ST. PAUL: 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THK 
 
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 MONTREAL 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Re7. MAURICE S. BALDWIN, M.A. 
 
 TRINITY COLLKQE, TORONTO. 
 
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 PRINTED BY THE MONTREAL PRINTINO AND PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
 

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ST. PAUL: 
 
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 MONTREAL 
 
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 Rev. MAURICE S. BALDWIN, M.A 
 
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ST. PAUL. 
 
 The city of God, says a modern writer, was built 
 at the confluence of three civilizations, namely, those 
 of Judea, Greece and Rome. Separated from each 
 other by the impassable chasm of a most implacable 
 hatred, and allowing every breeze only to fan their 
 hereditary feuds and wrongs, these nations, like 
 three lordly lions who have banished all competitors 
 from the plain, watched each other with sleepless 
 vigilance, each anxious to seize the moments of weak- 
 ness or security, to free itself from rivalry, and be 
 alone upon the face of the earth. Yet, strange to say, 
 through the Divine interposition, these very ele- 
 ments of war w^ere made to work out the mysterious 
 purposes of God ; so that from the very rush and tur- 
 bulence of their passions were brought forth mighty 
 results, all more or less conducive to the welfare of 
 the infant church, and the propagation of the gospel 
 of peace 
 
 Each nation had its striking characteristic, — each 
 its intrinsic excellence and worth. The Jeio, for in- 
 stance, had a history and a boast peculiarly his own : 
 he could look back with an exulting and grateful 
 
heart to a long list of mighty dead ; from Abraham, 
 thai majestic embodiment of faithfulness, who came 
 from the hills of Mesopotamia, to sojourn "a stranger 
 in a strange land," down to the heroic Maccabees, who 
 broke the pride of Sj.ia, and re-consecrated the pol- 
 luted Temple of the Lord. His heart caught fire as 
 he remembered how Israel left the house of its bond- 
 age, and how Egypt awoke to the chase. He trod 
 with Moses the desert, and entered with Joshua the 
 land of promise and of blessing. He followed the 
 footsteps of the victorious David, and listened with 
 rapture and delight to the wisdom of Solomon and 
 the achievements of his reign of peace. 
 
 But the pride of the Israelite was in something 
 higher than all these rich associations of the past : he 
 felt that in some peculiar way the Lord was his ever- 
 lasting light, and his God his glory ; that heaven 
 above rather than man beneath had made his nation 
 illustrious. It was not, therefore, in the march of a 
 ferocious conqueror, or the triumphs of a patriot's 
 hand, that the Jew of the age of St. Paul found his 
 highest satisfaction and delight ; it was in the 
 abundant manifestations of the Divine power, as seen 
 in tlie history of his people, and the destruction of" 
 his foes. In days gone by, when the proudest minds 
 of Greece and Rome bowed down to a thousand idols, 
 and to deities who were but the impersonations of 
 vice, his fathers, on the slopes of Moriah, or the more 
 distant sanctuaries of Shiloh and of Bethel, wor- 
 
5 
 
 shipped with a reasonable service the only God, the 
 Supreme Arbiter of heaven and earth. Thus had the 
 Jew kept alive the religious element in the world, 
 and fostered, with a mother's care, those holy prin- 
 ciples which, in their vigorous manhood, were to 
 sweep from the face of the earth all the mythologies 
 and philosophies of Greece and Rome, and establish 
 on an immovable basis the glory and the gospel of 
 the Son of God. 
 
 The long, dark night of heathen barbarism was 
 now fast passing away, and the light — the eternal 
 light of God — which, like the sun in Gibeon and the 
 moon in the valley of Adjalon, had remained spell- 
 bound over the fruitful plains of Palestine, wrs now 
 about to move and bring in the golden day on the 
 darkness and superstition of Europe. 
 
 There was the Greek, — he also had his. peculiar 
 history and individual influence on the world about 
 him. The wars of Alexander, exte' sive and trucu- 
 lent as they were, had had a beneficial effect upon 
 societ}^ at large. They had spread the language and 
 civilization of intellectual Greece over the dark and 
 barbaric East; they had made the farthest lands 
 acquainted with the modes of thought and superior 
 learning of the most refined and elegant people of 
 the heathen world ; and above all, as the Greeks 
 were fond of roaming and of colonization, they had 
 made their language, the most polite and refined of 
 antiquity, the universal medium for the communica- 
 
tion of thought. The venerable Hebrew Scriptures, 
 hoar with the frost of sixteen hundred years, had 
 been translated into the Greek tongue, so that the 
 Greeks from the cities of Athens, Corinth, and 
 Lacedoemon, and even the learned Koman from the 
 banks of the Tiber, might read, side by side with 
 the bearded Rabbi, the glories of Israel and the 
 promised redemption of the suffering world. 
 
