed the Divine plan." This 1 The contrast oiperitus and imperitus. ^ rov Kr\pvy\uaos. 5/. Paul on Wisdom 367 plan, the central point of which, according to St. Paul's explanation of it, was the Crucifixion, appeared to the (in his own estimation) clever Greek to be clumsily contrived, i Cor. i. 26. "Wise after the flesh," that is those who boast themselves to be, and by their admirers are regarded as, capable, clever, or skilful. They may be this when judged by a lower standard than the one which the Christian can accept. I Cor. ii. 4. " For neither my teaching nor the contents of my preaching^ were marked by persuasive skilful language." These passages will suffice to show how strongly the idea of "skill" enters into the meaning of ao^ia in St. Paul's use of the word.^ The following passages from the Acts evidently demand the same interpretation : — vi. 3. " Look out therefore from among you seven men of good report, full of the Spirit and of wisdom," that is men full of the Holy Ghost, and also capable men, skilful in the conduct of practical matters. vi. 10. " They were not able to withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he used to 1 " KTjpvyiia signifies the facts of the gospel : e.g. the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, etc. Xoyos is the teaching built on this." Lightfoot in loc. ^ I might add, i Cor. xii. 8. One endowment of the Spirit is skilful speech. Note the order is (i) wisdom, (2) knowledge, (3) faith. Wisdom is a means of acquiring knowledge, upon which faith rests, and by which faith is produced. 368 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul speak," — the combination of dialectical skill and spiritual power with which his addresses were marked. vii. 10. Of the practical skill in conduct which Joseph manifested in the management of his own life and in the affairs of others/ vii. 22. " And Moses was instructed (eVatSev^iy) in all the skill of the Egyptians," — not in their philosophy or abstract science or theology, but in all that he could learn from them which would make him efficient.^ In each of these cases wide knowledge is of course presupposed, but the idea of o-o^t'a is that of the art of life] (founded upon a science or philo- sophy of life). The following passages also gain in clearness if this thought of " skill " is remembered : — St. Matt. xi. 19. "Wisdom is justified by her works," i.e. the test of skill is seen in its results, in what it accomplishes. This saying seems to be akin to our " Nothing succeeds like success." St. Matt. xiii. 54. " Whence hath this man this skill, which is evidenced by these mighty works ? " St. Luke xxi. 15. "I will give you speech and skill to use it." I may also add Rev. xiii. 18, "Here is the opportunity for the exercise of skill " ; and 1 Cp. Gen. xli. 39. 2 Egypt was famous for its astrologers, magicians, and the like, who doubtless employed much " skill " in practising their arts. St Paul on Wisdom 369 Rev. xvii. 9, " Here is the opportunity for the intelligence which possesses skill," i.e. which is trained, and so capable and efficient. There are, of course, some passages in St. Paul's Epistles in which cro^ia seems to have a much deeper meaning than that of skill and efficiency ; but even upon these passages the introduction of this idea throws valuable light. I Cor. i. 22 ff. "Seeing that Jews demand signs and Greeks seek for (what they term) wisdom : but we proclaim a Messiah crucified, unto Jews an obstacle and to Greeks mere folly : but unto those who have accepted the call (He is) Messiah the power of God (they have felt Him to be such in their lives), and the wisdom of God" (the power they have felt, and what they have now learnt of God's dealing with men in the past has convinced them how skilfully adapted is God's chosen instrument and God's chosen method to effect His determined purpose).^ I Cor. i. 30 ff. "Ye are God's offspring^ (ye share the Divine nature, the Divine is the source of your life) through your incorporation in Christ Jesus, Who became unto us by His incarnation and all that followed it, not merely the imper- sonation or incarnation of the Divine ao^ia, but the means for our realisation and appropriation 1 We must remember that Christ is not only the manifestation, but actually the incarnation of the Divine Wisdom. ^ e^ avTQV fie i/ieir eWe iv Xpiarm 'Irjirov. 24 370 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul of the skilfully adapted purpose issuing from God for us, even righteousness, and sanctification, and also redemption." It is most important that we should try to realise St. Paul's meaning when in these two passages he speaks of Christ, first, as the Wisdom of God, and, secondly, of our incorporation in Him as wisdom from God to us, with the ex- planation, "even righteousness, and sanctification, and also redemption." For I believe that it is only upon a correct interpretation of the teaching contained and implied in these sayings that we can hope to build an adequate system of Christian ethics, and also understand what St. Paul means when he says " a-0(pLai' Be XaXovfiev iv rots reXeLOK."^ St. Paul was both a strong realist ^ and a great ethical teacher.