THE ALL-ROUND MAN
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ROBERT E.SPEER.

YALE
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PAUL, THE ALL-ROUND MAN

By ROBERT E. SPEER
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Paul The All-Round Man

By
ROBERT E. SPEER

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

Copyright, 1909, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

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CONTENTS

I.

Paul the Pharisee

7

II.

Paul the Roman .

20

III.

Paul the Christian

29

IV.

Paul the Believing Man

41

V.

Paul the Undiscourageable .

49

VI.

Paul the Bible Student

59

VII.

Paul the Friend .

67

VIII.

Paul the Orator and Logician

80

IX.

Paul the Man of Prayer

90

X.

Paul the Missionary

100

XI.

Paul the Joyful Struggler

109

XII.

Paul the All-Round Man

117

PAUL THE PHARISEE
PAUL grew up in the straitest sect of
the Pharisees (Phil. 3:4-6; Acts
23 : 6 ; 26 : 4, 5). That is equivalent
to saying that he belonged to the most up
right and earnest section of the Jewish nation.
The Pharisees were the best men of the time.
They had convictions. They believed in
God. They cherished great hopes. Life
was a real thing to them. Principles were
possessions for which they were ready to live
and die. Conscience was their law. All
things had a moral significance, and men
were meant to do all their living unto God.
The Pharisees were narrow and hard and
formal and they missed the very soul of life
and love, but they furnished the best material
available for religious leadership and a uni
versal propaganda. Many of the early
Christians were men and women of a weak
past. The gospel redeemed the waste of
human life as no philosophy or pagan re
ligion had ever done. And some rose to
7

8 Paul, the All-Round Man
careers of honour and influence under the
energizing transformation of the creative
Spirit. Still in our day as in that day the
weakling and the undisciplined are some
times in their regenerate life sosupernaturally
renewed in all the springs and streams of
their character as to become the leaders
of the strong. But God's best men have
ever been the men whose past training made
them lovers of righteousness, who may have
erred as to what right principle was, but who
loved it with all their soul.
This had been Paul's conscious purpose of
life from boyhood. " Brethren," he said to
the Council, beginning his defence after his
arrest, " I have lived before God in all good
conscience until this day." He does not
speak of any change of principle in this re
gard upon his conversion. And so a few
days later, in his defence before Felix, he
claimed that he had as a Christian done noth
ing that could legitimately be condemned by
the nation, and least by the Pharisees. He
was still " serving the God of our fathers, be
lieving all things which are according to the
law . . . always exercising myself to have
a conscience void of offence toward God and
man." " His defence," says Ramsay, " was

Paul the Pharisee 9
always the same : that his life had been con
sistently directed from the beginning toward
one end, the glorification of the God of
Israel." When years later he looked back
over his life before he became a Christian, he
saw no fault in the central principle of obe
dience to duty, to which he had been trained
as a boy. " I thank God," he wrote to Tim
othy, " whom I serve from my forefathers in
a pure conscience." That word " conscience"
was a great word with him (Rom. 2:15;
9:1; 13:5; 1 Cor. 8 17, 10, 12; 10: 25, 28,
29; 2 Cor. 1:12; 4:2; 5:11; 1 Tim. 1 : 5,
x9 J 3 : 9 J A'-2)- What worse thing can he
say of the Cretans than that " their con
science is defiled " ? And " ought " was
another of his great words (Acts 25:10;
Rom. 8:26; 1 2 : 3 ; 1 Cor. 8:2; Eph. 6 : 20 ;
Col. 4:4, 6; 1 Thess. 4:152 Thess. 3:7;
1 Tim. 3:15; 5:13; Titus 1 : 1 1). It was
his training as a boy, we may believe, which
gave him this deep and earnest conscience.
He himself traced it back to his forefathers.
His father and his father's fathers had been
Pharisees. His father observed punctiliously
all the requirements of the ceremonial law re
garding his son, and the boy grew up under
his careful and scrupulous training (Phil.

io Paul, the All-Round Man
3 : 5). His mother was equally devout, and
the boy was set apart to God even from his
birth (Gal. 1:15). All that could be done
for a Jewish boy, we may be sure they did
for their boy. We can only speculate as to
the anguish his conversion to Christianity
must have been to them. It has been sug
gested that when, as still a young man,
needing the help of home and a father's
hand, and a mother's heart, Paul became a
Christian, he was cast out by his family and
wandered out alone into the strange new life.
Paul never mentions his family in his epistles.
In two of them he entreats fathers not to pro
voke their children to wrath, and in empha
sizing the duty of the obedience of children
he adds that this is due to parents " in the
Lord." Is he recalling some sad scene in his
own life, when his father, of the strictest sect
of the Pharisees, heartbroken at his son's
apostasy, choked down his love and pity for
the boy, provoked him to anger, and drove
him out penniless to follow the Nazarene ?
(Phil. 3 : 8.) In Tarsus and Jerusalem Paul
had apparently needed nothing. As a Chris
tian missionary he earns his living by his own
toil. Until his journey to Rome he was a
poor and homeless man.

Paul the Pharisee ll
" But well worth Poverty !
Our Prince Jesus Poverty chose, and His apostles all,
And aye the longer they lived, the less goods they had."
The thought of his weary, lonely wanderings
adds a pathos to his references to wife and
child, to fathers, and the great Father, " after
whom every fatherhood in heaven and on
earth is named " (Eph. 3 : 15). He had none
of these human loves. Christ was his all.
" Christ ! I am Christ's ! And let the name suffice
you;
Aye, for me, too, He greatly hath sufficed ;
Lo, with no winning words I would entice you ;
Paul has no honour and no friend but Christ.
" Yes, without cheer of sister or of daughter,
Yes, without stay of father or of son,
Lone on the land and homeless on the water,
Pass I in patience till the work be done.'7
He came from the little tribe of Benjamin.
" I was not descended," he intimates, as
Lightfoot paraphrases the words in Philip-
pians, " from the rebellious Ephraim, who
had played fast and loose with the covenant,
as many Jews are, but from the select tribe
of Benjamin, always faithful to Jehovah. All
my ancestors were Hebrews." More than
once Paul refers to his pride of tribe. He
speaks of it in two epistles (Rom. 1 1 : 1 ;

12 Paul, the All-Round Man
Phil. 3 : 5). In his address at Antioch of
Pisidia he recalls the fact that his namesake,
Saul, the king, was a man of Benjamin.
And he knew also that when the ten tribes
revolted, Benjamin was loyal, and that in the
dark years of the Babylonian captivity it was
Mordecai " a Benjamite who had been car
ried away " who saved the nation. Now out
of Benjamin the great servant of the Church
was to come. Tertullian sees in the dying
benediction of Jacob, when he said that
" Benjamin should raven as a wolf, in the
morning devour the prey and at night divide
the spoil," a prophetic intimation of him
" who in the morning of his life should tear
the sheep of God, and in the evening feed
them, as the teacher of the nations." From
the memoirs of his tribe Paul learned the
lesson of loyalty. It was a heart which had
gloried in tradition of absolute fidelity to
God and principle that he brought to the
kindling touch of the Lord of Life on the
Damascus highway.
About the age of thirteen Paul came under
the influence and instruction in Jerusalem,
whither he was sent, of one of the seven
great doctors, Gamaliel, called by his con
temporaries, " The Beauty of the Law." He

Paul the Pharisee 13
was a man of high character, not hostile or
intolerant to Greek culture. He lacked the
intensity and fervour of his young pupil, and
had none of the zeal of the persecutor which
Paul had. Nevertheless, in his school Paul
tells us that he was " instructed according to
the strict manner of the law of our fathers,
being zealous for God." Paul's word for
" zealous " is derived from the Greek word
meaning " to boil," " to be hot." It is the
same root from which Paul's word " fervent "
is derived in Romans 12:11. Either through
his own personal qualities or through his
family standing Paul became a young man of
influence and prominence in Jerusalem. He
had access to the high priest, and had his
confidence (Acts 9 : 1, 2). Perhaps he was a
member of the Sanhedrin, for he alludes to
" my vote " as given for the condemnation of
the martyrs (Acts 26 : 10).
When the issue over Christianity came, he
was for aggressive measures. There was no
restraint to his vehemence. " He ' made
havoc of the church/ invading the sanctuaries
of domestic life, ' entering into every house,'
and those whom he thus tore from their
homes he ' committed to prison ' ! or in his
own words at a later period, when he had

14 Paul, the All-Round Man
recognized as God's people those whom he
now imagined to be His enemies, ' thinking
that he ought to do many things contrary
to the name of Jesus of Nazareth ... in
Jerusalem ... he shut up many of the
saints in prison.' " And not only did men
suffer at his hands, but women also — a
fact three times repeated as a great ag
gravation of his cruelty. These persecuted
people were scourged — " often scourged,"
in many synagogues. Nor was Stephen the
only one who suffered death, we may infer
from the apostle's own confession. And
what was worse than scourging, or than death
itself, he used every effort to make them
" blaspheme " that Holy Name whereby they
were called. His fame as an inquisitor
was notorious far and wide. Even at Da
mascus Ananias had heard " how much evil
he had done to the Christian saints at Je
rusalem." He was known there as " he that
destroyed them which call on this Name in
Jerusalem." He " persecuted the Church of
God and wasted it." He was " a blasphemer,
a persecutor, and injurious."
How can we account for such fury on the
part of the urbane young man of Gamaliel's
school ? Gamaliel refused to give his sane-

Paul the Pharisee 15
tion to persecuting measures. What drove
Paul to his vindictive enmity ? He was as
much at war with himself as he was with the
Christians. That was his trouble. He had
begun to see the hopelessness of legalism and
Pharisaism, and to suspect the truth of the
strange new doctrine which was forcing itself
upon his mind and conscience. " Only on
the assumption that some such thoughts had
been working in Saul's mind," says the late
Dr. Bruce, " does his furious, hyperbolical
(Gal. 1:13) hostility to Christianity become
intelligible. These thoughts, combined with
those ever-deepening doubts as to the attain
ability of righteousness on the basis of legal
ism, fully account for his mad behaviour.
They also prepare us for what is coming."
«' Who lights the fagot ?
Not the full faith : no, but the lurking doubt."
He had ceased to be sure of his Pharisaic
principles. That was what led him to sup
port himself in his own uncertainty by attack
ing the faith whose truth he had already be
gun to suspect. His own deep personal
experiences, vainly stifled by the spirit of
persecution, were preparing him for his con
version.

16 Paul, the All-Round Man
And his Pharisaic training had prepared
him for the form of his experience. He had
believed firmly in the doctrine of the Phari
sees as against the Sadducees, in the reality
of the spiritual world and of communication
with it. The past had been full of such rev
elations to men. He had been trained in his
strict Pharisee home from infancy to hold
the Hebrew view " which attributed," as
Ramsay says, " the whole course of the na
tional religion and fortunes — the latter being
simply the measure of national adherence to
the religion — to a series of such revelations
made by God on various occasions to certain
favoured individuals. Saul undoubtedly was
eager and was preparing himself by educa
tion, by study, by scrupulous obedience to
the law, by ardent zeal in enforcing it in
others, to be in a fit state to hear the voice
of God."
And in another respect his Pharisaic train
ing had made him ready not only for his
conversion, but also for his missionary vision.
"There lay in Paul's mind from infancy,"
says Ramsay, in his essay on " The States
manship of Paul," " implanted in him by in
heritance from his Tarsian Jewish parents,
nourished by the surroundings of his child-

Paul the Pharisee 17
hood, modified and redirected by the mar
vellous circumstances of his conversion, the
central and guiding and impelling thought
that the religion revealed to the Hebrew race
must conquer and must govern the Roman
world (which, ultimately, would mean the
whole world), and that the realization of this
idea was the Kingdom of God.
" This was a very different idea from the
idle dream of the Palestinian Pharisees and
Zealots, a barren fancy, born of ignorance
and narrow-mindedness, that the Messiah
would plant their foot on the necks of their
enemies and make them to rule over their
Roman conquerors. Such a thought was
fruitless and useless. The man who could
give it space in his mind was never chosen
by the Divine overruling will to go to the
Nations. We see in Paul a totally different
conception of the Messiah. After his Chris
tian days began, that is, of course, obvious.
But even from his childhood it was a rich
and great idea — and therefore an idea of jus
tice and freedom, bringing with it equality of
rights, equality of citizenship, free participa
tion in the one conquering religion. To
prevent the Jews from sinking to the level of
the Nations among whom their lot was cast,

18 Paul, the All-Round Man
the Nations must be raised to the level of
the Jews."
There were other ideas, some enduring,
some less abiding, which he carried over
from his Pharisee days into his Christian
thought and experience, but we can consider
further here only the two great errors of his
earlier years. In the first place he was con
scientious, but he failed to realize that to be
conscientious is not always to be right.
Later he recognized this, and mourns that he
had thought he ought to do things contrary
to the Name of Jesus. This is always the
peril of good and earnest men. They are so
sure of the integrity of their purpose that
they are unsuspicious of the error in their
moral judgment. That so good a man as
Saul the Pharisee was so terribly wrong, that
such devoted men as the Pharisees should
murder Christians, thinking that they thus
served God, should make us all modest and
self-distrustful. We may be dead sure that
we are right and turn out to be dead wrong.
There is a safeguard and a certain guidance,
but the Pharisees did not know where it was
to be found.
That was Saul's second great error. He
looked in the wrong place for the spring of

Paul the Pharisee 19
life. He sought it in the law, and it was not
there. When he realized this, he was in de
spair, and that despair drove him to the
madness of persecution to cover and conceal
it from his own soul. The spring of life can
never be in statutes or in obedience to rules.
It can only be in what is living, in the living
God Himself and in God brought to man,
made real and accessible in the Incarnation.
The knowledge of God in Christ is eternal
life. And it is also the correction of the
moral conscience. Those whose conscience
was so perverted that they would murder
Christians, conscientiously, were only capable
of such error, said Jesus, because they had
not known the Father character of God re
vealed in Christ. The honest Pharisee dis
covered this world-transforming secret when
on the Damascus road the glory of God in
Christ struck him blind and gave him vision.