 And there was the Roman Empire. It was now 
 at the zenith of its fame and majesty. The voice of 
 its rulers was supreme from the wall of Hadrian to 
 the confines of Persia ; from the forests of Germany 
 to the deserts of Africa. Not yet had ferocious 
 barbarians from the wilds of Scythia and the steppes 
 of Asia ventured down to contend with imperial 
 Rome for the possession of Italy and the mastery 
 of the world. Not yet had the blood of the Scipios 
 and the Gracchi ceased to flow in the veins of Roman 
 knights and citizens. She was still "■ generally 
 victorious in battle, always successful in war." And 
 like a god, she reigned without a rival, but without 
 a friend, — a high-throned terrible deity, whom it 
 "was policy always to propitiate, death to irritate or 
 defy. Not for an idle purpose was it that Rome was 
 now mistress of the world. Her power was abso- 
 lutely needed tc> keep together in peace the fierce 
 and intractable nations of the earth. Without it 
 there would have been no means of communication 
 or even of friendlv intercourse. Rome did then 
 
what the Gospel did afterwards— she bound together 
 the hostile antagonisms of the age, and compelled 
 them, even against their will, to be at one ; the 
 difference between the two being — Rome bound 
 with thongs of iron, the Gospel with bands oi love ; 
 Rome crushed by its power, the Gospel conquered by 
 the Spirit. The iron broke, but the love remained, 
 and the majesty of Rome at last was found as weak- 
 ness compared with the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 In fine, Rome was the great constricting power of 
 the earth, Greece gave its language and civilization, 
 while Judaea contributed what no other people could 
 supply, the light and the truth of the Son of God. 
 
 Guthrie has remarked that, as in looking over a 
 sheet of water at some distant landscape, we see only 
 the mountains ; so in looking over the history of the 
 past, we see only the great men who have made 
 themselves famous, while the mass of mankind who 
 lived with them are forgotten and unknown. And 
 who, w€ ask, are the great men of the past ? Soldiers 
 who have swept over the earth like so many streams 
 of fire, leaving only a desolation and a waste, — 
 statesmen who have built up empires and common- 
 wealths by the mastery of intellect, — crowned 
 kings who have made themselves conspicuous either 
 by their virtues or their vices, — philosophers who 
 have tried in vain to roll back the torrent of iniquity 
 and to do the great impossible, namely, make human 
 nature greater than itself? These all have lived, 
 
flourished, and have died, creatures of the past ; 
 their sins, talents and virtues affect us not, and their 
 memories, like the fables of romance, come down the 
 stream of time more to enrich our fancy than to 
 influence our lives. But athwart the distant horizon 
 looms up, like the shoulder of some great mountain, 
 the majestic characte? of St. Paul — a man born in 
 the past, but living in the present; a man who, 
 though dead long since, speaks to each new-born 
 century with all the fire and eloquence of the past, 
 living, as it were, in the centre of the circle or 
 time, and being equally dear and precious to all; 
 a man who, nex;; to our Saviour Himself, has exer- 
 cised a greater influence on mankind than any 
 human being ; a man who, considered in his own 
 individual character, in his unremitting personal 
 exertions and persuasive writings, is undoubtedly, 
 to use the language of a modern writer, " the 
 grandest spirit of all time." In looking over the 
 vast plain of the Egyptian desert, nothing strikes 
 the beholder .is being so startling and inspiring in 
 its effect as the human countenance of the mighty 
 Sphinx, calmly gazing with its eternal eyes on the 
 widespread solitude and universal death that reigns 
 on every side. It is something living amidst a 
 scene painfully still and death-like, something ever- 
 lasting amid things that have passed away, something 
 that combines in ics own solitary grandeur and 
 majesty the three ideas of humanity, solidiiy, arid 
 
eternity. So, too, with the Apostle Paul. He rises 
 up amid the death and solitude of the past, human 
 in his. unaffected sympathy and noble unselfishness; 
 solid in the noble themes and majestic hopes which 
 he holds out to suffering humanity ; and eternal in 
 the undying life and fadeless joy he first promulgated 
 to the long-lost Gentile world. 
 