^ He knows there is, there must be, an absolute righteousness which is the creation of the wisdom of God. Man's wisdom is seen in his effort to realise in life that perfect righteous- ness. Christ realised, embodied, and expressed it in His incarnate Hfe ; indeed, God's "wisdom" may be said to have been manifested to man through this method of the expression of the Divine righteousness. But man then thought, 1 I Cor. ii. 6. ' See my Social Teaching of St. Paul, " St. Paul's Realism," pp. 142 ff. ^ " The first truth with St. Paul is that righteousness is salvation : and the second is that Jesus Christ is righteousness." Du Bose, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 7. vS/. Paul on Wisdom 371 and man still too often acts, as if he thought God's wisdom in Christ to be folly. In spite of this, Christ, sent forth from {anro) God, has become to man, by actual experience, "wisdom" in human life. Here, as ever, the perfect righteous- ness in the fullest sense of the word is the proof of perfect wisdom. To-day the old battle between " nominalism " and "realism," if under other names, is still being fought. To-day treatises upon ethics are being written from the so-called scientific point of view, whose result is to deny the existence of an absolute righteousness, which, instead, is treated as some- thing entirely relative.-^ Now we believe that God's purpose for man includes not only an absolute law of the universe, but also an absolute righteousness and a perfect social state. To the Christian realist this right- eousness and this social state "exist" just as surely as does any physical law.^ In His incarnate life Christ has manifested this right- eousness ; in His teaching He has laid down the principles upon which alone this state may be realised. ' See an essay on " The Ethical Significance of Christian Doctrines,'' by J. F. Bethune-Baker in Cambridge Theological Essays (1905), pp. 560, 561. "On the assumption of the Incarna- tion we are in possession of an authoritative test of human life. The human life which the Son of God lived is the criterion by which all human lives must be judged," etc. ^ Phil. iii. 20 ; Heb. xi. 10. 372 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul It may be some help in understanding this if we remember that one great step in the progress of revelation and in the preparation for the gospel consisted in showing^ that righteousness and "wisdom" — true skill, in living — are identical. To make our ministerial life and teaching more really useful, our greatest need at the present time is a clearer conception of what the Divine righteousness implies and demands, accompanied by a more courageous expression of that concep- tion. In other words, we must present to men a more adequate ethical standard ; we must furnish them with deeper and more comprehensive ethical instruction ; ^ also we must prove that a pro- fession of Christianity implies the effort to realise the life of righteousness in spheres and relation- ships from which to-day it seems to be almost banished. Briefly, religion must be more adequately moralised. Another suggestive passage on this subject is Col. ii. I ff., where St. Paul states how he strives that the hearts^ of his readers "may be strengthened (or encouraged),* they being com- 1 As in the " Wisdom " literature, e.g. in the LXX's extension of Prov. i. 7, where note the contrast in ao^'iav 8e . . . ao-e/Seis 2 On this subject see an admirable essay by the late Sir John Seeley on " The Church as a Teacher of Morality " reprinted in Lectures and Essays. The whole essay should be most carefully studied. ® In the Hebrew sense of the word. * 7rapaKKrj6S)(nv : under the action of the napaKXrjTos — the Sf. Paul on Wisdom 373 pacted together i^geeinigi) in love and unto all the wealth which comes from the firm assurance of an understanding mind, unto the knowledge of the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and know- ledge." Christ is the Divine Mystery, therefore He is the Divine Truth — once hidden but now revealed. And this Divine Truth must be the Divine Ideal. Hence Christ, as the Divine Ideal (which men are slow to understand and appreciate), contains in Himself all the treasures of the ideal life and of fulness of knowledge. As our Example — the Divinely ordained Pattern, itself the creation of the Divine Wisdom — Christ contains in Him- self all the treasures of conduct, all that we ought to do ; and as our Teacher, all the treasures of knowledge, all that we ought to know. We may with this compare Eph. iii. 8ff, " To me who am less than the least of all saints was this grace given — to bring to the Gentiles the good news of the inexplorable wealth of the Christ, and to bring to light what is the dispensation of the mystery which hath been hid from the ages in God, Who created all things, that now to the principalities and powers in the heavenly (spheres or orders) might be made known through the Spirit of Wisdom. See G. A. Smith on Isa. xi. 2, 3 (vol. i. pp. 185 ff.). I have elsewhere pointed out how the intellectual nature of most of the six Spirits, or the intellectual nature of the qualities suggested by these, should be noticed. See p. 153. 374 The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul Church the manifold wisdom of God." Here I would notice the parallel between "the inexplor- able wealth of the Christ" and "the manifold wisdom of God." As Bishop Westcott points out, St. Paul's views upon " the scope and power of the gospel " seem to have widened with his growing experience in the course of his ministry. From this growing experience he saw how " the truth made known to him met the various needs of men." This sufficiency of usefulness was in itself a proof of the Divine wisdom. To him (and so to us) has been committed the dis- pensation (the olKovoiiia, the work of the oIkov6ij,o