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 PAUL OF TARSUS.
 
 PAUL OF TAESUS 
 
 BY A GRADUATE 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO 
 
 1872 
 
 All rights reserrnl
 
 PRINTED BV ROBERT MACLEHOSE, AYR.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE author of the following pages has for some time 
 past attempted, out of the materials which were at his 
 disposal, to construct for himself a sketch of the times 
 in which St. Paul lived, of the religious systems with 
 which he was brought in contact, of the doctrine 
 which he taught, and of the work which he ultimately 
 achieved. It seemed that some interest might be felt 
 by others in these researches, and they have therefore 
 been published. 
 
 The influence which St. Paul has exercised over the 
 Christianity which completely leavens modern civilisa- 
 tion, is wider and more lasting than that which has 
 
 20002 JO
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 been wielded by any other man. One other person, 
 St. Augustine of Hippo, has had a similar, but a 
 far less energetic authority. If the contents of this 
 book enable the reader to realise more adequately 
 what was the social and religious condition of the 
 world in which St. Paul lived, and what it was 
 that he sought to teach, the immediate purpose of 
 the publication will be satisfied. 
 
 The writer has taken for granted that the writings 
 ascribed to St. Paul are genuine. The evidence w r hich 
 has been alleged against the authenticity of the 
 Pastoral Epistles, and of some among the other 
 letters, does not seem strong enough to render these 
 writings suspicious. On the other hand, the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews could not have come from St. Paul. 
 These epistles are the principal, almost indeed the 
 only, source from which to construct the Pauline 
 theology. 
 
 Among the Scriptures of the New Testament is a 
 work which gives an account of the doings of some 
 among the Apostles, and particularly of Peter and
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 John, Barnabas and Paul. It seems that this book 
 is either a collection of extracts from some very 
 copious archives, or that it contains the fragments of 
 a comprehensive work. Such a compilation may 
 have been made because only portions of the original 
 survived, or the book may be an ancient Eirenicon, 
 intended to prove a substantive harmony between 
 the tenets of the Jewish Christians, and those of 
 the Gentiles to whom Paul imparted his gospel. 
 The latter opinion seems to be confirmed by the 
 manifest parallelism between the recorded doings 
 and sayings of Peter and of Paul. It does not 
 indeed follow, because the facts are selected, that 
 the narrative is not to be depended on. But if 
 any one wishes to get an insight into the causes of 
 that strife which was waged between the Apostle of 
 the Gentiles and the heads of Jewish Christianity, 
 he will examine the Epistles to the Galatians and to 
 the Romans, rather than the history of the controversy 
 in the Acts of the Apostles. 
 
 It has been found necessary, in giving quotations
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 from the Pauline epistles, to deviate from the words 
 of the authorised version. It is well known that the 
 translation of this part of the New Testament is 
 frequently unsatisfactory, and is sometimes unin- 
 telligible. It is hoped that these deviations from the 
 words of a version which is justly regarded as one of 
 the noblest exemplars of the English language, will 
 be justified by the assistance which they give the 
 reader in comprehending the scope of St. Paul's 
 words. 
 
 It will be found that the writings of St. Paul are 
 treated as human compositions only. It may be the 
 case, as popular Christianity avers, that the religious 
 sentiments of the writers whose works are contained 
 in the Scriptures are too exalted for the unassisted 
 powers of man, and that the manifestation of this 
 peculiar genius was confined to a few favoured 
 individuals. Such an opinion, partly dictated by 
 the reverence which is naturally felt towards the 
 founders of a religion, partly due to the energy with 
 which controversy has hallowed the authorities from
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 which it draws its arguments, is not countenanced by 
 the language of the New Testament. However 
 transcendent may be the value of these writings, it 
 must at least be admitted, that neither the Jewish 
 nor the Christian Scriptures speak with the egotism 
 of the Koran. 
 
 Whatever may be the power which guided the 
 writers of the New Testament, the student of 
 Primitive Christianity must needs, unless he merely 
 intends to declaim on a foregone conclusion, free 
 himself from preconceived opinions and traditions, 
 and strive to look on the teaching of such an 
 Apostle as Paul from the standpoint of a listener 
 at Thessalonica, Athens, or Corinth, and to whom 
 the message of the new religion has come for the 
 first time. He must not merely take a layman's 
 view of Christianity, or, in other words, consider his 
 subject as one does who has no professional sympath- 
 ies, and no professional antipathies ; but he must, if 
 possible, divest himself of those habits and associa- 
 tions which pervert a critical judgment. It is not
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 too much to say, that the defence of popular Chris- 
 tianity is constantly irrational and inconsistent, while 
 the attack on it is as frequently peevish and angry. 
 If the contents of this volume are written in a 
 different spirit, the author hopes to have given some 
 assistance towards the solution of that far larger 
 question, By what means, and under what pressure, 
 have the dogmas of later Christianity been developed 
 from the Pauline original ?
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER L, 1 
 
 CHAPTER II., 38 
 
 CHAPTER III., 77 
 
 CHAPTER IV., 116 
 
 CHAPTER V., 153 
 
 CHAPTER VI 191 
 
 CHAPTER VII. , 231 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. , 269 
 
 CHAPTER IX., . .305 
 
 CHAPTER X., .... 340
 
 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 JUDAISM was the cradle of Christianity, and Judaism 
 very nearly became its grave. The first teachers of 
 Christianity were all Jews, and were deeply imbued 
 by the traditions and observances with which the 
 restored Israelites had overlaid the generous teaching 
 of the great prophets. These refinements were partly 
 glosses on the Law, partly additions to those tenets 
 which constituted the Judaism of the monarchy. 
 From such traditions and observances many of the 
 Jewish converts tore themselves with infinite diffi- 
 culty and pain, while not a few of them were willing 
 to sacrifice the last command of Christ to the urgent 
 claims of the Mosaic ritual. From so serious a peril 
 one man saved Christianity ; and this at a time 
 when the words and acts of Christ had been recorded 
 in no written gospel. The career of no man has 
 ever produced such lasting effects on the world's 
 history as that of St. Paul. But, in attempting 
 
 to estimate the work which he did, it is essential 
 
 A
 
 2 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 that we should know what was the material with 
 which he had to deal, and what were the agencies 
 which assisted and thwarted him. And, first, for his 
 countrymen. 
 
 About a century before that memorable day on 
 which Paul of Tarsus was making a journey to Damas- 
 cus, and was just in sight of the city whose antiquity 
 was such that even the great ancestor of the Hebrews 
 had visited it, a trial was going on at Rome. The 
 person inculpated was a member of that distinguished 
 family which appears in the earliest recorded memories 
 of the Republic, and which is said to have been con- 
 tinued to within a century of the present time. A 
 proconsul of the Roman province of Asia had been 
 accused of extortion. He had been praetor of the 
 city during Cicero's consulship and the maturity of 
 Catiline's conspiracy, and had given great assistance 
 towards detecting and frustrating the plot. He had 
 obtained his province in order to recruit his for- 
 tunes, for Rome rewarded her officials by lucrative 
 provincial appointments. The power of these gover- 
 nors was almost absolute. In order, however, to 
 provide a check against the wrongs which power com- 
 mits when a ruler is hard and greedy, the central 
 government at Rome made these officials liable to a 
 trial for extortion, and, on conviction, inflicted the 
 severest penalties which the Roman law had enacted 
 against the misdemeanors of its aristocracy. 
 
 Lucius Valerius Flaccus was acquitted, as we are 
 informed, through the eloquence and interest of Cicero. 
 The charge of extortion was seldom brought home to 
 the accused, even when the guilt of the governor was
 
 THE TRIAL OF A ROMAN PROCONSUL. 3 
 
 notorious. The luxury and waste of the Roman 
 nobles were sustained by the spoils of the provinces. 
 In course of time these nobles employed their ill-gotten 
 gains in civil war, and were divided into hostile camps. 
 At last, and of necessity, " the settled world," as men 
 called it, came under the despotism of a single ruler, 
 who was garrisoned by an imperial guard. The settled 
 world found that its material interests were benefited 
 by the change, for the rule of a single despot is more 
 tolerable than that of a legion of despots. But the 
 moral interests of the world suffered utter havoc, while 
 the two remedies of moral evil, resistance and patience, 
 were seeking for their opportunities. Resistance was 
 hopeless, and patience at length created a new society 
 on the ruins of the old. But this reconstruction was 
 effected four centuries after the trial of Flaccus. 
 
 Among t^e charges brought against the proconsul, 
 was that of his having forbidden the exportation of 
 certain moneys which had been collected by the 
 Asiatic Jews on behalf of their metropolis Jerusalem. 
 Those among the Jews who had settled outside the 
 Land of Promise, held themselves bound to regularly 
 transmit their first-fruits to the Temple, as well as to 
 obey the ceremonial law of Moses. This voluntary 
 tribute, paid by many votaries, was the source of 
 these sacred treasures which Poinpey spared, and 
 Crassus pillaged. There is no doubt that the wealth 
 of the Jewish hierarchy was great. It is probable 
 that much of that opulence for which Herod the Great 
 was conspicuous, and which he employed in conciliat- 
 ing leading men at Rome, and in constructing fortifi- 
 cations throughout Judea, was derived from the
 
 4 PAVL OF TARSUS. 
 
 spontaneous revenue which was paid by the ex- 
 patriated Jews. 
 
 As proconsul of Asia, Flaccus had impounded this 
 gold of the Jews, had probably appropriated it. The 
 act had given great offence to the Jewish race, espe- 
 cially to those at Rome ; for Cicero even accuses the 
 prosecutor of having designedly selected the court for 
 holding the trial. It was erected, he says, in a quarter 
 of the city where the compatriots of these Asiatic 
 Jews could make themselves felt by their clamour, and 
 baffle the defenders of the inculpated satrap. This 
 region, we are told by Philo, was on the left bank of 
 the Tiber, and near those gardens of Caesar which 
 were bestowed by the great dictator on the Roman 
 people. It was reckoned to contain a colony of 8,000 
 Jews in the time of Augustus. But Cicero appeals 
 to what was deemed policy in those days, and for 
 many a century after. " The conduct of Flaccus, " he 
 says, "in prohibiting the exportation of the precious 
 metals is patriotic, is admirable. It is a policy which 
 I have often recommended to the senate, and which 
 the senate has adopted at my recommendation. These 
 Jews collect treasure from all parts of the empire, 
 from Italy itself, and pour it into Jerusalem." The 
 notion that money is wealth, was a maxim with 
 Roman statesmen. 
 
 The trivial and ordinary parts of human society, at 
 any epoch of its history, attract no attention, find no 
 record. The annalist merely narrates that which 
 strikes his imagination, rouses his curiosity, is unlike 
 his ordinary experience. To us, however, that which 
 a Roman of Cicero's day found commonplace would
 
 JEWS OF THE DISPERSION. 5 
 
 be, if we could recall it, profoundly interesting : that 
 which he thought worthy of record is only that which 
 history is eternally repeating the ambition of great 
 men, and the means and acts by which that ambition 
 is satisfied or disappointed. What if we could repro- 
 duce precisely, the social condition of that Rome in 
 which Cicero was speaking, and the Asia which 
 Flaccus had pillaged and provoked ! The fancy of 
 Eastern nations is always dreaming of some city which 
 has been suddenly crystallised into a perpetual sleep, 
 and in which the traveller, if he could onlv reach it, 
 
 V 
 
 would see what were the doings of those primeval 
 races whose empire has long since passed away. And 
 yet the East changes slowly. The Damascus of to- 
 day does not perhaps differ much from the Damascus 
 which Abraham visited, differs hardly at all, except 
 in its magnitude and prosperity, from the city where 
 Paul lodged in the street which is called Straight, 
 which was in the principal boulevard of the town. 
 We in the Western world, who exult in change, and 
 progress, and growth, are very far removed from those 
 facts, the knowledge of which would allow us to 
 reconstruct the social state which constituted the 
 cradle of our faith. The East is the best school in 
 which to study the outline of that civilisation which 
 is still an antiquarian puzzle, but the interest in which 
 is perennial, the historical reconstruction of which is 
 a necessaiy condition to the comprehension of the 
 Christian Origines. 
 
 The Ghetto of Republican Rome helped to swell 
 the noisy crowd at the Aurelian ascent, where, the 
 orator tells us, the clamour was such that the accused
 
 6 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 person was placed at a great disadvantage. On this 
 occasion the Roman Jews collected in great numbers, 
 in order to support the charge against the rapacious 
 proconsul who had forbidden them to send their pious 
 offerings to the temple at Jerusalem ; and they exhi- 
 bited a formidable organization. 
 
 The Roman nobles treated native religions with 
 toleration, even with favour. This attitude was 
 partly due to the contempt with which a conquering 
 race viewed the faith of the vanquished, whose super- 
 stition was beneath the notice of an irresistible power, 
 whose gods had become the subjects of the Capitoline 
 Jove, when the nation had submitted to the senate 
 and people of Rome. It was partly due to that habit 
 which the Romans had of identifying the theocracy 
 of foreign nations with their own, and by which, for 
 example, they acknowledged Jehovah Sabaoth, under 
 the name of Jupiter Sabazius. But it was still more 
 due to policy. Rome wished to make subjects, not to 
 collect converts. Occupied with the business of con- 
 structing an empire, the Roman statesman would have 
 considered it a mere waste of force to combat the 
 religious opinions of the dependencies, when his 
 primary business was to ensure their political sub- 
 jection. If, indeed, religious fanaticism was enlisted 
 on the side of the combatant, the Roman showed no 
 more mercy to the religious than he did to the poli- 
 tical sentiment. But, during the growth of that em- 
 pire, Rome only once had to fight with fanatics, and 
 then she found the struggle fierce enough to task her 
 greatest energies. It was only a fragment of the 
 Jewish race which fought against Vespasian and Titus.
 
 THEIR HABITS. 7 
 
 Even this portion was split up into bitter factions, 
 and was disorganised by furious enmities. The 
 effect, however, of the last Jewish war was prodigious, 
 and the conquerors marked their sense of the impulses 
 which gave force to the struggle, by razing the site of 
 the Holy City, by proscribing the sacred Name, and 
 by rigorously banishing the Jews from Palestine. 
 
 The slight sketch of Jewish nationality which Cicero 
 gives us is reproduced several generations later by 
 Tacitus, and hinted at by Juvenal. The historian ex- 
 plains the extraordinary vitality and growth of the race 
 by the intense home sentiment of the Jews. To be 
 childless was a reproach in Israel, and few Jews 
 were unmarried. As is the manner of Roman writers, 
 when they comment on races whom they despise 
 or dislike, Tacitus speaks coarsely of the Jewish tem- 
 perament and creed, while he admits the loyalty of the 
 race to the metropolis of its nation, notes its abhor- 
 rence of any anthropomorphic religion, and refers to the 
 sedulous care with which the Jew fenced off his domes- 
 tic life from any intercourse with the people among 
 which he sojourned. 
 
 The Jews of antiquity, like their modern descen- 
 dants, always dwelt in cities, forming a separate com- 
 munity in some well-defined locality or ghetto. This 
 was and is inevitable. It was only in Palestine that 
 they were agriculturists. Their law forbade the use 
 of certain kinds of animal food. Even that flesh 
 which was permitted them had to be carefully pre- 
 pared, and had to be legally healthy. Under certain 
 restrictions and limitations, their great Lawgiver per- 
 mitted mixed marriages, and the practice of the an-
 
 8 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 cient Jews was even less rigid than the rule of the 
 Mosaic code. The tenderest narrative in the Old 
 Testament, after the story of Joseph and his brethren, 
 is the Eastern idyll of Ruth. This pastoral tells us 
 how a daughter of the accursed Moab of a race 
 which was to be perpetually excluded from the con- 
 gregation married into the first family of the tribe 
 of Judah, after having claimed the right of a widow 
 against her husband's next of kin. The great King 
 of Israel married the daughters of Canaanite chief- 
 tains. The harem of his magnificent son was filled 
 with women who worshipped strange gods. The Song 
 of Songs is reputed to be, in its primary meaning, an 
 epithalamium on the marriage of Solomon with an 
 Egyptian princess. In the story of Esther, a Jewish 
 maiden is taken into the seraglio of the Persian 
 monarch, and advanced to the post of principal wife, 
 without any demur on the part of her nearest male 
 relative and guardian. But after the captivity a more 
 rigorous rule prevailed. In the days of Ezra and 
 Nehemiah the Puritans of Jewish history we read 
 that all mixed marriages were proscribed, that those 
 who contracted them were excommunicated, and that 
 the offspring of these marriages were deprived of civil 
 rights. At the beginning of our era, the Jew would 
 marry no woman who was not of his own race. It 
 seems that Jewish women did occasionally contract 
 marriage with Gentiles. Paul vouches for the piety 
 of Eunice and Lois the mother and grandmother of 
 Timothy ; but the father of this disciple was a Greek ; 
 and it is plain that these pious women did not think 
 the ceremonial law, represented by its most obligatory
 
 THE JEWS OF ALEXANDRIA. 9 
 
 and universal rite, binding on the child whom they so 
 carefully instructed in the Jewish scriptures. 
 
 The most important colony of Jews was that of 
 Alexandria. It dates from the commencement of the 
 voluntary dispersion, and is co-eval with the foundation 
 of the city. We are told that, after the destruction 
 of Tyre, the Macedonian conqueror marched on Jeru- 
 salem, that he was welcomed by the high priest, and 
 informed of the success which the prophet Daniel 
 had predicted for Greek valour and discipline. It is 
 added that Alexander treated high priest and temple 
 with scrupulous respect. There were Jews who ac- 
 companied his army, who refused to pollute their 
 hands with the work of rebuilding the temple of 
 Belus, who were instruments in the vengeance which 
 the captive Psalmist imprecated on the daughters of 
 Babylon. So Jews were enrolled among the colonists 
 of Alexandria. 
 
 The successors of Alexander continued the favour 
 which he showed to the Jews. Seleucus gave them 
 the freedom of citizens in Antioch and Seleucia, and 
 favoured those banking establishments which they set 
 up in the principal towns of Asia Minor. But the 
 Lagid dynasty established in Egypt treated them with 
 the greatest confidence. The corn trade of Alexandria 
 fell almost entirely into their hands at a very early 
 period. Two Jews were the captains of the household 
 troops under Philadelphus, and another Jew farmed 
 its revenues under Evergetes. The armies of Philo- 
 metor were led by Jewish generals. The settlers were 
 wealthy, and, as was to be expected from the callings 
 which they followed, unpopular. Hence the later
 
 10 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 monarchs of the dynasty occasionally sacrificed them 
 to the anger or alarm of the Alexandrian mob. 
 
 These Jews followed and were faithful to the 
 fortunes of Caesar, who rewarded them by confirming 
 them in all their rights and privileges, and by allowing 
 them to elect a ruler or chief magistrate over them- 
 selves, under the title of Alabarch. In the same 
 way, according to Benjamin of Tudela, the Abassid 
 Caliphs of Bagdad permitted the Jews of Central 
 Asia, in the twelfth century, to elect a chief of their 
 own race, under the title of the Prince of the Cap- 
 tivity. The nation throve, and in the days of Tiberius 
 it was reckoned, according to Philo, that Alexandria 
 contained 200,000 out of the million Jewish settlers 
 in Egypt. The same authority informs us, that 
 two out of the five wards into which the city was 
 divided were entirely occupied by Jews. 
 
 Many troubles fell on the Alexandrian Jewry 
 during the reign of Tiberius, and under the adminis- 
 tration of Sejanus, the father of the notorious minister 
 whom Tiberius trusted, detected and destroyed. This 
 Sejanus was succeeded by Flaccus Avillius, who fol- 
 lowed the policy of his predecessor, and encouraged 
 the Alexandrian mob in acts of violence on the 
 Jewish quarters. For a time, the seclusion, the 
 sufferance, the patience, the profound humility of 
 this people, enabled them to avoid the hostility which 
 they could not disarm. " The race," says Cicero, " is 
 slavish to the core." There was, however, a limit 
 to this submission there was an act of tyranny 
 which could rouse this people to enthusiastic resistance. 
 They might be insulted, plundered, tortured, and
 
 CALIGULA AND THE JEWS. 11 
 
 they would fawn on the wrong-doer. But they 
 were stung to frenzy if any insult was offered to 
 their God, and to His temple. 
 
 Caligula resolved to be worshipped as a god. The 
 empire was prostrate before the majesty of the Csesar. 
 It began by worshipping his fortunes, and it at last 
 reached the inconceivable meanness of adoring the 
 man. This baseness was not unknown in the days of 
 Augustus, it grew during the reign of Tiberius. But 
 the degradation was voluntary, was confined to places 
 and individuals. Caligula strove to make it compul- 
 sory, and to extend it over the whole empire. 
 
 The promulgation of this new religion gave an 
 opportunity of which the enemies of the Alexandrian 
 Jews availed themselves, in order to satisfy the malig- 
 nity of their perpetual feud. Flaccus secretly encour- 
 aged every excess against Israelites, every outrage 
 which could be committed. The Jewish quarters 
 suffered all the horrors of a sacked city. At last 
 Flaccus was recalled, it was a satisfaction to the pious 
 Jew to know that the enemy of his nation was ruined, 
 disgraced, and finally banished to an island in the 
 Egean. Here, as he bemoaned his fate, Caligula 
 remembered him. This emperor suffered from one of 
 the common symptoms of madness, continual want of 
 sleep. In an hour of this watchfulness, he bethought 
 himself of the numerous exiles who were confined 
 in their insular prisons, and among them of Flaccus, 
 and despatched his executioners after him. Philo 
 again exults over the horrible circumstances which 
 attended the legate's slaughter. 
 
 Still the troubles of the Jews were not ended.
 
 12 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 Petronius was charged in Judea with the duty of 
 setting up the statue of the emperor in the temple, 
 and the Alexandrian Jews were harassed because they 
 did not worship Caesar. So they resolved to send an 
 embassy to Caligula, with the view of deprecating his 
 wrath, and of pleading their inability to fulfil his 
 command. The leader of this forlorn hope was Philo. 
 This eminent person has given an account of his inter- 
 view with the madman who was ruling the world, and 
 of the danger which the deputation ran in the attempt 
 to conciliate him. Fortunately for the embassy, 
 Caligula was not in one of his savage moods, and 
 merely amused himself with his trembling petitioners. 
 He was occupied in decorating a palace, and had no 
 present appetite for blood. So he dismissed Philo and 
 his companions for a time, observing that they were 
 rather to be pitied than blamed for their unwillingness 
 to worship him. 
 