 It was by the banks of the Cydnus, and under the 
 shadow of Mount Taurus, in the city of Tarsus — " no 
 mean city," — that Saul was born. Unacquainted 
 with the particulars of his boyhood, we can only 
 describe him as growing up an intelligent Jewish 
 youth, amid a busy Greek population, and in a city 
 which must have closely resembled tjie modern Mar- 
 seilles. Everything about him conspired to fill his 
 mind with a love for gorgeous scenery, and all that 
 was grand and imposing in nature, while deep- 
 seated in his youthful mind, and made more lively 
 from his residence among a foreign population, 
 would be the lessons his father and mother would 
 give him in the rich and marvellous history of his 
 country. We can easily imagine how, in glowing 
 language, they would depict to him the unrivalled 
 glory of the past, the misery of the present, and the 
 hopes of the future. How they would endeavour to 
 instil into his mind a fervent love for the law and 
 an unbounded hatred for idolatry, and above all, an 
 implacable hostility to imperial Rome, and to ev^ery 
 creed which interfered with the ancient customs and 
 
10 
 
 modern conceptions of their own peculiar and intol- 
 erant religion. Peculiar fascination would there be, 
 too, in the fact that he was of the famous tribe of 
 Benjamin, the most warlike, though the least nume- 
 rous, of all the families of Jacob. There had been 
 a romantic chivalry, combined with a savage spirit 
 of independence, exhibited by this tribe, which had 
 made it famous. '* Side by side with the mighty 
 sons of Ephraim, they trode the desert," while in 
 the long conflict that ensued, their well-known war- 
 cry, »' Aft3r thee, ! Benjamin," reverberated 
 amid the wild fastnesses of the South, inspiring 
 their friends, but discomfiting their foes. From this 
 same intractable tribe, his great name-sake Saul, the 
 son of Kish, had come ; the first to wear the crown 
 and to assume the symbols of royalty in Israel. 
 While Mordecai, who confounded the schemes of the 
 perfidious Haman, and effected the deliverance of 
 his people, was the son of another Kish and another 
 Benjamite. Benjamin, the beloved of the Lord, had 
 ravined as a wolf— in the morning it had devoured 
 the prey, and at night it had divided the spoil. As 
 the youthful Israelite dwelt on the glories of his 
 tribe, and lingered on the scenes where his proud 
 ancestry first obtained renown, he was unconscious of 
 the fact that a mightier spirit than Saul, the son of 
 Kish, or Mordecai, grand-vizier of the boundless realm 
 of Persia, was yet to come, and swell the dyptichs of 
 his favourite tribe. Anointed with no prophet's oil, 
 
11 
 
 but with the influences of the Holy G^^ost, he was to 
 overleap the barriers of hi^' tribe and :he prejudices 
 of his people, and be a blessing, not onlj from Dan 
 to Beersheba, but to the wide-spread nations of the 
 Gentile world. He was to do more for his country 
 than tho legislature of Moses, the sword of Joshua, 
 the kingdom of David, or the Avisdom of Solomon. 
 He was to be Christ's great ambassador to the out- 
 side world, and the honoured teacher of this undying 
 truth, that the groaning world about him, however 
 vitiated, however astray, hnd an indefeasible interest 
 in the religion of Jesus of Nazareth, and in the 
 Gospel of the Son of God. 
 
 In order that we may derive as great an advantage 
 as possible from the early history of Saul, l^t us con- 
 sider the peculiarities of his education. 
 ' It teas, in the first place, eminejitly religious. 
 * The whole training of a Jewish youth was of 
 necessity in the Scriptures. The law of Moses 
 comprised all the intricacies of j udicature, and the 
 relations of civil life. The Word of God governed 
 the king upon his throne, and the peasant in his 
 cottage. It gave wisdom to the judge, and condem- 
 nation to the prisoner. It regulated not only the 
 services of the Temple, but the principles of trade ; 
 and in its desire to glorify God, it forgot not to see 
 that justice was done between man and man. But 
 the parents of Saul infused into his heart a nobler 
 love than that of a mere affection for the letter of 
 
.2 
 
 the law. They laboured, no doubt, with many tears, 
 to implant in his soul not the love of God only, but 
 an earnest anxious desire to fulfill, in his dailv life, 
 the precepts of the venerated Scriptures. Whether 
 we look upon the youthful Saul as listening with 
 reverence to the instruction of his parents, or in 
 some noisy Jewish school in the crowded Tarsus, 
 hearing the disquisitions of the Rabbi, or, better 
 still, in the holy city of Jerusalem itself, hanging, 
 with enthusiastic admiration, on the words of the 
 great Gamaliel, we see the strict conscientious atten- 
 tion that was paid by his parents to his religious 
 welfare and advancement. ; 
 
 And what, we ask, is education without the enno- 
 bling, sanctifying influences of true religion ? When 
 we build a ship, we strive to fit her not only for fair 
 winds and sunny skies, but for the pitiless tempest, 
 and the racking storm. We gird her iron sides with 
 giant strength, that when the lightning flashes and 
 the thunder rolls she may outlive the shock and brave 
 the fury of the sea. We would not send a prince 
 across the stormy Atlantic in a small open boat; but 
 how many princes, noble, immortal youths, are sent 
 out on the vast stormy sea of life in no better con- 
 veyance than the fi^ail craft of human wisdom and 
 philosophy. And can mere knowledge, however 
 subtle and refined, bind the fierce passions of the 
 heart, and charm the tossings of the troubled mind 
 to rest ? Can the training of the schools, without 
 