II
PAUL THE ROMAN
PAUL inherited Roman citizenship
(Acts 22 : 25-29). We can only spec
ulate as to how his fathers had acquired
such a political status. It is probable that
they had not simply emigrated to Tarsus from
Judea. If his father had done so, neither he
nor his son would have been citizens but only
residents. The family had doubtless been
there for some generations with full citizen
rights. It is possible that citizenship might
have been presented to his father or grand
father for distinguished service to the state,
but we do not know. We know only that
Paul was a Roman and that he had been born
in the free citizenship of the Empire. Very
probably he had a full Roman name of which
Paulus is but a part.
His political rights had a large place in his
thought. There is an unconcealed tone of
pride in his manly words, " I am free born."
No slavish or cringing spirit was in him. He
had grown up in comfort, in self-respect, in

Paul the Roman 21
the regard of men, and when he came to
Christ and was enlisted in his service he was
the stronger and richer for the gifts of per
sonality and easy mastery over men which he
brought to Christ and which Christ enriched
and utilized. And it was not of Roman citi
zenship in general only that Paul was proud,
but of his being a Roman citizen in Tarsus.
The city was far more of a distinct political
body then than now. The feeling of patriot
ism which we attach now to the country was
attached then to a man's town, and Paul loved
the city in which he held his imperial citizen
ship. Tarsus was at the opening of the Cilician
Gates and was the mart of trade and import
for the mountain cities. " Its situation was
favourable ; a navigable stream gave direct
access to the Mediterranean ; it had com
munication on the one hand with Syria, and
on the other with the lands beyond the Taurus
and its trade was therefore considerable. As
a boy, St. Paul must have watched the rafts
of timber which, hewn in the forests of the
Taurus and floated down the river, were sent
to the dockyards or other places as required.
Here, too, he must have seen bales of goods,
which having the names and marks of the

22 Paul, the All-Round Man
owners on them, lay on the quays. How
profound an impression the very mercantile
life of Tarsus made on his young mind may
be gathered from the fact that his style, his
mode of thought, and almost all his metaphors
and illustrations are drawn from it " (Iverach,
" The Life and Times of St. Paul, p. if.). See
2 Corinthians 1:22; 2 : 17; 4:2; Ephe-
sians 1:13; 4 : 30 ; where Paul speaks of
" huckstering," " adulterating," " stamping or
sealing," " earnest-money." It was a self-gov
erning city under Rome, and one of the lead
ing university cities. All his boyhood love
of his city Paul kept. Christianity was not
inconsistent in his mind with a patriotic love
for his home, for his fatherland, as his city
was to him.
His Roman citizenship placed him in the
aristocracy of Tarsus. His family must have
been one of distinction and at least moderate
wealth. The good custom of Jewish families
saved him from the peril of effeminacy and
inefficiency and gave him the trade which
was afterwards to stand him in good stead.
The trade which he was taught was tent-
making. It was the most common trade in
Tarsus, the hair of the Cilician goats provid
ing excellent material. It was an honest

Paul the Roman 23
Jewish custom, that each boy should be given
the breadth of sympathy, the moral disci
pline, and the resource in time of need which
are to be found in a trade (Acts 20 : 34).
Think of what we would gain by such a prac
tice among us ! "I worked with my hands,"
says the will of St. Francis of Assisi, " and I
wish to continue so to do, and I wish that all
the other brothers should work at some hon
est trade. Let those who have none learn
one, not in order that they may be paid
wages for their work, but to set a good ex
ample and to avoid laziness."
Paul's later teacher, Gamaliel, was the au
thor of the saying that " learning of any kind
unaccompanied by a trade ends in nothing
and leads to sin."
Paul's citizenship stood him in good stead
at more than one crisis in his career. At
Philippi he appealed to it and demanded the
dignity of treatment to which he was entitled
(Acts 16: 37ft".). In Jerusalem he delivered
himself from scourging by interposing the
rights of his citizenship (Acts 22 : 25ft".). And
by right of his citizenship he appealed his
case to Caesar, and to Caesar was sent (Acts
25 : ioff.)
It is sometimes argued that there is too

24 Paul, the All-Round Man
much assumption in the theory of Paul's Ro
man citizenship. The declarations in Acts
that he was a Roman are regarded as state
ments by the author of the book, intended to
commend Paul to Romans or " to remove the
reproach that the originators of Christianity
had been enemies of the Roman state." And
it is added that the fact that he was so often
scourged shows that he did not enjoy the im
munities of citizenship. But Paul had many
rights which he was accustomed to waive.
Sometimes he appealed to his citizen's rights
and sometimes he did not. His theory was
that the possession of rights did not require
their possessor to assert them. As Woolsey
says in his " Political Science," it is of the very
nature of a right that a man may waive it.
Our Lord had a right to lay down His life and
a right to take it again, and He did that which
He believed His mission required. So also
Paul had a right to eat meat and he had a
right also to forego eating meat and he was
ready, for cause, to waive this right to eat so
long as the world stood.
Paul's course throws light on missionary
duty to-day. The citizen of a Western na
tion who goes out to China or Turkey has a
right to be protected by his government.

Paul the Roman 25
The government recognizes the right of all
who are engaged in lawful business in these
lands to its protection. The business of the
missionary is as lawful as any other business.
Until recently it was even more lawful in in
terior China than our mercantile enterprises.
But because he has a right to the protection
of his government it does not always follow
that it is the missionary's duty to exercise
this right. Paul's use of his citizenship
shows that it is a right to be used, not a duty
to be asserted.
Paul's Roman citizenship did not involve
him in two difficulties in his missionary work
which are experienced by Christian mission
aries to-day. There was no extraterritori
ality then in the sense in which we know it.
There were not then any foreign lands.
Where Paul went he was under his own
government. He did not go to Italy or
Greece or Spain and work as a citizen of a
foreign country, amenable to the jurisdiction
of a foreign nation. He was at home all
over the Roman world. When he appealed
in Philippi or in Jerusalem to Rome he was
not appealing to a foreign nation. His work
practically was all home mission work. It
was done under his own flag, so to speak.

26 Paul, the All-Round Man
In the second place, Paul went to his own
civilization. No social or economic chasm
separated him from the people whom he
sought to reach. Nineteen centuries of
Christianity have lifted the West far above
the East. Certainly, at any rate, the East
and West are far apart and missionaries have
to cross a great gulf of diverse customs, man
ner of living, scale of expenditure, ideas and
traditions. Paul had to cross no such gulf
as ours. He went to his fellow citizens as to
great masses of men living in the same con
ditions as those in which he had lived. In
side one great unified empire many of our
present day missionary problems, e.g., self-
support, ecclesiastical relations of mission
aries and native churches, the use of mission
money, etc., never arose. The citizen mis
sionary worked among conditions which
were marked by their own difficulties but not
by these.
Paul's citizenship, we may not doubt, pro
foundly influenced his character. " His Jew
ish inheritance in religious and moral con
ceptions was, of course, by far the most im
portant part of his equipment for the work
that lay before him. But his experience as
a Tarsian and as a Roman was also indis-

Paul the Roman 27
pensable to him ; and, as we have seen, he
was himself quite aware of the debt he had
incurred to the Gentile world. ' Tarsian ' to
him, expressed a thought that lay very deep
in his heart ; whereas the name ' Roman ' ex
pressed an idea more intellectual than emo
tional, more a matter of practical value than
of kindly sentiment. But the Roman idea
was a very important part of his qualification
as a statesman, and a moulder of the future
of the Empire. There had passed into his
nature something of the Roman constructive-
ness, the practical sense of economic facts,
the power of seeing the means to reach an
end in the world of reality and humanity,
the quickness to catch and use and mould
the ideas and ideals of the citizens of the
Empire " (Ramsay, " Pauline Studies," p. 64),
His citizenship shaped also his whole
thought about his mission and the character
of the Church. He rose from his pride in
his earthly citizenship to a nobler ideal of
citizenship in a heavenly kingdom. In the
guarantee which that earthly citizenship " of
fered to individual freedom, in its independ
ence of circumstances of time or place, in its
superiority over inferior obligations, in the
sympathy which it established between all

28 Paul, the All-Round Man
the members of the community, and in the
universality of its application, lying, as it
did, within the reach of all, far or near, friend
or foe — in all these points it expressed, as
no other earthly institution could do, the
eternal relations of the kingdom of Christ."
"Behave as citizens worthily of the gospel
of Christ," he enjoins (Phil. 1:27; compare
Phil. 3: 20; Eph. 2: 19). His political ed
ucation fitted him for wide views, for the
vision of a kingdom of Christ greater and
more glorious than the kingdom of Caesar.
It was with imperial conceptions that he em
barked on his missionary career and his
Christian statesmanship was built on princi
ples of world conquest. This he owed in
some real measure to the ideals of the earthly
empire of which he was a citizen.

Ill
PAUL THE CHRISTIAN
THE fundamental fact of Paul's Chris
tian life was his experience of Christ.
He knew Christ. On the Damas
cus road evidence came to him that Jesus
was still alive. There Paul met Him and
felt the searching of the living Saviour upon
his soul. Jesus was not a dead teacher
whose doctrine he accepted. He was not a
vanished ideal whose memory he revered.
He was a risen and living and present per
sonal force whom Paul had experienced and
in whom his will and heart and mind moved
and dwelt.
We do not live in a vacuum. Each of us
lives in something. Some live in themselves,
life being perversely wound in upon itself.
Some live in others, life being ever led forth
in generous thought and loving service.
Paul lived in Christ. This was not a mere
metaphor. Christ was the element in which
he breathed and in which his whole per-
29

30 Paul, the All-Round Man
sonality stood and operated. But Christ was
more than a mere element. He was a living
person, and Paul's life was really sunk in His
life. Or to put it otherwise, Christ was in
Paul. Make a list of his phrases, " in Christ "
or " Christ in," and you will realize how
Paul's Christian life was a deep mystical ex
perience of Christ.
" What may be called the inner or spiritual
life of St. Paul," says Dr. Stalker, " may most
of all be said to have been all Christ. His
own theory of this innermost life is that it is
a kind of living over again of the life of
Christ. . . . He is the very soil in which
this life grows, and the atmosphere which it
breathes. St. Paul loves to say that he is
filling up that which is lacking in Christ's
sufferings for the sake of His body, the
Church. He says that the heart of Christ is
yearning after men in his heart; that the
mind of Christ is scheming for the kingdom
Of God in his brain." As Paul himself put
it, " I have been crucified with Christ ; and it
is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in
me : and that life which I now live in the
flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the
Son of God, who loved me, and gave him
self up for me."

Paul the Christian 31
These ideas bore the deepest significance
to Paul. Christ was to him what no mere
man could be. The Christian life was a
supernatural thing. God was in Christ to
him. All his talk about the experience and
knowledge of Christ was not figure of speech
and mere rhapsody, poetry about a great
friendship and nothing more. It was a real
thing of which he was writing, as real to him
as the material world ; more real. The Chris
tian religion was a supernatural power, a
supernatural life, the actual pervasion of
human life by God so that there was in
Christian men a real divine presence, God in
Christ, God in the Holy Spirit, working in
and upon the soul. Christianity was not
mere self-culture. It was not mere human
pursuit of lofty ideals. It was not a battle
in man's own strength against evil and for
the conquest of the Kingdom of Christ. It
was a true fellowship with God in Christ.
It was the operation upon and in man of the
supernatural. It was the infinite and the
eternal breaking through into the local and
the transient in order to give them their true
significance and put them to their true use.
But though his Christian experience and
life were thus mystical and supernatural, they

32 Paul, the All-Round Man
were not unreasonable, not incoherent, not
incapable of clear and reasoned statement
and explanation. The experience of Christ
was to Paul the most reasonable thing in the
world. He was prepared to set it forth to
men's minds in the conviction that while to
Greeks it might seem foolishness, it was still
not foolishness but the very reason and wis
dom of God. There were things too deep
for him, but " mystery " meant to him not
something incomprehensible but something
brought clearly within men's comprehension
by the revealing Spirit of God. As a Chris
tian he used his mind and demanded that
others should. This Christ whom he had
experienced had a value to his heart. Why ?
How could He ? What value ? He thought
on these questions, and his preaching and
teaching was the setting forth of the truth
which he held on them. He had experienced
Christ. That meant certain great truths and
principles to the mind. It must mean the
same thing in measure to every one else who
might experience Christ and who, as he
would inevitably do if it was a true and full
experience, would go on to think of who
and what Christ was, and how he could do
the same things for others, and how his mis-

Paul the Christian 33
sion was related to all the life of man. Paul
knew Christ in his heart, and he sought to
account for Him in his thought. True Chris
tians will do both of these.
This experience and knowledge of Christ
were fixed in the most tender and passionate
love. Christ was all in all to him. He had
been nothing. He had been hated and de
spised. He was now become his supreme
lord and lover. The power that wrought
this change was no mere human power, no
reflection upon the past, but a living, divine
Person. So Paul always believed. The
Power that then wrought in him, he taught,
will work in us likewise. So Samuel Johnson
sings of him and us :
" The Will Divine that woke a waiting time
With desert cry and Calvary's cross sublime,
Had equal need on thee its power to prove,
Thou soul of passionate zeal and tenderest love.
" O slave devout of burdening Hebrew school,
Proud to fulfill each time-exalted rule,
How brake the illusion of thy swelling wrath
On that meek front of calm, enduring faith !
" Then flashed it on thy spirit mightily
That thou hadst spurned a love that died for thee
And all the pride went down in whelming flood
Of boundless shame and boundless gratitude.

34 Paul, the All-Round Man
" What large atonement that great conscience pays
For every wounding slight, a psalm of praise;
Unending worship shall the debt consume,
For hours of rage a life of martyrdom.
" Yet in such morning glow, such vital day
What chilling sense of debt or claim can stay ?
O wondrous power of noble love, to free
From binding Law to glorious Liberty 1
" Dream not that one hath drained the exhaustless sea,
Full pours the tide in widening stream for thee ;
Lift for new liberties that conquering sign :
Shatter the severing walls with power divine."

Johnson's lines do not exaggerate Paul's
consuming devotion or the freedom it
brought to him. The love of Christ bound
him in every impulse and desire. And yet
its binding was perfect liberty. As he said
himself, " the love of Christ constraineth us."
This was the centre of all life to him. Christ's
love surrounded him, and walled him in, and
yet it expanded and delivered him and lifted
him up as on wings above all constraints. It
was, as Maurice points out, " a power of love
which was urging him on to right thoughts
and good deeds ; which could, in spite of his
natural selfishness, make him live and act as
a brother and a fellow-worker in Christ's
Church. He yielded himself to that power,

Paul the Christian 35
he besought others to yield to it, since it was
for them as much as for him, since he judged
that Christ died for all, that all were dead
without Him, that all might live through
Him. This was the secret of his theology,
his philosophy, his arguments, his passionate
appeals to other men's consciences and hearts,
his struggles, his joys, his sorrows, his vehe
mence, his weakness, his self-justification, his
self-contempt, his rejection of the Law, his
submission to the Law, his freedom to do all
things, his labours to bring his body into sub
jection, his fear that he might be a cast
away, his confidence that ' neither height,
nor depth, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
things present, nor things to come, should
separate him from the love of God which was
in Christ Jesus his Lord.' "
The Christian life to Paul was such a tender
and personal relationship to Christ. It was
also a passionate and selfless devotion to men.
Paul the Christian was the lover of men. He
was ready to make any sacrifice to help them
or to win them to the Saviour. No adapta
tion was too exacting for him. He who had
been a Pharisee became a Gentile to the
Gentiles. He who had been a citizen of the
world and a brother of humanity became a

36 Paul, the All-Round Man
Jew to the Jews. All to the end of winning
some. He was no recluse, no selfish aesthete,
or spiritual self-culturist. He was a worker
among men. To have a gospel and not to
share it, not to be on the watch to communis
cate it to men, not to be eager at any sacri
fice to spread it over all the world, were ideas
entirely foreign to Paul's conception of what
it was to be a Christian.
But his zeal for service did not obscure to
Paul the supremacy of character. He never
exalted either at the expense of the other.
He bound the two together always. What
could a man give save what he had? and
what had a man that he was not ? Does a
man really possess anything save what he
is ? Out of what each man was, rather out
of what God was to each man and in each
man, came all efficiency and accomplishment.
No lofty soaring among the high places of
Christian truth ever carried him out of com
mon life. Back he inevitably came from each
such flight with fresh reason and appeal for
unselfishness and for righteousness. Chris
tianity to him was reality in deeds and per
sonality. To be a Christian, however, was not to try
to become a good man by effort and volition.