 The Jews of Alexandria were distinguished for their 
 culture as well as for their wealth. They founded a 
 school of philosophy, or at least amalgamated the 
 speculations of the great Greek thinkers with their 
 own theosophy. Many of them were thoroughly 
 versed in the literature of Greece, and Philo in 
 particular quotes largely from the most famous poets. 
 The system which they constructed was eclectic. 
 They adopted the mystic theory of numbers which 
 characterised the tenets of the Pythagoreans, incorpor- 
 ated the Platonic ideas, and accepted the Aristotelian 
 logic, as the vehicle of their formularies, and as a 
 support to their allegories. 
 
 The doctors of the Jews recognised under the name
 
 THE THE080PIIY OF PHILO. 13 
 
 of Memra, a Word or Reason of God, whom they 
 called the son of God, the mediator between God 
 and man. The same conception is traceable in the 
 Apocryphal book of wisdom, which is supposed to 
 have been the work of an Alexandrian Jew. But in 
 Philo, the Word is the true High Priest, the legate 
 of the Most High, the archetypal exemplar, the creative 
 power, the perpetual Mediator. This conception, 
 enlarged, exalted, and identified with Christ, is the 
 central figure in the fourth gospel, the form under 
 which Jesus the Prophet, the Teacher, the Redeemer, 
 the King, the Mediator, the Judge of humanity, is 
 exhibited as the eternal Son, the Sharer in the creative 
 power of the Almighty. 
 
 To our modern habit of thought, the allegories of 
 
 O * O 
 
 Philo would seem childish and forced. With this 
 author, for example, the story of the Patriarchs was 
 not only a narrative of Israel's childhood, but a mine 
 from which the treasures of Divine truth might be 
 extracted, the profound verities of religion might be 
 illustrated or demonstrated. St. Paul himself has not 
 disdained to use this method of exposition in his 
 parallel between the Law and the Gospel, the son of 
 Hagar and the son of Sarah ; and again in his contrast 
 between the heavenly bread and miraculous water 
 which followed the wandering Israelites, and the spiri- 
 tual sustenance which Christ affords those who are 
 within His covenant of grace. 
 
 But though sometimes the Alexandrian theologian 
 of the Jewish school was apt to make the Almighty 
 rather a Power than a Person, to represent Him as 
 Universal as well as One, and so to almost adopt a
 
 14 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 Pantheistic conception of the Divine nature the idea 
 which he entertained as to the action of God is lofty, 
 just and consolatory. His most marked attribute is 
 that of a protector to suffering humanity, an avenger 
 of high-handed insolence, of mercilessness, of wicked- 
 ness, and of wrong-doing. As a servant of such a God, 
 the Jew of Alexandria could hold no man in slavery. 
 The essence of the Divine nature is His Providence, 
 His universal, unsleeping sight, His absolute know- 
 ledge of each man, in act, in word, in thought, in heart. 
 And if sometimes His hand is slow to strike the 
 wrong-doer, and His ear seems closed to the wail of 
 misery the prayer of the poor destitute He is sure 
 to perform at last what His long-suffering tenderness 
 delays. It was this firm confidence which made the 
 Jew patient in adversity, trustful in the direst need. 
 It is this trust which has given unity and unchange- 
 ableness to a race now exiled for eighteen centuries 
 from its fatherland. He could endure all things, if he 
 held fast to the cardinal tenet of God's eternal being, 
 if he was jealous of God's honour, if he clung to the 
 crowning consolation of an ultimate deliverance, to be 
 worked by the power of Him who is mighty to save. 
 It need hardly be said that this calm, confident hope 
 is the thought which penetrates the devotional books 
 of the Old Testament, which has made the Psalter a 
 perpetual solace to Jew and Christian, which gave the 
 great prophets of old so mighty a power of interpreting 
 the letter by the spirit, as to make them, instead of 
 being the Ulemas of a scanty Syrian tribe, the teachers 
 of the whole human race. Even now the revelation 
 which these fathers make of the Divine nature, is
 
 THE JEWISH TEACHING OF PROVIDENCE. 15 
 
 inferior to the luminous exposition which the Gospel 
 gives of the Almighty counsels, in degree only, not in 
 kind, as the dawn of a summer's day differs in bril- 
 liancy only from the sun-light in its strength. 
 
 Among the practical rules of Judaism, none was 
 insisted on with greater emphasis than the duty 
 of succouring the poor, the fatherless, the widow. 
 The reaping of the harvest, the gathering of the 
 vintage, the shaking of the olive trees, must not 
 be too complete, that this rule of kindly care for 
 the helpless may not be lost sight of, even in the 
 urgent business of life. The servitude of Jew to 
 Jew was permitted, but only for a brief space, since 
 the Sabbath-year must see the Hebrew bondman free. 
 The pledge must not be mercilessly enacted, in 
 some cases must be restored. Nor could a Jew 
 perpetually alienate the inheritance of his fathers. 
 Between Jew and Jew those money-dealings which, 
 more than ought else, make men harsh and unfeeling, 
 must not be stimulated by the condition of usury or 
 increase. Nay, similar rules attend the usage of the 
 brute creation. The labouring ox must be unmuzzled 
 when he treads out the corn, in order that he, too, 
 may share in the bounty of Him who gives both seed- 
 time and harvest. It is a cruelty which the Law 
 forbids, to take the mother bird and her young ; it is 
 unnaturally harsh even to seeth the kid in his mother's 
 milk. Is it not also likely that the horror of eating 
 blood the life of living beings which is treated as 
 the oldest command of the Law, may not have had the 
 same humanizing object of inculcating gentleness and 
 tenderness, and the avoidance of that familiarity
 
 16 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 with violence and slaughter which always brutalizes 
 man ? 
 
 Commands like these, energetically interpreted ex- 
 tended so as to include the spirit of the Law, as well 
 as its letter educated the Jew in the habit of generous 
 dealing towards those of his own nation who needed 
 the aid which he could give. Until he was maddened 
 beyond endurance by the insults which despotism 
 heaped on his faith, and the dishonour which was done 
 his God, the patriotism of the Jew did not consist so 
 much in the glorious memories which belonged to his 
 race, as in the active exercise of benevolence towards 
 his fellow-countrymen in the readiness with which he 
 listened to the cry of distress. It is by this, as well as 
 by his pure monotheism, that the Jew stands out so 
 markedly in the civilisation of the ancient world. And 
 it was this spirit which Christianity incorporated into 
 its ethical code, the best inheritance which it gained 
 from the older creed. Judaism, it is true, confined, in 
 theory at least, its kindliness to the race of Abraham, 
 though it is impossible that a carefully-trained gentle- 
 ness of nature should be wholly bounded by the ties of 
 blood should be deaf to any cry for pity which may 
 rise from those of an alien race. But Christianity, in 
 the hands of its great missionary, accepted as its car- 
 dinal truth, that all the generations of mankind should 
 be blessed by the great Son of Abraham and David, 
 and so enforced the beneficent maxims of the Jewish 
 code on behalf of all those who are gathered within 
 the church of Christ. Here was the contrast between 
 the hard, selfish, haughty pride of the Koman, and the 
 boundless charity of the Christian convert. Here was
 
 ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY. 17 
 
 the origin of that marvellous conversion, which, leaving 
 St. Paul in possession of his ancient courage and in- 
 domitable will, made him able to endure all things, 
 and yet acknowledge the duty of universal charity. 
 
 As God was the Maker of all, the Judge of all, 
 the Saviour of all, so He is in this Alexandrian 
 Judaism the Author of all grace. St. Paul himself 
 did not plead more vehemently against self-righteous- 
 ness and self-sufficiency than Philo does when he says, 
 that the man who recognises the work of his own 
 mind only, and does not see God in what he can do, 
 is a brigand who robs another of his due. 
 
 That the philosophy of Alexandria had a wide 
 influence is known. It is clearly traceable in the 
 writings of Seneca, who was the pupil of a Jewish 
 doctor. But its influences on Christianity were 
 abiding. It contributed largely to that speculative 
 spirit which early busied itself with abstract dogma, 
 from the days of Origen to those of Athanasius and 
 Cyril. The chief city of Egypt was the cradle of 
 dogmatic theology, the workshop from which issued 
 these definitions and distinctions which tore Christi- 
 anity into sectarianism. And, unhappily, it was also 
 the earliest home of bitter intolerance. The birth- 
 place of turbulent theological factions, of persecuting 
 ferocity, of insane asceticism, of frivolous ceremony, 
 of arrogant sacerdotalism, it canonized these pas- 
 sions in the person of Cyril, who, Christian bishop as 
 he was, rivalled Flaccus in his outrages on the Jews, 
 and gloried in being the murderer of Hypatia. 
 
 It was inevitable that the Greek conquest of Asia 
 should have powerfully affected Semitic habits of
 
 18 PAUL OF TARSUS 
 
 thought. Alexander and his successors gave their 
 subjects an army and a discipline. Army and dis- 
 cipline, it is true, rapidly deteriorated. He gave them 
 also an administration, which must have remained 
 Greek to a large extent, though it was accommo- 
 dated to Eastern habits. Those Greek customs, 
 also, the gymnasium and the sophist's lecture, took 
 root in the Asiatic and Egyptian cities. Schools of 
 philosophy, the basis of whose training was laid in 
 the formularies of the great Athenian thinkers, 
 flourished among these outlandish towns which the 
 Greeks generalised as barbarian. The most famous 
 Jewish doctors accepted and employed some of 
 these philosophic forms. The Pauline epistles contain 
 many illustrations of the exactitude with which the 
 nomenclature of the Peripatetic system was known to 
 the Apostle, however little the Aristotelian syllogism 
 may appear in his writings. The young Pharisee 
 who sat at the foot of Gamaliel learnt from him 
 technical terms which were much more nearly like 
 the method of the Academy and the Porch, than 
 akin to the discipline of these schools of the pro- 
 phets which Samuel seems to have founded, and 
 whose influence, moral and political, was so great 
 during the epoch of the kings. Some of the dispersed 
 Jews, whose allegiance to the Mosaic code was loose, 
 even frequented the gymnasium, and took part in the 
 games. It is not at all inconsistent with human 
 nature that this laxity of conduct and discipline co- 
 existed with a ferocious patriotism and a fanatical 
 spirit towards those who appeared to secede from 
 Jewish unity. The dispersed Jews were always the
 
 JUDAISM LICENSED BY LA W. 19 
 
 bitterest enemies of the Apostle, both in Jerusalem 
 and elsewhere. 
 
 It seems, moreover, that the chief civil and 
 ecclesiastical magistrates of Judea exercised a pre- 
 carious criminal jurisdiction over their dispersed com- 
 patriots. They may have obtained this authority by 
 the consent of the Roman senators, who were always 
 well disposed towards an established religion, the 
 dignitaries of which might be useful instruments for 
 the maintenance of order. The controversial essay of 
 Hippolytus, bishop of Ostia, in which the tenets of 
 the more prominent heretics in the early part of the 
 third century are expounded, shows that the exercise 
 of the Jewish religion was protected in Rome at 
 this epoch. The empire may have connived at this 
 imperium in imperio, feeling w r ith Gallio, that it was 
 not the part of a dignified Roman to adjudicate on 
 the squabbles which broke out among the devotees 
 of a despicable superstition, and that it was quite out 
 of the question to expect that a Roman judge should 
 attempt to understand the byelaws of a ghetto. This 
 contemptuous toleration was of infinite value to the 
 infant churches. It was only when the political and 
 social system of the Roman empire seemed to be 
 imperilled by the growth of Christianity, that syste- 
 matic persecution began. 
 
 The Roman law favoured all voluntary associations. 
 It conferred a legal status on such parties as united 
 themselves into a corporation, and enacted bye-lawa 
 for their own order and guidance. Perhaps the most 
 valuable inheritance of Roman civilisation is the spon- 
 taneous municipality, the collegium of the jurists, the
 
 20 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 voluntary corporation, on which law bestowed some ot 
 the personality of the social unit. The peculiarities of 
 the Jewish creed, the marked servility, and the equally 
 marked pride of its devotees, qualities which have 
 made them at once the most pliant and the most 
 conservative of races, led them to eagerly adopt those 
 provisions of the law which gave their associations a 
 legal colour and standing. 
 
 The rigid monotheism of the restored Jew, and his 
 hatred to all anthropomorphic conceptions of God, 
 markedly distinguish the Israelite whom Ezra led 
 back from Persia, and the Macchabees marshalled 
 against the gross nature-worship of Syria, from the 
 Israelite of the Davidic kingdom, who perpetually 
 fell into Cariaanite idolatry. The Scriptures of the 
 Old Testament prove how easily the ancestors of the 
 later Jews were seduced into adopting the gods of 
 the heathen, Baal and Ashtaroth, Moloch and 
 Chemosh. It is not unlikely that intercourse with 
 their Persian conquerors may have aided the children 
 of the captivity in forming those strict conceptions of 
 monotheism, which insulated the Jew of the Roman 
 Empire. It assuredly developed that dualism, the 
 perpetual conflict between a good and an evil power, 
 which constituted the basis of Aryan theology, 
 which, almost absent from the system of the Old 
 Testament, is allowed in the New, which has at 
 length been taken by many sects to constitute the 
 essence of the Christian creed, and which is the 
 most poetical as well as the most stirring form in 
 which men can put before themselves the ends and 
 the means of the religious life, though it is far
 
 AXXOCIA TION AMONG THE JEWS. 21 
 
 from being the noblest conception of divine love 
 and gentleness. 
 
 It is easy to see then, how this Jew, forced or 
 induced to quit his native land, secluded from the 
 society in which he lived by ceremonial obligations, 
 by an ineffaceable rite, by a persistent patriotism, whose 
 nationality was fed by a host of magnificent memories, 
 and sustained by an energetic organisation, should have 
 eagerly adopted those means of association which the 
 Roman law permitted. The dispersed Jews levied 
 a voluntary tax on themselves, and transmitted the 
 proceeds to the hierarchy at Jerusalem. The economy 
 of ancient society supplied a ready means for this 
 transmission, for the mechanism by which foreign 
 exchanges were effected was well known to the old 
 world. The Parable of the Talents is proof that so 
 much of the system of banking, as is contained in the 
 practice of giving interest on deposit accounts, was so 
 familiarly used in Palestine as to become an obvious 
 and popular illustration in a religious apologue. It is 
 plain that if a Syrian banker was ready to encourage 
 depositors with an offer of interest, he must have used 
 these deposits either as advances on loan, or as the 
 means for effecting exchanges with distant countries, 
 and that the latter object is much more likely than the 
 former. The Jew has traded in money from the days 
 of the Macchabees. 
 
 Sometimes these collegia, as the Roman law called 
 them, were declared unlawful. Occasions frequently 
 arose, on which the haughty conservatism of the 
 Roman noble was led to proscribe that which it always 
 despised, on the plea uttered at Philippi that the
 
 22 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 practice was not lawful to a Roman, that the public 
 morality was debased by the presence of foreign 
 superstition, or that the gods of the Republic were 
 insulted by rivals. The religion of Rome was essentially 
 domestic. The great gods of the city were to the state, 
 what the Penates were to the household. Generally 
 it was thought politic to conciliate a foreign deity. 
 But it was another thing to introduce his unlicensed 
 culte into Rome, or into a colony which was constitu- 
 tionally a part of Rome. And much more frequently, 
 as I conceive, the wealth of these Jewish collegia 
 roused the avarice of those Roman nobles, whose 
 rapacity was even more devouring than their pride. 
 Verres and Flaccus were the types of a class. 
 
 The Old Testament sanctions no particular form 
 of government, prescribes no single system of secu- 
 lar authority, enforces no uniform organisation of 
 society or administration. The eternal purpose of the 
 Almighty does not condescend to define a form of 
 polity for man. The house of Aaron is gifted with 
 the priesthood, the fierce tribe of Levi is dedicated 
 to Jehovah. But neither priest nor Levite is invested 
 with magisterial functions. The only office which 
 the priest of the old covenant exercised, was that 
 of a judicial decision on the condition of a person 
 suspected of leprosy, with the duty of pronouncing 
 the social excommunication of one convicted of this 
 disease. The taint of leprosy, incurable by any 
 remedy which lay in the power of man, became, by 
 an obvious metaphor, the representative of the moral 
 taint of sin, of which man cannot rid his fellow-man, 
 which must be cleared away by some act of divine
 
 THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT OF THE JEWS. 23 
 
 beneficence, and which, being inheritable, designates 
 the inherent depravity of the human race, a moral 
 as consequent upon a physical death. But the priest 
 of the Pentateuch and the early historical books 
 of the Old Testament, is not a ruler, not even a 
 magistrate. Before the monarchy, there was no 
 central government in Israel, except during the oc- 
 casional supremacy of some eminent judge. 
 
 In Palestine itself, after the rise of the Asmonean 
 dynasty, the offices of high priest and monarch were 
 for a time united. Later on, they were divided, the 
 high priest becoming the centre of that ecclesiastical 
 system to which the scattered Jewish communities 
 owed allegiance and tribute. This Israelite pope 
 was assisted by a council, or conclave, or sanhedrim, 
 or presbytery, as St. Paul himself calls it. It was 
 before this assembly that Stephen, the first martyr, 
 was brought, and by it that he was condemned. 
 It was in imitation of this central organisation that 
 the Christian Church of Jerusalem established the 
 sacred College over whom James was set, and by 
 whose authority it was intended that all the converts 
 of the gospel should be governed. It was this 
 assumption which St. Paul resisted with so much 
 energy and with such success at Antioch. It is 
 doubtful, however, whether the College at Jerusalem 
 would not have ultimately succeeded in establishing 
 its pretensions, had not the capture and total destruc- 
 tion of the city dispersed the organisation of the 
 Christian Jews in Palestine. 
 
 It is possible that the form which the permanent 
 council of the high priest assumed, was borrowed
 
 24 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 from the usage of Greek and Roman politics. In 
 the view of Aristotle, the senate was essentially a 
 popular institution, and was characteristic of that 
 political civilisation which the Greeks achieved. The 
 Roman municipality had officers and senate, as in 
 Rome duumviri, who represented the consuls; curiales, 
 who were the councillors of the provincial towns. 
 So, where the dispersed Jews were in numbers 
 sufficient for a synagogue, they had a chief of their 
 community, and a council of advice. Such synagogues, 
 for example, existed at Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, 
 and Ephesus, and were, naturally, the first theatre for 
 the Apostle's preaching, as they were constantly the 
 source from which mischief threatened him. The 
 captivity of St. Paul, with which the direct narrative 
 of the Apostle's life ceases, was primarily the work of 
 those Asiatic Jews whom he had often confronted in 
 their synagogues, and from whom he had finally sepa- 
 rated his converts during the time of his last visit to 
 Ephesus. In its beginnings, Christianity, like the 
 Judaism of the Christian era, was the religion of 
 
 ' O 
 
 towns-folk. The heathenism of the villages was not 
 assailed till long after the apostolic age. But wo 
 shall see the effects of this hereafter, in considering- 
 
 7 O 
 
 what was the organisation of the Church in its early 
 stages of existence. 
 
 It does not appear that the Jews of the apostolic 
 age were profoundly conversant with all the books 
 of the Old Testament. A general acquaintance with 
 the Pentateuch, a more thorough knowledge of the 
 Psalms, and with some of the leading Messianic 
 prophecies, seem to constitute the Biblical learning
 
 THE SCRIPTURES OF THE 7J!X 25 
 
 possessed by a carefully taught Jew. The New 
 Testament contains few allusions to the history of 
 the chosen people during the years which intervened 
 between the settlement of Canaan and the reign of 
 David, or during the rival monarchies. And yet 
 it would have been expected had the writers of 
 the New Testament been well acquainted with the 
 historical books of the Old that allusions would 
 have been frequent, that types and allegories would 
 have been discovered abundantly, and that the spirit 
 of the prophetic books would have been invoked 
 constantly and successfully against a blind obedience 
 to much of the ceremonial law which the Israelite 
 followed. The story of the chosen people is full 
 of passages which might have been used freely for 
 the purpose of spiritual analogy. What, for example, 
 is more obvious than the long doom of that kingdom 
 whose rulers persistently made Israel to sin ; and 
 the religious significance of the lesson ? What story 
 is more fitted for typical illustration than the exquisite 
 narrative of Joseph? What indicates more forcibly 
 the single-heartedness of the Christian than the career 
 of Joshua, his zeal than that of Elijah ? One would 
 like to know what scriptures those were in which 
 Apollos was mighty. Moses, we know, was read 
 on the Sabbath. Christ commented on the prophecy 
 of Isaiah in the synagogue of Nazareth. St. Paul, 
 however, quotes the Old Testament scriptures fre- 
 quently, especially in the Epistle to the Romans. 
 
 Some even of these scanty quotations are inaccurate. 
 Jeremiah is credited with a passage from Zechariah. 
 The author of the Epistle of St. James ascribes the
 
 26 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 drought in the days of Ahab to the efficacy of Elijah's 
 prayers, but the narrative in the Book of Kings 
 designates the prediction of this visitation as a reve- 
 lation from Jehovah, and the return of the customary 
 showers as a similar announcement, the prophet being 
 a perfectly passive instrument. Again, the Epistle 
 of Jude quotes as genuine, and without the slightest 
 suspicion, the Book of Enoch, and refers to the legend 
 of a dispute between Michael and the Devil over 
 the body of Moses, as though it were part of the 
 sacred history. 
 