13 
 
 the divine power of grace, make a youth superior to 
 the god of this world, and to the trooping spirits of 
 evil, to the blandishments of the worlds and the 
 depravity of nature? Yet thousands and tens of 
 thousands of the children of our day are brought up 
 educated and refined, as if the world which they were 
 to inhabit were an Eden, and the powers of darkness 
 but a myth. To divorce religion from education 
 is to separate what God has indissolubly joined 
 together, and to confide to £. cruel stepmother the 
 care of immortal youth No strength will she give 
 them to fight the good fight of faith, and to over- 
 come in the day of temptation ; and while they may 
 grow up proficient in human knowledge, they will 
 be equally deficient in divine, and, therefore, like a 
 rudderless ship in the trough of the sea, they must 
 be carried by the violence of the storm till they are 
 cast upon the rocky shore, or sunk beneath the 
 wave. We may remark, also, that St. Paul's parents 
 were cmisistent ; they did not send their boy to a 
 Greek school to be taught the precepts of a pagan 
 philosophy. They se.nt him to Jerusalom, to Gama- 
 liel, to be brought up in their own faith and per- 
 suasion. They were, at least, consistent; and we 
 cannot but contrast their conduct with that of many 
 in our own day, who, knowing, and apparently 
 rejoicing, in the glorious principles and perfect 
 freedom of our Protestant faith, yet deliberately 
 send their children to be brought up in Roman 
 
14 
 
 Catholic schools and convents. One Roman Catholic 
 institution in Montreal is crowded with Protestant 
 young ladies, sent from all parts of the country, and 
 though by specious arguments parents may endeav- 
 our to justify their conduct, yet they must remember 
 that Rome will do all in her power to subvert their 
 faith, and in many cases will succeed. And as they 
 liLve sown to the wind, they must expect to reap the 
 whirlwind. In old age, when these, their children, 
 should come to their bedside, a comfort and support 
 to them, they will but vex and sadden their declin- 
 ing days by the unblushing statement, that the faith 
 of their fathers was but heresy, and they themselves 
 but hopeless outcasts from the church of Christ. 
 
 Another feature inSavrs education was its thoroughly 
 practical fiature. , 
 
 It was a custom among the Jews, says a modern 
 writer, that all boys should learn a trade, and he 
 quotes a passage from Rabbi Judah, in which he 
 says : ** He that teacheth not his son a trade, does 
 the same as if he taught him to be a thief." In 
 compliance with this idea, the young Saul was 
 taught the art of tent-making. How long he 
 laboured at this work we know not, but this much 
 we do know, that in after years, when the care of 
 all the churches rested as a mighty incubus on his 
 soul,— when his body was enfeebled with sickness, 
 ill-treatment and old age, his hands— „ these hands, 
 as he held them up to the elders of Miletus, minis- 
 
tered to his necessities." In connection with this 
 I cannot but remark that the tendency of our age is 
 to ignore the practical for the theoretical, and to 
 crowd young men into professions rather than 
 business, thus compelling them to enter a life for 
 which, by nature, they are utterly unprepared. 
 '*What shall we do with our boy?" ask two 
 anxious parents. " Make him a lawyer," says the 
 father,— '* a minister," says the mother; at last a 
 doctor is thought of as a sort of compromise between 
 the two. And for all these professions the aforesaid 
 son is about as suited as a polar bear is to the line of 
 the equator. He will be perfectly miserable in any 
 of them, and what is worse, will make everybody 
 .else miserable with whom he comes in contact. An 
 honest, manly trade or business, for which he is emi- 
 nently fitted, is despised, as being beneath his high 
 Bramah casto, and he is therefore thrust into some 
 learned profession, in which, like a ship in the Dol- 
 drums, he lies becalmed, an object of pity rather 
 than of envy. Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, 
 summoned on one occasion the celebrated philosopher 
 and poet Philoxenus, into his presence, and read 
 him one of his ^^ieces of poetry. The philosopher 
 ridiculed it to such an extent that the tyrant became 
 furious, and sent him to prison. After some time 
 Dionysius wrote another composition, and so delighted 
 was he with it, that he sent for the philosopher again, 
 and read it to him, expecting he also would be de- 
 
16 
 
 lightod. When he had finished, he looked earnestly 
 at Philoxenus, expecting some high praise for his 
 effort; but the philosopher only .urned to the guards, 
 and with an air of sublime resignation, said, " Carry 
 me back to prison." This is the story of many a 
 lawyer who needs a brief; many a clergyman who 
 lacks a congregation ; many a doctor who sighs for 
 patients, and happily cannot get them. The world 
 will not stand them ; they cannot do their work, 
 and thus they pine away in poverty, whereas in 
 some honest mercantile business they might shine 
 as stars of the first magnitude. 
 