Paul the Christian 37
It was not to analyze and classify the ethical
ideals of character. " In the early ages of
Christianity," says Ruskin in " The Stones of
Venice,"" there was little care taken to analyze
character. One momentous question was
heard over the whole world : Dost thou be
lieve in the Lord with all thine heart ? There
was but one division among men, the great
unatonable division between disciple and ad
versary. The love of Christ was all, and in
all; and, in proportion to the nearness of
their memory of His person and teaching,
men understood the infinity of the require
ments of the moral law and the manner in
which alone it could be fulfilled. The early
Christians felt that virtue, like sin, was a sub
tle universal thing, entering into every act
and thought, appearing outwardly in ten
thousand diverse ways — diverse according to
the separate framework of every heart in
which it dwelt, but one and the same always
in its proceeding from the love of God, as sin
is one and the same in proceeding from
hatred of God. And in their pure, early and
practical piety they saw that there was no
need for codes of morality or systems of meta
physics. Their virtue comprehended every
thing, entered into everything; it was too

38 Paul, the All-Round Man
vast and too spiritual to be defined, but there
was no need of its definition. For through
faith, working by love, they knew that all
human excellence would be developed in due
order, but that without faith neither reason
could define, nor effort reach, the lowest
phase of Christian virtue. And, therefore,
when any of the apostles have occasion to
describe or enumerate any forms of vice or
virtue by name there is no attempt at system
in their words. They use them hurriedly
and energetically, heaping the thoughts one
upon another in order as far as possible to
fill the reader's mind with a sense of the in
finity both of crime and of righteousness.
Hear St. Paul describe sin : ' Being filled with
all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness,
covetousness, maliciousness ; full of envy,
murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisper
ers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful,
proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, dis
obedient to parents, without understanding,
covenant breakers, without natural affection,
implacable, unmerciful.' There is evidently
here an intense feeling of the universality of
sin, and in order to express it the apostle hur
ries his words confusedly together, little caring
about their order, as knowing all the vices to

Paul the Christian 39
be indissolubly connected one with another.
It would be utterly vain to endeavour to ar
range his expressions as if they had been in
tended for the ground of any system, or to
give any philosophical definition of the vices.
So also hear him speaking of virtue : ' Re
joice in the Lord. Let your moderation be
known unto all men. Be careful for nothing,
but in everything let your requests be known
unto God; and whatsoever things are hon
est, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely,
whatsoever things are of good report, if there
be any virtue, and if there be any praise,
think on these things.' Observe, he gives
up all attempt at definition ; he leaves the
definition to every man's heart, though he
writes so as to mark the overflowing fullness
of his own vision of virtue. . . . And
all early Christians taught in the same
manner. They never cared to expound the
nature of this or that virtue, for they knew
that the believer who had Christ had all.
Did he need fortitude ? Christ was his rock.
Equity ? Christ was his righteousness. Holi
ness ? Christ was his sanctification. Lib
erty ? Christ was his redemption. Temper
ance? Christ was his ruler. Wisdom?

40 Paul, the All-Round Man
Christ was his light. Truthfulness ? Christ
was the truth. Charity? Christ was love."
" Christianity " was not a word used by
Paul, and the earliest designation of the dis
ciples of Jesus as Christians was not friendly.
But it was true, and the significance of it
Paul accepted to the full. Christianity was
Christ. It was not a vague and unreflecting
admiration. It was a personal and living
service of a living, personal Saviour. Paul
the Christian was Paul the follower of Christ.
But " follower of Christ " was a phrase with
meaning and body to it. It meant then and
it means now if it meant then and means
now anything at all, the union of life, its sin
forgiven and its heart purified ; with God in
Christ, with God in Christ in a sense in which
he never was in any other. Are we such
Christians? Whether or not we are such
consciously as yet, we will become such if
we truly follow Paul as Paul followed Christ.

IV
PAUL THE BELIEVING MAN
SOME minds are restive at the thought
of God. An orderly universe, set in
inevitable ways and devoid of personal
government, from which are shut out the un
certain disturbances of such emotion as a liv
ing God will excite, is a satisfying thought to
them. But the introduction of the super
natural unsettles their rest. Over multitudes
who have never gone to this extreme this
frame of mind yet exerts influence. And
among Christians it displays itself in a con
stant tendency to get rid of the supernatural,
sometimes by banishing it to the first century,
sometimes by compacting it solidly in theol
ogy, and compounding in this way for its
exclusion from life. Paul felt no difficulty
whatever at this point. The supernatural
was not difficult to him.
There were many reasons for this. In the
first place, he came of a race which believed
in God. Its sacred Book began with the
declaration, " In the beginning God." The
history of his people was the history, he be-
4i

42 Paul, the All-Round Man
lieved, as did all his countrymen, of a racial
education directed by God Himself. Prophet
and psalmist had hungered for God, and
thirsted after Him, and again and again
hunger and thirst had been satisfied. And
the whole people had looked, not once, but
a hundred times, at the bared arm of the
Almighty, and had listened for centuries to
His unmistakable voice.
In the second place, Paul had himself felt
and seen the supernatural. The beginning
of his Christian life was bathed in it. He
had looked upon the face of Christ, crucified,
risen, glorified. In that vision doubt died.
And after it, once at least, he was caught up
in such transports, out of the natural expe
rience of earth, that he never dared tell what
he saw and heard. And, thirdly, all this was
no exclusive privilege of his own, but the
whole message of Christianity was in his mind
supernatural, and it proposed to lodge in
every life the same supernatural forces which
worked in his own, and which in rare revela
tion he had beheld in their naked divinity.
The gospel was in Paul's mind " the power
of God." God came forth in it, offering Him
self and His life to men. This was all, — but
what more could there be ? There are effects,

Paul the Believing Man 43
but this is the essence. The Christian re
ligion was to Paul " something simple and
sublime; . . . eternal life in the midst of time,
by the strength and under the eyes of God."
God was most familiar to Paul. " I thank
my God," he says. There was nothing un
natural in the idea of his living presence.
" God is my witness, whom I serve in my
spirit in the Gospel of His Son," he declares.
He believed that God ruled and governed,
and that His " power to compel nature," as
Harnack says, " we can move by prayer and
make a part of our experience." God lived
as the great power in Paul's experience. " We
have our hope set on the living God." " We
rejoice in God." " Bring forth fruit unto
God." His God was sympathetic, full of kind
and solicitous interest for men. In His sight
Paul lived, and thither he entreated men to
come with body and spirit, and yield them
as acceptable sacrifice and reasonable service
to Him. His theism was unquestioning, and
it was not hard and bare, but fresh, quick,
real. The great history of his people behind
the Apostle to the Gentiles, who was yet a
Jew, taught him of a God who is in the world
with a heart towards His own, and power to
guide and deliver. His God was the same

44 Paul, the All-Round Man
" God who in Israel's bondage and bewailing
Heard them, and granted them their heart's desire,
Clave them the deep with power and with prevailing,
Gleamed in the cloud and glowed into the fire.
" Fed them with manna, furnished with a fountain,
Followed with waves the raising of the rod,
Drew them and drave, till Moses on the mountain
Died of the kisses of the lips of God."
No reduction of the universe to the im
mutable order of fixed law can exclude^ from
it the living God who made it, and who,
though denied His place in the works of His
hands, cannot be expelled from the heart of
man, but will make Himself felt there as a
want where He is not acknowledged as want's
supply. Paul felt God there, and saw Him
everywhere in his world. Godless life was
inconceivable to him. Had not God come
nigh in flesh ? " God was in Christ," he de
clares. " God was manifest in the flesh."
And his recognition of the supernaturalness
of Christ included more than the Incarnation.
It embraced also the eternal life of the divine
Lord, risen from the grave to live forever in
the souls of His people. His own life was
Christ. " I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth
in me." And his experience was illustrative,
not exceptional. Others must be sensible also

Paul the Believing Man 45
of vital connection with the supernatural.
" Know ye not as to your own selves, that Jesus
Christ is in you, unless indeed ye be repro
bates ? " " Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ."
Paul's view of our relation to Christ is not
naturalistic. We do not simply admire
Christ. We do not simply believe in Him.
We incorporate Him. We contain Him.
Christianity in his view is not an ethic, nor a
life in the sense of conduct. It is a union
of nature between the human and divine. It
is the impress of the supernatural upon us.
To be sure, to speak in such terms lifts us
off the plane of the physical. But what com
pels us to live there ? We are not bodies.
We are spirits. And it is here in the spirit
that God comes near. Here the Spirit of
God bears witness with our spirits that we
are children of God, and comes even to live
in our body to make it a holy place. How
easily everywhere Paul speaks of this Holy
Spirit of God ! " The Spirit helpeth our in
firmities." " I think I also have the spirit of
God." " My conscience bearing witness with
me in the Holy Spirit." And he expects all
to possess the same high sense of spiritual
reality. " If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit
let us also walk."

46 Paul, the All-Round Man
For great spiritual principle and the easy
sense of the supernatural were not, in Paul's
view, the exclusive possession of one or a few.
What one Christian may possess of this is
open to all. " We are one body in Christ.
In one Spirit were we all baptized into one
body, and were all made to drink of one
Spirit." But this very community of priv
ilege among Christians is rooted, in Paul's
view, in supernaturalism. It is a mystical
organic life, deriving nourishment from Christ
the head. Christianity has in it so much
supernatural power for all of us because it has
in it all supernatural power for each of us.
Paul was sure of this. " If God be for us,"
he said, " who can be against us ? " Of
course, some can be against us still, but they
are inconsequential and impotent in com
parison. The natural can raise no capable
rebellion against the supernatural.
And the supernatural was to Paul the real
and true. The things which present them
selves to the sense, he says, are transitory.
The supernatural abides. Earthly politics
has a near goal. Our citizenship is in heaven.
The true principle of life was to let the lesser
things go, and hold fast to the supreme and
eternal. " The more we see of life," wrote

Paul the Believing Man 47
Chinese Gordon to his sister, " the more one
feels disposed to despise one's self and human
nature, and the more one feels the necessity
of steering by the Pole Star, in order to keep
from shipwreck ; in a word, live to God alone.
If He smiles on you, neither the smile nor
frown of man can affect you. Thank God !
I feel myself in a measure dead to the world
and its honours, glories, and riches. Some
times I feel this is selfish. Well, it may be
so ; I claim no infallibility ; but it helps me
on my way. Keep your eye on the Pole
Star ; guide your bark of life by that ; look
not to see how others are steering ; enough
it is for you to be in the right way. We can
never steer ourselves aright. Then why do
we try and direct others ? I long for quiet
and solitude again. I am a poor insect. My
heart tells me that, and I am glad of it."
Believing firmly in the reality and suprem
acy of the supernatural, death had no terrors
for Paul. It is skepticism about the divine
that breeds the fear of death in Christians.
Paul had no fear. " I have a desire to de
part," he wrote, " and to be with Christ."
And, though he felt obliged to suppress his
desire, the longingly awaited day came at
last, and he was prepared. " I am now ready."

48 Paul, the All-Round Man
And he spread his sails, and the sweet breath
of God filled them softly, and he slipped
away into the shining sea.
The fear of death, as Paul said, is but one
form of the bondage from which the super
natural Christ brought deliverance. He taught
men in every sphere the freedom of the Spirit.
He broke down for men " the old and almost
ineradicable tendency of mankind to rid itself
of its freedom and responsibility in higher
' things, and subject itself to a law," re'. sing
thus " to live in the liberty of the good."
Men will always refuse who are not freed by
the franchise of the supernatural. Paul re
joiced in the freedom of God, and charged all
to stand fast in the liberty with which Christ
had gifted them. He saw in the supernatural
the real sanction of the naturalness of life, the
abolition of its restraints, and the secret of its
completion. He lived in easy freedom, for
he lived in God, and there was range bound
less there.
" Oh, if thy soul's at latter gasp for space,
With trying to breathe no bigger than thy race,
Just to be fellow'd, when that thou hast found
No man with room, or grace enough of bound
To entertain that New thou tell'st, thou art, —
'Tis here, 'tis here thou canst unhand thy heart
And breathe it free, and breathe it free."

PAUL THE UNDISCOURAGEABLE
THE penalty of high standards is the
discontent of conscious failure. The
man whose principle of life is that
no man can be expected to tell the truth or
to be absolutely honest has no difficulty in
living up to his principles. So long as his
standards remain what they are, he will never
be distressed at his inability to realize his
principles in his practice. But the man whose
ideal is, as Jesus enjoined, to be perfect even
as our Father in heaven is perfect, never at
tains his ideal here, and feels constantly the
sting of his failure. The nobler a man's spirit,
and the more sensitive his devotion to the
best, the keener is his appreciation of his
shortcomings, and the more depressing his
remorse at his weaknesses and mistakes.
Almost every good man knows this ex
perience. It comes to him in a double form.
First he looks back upon the life he lived be
fore his high and true conceptions came to
him, and he sees innumerable blunders and
49

50 Paul, the All-Round Man
sins that he rushed into with heedless wil
fulness, which his new standards utterly con
demn, and he bewails what has gone past
all recall and amendment. And secondly,
he sees every day in his present life incon
sistencies, failure to embody his ideals in his
acts, slips of thought and speech, for which
he is instantly ashamed, and which leave him
cast down and self-condemned. Or, in a yet
subtler way he abhors himself and hangs his
head, because he knows that the work that
he has done, while defaced by no visible evil,
is yet not the best work that he could do,
and has been of inadequate efficiency.
Others may praise him, but, with sterner
justice and higher ideals, he knows that he
has fallen short of the best, and he is sick
with the shame of conscious failure. This
frame of spirit is not an imagined thing.
Every Sunday evening hundreds of Christian
preachers pass into it, and some true man is
under its shadow every hour.
We may not know how far the humanity
of our Lord made Him participant in this
penalty of high-mindedness, but Paul was a
man of like passions with ourselves, and
there is ample evidence in his letters that he
drank of this cup. As he looked back over

Paul the Undiscourageable 51
his past life, again and again some half-re
vealing, half-concealing expression drops
from his lips, opening to us an insight into his
sense of the terrible blindness and wrong of
the old days. He refers repeatedly to his
persecution of the church (Acts 22:4; 26 :
11; 1 Cor. 15:9; Phil. 3 : 6), and to the
careless life of earlier years (Eph. 2 : 3).
There lived in his memory, we may be sure,
the recollections of his cruel treatment of the
innocent and the unresisting. Once he
speaks of his complicity in the guilt of
Stephen's martyrdom (Acts 22 : 20), and at
the last he calls himself " persecutor, injuri
ous " (1 Tim. 1 : 13). Did he ever get those
" remembered faces " out of his heart ?
" Dear men and women, whom I sought and slew,
Ah, when we mingle in the heavenly places,
How will I weep to Stephen and to you !
" Oh, for the strain that rang to our reviling
Still, when the bruised limbs sank upon the sod !
Oh, for the eyes that looked their last in smiling, —
Last on this world here, but their first on God ! "
And Paul's occasions for discontent were
not all past. He was waging a continual
struggle with the forces that hindered his at
tainment of what he had seen in Christ, and,

52 Paul, the All-Round Man
as he said, it was a struggle in which he was
constantly bruised, and in which he was un
able to win free from his foes, though his
soul fought upwards unceasingly.
" What was their tale of some one on a summit,
Looking, I think, upon the endless sea, —
One with a fate, and sworn to overcome it,
One who was fettered, and who should be free ?
« Round him a robe, for shaming and for searing,
Ate with impoisonment and stung with fire,
He through it all was to his Lord uprearing
Desperate patience of a brave desire.
« Ay, and for me there shot from the beginning
Pulses of passion broken with my breath ;
O thou poor soul, enwrapped in such a sinning,
Bound in the shameful body of thy death !
" Well let me sin, but not with my consenting ;
Well let me die, but willing to be whole ;
Never, O Christ, — so stay me from relenting,—
Shall there be truce betwixt my flesh and soul."
" Saint Paul," as the late Dr. Bruce said,
" while a true saint, was also a man of like
passions with ourselves ; that he had his des
perate struggles with the flesh under very
common forms of temptations, — inferred from
the prominent position given to sins of im
purity in his catalogue of the works of the
flesh (Gal. 5 : 19), — and that his sanctity was