 It is almost superfluous to say that the critical 
 faculty which investigates facts judicially, and which 
 considers their reality as relative to their probability, 
 is of recent growth. Nothing, indeed, is or can be told 
 with perfect accuracy, no description, for example, 
 gives all the circumstances which have come before 
 the sight. Still less is it possible to assign all the 
 causes and motives of an action. The utmost that 
 can be done is to narrate as much of the event as is 
 needed to give a clear and distinct impression of its 
 leading features, to tell the story as it invited the 
 attention or affected the imagination of the narrator. 
 Even under these circumstances, two independent 
 witnesses, both of whom endeavour to give a genuine 
 account of their impressions, may traverse, or even 
 contradict each other in particulars, as one sees every 
 day in judicial proceedings. The habit of criticising 
 events, as though they were marshalled before a court 
 of law and in view of the verdict of a jury or the 
 'once of a judge, and with such strictness as to 
 make it requisite that dates, places, and persons should
 
 THE ROMAN DESPOTISM, 27 
 
 be precisely identified, is modern. And it may very 
 possibly happen that what is gained in precision by 
 such an analytical process, is more than lost in the 
 weakened vivacity of the tale and even in its substan- 
 tive veracity. To treat that only as a fact which is a 
 likelihood, reduces history to a dull drama of mechani- 
 cal puppets, which has far less reality than a con- 
 fessedly poetical narrative. 
 
 The authors of those books which have come down 
 to us, under the collective name of the New Testament, 
 lived in a thoroughly matter-of-fact world, with which 
 their affections and their hopes were very little in 
 harmony. They were the helpless subjects of a devour- 
 ing and remorseless despotism. Before the empire 
 was inaugurated, these subjects from time to time 
 strove to free themselves from the yoke. After this 
 epoch, the Jewish struggle in the later days of Nero 
 was the last effort which a nationality made to vindicate 
 its autonomy. It is impossible for us to realise the 
 deadening effects of such a despotism. From it there 
 was no escape, even no exile. Outside its barriers 
 were surging up those hordes, which in the end poured 
 over it like a flood. But in the early days of the 
 Roman empire these marauders were kept effectually 
 at bay, along a vast range of frontier, flight over which 
 was rarely open to the discontented. The civilised 
 world was literally bound in fetters. Caesar and his 
 legions were everywhere, crushing down everything 
 with the iron heel of power, enslaving everyone. 
 Speech was watched, for the empire swarmed with 
 spies and informers. Thought was hardly free, for the 
 tremendous interpretations given to the law of treason,
 
 28 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 made every man suspicious and suspected. The repu- 
 tation of eminent virtue and of daring vice was equally 
 dangerous. The best hope of safety lay in insignifi- 
 cance and obscurity. The saddest lot was to be of 
 Caesar's kinsfolk, the luckiest was to be his favourite 
 slave. "It is a rare happiness" says Tacitus, writing in 
 the better days of Trajan, " to think as you will, and to 
 speak as you think." It is amazing that in such an 
 age, Christianity laid its foundations so deeply and 
 so broadly. 
 
 The long indulgence of every sensual passion makes 
 Eastern sovereigns, we are told, feel a languid pleasure 
 in cruelty for its own sake. It becomes an excite- 
 ment to inflict pain. But these Eastern despots must 
 be roused from a more delicious apathy in order to 
 entertain this pleasure. The worst of the Roman 
 emperors had a horrible activity in the pursuit of this 
 gratification. Caligula and Nero, the former from a 
 ferocious insanity, the latter from very wantonness, were 
 preeminently cruel. The former demanded divine 
 honours to be paid him ; the latter, beyond his unnum- 
 bered outrages upon the people whom he ruled, worked 
 special havoc on the imperial house. Mother, wife, 
 cousin, were his victims. And these monsters of 
 despotism, so totally crushed was the people, fell by 
 their affronted soldiers, not by the daggers of those 
 whom they had outraged or wronged. The Roman 
 emperor had no one to fear but his praetorians, and the 
 body-guard of the emperor was generally faithful to 
 its paymaster. The mission of St. Paul was cast in 
 the darkest era of the world's history. It was a long 
 of despair.
 
 AND THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY. 29 
 
 From such overwhelming misery there are two 
 kinds of refuge. Men may forget their degradation 
 in profligacy, or escape into the haven of religion. 
 Caesar may claim their life, their goods, their corporeal 
 liberty, but he cannot quench their passions, or he 
 cannot coerce their souls. They may drown their 
 moral consciousness in debauchery, or they may take 
 the wings of a dove, and fly to the rest of the people 
 of God, may possess their souls in patience. 
 
 The fragments of a romance, professedly written in 
 the days of Nero and which may well ' have been 
 composed at that time still exist under the title of the 
 Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter. The name of the 
 book means no more than that the composition is 
 partly prose, partly verse. It contains a few passages 
 of great beauty, and one of genuine humour, the tale 
 of the Ephesian matron. But the greater part of 
 the fragments is the narrative of a licentious revel. 
 It is the mere delirium of debauchery. And yet it 
 is probably a picture of the expedients by which a 
 Roman noble strove to forget the despotism under 
 which he lived. Much which the Csesarism of that 
 age could not crush, it utterly debased. Aristophanes, 
 Lucian, Rabelais are coarse and licentious enough, but 
 Petronius is transcendently impure. 
 
 Another novel has come down to us entire. It 
 is of a later date than the fragments of Petronius, 
 but it is tainted in the same way, though in an 
 inferior degree. The Golden Ass of Apuleius has 
 been said to be a romance inculcating the worship 
 of the good goddess the deified power of nature. 
 As a picture of social life, it justifies the indignant
 
 30 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 condemnation of the Apostle, when he reckons up, 
 with characteristic vehemence, the accumulated mis- 
 deeds of those who are given up by their own vices 
 to a reprobate mind, who know how great is their 
 own depravity, but indulge it, and encourage others 
 to the like. 
 
 The other refuge from the slavery of Cresarism, 
 from the subjection of the physical man and his 
 material possessions to despotism, was religion. And 
 this religion was of two kinds. One had been long 
 in existence, partly as a protest against the gross 
 superstitions of the popular theology, partly as an 
 inquiry into the conditions of mind and being. It 
 had now become the defiant avowal of the superiority 
 of moral rifjht over brute force, even though it was 
 
 O ' O 
 
 constrained to occupy the attitude of passive resis- 
 tance. This was philosophy, especially that of the 
 later Stoics. The other alternative was new, obscure, 
 despised a foolish refinement, as was thought, upon 
 a Syrian superstition. This was Christianity, as 
 taught by Paul and his associates. The last struggle 
 between the ancient religion of the heathen world, 
 and the new force which was to leaven civilisation, 
 came in the form of a controversy between philosophy 
 and Christianity a struggle which continued vigor- 
 ously in Athens and Alexandria long after the Empire 
 professed the Faith, and which was at last concluded 
 by the compulsory silence of the philosophers. And 
 if Christianity converted the Constantines, philosophy 
 numbered the Antonines among its disciples and 
 devotees. 
 
 The philosophers of the Empire did not aim at
 
 PHILOSOPHY. 31 
 
 providing a system which should leaven society at 
 large. They merely purposed to instruct those who 
 had capacity and leisure. They did not demand that 
 their disciples should be rich, well-born, influential. 
 It was the pride of philosophy that it totally ignored 
 rank and wealth, or treated them as superficial and 
 unimportant circumstances. The fact that the satirist 
 sometimes depicts the philosopher as hanging on to 
 the skirts of the rich, of being a parasite, is negative 
 testimony that such practices were a dishonour to 
 the profession which the philosopher made, and that 
 the majority of these savants were free from the 
 imputation of such aims. When a churchman is 
 described as rapacious, luxurious, or licentious, and 
 emphasis is laid on characteristics of this kind, the 
 satirist of the individual intends to imply that such 
 a person is an exception and a scandal. "When 
 Boccaccio depicts the clergy of his day, he expresses 
 no indignation against their profligacy, gluttony, and 
 mendacity. These were, at that epoch, the general 
 vices of the order. 
 
 The philosophies of antiquity could not address 
 themselves to the general mass of the community. 
 They did not appeal to sympathy, which is a uni- 
 versal bond, but to intelligence or reason, which, is 
 a limited faculty, an exceptional endowment. Still, 
 the philosopher intended to influence society at large. 
 But this was to be effected by attracting and instruct- 
 ing such minds as could rule or guide mankind. The 
 greatest victory of this discipline was to be achieved 
 when the philosopher should rule, or the ruler become 
 a true and competent philosopher. " Under existing
 
 :\-2. PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 habits of thought," says Plato, "this is a tremendous 
 paradox, the advocates of which will be saved from 
 active hostility only by a torrent of ridicule. But," 
 the speaker continues, "it is only in this way that 
 society can be saved." Nor can it be doubted that 
 the object which the Stoic and Plato nist of the empire 
 had before him, was an attempt to supplant, by his 
 better way, a brutal military system, and that any 
 success in this direction was a prodigious gain to 
 mankind. Few monarchs have reached the sim- 
 plicity, piety, truthfulness, and zeal for the public 
 good, which characterized Antoninus and Aurelius. 
 The age of these great princes is the one oasis in 
 the desert of the Roman Empire. They were the 
 ripest and the best examples of what philosophy 
 could do for man. But theirs was not a lasting 
 
 O 
 
 example. The general vices of despotism ruin 
 society, and its occasional virtues are incompetent 
 to restore it. 
 
 That Christianity has affected the mass of man- 
 kind is primarily due to the fundamental propo- 
 sitions which it affirms. It says, that mankind has 
 been saved or restored by the life and death of 
 Christ, however differently the profession of Christi- 
 anity has understood both life and death, however 
 limited or however wide may be its interpretation 
 of the benefit which mankind has gained by that 
 Great Fact in the history of the world. The more 
 wretched, forlorn, depraved, has been the condition 
 of those who have been introduced to this gospel 
 and who have received it, the clearer has the benefit 
 been. Hence, however much the teaching of Christi-
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. 33 
 
 anity may appeal to the reason, it appeals still more 
 urgently to the feelings, reaching to their lowest 
 depths, and stirring them profoundly and completely. 
 It demands faith, but it demands action as a proof 
 of faith. It addresses the individual, and, therefore, 
 from its very beginnings it markedly repudiated that 
 most preposterous outcome of Nihilism, under which 
 the Buddhist longs for annihilation and absorption. 
 It is true, that after a time this gross superstition 
 attacked the Eastern Church, and produced those 
 swarms of hermits and monks who travestied Chris- 
 tianity in the third century. Even now, the descen- 
 dants of these Buddhist devotees, the Lamas o 
 Central Asia, closely resemble, as MM. Hue and 
 Gabet affirm, the monkish orders of the Greek and 
 Roman churches. Had such an absurdity been de- 
 veloped during the life of Paul, and in the churches 
 which he founded, his indignation would have vented 
 itself in language like that in which he denounces 
 the Judaizing bigots of Jerusalem, when he writes 
 to the Galatians. 
 
 But though the Christianity of the apostolic age 
 addresses the individual, it supposes him to be at one 
 with other believers in Christ. Man is not saved for 
 himself only, any more than he is saved by his own 
 efforts. He is not, and cannot be, the isolated object 
 of the Divine mercy and grace. Christ came to save 
 the world. The arrogance and self-complacency which 
 induce men to think themselves the particular object 
 of God's favour, that affected thankfulness which 
 is real contempt for others, is the temper of the 
 
 Pharisee, not of the Christian. The Christian must 
 
 c
 
 34 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 teach his fellowman, by word it may be, by deeds of 
 necessity. The individual is converted, to be enrolled 
 into a church, with an organisation, a government, a 
 corporate power, a corporate grace. 
 
 The apostles preached in towns. The intinerary of 
 St. Paul is from Philippi to Thessalonica, Bercea, 
 Athens, Corinth. Nothing is said about halting at 
 intermediate places, and preaching the gospel in the 
 villages or small towns which were interspersed 
 throughout this route. The social arrangements of 
 cities were more available for the message of the 
 gospel than the population of the pagi and denies was. 
 It is not, indeed, to be supposed that the country folk 
 of Greece and Italy, of Asia Minor or Palestine, 
 were planted in scattered households. They dwelt 
 together for purposes of mutual defence, and generally 
 had their stronghold to which they might convey their 
 possessions when marauders were about. So, in all 
 probability, the form of the English village, where the 
 houses are clustered together near the church, is 
 derived from the time in which the country was liable 
 to the incursions of Danes and other Norsemen, and 
 when the church was a common hall in times of quiet, 
 a storehouse, an arsenal, and a castle in times of 
 danger. 
 
 It was easier to gather a church together in these 
 cities. There was the synagogue, or the place of 
 prayer; there were the dispersed Jews, sometimes 
 friendly, often hostile ; there were the devout Greeks, 
 who had been attracted from nature worship and its 
 course superstitions to the pure monotheism of the 
 Jews, though they did not accept its ceremonial
 
 THE APOSTLES PREACHED IN TOWXS. 35 
 
 obligations. Sometimes they had even learned so 
 much as to comprehend that interpretation of the 
 letter by the spirit, which was known as John's bap- 
 tism, and which was the restoration of that generous 
 and living zeal which characterised the Hebrew prophet 
 of the kingdom. This was ground prepared for the 
 seed. But once within the believing church, the 
 Apostle taught that there was an absolute oneness 
 and equality in Christ. The distinction between Jew 
 and Greek was to disappear ; the ancient rite which 
 sealed the covenant of Abraham, and was renewed 
 under the captaincy of Joshua, was now obsolete ; the 
 foreigner was a citizen of the new Church, the 
 Jerusalem which was from above. The Scythian 
 savage might become the docile disciple, or the active 
 preacher ; the slave was the Lord's freeman, the free- 
 man was bought with the price of Christ's death. 
 The nature of the convert was changed, tfye old man 
 was put off there w r as no further fellowship with 
 bygone habits, practices, and beliefs, which were now 
 for ever abandoned ; for in their place was a new 
 being, ever growing, ever developing, ever renewing 
 itself, and gradually by its spiritual introspect, as it 
 knows more and more, reaching that likeness of the 
 Creator, for which it once ignorantly yearned, into 
 which it is now being transformed. 
 
 To those who lived within this mystic union, the 
 outer world seemed lifeless or corrupt an unreal 
 thing, which was passing away. The religion of the 
 heathen was a sacrifice to devils, its political system a 
 mystery of iniquity a revelation of Antichrist of 
 the Man of Sin. For a time, many of the converts
 
 30 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 had lived in and for this system had been enslaved 
 to its grossness, or overpowered by its prestige. They 
 had now been enlightened; and to go back, even in 
 thought, to that from which they had escaped, was as 
 impossible as it would be for a child to again accept 
 the errors which have been utterly dispelled by a sudden 
 and large experience. They enjoyed the full light of a 
 clear and perfect faith, the intensity of which corres- 
 ponded to the freshness of its growth, and contrasted 
 with the black debasement from which the man had 
 effected his escape. With men in this state of happy, 
 joyous trust, who lived in an age when charity had 
 not been throttled by dogmas and definitions, there 
 was no doubt to torment the mind, no gloss on the 
 law of liberty, which should seek to make it an in- 
 tolerable bondage. 
 
 It is in this absolute seclusion from past interests 
 that we must account for the indifference to public 
 questions which formed an early reproach on the 
 Christian community, and that timidity, or, at least, 
 acquiescence in the established order of things, which 
 characterised the Apostolic age. The casuistry of a 
 later age perverted the tenets which justified this 
 policy into a permanent political creed, and attempted 
 to make that a rule for the conduct of a Christian 
 community which was intended to secure to these 
 new converts complete isolation from a social system 
 which could not be touched without impurity. The 
 early Christians dared not exercise the rights of 
 citizens without forfeiting or imperilling the most 
 precious privileges of their faith. It was even doubt- 
 ful whether they might hold social intercourse with
 
 INTENSITY OF EARLY CHRISTIAN FEELING. 37 
 
 unbelievers. Life was short, and immortality lay 
 beyond it. 
 
 Besides, it is manifest that all apostles and people 
 looked forward to the immediate consummation of the 
 world. St. Paul was possessed by this impression. 
 The times were in God's own power the day and the 
 hour were not revealed to the Christ in the days of 
 His flesh, but hid in the counsels of the Father. But 
 the time was assuredly short there were those living 
 who would be caught up in the air, to be for ever with 
 Him. They were near Him now in spirit, they would 
 be speedily near Him in the body. In the view of 
 that faith which bridged over the interval of the 
 Divine counsels, and already gave the assurance of the 
 immediate presence of God, the world, its cares, its 
 purposes, its pomp, its power, its threatenings, became 
 most remote, most insignificant, a mere speck in the 
 dawning Infinity.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE principles of morality are not peculiar to one 
 epoch of civilisation nor to one religion. They are as 
 permanent and as universal as other laws of nature 
 are. It is true, that like all those general positions 
 which are relative to the social condition of man, they 
 are often imperfectly understood, often ignored, often 
 violated to the detriment of society, to the injury of 
 those who do not know them, or knowing break them. 
 In just the same way, communities and individuals 
 understand the laws of health or of political economy 
 imperfectly, defy them or break them. The perfec- 
 tion of moral science consists in the accurate knowledge 
 of all moral obligations ; the theory of civilisation 
 presumes a general acquiescence in these moral obli- 
 gations, while its completeness is effected by prompt 
 and general obedience to the precise rules of conduct 
 and duty. 
 
 It would not be difficult to construct several systems 
 of pure morality which should be almost perfect, and 
 therefore alike, from a host of independent sources. 
 The duties of individuals to society at large, and to
 
 THE MORALITY OF DIFFERENT RELIGIONS. 39 
 
 the forces which compose society, are to be found in 
 the Vedas, in the Zendavesta, in the works of the 
 Athenian philosophers, in the Kabbala and Talmud, 
 in the Koran, as well as in the New Testament. 
 The author of the Epistle to the Romans bears witness 
 to the universality of the moral law, and to its suffi- 
 ciency as an exposition of moral duty. It is an error 
 to arrogate the affirmation of this moral law to one 
 system of religion, and no less an error to argue that 
 such parts of different systems as coincide must have 
 been derived from some common source, or to see in 
 some agreement that the one is a plagiary of the 
 other. 
 
 It is easy to discover a close resemblance between 
 the morality of the Talmud and that of the New 
 Testament, easy for a partisan to exalt the gloss of 
 the Jewish doctors over the rules of the Christian 
 life as promulgated by the Evangelists and Apostles, 
 or to ignore the teaching of the Rabbis in estimating 
 the service which Christianity has done to the moral 
 purification of the world. It is not inconsistent with 
 what we read of Christ in the gospels that He should 
 have been, as Jewish writers have alleged, the pupil 
 of that Rabbi Simeon who was noted as the chief of 
 the Ascetics, the great teacher of the Essenes. It 
 may be true that a close resemblance may be found 
 between the comparison of the lily of the field with 
 the glory of Solomon ; and a recorded saying of this 
 famous doctor : that the eagerness with which a 
 lost sheep is sought, and the tenderness with which 
 it is welcomed back one of the most touching of 
 Christ's parables may have its counterpart in a para-
 
 40 /'-I C"Z OF TARSUS. 
 
 ble of the same sage. He is reported to have said that 
 a certain man had a flock of sheep which were daily 
 led to pasture. Here they were joined by a gazelle, 
 who regularly fed with them, and returned with them 
 to the fold. The owner of the flock bade his shep- 
 herds take the greatest care of this stranger ; and when 
 he was asked why he showed it such favour, answered, 
 This creature has left the wilderness, and, in spite of 
 its own untamed and timid nature, has joined the 
 flock. It is well that I should welcome it more 
 affectionately than I do those who have been fed 
 by me, and tended by my care. For that which is 
 customary with them, is strange to the gazelle. And 
 thus, continues the Rabbi, God will welcome the 
 stranger who joins himself to the chosen people, 
 more than He will those who have always had the 
 blessing of His covenant, because they are born to 
 Israel. 
 
 Does the Christian law bid man love his neighbour, 
 and assert that they who, serving God, do this, are 
 near to the kingdom of God ? The great doctor Hillel 
 says, that not to do to your neighbour that which is 
 distasteful to yourself is the whole law ; while another 
 t.-.-iclier infers the universal obligation of charity and 
 beneficence from the fact that man is created in the 
 image of the Almighty. 
 
 Again, the grace which is given to the humble, 
 when expressed by the Jewish doctors, is stated under 
 the form that in the humble dwells permanently the 
 Shekinah of the Almighty. The Divine Master bids 
 those who would be first among men to be their 
 servants ; the Rabbi gives a conversation between
 
 THE TEACHING OF THE JEWISH DOCTORS. 41 
 
 the chief among the Jews and Alexander the Great, 
 " What should a man do who wishes to gain the love 
 of his fellow-men ? Avoid all rule and authority over 
 them." Are the disciples informed that he who exalt- 
 eth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth 
 himself shall be exalted, we are reminded of the 
 maxim of Hillel, " My humiliation will be my exalta- 
 tion, my exaltation my humiliation." "The know- 
 ledge of God is not in heaven," says Moses ; and the 
 gloss of the Rabbi is, "Do not look to find it among 
 those who raise their pride to heaven. He who 
 makes himself little in this world for the sake of the 
 Law will be great in the world to come." The Gospel 
 bids the forgiveness of injuries, and the t Talmud ad- 
 vises as follows : " They who undergo injury without 
 retaliation, who suffer themselves to be traduced and 
 do not retort, and who accept the ills of life cheerfully, 
 for them is that which was written in the prophets, 
 " The friends of God shall shine as the sun in his 
 strength." And again, " God ranges Himself on the 
 side of the persecuted, whether the persecutor and 
 persecuted are equally just or equally wicked. Nay, 
 as He assists the just man who is persecuted by the 
 unjust, so He even aids the unjust when he is perse- 
 cuted by the just." Are the disciples to be wise as 
 serpents and harmless as doves, the Talmud says that 
 " Israel is as brave as a lion, wise as a serpent, but 
 that he has also the simplicity of a dove." It would 
 be possible to extend these examples indefinitely. It 
 would be possible to exhibit similar parallelisms from 
 the teaching of the older Platonists and the later 
 Stoics. The canons of morality are universal and
 
 1-) PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 immutable, for they are the highest laws of social 
 
 life. 
 