 Afiother feature in Saul's education was its com- 
 prehensiveness. ' ■: 
 
 He was brought up to understand, though not to 
 believe, in all the wonders of Greek and Roman 
 mythologies. He was acquainted with the literature 
 of the outside world. No doubt he had read in the 
 Homeric page the tale of the Trojan war ; grown 
 warm as he followed th' avage Achilles, panting to 
 meet Hector in the fight. The mysteries of Egypt 
 and of Greece, the history of the past, and the state 
 of the present, were familiar to his mind, so that on 
 casting his eye over the vast heaving world about 
 him, he could see, in one grand panorama, all the 
 kingdoms of the earth, not indeed, lit up with any 
 substantial glory, but wrapt in the gloom of igno- 
 rance, superstition and vice. No man can judge of 
 the whole from a part. A Chinese, having never 
 
17 
 
 seen beyond the walls of his own kingdom, has come 
 to the satisfactory conclusion that 7m empire is the 
 celesfml empire, and that he himself,-yes, he that 
 hard, mon^y^making, chop-stick Chinaman is a celes- 
 tial. Yet, somehow or other, our ideas of heaven 
 and Its inhabitants differ materially from what we 
 see of China and the Chinese. The world is full of 
 celestials of this kind :-the fur-clad Exquiinanx, 
 feeding on blubber and oil, fancies heaven and its 
 inhabitants may be found near the mouth of the Mac- 
 kenzie river ; the fiery Indian has found out heaven 
 in the boundless prairies of the West. And in general 
 every untravelled man has a heavenly idea of his 
 own country ; every bigot an unreasonable attach- 
 ment to his own creed; every unread man, a stupid 
 idolatry for the customs of his fathers ; while those 
 who only contemplate themselves, their wealth 
 their beauty, and their influence, and have come to' 
 the conclusion that they are celestials, are positively 
 legion in number. Many of these heavenly creatures 
 we pass by as if the} were only Chinamen. 
 
 No, education to be finished ought to be compre- 
 hensive, and to teach us the great truth, that real 
 excellence is no placid lake hidden in the valley of 
 some favoured country, but a broad, majestic river 
 flowing through many lands, giving life and energy 
 tjo all. 
 
 Where Saul was all the days of our Lord's public 
 ministry, it is impossible to say; but we may suppose 
 
' ■■ '' 18 
 
 that after his studies with Gamaliel, he returned to 
 Tarsus, and did not come back to Jerusalem until 
 after the day of Pentecost, when the infant church 
 had been Ibrmed, and persecution had begun. He 
 was now a fiery enthusiast, conscientious in the 
 . extreme -indeed, as one has well said, " His conscien- 
 tiousness was the continuous thread which ran 
 through both his converted and unconverted life." 
 Above all, the one innocent object of his most im- 
 placable hatred was the person of Jesus of Nazareth 
 ^Him he hated with all the intensity of an intense 
 nature. He looked on Him as a huge impostor, who 
 not only arrogated to Himself the awful name of 
 Jehovah, but had attacked with unsparing vehemence 
 that very party to which Saul belonged " Verily "' 
 said he, " 1 thought with myself that I ought to 
 do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of 
 JNazareth : many of the saints did I shut up in 
 prison, and I punished them oft in every synogogue 
 and compelled them to blaspheme." Breathing fury' 
 and with wrath depicted on his countenance, we see 
 him stand amid the excited Sanh,=Jrim, while the pro- 
 tomartyr Stephen pleads, with matchless eloquence 
 for the glorious Gospel, and infant church of the Sor^ 
 of God. Calmly, and with the dignity of a Christian 
 man, the holy Stephcxi recounts the history of the 
 past lingers on the page of prophecy, and endeavours 
 by the cogent arguments of reason, to convince the 
 stubborn minds of his hearers. At last, seeing only 
 