Paul the Undiscourageable 53
a victory achieved in that fell war by one
who was prepared to sacrifice an offending
member that the whole body might not be
cast into hell. For the comfort of those who
are manfully, though, as it appears to them
selves, with very indifferent success, fighting
the same battle, it is well to make this plain."
And Paul often felt his own weakness in his
life and in his work. He tells the Corinthi
ans of his feelings when he visited them : " I
was with you in weakness, and in fear, and
in much trembling." He was intensely de
pressed over his failure to reach the Jews.
It weighed on him so that he declared it
was an unceasing pain in his heart. He
sometimes felt that he had made mistakes,
and was filled with regret for them. Indeed,
it was just the failure of his work to prosper
as he wished that caused him most sorrow, —
" when he saw his converts relapsing into
sin, giving ear to seducing teachers, listening
to calumnies against himself, disobeying his
authority, slighting his affection." He was
greatly cast down by his own failure and the
failure of his work to realize his high ideals.
There were times when his distress was keen
and overmastering (2 Cor. 7: 5). The fact
that he knew all would come out well, that

54 Paul, the All-Round Man
the general trend of all was the continuous
triumph of Christ (2 Cor. 2: 14), did not
blind him to the present disappointments
and shortcomings of it all, or to the constant
griefs that made him a true follower of the
Man of Sorrows. And the pang of his sor
row must have been that the best was un-
attained. Now how did Paul bear all this ? Did he
yield himself to despondency and remorse ?
Did he brood over past failure? Did he
surrender to discouragement? None of
these things. First of all he gave sharp per
ception to the fact that these mistakes and
failures were past things. He speaks of some
of them as in " my manner of life in time
past" (Gal. 1:13; compare Gal. 1: 23;
Eph. 2 : 3). There is great help in clearly
recognizing and asserting this. " Yes," we
say, and gain help in saying, " we have erred
and fallen." But these things are past, and
we are on our feet now, and ready to live
and do, as though no failure marked the past.
And even when failure comes again, we are
to rise up at once and say : " I failed, but I
am not failing. All my mistakes are past.
No man has made mistakes until he has
made them. I am not I of the past, seamed

Paul the Undiscourageable ^
with fault ; I am I of the future, perfect and
undefiled." In the second place, it was a comfort to
Paul to remember that at least some of his
mistakes were conscientious. That did not
excuse them, but it was a comfort to him to
believe that he had tried to do right (Acts
23 : i ; 24: 16; 2 Tim. 1 : 3). He pitied the
man of defiled conscience (Titus 1 : 15).
When we have done our best, have truly
sought God's help, and conscientiously tried
to reach the highest, we are surely entitled to
leave the issue with Him, careful only that
our desire to do right shall not harden into
the assurance that, merely because we did it,
and thought we were doing right, therefore
it was right. " I verily thought with myself
that I ought to do many things contrary to
the name of Jesus." It was at least a com
fort to Paul to think that he had done what
he believed was his duty. And if our cause
of depression is that we have erred in dis
cerning our duty, surely we may leave it
with God if we tried our best, and hope that
the next time we may succeed. If we do
not, we may still resort to the same comfort,
and live in our future hopes, not our past
despairs.

56 Paul, the All-Round Man
Moreover, human life is an almost infi
nitely intricate thing. We can never discern
all its elements and issues. Paul knew this.
He regretted some things which afterwards
turned out for good, so that he was glad for
them (2 Cor. 7 : 8, 9). He gave up at last
all judging of his own past course, save to
catch from it a better direction for the future
(1 Cor. 4 : 3), and shut his memory to its dis
mal record of shortcoming (Phil. 3: 12-15).
He knew that for the sins of the past there
was remission in Christ (Rom. 3: 25), and
what Jesus had forgiven and forgotten it was
a species of treachery for him to uncover
and recall. The past, with its failure and
success, was in God's hand, and as He alone
could tell what was failure and what success,
He alone could defeat the evil of the one,
and perfect the good of the other.
Perhaps it was the perception of these
things that produced the noble reserve which
characterizes Paul's references to his past.
He was not a man to dwell with spiritual
pride upon his past sins and failings. They
but taught him his weakness, and in his
weakness he would glory, not as weakness,
but solely because in it the strength of Christ
was perfected. In this his shortcomings

Paul the Undiscourageable 57
were a blessing to him, as ours may be to us,
if they break down our self-confidence, our
boastful front of fictitious strength, and throw
us back upon God. For the chief concern
of our life must be, not our success or failure
in realizing our ideals, but the ideals them
selves. Not my sense of God, nor my suc
cess in attaining Him, is the essence of life,
but God Himself.
Unattainment, with Paul, was not synony
mous with unattainability. " I have not at
tained," he says, but he adds that his hunger
for attainment has not at all abated. It is a
peril with us that, failing so many times, we
shall lose the passion for success. But " we
fall to rise," not to rest, and each shortcom
ing is furnished with its sting of shame to
make us restless till we reach at last perfec
tion at the end.
Alas for the life whose ideals deliver it
from discontent, whose standards preclude
failure by making failure the principle of life,
and abolish remorse by leaving no cause for
it ! It is remorse for failure that provides
the noble life with its intensest pangs, and
it brings it also its most exquisite joy. True
grief for failure, says Paul, works an ennoble
ment and refinement of life otherwise de-

58 Paul, the All-Round Man
nied ; and it is out of the pathos and agony
of a consciously defective devotion that the
most sensitive power is born.
" Also I ask, but ever from the praying
Shrinks my soul backward, eager and afraid ;
Point me the sum and shame of my betraying,
Show me, O Love, Thy wounds which I have made I
" Yes, Thou forgivest, but with all forgiving
Canst not renew mine innocence again ;
Make Thou, O Christ, a dying of my living,
Purge from the sin, but never from the pain.
" So shall all speech of now and of to-morrow,
All He hath shown me or shall show me yet,
Spring from an infinite and tender sorrow,
Burst from a burning passion of regret.
" Standing afar, I summon you anigh Him ;
Yea, to the multitudes I call, and say,
• This is my King ! I preach and I deny Him,—
Christ 1 whom I crucify anew to-day.' "

VI
PAUL THE BIBLE STUDENT
WHATEVER may be said of Paul's
acquaintance with other books,
it is clear that he had a deep and
intimate knowledge of the Hebrew Scrip
tures. His speeches recorded in the Book
of Acts contain quotations from, and al
lusions to, Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy,
Numbers, Joshua, Judges, I and 2 Samuel,
I Kings, I Chronicles, Psalms, Isaiah, Job,
Amos, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Zechariah,
Daniel, Hosea, Habakkuk. And his epistles
teem with references to the Old Testament.
Westcott and Hort in their Greek New
Testament find seventy-four quotations from
the Old Testament in Romans, twenty-nine
in I Corinthians, twenty in 2 Corinthians,
thirteen in Galatians, twenty-one in Ephe-
sians, six in Philippians, four in Colossians,
seven in I Thessalonians, nine in 2 Thes-
salonians.two in I Timothy, four in 2 Timothy,
three in Titus. Their frequency shows how
saturated Paul's mind was with the ideas and
59

60 Paul, the All-Round Man
the language of the Hebrew Scriptures. His
quotations are from twenty-five of the thirty-
nine books of the Old Testament. There
are no quotations from Joshua, Judges,
Ruth, I Samuel, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehe-
miah, Esther, Lamentations, Obadiah, Jonah,
Nahum, Zephaniah and Haggai. There is
nothing strange in this, however. The Epis
tles are very short. He did not set out to
comment on the Old Testament. The no
table thing is that what he did write was so
permeated by the thought and phrases of the
books that constituted his Bible.
For it must be remembered that both to
Paul and to our Lord the Old Testament was
their only Bible. We deem the New Testa
ment, made up so largely of what was written
of Jesus and what Paul wrote, as the richer
portion of the Bible. But Paul had not even
one written Gospel. He was confined to the
Hebrew Scriptures. He knew them in
Hebrew and also in their Greek translation,
the Septuagint. Sometimes when the Sep-
tuagint differed from the Hebrew text which
Paul knew, he quoted the former, as in I
Corinthians 13:5 from Zechariah 8 : 17, and
sometimes the latter as in 1 Corinthians
14 : 25 from Isaiah 45 : 14.

Paul the Bible Student 6l
And sometimes when he quoted it was not
the exact letter at all, but the inner spirit and
life as the divine Spirit enabled him to lay
hold of these. God had given him his gos
pel in Christ, in a living experience of Christ ;
it was from Christ by the living Spirit that
Paul drew his truth. When he looked back
now into the Old Testament the truth was
sometimes patent upon the surface, sometimes
latent in the words of the prophets or the
facts of the history. He had not seen it be
fore. It was the same Scripture he had stud
ied in the schools, but it was all alight now
with the truth of the gospel. In other
words, Paul found the gospel first in Christ
and then in the Old Testament.
Toward his Bible Paul held an attitude of
earnest reverence. It was, in his belief, " in
spired of God, profitable for teaching, for re
proof, for correction, for instruction which is
in righteousness : that the man of God may
be complete, furnished completely unto every
good work"( 2 Tim. 3: 16, 17). His posi
tion was that of one " believing all things
which are according to the law, and which are
written in the prophets " (Acts 24 : 14). And
it was these " sacred writings," as he called
them, which could make a man wise unto

62 Paul, the All-Round Man
salvation, not by themselves, but through
faith which is in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3: 15).
The book or books of the Old Testament
were the record of the acting upon life of the
living God. The Bible was to Paul, as
Myers describes it in " Catholic Thoughts on
the Bible and Theology," " a history of divine
acts, and of the unfolding of divine ideas,
continually manifesting the superintendence
of a divine Sovereignty : not a history of the
world or of all God's Providence in it, but
only of one kingdom and society, which was
elected out of the rest to exhibit principles
applicable to all kingdoms and societies, and
to preserve certain privileges with which it
was provisionally endowed in order that they
might ultimately be extended to the whole
race of man." Paul realized this and in his
preaching and teaching he used such a rec
ord copiously. He did not weave its state
ments together as Stephen did in his great
speech. He used the Old Testament rather
for confirmation and illustration, more as a
fountain of living voices than as a record of
vanished deeds. It witnessed to the ever
present God. That was its great lesson.
Something of Paul's thought and use of
the Old Testament can be gathered from a

Paul the Bible Student 63
study of the numerous appeals to it in his let
ters (Rom. 1:17; 2:24; 3:4, 10; 4:17;
8:36; 9:13- 33; 10:15; 11: 8, 26; 12: 19;
14:11; 15:3,9, 21; 1 Cor. 1: 19,31; 2:9;
3: 19; 9:9; 10:7; 14: 21; 15: 45, 54; 2 Cor.
4: 13; 8: 15; 9:9; Gal. 3: 10,13; 4:22,27).
The book to which he thus appealed was to
him and to those to whom he wrote no ordi
nary book. He found in it great principles
and truths not accidentally fitting the needs
of his own life and time, but prepared before
hand by God for this very end. The Old
Testament was a living, present, speaking
book to him. What had been written was
not for the fathers' sakes alone but for our
sakes (Rom. 4:23; 1 Cor. 9:10). "These
things happened unto them by way of exam
ple ; and they were written for our admoni
tion, upon whom the ends of the ages are
come" (1 Cor. 10: 11).
Chinese Gordon felt this deeply. " I have
read the Scriptures," he wrote, " and have
got pearls from them, but, as though from de
duction or analogy, and not as directly from
God — not as though He spoke or wrote to us.
It is difficult to explain what I mean, but
what I want to say is this : I now look on
the Scriptures as alive — living oracles, and

64 Paul, the All Round Man
not as a historical, religious book, as I have
hitherto done, even when feeling its mystical
character. I cannot say how important this
vista is to me."
And Maurice in his sermon on " The Sac
ramental Character of the Bible," sets forth
" the justification of those who insist," as
Paul did, " upon claiming the Bible for them
selves and their own time, who must take it
as a message to their hearts and consciences,
must warp its words from their apparent
sense rather than not find that sense in them.
Here is the justification for their meaning,
the excuse for their outrages on philology.
For if the Bible speaks of a Living God, a
God who reigneth forever and ever ; if it
sets forth the principles of His government as
uniform amidst all changes in the outward
tokens of it, they must be right in the es
sence of their doctrine ; they are bound to
hold it fast against all schoolmen and critics.
What they want is, to see that they may take
the Bible more exactly than they have taken
it, and that they may read it now, not less
than in the old time, as a book concerning a
society and that so it will become a more
precious book to themselves individually than
it has ever been. When they trace it as the

Paul the Bible Student 65
progressive history of God's revelations to a
family, to a nation, and to mankind, they will
understand more what support there is in it
for them as men, what awful admonitions to
them as men whom God has claimed, not as
servants, but as sons."
Paul believed in the trustworthiness of this
Bible. It is pathetic to think that he probably
owned no copy of his own. The Old Testa
ment Scriptures were in cumbersome rolls,
and they were too expensive for individuals
to own. On his long journeys Paul could
scarcely have carried them with him if he had
been able to purchase them. It is not im
possible that the parchments left at Troas
which he asked Timothy to bring may have
included some sacred writings — we cannot
say. This we do know, that Paul had the
words of this Bible in his heart, that where he
went that treasure went with him. All that
the Psalmist sang Paul could sing also. He
knew it in the deepest experience of his soul.
Oh, how love I thy law !
It is my meditation all the day.
Thy commandments make me wiser than mine ene
mies ;
For they are ever with me.

66 Paul, the All-Round Man
I have more understanding than all my teachers ;
For thy testimonies are my meditation.
I understand more than the aged,
Because I have kept thy precepts.
I have refrained my feet from every evil way,
That I might observe thy word.
I have not turned aside from thine ordinances ;
For thou hast taught me.
How sweet are thy words unto my taste 1
Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth !
Through thy precepts I get understanding :
Therefore I hate every false way.
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,
And light unto my path.
I have sworn, and have confirmed it,
That I will observe thy righteous ordinances.
I am afflicted very much :
Quicken me, O Jehovah, according unto thy word.
Accept, I beseech thee, the freewill-offerings of
my mouth, O Jehovah,
And teach me thine ordinances.
My soul is continually in my hand ;
Yet do I not forget thy law.
The wicked have laid a snare for me;
Yet have I not gone astray from thy precepts.
Thy testimonies have I taken as a heritage for
ever ;
For they are the rejoicing of my heart.
I have inclined my heart to perform thy statutes
For ever, even unto the end. — Psalm zig ; 07-113.