 And here I cannot but notice one marked peculi- 
 arity in the ethics of ancient Judaism, which is pre- 
 cisely continued in the modern development of this 
 primeval faith. No moral code has ever rested so 
 profoundly on home duties and home ties on the 
 love of parent and child as the Jewish has. The 
 birth of a son is the highest reward for Abraham's 
 faith. Paternal love almost makes a hero of Jacob, 
 and gives dignity to a character which is otherwise 
 furtive and mean. What is more tragic than the 
 sorrow of Jephthah, what is brighter than the filial 
 duty of Jonathan, what more touching than the grief 
 of David over that rebellious son who inflicted on his 
 father the most atrocious insults that could have been 
 perpetrated ? The Psalmist's picture of a pious and 
 happy family, of the laborious and contented husband- 
 man, whose wife is as the fruitful vine, whose children 
 are like the comely olive trees, full of assured promise, 
 is a sketch, the nature of which is perpetually bright 
 and fresh. The sorrows of Jeremiah are over wasted 
 homes ; his deepest grief is felt at the " children and 
 sucklings swooning in the streets of the city, who faint 
 like the wounded in battle, and pour out their soul 
 into their mother's bosom." The home was the centre 
 of Jewish life, the type of that archaic epoch when 
 every man did that which was right in his own eyes, 
 when Israel dwelt securely under his vine and fig-tree, 
 of the golden age of the nation. Even now the Jew, 
 with no little colour of truth, complains that Christian- 
 ity has exalted the monastic spirit, and disparaged
 
 THE JEWISH LOVE OF I10XK. 43 
 
 home, and asks for the gain which social life has 
 effected by this contempt of the natural affections. 
 
 The sanctions of morality, apart from such evidence 
 as can be gained from the experience of obedience 
 and the blessings which such obedience entails, are 
 found in religion. To yearn after the supernatural, 
 and thereby to satisfy the longings of the soul to 
 address oneself to God, so that the weakness of 
 humanity may be aided in achieving the great destiny 
 which lies before it to trust in God, that He can 
 and will redress the evil and wrong-doing which 
 blot His creation, are the earliest and the most 
 lasting religious instincts, and belong to every creed 
 except those which exhibit the Deity as a remorse- 
 less and inevitable fate, or a capricious despot. 
 Even ruined and debased religions may often be 
 traced to a pure original. 
 
 The Jewish creed recognised the long-suffering, 
 the beneficence, the providence of God. He was 
 the avenger of the helpless, the judge of the wicked, 
 the protector of His people, the defence of His ser- 
 vants. He was surrounded by majesty, by light 
 unapproachable, by every symbol of awful power. 
 But He deigned to visit men, to serve and save them. 
 High as His dwelling is, He humbles Himself to 
 a watchful providence over man. He is King, 
 Teacher, Father. This last title is, as we all know, 
 His universal name in the New Testament. But 
 it is not unknown or unfamiliar in the Old. " Doubt- 
 less," says that prophet, whose writing has been in- 
 corporated with the sayings of an elder Isaiah, " thou 
 art our Father ; though Abraham be ignorant of us,
 
 44 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 and Israel acknowledge us not, Thou, O God, art 
 our Father, our Redeemer." The Paternity of God 
 extends beyond the narrow range of human kindred 
 or human patriotism. There was a bitter feud 
 between Ephraim and Judah. It has even con- 
 tinued to our day, is a feud of twenty-four centuries, 
 for the Samaritan is the wasted representative of 
 the Israelite kingdom, as he was in the days of 
 Christ, as he was to Benjamin of Tudela. But 
 there was one Father to both, to the worshipper 
 at Jacob's well, and to the Pharisee of David's 
 city. Nay, the outcasts of Abraham and Isaac, 
 the men whom Ezra and Nehemiah scornfully re- 
 jected from the company of those who were restored 
 after their captivity, could claim Him as their Father 
 and Redeemer, exiled and maligned as they were. 
 
 The really Jewish scriptures contain no affirmative 
 statement as to the immortality of man's soul. They 
 are similarly silent as to that final judgment which 
 forms so marked a characteristic in the religion of 
 Christianity. We know that even when some of the 
 later doctors of the Law taught the doctrine of man's 
 immortality, other doctors were hostile to the tenet. 
 Nay, even those who accepted the doctrine often 
 qualified it by a wild metempsychosis. There are, 
 they held, a certain number of created souls, which 
 pass from body to body, and when their transmi- 
 grations are completed the Messiah shall come. 
 This appears to have been the opinion of Josephus. 
 There are traces of this compromise between the 
 doctrine of man's immortality, and the absence of 
 recorded authority on the subject, in the language
 
 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 45 
 
 of the gospels. The antenatal sin, which the blind 
 man in the Gospel of St. John may have committed, 
 is an illustration. Nor does the language of the 
 New Testament contravene the more refined concep- 
 tion which was included in the theory of transmi- 
 gration, that, namely, of a purifying process. There 
 is a final day of judgment, but there is almost 
 complete silence as to the intermediate condition of 
 the departed. Once only Christ lifts the veil, and 
 displays the rich man suffering, repentant, but not 
 despairing. The spiritual Abraham, the father of 
 all, does not address the lost as his sons. 
 
 It is well known that the Jews were divided-on this 
 subject that the Pharisees accepted, under various 
 forms, the doctrine of the soul's immortality, of the 
 enduring personality of the dead, and that the Saddu- 
 cees rejected the doctrine, or at least held that the 
 soul was absorbed into some general Intelligence or 
 Power. It would seem that the former doctrine, which 
 Christianity affirmed with peculiar emphasis, was 
 adopted after the captivity, and that it formed a charac- 
 teristic tenet of the stricter spirituality which the 
 ascetic Pharisees taught. This tenet is an inevitable 
 consequence of the spiritual life. If men are once per- 
 suaded that the enjoyment of life is not its end, if they 
 understand that man does not merely live to receive 
 his just portion in those good things of material 
 existence which a beneficent Providence bestows, and 
 a wise economy distributes and secures, they necessarily 
 conclude that man's being is not bounded by his visible 
 personality. It is, indeed, plain that the moral and 
 intellectual progress of society is due to the efforts of
 
 46 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 those who deliberately daff the lawful pleasures of life, 
 in order that they may effect the general good of 
 humanity. But neither the stimulus to this prodigious 
 service nor its reward can be found in the satisfaction 
 with which a limited existence could survey the unlim- 
 ited good which it has effected. "If," says the apostle 
 Paul, in that remarkable passage, where deep convic- 
 tion struggles for eloquence, " our hopes in Christ are 
 bounded by this life only, we are the most pitiable of 
 mankind." It is not impossible to suffer patiently 
 on behalf of a creed which offers no prospect but 
 annihilation ; it is impossible to do bravely, to labour 
 with unceasing and untired energy, to go about doing 
 active good, and withal to believe that all this power 
 and force, this concentrated influence which rouses and 
 elevates the soul of a generation, and leaves perma- 
 nent effects on the whole nature of man, is abruptly 
 terminated in an eternal negation. And as the 
 
 O 
 
 doctrine of the soul's immortality begins with the 
 development of the spiritual life, so it is intensified 
 and confirmed by the determination to serve man for 
 God's sake. The doctors who compassed sea and land 
 to make one proselyte, could not but affirm that the soul 
 which had enlightened his fellow-man in the knowledge 
 
 o O 
 
 of God partakes of the eternity which belongs to the 
 Most High. The fruit of their labour may have been 
 worthless, a mere growth of malignity and pride, a 
 mere slavery to the letter, but the activity which is 
 patient in winning souls, no matter to what creed, 
 cannot but believe in its own immortality. 
 
 The leading tenet of Jewish teaching was the 
 dignity of man. It is a tradition of the Rabbans
 
 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 47 
 
 that God said to Jacob, " I am the God of those on 
 high, thou art the god of those below," a legend 
 derived from or confirmed by these words of the 
 Psalmist which are quoted by Christ, as a patent 
 justification of His claim to the Divine Sonship. The 
 Kabbalists taught that the true habitation of God, 
 of which tabernacle and temple were but types, was 
 the body of man ; and they compared each member 
 of man's body to some one or the other among the 
 divisions of the building, placing the Holy of Holies 
 in the heart. They extracted from this symbolism 
 at once the duty of religious purity, and the obligation 
 of charity, since the wound of one part in the mystical 
 as well as the natural body is the suffering of all parts. 
 And in the same strain, as if by way of comment on 
 the declaration that man is created in the image of 
 God, the Jewish doctors affirmed that "the soul of man 
 is higher than the nature of angels ; that man is the 
 councillor of God in creation, His associate in the 
 work of heaven and earth ; that he is the stay and 
 foundation of the universe ; and that the angels desire 
 to hold converse with the just, that they may learn of 
 them the mysteries of the eternal God." And as the 
 last favour which the Almighty grants His favoured 
 servants, He deigns to let them know His incom- 
 municable name. It is in accordance with this 
 highest mark of divine condescension and indwelling, 
 that according to the Talmudists, the wonders which 
 Christ did were due to the power which He possessed 
 from the full revelation of what constituted that mys- 
 terious title. The same idea is current in Moham- 
 medan legends. It is by the possession of that name
 
 48 PAUL OF TARSI**. 
 
 that the great Solomon gained his empire over all 
 creation, over men, and angels, over birds and beasts, 
 over ginn and devils. So, says Benjamin of Tudela, 
 David el Roy, who claimed about the middle of the 
 twelfth century to be the Messiah, and who there- 
 upon stirred up the Jewish nation in the caliphat of 
 Bagdad, exercised magical powers by virtue of the 
 same rare knowledge. 
 
 According to the teachers of the Talmud, the re- 
 
 O ' 
 
 generation of man was due to the Eternal Word. 
 This was expounded to be, "God incarnate in the 
 Law, and continuing itself from age to age." Man 
 is degraded by the sin of Adam, but restored by this 
 Divine Essence, which permeates his heart and life, 
 which through him purifies and restores the world 
 and all creation. It makes man, by his own soul and 
 will, by his own conscience, the first and chief, nay, 
 almost the solitary instrument of his own regeneration. 
 How man may best facilitate the process is matter of 
 teaching, and the details of the teaching are to be 
 found in the works of the Jewish schoolmen. " The 
 doctrine," says one of the latest expositors of Hebrew 
 theology, "which most nearly represents the Jewish 
 machinery of regeneration, is that which is known in 
 Ecclesiastical history as Semi-Pelagianism which ad- 
 mits the infirmity, the sinfulness, of human nature, 
 but which also conceives it possible that man may 
 work out his own salvation." The redemption which 
 the Word effects, according to this author (Ben-amo- 
 zegh), is wholly internal. "The passion, the condem- 
 nation, the death, the garden of olives, the Praetorium, 
 and Golgotha. ;nv all internal, subjective facts, having
 
 CHANGES IN THE TEMPER OF JUDAISM. 49 
 
 for their theatre the spirit and heart of the man, where 
 the Word sacrifices itself perpetually for the benefit of 
 humanity, and on the altar which the man raises for 
 himself." Man, in short, is self-made the architect 
 of his spiritual, as well as of his temporal fortunes the 
 sufficient master of his own eternal destiny. This 
 seems like the teaching of Hegel, it is not far from the 
 teaching of the Gemara. 
 
 The Jew was encouraged in being profoundly 
 national. It is needless to adduce proofs of this fact, 
 or of the endurance of the sentiment. That the 
 national feeling was hardened by centuries of persecu- 
 tion is certain; that it has been weakened by the 
 development of toleration first, and of civil equality 
 afterwards, is no less manifest. That a few genera- 
 tions of justice will almost efface the characteristics of 
 Judaism, may be safely predicted from the conditions 
 of human nature. The effort which is now made to 
 prove that the peculiar tenets of Christianity had their 
 origin in the teaching of those Rabbis who flourished 
 in the Asmonean epoch, reveals a different spirit from 
 that contemptuous hatred which retorted scorn on the 
 savage persecutors of the Jewish creed. The com- 
 parative gentleness with which the Jewish theologian 
 of the nineteenth century treats the mission and teach- 
 ing of Christ is of another temper to that which 
 induced the Spanish Jew in the twelfth century to 
 speak of Jesus, in the phrase of the Talmud, as " that 
 man " as the disobedient prophet whom the lion 
 slew. The Israelite of our day finds abundant 
 authority in the writings of the Hebrew schoolmen 
 to warrant his assertion, that these sages taught the
 
 5() PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 equality and fraternity of mankind. But it should 
 be remembered that the reasonings of the teacher are 
 no evidence of the temper which inflamed the pupil, 
 still less of the passions and fears which occupied 
 rulers and people. The Rabban may be calm and 
 tolerant, while the chief priests and elders are rousing 
 the fury of an excitable populace. 
 
 As the religious life of the earlier Israelite was 
 complete without the tenet of the soul's immortality, 
 so it was satisfied with such felicity as can be obtained 
 by obedience to a moral law. The later apologist of 
 the Jewish creed, as contained in the traditions and 
 glosses of the Jewish schoolmen, may speak of human 
 life as the vestibule as the eve of the Divine Sabbath 
 as the time of labour as the now, while eternity is 
 designated as the time of retribution as to-morrow. 
 " One whole hour," say the same authorities, "of virtue 
 and repentance are worth more than all eternity for 
 eternity can give no more than the man brings to it, 
 and thus it is not without reason that Solomon said, 
 'a living dog is better than a dead lion." But the 
 eternity is itself a gloss on the text. It takes its sub- 
 stance from the life of the man, not its colour only. 
 It is a Paradise an Elysium a garden of divine 
 delights an eternity of the land of promise. There 
 have been ascetic Jews, as there have been proselytis- 
 ing Jews. But the tendency of the Jew is to be 
 intensely active in the material occupations of life 
 to be cosmopolitan in his treatment of secular business 
 to know no country, no patriotism, no allegiance- 
 nothing but obedience to the political institutions 
 under which he lives, and the value of which he
 
 THE TEMPER OF MODERN JUDAISM. 51 
 
 thoroughly comprehends. " Throw no stone/' says the 
 Jewish proverb, " into the well from which thou hast 
 drawn water "-implying that men should be respect- 
 ful to the society which shelters them. Israel, if it 
 be anything, is an imperium in imperio. When it 
 ceases to be an institution, it ceases to be a special 
 creed is dissolved into some one or the other of those 
 creeds which are either rigidly monotheistic and icon- 
 oclast, or which are developments of the monotheistic 
 tenet. If the time had been favourable to it had 
 any terms of compromise been found Judaism might 
 have been merged in some religion of antiquity, as it 
 is likely that it was deeply coloured by the mono- 
 theism of the Persian conquerors of Babylon, for the 
 prophet speaks of Cyrus as the Lord's shepherd as 
 His anointed, and Daniel, the hero of Ezekiel's pro- 
 phecy, is the chief of the magicians at Babylon. 
 
 The Jews of the first century held that a pagan 
 who confessed God, and kept the moral law, might 
 be saved ; that Socrates and Plato would be in 
 Paradise with Abraham, Isaac and Moses. Abraham, 
 they said, was the first-born of the promise, only 
 because he was the first proselyte. " I call heaven 
 and earth to witness," says a doctor of the Law, 
 "both man and woman, slave and free, Jew and 
 Pagan, it is only by the works of man, that the 
 Spirit descends on him." "Why," says another, "is 
 there only one race of man ? It is that no man 
 may say, My father and mother are greater than 
 thine." And, to prove that these words were not 
 without the confirmation of facts, we are informed, that 
 the teachers of Hillel and Schemaiah were proselytes,
 
 ;,i> PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 that one of the great and venerated doctors was 
 descended from Haman the Amalekite, another from 
 Sennacherib, and others from Sisera; the legend 
 typifying that Israel would not shut its doors to 
 those who were the offspring of the most hateful 
 names in Jewish history. Nor was this welcome 
 limited to strangers of illustrious learning and virtue. 
 The prophetic authority of Zephaniah was cited as a 
 proof that the final unity of mankind was part of the 
 counsels of God. 
 
 The Jew averred that the revelation of God in 
 the Law was complete. "'The Law/ indeed, w r as 
 not comprised in the Pentateuch only. This is the 
 code of the Jews, their civil, political, ritual code 
 a monument of vigorous and manly genius, a 
 system of which the exemplar is a characteristic, 
 indestructible nationality. This code is ennobled 
 and exalted by inspiration, it breathes with a moral, 
 spiritual, dogmatic vitality, which gives an intense 
 energy to all its details, but it is only a code." It 
 needs an interpreter. For a series of ages this 
 interpretation was found in the teaching of the 
 prophets, those sages whom God raised up in order 
 to declare His will, or to announce His judgments. 
 Sometimes these men, like Samuel, were brought 
 up within the very precincts of the tabernacle, and 
 lived daily within sight of the Shekinah. At 
 another time, the interpreter of the age, like a 
 Marabout or Dervish, appears suddenly from the 
 desert or the mountain, clad in the rough dress of 
 the Ishmaelite, and denounces the apostate king, 
 or faithless people, scorching them with the wrath
 
 THE JEWISH PROPHET. 53 
 
 of God, and zealous even to slaying. Another is 
 the wise counsellor, the polished courtier, but one 
 who never forgets his mission from the Almighty ; 
 who ejects a perfidious, idolatrous, murderous dynasty, 
 substitutes a more obedient family in its room, and 
 then counsels, warns, strengthens the monarch as 
 Elisha does. Later on, the prophet is a still more 
 important personage. He is called by no succession 
 or ordination, but by the voice of God, by the Word 
 of the Lord, by some inward warning, or in some 
 ecstatic vision. He is a scion of the royal house, 
 as Isaiah ; or a herdsman, as Amos ; or a priest, 
 as Jeremiah whose statesmanship was unavailing to 
 save the falling throne of David against the head- 
 strong king, and his more headstrong nobles ; or 
 another priest, as Ezekiel, the captive in the land of 
 the Chaldeans ; or the comforter of a ruined nation, 
 who assures them of God's sure though tardy ven- 
 geance on the enemies of Israel. He is sent in- 
 differently to the revolted house of Joseph, or to 
 the faithful tribe of Judah. His mission is to awaken 
 the conscience, to purify the heart, to call back the 
 people to the God of their fathers, whom they 
 have forsaken in word and thought. 
 
 The nearest parallel to the Jewish prophet is to be 
 found in those reformers who have set themselves to 
 the task of turning, in some age of spiritual deadness, 
 the hearts of erring children to the purer religion of 
 their fathers. Such were Basil and Benedict, Francis 
 and Dominic, Wiklif, Luther, Loyola, Wesley men 
 whom their own generation has intensely loved, and 
 intensely hated, but who have assuredly stirred
 
 54 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 humanity from its very depths, who have effected 
 permanent revivals. In one particular, however, these 
 men differed notably from the Jewish prophets. They 
 were ecclesiastics, not statesmen. They founded sects. 
 They reformed the religion of their day, but they 
 created an organisation by which they fondly hoped 
 that their spirit would live, their work be continued. 
 But in the prophetic age, there was no place for a 
 sect. The Jewish creed had few dogmas : it may be 
 said to have had only one, I am the Lord your God. 
 The discipline of Jewish society was the perpetual 
 interpretation of the letter by the spirit, in case the 
 Law was perverted to unrighteous ends ; or more 
 frequently the warning of the Almighty Word, the 
 chastisement of the Almighty judgment on public 
 and private sins. But it is impossible to found a 
 sect except by dogmas, impossible to maintain one 
 without a permanently organised discipline. 
 
 The open vision passed away. The Jews of the 
 restoration entrenched themselves in sacerdotalism. 
 They exacted evidence of pure descent from all those 
 who were to partake of the privilege of Israel. We 
 are informed that this strictness led to the extensive 
 forgery of pedigrees. They refused alliance with the 
 Samaritans, and created a perpetual schism between 
 themselves and their own kindred. They read that the 
 Ammonite and Moabite should not come within the 
 congregation for ever, and the Jews of Nehemiah's 
 age expelled the children of mixed marriages from 
 the nation. This rigorous nationalist forgot the per- 
 mission which the great lawgiver gave that the settlers 
 in the Promised Land might marry the women of
 
 THE JE WISH RA EEL o 5 
 
 the country, and that the prince of the house of Judah 
 was wedded to Rahab of Jericho. Nay, was there 
 not one woman, whose gentleness and love have made 
 her for generations the type of perfect womanhood, 
 and was not she a daughter of the accursed Moab, 
 of the race which hired Balaam, and which made 
 Israel to sin? And yet was not this woman also 
 married to the chief of the house of Judah, and did 
 she not become the ancestress of David ? 
 
 The Rabbi became the successor of the prophet. 
 It is probable that the school of this teacher was 
 formed on the model of those academies in which the 
 sages of Greece instructed their pupils. It was in 
 such a school that the youthful Jesus was found, 
 engaged in questioning the master, and answering those 
 queries which the master put to his disciples. Such 
 questions and answers, such sayings of the teacher, 
 were handed down orally, and gathered at last into 
 those commentaries which are known as Talmud, or 
 Gemara, or Kabbala. They formed that vast body 
 of tradition out of which the Scribe and the Pharisee 
 obtained their skill in casuistry, sometimes indeed 
 using their knowledge to fortify the true interpretation 
 of the Law, often as a power by which they might 
 rule and oppress their fellows. 
 
 There was, therefore, a continual commentary on 
 the Law, which professed to be a revelation of its 
 meaning. The Jew declared that this revelation was 
 complete. The Christian declared that it was imper- 
 fect, or at best could only be interpreted by the 
 commentary of the Gospel. The gist of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews is that the Son of God has revealed
 
 50 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 that which was unknown, has interpreted that which 
 was obscure, has fulfilled that which was inchoate. 
 The founder of Christianity asserts the high prophetic 
 gifts of the Baptist, but puts him below the least in 
 the kingdom of Heaven. "The Law," says the great 
 Apostle, "was our schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ." 
 It dealt with the age of childhood : the Christian has 
 
 o 
 
 come to the stature of a full-grown man. 
 