Id 
 
 a smile of contemptuous derision on the face of his 
 auditory, he bursts into the passionate exclamation, 
 " Ye stifineckcd and uncircumcised in heart and 
 ears, ye do alway resist the Holy Ghost.*' It was 
 enough ; they gnashed on him with their teeth, and 
 fiercest among the tierce was Saul, mad for the blood 
 of the Evangelist. With the fury of the multitude 
 rose the calm sublimity of Stephen. Lif':ing up his 
 eyes, he saw heaven opened, and Jesus standing, 
 pleading for him at the right hand of God. They 
 stop their ears, — they rush upon him, 1 urry him out 
 of the citv, and commence their work ol death. 
 Death did 1 say ? Stephen did not die — he fell 
 asleep They slew the body, but set free the soul ; 
 and death to him was but the breaking of the cage 
 in which his spirit was confined ; for, set at liberty, 
 it rose and winged ito noiseless flight to the bosom 
 of its Father and its God. It was a mighty victory 
 for the dead ; they could stone his body, but they 
 could not ruffle his spirit. Amidst the crashing of 
 the stones he knelt down and prayed — *' Lord, lay 
 not this sin to their charge." And there were fierce 
 eyes flashing on him beneath, and calm eyes looking 
 down upon him from above ; and he prayed for those 
 who slew him, and his prayer was heard ; and the 
 young man at vrhose feet the witnesses laid down 
 their clothes was written that day among the living. 
 It was the reward of constancy, and as it was the 
 sublimest prayer that man could utter, it was the 
 
20 
 
 mightiest answer that God could give. St. Stephen 
 was a noble type of that great army of martyrs 
 whose members upheld the truth of Jesus from the 
 days of Nero to the reign of Diorletian-of all those 
 men who, like Jerome of Prague, and Huss of 
 Bohemiu, preferred the testimony of a good con- 
 science to the praise of men-of all thos'^e who in 
 every age and every nation stfiFer for a noble, manly 
 straightforward confession of the truth, whether \t 
 be in the full blaze of public life, or in the quiet 
 and unostentatious circle of one's own family and 
 brotherhood. 
 
 ' It is impossible to say what were the conflicting 
 thoughts that filled the dark mind of Saul as he left 
 the dead body of the saint to imbrue his hands in 
 other blood, and pursue, still more fiercely, the scat- 
 tered members of the church. He is now on his way 
 to Damascus, the most ancient city of the world 
 Here it was that Abraham tarried on his way to the 
 promised land. Here dwelt the humbled Benhadad 
 tlie treacherous Hazael, and the leprous Naaman.' 
 Here, too, flowed Abana and Pharphar, rivers of 
 Damascus, -better than all the waters of Israel" 
 It was noonday. The sun was beating fiercely 
 down. « The birds were silent in the trees." Dam- 
 ascus, 1. her queenly beauty, lay before him, when 
 suddenly a flash from heaven laid the persecutor in 
 the dust. There was a voice, the voice of the Lord 
 -and th^t a mighty voice,-an awful pause,-a 
 
21 
 
 mighty conversion. And then a poor blind peni- 
 tent—an object of pity rather than of fear— enters 
 the city, not as a foe, but as a friend. . . 
 
 The con^^ersion of Sai.1 should be understood 
 •aright. It was not the making a wordly man 
 devout — he was devout before— but it was the 
 turning a mighty river of earnestness into the right 
 channel. Had he been left alone he would have 
 beoome fiercer and still more gloomy in his bigotry. 
 His name would have come to posterity in the same 
 catalogue with these of Nero and DiocL tian, with ^ 
 Ferdinand of Spain, with the ferocious Montfort, 
 and with the tigress Catherine-the blood-stained 
 niece of Clement VII. What Saul had received was 
 %A<, and what every man on earth needs is the 
 illumination of the Holy Spirit. The fanatic Ma- 
 hometan, brandishing his scimeter and threatening 
 death to his foes, is sincere; what he needs is liglif 
 and the poor blind Romanist, bowing to his countless 
 saints and yielding hh reason to the will of others 
 IS perfectly in earnest; he means the best, and 
 believes in all he says and does ; but still he needs 
 the light of God, and that light will make him not 
 more devout, but more Scriptural, more reasonable, 
 more pure. Had the Apostle Paul been left alone 
 like a stream of fire he would have swept over the 
 earth, devastating the church, and carrying misery 
 in his path; but changed by the grace of God he 
 became like a broad benignant river, a blessin. 
 
22 ' . -;■■■ ;;•■• ,_ 
 
 rich as well as lasting, to all ages and to all 
 lands. 
 
 Converted, illuminated, and made an Apostle by 
 the grace of God, Paul stands before us as the very 
 embodiment of earnestness, and the especial minister 
 of Christ to the Gentiles. 
 
 In order to study Paul in his new character of an 
 Aposlh) we will consider, first, his conduct among his 
 own people, the Jews. ^ - ^ ^ ^ ■ 
 
 He was a patriot in the truest and noblest sense. 
 He had deserved their praise: he received only their 
 hatred ; but neither persecution, nor the n^jection 
 of his message, nor the lapse of time could alienate 
 that noble heart from its loyalty, nor quench the 
 love that bound him to i.is people Isn^-el. Defamed, 
 beaten, imprisoned, with a nobility that seldom finds 
 n, parellel, he says, " I have not aught to accuse 
 m}^ nation of." And then he calls God to witness, 
 '* I say the truth in Christ ; I lie not that I could 
 wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my 
 brethren, my kinsncen according to the flesh." 
 