VII
PAUL THE FRIEND
PAUL conceived of faith not only as a
bond of union and a living relation
ship with Christ, but also as the basis
of human relations. He speaks to Philemon
of " The faith which thou hast toward the
Lord Jesus, and toward all the saints " (Phi
lemon 5). By faith we identify ourselves with
Christ (Gal. 2 : 20), but not with Christ
only. We are also one body with all who
are Christ's (Eph. 4 : 25). We are one body
with Christ by faith (Eph. 4 : 4, 1 2 ; 5 : 30)
and by faith are we one body in Christ (Rom.
12: 5 ; 1 Cor. 10: 17 ; 12: 12, 13,27). " Paul's
mystical conception," says Matthew Arnold in
" St. Paul and Protestantism," " is not complete
without its relation of us to our fellow men, as
well as its relation of us to Jesus Christ. . . .
Jesus Christ's life, with which we by faith
identify ourselves, is not complete, His aspira
tion after the eternal order is not satisfied, so
long as only Jesus Himself follows this order,
or only this or that individual amongst us
67

68 Paul, the All-Round Man
men follows it." All of Christ's must follow
it. This unity of souls in the Saviour was
one basis of Paul's friendships.
And Paul had rich and original conceptions
of love also, which he had learned from
Christ. Christ had loved him in his unlove-
liness. He had been patient with him in his
blindness. His love had been the love of
which Matheson sings, " O love that wilt not
let me go." It had been the love of which
Paul himself sang ( I Cor. 13:4-8). The
man who had this ideal of love realized what
it was to be a friend.
It was to love unselfishly. " The third
time," he wrote to the Corinthians who had
been such a source of care and grief to him,
" I am ready to come to you, and I will not
be a burden to you : for I seek not yours, but
you. I will most gladly spend and be spent
for your souls." " Though," as the King James
Version reads, " the more abundantly I love
you, the less I be loved " (2 Cor. 12 : 14, 15).
He loved men for their own sakes, not for
what they could be to him selfishly, though
he rejoiced when they poured back such
friendship love as his in return. But that
was their friendship, not his. His friendship
love gave and bargained for no return. It

Paul the Friend 69
coveted good for its objects and was ready to
purchase this with pain. " My little chil
dren," he cries to the Galatians, " of whom I
am again in travail until Christ be formed in
you " (Gal. 4 : 19). " I say the truth in
Christ, I lie not," he told the Romans, " my
conscience bearing witness with me in the
Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and
increasing pain in my heart. For I could
wish that I myself were anathema from
Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen
according to the flesh." Such a man knew
what true friendship love is.
And he knew not only that it was selfless.
He knew also that it was eternal. " Love
never faileth," he declared. But did not his
own love fail once ? He and Barnabas had
loved. Was there not a rupture of that
friendship ? " And there arose a sharp con
tention, so that they parted asunder one from
the other." That is Luke's unflinching nar
rative (Acts 15 : 39). It was over the worthi
ness of young John Mark, the nephew of
Barnabas. Paul thought he was not plucky
enough for missionary work, and Barnabas
wanted to try him again. He saw good in
him as he had seen in Paul ; and when others
distrusted him, as they had Paul, Barnabas

70 Paul, the All-Round Man
thought there was hope. Possibly Galatians
2:13, which records a time of wavering on
the part of Barnabas with reference to prin
ciples which Paul regarded as vital, may help
to explain this breach. At any rate, they
parted, and there is no record of their meet
ing again. But Paul always remembered
Barnabas kindly, and by and by he came round
to Barnabas's view of Mark. In Colossians
4 : 10, he commends him as a relative of Bar
nabas, and he finds at last the good in him
which the tolerant generosity of the " Son of
Consolation " had seen in him from the be
ginning (Philemon 24; 2 Tim. 4:11). In
1 Corinthians 9 : 6 Paul mentions Barnabas
honourably, implying that he was still at work,
unmarried, and toiling with his own hands.
Perhaps the rupture was for the best. Per
haps it helped John Mark to see his failings.
Perhaps the gospel was more widely preached
because of it, and love survived it, as it al
ways does with true men. We must believe,
therefore, that it was not a rupture of the
friendship; that like every true friendship,
this one outlived a difference of opinion, and
sweetened the lives of the friends to the end,
and after the end. And it is better not to
apply to it, as has been done, the lines from

Paul the Friend 71
Coleridge's " Christabel," however true they
may be of some of life's paroxysms :
" That to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain :
And each spoke words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother.
They parted — ne'er to meet again :
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining:
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder."
" We came in sight of Cyprus," says Luke in
Acts 21:3. Did Paul lean on the ship's side
ds they sailed past the old home of Barnabas
and tell Luke and Aristarchus and his other
companions of his dear old friend and the
good work of God they had shared, and of
the love that even that sharp contention long,
long ago had not made to fail? We will be
lieve so.
The man who loves unselfishly and eter
nally will be one of the sons of the unselfishly
and eternally loving God in the matter of
friendships. Life will be merely the back
ground and framework for friendship. No
man had more of this genius for loving than
Paul. When he and Barnabas separated he
could not go on alone. So he chose Silas,

72 Paul, the All-Round Man
and that friendship enriched his life for at
least several years, when Silas disappears
from our view. Silas was one of the two
brethren sent from Jerusalem down to Anti
och with the deputation who had come up
to confer as to Gentile rights in the church, '
to bear back the decision of the Council. He
had been a leading man among the brethren
in Jerusalem, and was accounted a prophet
(Acts 15:32). He shared many of Paul's
great experiences, and when Paul went on to
Athens alone, leaving Silas and Timothy in
Macedonia, the apostle's hunger for his
friends became too strong and they came on
and rejoined him in Corinth (Acts 18:5).
" What we read of the effect produced upon
his mind and work, when Timotheus and
Silas rejoined him," says Dean Howson,
" tends to show us how much his happiness
was increased by the presence of his friends,
and what a reserve of true religious force re
sided for him in the mere fact of companion
ship. Some are too ready to throw upon
others the work which they ought to do
themselves ; but he increased in zeal and ac
tivity when he could obtain others to help
him." Paul's dearest friend was this young

Paul the Friend 73
Timothy, who became to him as his own
beloved son. " I hope in the Lord Jesus,"
he writes to thePhilippians, " to send Timothy
shortly unto you, that I also may be of good
comfort, when I know your state. For I
have no man likeminded, who will care
truly for your state. For they all seek their
own, not the things of Jesus Christ. But ye
know the proof of him, that, as a child
serveth a father, so he served with me in
furtherance of the gospel. Him therefore I
hope to send forthwith, so soon as I shall
see how it will go with me." That was the
way he ever regarded him. It was at Lystra
that Paul met him. Apparently his conver
sion was one of the fruits of Paul's visit to
Lystra on his first missionary tour (Acts
14 : 6). He speaks of Timothy as his own
son in the faith. On Paul's later visit, re
corded in Acts 16: 1, Timothy was already
a disciple. Paul speaks of Timothy's per
sonal knowledge of his sufferings at Antioch,
Iconium, and Lystra (2 Tim. 3:11), so that
they were not strangers when they met at
that time.
There was a godly ancestry back of
Timothy, in his mother and grandmother,
who had his unfeigned faith, and from his

74 Paul, the All-Round Man
babyhood he had been taught the "sacred
writings which are able to make wise unto
salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus" (2 Tim. 1:5; 3 : 14, 15). We do
not know whether Timothy's Greek father
ever became a Christian, but his mother was
a believer, and he himself had gained a good
reputation. On his second journey when he came to
Lystra, Paul was sore still at the disagree
ment with Barnabas, and he eagerly took, as
a new associate, the fine spirited young man,
to whom he had been drawn on his previous
visit. Timothy accepted the privilege offered
to him, and never faltered in his devotion to
Paul or in his service of Christ, and to the
very end Paul joyed in his love and trusted
him with perfect faith. No cloud ever came
upon their relationship. Paul sent him to
and fro as his own other self. " For this
cause," he writes to Corinth, " have I sent
unto you Timothy, who is my beloved and
faithful child in the Lord, who shall put you
in remembrance of my ways which are in
Christ, even as I teach everywhere in every
church" (1 Cor. 4: 17). "See that he be
with you without fear," he adds, " for he
worketh the work of the Lord, as I also do "

Paul the Friend 75
(1 Cor. 16: 10, 11). Some of the most
precious pages of the New Testament are
the older man's letters to his son. " That
the epistles to Timothy and Titus do not
proceed from Paul himself, but can only be
historically understood as productions of the
post-apostolic period, should no longer be
disputed," says Begschlag, and supports this
view by proof that does not satisfy. These
are just the letters we should expect from
Paul to his dear friend, and more humanity
and appreciation of the ways of human
friendship and the liberal play of the human
spirit would save men from the wooden con
viction that no one has a right to enlarge his
vocabulary, to expand his opinions, or to
talk like a man to his friend.
The fourth great friendship of the apostle
was with his biographer, the evangelist Luke.
This man, who was so much to Paul, and to
whom we owe so much of our knowledge
both of Paul and Paul's Lord, is named only
three times in the Bible, and never by him
self (Col. 4 : 14 ; Philemon 24 ; 2 Tim.
4:11). He joined Paul at Troas on his sec
ond missionary journey, and while he re
mained at Philippi for seven years and doubt
less had much to do with the fine spirit of

76 Paul, the All-Round Man
that church and its loyalty to Paul, he re
joined his friend when he came to Philippi,
at the end of his third missionary journey,
and after that was his almost constant com
panion. In his last epistle, the old man says
simply, " Only Luke is with me" (2 Tim.
4 : 11). There is something very sweet in
this modest, faithful friendship. Perhaps
there was none to which Paul owed more, or
which lay more fully in the bounds of that
holy land where men keep the loves which
they do not sully with over-speech. It was
a warm, close, uninterrupted friendship, un-
marred by a rupture or a disagreement, and
full of mutual service. One need not tarry
to think of what such a friendship meant to
Luke. It meant no less to Paul. In his
sickness, in his work for souls, in his literary
work — where Luke's great taste and skill
must have been invaluable — in his very lan
guage, which shows traces of Luke's medical
terminology (1 Tim. 1 : 10; 4:2, 8 ; 5 : 23;
6 : 4 ; 2 Tim. 2 : 17 ; 4 : 3 ; Phil. 3:2, 8 ; Col.
3 : 5), in his loneliness and care, the beloved
physician was a constant strength and com
fort to him. Paul did not share the con
temptuous view of doctors which some
earnest people of our day express. He was

Paul the Friend 77
a sane and steady man, and he respected the
gentle, ministering skill of Luke.
Whoever will read Ramsay's book, " St
Paul, the Traveller and Roman Citizen," will
gain a fresh respect for the honest, modest,
careful man who was Paul's biographer, phy
sician and friend, and will understand some
thing of what he must have been to Paul.
For one thing, he seems to have been a
cheery, hopeful man, capable of large inter
ests, and kind and encouraging. He loves
to preserve consoling and bracing words
(Acts 18:9, 10 ; 23:11; 27 : 22, 25), and he
notes humane courtesies (Acts 27 : 3), and
times of exhilaration (Acts 28 : 1 5), and it
has often been remarked that his Gospel is
full of the jubilant notes of praise (Luke
1:28-33, 46-55, 68-79; 2:14, 29-32),
ofjoy(2: 10; 15 : 10), of thanksgiving (2: 20;
5:25, 26; 7:16; 13:13; 17:15; 18:43;
23 : 47). When the care of all the churches
and the news of heresy and moral defection lay
heavy upon his soul, it must have been avast
relief to Paul to sit down in the genial cheer
fulness of Luke's company and be rested by
that calm equipoise, that patient acceptance
of what cannot be helped, that resolute, in
domitable will to accept nothing evil which

78 Paul, the All-Round Man
can be helped, which fill the atmosphere of
every " beloved physician " with balm and
strength. Surely of this true friend Keble sings truly
when he warrants his presence at the mar
tyr's side :
" But if there be, who follows Paul,
As Paul his Lord, in life and death,
Where'er an aching heart may call,
Ready to speed and take no breath ;
" Whose joy is, to the wandering sheep
To tell of the great Shepherd's love ;
To learn of mourners while they weep
The music that makes mirth above ;
" Who makes the Saviour all his theme,
The Gospel all his pride and praise —
Approach ; for thou canst feel the gleam
That round the martyr's deathbed plays.
" Thou hast an ear for angel's songs,
A breath the Gospel trump to fill,
And taught by thee the Church prolongs
Her hymns of high thanksgiving still."
These four were only a few of the men and
women whom Paul loved and who loved him
as friend loves friend. We know the names
of a score beside, — Apollos, Titus, Tychicus,
Aquila and Priscilla, two of the most en
gaging New Testament characters, Lydia,
Phcebe, the mother of Rufus, who was as

Paul the Friend 79
his own mother (Rom. 16:13), Andronicus,
Junias, Lucius, Jason, Sosipater, Epaenetus and
Ampliatus and Stachys, each called " my be
loved" (Rom. 16: 5, 8, 9), Aristarchus, who
went to Rome with him (Acts 19: 29; Phi
lemon 24), Mark, whom he took back into his
confidence again (Col. 4 : 10; 2 Tim. 4: 11),
Epaphras, Epaphroditus, Onesimus, One-
siphorus, Trophimus, of most of whom we
have some tender knowledge as lovers of
Paul and his Saviour. He had his foes, too,
as any true lover must, — men who were his
enemies because they were his Master's, but
even them he would have loved and died for,
as he loved and would have died for the
Jews, who cast him out to go to the Gentiles.
Never was there a richer and more love-
filled life. He who had given up all, father
and mother and home and friends, received
them all back a hundredfold, as the Saviour
had promised (Mark 10:29, 30). He sur
rendered his own personal relationships, and
he got humanity. So alone he passed through
life encompassed. It was ever so —
" Hearts I have won of sister or of brother,
Quick on the earth or buried in the sod.
Lo, every heart awaiteth me, another
Friend in the blameless family of God."

VIII
PAUL THE ORATOR AND LOGICIAN
THE purpose and passion of Paul's
life was to win men to Christ. He
bent everything to this supreme
end. " Though I was free from all men,"
he wrote to the Corinthians, " I brought my
self under bondage to all, that I might ,pain
the more. I am become all things to all men,
that I may by all means save some." The
only agencies by which he sought to accom
plish his end of winning men were speaking
and writing. He travelled about talking to
people, in large audiences where he could
get them, but for the most part in small com
panies and especially one by one. The coun
sel which he gave to Timothy was the coun
sel by which he directed his own course.
" Preach the word ; be instant in season, out
of season ; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all
longsuffering and teaching." The power
which he wielded was due to the living Spirit
of God working through him, but working
through him as a speaker and writer, as an
orator and logician. 80

Paul the Orator and Logician 8l
We have a number of his speeches pre
served. From these we may judge some
thing of his style of speaking, although these
are evidently for the most part only con
densed fragments. Among these are his ad
dresses to the Jews in the synagogue at
Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13:17-41); to the
Athenians on Mars' Hill (Acts 17:22-31);
to the Jewish mob in Jerusalem (Acts 22:
3-21); to Felix (Acts 24: 10-21); to Festus
and Agrippa (Acts 26:2-23); and to the
elders of the Ephesian church at Miletus
(Acts 20 : 1 8-35). His letters to his churches
show us how he must have talked to them.
Doubtless in his preaching to the churches
there were many passages in his addresses
like the thirteenth and fifteenth chapters of
First Corinthians or the eighth chapter of
Romans or the first chapter of Ephesians.
These addresses and letters show us clearly
his qualities as a speaker and debater. They
reveal his superb skill and tact, his gracious-
ness and yet his straightforward courage.
The lack of any one of these qualities weakens
a speaker's power over his audience. He
was able by using Hebrew and by the adroit
ness of his introduction to silence the very
mob that had been bent on killing him be-

82 Paul, the All-Round Man
fore his rescue by the soldiers, and to hold
their attention through an account of his con
version, and if he had been a mere orator he
would have held it longer, but he valued it
only as an opportunity for preaching the
great principles for which he stood, and he
did not hesitate to introduce these though it
woke the fury of the mob again. He never
flattered or wasted effusive words, but he
knew how to turn a complimentary phrase,
and he was a gentleman through and through
(Acts 24 : 10 ; 26 : 2, 3, 25, 26).
But his graciousness and tact were not
ends. They were merely qualities of charac
ter and manner which he used to serve his
real ends. He was propagating truth. He
was the servant of a cause. It is the man
who is possessed by a message and whom a
cause consumes who can sway men, facing
them dauntlessly (Acts 1 3 : 45-47). They
realize that he is above their considerations
of interest, and they listen with awed regard
even when they disagree. They may not be
lieve what he says, but they see that he be
lieves it, and they respect him for his sincer
ity and his courage. Paul had these in
unlimited measure. He dared even to con
front the great Peter and to resist him to his