 While the Christian claimed a full revelation, com- 
 pared with which the light of Sinai was dim, and the 
 utterance of the prophet faltering, the wild tlieogony 
 of the Gnostics accepted the earlier revelation as 
 complete, but asserted the development of the Divine 
 Nature itself. They held, we are told, that the God of 
 the Jews was an imperfect essence, both in his moral 
 and spiritual nature, and that, his function over, he 
 was succeeded by a greater, holier, and more powerful 
 Being. It seems that this dreamy succession of 
 supernatural existences was developed from the bosom 
 of Judaism, if, as is commonly reported, Gnosticism 
 has Simon of Samaria for its founder. It is supposed 
 by most persons that it is to these transcendental 
 genealogies of the Gnostics that St. Paul refers in his 
 First Epistle to Timothy, and it is alleged that such an 
 allusion casts a doubt on the authenticity of the epistle. 
 The objection does not, for many reasons, seem valid. 
 M. Asher, the editor and commentator on Benjamin 
 of Tudela, understands these genealogies to be the 
 pedigrees which were forged after the captivity, 
 which are, he adds, to be found in the book of Chroni- 
 cles, and which were as apocryphal and silly as their 
 modern equivalents. If this interpretation be correct,
 
 THE JEWISH REVELATION IMPERFECT. 57 
 
 the Apostle is urging his disciple to discourage the 
 vanity of the Jewish converts at Ephesus, and thus 
 is reaffirming the necessity for repudiating every 
 tendency towards distinctive Judaism in a Christian 
 church. 
 
 The Christianity of the Apostolic age ran a double 
 danger from Judaism. It had to withstand the furious 
 animosity of those who regarded Christ as a deceiver, 
 and His apostles as the emissaries of a pernicious and 
 unpatriotic sect. It had also to resist the still more 
 dangerous intrigues of those who insisted on con- 
 formity to the Jewish ritual as a condition of member- 
 ship in the new Church, who would have made the 
 Jerusalem which is above, and which is the mother of 
 all Christian men, a mere cramped and narrow 
 faubourg in the metropolis of Judaism. The bitter- 
 ness of the former could find no stronger language of 
 hatred than the words which the Jews addressed to 
 Christ : "Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan and 
 hast a devil ?" combining in the charge the intensest 
 feelings of political and polemical rancour. The ped- 
 antry of the latter is the first example of that spirit 
 which has perpetually vexed Christianity, in its attempt 
 to coerce conscience by a rigid and implacable dogma- 
 tism. " Except ye be circumcised and keep the law 
 of Moses, ye cannot be saved." This is the first of 
 these anathemas by which men have tried to fetter 
 Christianity. Perhaps our own age has said the 
 last. 
 
 It has been said that in the administration of secular 
 business, the majority should rule, the minority should 
 influence. But they who are concerned with such
 
 58 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 business, are much more ready to affirm the former 
 position than they are to allow the latter. In our own 
 country, people very often attempt to coerce the 
 minority by calumniating its objects, and one of the 
 commonest words used for this purpose is the term 
 unenglish. Now, the nationalist party among the 
 Jews might have called the converts unjewish. Heated 
 by a narrow patriotism, they were ready to join the 
 cry of the depraved rabble in the heathen cities, and 
 stigmatise the Christian as the enemy of the human 
 race, because his sympathies were comprehensive. 
 Now, we need not be told that religious animosities 
 are inconceivably more bitter than political differences 
 are. Men who will tolerate one whom they call a 
 partisan, are implacable towards another whom they 
 are pleased to name a schismatic or a heretic. The 
 modern Jew denies that he ever entertains, or that his 
 race has ever entertained, religious enmities. The 
 history of Paul's travels is abundant proof to the 
 contrary. And yet Paul always abstains from that 
 topic which invariably irritated the Jews to frenzy, the 
 charge, namely, that they had repudiated the teaching, 
 and murdered the person of Christ. They hear him 
 till he speaks of his mission to the Gentiles. He 
 has only to avow this as the business of his life, and 
 they strive to tear him in pieces, conspire to assassinate 
 him. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the teaching of Chris- 
 tianity ignores patriotism. It ignores it, however, 
 only because patriotism is transient, is inferior to 
 the large purposes which can be obtained by evan- 
 gelising a federal humanity. The State is superior
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIOTISM. 59 
 
 to the family, and asserts its claim to break up all 
 domestic ties in view of the public good, for it 
 sacrifices the father in the citizen. But it does 
 not, except under this constraint, disparage the 
 family ; on the contrary, it cherishes and encourages 
 the love of home. And, similarly, the claims of a 
 federal humanity are stronger than those of patriotism, 
 and, as civilisation advances, the latter will be sacri- 
 ficed if it clashes with the former. Patriotism is 
 encouraged only as the school of a higher life. And, 
 it should be remembered, that if patriotism has given 
 magnificent examples of self-sacrifice, of heroic de- 
 votion, of ardent courage, of noble enterprise, these 
 very qualities have been called out because a spurious 
 loyalty has armed the oppressor with the power which 
 a true patriotism has sometimes successfully defied. 
 But where, alas, could the preacher of the apostolic age 
 find the material for patriotic impulse in the hopeless 
 slavery of the Roman Empire. He is turned, per- 
 force, to the civitas Dei. He does not, indeed, forget 
 to prescribe the conduct of a pure and happy home. 
 Between that and the spiritual kingdom there was 
 a desert. If the Lord had not shortened those days, 
 no flesh should be saved. 
 
 The sacrifice of life, of home, of father and mother, 
 of husband, of wife, of child, is demanded only as 
 an alternative to the desertion of God. The State 
 claims all these possessions, if its own being is im- 
 perilled, often if its own pride is wounded, its 
 ambition is unsated. And can God, whom all 
 religion recognises as the Author of all benefits, 
 claim less than the exigencies of human society
 
 60 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 demand from its citizens? Is loyalty due to king, 
 race, country ; is political unity a boon for which no 
 sacrifice is too costly ; and is no hearty allegiance due 
 to the Father of heaven and earth; is the maintenance 
 of a universal gospel worth no sacrifice from those 
 who profess to be the city of the Great King? 
 The closer, the tenderer, the more affectionate are 
 the relations which religion affirms to exist between 
 man and his Maker, the more earnest must needs be 
 the devotion of the former to the latter. It is the 
 Paternity of God which is foreshadowed in the Old 
 Testament, but which thoroughly permeates the New. 
 The hostility which the Jews of the apostolic age 
 entertained towards the Church, was akin to that 
 which the Jew of Palestine bore to the Samaritan. 
 The enmity which men are apt to feel towards those 
 who swerve from some particulars of the faith, is 
 far bitterer than that which they cherish against 
 unbelievers. We have daily experience of such a 
 temper among sectaries. And it is clear, notwith- 
 standing the general affirmation of the Jewish doctors, 
 that there is not, and must not be, an eternity of 
 punishment, that the Christian reformation is glanced 
 at in the statement, that "he who profanes holy things, 
 who despises solemnities, who annuls our alliance 
 with Abraham our father, who gives to the law a 
 sense contrary to the true, who puts his neighbour 
 to the blush in public will have no place in the 
 world to come." The zeal of Saul was shared by 
 other zealots. High Priest and Council, Sadducee 
 and Pharisee, were of one accord in the cry, "Away 
 with such a fellow from the earth."
 
 JEWISH OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. 61 
 
 Still more dangerous, however, was the narrow 
 conscience of the converted Jew. To him the ritual 
 and discipline of Moses were the unalterable will of 
 the Almighty. Departure from the covenant in- 
 volved the terrible doom of anathema from his 
 people, obedience to it was the peremptory condition 
 of the Divine blessing and favour. Was it not 
 written, that Moses, speaking by the power of God, 
 warned Israel to obedience ; and did he not utter, 
 on those who disobeyed the statutes and command- 
 ments of the Law, those terrible curses which are 
 found in the last revelations of the Pentateuch. 
 Had it not been by disobedience that Israel was 
 scattered, impoverished, humiliated, enslaved ? Had 
 he not preserved his national existence by the 
 righteousness of some, by the remnant which saved 
 the race from becoming as Sodom and as Gomorrha ? 
 Do not Law, chronicle, prophet, confirm this obli- 
 gation ; is not Jewish history a continual consolation 
 to the faithful, a fearful warning to those who forget 
 God ? Christ came to fulfil the Law : He expressly 
 stated that He was not here to destroy it. Can 
 you, who were with Him from the beginning, who 
 are witnesses of His life, His death, His resurrec- 
 tion, who had been appointed to this office by the 
 Wisdom of God, by Him who knew whom He 
 had chosen can you recall any saying of His in 
 which He revoked the law of Moses? For ages 
 that law has made us a peculiar people, by it we 
 have resisted an idolatrous world, through it we 
 have known and worshipped the God of our fathers 
 can we abandon it now ? How can we be one
 
 G2 PAUL OF TARSUS, 
 
 fold, under one shepherd, except by one obedience ? 
 How can the Gentiles be raised up as children to 
 Abraham, except they keep the covenant which was 
 once delivered to the father of them who are faithful ? 
 In something like this fashion, they who came down 
 from Jerusalem must have argued at Antioch and 
 Ephesus, in Galatia and in Crete, even after Peter 
 had given his healing counsel, Paul had narrated 
 the success of his mission, and James had uttered 
 the terms of the compromise which the apostolic 
 college proposed and authorised. 
 
 Even if the ancient Law had not been revealed 
 with so much solemnity, supported by such sanctions, 
 confirmed by such examples, enforced by such warnings, 
 
 had it not made a nation illustrious, a page in the 
 world's history luminous and real, had it not twined 
 itself so closely round the heart and brain of the Jew, 
 
 the mere habit of obedience to its precepts would 
 have given it sanctity and majesty in the eyes 
 of those who had followed it. To us, at this 
 distance of time, it may seem strange that the 
 Jewish ritual should have had such an overwhelming 
 influence over the Jewish Christian; that he should 
 not have eagerly embraced relief from observances 
 which his forefathers could not bear, and which he 
 had found oppressively onerous. But a little reflec- 
 tion will remind us of the tenacity with which 
 men cling to forms, guarantees, rites, obligations, 
 the origin and continuance of which are far less sug- 
 gestive and intelligible than the unexpanded ritu.al 
 of Moses, which are as oppressive and unsatisfying 
 as the grievous burdens with which the Pharisees
 
 JUDAISM REP UDIA TED BY PA UL. 63 
 
 loaded men's shoulders, and which they made neces- 
 sary to the Jewish salvation. 
 
 But whatever may have been the attachment which 
 the converted Jew felt towards the code of Moses, it 
 was imperatively necessary that the Gentile convert 
 should be freed from them. Even had he not resented 
 the interference with his own mission, had he not been 
 indignant at an attempt to reconstruct the foundation 
 of his gospel, had he not been stirred to denounce 
 those, as he does over and over again, who were 
 designedly creating schisms in the Christian community, 
 Paul was too acute and farsighted a man not to discern 
 that the mission of Christ would be annulled, that 
 Christ would profit the convert nothing, that He 
 would be of no effect to mankind, if men suffered them- 
 selves to submit to the bondage of Judaism. There 
 was an immediate advantage in the conversion. This 
 was the avoidance of persecution. If the Jewish 
 Christian could induce the Gentile proselyte to submit 
 to the covenant, the hostility of the unconverted Jew 
 would be disarmed. This, as we know, was the opinion 
 of the apostolic college at Jerusalem, who persuaded 
 Paul to go through certain marked observances on the 
 occasion of his last visit to Jerusalem. In the eyes 
 of the great missionary they were of no importance. 
 It was his habit to gain men's hearts, or to disa- 
 buse their suspicions. If his concession involved no 
 sacrifice of principle, he was ready to conciliate Jew 
 and Greek in non-essentials. 
 
 Had the Christian converts allowed themselves to 
 submit, it is not difficult to see the consequences. The 
 Jews would have had, could have had, no permanent
 
 64 PAUL OF TARSUS, 
 
 difficulty in allowing the prophetic mission of Christ, 
 and in permitting the formation of a sect which should 
 see in Him the greatest of the prophets, the Son of 
 God. Could they only have secured the perpetual 
 supremacy of the Mosaic ordinances, they would have 
 willingly acquiesced in the formation of a school which 
 should accept, affirm, propagate the tenets of the 
 Nazarene prophet. They would not have been greatly 
 offended had this school anathematised its rivals, or 
 extinguished them, any more than the head of Roman 
 unity was alarmed at the feud between the Dominicans 
 and Franciscans, or at that between the Minorite friars 
 and the endowed orders. Unanimity was not, is not 
 to be expected in the spiritual any more than in the 
 material life, but uniformity may be demanded and 
 must be insisted on. The question was ; Shall Christ- 
 ianity be lost in Judaism, or shall it assert its supre- 
 macy over the older covenant, by boldly claiming to be 
 the successor of a defunct organisation ? 
 
 Familiarity with Jewish observances endeared them 
 to the Jewish converts. But the acceptance of a 
 peculiar and ineffaceable sign, the fact of which 
 became especially notorious to the habits of ancient 
 civilisation, the obedience to a number of exact pre- 
 cautions against ceremonial defilement, which com- 
 pelled the Jews to live apart from the nations with 
 whom they sojourned, were conditions of church 
 membership which were intolerably distasteful to 
 the Gentiles. They were told that Christianity 
 was a law of liberty, a religion, the acceptance of 
 which, forthwith, worked an instant purification from 
 any taint which adhered to human nature, was a
 
 JEWISH RITES OFFENSIVE TO GENTILES. 65 
 
 salvation by Grace, and they were invited, nay, 
 constrained by the threat of perdition, to submit 
 to these strange rites. There were portions of the 
 Jewish law which they could willingly adopt. " The 
 habit," says Josephus, in his Apology for his nation 
 against the malignant calumnies of Apion, "of imi- 
 tating many among the rites of Jewish worship is 
 general. There is no city of Greeks or barbarians 
 no race of mankind which is unfamiliar with the 
 custom of keeping the Sabbath, of resting on that 
 sacred day. There is none where certain of our rites 
 are not observed as fastings, the burning of lamps, 
 and the avoidance of much that our law forbids. 
 They affect," he adds, "to imitate our concord and 
 liberality, our industry in the arts, our heroic resolu- 
 tion to die rather than abandon our law." The Jews 
 did not establish an active propaganda, at least in the 
 capital. They knew the danger of attracting noble 
 converts. In the nineteenth year of our era, the 
 conversion of Fulvia, wife of Saturninus, to Judaism, 
 by the endeavours of some enthusiast, who persuaded 
 his neophyte to send a great present to Jerusalem 
 under the name of first-fruits, and who was charged 
 with the intention of appropriating the offering to his 
 own use, provoked a dangerous re-action from the 
 toleration, and even favour with which Augustus had 
 treated the nation. Four thousand of these Jews, 
 say Josephus and Tacitus, were transported to Sar- 
 dinia. The latter adds, that if the unwholesomeness 
 of the island was fatal to them, it would be a cheap 
 loss. Adherence to the tenets of Judaism, therefore, 
 on the part of such converts as were of Gentile origin,
 
 66 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 though it might check the hostility of the synagogue 
 and the Sanhedrim, would provoke the animosity 
 of the praetorium and the senate. The yoke was 
 intolerable, the obligation superfluous, the maintenance 
 of the ritual obstructive and dangerous. 
 
 The most superficial study of the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles teaches us that this controversy was the earliest 
 and the latest of which that narrative takes cogniz- 
 ance. The struggle commences with the mission of 
 Peter to Cornelius, and the suspicion with which 
 the chief apostle is treated a suspicion which is 
 disarmed only by the authority of a special revela- 
 tion, and of a miracle, and by the testimony of the 
 brethren who accompanied Peter in his journey 
 from Joppa to Csesarea. How it harassed the 
 life of Paul is well known. It was the subject 
 of long and anxious debate before the A.postolic 
 college. It led to the arrest and imprisonment of 
 Paul Even when he came a prisoner to Rome, he 
 instantly anticipates that this unsettled question will 
 follow him thither. He finds the Jewish residents 
 ignorant of any specific charge against him perhaps 
 because the bitterness with which he was assailed had 
 been assuaged by his captivity. The men of Judea 
 send no complaint. But elsewhere, everywhere his 
 preaching is spoken against. Almost the last fact in 
 this historic book of the New Testament is the declar- 
 ation that the salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles, 
 and that they are to hear it. 
 
 The attitude which Paul took in this question is, at 
 first sight, ambiguous. It appears, though the lan- 
 guage used is not perfectly clear, that the Apostle gave
 
 PAUL'S CONCESSIONS TO JUDAISM. G7 
 
 way in the case of Titus, not from compulsion, but for 
 the sake of peace. It is known that he spontaneously 
 put this discipline on Timothy. It may be that when 
 he sought, in the case of any among his disciples 
 whom he wished to employ as missionaries, the autho- 
 rity or licence of the Apostolic synod, he conceded 
 the point. It was his avowed principle to conciliate 
 men by a concession in non-essentials. Christianity 
 was a new creation the ceremonial characteristics, 
 the observances of Judaism, were nugatory, antiquated, 
 superfluous. Only, if some of the brethren still cher- 
 ished them, he could not fight for trifles. To resist 
 would stir up bitterness, and might prolong the exis- 
 tence of a sentiment which time would weaken, and 
 finally extinguish. 
 
 But the case was very different when an attempt 
 was made to exalt this sentiment into a rule of 
 Christian life, as a condition precedent to salvation. 
 The emissaries of the narrower school had intruded 
 on his special province, had raised the cry of Jesus, 
 not Paul, in the place where Paul had laboured, 
 had taught another gospel, had questioned the author- 
 ity of the Apostle's mission, had insinuated doubts 
 of his orthodoxy. Nor had this attempt been un- 
 successful. It had produced dissensions in Corinth. 
 It had thoroughly disorganised the Galatians, a 
 people of European origin, but who had been settled 
 in the interior of Asia Minor for three centuries. 
 This nation had once been the scourge of Asia, but 
 had latterly become peaceful. Up to the fifth 
 century after Christ, the country folk of Galatia 
 still spoke with the Celtic tongue of their forefathers.
 
 68 PA VL OF TARSUS. 
 
 The people in the towns knew Greek, but were pro- 
 bably bilingual. 
 
 These Asiatic Celts possessed the peculiarities of 
 their race. They had strong religious feelings, and 
 high conceptions of moral purity, great quickness of 
 apprehension, keen affections, loyal natures. The 
 higher qualities of the Galatian race are illustrated 
 by the story of Chiomara, with whom Polybius 
 had conversed. She had been taken captive by a 
 Roman, and had been made to endure the last insult 
 by her captor. She was ransomed, but contrived, 
 like Judith, to bring back to her husband the head 
 of her ravisher, in proof of her conjugal fidelity and 
 courage, of her unpolluted and heroic chastity. 
 
 But, as these Galatians readily gave in to one 
 set of religious impressions, so they as readily per- 
 mitted their first impressions to be supplanted by 
 others. They accepted the Apostle's teaching with 
 warmth, as he preached to them during his intervals 
 of sickness. And now, with the fickleness of tender 
 and religious natures, they were terrified by the 
 denunciations of these teachers of the narrow school, 
 and were almost disposed to submit themselves 
 to the despotism of the Law. They had given 
 way in some points, had already consented to observe 
 the ceremonial seasons of the Jewish calendar, were 
 on the brink of sacrificing themselves irrevocably to 
 the claims of the Jewish covenant. 
 
 To this emergency the Apostle addresses himself 
 without hesitation. It is the occasion for a supreme 
 effort. Unless he succeeds in crushing this apostacy, 
 his mission is annihilated, his labours are vain, his
 
 PAUL AND THE GALATIANS. 69 
 
 gospel is repudiated. So he wrote to the Galatians 
 a letter which has had a more powerful effect on u 
 the religious history of mankind than any other com- 
 position which was ever penned, any other words which 
 were ever spoken. It severed, conclusively, though not 
 at once, Christianity from Judaism; it declared the old 
 revelation imperfect, and transitory. It even pointed 
 to a covenant older than that of Moses, older than 
 any rite by which God had distinguished the objects of 
 His promise. This manifesto was a final and deliberate 
 schism, an act as defiant as the Confession of Augsburg, 
 and vastly more complete. At this distance of time, 
 when the din of the first theological fight has long 
 since been hushed, it is not easy to estimate the 
 extraordinary boldness of this sally. Though written 
 to the Galatians, it was probably published and dis- 
 seminated with great rapidity through the various 
 Christian communities. St. Peter, or whoever else 
 was the author of the second epistle which goes 
 under his name, might well say that there were 
 things hard to be understood in his fellow apostle's 
 writings. The hardest thing of all, however, was 
 to find an answer to the question which was put 
 over and over again by the contemporaries of the 
 Apostle, How can a man who is a Jew, who is trained 
 in the Law, who has profited much, as he says, in 
 the religion of his fathers, utterly reject the authority 
 of Moses, repudiate the code in which every Israelite 
 glories, can believe in Jesus, live for Him and be 
 ready to suffer and die for Him, and escape from 
 the fatal doctrine that a new religion can supersede 
 or render superfluous the foundation on which that
 
 70 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 religion is built. It is probable that the persons 
 alluded to in the last chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Romans, were carrying on, in the church which 
 Paul had not, indeed, founded, but which apparently 
 owed its origin to Aquila, the same interested 
 hostility to that liberal teaching which characterised 
 the Pauline gospel. The " Romans " must have 
 contained a strong Jewish element, else it is unin- 
 telligible that the Apostle should have, in this par- 
 ticular epistle, argued so copiously from the Old 
 Testament Scriptures more than half his quotations 
 being: found in this single letter. But, it is also 
 
 O cj 
 
 plain, from the recital of heathen practice and from 
 the reflections made on heathen morals, that the 
 Church of Rome contained, at the date of this epistle, 
 a strong admixture of Gentile converts ; and, it is 
 further plain, that the opinion boldly avowed in the 
 Epistle to the Galatians, to the effect that Mosaism 
 is superseded by Christianity, is strongly before the 
 writer of the letter to the Romans. 
 
 " I give you my advice," he says, " to take note of 
 these men who are making divisions and stumbling- 
 blocks, in contravention of the instruction in which 
 you have been trained. Keep out of their way. 
 Those people are no servants to our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 but to their own belly, and it is by their fair speeches 
 and plausibility that they deceive the hearts of the 
 unsuspicious." The teachers of a narrow theology 
 were fomenting differences under the pretext of a 
 spurious uniformity. 
 