 We cannot help contrasting this with the flimsy, 
 spurious patriotism of multitudes in our own day. 
 How many, for instance, have we seen leaving 
 England, where, perhaps, they were treated better 
 than they deserved, and coming to this continent, 
 commence bitterly to inveigh against her in a foreign 
 country and under a foreign flag. The deeper our 
 Christianity, the truer our patriotism. And as no 
 
ties are so sacred, and no bonds so firm, as those 
 which bind a holy family on earth together, so no 
 political compacts are so sure, or no obligations so 
 perpetual as those which come at the holy instance 
 of religion. And these, and these alone, can bind 
 together the distant portions of the British empire 
 with that firmness and solidity absolutely requisite 
 in a world of vicissitude and war. 
 
 He was an ambitious Christian, 
 
 Most people have an idea that all ambition is 
 wrong. It is wrong when the object is the exalta- 
 tion of self, but absolutely necessary when our object 
 is to serve God, and to fulfill our duty to man. There 
 are some people who seem to think that all difficul- 
 ties and hardships were made, like mountain tops, 
 for scenery and not for trial. If they happen to have 
 been born in the valley they will live in the valley, 
 and what is worse, die in the valley, too. Ambition ! 
 we would that we saw a little more of it in the 
 young men and young women of our day. What 
 would not a little ambition do for the trooping crowd 
 of empty-headed, listless idlers who mingle in our 
 modern society ? Contentment, whose robes always 
 cover the eyes, sits on their countenance and hinders 
 them from making any improvement; whereas if 
 they would but arouse themselves, and light a few 
 candles in their stumbling dark garrets, they would 
 not only see a little better themselves, but give 
 others a possibility of profiting by them. St. Paul 
 
was ambitious. He longed, not to be first to govern, 
 but first to serve his fellow-creatures : to spend and 
 to be spent for man. Ambition he had, but it made 
 him the first and the greatest spirit of his age. It 
 taught him to be humble after his n scent to heaven, 
 and to be exalted after his imprisonment in the 
 dungeons of Philippi. It made him, not the flatterer, 
 but the stern rebuker of kings; while in his obedience 
 to God, he emulated the prophets of the past, and 
 competed even with the angels themselves in his 
 unwearying service of love. Ambition ! Yes, it 
 was the holy chastened desire to be first in the 
 praise of God, to outstrip the world in the mighty 
 race, and before the great cloud of witnesses, to reach 
 the goal ahead of all mankind. It was ambition, 
 kindled by the Holy Ghost, filling his soul, enlarg- 
 ing his mind, and urging him on to win the noblest 
 crown ever placed on the brow of man. 
 
 St. PauVs constancy ought also to he noticed. 
 He stood alone at Athens. High over the majes- 
 tic Parthenon glittered the form of xMinerva Prom- 
 achus. Around him stood the sculptured deities of 
 heroic Greece. Philosophers, poets, statesmen, orators 
 and priests, all bent the knee to some imaginary god 
 or tutelary hero. No heart was friendly Yet, alone 
 as he was, he rose, and in the midst of that most 
 idolatrous people, and with all their deities gazing 
 down upon him, he preached ." the unknown God." 
 Now was the time to waver when all the seductions 
 
of Grecian art were round about him ; but his voice 
 became only the more clear, and his heart more 
 warm as he pleaded for Christ, and through Him 
 the resurrection of the dead. He did not apparently 
 succeed ; but he had preached, if Athens had not 
 believed, and the record of his constancy was on 
 high. Be steadfast to your principles, not only in 
 prosperity, but in the face of all opposition and 
 difficulty. Remember that principle is meant, like 
 the breast-plate of the warrior, for the shock of 
 battle rather than for the parade of peace. Where- 
 ever the Apostle was, he was the same. What he 
 taught in Jerusalem, he upheld on Mars Hill; what 
 he said to his faithful friends at Ephesus he pro- 
 claimed in the PraBtorium of imperial Rome. Con- 
 stancy such as this we need now. Constancy to the 
 Crown when men talk of revolution and of change. 
 Constancy to our Church when men would burden 
 it with forms, and pollute it with errors. Constancy 
 to God when His religion is attacked. His Bible 
 assailed, and His existence grossly denied. Firm, 
 like some rugged barrier that separates two mighty 
 peoples, should we stand, unfailing champions of all 
 that is just and good. 
 
 Observe, next, his Christian courtesy. 
 