Paul the Orator and Logician 83
face (Gal. 2:11, 14). Men are always ready
to listen to the talk of such a man.
The note of authority was ever present
with Paul (Acts 13:9-11; Phil. 1 : 6 ; 2 Tim.
1, 2). It was because Jesus had spoken
with authority and not as the Scribes that
the people thronged to Him. Paul spoke
forth also with positive assurance, and the
heart of man, always timid and yet admiring
bravery, hesitant yet desiring certainty, turned
to him and rested upon his great, rugged
faith. The true orator must be a man who
has some solid convictions that he dares to
declare in a way which makes men secure in
the feeling that he would die for them, and
that therefore they are worth dying for, and
that readiness to die for something has not
died out of the world.
Paul spoke simply and directly to the mind
and heart of men. He knew how the people
to whom he spoke thought, and he used their
moulds. A specimen sermon in outline is
presented in Acts 13 : 17-41. This was ad
dressed to Jews in the synagogue at Antioch
in Pisidia. He sketched the dealing of God
with Israel from the days in Egypt, outlining
the wilderness journeys, touching on the
conquest of Canaan, the reign of the Judges,

84 Paul, the All-Round Man
Samuel the prophet, Saul, and David, with
interesting chronological references, then leap
ing to Jesus and the Baptist, the rejection
and crucifixion of the Messiah, His resurrec
tion and the remission of sins, and liberty
through Him. " Beware," he concluded,
" lest despising and prejudice stifle faith."
Such preaching yielded results (Acts 13 142-
45). Paul would argue differently with us.
He did argue differently with Gentiles. He
preached to these Jews in the way he knew
they would understand. His mind was not
mechanical. It was sympathetic, living,
adaptive. His language also was simple, di
rect, vivid, full of nerve and life. He had a
message to deliver, and he delivered it so that
people listened to it and comprehended it.
He was intensely personal in his method.
He was no theorizer, no calm, academic phi
losopher. He was an apostle, a propagandist,
a missionary. He had experienced what he
offered. He was a witness to things he
knew personally, and he had a work which
God had given to him personally to do. So
he spoke right out about himself. He told
of what he had felt and done and knew. His
speeches and letters are full of the urgent and
intimate personal note (Acts 22 : 3-21 ;

Paul the Orator and Logician 85
24:10-21; 26:2-23; Rom. 7:7-25; 9:1-
5 ; 1 Cor. 9; 2 Cor. 12; Phil. 3). Yet ever
when he says " I " it was not Paul that we
see but the Christ in whom Paul was and
whom Paul preached. It was this selfless
personalization of Christianity which made
his preaching so powerful. The greatest
oratory is the paradoxical combination of
complete self-mastery with complete self-for-
getfulness. The speaker must lose himself
and yet he must have himself absolutely in
hand. His audience must perceive that he
has completely lost sight of himself, and yet
if he is to sway them he must have his
powers in full control and be bending them
all with mighty coherence upon his task.
The vain or performing or self-conscious
speaker can never rise to Paul's height.
It is clear that Paul had the true orator's
nervousness and fear. He never hardened to
his work. " Do you get over your fright and
apprehension at speaking?" an old judge
asked another public speaker, and added, " I
never do. It works me up more and more
each year to charge my juries." The man
who is not stirred himself when he rises to
speak is not likely to stir others. Paul was
in a tremor. He was with the Corinthians

86 Paul, the All-Round Man
in weakness and fear and much trembling.
If the mark of rank in nature is capacity for
pain, it is capacity for tension which is the
mark of power in speaking. Paul had it.
He was all a-tremble with his message and
burden. His speech was made compelling by his
intense sympathy and earnestness. He knew
so much, and he knew it so surely, and men
were so dull. He burned to persuade them.
We can feel even now the tremulous thrill
of his yearning love.
M Oh, could I tell ye surely would believe it !
Oh, could I only say what I have seen !
How should I tell or how can you receive it,
How till He bringeth you where I have been ?
" Therefore, O Lord, I will not fail nor falter
Nay but I ask it, nay but I desire
Lay on my lips Thine embers of the altar
Seal with the sting and furnish with the fire ;
" Give me a voice, a cry and a complaining, —
Oh, let my sound be stormy in their ears !
Throat that would shout but cannot stay for straining,
Eyes that would weep but cannot wait for tears.
" Quick in a moment, infinite forever,
: Send an arousal better than I pray,
Give me a grace upon the faint endeavour,
Souls for my hire and Pentecost to-day t

Paul the Orator and Logician 87
He was not ashamed of tears (Acts 20 : 19,
31). He wept of love for those whom he
would have died to redeem (Rom. 9: 1-5),
and he wept of loyalty for the gospel which
he would have died to defend (Phil. 3: 18).
His intense sympathy made him sharer in
the soul of every man (Rom. 12 : 15).
But Paul's power was not in emotionalism.
It was in the ethical loftiness, the unanswer
able moral challenge of his ideals. He spoke
with inspiration, with that tension of the
soul which sends tremors through the con
science of those who hear whether they
reject or obey. But this was not merely
emotional. The emotion was there, but
it was the heat glow of the moral doc
trine which he preached. He had thought
out his message. He was a reasoner (Acts
19:8). He meditated with a persistent mind
upon his gospel and was possessed by it en
tirely. He had it logically stated to his own
thought and he was ever ready to proclaim
and defend it. He sought to convince reason.
He confounded the Jews who lived in Da
mascus " proving that this is the Christ "
(Acts 9: 22). And at Thessalonica, " as his
custom was, he went in unto them, and
for three sabbath days reasoned with them

88 Paul, the All-Round Man
from the scriptures, opening and alleging
that this Jesus whom, said he, I proclaim
unto you, is the Christ. And some of them
were persuaded " (Acts 17 : 2-4). Paul was
a man of argument (Acts 13:45; 15:2).
He had thought out his case and was pre
pared for all comers. He was eager to vindi
cate his faith as reasonable. Here was a true
rationalism ; for even faith must secure itself
by convincing reason of its right to be. And
Paul was a constant and superb reasoner.
At Athens " he reasoned in the synagogue
with the Jews and the devout persons, and in
the marketplace every day with them that
met him" (Acts 17:17). And at Corinth
" he reasoned in the synagogue every
sabbath, and persuaded Jews and Greeks "
(Acts 18:4; compare Acts 19:8). He fol
lowed his own logic fearlessly, and he drove
it home upon others.
He had, of course, his presuppositions.
He assumed the existence of God, the moral
law, the authority of the Old Testament, the
trustworthiness of the reason. And he was
as far removed as could be from a dry-as-
dust, precise philosophy. He was not afraid
of mighty mysteries and his speech was en
nobled by their presence, and he did not

Paul the Orator and Logician 89
hesitate to sacrifice order and form in the
intensity of his outpourings and appeals. As
Mr. Moody used to say of himself, Paul
sometimes forgot his subject, but he never
forgot. his object. Note the long and in
volved and sometimes incomplete sentences
(Eph. 1:3-14, 15-23; 2:1-10; 3:1-12;
4:1-16; Col. 1:9-23). But in then all
and always we see the strong man seeking
men with a longing to save.
The power of his thought and his speech
lay in this. " We preach not ourselves, but
Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your
servants for Jesus' sake." We bring " every
thought into captivity to the obedience of
Christ." Whosoever will do all his thinking
in Christ and all his speaking for Christ will
learn for himself the secret of Paul's wonder
ful gift as a convincer and persuader of men.

IX
PAUL THE MAN OF PRAYER
PAUL nowhere attempts to prove the
existence of God. Those to whom
he spoke and wrote believed in God.
Paul's desire was to lead them into a personal
knowledge and experience of God in Christ.
All his teaching is directed to that end. So,
likewise, he makes no attempt to explain the
possibility of prayer or to defend its reason
ableness. He assumes that prayer is a reality,
a fundamental activity of the spiritual nature.
It is the very Spirit of God which He sent
forth into our hearts because we are His sons
which cries, " Abba, Father " (Gal. 4 : 6).
That sense of God's fatherhood and of our
true sonship is the rational basis of prayer.
On that basis Paul took prayer for granted.
His belief was that God dwelt in him and
that his very life was Christ (Phil. 1 :2i;
Gal. 2 : 20) ; that prayer is only the opera
tion of the Holy Spirit of God (Rom. 8 : 26),
the Spirit of God within us making answer
to the Spirit of God without (Rom. 8:9, 11;
90

Paul the Man of Prayer 91
I Cor. 3 : 16). Prayer was simply a Chris
tian's vital breath.
But Paul had no trouble with the super
natural such as we have to-day. He knew
that he was supernatural himself, that at
any rate he had a supernatural life within
him, which came from God and was in inter
course with God. Direct revelations of the
will of God came to him (Gal. 1:12; 2:2),
and he believed that direct interventions of
the power of God were vouchsafed to him
(Acts 27 : 23-26; 2 Tim. 4: 17). Paul was
one of those men, whom Fleming Stevenson
described in speaking of Falk, Wichern,
Fliedner, Gossner and Harms, " who main
tain that God exercises some direct influence
in the affairs of the world ; who, therefore,
appeal to Him in any puzzle or difficulty ;
who expect His help, and as they believe
that He has the hearts of all men in His
hand, do not know any special type of
actions, within which that help must be
limited. They distinctly believe in God as
their Father, and never care to realize Him
either as a pure, infinite Intelligence, or as an
eternal Law. They believe, also, that prayer
is not an arbitrary provision for temporary
circumstances, but that it is fixed in the ways

Q2 Paul, the All-Round Man
of God, and in harmony with the settled re
lations of the world and the laws of human
conduct. And they believe that if in God's
name they begin a fitting work, God will
establish it ; answer their prayers regarding
it ; enable them to deal wisely and righteously
and prosperously by it; and that behind
every other means, and often supplanting
the others, there is prayer itself."
He believed in intercessory prayer. He
was ever praying for his converts, that they
might do no evil (2 Cor. 13:7), that their
love might abound in knowledge, that they
might have right tastes and be sincere and
innocent (Phil. 1:9-11). He assured the
Coloss ians that he did not cease to pray for
them, that they might be filled with the
knowledge of God's will, and be led in faith
fulness and power and patience ( Col. 1 : 9-12).
His churches were the cause of his rejoicing
in prayer, as he prayed to see them and to
help them toward a perfect faith (1 Thess.
3 : 9, 10), and that they might be worthy of
their calling (2 Thess. 1 : 11, 12). "A de
voted Sunday-school teacher of whom I have
heard," writes the Bishop of Durham in his
little book on " Secret Prayer," " was the
means, under God, of bringing scholar after

Paul the Man of Prayer 93
scholar, with always growing frequency, to
the feet of Jesus in loving conversion, evi
denced by a new life of love and consistency.
After her death her simple diary was found
to contain, among other entries, the three fol
lowing, ' Resolved to pray for each scholar
by name.' ' Resolved to wrestle in prayer
for each scholar by name.' ' Resolved to
wrestle for each by name and to expect an
answer.' " It was thus that always and with
out ceasing Paul prayed. He tells Timothy
with what warmth and longing he prayed for
him (2 Tim. 1 : 3, 4). He bore on his heart
the temptations of his converts, and besought
God to keep them that they should be clean
of sin (2 Cor. 13:7). He was wholly
wrapped up in them and in their faithfulness
and progress. •• God is my witness," he
said, " how I long after you in all the tender
mercies of Christ Jesus " (Phil. 1 : 3-8). Far
away from them, what else could he do but
pray ? And in prayer he found solace and
peace. "When hearts are full of yearning tenderness
For the loved absent, whom we cannot reach,
By deed or token, gesture or kind speech,
The spirit's true affection to express,
When hearts are full of innermost distress,

94 Paul, the All-Round Man
And we are doomed to stand inactive by,
Watching the soul's or body's agony
Which human effort helps not to make less —
Then like a cup capacious to contain
The overflowings of the heart is prayer ;
The longing of the soul is satisfied,
The keenest darts of anguish blunted are ;
And tho' we cannot cease to yearn or grieve,
Yet we have learned in patience to abide."
And as he prayed for others, so he craved
their prayers for himself. He regarded
prayer as a great cooperative relationship
(2 Cor. 1: 11). Those to whom gifts had
been given could best repay through prayer
(2 Cor. 9:12-15). In the direction and plan
ning of his own life, he counted upon the
prayers of his friends as a determining factor
(Phil. 1 : 19, 20). His constant appeal was
" Pray for me " (1 Thess. 5 : 25). He asked
the Romans to pray for four things for him
(Rom. 15 :30-32), the Ephesians to ask for
bold utterance for him (Eph. 6: 18-20), the
Colossians for an open door (Col. 4 : 2-4), and
more than once he entreated prayers for de
liverance (2 Thess. 3:1,2; Philemon 22).
" Whole days and weeks," says Whitefield,
" have I spent prostrate on the ground in
silent or vocal prayer." He could not have
prayed more unweariedly than Paul. " For

Paul the Man of Prayer 95
God is my witness," he writes, "whom I
serve in my spirit in the gospel of his Son,
how unceasingly I make mention of you,
always in my prayers making request, if by
any means now at length I may be prospered
by the will of God to come unto you"
(Rom. 1 : 9, 10). Again and again he writes
of his unceasing prayers ( I Cor. 1:4; Eph.
1 : 15, 16; Phil. 1:3-5; Col. 1 : 3, 9), and in
writing to the Thessalonians, while he ex
horted them to pray without ceasing, he
assures them that it is without ceasing that
he prays for them (1 Thess. 1 : 2, 3; 2:13;
2 Thess. 1 : 3, 11, 12 ; 2 : 13-15).
He prayed with constant thoughtfulness
and gratitude. For what was he so thank
ful ? That the faith of the Roman Christian
was known far and near (Rom. 1 : 8), that
Jesus Christ had delivered him from " the
body of this death " (Rom. 7 : 24, 25), for the
spiritual grace of the Colossian Christians
(Col. 1 : 3-5), for the growing faith and
abounding love of the Christians at Thessa
lonica (2 Thess. 1 : 3, 4. Cf. also 1 Cor. 1 :
4; Eph. 1 : 16; Phil. 1 : 3-5 ; 1 Thess. 1:2;
2:13; 2 Thess. 1:3,4; 2:13). Gratitude
was to be mutual, just as supplication was
(2 Cor. 1 : 9-1 1).

96 Paul, the All-Round Man
His whole heart was in his prayers (Rom.
10: 1), and joy mingled with his longings
(Phil. 1 : 4), while love overflowed (2 Tim. 1 :
3, 4). His intense desire found utterance in
groaning (2 Cor. 5 : 2-4), but for the most
part in jubilant gladness and gratitude.
" For what thanksgiving can we render again
unto God for you?" he asks the Thessa
lonians, " for all the joy wherewith we joy for
your sakes before our God ; night and day
praying exceedingly that we may see your
face, and may perfect that which is lacking
in your faith ? " But while eager and intense
in his prayers, he believed in a will and a
wisdom above his own, and he peacefully re
signed his will and his wisdom to the strong
Mind which was over all (2 Cor. 12 : 8-10).
It is clear from all this that Paul regarded
nothir.j £.3 beyond the reach of prayer. In
the passages already cited he asked not only
for blessings in his own heart and in the
hearts of his friends, but for the salvation of
Israel (Rom. 10: 1), for Christ's coming and
the deliverance of his body not through death
(2 Cor. 5 : 1-4), for the devotion of his mis
sionary work (Rom. 1 : 10; 1 Thess. 3 : 10),
for the larger revelation of God to his friends
(Eph. 1 : 15-23).