 It is almost unnecessary to say that the Paulino 
 Ethics are as stern and strict as those of any moral
 
 PA UL'S SECESSION. 71 
 
 system which has ever been promulgated. The 
 liberty on which he insisted was no cover, no apology, 
 no defence for licence, for those wild and profligate 
 excesses which the fanatic's faith has sometimes 
 permitted. The extravagances of the Adamites, of 
 the Cathari, of the Anabaptists, have been quoted 
 as a reproach on the genius of Christianity. In 
 reality they are homage to it. The claim of Christ- 
 ianity on the allegiance of men has been so strong, 
 that they who have repudiated its spirit have affected 
 to call themselves by its name. The Israelites often 
 fell into that idolatry which the Law denounced, 
 chastised, condemned. But there is no reason to 
 think that they forgot their nationality in their 
 offence. 
 
 The victory which Paul foreshadowed was not 
 achieved in his life-time. In the latest of his epistles, 
 if the second to Timothy is from his hand, and no 
 sufficient objection has, it seems to me, been alleged 
 against its authenticity, his mind is still full of 
 Antioch, Iconiuin, Lystra, and of the perils which he 
 endured in these places. All those who were in Asia 
 were alienated from him, even the converts whom he 
 had made, for whom he had laboured, for whose sake 
 he was in prison at Home. Knaves and charlatans, 
 as he asserts, the grievous wolves whose mischievous 
 activity he predicted so sadly at Miletus, were doing 
 their w r orst on the Christian flock, urging them to 
 quit that liberty to which he had called them, and to 
 adopt those ascetic fancies which would again bind 
 them to Jewish practices. 
 
 It has been suggested that the epistles ascribed to
 
 72 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 James and Jude are attacks on the Pauline theology ; 
 that in the Apocalypse the allusions to the Nicolai- 
 tanes, in the message to the churches of Ephesus and 
 Pergamos ; the condemnation of those who say they are 
 Jews and are not, in the churches of Ephesus and 
 Philadelphia, and who are branded with the name of 
 the synagogue of Satan, are reproaches cast on the 
 followers of the Apostle of the Gentiles. The same 
 criticism discovers in the prophetess whom the writer 
 calls Jezebel, and who is expressly said to have seduced 
 Christians to idolatry, and induced them to eat things 
 offered to idols, one of those female teachers who, like 
 Lydia, Priscilla and many others, accepted and fur- 
 thered the gospel of the Apostle. They who cannot or 
 will not accept this interpretation, may yet discern in 
 these vehement denunciations that the writer of the 
 Apocalypse detected laxity of life and doctrine in 
 churches whose characteristic practices had become a 
 monstrous caricature of the freedom which Paul 
 claimed for his converts. 
 
 Thus much at least is plain. The influence of the 
 ascetic party was so strong, that although the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem loosened the grasp of Judaism on 
 the Church, the tenets of the Egyptian Therapeutse, 
 and of the Syrian Essenes, offshoots of Judaism, or 
 more probably of that Buddhism which, as we learn 
 from the Mahawanso, and the inscriptions which 
 Cunningham has interpreted, was preached extensively 
 in Western Asia, and Northern Africa, in the third 
 century before Christ, encouraged that gloomy aus- 
 terity which was so characteristic of early Christianity, 
 especially in its Southern and Eastern home. Of this
 
 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 73 
 
 temper Justin Martyr and Tertullian are types. It 
 was in the western world that the genius of Paul was 
 acknowledged and his gospel was adopted, for the 
 western Church detected the polemical value of the 
 Pauline writings when it began its struggle with the 
 Gnostics. 
 
 There is an epistle addressed, it is said, to the 
 Hebrews, which popularly goes under the name of 
 Paul. No one, however, who is possessed of the ]/ 
 critical faculty in its most rudimentary degree, can 
 fail to recognise that the writing is none of his. The 
 style of this pastoral is that of grave, easy argumenta- 
 tion, and differs totally from the abrupt, involved, 
 and hyperbolic manner which characterises the Pauline 
 compositions. The language used is almost another 
 dialect from that which the Apostle employed. The 
 matter is an ingenious analogy between the ceremonial 
 of the Jewish law, and the office of Christ as the 
 Great Sacrifice. It might have been written by an 
 Alexandrian Jew, who allegorised in a Christian 
 spirit, by a converted Philo. The weight of tradition 
 assigns its authorship to Apollos. Even in an early " v 
 and uncritical age, it was seen that it did not proceed 
 from Paul. 
 
 The epistle was probably written after the Apostle's 
 death. The writer informs his readers that Timothy 
 is set at liberty, and that they purpose in a short 
 time to visit those to whom the letter was addressed. 
 No name but that of Timothy is found in the letter. 
 The salutation from those of Italy seems to indicate 
 that it was written from some town in that part of 
 the Roman empire. But the writer gives no clue to
 
 74 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 his personality. It is likely that Timothy had obeyed 
 the summons of Paul, and had shared his imprison- 
 ment, but that he had been liberated during the 
 period which followed on the death of Nero, an 
 occurrence which took place about a month after the 
 reputed date of the Apostle's martyrdom. It may 
 be added that the epistle contains fuller indications 
 of a system of church government than any of the 
 Pauline letters do, the teachers being twice bidden in 
 the last chapter to remember and obey those who 
 have the rule over them, an expression which easily 
 squares with the government of the Church at Jeru- 
 salem, and of those which were founded on its model. 
 But again, it would seem to be written before the 
 investment and capture of Jerusalem, for we can 
 hardly conceive that any letter would be composed 
 during that crisis of the nation's agony, and be wholly 
 silent on so terrible a 'subject. 
 
 No better defence could be found for the Jewish 
 ordinal than the successful proof that it was a sym- 
 bolical and prophetic ceremonial ; and with those who 
 held that the substance was given at last in Christ, 
 no better method could be found for concluding that 
 the necessity of the shadow was past. The excuse 
 for a ritual consists in the position that the ceremony 
 or rite presents a distant fact, or a transcendental 
 force under the economy of some visible or sensible 
 sign. Before the mind of the writer of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, the priesthood and the sacrifice, the 
 censer and the ark, the cherubim and the sanctuary, 
 were the parts of a grand historical procession, the 
 continuity of which was intended to be a perpetual
 
 THE COVENANT AND THE GOSPEL. 75 
 
 reminder of some final consummation in which these 
 appointed symbols and shadows would be fulfilled and 
 absorbed. Far away in the dim antiquity, was 
 remembered the majestic figure of the king of Salem, 
 to whom Abraham, the father of the faithful, the 
 conqueror of the four kings of Canaan, did homage 
 and gave tithes, the king of peace, the king of 
 righteousness, who, in those primeval times, united 
 the functions of priest and monarch. This great 
 memory was powerfully impressed on the mind of 
 the Psalmist, who contemplates an eternal priesthood 
 after the similitude of Melchisedek, the mysterious 
 hierarch of whom no father or mother is recorded, no 
 genealogy given, who appears in the midst of an 
 idolatrous and licentious people, and disappears after 
 he has blessed the great patriarch. Who can this 
 be, implies the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 unless some heavenly visitant, like them who con- 
 versed with Abraham at the door of the tent of 
 Mamre, him who wrestled with Israel, and whose name 
 was sacred, him who appeared with a drawn sword by 
 the wall of Jericho as captain of the Lord's host; who, 
 in short, but the eternal Son of God ? Here is the 
 perfect, the perpetual priest, who has not only entered 
 into the holiest place before the vision of God, but 
 has invited those who believe on Him to behold the 
 same glory. 
 
 And then, to show that an unchanging purpose 
 shapes the counsel of God throughout, the writer of 
 this epistle enumerates the victories of faith under the 
 older covenants, from the days of Abel to that army 
 of witnesses whose exploits and endurance are told in
 
 76 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 so fervid a strain of passionate eloquence, as the 
 memory of those ancient heroes passed before the 
 mind of the enraptured allegorist. Nothing is more 
 consummate than the art of this passage, for, while 
 it keeps present the fact that the coming of Christ 
 is the abrogation of the imperfect symbol, it consoles 
 the Jewish believer with the glories of his race, and 
 suggests greater triumphs, under the reign of the 
 King and Priest whose throne endures for ever in 
 heaven. 
 
 The law of Christ and the law of Moses are one, 
 only the former is more exact and absorbing than the 
 latter. To do despite to the former is a capital 
 offence ; to scorn the latter, and its great sanctions, is 
 to invite an angrier judgment a speedier wrath. To 
 apostatise from this more perfect law, is to repudiate 
 the place of repentance to sin like Esau to fall into 
 the hands of the living God to draw back unto per- 
 dition to provoke a consuming fire. But to them 
 that believe, Sinai has lost its terrors ; and in place of 
 the mountain from which the Law proceeded, there is 
 the pleasant prospect of the divine Zion the city of 
 God the Jerusalem of heaven, as the prophet Eze- 
 kiel foresaw it in vision the Sabaoth of angels the 
 Church of the eternal First-born, of the Divine Judge, 
 of the perfected spirits of the just.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 As races have come to nought, have been ruined or 
 destroyed, as regions, which were once the gardens 
 of the earth, have become deserts, so theologies have 
 become extinct. Three of the most notable among 
 these forms, whose antiquity is extremely remote, and 
 which existed when Christianity began its career, still 
 survive. These are the creed of the Jews, that of 
 Brahmanism, and that of Buddhism. The last, which 
 is, nominally at least, the most widely embraced of 
 all faiths, is said to be nearly six centuries older than 
 our era. 
 
 Again, some religious systems have utterly perished. 
 No trace survives of the theosophy and ceremonial 
 of Greece, Home, Egypt, Phoenicia. Zeus, Jupiter, 
 Apollo, Phoebus, Athene, Minerva, the myriad divini- 
 ties of the Greek and Roman Olympus, are as extinct 
 as the most remote geological fauna. So with Isis 
 and Osiris, Anubis and Thoth, and the infinite series 
 of Egyptian Gods. The Theogony of Phoenicia, 
 Dagon, Ashtaroth, Baal, have become mere names, the 
 memorials of which have perished with them.
 
 78 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 Some have survived, but are wasted into extreme 
 feebleness. The ancient religion of Zoroaster is said 
 to exist in the Parsee colony of Bombay, among the 
 scanty and expatriated relics of a race which was 
 formerly great and victorious. The Druses and Yez- 
 idis are the representatives of some ancient Gnostic 
 religion, once probably as wide-spread as any of the 
 Eastern beliefs. The few Israelite sectaries who still 
 linger at Nablous, are the remains of that Samaritan 
 schism which began with the revolt of Jeroboam, 
 was embittered by the rivalry of Tobiah and Sanballat 
 on the one hand, Nehemiah and Ezra on the other, 
 and which was strong enough in the time of Christ to 
 be intensely detested by the Jewish national party. 
 But all these religions are crumbling away, and 
 perhaps in a few generations each will become 
 historical 
 
 It has been stated more than once in these pages 
 that the Christian religion was nearly absorbed by 
 Judaism at the beginning of its career, and that on 
 grounds of human probability it was about to become 
 an obscure Jewish sect, when it was rescued by the 
 vigour and independence of the great missionary- 
 apostle. Paul saved it from this catastrophe, by the 
 peremptory manner in which he insisted on the 
 abrogation of the Jewish code, as far as Gentile 
 converts were concerned, and Paul was ultimately 
 successful in the bold course which he adopted. But 
 the effort was a supreme struggle. It cost the Apostle 
 a life-long martyrdom, and for a time discredited his 
 labours and his success. The attempt to supersede the 
 Jewish ritual excited the warmest hostility. The
 
 THE GNOSTIC ORIGINES. 79 
 
 success of the attempt thrust the Church into a new 
 danger. Paul saved it from being stifled. He lived, 
 it appears, to see it exposed to the attacks of a more 
 ubiquitous and more versatile enemy. In the East, at 
 least, it was nearly supplanted by Gnosticism. It was 
 threatened and even imperilled by the equivalent of 
 Gnosticism in the West. 
 
 For a century and a half the Church struggled for 
 existence against the numerous, and frequently hos- 
 tile sectaries who were known under the general 
 name of Gnostics, and who, as will be seen, 
 held certain tenets in common. By far the 
 largest part of that controversial theology which 
 has descended from the earliest Christian times to 
 our own, is occupied with the statement and refuta- 
 tion of these Gnostic reveries. The existence of 
 such opinions is alluded to by Justin Martyr. The 
 work of Irenaeus consists almost entirely of state- 
 ments purporting to give an account of the tenets 
 entertained by the various heresiarchs of the Gnostic 
 theogonies. The lately -discovered work of Hippo- 
 lytus, bishop of Ostia, is, for the most part, a treatise 
 on Gnostic opinions. The greater part of Tertullian's 
 works are controversial, and deal with the same 
 tenets. During the days when Christianity was in 
 its infancy, men did not construct creeds, or elaborate 
 definitions on the nature of Christ, and on the work 
 of redemption; but either accepted the simple faith 
 of the apostolic teaching, or exhibited a prodigious 
 theogony, which they collected from all sources, and 
 arranged into the most fantastic systems. Never did 
 the religious imagination run wilder riot. At the
 
 80 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 same time, it is not impossible to trace those theories 
 to a few simple principles. These principles were 
 recognised in and before the age of St. Paul. 
 
 In eastern Iran, and in that part of it which the 
 ancients knew as Bactria, there lived, at a time which 
 it is now impossible to fix with any degree of cer- 
 tainty, a certain Zoroaster. Some facts about the life 
 of this personage, and an exposition of the doctrine 
 which he taught, are contained in the Zendavesta a 
 scripture written in an ancient Aryan dialect. Zoro- 
 aster is the reputed founder of the Magian religion. 
 The characteristic of this creed is dualism i. e., the 
 existence of two powers, principles, beings, of co-ordi- 
 nate and nearly equal authority one of whom is 
 Good, the other Evil; one the author of every blessing 
 which lightens the lot of humanity, the other of all 
 and every misery which depresses and degrades it. 
 These two powers are in constant rivalry; and al- 
 though the beneficent spirit will and must finally 
 vanquish his enemy, and the enemy of the human 
 race, the struggle is long, arduous, and as yet far from 
 its completion. The name of the Good Being is 
 Ormuzd, that of the evil Ahriman. Lately deciphered 
 inscriptions prove that the system of Zoroaster was 
 the state religion of the Persian people. To Darius, 
 for example, Ormuzd is the author of all prosperity, 
 victory, blessing, and is reverenced accordingly. Both 
 Ormuzd and Ahriman were emanations from Primeval 
 Light. But Ormuzd was the elder, and Ahriman was 
 ambitious, proud, and jealous of the first-born. These 
 faults are an impersonation of the vices and the vin- 
 dictiveness of those who, in an Eastern dynasty,
 
 THE FORTUNES OF PARSISM. 81 
 
 are near of kin to the ruler, but are subjects to 
 him, and are thereupon suspicious and suspected. 
 Such persons were Smerdis to Cambyses, Cyrus the 
 younger to Artaxerxes. 
 
 The principles of the Zoroastrian or Magian religion 
 are to be found in the Scriptures of the Parsees, 
 who are reputed to be the surviving worshippers of 
 the ancient Persian Deity. If we can trust slight 
 hints given in those relics of a faith which was 
 once accepted by the highest civilisation of Central 
 Asia, the oldest parts of the Zendavesta point to the 
 existence of pastoral habits among the people to whom 
 Zoroaster was the prophet. The greater part of the 
 Zend scriptures treat of ceremonial defilement and 
 purification, and are even more minute in the rules 
 which they lay down for the atonement of voluntary 
 and involuntary offences than the Mosaic ritual is. It 
 is possible, however, that many of these regulations 
 have been interpolated. That the religion suffered 
 by the conquest of Alexander cannot be doubted. 
 It is said to have declined during the Parthian 
 occupation of Iran, and to have been restored by 
 Ardshir in the third century of our era. This 
 monarch, the first king of the Sassanid dynasty, did 
 for the scriptures of the Zoroastrians what Peisis- 
 tratus did for the Homeric poems; he collected 
 them from the memories of those who treasured 
 them into the volume which we know by the 
 name of the Zendavesta. When the Persian empire 
 was overrun by the followers of -Mohammed in 
 the seventh century, a few of the adherents of 
 Parsism escaped to India, and obtained permission,
 
 82 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 under certain conditions, to settle near the mouth 
 of the Indus. 
 
 The creed of the Persians was that of a dual 
 monarchy. But the good king was surrounded by 
 a hierarchy of powers whom he had created. Chief 
 among these were six amshaspands, then twenty- 
 eight other powers, one of whom was Mithra, and 
 then an infinite order of pure spirits, all of whom 
 were superior to man. On the other hand, Ahriman, 
 the evil power, created an infinite number of dewas, 
 who are presided over by six evil dynasts. Orrnuzd 
 is the creator of the world a work which he effected 
 in six periods of time. In this new world, Ormuzd 
 placed a man and woman, who are corrupted by the 
 wiles of Ahriman. But, when the earth is most 
 depraved and afflicted, Ormuzd will send his prophets, 
 the chief of whom will regenerate creation and bring 
 it back to its pristine beauty, power and purity. 
 Thereafter will ensue a universal resurrection, and 
 the chief prophet will judge both good and bad. 
 Then those who are found pure will live in eternal 
 felicity. And, on the other hand, Ahriman, his 
 demons, and the wicked will be also purified, but 
 by a torrent of molten metal. In the end, the reign 
 of Ormuzd will commence its uninterrupted course, 
 humanity will be perpetually happy, and all will 
 be engaged in singing the praises of the Supreme 
 Being, the Ancient of Days, the King of Light. 
 
 In this life, man is always exposed to the machina- 
 tions of the dewas and their chief. They who fall 
 into sin become the habitations of evil spirits, and 
 are finally transformed so as to be identical with the
 
 A HRIMA X A XD SA TA X. 83 
 
 
 
 demons with whom they have consorted. But the 
 door is never closed to repentance and faith, however 
 great has been the sin, even though its ceremonial 
 lustration is impossible. Furthermore, to know the 
 names of Ormuzd is a power, a talisman, with which 
 to chase away demons, and coerce the wicked. These 
 names, which were revealed to Zoroaster, and are con- 
 tained in the Zendavesta, are twenty in number, and 
 designate the attributes of the Supreme Being. The 
 name Ormuzd in the Zend, Ahura-mazda means 
 the great wise God. His rival's name is Anra- 
 mainyus, or, as it has been corrupted by Europeans, 
 Ahriman. 
 
 One cannot fail to see a close parallel between this 
 Zoroastrian system and the theosophy of the Jews. 
 The angel of God appears frequently in the earlier 
 books of the Jewish canon, though there is hardly 
 any such agency in the Mosaic epoch. But the 
 operation of an evil spirit is scantily hinted at. We 
 first read of such a personage in the story of Saul's 
 madness. We read of him again, in the apologue of 
 Micaiah, when this prophet stood before the misguided 
 Ahab. We read of Satan in the book of Job, the 
 scene of which is not Jewish, but Arabian. 
 
 This name Satan that is, an adversary or an enemy 
 is used in Hebrew with the article when it denotes 
 the superhuman adversary of man. So Zechariah, 
 one of the later prophets, uses it, after the return from 
 Babylon, and therefore when the conception of a 
 spiritual foe had become familiar to the Jewish exiles. 
 But elsewhere throughout the Old Testament, the evil 
 spirit is only a subordinate instrument of Jehovah, a
 
 84 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 > 
 power whom God permits to deceive the reprobate, 
 
 to torment the sinner, and to try the good. 
 
 In the New Testament, however, but particularly 
 in the Apocalypse, this personage is recognised as 
 an active malevolent being, who seeks to thwart the 
 designs of the Almighty, and to pervert the souls 
 of men. He is permitted to tempt Christ, and his 
 satellites torment the bodies and distract the minds 
 of those whom they inhabit. He is the prince of 
 this world, the power of the air, the father of the 
 disobedient and unfaithful, the enemy of the saints, 
 one who disguises himself as an angel of light, 
 the hinderer of holy purposes, the prompter of impure 
 and unholy thoughts, the. devourer, the destroyer, 
 and, hereafter, the inhabitant, with his angels, of 
 everlasting fire. In the Apocalypse he is the leader 
 of a rebel host, who fights against Michael and the 
 angels of God, the dragon, the serpent, the prisoner 
 for a thousand years, who* is afterwards set free to 
 harass and vex the faithful, but who will finally be 
 judged and punished. Out of his mouth came those 
 lying prophets who have power to deceive men. He 
 has a mystic name, which is designated by a certain 
 number, and is probably made up of the numerical 
 values of the letters composing it, as those names, 
 Abraxas, Mithras, and Belinus were; the symbolic 
 genii of Gnostic, Persian, and Druidical worship. 
 
 The Rabbinical books of the Jews and the writings 
 of Philo are full of the same facts, for they refer to 
 a hierarchy of angels, evil and good to the beneficent 
 action of the one, to the malevolence of the other. 
 The Pharisees, we are told, acknowledged angels
 
 J TAN IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 85 
 
 and spirits, the Sadducees denied the existence of 
 each order. Thus the Gemara even said that the 
 temptation of Abraham was a deed of Satan, the 
 rescue of Isaac an interposition of Jehovah, and a 
 baffling of the enemy. In the romance called the 
 book of Tobit, the machinery of the story is the 
 mission of an angel, who should accompany Tobias 
 on his journey, should defend him and his wife 
 from the machinations of Asmodeus, who had pre- 
 viously slain those husbands to whom Sarah had 
 been wedded, and should bind the evil spirit in the 
 utmost parts of Egypt. 
 