 He stands before Agrippa,— Agrippa, the king. 
 
 lears had enfeebled his body, but had not quenched 
 
 the manly vigor of his soul. He was on trial for 
 
 his life, but death to him was but the passage from 
 
the sombre shades of night to the noontide blaze of 
 glory. He would have preferrei to plead for death. 
 Of Christ he speaks with a soL unity and majesty 
 of power that arouses the voluptuous Agrippa, and 
 compels even his enemies to hear. His judge wavers. 
 The intense earnestness of the man, the cogency of 
 his arguments, and the power of his appeal had their 
 effect. '^Almost," he says, " thou persuadest me to 
 be a Christian." At these words, rising to the height 
 moral of sublimity, he replies, ^* I would to God 
 that not only thou, but all here present, were not 
 only almost but altogether such as I am ; " and 
 then, lest any should think of his captivity, he adds, 
 lifting up his hands, " except these bonds." 
 
 See him in the Mamertine prison at Rome To- 
 morrow he is to die. The Emperor has appointed it 
 as the day for his death and the King of Heaven as 
 the day for his crown. He feels that his trial is 
 past and his victory is won. The gates are opening • 
 the voices are welcoming the soldier to his rest 
 Before him rise the awful, the majestic form of 
 Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It is 
 the same who stopped him at the gates oi Damascus 
 who now meets him at the gates of Heaven. Then 
 He asked Saul to serve, but now has He girded 
 Himself to serve Saul. Sternly the Roman guard 
 watches his prisoner the long night through, lest in 
 some moment of weariness he should escape his 
 grasp. His hand clutches the spear ; the fetters 
 
27 
 
 . are upon his limbs, while the pale light that steals 
 through the narrow chink shows him all is safe. 
 But the thoughts- the thoughts of that strange 
 prisoner— are far away. All the past rises in solemn 
 retrospection before him, from the day he shouted 
 for the blood of Stephen, down to this very night 
 when absorbed in prayer and praise, he waits for 
 the coming morn, that on its golden beamc his spirit 
 may enter the city of God. No longer is he in a 
 strait between two opinions ; the desire to depart, 
 which was far better, was to be gratified. The 
 perils of waters and of robbers,— the perils in the 
 city, and in the wilderness —the weariness and the 
 painfulness,-the fastings oft,-the cold and naked- 
 ness—are past, and now are to come the rest, the 
 joy, the glory, and the crown. The morning at last 
 broke— the day on which he was ready to be offered 
 up —and the time when his departure was at hand. 
 Gladly he follows his executioners on their sad but 
 triumphal journey. Along the Ostian way the pro- 
 cession moved. As he passed out of the mighty city 
 thousands must have met him ; but no one cares to 
 notice him. Eoman merchants, hurrying to their 
 marts of commerce; Greeks, from the fallen cities of 
 Athens and of Sparta; Egyptians, from the banks of 
 the reedy Nile; dancing-girls, from the voluptuous 
 East; and broken-hearted Israelites, from the land 
 of Immanuel : all, no doubt, he mQi- they going to 
 their work, he to his rest. At last the procession 
 
,:*^: ;:',,.: 28 ^ 
 
 comes to a halt. No chariots of fire, or horses of fire, 
 caught up the great Apostle into heaven ; he died the 
 common death of all men, but his spirit, free from 
 all clog or chain, rose on high to rest on the bosom 
 of its Father and its God. 
 
 " He sank as sets the morning star, that goes not down 
 Behind the darkened West, nor hides ob^^cn.red 
 'Mid tempests of the sky, but fades away 
 Into the pure light of heaven." ^ ^ 
 
 St. Paul was great while he lived ; he is greater, 
 if possible, now that he is gone. His writings re- 
 main to instruct, cheer and exalt mankind. They 
 have proved too deep for the loftiest intellect fully 
 to grasp, — too clear for the feeblest understanding 
 possibly to mistake. They have thrown a full strong 
 light upon that dark untrodden land that lies beyond 
 the sphere of time, and even lit up with a substantial 
 glory the dark valley of the shadow of death. Dying 
 martyrs, wrapped in sheets of fire, have been sus- 
 tained by their mighty promises, and pillows on 
 which protracted suffering has laid its weary head, 
 have been made soft by the example they exhibited 
 and the comfort which they spake. Princes who 
 would brook no rebuke from the living, have rev- 
 erently listened while the mighty Apostle has 
 reasoned with them of rightousness, temperance, 
 and judgment to come. Spirits, fierce and intract- 
 able, have been tamed to meekness by their power ; 
 
while whole peoples have been changed from being 
 the devotees of ignorance, superstition, and vice, to 
 being the free and intelligent worshippers of the 
 only true God. Let us see that not only we our- 
 selves, but the grand old e^/pire to which we belong 
 be built up on the maxims and eternal truths uttered 
 by this great man, and then shall her power and her 
 glory long remain to enlighten and bless the world. 
 
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