Paul the Man of Prayer 97
Paul's epistles are full of prayers. The in
vocations and benedictions are in reality
prayers, e. g., 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13:
" Now may our God and Father himself,
and our Lord Jesus, direct our way unto you :
and the Lord make you to increase and
abound in love one toward another, and
toward all men, even as we also do toward
you ; to the end he may establish your hearts
unblamable in holiness before our God and
Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with
all his saints " (2 Thess. 2 : 16, 17). And we
have several great passages which show what
his oral prayers must have been (Eph. 1:15—
23; 3:I4-2IJ Col. 1:9-23). It is clear
from these passages that the apostle studied
the thought of his prayers. The character
of his written prayers would indicate that his
public prayers were not loose and slovenly,
" When some one complimented M. Thiers
on his effective impromptu speech in the
French Assembly," Dr. H. Clay Trumbull
says in one of his two books on prayer, " M.
Thiers replied that he never insulted the As
sembly with impromptu speeches, but he rose
at five o'clock every morning to prepare his
'impromptu' for the day." "Study your
prayers," said Robert Murray McCheyne.

98 Paul, the All-Round Man
" A great part of my time is occupied in
getting my heart into tune for prayer."
These great prayers of Paul's are full of
adoration and reverence, qualities too much
neglected in our prayers. " There are but
two objects I have ever desired these forty
years to behold," wrote Charles Simeon in
1 8 19 ; " the one is my own vileness ; the other
is the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ, and I have always thought that they
should be viewed together. . . . This is the
religion that pervades the whole Liturgy.
. . . The praise all through savours of
adoration. ... I consider the religion of
the day as materially defective in this point.
I do not see, as much as I could wish, a holy,
reverential awe of God." In 1834, two years
before his peaceful death, he wrote : " I have
often wished there were more of holy rev
erence in religious people when speaking of
God and of the things which He has wrought
for their salvation. I see not an instance in
Scripture of any remarkable manifestation of
God to man which did not instantly generate
in his heart and produce in his act a lowly
reverence and self-abasement. ... I would
have the whole of my experience one contin
ued sense, first, of my nothingness and de«

Paul the Man of Prayer 99
pendence upon God, secondly, of my guilti
ness and desert before Him, thirdly, of my
obligations to redeeming love, as utterly over
whelming me with its incomprehensible ex
tent and grandeur." Paul was overwhelmed
with this love and his prayer life was bathed
in it.
Are our hearts cold and impassive? Is
our work dead and joyless ? Are we desti
tute of power to win and hold other hearts ?
Let us find our remedy in such a life of prayer
as Paul's. It waits for us there. " I was
weary of a cold heart toward Christ," says
Christmas Evans of an experience when he
was climbing a lonely and mountainous road
toward Cader Idris, " and I began to pray,
and soon felt the fetters loosening, tears
flowed copiously, and I was constrained to
cry out for the gracious visits of God. Thus
I resigned myself to Christ, body and soul,
gifts and labours, all my life, every day and
every hour that remained to me : and all my
cares I committed to Christ." We may so
commit our lives.

X
PAUL THE MISSIONARY
PAUL came to the service of Christ
with the missionary spirit and with a
great endowment of vigorous per
sonal power. The material which was given
to his Saviour to mould and use was rare
material. Christ did not need to create in
him the will to win men to his own deep
convictions. He had had that will. " Even
before his conversion," says Professor McGif-
fert, " Paul desired to be not merely a rabbi
but a missionary, to devote his life to the
propagation of true righteousness and to the
overthrow of everything which in any way
interfered with its advance and which in any
way hindered the people from giving them
selves undividedly to the practice of the law "
(Acts 22 : 3 ; Phil. 3:5,6). And it was not
only missionary zeal, it was force of person
ality also which he brought to his new
Master (Acts 8:3; 9 : 1-3). His conversion
did not kill this. It intensified it and gave
100

Paul the Missionary 101
aew direction to it. For " religion, " as Bishop
Butler said, " does not demand new affections
but only claims the direction of those we
already have. Let the man of ambition go
on still." The more a man has of " natural
gifts," which we hold are yet all supernaturally
given, the better. Christ is seeking such for
His service. He chose Paul because He saw
in him the missionary qualification, and we
must believe that He rejoiced when the man
answered His call and brought his mighty
power into the Kingdom of God.
The call which came to Paul was of a kind
to enlarge his personal passion. He had ever
been a loyal man. Now his loyalty rose to
a loftier and more intense devotion. Its ob
ject was no more the Law or the God who had
spoken to the fathers, but the gospel and the
God who had spoken straight to his own
heart in Christ His Son. He was evermore
sustained in his missions by the consciousness
of a personal Saviour with him and in him,
before him and behind him, whom he served
and in whom and unto whom he lived. The
missionary life grounded in such a confidence
is invincible and irresistible. The manner of
his discovery of God's great missionary pur
poses for him was intensely and solemnly

102 Paul, the All-Round Man
significant to Paul. He often spoke of it.
But the vitally important thing was the fact
of the duty, not the manner of its discovery.
He had been called from his mother's womb.
God had planned his life before his life was.
The " call " of the missionary to-day is not
the new purpose of God for his life but the
discovery of the purpose with which God
sent the life into the world. Paul felt this.
He came himself only gradually into a clear
understanding of what God's work for him
was (Acts 13:46; 18:6; 22:18-21; 26:
16-18). How he came or how we come is
unimportant, provided only we come.
Thrilling as his call was, he did not rush
at once into his new work. He went off for
long quiet thinking. His early training had
been conservative and restraining. The
feverish excitement of the persecution had
not swept him out of his sobriety, and guided
by the wise and quieting Spirit of God, he
went off and made ready within. When he
came forth to his work, accordingly, he had
his message, unborrowed, original, fresh from
God. As he began he had the invaluable
counsel and friendship of ah older man, a
gentleman, a man of love and sympathy, un-
weakened by pride or jealousy, a true servaat

Paul the Missionary 103
of his Master and his Master's cause. He
stood sponsor for the young missionary when
others mistrusted him (Acts 9 : 27). He be
friended and trained him (Acts 11 123-26).
He saw him go forward and himself with
drew (Acts 13 : 16). Not every young mis
sionary has the advantage of such a begin
ning. Not every one who has appreciates it.
The missionary career of Paul was a career
of steady expansion, — Antioch, Asia, Greece,
Rome, Spain (Rom. 15 : 19-29). It was not
a great inflated ambition, slowly dwindling to
reality. It was - steadily widening, con
structive achievement. When he was done a
great work stood accomplished as the result
of his life activity.
The missionary methods of Paul will bear
a great deal more study than has been spent
upon them. The students of his life have
been men who had no actual missionary ex
perience of their own. We shall have to
wait for an adequate biography until some
one undertakes it who has himself lived
through the same conditions and problems,
as modern missionaries are doing to-day,
and who has also the full ethical and critical
equipment. Some of the things we may
notice are the following: (1) He knew the

104 Paul, the All-Round Man
secret of giving away work and responsibil
ity. Perhaps he had learned this from Bar
nabas. He trained others and set them to
work (Acts 13:1; 16 : 1-4 ; 2 Tim. 2 ;
Eph. 6:21,22; Phil. 4:3). He was con
stantly on the watch for promising young
men. He was full of interest in them and
drew them on to share in his great enterprise.
He had a heart for friendship and he gave it
freedom of play in his work (2 Cor. 7:6;
2 Tim. 1:16-18; Philemon). (2) He
counted on the readiness of men to respond
to the heroic and unselfish. He offered no
salaries. The money problem which is so
large a problem in missions to-day, in the ef
fort to get workers for Christ, when business
and government service are offering such
great rewards, and in the attempt to build up
a self-supporting church did not trouble him.
Men left the cause for the sake of worldly
pleasures and gain (2 Tim. 4:10; Phil. 2 : 20,
21), but Paul never attempted to hold them
by money inducements. He was sure that
with the right influence brought to bear upon
them, the right example set before them, the
spirit of Christ truly controlling them, true
men would serve Christ without regard to re
ward. (3) His plan was to find the men

Paul the Missionary 105
and women responsive to the truth, and then
to organize them in the simplest way into a
self-supporting Christian company, whom he
trained in unselfish giving. He took no
wages himself, though he often accepted hos
pitality, and he taught others to give prayer
fully, proportionately, and systematically
(Acts 20: 33-35 ; I Cor. 16 : 1, 2 ; 2 Cor. 9;
Gal. 6 : 6). He kept in close touch with these
little churches and kept them on his heart as
a constant care. (4) He was an itinerant
evangelist covering an immense field (Rom.
15 : 19, 20). His aim was to reach ever new
territories and to cover no fields already
reached by others, and he did not know when
Christ might return and was bent on reach
ing all the souls he could in his short life.
But he was no touch and go missionary. He
believed in founding a permanent institution,
in doing an abiding work, in leaving an in
digenous church behind him as he passed on.
(5) His own reliance was the gospel. It
was not culture, or education or philanthropy.
He did not think that people must be pre
pared to be preached to. He knew men's
hearts and he went straight to them. In our
own day we may be sure he would use any
necessary means, but he would not put the

106 Paul, the All-Round Man
proclamation of the gospel at the end of any
process. He would not believe that the gos
pel needed something else, money or political
support, or equipment in buildings, before it
could be the power of God unto salvation.
(6) He fearlessly made the great cities his
point of attack. If he could, he reached the
influential people ; if he could not, he reached
whom he could. Those whom he reached,
strong or weak, became at once a centre of
propagation. He did not pass by any peo
ple, but he himself was a city man and the
cities dominated the life of his day, and
he struck straight at the centre of power.
(7) He was an incessant personal worker for
souls. He did not counsel others to do what
he was not doing. His example preached as
loudly as his word the duty and privilege
which rested on each disciple of being a dis-
cipler of others.
His missionary gospel was for all men, all
classes and all sexes. He boldly declared
that in it the three great lines of division
which had cursed the pre-Christian world,
which still curse the non-Christian world,
were erased (Gal 3 : 28). He proclaimed the
universality and deadliness of sin (Rom. 1 ;
3 : 9, 10), the width of God's love (Rom. 3 : 29,

Paul the Missionary 107
30 ; 5:7, 8), the world sufficiency of Christ
and His cross (Rom. 1 : 16; 3 : 21-24 > 5:IS
18; 10: 13; 2 Cor. 5 : 19), Christ's absolute
world ownership (1 Cor. 3:23; 2 Cor. 4 : 5),
and His sure triumph ( 1 Cor. 1 : 24 ; Col.
1:20; Phil. 2:9-11). It was a whole mes
sage. It was a simple pressure of the living
truth of God upon the deepest needs of the
soul. He was a man of tireless movement. He
never settled down at his ease. He never
contented himself with any past achievement.
He never subsided in despair at lack of re
sult. He was up and on again. He never
asked God for leadings. He asked Him only
for restrainings in case he was going astray.
We see his method in Acts 16 : 6-8. He
was here for work. God had given him the
faculties for it. Where it was needed most
he pushed in. And nothing could daunt
him, no not even death itself. He met that
at last as he had met all else, with joy and an
unfearing heart.
" The good soldier," says Thomas Fuller,
" grudgeth not to get a probability of victory
by the certainty of his own death and fleeth
from nothing so much as from the mention
of fleeing, and though the world saith he is

108 Paul, the All-Round Man
a madman, our soldier knoweth that he shall
possess the reward of his valour with God in
heaven, and making the world his executor
leave to it the rich inheritance of his memory."

XI
PAUL THE JOYFUL STRUGGLER
SOME men meet the difficulties of life,
and, appalled by them, surrender ;
others meet them with dismay, but,
knowing that they must fight it through,
doggedly take up their tasks. But Paul saw
that difficulties were a necessary part of the
work of a man, and greeted them with de
light. " Count it all joy," said James, " when
ye fall into manifold trials." That was the
spirit of Paul. " I will tarry at Ephesus until
Pentecost," he told the Corinthians ; « for a
great door and effectual is opened unto me,
and there are many adversaries." " And,"
not " but." The adversaries did not limit and
qualify the opportunity at Ephesus; they
constituted it. It is the difficulties that make
the work of life. " Let no man be moved
by afflictions," he tells the Thessalonians,
" for yourselves know that hereunto we are
appointed." And Paul had enough of them to face.
There were the common difficulties of every
day, but there were more. Again and again
109

no Paul, the All-Round Man
he lets us see what the things were which
weighed upon him. He enumerates for the
Corinthians the hardships and perils of his
work, the long list of " things that are with
out," ending with hunger, cold, and naked
ness, and including the " perils among false
brethren." It was in persons that his great
difficulties were found. " It is not things
that trouble us," said an experienced mission
ary in Persia to a traveller who said good
bye to her as she stood in her doorway in a
remote village ; " our difficulties are folks."
This was Paul's experience. The " things
without " were trivial compared with " un
reasonable and evil men," " unruly men, vain
talkers and deceivers," " abominable, and
disobedient, and unto every good work rep
robate." It was the " adversaries " at Ephesus
who made Paul eager to stay there and front
them. Of course, Paul was not glad that there
were such unreasonable and abominable men
in the world, but, since they were here, he
was glad of a chance to resist them, and
break down their influence, if he could not
win them. He wasted no time in specula
ting as to why God did not make roses with
out thorns, or whether He could have made a

Paul the Joyful Struggler m
better world, a world without difficulties and
drawbacks ; he simply saw that the hard
things are here, and sprang with joy to get
his share. He had an instinct that the man
who got most of them would have the most
glorious crown of accomplishment. And
there was something fundamentally true in
this view. If God will not allow any man to
be tried beyond his strength, then, the greater
a man's trials, the greater God's view of his
strength. In this light difficulties and trials
are God's form of compliment, His appor
tionment of the battle to His warriors.
" Give me a man's full share," prayed Paul.
And this was what he sought, — not the easy
thing, but the post of peril. " I have been
ambitious to preach the Gospel not where
Christ was already named, that I might not
build upon another man's foundation." Let
others choose the way without difficulties ;
Paul preferred the hard road. Per aspera ad
astra. And Paul no more shrank from inner
conflicts and agonies than he feared outer
perils and foes. He reminded the Corin
thians, with a true and touching pathos, of the
heavy strain under which he lived hourly, the
burden of all his churches resting upon his

112 Paul, the All-Round Man
eager sympathy, so that he felt every lapse as
a personal fall, and made all weakness his
own. He might have escaped from all this,
but he did not. Any Christian worker can
secure rest at this point by simply allowing
his sympathies to harden. It is an easy
thing. But it costs him all his power. The
price of power is strain. And Paul rejoiced
at his inner agony, and asked those for whom
he suffered to be strong : " I ask that ye may
not faint at my tribulations for you, which
are your glory." It is good to remember
that our Lord allows us also to taste the joy
of vicarious suffering. Paul knew it, and it
made him glad. " I rejoice," he told the
Colossians, " in my sufferings for your sake."
What God sent him of difficulty in his own
personal Christian experience he accepted
with delight. Not at first. He was disposed
to protest at the beginning, but he soon per
ceived the divine law of compensation, and
his reluctance died. " I will rather glory in
my weaknesses," he could write, " that the
power of Christ may rest upon me. Where
fore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries,
in necessities." The real significance of life
began to dawn upon him. He perceived, as
Emerson says, that " life invests itself with