 No one can ignore the fact that the Old Testament 
 recognises, and that its teaching is based on, the per- 
 petual antagonism of good and evil of the struggles 
 and ultimate victory of the former, of the power 
 and final punishment of the latter. But, while 
 it exhibits infinite goodness under the form of a 
 heavenly Father, it does not impersonate the oppos- 
 ite principle except slightly and imperfectly. Nor, 
 unless we repudiate every rule which would guide us 
 on any other subject when we are discussing the affini- 
 ties of an opinion or belief, can we doubt that this im- 
 personation of the evil principle in a chief of wicked 
 spirits and in his subordinates, was derived from, 
 or suggested by, the Zoroastrian theology. The Jews 
 had been carried captive into Assyria and Persia, 
 and had been brought in contact with this religion 
 when it was in its full vigour. Daniel, a descendant 
 of the royal house of David, was the chief of the 
 Magi, receiving a name prince of Bel by virtue 
 of his eminent position in the priesthood of the Zor-
 
 8C PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 oastrian system ; while another Jew, a companion of 
 his, was called the servant of Nebo. It was possible 
 for those Jews to retain their worship of the one 
 true God in the midst of Aryan theism, for the 
 Persians were not idolaters. It was possible for 
 a Jewish prophet to recognise a Shepherd in Cyrus, 
 and even to call him the Lord's anointed. But it 
 is impossible to doubt that the Jews who lived in 
 Persia borrowed and transmitted to the returning 
 exiles of Zerubbabel, Neheiniah, and Ezra, some 
 of the dualism with which they were made familiar 
 at Susa and at Babylon. Even when Parsism was 
 depressed by the Parthian dynasty, the Chaldean 
 was known at Rome, and the Babylonian Numbers 
 were consulted by noble ladies at the metropolis of 
 the empire. 
 
 When a new religion, however pure and powerful 
 it may be, supplants another, it can hardly help 
 making some compromise with its vanquished enemy. 
 It is no disgrace to western Christianity, that it con- 
 ciliated the Paganism which it overthrew, by accom- 
 modating its feasts to the cherished memory of ancient 
 rites. Thus we are told, that the Christmas festival 
 was fixed at the winter solstice, because this period 
 was occupied in the Roman calendar by the Saturnalia 
 a holiday time in which the rigour of slavery was 
 relaxed, and the bondsman was permitted a short 
 liberty. Nor can any one object that the episcopate 
 was founded on the model of those fiscal and military 
 divisions which the empire defined. Church govern- 
 ment was found to be a necessity, and men adopt t <1 
 familiar forms for carrying out what was to be dom. .
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF PARSISM ON JUDAISM. 87 
 
 This kind of compromise accounts for the fetish 
 worship which the Roman church has revived and 
 inculcated in the reverence paid to relics, and for the 
 rationalism which has given the peasantry its local 
 saints, instead of Nymphs and Dryads, which has 
 made the mother of Christ a Juno, and, like her 
 pagan prototype, which has multiplied her by the 
 shrines in which she is worshipped. Not even the 
 stern monotheism of the Mosaic code could extirpate 
 from the Israelite mind all sympathy with the wor- 
 ship of the Hittite. The high places remained ; the 
 returning ark, welcomed by the Israelites, found them 
 gathered at Beth-shemesh, the house or temple of the 
 sun ; and the house of Jacob constantly associated itself 
 with the gods of the nations round about. 
 
 The influence, however, of a religion which guides 
 the life and practice of a great and generous nation, 
 such as the ancient Persians undoubtedly were, cannot 
 fail of being felt in a still greater degree by subject 
 races. Besides, the Zoroastrian creed was not repug- 
 nant to the mind of the captive Israelite. The 
 companions of Daniel refuse to honour an image ; 
 the chief of the Magians, the eunuch of David's 
 race, declines, on peril of his life, to obey the in- 
 sidious suggestion of the courtiers of Darius, and 
 still prays to his God, with his windows open in 
 the direction of Jerusalem, three times a-day. But 
 the hierarchy of Zoroaster in which angels were 
 subordinated to the one great Deity was no way 
 alien to Daniel's orthodoxy. Nothing pleases the 
 imagination more than to people the vast expanse 
 with ministering spirits, to ascribe the sorrows and
 
 88 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 sufferings of life to the spite of malignant demons. 
 It is the familiar habit of children to conjure up thick 
 coming fancies ; and at this epoch the childhood of 
 civilisation and belief, the same energy of imagination 
 delighted in the exuberant growth of these divine and 
 pure emanations, and constructed, as antagonists to 
 them, a host of gloomy and passionate spirits, who 
 strove to drag men down to their own likeness, but 
 who could be resisted, baffled, judged, by the wise 
 and pure in heart. To one wrapt in the contempla- 
 tion of this war in heaven, of which man was the 
 prize, and of which the victory was finally assured, 
 there was no solitude. The lonely hermit was least 
 alone. To one who had in view the pomp and 
 majesty of eastern royalty, there was a far nobler 
 and grander array in the" 5 glorious host of heaven, in 
 that angelic band, the power of the lowest of whom was 
 greater than that of the mightiest king, for they are 
 the servants of the Lord of Hosts. The counterpart 
 to this regal splendour is the pomp of faded majesty, 
 the royalty of hell. Just as to the eastern mind, a good 
 and wise king, such as Cyrus, the father of Persian 
 nationality, who had for his attendants an immortal 
 body guard, was the highest exemplar of human 
 excellence and beneficence; just as a furious, mad, 
 suspicious tyrant, such as Cambyses, was the im- 
 personation of malevolence and mischief so the un- 
 seen world had its King and His heavenly host, 
 and also its regal fiend, with his attendant demons. 
 The Israelite eagerly engrafted the two systems on 
 his national creed, and, already made familiar with 
 the angels of God, discovered their antagonists in
 
 DUALISM IN RELIGION. 89 
 
 the gods of the heathen, in the devils of the Pauline 
 epistles, in the evil spirits who possessed those un- 
 happy men who fell under their sway. The same 
 dualism has been transmitted to our times, and has 
 become part of the system of popular religion. It 
 is so strongly intertwined with the innermost senti- 
 ments of the human heart, that the imagination 
 itself must be extinguished before dualism ceases to 
 be acknowledged. 
 
 The creed of the East was a supernaturalism, with 
 an exact ceremonial, typical of personal holiness, and 
 a strict discipline which imposed penances or punish- 
 ments on those who violated its moral precepts. The 
 creed of the West was the worship of nature, without 
 any permanent ceremonial, and with no higher moral 
 code than was absolutely necessary in order to preserve 
 society from dissolution. The supreme ruler of the 
 Zoroastrian world is a pure spirit to whom sin is 
 loathsome. The ruler of the Greek Olympus is the 
 president of an aristocratical council, a capricious, 
 sensual chieftain, whose providence over human affairs 
 is of the slightest and most uncertain kind. With a 
 strange perversity, men, misled by the dazzling 
 splendour of Greek genius, have tried to discover in 
 the theogony of the Greek creed, and in the social 
 life of which it is the highest exemplar, a lofty and 
 simple morality. They have mistaken poetry for 
 religion. The civilisation of Greece, and subsequently 
 that of Rome, were extirpated, because neither was 
 based on religion or morality. 
 
 The border-land between the East and the West 
 was occupied by the Jews. It appears that nature
 
 90 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 worship was nowhere more sensuous than among the 
 Phoenicians of the coast. The God of the Hebrews 
 is absolutely spiritual, absolutely holy, and, as the 
 conception of Him is developed in the prophets, is a 
 Being of perfect justice, who prescribes and enacts 
 obedience to a Law, which is to be interpreted by 
 an intelligent and scrupulous conscience. The creed 
 of the Jew is a single sentence, I am the Lord your 
 God. Upon this creed the Pharisee induced the 
 dualism of the remote East, while the Sadducee 
 insisted on retaining nothing but the secularism of 
 the Mosaic revelation, in which the immortality of 
 man's soul might be contained by implication, to 
 which it certainly was not repugnant, but by which 
 it was not expressly affirmed. The Sadducee, how- 
 ever, was as monotheistic as the Pharisee, believed as 
 rigorously that the Almighty was a pure Spirit. 
 
 The teaching of Christianity was welcome to the 
 religious sense of the western world. Its acceptance 
 enabled the believer to escape from the immeasurable 
 grossness of nature-worship, to take refuge in a pure 
 theology, to apprehend that for which every creation 
 groans and struggles. In those days of conversion, 
 men fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, and cast their 
 abominations of silver and gold, which they had made 
 to worship, to the moles and to the bats, to the dark- 
 ness of that night from which they had emerged. To 
 tjhern Christianity was emphatically a new creation. 
 Old things had passed away, all things had become 
 new. It was an escape from bondage to freedom, to 
 a glorious liberty, and was welcomed with all the 
 freshness of a first enthusiasm.
 
 CHRISTIANITY IX THE WEST AND IN THE EAST. 91 
 
 The case, however, was different with the eastern 
 people. They had already a religious creed, which 
 taught that God was a Spirit, and that they who 
 worship Him must do so in spirit and in truth. They 
 were monotheists, iconoclasts, haters of symbolism, 
 and of nature-worship. They had lived for ages 
 under traditionary customs which no one was prepared 
 to loathe, under rites which had been sanctioned by 
 the same authority which had given them their purer 
 creed. Hence, as has often been said, the Jewish 
 Christians clung tenaciously to the traditions of their 
 forefathers, and nearly wrecked the prospects of Gentile 
 Christianity, by peremptorily insisting on obedience to 
 the Law of Moses. Even when some liberty was given, 
 they insinuated that those who claimed release from 
 Jewish rites were enemies to the spirit of Christianity, 
 and the secret advocates of a compromise with idol-wor- 
 ship and licentiousness. As with other Eastern converts, 
 there was an unwillingness to abandon those gorgeous 
 visions with which the unseen world was peopled, and 
 to accept those simple practical principles by which 
 the Christian life was to be guided. In the West the 
 Magian was an adventurer, in the East he worshipped 
 at the foot of the infant Jesus, was the hierophant of 
 transcendental revelations, the mystic, the gnostic, the 
 man possessed of knowledge, the knowledge which 
 inflated a man with a sense of self-importance, the 
 knowledge which the author of the epistle to Timothy 
 designates as falsely named. 
 
 This Gnosticism was born at a time when the human 
 mind was more eager after belief, and more ready to 
 construct systems, than at any epoch in its history.
 
 92 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 It offered the most energetic and the richest visions to 
 the believer, and it is not marvellous that it had many 
 teachers and a vast following of disciples. It extended 
 itself widely through the eastern world, and affected 
 not a little of the western. Its symbols are still 
 existent in great numbers in the form of gems, 
 engraved with composite emblems and legends. It 
 was a formidable rival of orthodox Christianity up to 
 the sixth century, and unquestionably leavened it with 
 many of its speculative formularies. It did not expire 
 in Europe till just before the Reformation, if indeed 
 its influence may not be traced still later. It consti- 
 tutes the occult science of Cornelius Agrippa. The 
 description which Mr. Layard gives of the tenets 
 entertained by the Yezidis clearly indicates that the 
 religion of these devotees can be traced to a Gnostic 
 origin. The Gnostics were, in their own language, 
 according to Gesenius, the Elect, and a sect which 
 calls itself elect is apt to have a long vitality. 
 
 The fundamental characteristics of Gnosticism are 
 its dualism, its doctrine of emanations, its assertion 
 that the God of the Jews, the God of the visible 
 creation, was an inferior, if not an evil spirit. The 
 schools of Gnosticism differed in many particulars, but 
 they invariably affirmed the three doctrines stated 
 above. A supreme intelligence exists, an eternal, 
 immutable, ineffable being, against whose purity and 
 power evil is arrayed, and from whom proceed the 
 various forces by which evil is combated. And as 
 these visionaries thought matter was evil, a doctrine 
 which may be traced in the philosophy of Greece, 
 they believed that the creator of the visible world
 
 THE GXOSTIC SYSTEM. 93 
 
 was either unconscious of the mischief which his 
 creation would work on the intelligence which it 
 coerced or restrained, or that he spitefully weighted 
 the pure spirit of man with the gross and polluting 
 burden of matter. Hints of this theosophy are found 
 in the Septuagint, in Philo, in the Kabbala, in the 
 significant words of the first, in the allegorising theory 
 of the Law, which marks the second, and in the 
 emanations of Adam Cadmon, the typical or perfect 
 man, the macrocosm to whom the individual is the 
 microcosm, of the third. Ten of these emanations, 
 according to the Kabbala, proceeded from the perfect 
 Adam. The same authority, according to M. Matter, 
 affirms that the parts of man's nature, his appetites, 
 his passions, his reason and his spirit proceed from the 
 four worlds of angels which influence and control him. 
 This fourfold division of man's inner nature is charac- 
 teristic of Greek philosophy. 
 
 Abundant illustrations could be given of the manner 
 in which Gnostic phraseology pervades those writings 
 of the Canon, which are expressly directed against 
 the doctrine which those dreamers inculcated, most 
 of all from the Apocalypse. Here the seven spirits, 
 the twenty-four elders, the Alpha and Omega, the 
 mystic number of the Beast, are all counterparts of 
 that theory of emanations which began with Cerinthus 
 and was completed by Valentinus and Marcion. But 
 the use of certain Greek words is even more sugges- 
 tive of the manner in which the language of the 
 apostles was permeated by the phraseology of this 
 wide-spread and versatile school. The reader may 
 find examples of these usages in the elaborate work
 
 94- PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 of Matter. The Shepherd of Hennas, once believed 
 to be a canonical book, is framed on a Gnostic model, 
 with its seven women representing the Virtues who 
 wait about the Church. The writers of the New 
 Testament do not, it is true, accept the theory which 
 these words imply, nay, they are impliedly, or, in 
 express terms, profoundly hostile to the Gnostic hy- 
 pothesis, but they could not, in the existing state 
 of theological language, avoid the employment of 
 terms which the speculative temper of the Eastern 
 mind had appropriated and characterised. These 
 words might have been perverted by the wild imagin- 
 ation of the sectaries, but they had the advantage 
 of being definite, and what philosophy has ever 
 disdained to spoil its rivals of their armour? 
 
 The narrative of an interview between St. Peter 
 and Simon is contained in the Acts of the Apostles. 
 The latter is described as resident in Samaria, 
 though he was, according to Justin, a native of 
 Gitti, a village near. This man, by his magical 
 arts, had deceived the people of Samaria, who 
 called him the great power of God which is, by 
 the way, a Gnostic formula. We are further told, 
 that Simon enrolled himself among the converts of 
 Philip, and that the apostles came down to Samaria 
 to receive the converts, and, by imposition of hands, 
 to bestow on them the Holy Spirit. Thereupon 
 Simon offered the apostles money, with the request 
 that he might receive the apostolic privilege of con- 
 ferring this gift of the Spirit. He is sternly rebuked 
 by Peter, who bids him repent and ask for forgive- 
 ness ; and the narrative, as far as Simon is concerned,
 
 SIMON OF SAMARIA. 95 
 
 is concluded by a request on Simon's part, that the 
 apostles would pray for him, that no misfortune 
 should come on him for his presumption. Hence- 
 forth, the Scriptures make no mention of the Samari- 
 tan. Another Magian confronts St. Paul in Paphos, 
 is more severely reprimanded, and is visited with 
 a sharper judgment. 
 
 The rest of Simon's history is enveloped in a cloud 
 of fable. Justin Martyr says, that he persuaded the 
 Emperor Claudius and the senate to erect a statue 
 to him on the Tiberine Island, the apologist having 
 mistaken a dedication to a Sabine deity for an inscrip- 
 tion in honour of the Samaritan. But Simon figures 
 in a host of legends. He is present at the interview 
 between Peter and Paul on the one hand, and Nero 
 on the other, and is represented as perishing in an 
 attempt to fly. He raised himself in the air by 
 the aid of evil spirits, and fell in consequence of 
 the prayer of Peter. In the Clementines, Peter 
 and Simon are represented as arguing together. But, 
 in the whole literature of the early Church, the 
 Samaritan Magian is made the founder of a system 
 which claims to be antagonistic to Christianity. He 
 is not properly an heresiarch, but a rival to Christ, 
 as Apollonius of Tyana was, after the adventures 
 of the Tarsian devotee had been manipulated by 
 his biographer Philostratus. 
 
 Simon, according to Irenseus, claimed to be the 
 voice of God. The supreme Being was "He who is 
 fixed," "the root of all things." From this Being 
 emanate three pairs of derived beings, one of which 
 is the mother of all that exists, spirits, angels, and
 
 9G PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 archangels. This personage is Ennoia or Intelligence, 
 who is perpetually persecuted by evil spirits, and is 
 preserved by the Supreme Being, in order to be mani- 
 fested to mankind by the agency of Simon. The 
 Jewish God was one of the angels of this Intelligence, 
 and was the author of the visible world. Irenaeus 
 adds to his account of Simon, that his followers, a 
 century and a half later, had fallen into gross licen- 
 tiousness, and excused their vices on the ground that 
 there was neither morality or immorality in external 
 acts. It is only by his dualism that Simon is identified 
 with Gnosticism. 
 
 The sect really sprang out of Christianity. The 
 earliest Gnostics came from Egypt and were familiar 
 with the allegories of Philo. With Cerinthus, Christ 
 was the son of Joseph and Mary, and as a man was 
 superior in justice, foresight, wisdom, and therefore 
 power, to all other men. He received the Divine 
 Nature at His baptism in the Jordan, and was 
 thereupon an emanation from the Supreme Being. 
 
 Marcion, the most eminent of the Gnostics, was, we 
 are informed, fond of quoting the saying of Christ, 
 "Put not new wine into old bottles." He meant to 
 imply that those Christians who had been familiarised 
 with the grand complications of the Eastern theogony 
 must needs incorporate their profound and magnificent 
 conceptions with the simple creed of the Apostles. 
 The Gnostic was unwilling, on being admitted within 
 the sanctuary of the new covenant, to strip himself 
 of his gorgeous traditions; he must needs enter clothed 
 in them. They are" susceptible of a spiritual interpre- 
 tation. They are revelations anterior to this last
 
 THEORIES OF GNOSTIC WRITERS. 97 
 
 experience of the Divine development, but they can 
 be made to harmonise with Christianity. Some of 
 those persons allegorised the mythology of Greece, and 
 discovered ^Eons in the Olympian deities, allowing 
 their imagination to run riot in the strangest theories 
 as to the meaning of Greek myths, and the origin of 
 Gentile practices. Some of these interpretations are 
 as grotesque as the latest allegory of the Homeric 
 poems, under which the heroes of the Iliad are im- 
 personations of the Sun and Moon and Stars, of 
 Nature, of Night and Day, of the Seasons and the 
 Winds. 
 
 Let us take the scheme of Saturninus. God, says 
 this Gnostic, is one, unknown by all, ineffable, inaccessi- 
 ble. The Gnostic is less exacting than some writers, 
 who have told us that the attributes of the Almighty 
 are utterly unknown to man, and that the divine 
 morality conforms to no human standard or experience. 
 He allows that all beings, with their attributes, proceed 
 from Him by way of emanation. 
 
 The highest power of God is His Wisdom or Word. 
 This is the first-born Son of God, the ideal type by 
 which the most perfect of all creatures, man, is created 
 and formed. But the creation of man was committed 
 to an inferior power the Jewish God. He had 
 received a mission to make man in the image of God, 
 but in error he did not realise the Divine type, the 
 heavenly Adam. Man was created a creeping thing. 
 The Word, as pitying his unhappy condition, bestowed 
 on him a ray of Divine life. But so feeble was the 
 work of the inferior God, that the breath of the Word, 
 
 by which humanity was enlightened, became powerless 
 
 G
 
 98 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 to effect his restoration to the Divine image. Christ 
 therefore came down from heaven to put an end to the 
 office of the Jewish God, and to save those who believe 
 in Hun those, namely, who have preserved that ray of 
 Divine light which was given to the first man, and 
 transmitted to his descendants. The moment they 
 have lost the ray of Divine light (and they lose it by 
 the overmastering influence of evil spirits), the way of 
 return to God is irrevocably closed. This heresiarch 
 forbade his followers to contract marriage and beget 
 children. 
 
 Bardesanes, one of these Gnostics, the chief of 
 another sect, who wrote against Marcion, was the 
 author of the first Christian hymnal. We are told 
 that he composed a hundred-and-fifty sacred songs, 
 which were set to music by his son, and were used by 
 the orthodox, to their danger and detriment, till 
 Ephrem the Syrian superseded them by other words, 
 the tunes being retained, just as the English pietists 
 of the last century adapted religious words to secular 
 music. Nor is there much doubt that the ascetic 
 Montanus, who won over the arrogant and fervid 
 spirit of Tertullian, gathered his strange notions of 
 the Comforter from the example, if not from the 
 teaching of the Gnostic sects, who represented every 
 form of mysticism, from antinomian grossness to 
 ecstatic and morbid rigour. 
 
 We know these grotesque doctrines only through 
 those who detested them, stigmatised them, and per- 
 haps caricatured them. It is to be regretted that no 
 single work has come down to us from those who taught 
 what they called Knowledge. Had such been our
 
 THE GNOSTIC CONCEPTION OF GOD. 99 
 
 fortune, we might perhaps have been able to construct 
 the system of these Syrian and Alexandrian mystics, 
 and, however alien the scheme might prove to our 
 habits- of thought, have discerned that Valentinus, 
 Basileides, Bardesanes, Saturninus, had at least as well 
 ordered an imagination, as noble a conception of God, 
 as rational a bagiology as those of many men who 
 have challenged and obtained the reputation of ortho- 
 doxy. 
 
 This, however, at least is clear. The Gnostic idea 
 of God was pure and even sublime. But the con- 
 ception which assigns the work of the visible world 
 to a malignant deity, because the Gnostic cherished 
 an insane hatred of matter ; the savage temper 
 which discerns nothing in creation but misery, dis- 
 order and vice, and which shows its contempt for 
 the body by fierce austerity, or gross licentiousness, 
 are grotesque misconceptions of that Providence 
 which these enthusiasts allowed. Worse still was 
 that sullen- pride which limited the office of the 
 Redeemer to a privileged race, to a few individuals, 
 capriciously chosen, whose grant of this election 
 was certified to them by some inward conviction, 
 and was perfected by an absorbing contemplation; 
 which, without the evidence of personal holiness, 
 or the fulfilment of personal duties, transported them 
 to the bosom of God ; which, finally, asserted that 
 the nature of the true Gnostic is like gold, the bright- 
 ness of which no pollution can dim, no contamination 
 affect. But, though the name of Gnostic, of Catharist, 
 of Paulician, has faded away under the anathema of 
 orthodoxy, it is doubtful whether the spirit has been
 
 100 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 exorcised. It is still possible for men to narrow 
 Almighty beneficence, to arrogate to themselves 
 redemption, to think that austerity is holiness, that 
 an inward assurance is the Divine favour, to look 
 bitterly on the beauty of God's creation, and see 
 nothing but what is evil in nature, even though 
 they may not people the world with ^Eons, and 
 make their own system of belief a series of emanations 
 from the Almighty and infallible exposition of His 
 will. 
 