Paul the Joyful Struggler 113
inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek
to dodge, which one and another brags that
he does not know, that they do not touch
him ; but the brag is on his lips, the condi
tions are in his soul. If he escapes them in
one part, they attack him in another more
vital part." Paul faced the difficulties, and
tore their secret from them. Thenceforth
they became a source of strength to him.
" When I am weak," he said, " then am I
strong." He took now a delight in limita
tion, perceiving its divine ordering, as a pre
ordained source of power and profounder
experience. In whatever state he was, he
was content. He was more, — he was glad.
Difficulties beget delight by another law
than the law of compensation. They obey
the law of consequence. We grow strong
by resistance. No man can climb a rungless
ladder. The atmosphere provides no foot
ing. A world without antagonism would
furnish no moral development. We unfold
and attain by the exercise of choices involv
ing refusals and repulsions. The strong man
is the man who wrestles with evil, overcomes
it, and confronts a stronger foe on a larger
field. It is trial that works patience and
strength. The valued teacher in the Sunday-

114 Paul, the All-Round Man
School is the one who has met incorrigibles
and tamed them, whose experience has em
braced all types of " adversaries," and who is
strong with confidence and power.
And the joyful difficulties of the Christian
life are not all found in the realm of feeling
and activity. They exist in the field of doc
trine too. " O the depth of the riches both
of the wisdom and the knowledge of God !
how unsearchable are His judgments, and His
ways past tracing out ! " Paul seems to be
delighted that God is beyond him. His great
intellect has waked and reared and hurled it-
Self against the topless truth of God. Higher
and higher it has flung itself, but at last it
has fallen back, conscious that there are infi
nite reaches beyond. And the thought fills
Paul with delight. And why not? The
difficulty of compassing God, of compre
hending all His ways, is the very fountain of
joy in life. If we could compass and com
prehend God, then we should in some real
sense be greater than He. But far beyond
us He lives, and we press out and onward
forever into His infinite life. Dark and dreary
falls the night on any man who, by any de
vice, denies himself the delight of the diffi'
culties of God,

Paul the Joyful Struggler 1 1 5
The difficulty of death was no horror to
Paul. " I desire to depart," he said. And
he took joy in the thought of martyrdom
even. " If I am offered upon the sacrifice
and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice
with you all : and in the same manner do ye
also joy, and rejoice with me." Indeed, he
experienced daily the difficulty of death, and
was not saddened by it. He died daily, as
he suffered daily, but it was the blessing of it
that he saw. " Our light affliction . .
worketh for us more and more exceedingly
an eternal weight of glory."
" And the end of trial
Shall be near the throne."
But the difficulty of death gave Paul less
delight than the difficulty of life. He set up
standards of unyielding and perfect rigidity
in righteousness, and, side by side with these,
standards of most gentle adaptiveness in sym
pathy and self-restraint. These standards
were hard of application separately. It was
harder yet to get them applied together.
What a keen and vivacious interest the at
tempt gave to life ! No man can ever lack
interest in life who tries to be good. Each
conceit of success at one point is countered

n6 Paul, the All-Round Man
by the chagrin of disaster elsewhere. The
attempt to be a Christian is an experiment of
delightful difficulty. The attempt to do a
Christian's work is the joyful business of men
who can say with the man Paul, " as dying,
and behold, we live ; as chastened, and not
killed ; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing."
¦¦ And so I live, you see,
Go through the world, try, prove, reject,
Prefer, still struggling to effect
My warfare ; happy that I can
Be crossed and thwarted as a man,
Not left in God's contempt apart,
With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,
Tame in earth's paddock as her prize.

Thank God, no paradise stands barred
To entry, and I find it hard
To be a Christian, as I said."
Rejoice. The way is hard. Ye saints, re
joice !

XII
PAUL, THE ALL-ROUND MAN
FROM the point of view of the dilet
tante, the secularist, the moderatist,
Paul was a devotee and fanatic. His
missionary zeal seems extreme to the men
who have no enthusiasm except for their
sports. His passion for God and his sense
of sin appear fantastic to the culturist and
the scholar. His intensity frightened one
man of the world with whom he talked once
(Acts 24 : 25) and led another blase but in
telligent man to tell him that he had gone
mad with his speculations. But Paul had
deliberately made his choice of concerns in
life, or as he would have put it, God had made
choice for him before he was born (Gal. 1:15).
The limitations of such definite mission Paul
cordially accepted. He lived for God, and
for God in religion, believing that the great
thing in life is not political reform or literary
culture, each good, but the redemption of
man in Christ. And he found his life in
stead of a contracted thing, a jubilant posses-
"7

il8 Paul, the All-Round Man
sion of the best. One of his favourite words
is " riches," descriptive of what a Christian
may have in his own experience of the pres
ence and fulness of God (Rom. 2 : 4 ; 9 : 23 ;
11:33; Eph. 1 : 7, 18 ; 2 : 7 ; 3 : 8, 16 ; Phil.
4:19; Col. 1:27; 2:2). Intellectually, he
was conscious of no narrowing. His sym
pathies ranged broadly over life.
He was no narrow devotee. He was a
man of commanding intellectual power who
had thought out fearlessly the great prob
lems of life, and in his experience of Christ,
and his interpretation of the principles
brought to light in that experience, had
reached conclusions which satisfied and dom
inated his reason. He spent his years in
propagating these convictions of his, and he
never met any one against whom he was not
able to maintain his position, while the
modern world bears his imprint even more
distinctly than the world of his own day, in
which, as we look back now, we see him as
the overtowering figure. " How strange and
odd it would have seemed to the educated
Romans of the middle of the first century,"
says Tolstoy, " had any one told them that
the . . . letters addressed by a wandering
Jew to his friends and pupils would have a

Paul, the All-Round Man 119
hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand
times more readers, more circulation, and
more influence over people than all the
poemsr odes, elegies, and elegant epistles of
the authors of that age ! And yet this is
what has happened." And as Somerville
says, " It is not only his amazing grasp of
mind and capacity for dealing with principles
of truth that strikes one. It is, above all, the
fineness and delicacy of his spiritual touch,
his power of concentration on the problems
of religion and life, his vivid understanding
of, and his sympathy with the conflict of hu
manity torn by the contending forces of good
and evil ; all this marked him out as pre
eminently fitter to discover for himself, and
tell to others, what the living Christ is and
can do as the Redeemer from sin and death,
and all that hinders the perfection of man."
Paul had a shrewd and comprehensive ex
perience of life. He knew many men and
things. His language bears evidence of his
broad views and vivid insights. It is full, as
Howson points out, of metaphors from
classical architecture (Acts 17 : 24, 29 ; 20: 32 ;
Rom. 15: 1, 2,20; Gal. 2:9,18; 1 Cor.
3:9-17; 8:1, 10; Eph. 2: 20-22:4:16;
Col. 2 : 6, 7; I Tim. 3 : 14, 15), from ancient

120 Paul, the All-Round Man
agriculture (I Cor. 3: 6-9; 9:7, 9, 10;
15:35-38, 42-44; Gal. 6: 7,8; 2 Cor. 9:
6-1 1 ; Col. 1:6; Phil. 1 : 1 1 ; Rom. 7 : 4, 5 ;
11 : 16-24; 2 Tim. 2: 4-6; iTim. 5 : 17, 18),
from law courts (Rom. 7 : 3, 4 ; Gal. 3:15;
4 : 1), from the shining stars (1 Cor. 15 : 41),
from the life of little children (1 Thess. 2: 7,
11), from soldiers and armies (Rom. 7: 23;
13:11-13; 2 Cor. 2:14-16; 6:7; IO;
3-6; 1 Thess. 5: 5-8; Eph. 6: 10-17;
2 Tim. 2 : 3, 4 ; Col. 2:15; 2 Cor. 7:5; Phil.
4:7; 1 Cor. 15: 23, 52), from athletic
games (Acts 1 3 : 25 ; 20 : 24 ; 2 Thess. 3:1;
2 Tim. 4: 7, 8 ; Rom. 9: 15, 16; Gal. 2:2;
5:7; Phil. 2:16; 1 Tim. 4:7; 1 Thess.
2:2; 1 Tim. 6:12; Col. 4:12; Phil. 3:
12-14 ; 1 Cor. 9 : 24-27 ; 2 Tim. 2 : 5).
" Certain it is," says Professor William
James, " that the acutest theories, the greatest
intellectual power, the most elaborate educa
tion, are a sheer mockery when, as too often
happens, they feed mean motives and a
nerveless will. And it is equally certain that
a resolute moral energy, no matter how in
articulate or unequipped with learning its
owner may be, extorts from us a respect we
should never pay were we not satisfied that
the essential root of human personality lay

Paul, the All-Round Man 121
there." In Paul we see both the power of
trained and informed intellect, and the power
of resolute moral energy and unique per
sonality. It was not that he never knew
fear, for he tells us that he did (1 Cor. 2:
3 ; 2 Cor. 7 : 5), but he knew, also, how to
conquer fear, and no fear ever kept him
from his duty. He shrank neither from life
nor from death. He rested resolutely in the
will of God, knowing the measure of truth
in John Brown's fatalistic declaration, " I
have no fault to find with the manner of my
death ; the disgrace of hanging does not
trouble me in the least. Indeed, I know that
the very errors by which my scheme was
marred were decreed before the world was
made." Paul was a great constructive statesman.
He saw early the vital issues in Christianity,
and when he saw them he unflinchingly
adopted a program which included a trans
formation of the gospel as the Jerusalem
leaders were viewing it, and a universalization
of its mission. In this he was only laying
bare and acting upon the principles of Jesus'
teaching and the clear significance of His
last instructions to His disciples. And Paul
accomplished more than this. He gave form

122 Paul, the All-Round Man
to the Church. It was he who worked out
the problem of the organization of Christian
ity in his mission churches. He took up his
mission with large minded and courageous
vision. He deliberately set out upon the
project of the conquest of the Roman world.
He travelled over it from east to west. He
insisted on being sent to Rome, when he
might have been set free. He carried the
gospel fearlessly into every class of society
and into every centre of influence. He was
not afraid of responsibilities and he never
distrusted God's readiness to work in him
and through him. " I know," he wrote to
the Romans, " that, when I come unto you, I
shall come in the fulness of the blessing of
Christ "(Rom. 15:29).
He was a man of authoritative personal
force. He stood out as a man of leadership
wherever he was. His qualities irresistibly
lifted him. He soon overbore Barnabas
(Acts 11:30; 13: 2, 7, 9, 13, 46, 50; 15:
22, 36). He became naturally the champion
of the rights of the Gentiles in the Church
(Acts 15:12; Gal. 2). He came forth as
the heroic figure in the shipwreck on the
journey to Rome (Acts 27). The huge
moral nature of the man, his enthusiasms for

Paul, the All-Round Man 123
holiness, his abhorrence of uncleanness, his
sense of integrity, gave him a moral authority
which could not be suppressed. This is what
blazes out like the wrath of the Lamb (Rev.
6: 16) in his denunciation of the immorality
of the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 5 : 1-8).
Yet his sharp moral ruggedness did not
make Paul overbearing or harsh. Sometimes
when he has spoken tempestuously, in the
surge of his oceanic impulse, he seems to
feel that he has gone too far, and he breaks
out with some gentle, loving speech (Gal.
4:19; 2 Cor. 2:4; Rom. 9:1-3). Some
times when he has spoken decisively with
positive assertion of his power, he turns the
edge of it with a modest phrase or a humble
recognition of the authority and devotion of
others (Rom. 1: 8-1 2). It is of this com
bination of power with restraint and modesty
that Newman speaks in his verses :

" I dreamed that with a passionate complaint
I wished me born amid God's deeds of might,
And envied those who had the presence bright
Of gifted prophet or strong-hearted saint,
Whom my heart loves and fancy strives to paint.
I turned, when straight a stranger met my sight,
Came as my guest and did a while unite
His lot with mine, and lived without restraint.

124 Paul> thc All-Round Man
Courteous he was and grave ; so meek in mien,
It seemed untrue, or told a purpose weak' ;
Yet in the mood could he with aptness speak
Or with stern force or show of feeling keen,
Marking deep craft, methought, and hidden pride ;
Then came a voice, < St. Paul is at thy side ! ' "
Paul had none of the self-will, the exclusive
assertiveness of the consciously great man.
He had a rich and affectionate nature. He
depended on friendship, and friendship with
him did not mean fawning sycophancy. It
meant loving confidence, respect and regard.
We see him admirable in the little sympa
thies of life (i Tim. 5 : 23; Phil. 2: 26, 27;
4 : 2, 3). Paul never hardened. He grew
more tender with the years, and was at the
end (2 Tim. 1 : 5, 16-18) as loving as he had
been when he wrote to the church in Cor
inth, " Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies
and God of all comfort ; who comforteth us
in all our affliction, that we may be able to
comfort them that are in any affliction,
through the comfort wherewith we ourselves
are comforted of God. . . . Whether we
are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salva
tion ; or whether we are comforted it is for
your comfort " (2 Cor. 1 : 3-6).

Paul, the All-Round Man 125
He was free from envy. He took delight
in the success and service of others. " We
rejoice," he assured the Corinthians, " when
we are weak, and ye are strong " (2 Cor. 1 3 :
9). He speaks pleasantly of Apollos ( 1 Cor.
16: 12), and of the apostles of the circum
cision (Gal. 2 : 7-10). And when at Rome
some Christians, desiring to irritate him,
"preach Christ even of envy and strife"
(Phil. 1:15-18), the nobility of Paul's nature,
the breadth of his mind displayed itself in
his comment on the course of these un
christian brethren. He might have scorched
them with his withering contempt. " Whether
in pretence or in truth, Christ is proclaimed,"
he said, " and therein I rejoice, yea, and will
rejoice." " Never surely," says Matthew Ar
nold, " did such a controversialist, such a
master of sarcasm and invective commend,
with such manifest sincerity and such per
suasive emotion, the qualities of meekness and
gentleness ! Never surely did a worker who
took with such energy his own line, and who
was so born to preponderate and predomi
nate in whatever line he took, insist so often
and so admirably that the lines of other
workers were just as good as his own "
(Rom. 16: 1, 2; 1 Cor. 15 : 9; 16: 15, 16;

126 Paul, the All-Round Man
Eph. 2 : 20 ; 3 : 5 ; 4 : 1 1). " Grace be with
all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ with
a love incorruptible " (Eph. 6 : 24). His
mind and heart made room for all to whom
Christ was truly dear.
In this openness and tolerance of mind
there was no indifference to the sacred ex-
clusiveness of truth, no desire for the soft
praise of men, no easy dissimulation. He
had a strong dislike of all wavering indefi-
niteness or compromise. He saw issues dis
tinctly and stood by right principle (Gal. 2 :
1 1— 14). He was an honest man (Acts 24 : 26).
He would not confuse moral distinctions
(2 Cor. 6: 14-18). He had, what the Duke
of Argyle remarked in Tennyson, that " ab
solute truthfulness " which " is one of the
rarest of human attributes," and which does
not surrender to conventional standards. It
displayed itself in Paul's rugged speech
(Rom. 16: 18; Phil. 3: 2; 1 Tim. 6:5) as
well as in his rugged conduct. The truth of
Christ was in him (2 Cor. 1 1 : 10). He pitied
those who could never come to the knowledge
of the truth because of unveracious and pliable
character (2 Tim. 3 : 7).
There is one simple word of his own which
rims up the whole character of Paul and

Paul, the All-Round Man 127
shows us the spirit of his life. " I know a
man in Christ," he says. It was himself that
he meant. " A man in Christ. And he adds,
" On behalf of such a one will I glory, but
on mine own behalf I will not glory, save in
my weaknesses " (2 Cor. 1 2 : 2-4). In Christ
he had lost himself. In Christ he had found
" the fulness of the Godhead bodily." That
was the fulness of human manhood also. In
unprecedented and unrepeated measure he
had already come to that to which it was his
noble faith we shall all some day come, " the
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-
grown man, unto the measure of the stature
of the fulness of Christ " (Eph. 4:13).

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