 We are told though it is probable that the state- 
 ment must be taken with caution that the Gnostics, 
 and particularly Marcion, accepted a mutilated gospel 
 of St. Matthew, though with some additions, and 
 most of the epistles of St. Paul, the pastoral letters 
 being rejected; but that even those whose authenticity 
 was allowed, were curtailed or interpolated so as to 
 sustain the doctrines which Gnosticism affirmed. It 
 is significant of the extent to which these tenets 
 permeated Christian communities, that the Ebionites 
 and Nazarenes the bitterest enemies of the great 
 Apostle, the persistent advocates of Jewish Christi- 
 anity are stated to have finally embraced the extreme 
 Gnostic doctrine of a particular redemption, and the 
 perfectibility of man by asceticism and contempla- 
 tion. We are told that they said of the Redeemer, 
 that " He was called the Christ of God and Jesus, 
 because no one before Him had fulfilled the Law, 
 but that if another had done so, he could have been 
 Christ, and that they, by doing the like, would 
 become christs, since He was a man like unto them- 
 selves." This wasted sect of Judaizers, who lingered
 
 GNOSTICISM A CLAIM TO SCIENCE. 101 
 
 on by the Dead Sea, was still open to the tempta- 
 tions which other sects have fallen into, and which 
 are characterised by St. Paul in one of his pithiest 
 and most prophetic sentences, Knowledge puffeth 
 up, but love buildeth up. 
 
 The essence of the Gnostic system, whatever were 
 the formularies with which it introduced its dogmas, 
 was the saving power of knowledge or science. It 
 matters nothing that the material of this knowledge 
 was a long array of subjective or imaginary essences, 
 the "bodiless expansions of a cunning ecstasy." They 
 were, if we can believe that the votaries of this system 
 propounded them all in good faith, as real to the 
 Gnostic, as the laws of nature, or the succession of 
 geological epochs, or the development of species are to 
 the physicists of our own day. The Gnostics wished 
 to give an interpretation to a set of facts, or to an 
 array of myths which had been accepted as facts, and 
 believed that they had gained the key to their solution, 
 by marshalling a progressive development of heavenly 
 entities. They believed that by the steady contem- 
 plation of these great realities, the soul of man might 
 be educated, ennobled, purified, glorified. The know- 
 ledge which they possessed separated them from the 
 vulgar and perishing herd of men, made them the 
 elect of a Divine wisdom, delighted them with the 
 ravishing dream that they were the peculiar objects 
 of the Divine favour, the self-made possessors of a 
 saving science. The spirit of the Gnostic is found, 
 not in what he knew, which a later philosophy declares 
 to be visionary, but in the utter absence of that love 
 of man for the sake of God, which is the practical side
 
 102 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 of religion, and of that clinging to a Divine ideal of 
 moral excellence, and perfect holiness, which constitutes 
 the contemplative side of the same religion. 
 
 There need be no antagonism between the religious 
 sense and scientific method. A clear and keen in- 
 telligence, which observes diligently, and draws 
 careful inductions from its observations, is quite 
 compatible with that sensitiveness which stimulates 
 and strengthens the sense of public and private duty, 
 because it lives in the sight of God, and does its 
 part in regenerating and purifying man for God's 
 sake, according to its power. There is not, and 
 there cannot be, any natural discord in the con- 
 stituent faculties of man's being. All the forces 
 which make up the identity of the individual may 
 be, and ought to be, in harmony; may be made to 
 assist each other in the work which each man has 
 to do. In true and healthy minds such a harmony 
 does exist. Nothing is more graceful, nothing more 
 winning than the union of acute intellectual power, 
 and the tender gentleness of an affectionate desire 
 to do good, because the heart yearns after purifying 
 and elevating the object of such goodness. Nor does 
 experience lack examples of so noble a conjunction 
 of energies. 
 
 But, as the religious sense may, unhappily, become 
 harsh and bitter, may be perverted by narrowness, 
 by spiritual pride, by sinister motives; so men may 
 insulate themselves under a feeling of profound satis- 
 faction at their own attainments in knowledge, and 
 of contempt for those who are unequally instructed 
 with themselves. Any kind of learning may suffice
 
 THE GNOSTIC TEMPER PERMANENT. 103 
 
 to effect this perversion, for the Gnostic professed to 
 possess the highest and truest learning with which his 
 age was supplied, and this on the most important and 
 absorbing subject. The temper of the Gnostic does 
 not cease to influence men, because the sciences of 
 observation have superseded in exactness and interest 
 the constructions of the Gnostic imagination. Any- 
 kind of knowledge may serve to inflate its possessor 
 with an over-weening sense of his own acuteness and 
 superiority. It may be the dry theory of the econo- 
 mist, according to which men are conceived to be 
 held together by mutual interest, and individualised 
 by an enlightened selfishness ; or the method of nature, 
 the knowledge of which may fill the student with a 
 modish conceit of his own quickness ; or learning ; 
 or philosophy. It may be impossible to construct 
 a logical religion, and to give proof of the emotions 
 by which man clings to a living God. But the 
 religious sense, if it be just and loving, at least does 
 this much. It binds men more closely together than 
 any other force can ; it gives, as long as it reigns in 
 man, cohesion and duration to the unity which it 
 creates ; it constructs and purifies society ; it makes 
 man reverent towards his fellow-man, pitiful, tender, 
 forgiving, courteous, graceful, gentle. If it dies or 
 is perverted, Society becomes a camp, in which distrust 
 is perpetual and panic is imminent; in which the 
 enemy is at the gate, and the spirit of resistance is 
 gone. So, at least, experience, past and present, 
 informs us. It is possible, that, at the instant of this 
 ruin, Archimedes still sits, poring over his problem, 
 unconscious of the crisis, indifferent in the midst of
 
 104 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 his speculation to the crash, the havoc, the despair. 
 After the agony is over, the same sentiment will, 
 unless a people be utterly lifeless, revive and renew 
 the strength which has been wasted, and men will 
 eagerly welcome the force which has hitherto been 
 found to constitute the very soul of human society. 
 After all, the highest, worthiest, truest of all human 
 knowledge, is that which is directed towards purifying 
 and ennobling man. He who discovers the knowledge 
 of this method, and, having discovered it, seeks to make 
 it the law of social life, is the wisest savant, the truest 
 teacher of mankind. The worth of the knowledge 
 which analyses a plurality of worlds is not disparaged 
 when it is said that it is of little import by the side 
 of that wisdom, if it can be found, and that under- 
 standing, if its place can be detected, which makes 
 man happier, and stronger, and better. The greatest 
 victories of science are little better than a thauniaturgy, 
 if they have no effect on the well-being of society. 
 They may become the instrument of conceit to him 
 who wins them, the instrument of oppression to him 
 who uses them. But, on the other hand, it is im- 
 possible for a science of social morality to make true 
 progress, unless the whole race of man is bettered 
 by it. It is impossible that it should influence man- 
 kind without making each successive generation 
 stronger and more just. Like every other good 
 force, it may be misused by designing persons, or 
 parodied by charlatans, who mislead men into ac- 
 cepting the husk of a true wisdom, in place of its 
 fruit. Whether Christianity has or has not finally 
 achieved this science of social life, is a larger question
 
 GXOSTIC EXPRESSIONS IN THE EPISTLES. 105 
 
 than can be discussed here. But it is plain, that 
 Jesus of Nazareth intended to propound such a 
 science, that the Apostle of the Gentiles intended 
 to affirm and expound the science, and that the 
 permanent enemy of Christianity is the theory that 
 the knowledge of God or nature, and the blessings 
 of God or nature, are the heritage and privilege of 
 the few, the elect, the fortunate. 
 
 Critics have detected traces of the Gnostic system 
 in the pastoral epistles, and have, thereupon, dis- 
 credited their authenticity. It is known that Gnosti- 
 cism ripened in the early part of the second century, 
 and it is inferred that the " falsely-named knowledge " 
 of the First Epistle to Timothy is a reference to the 
 Emanations of these sectaries. But the language 
 of the Apostle is not necessarily directed against those 
 whom we know as Gnostics. It seems rather to 
 point to those Jewish or semi-Jewish sects, which are 
 known to have sprung up in the cities of Asia-Minor, 
 and to have attempted a compromise between the 
 learning of the Rabbis and the tenets of Christianity, 
 or, at least, to have overlaid the latter by the former. 
 The Apostle was reasonably jealous of any addition 
 which might be made to the simple creed which he 
 had taught; for he well knew that nothing deadens 
 the sense of religion so much, as the reduction of 
 it to a set of formal definitions, the acceptance of 
 which might be construed into an equivalent to that 
 energy of faith and love, which his instincts and 
 his experience assured him were the true constituents 
 of the Christian temper. 
 
 Besides, though Gnosticism culminated in the
 
 106 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 second century, it does not follow that it was not 
 existent, and even active, in the first. The earliest 
 Christian controversialists give us the names of the 
 Gnostic savants, but they do not expound to us the 
 origin of the Gnostic temperament. If the exposition 
 given above is satisfactory, Gnosticism, in some shape 
 or other, is not of one age, but of all is not the title 
 
 ' o ' 
 
 of an extinct theology, but the equivalent of a per- 
 manent phase of human thought. That men busied 
 themselves with the origin of evil, and recognised its 
 antagonism to good, in a formal dualism, long before 
 the apostolic age, is historically certain. That they 
 had constructed a cosmogony on this principle is 
 equally clear. That they had, according to the fashion 
 of the time, realised the development of the universe 
 by impersonating creative power in a series of angelic 
 beings, is as plain as proof can make it. But this is 
 only the shell of Gnosticism. Its kernel is the sub- 
 stitution of theology for trust in God, knowledge for 
 religion, contemplation for duty, philosophy for love. 
 The system of the Stoic and Platonist, as critics and 
 rivals of Christianity, was only another phase of the 
 same theory was equally the substitution of the indi- 
 vidual mind for the body of Christ, and the growth of 
 the perfect man the peace of the absorbed and en- 
 lightened intellect for the peace of God the salvation 
 of the few, by their own power and holiness, for the 
 redemption of the world by the Passion and the Pre- 
 sence of Christ. We ought to be far from wondering 
 that the Apostle detected and inveighed against this 
 tendency. It is rather to be wondered at, that his 
 writings do not contain frequent allusions to the dan-
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF INTELLECTUAL PRIDE. 107 
 
 ger in which, from his point of view, men might make 
 shipwreck of their destiny in a vain and engrossing 
 self-sufficiency. The early Church did recognise such a 
 warning in the Apostle's statement, that the natural 
 intellect of man does not receive the influence of God's 
 Spirit. 
 
 Nor is there reason to think that the genius of 
 Gnosticism is extinguished or evaporated, or that it 
 ever will fail to assert itself in its own domain that, 
 namely, of exclusiveness, of spiritual or intellectual 
 pride. It is true that no one now busies himself in 
 constructing a dualistic hierarchy, or fills heaven, and 
 earth, and hell with the fancies of an unrestrained 
 imagination. The steady progress of phenomenal 
 science the regular method by which it has built up 
 its inductions the success with which it has inter- 
 preted the order of nature have made men contemp- 
 tuous towards imaginary systems, and sometimes even 
 sceptical as to the existence of other than sensible 
 forces. The cosmogonies of the Eastern sage, of the 
 Greek philosopher, of the Western schoolman, have 
 given way to the logic of facts, and the laws of nature 
 which they exemplify. Those exploded theories were 
 attempts to interpret the phenomena of Being; and 
 for a time, at least, satisfied and delighted the mind. 
 But they are abandoned only because other attempts 
 have been made to interpret the same phenomena. 
 Ptolemy retreats before Copernicus and Galileo ; the 
 scheme of elemental forms, by which Aristotle at- 
 tempted to interpret nature, has been superseded by 
 the chemical analysis of modern research ; the humoral 
 theory of physiology, loy which the same philosopher
 
 108 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 tried to account for growth and decay for health and 
 disease, has been abandoned for a microscopic investi- 
 gation into the circumstances of organic generation : 
 creation is the formula of a bygone speculation, of 
 which development has latterly become the scientific 
 equivalent. 
 
 The thinkers and reasoners who lived before and 
 after the commencement of our era, were constantly 
 busied with the philosophy of Being with the laws 
 of consciousness and nature with the conditions of 
 progress and change. To account for all those pheno- 
 mena of sense and cognition, they invented a world 
 of imaginary existences. Thus, for example, the appe- 
 tites and passions, the reason and the spirit of man, 
 were derived, according to some of these Mystics, from 
 the four worlds of spirits. The characteristic words of 
 this system are traceable even in the Septuagint its 
 terms are freely employed in the New Testament. 
 
 Childish and trifling as the system which these men 
 constructed seems to us, it satisfied them. It enabled 
 them to account for all they saw, knew, and felt to 
 give an exact and formal account of creation, and of the 
 facts of nature or life. Deeply enamoured of their 
 genealogies and cosmogonies, they wrapt themselves 
 up in their contemplations stood aloof from inter- 
 course with the unenlightened world without them, and 
 limited the possession of knowledge to those who were, 
 like themselves, engaged in solving the problems of 
 creation or development. Sometimes ascetic, some- 
 times licentious, but always for the same reason 
 because the body was only an accident to the spirit 
 or intelligence of the man, they lived in an atino-
 
 THE SELFISHNESS OF GNOSTICISM. 109 
 
 sphere of spiritual and intellectual pride. It is Gnos- 
 ticism in its rudimentary form, or in its tendency, 
 which Paul contrasts with love in the First Epistle to 
 the Corinthians. Gnosticism, in some shape or other, 
 was invariably adopted by the heresiarchs of the first 
 three centuries, as we see from Tertullian ; and it was 
 into an analogous creed that this father of the Latin 
 church ultimately seceded, for the Paraclete of Mon- 
 tanus closely resembles " the great power of God " of 
 Simon, and the mysterious Pleroma of Basileides. 
 
 "This people," says the Pharisee, "who know not 
 the Law are cursed." The creed of the Gnostic was 
 that of the Pharisee, without his Judaism, without 
 that sense of nationality or patriotism which saved 
 the Jewish devotee from being absorbed in the worst 
 of egotisms a belief in his own spiritual perfection, 
 and a scorn for the mass of those who live outside 
 the region on which the rays of divine light have 
 shone. They who had learned the Law and its 
 interpretation were harsh and fanatical; zealous for 
 the maintenance of that empire which they possessed 
 over the minds of their countrymen; but they did 
 not forget that the nation was chosen as well as 
 themselves, or repudiate the election of Israel in 
 the ascendancy which they claimed for their own 
 authority. They believed themselves to be an aris- 
 tocracy of intelligence and education, but the collective 
 Israel was as a nation, the soldier of God. 
 
 The seeker after wisdom, the Gnostic who inserted 
 Jesus and the Gospel into his eclectic creed, believed 
 that some men were illuminated, but that the great 
 majority of mankind were consigned to impenetrable
 
 110 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 and unilluminable darkness. It was a favourite 
 dogma of these idealists, that some were elect, and 
 others reprobate. It is true that the Gnostic did 
 not give himself up to a cold and apathetic fatalism, 
 but demanded from those who were conscious of 
 their election a fervid energy of the soul, which must 
 be ever directed towards that Being from whom 
 the illumination was derived. But he was the God 
 of intelligence as opposed to the God of creation, 
 insulated in his sympathies, haughtily indifferent to 
 a world of sorrow and ignorance. The knowledge 
 or wisdom which is not combative contributes little 
 to the forces of human progress, is not the wisdom 
 which is from above, because it does not aid in re- 
 generating or redeeming mankind. 
 
 It has been stated that Gnosticism was the chief 
 enemy with which the nascent church contended. It 
 is almost certain that, in order to meet this enemy, 
 the Pauline doctrines were affirmed by the western 
 and accepted* by the eastern churches, and that the 
 rancour which the Jewish Christians entertained 
 against the great Apostle, was finally transformed 
 into the reverence which has been for so many 
 centuries felt towards him, as the great doctor of 
 the primitive church. Marcion accepted his Catholic 
 epistles, though in a mutilated form. What better 
 weapon could be found to fight, against these Mystics 
 than the authority which their principal advocate 
 recognised ? Judaism was repudiated in order that 
 Pharisaism might be combated. An effort, indeed, 
 is made to proscribe Paul and the Gnostic under 
 the same name, and, by the agency of Peter, in
 
 KNO WLEDGE NOT RELIGION. Ill 
 
 the imaginary discourses which, are still extant under 
 the name of the Clementines, but the effort failed. 
 
 The fantastic theosophy of emanations, aeons, 
 essences, and powers the system under which logi- 
 cal formularies were represented as objective realities, 
 and exhibited as a pedigree, which originated in a 
 primeval pair called "depth" and "silence" could 
 have had no permanent influence on mankind, de- 
 served no vitality. Even if this philosophy had 
 rested on a real foundation, it would have done 
 nothing towards the moral progress of mankind. 
 No growth of mere speculative opinion has ever 
 assisted in the development of virtue or morality, 
 though such opinion may have, indirectly, retarded 
 both. Man is the better by what he does, not by 
 what he knows. The clearest and most confident 
 avowal of belief may be, as we all know, unaccom- 
 panied by worthy service. Men may hide God's 
 talent in their own napkin, keeping the talent dili- 
 gently all the while, and even boasting of its posses- 
 sion. There is no theory more false than that which 
 asserts that opinion and religion, belief and virtue, 
 always co-exist; or, that those who cannot assent 
 to a doctrine must needs fall short in the practice of 
 godliness. But it is true that an opinion may be in 
 itself immoral, because it contravenes, either directly or 
 indirectly, that morality which lies under every reli- 
 gious life, or because it supersedes hearty obedience to 
 it. To trust in God, and to do His will, are the faith 
 and obedience of the Gospel. In the absence of this 
 faith and obedience, the true and the false in theology 
 are equally virtueless. There is no allegiance to a
 
 112 PAUL OF TARSI'S. 
 
 definition, no loyalty to a formulary. Both are 
 tendered to a Person and a Power, and are invariably 
 offered on grounds which recommend themselves to the 
 reason and the affections. 
 
 In the early age of Christianity, there was no field 
 for that political action which may be powerfully 
 allied with a great religious movement. The social 
 life of mankind was, as we all know, governed by a 
 jealous and irresistible military despotism, from which 
 no one could escape. An attempt was made to main- 
 tain a religion and a nationality in the Jewish war. It 
 failed after a prodigious effort, and Judaism was pro- 
 scribed. To Christianity the importance of this event 
 was enormous. It finally severed the new religion 
 from the old, and transferred the centre of the Church 
 from Syria to Italy and Egypt. But, even if the 
 teaching of the early Christian fathers had not pro- 
 scribed all resistance to constituted, or de facto author- 
 ity, the example which the ruin of Jewry afforded 
 would have been quite sufficient to deter the Christian 
 Church from any organised hostility to the civil and 
 military power of Rome. 
 
 Such an alliance, however, as that between political 
 action and religious zeal, has been effected from time to 
 time. This was the characteristic of Islam, and is 
 the explanation of its amazing success. It accounts, 
 also, for the force which Calvinism exercised during the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Men were not 
 won over to the creed of the Geneva reformer by the 
 attractiveness of the doctrines which he taught, 
 
 O ' 
 
 but by the means which he employed to assist in 
 spreading his creed. He appealed to republican sen-
 
 POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS SYMPATHIES. 113 
 
 timent to that passion for political liberty which is 
 always keenest when men feel the oppressiveness of 
 institutions which cease to challenge their attach- 
 ment, and to which they are no longer proud to 
 be loyal. The most superficial glance at the history 
 of the religious struggle ; in France, where Calvinism 
 ultimately failed ; in Scotland, where it triumphed ; in 
 England, where it ended in a compromise, will detect 
 how closely a political was intertwined with a religious 
 movement. It may seem a paradox, but the great 
 convulsion of the eighteenth century, which we call 
 the French Revolution, was the product of this double 
 energy political and religious zeal. 
 
 The Gnostic was as little anxious to confront the 
 military despotism under which he lived and dreamed 
 as the Christian enthusiast was. But when a creed or 
 a religion is debarred from alliance with political 
 advocates, it can commend itself only by appeals 
 to universal sympathy, and by the constancy with 
 which it endures martyrdom. Christianity adopted 
 both methods ; .Gnosticism adopted neither. It was a 
 theology of particular salvation confined to the elect 
 and the illuminated only. Its adepts, as Tertullian 
 maintains, shrunk from suffering on behalf of their 
 tenets. Now a faith which incites neither love nor 
 admiration will have no bold on the minds of men. 
 A creed, on the other hand, may be harsh and severe 
 may distribute its rewards and punishments by no 
 higher principle than caprice or chance, and yet may 
 win its adherents by thousands, because it appeals to 
 some profound and energetic sympathy. The Scotch 
 
 Covenanters did not fight and die for the Westminster 
 
 H
 
 114 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 Confession, but for liberty of conscience. Besides, 
 men may accept a faith which seems dark and for- 
 bidding, and yet find the profoundest consolation 
 in it, because they look on themselves as the peculiar 
 objects upon which its narrow favours are bestowed 
 ungrudgingly, because they are able to die first. 
 
 As the Christianity of the apostolic age carefully 
 abstained from traversing the authority of the political 
 system under which it grew, so it shows no trace of 
 any inclination to ally itself with the forces of a 
 friendly government, should such a contingency arise. 
 The maxim of its Founder, " My kingdom is not of 
 this world, else would my servants fight," has its 
 complement, implied but unexpressed, that the same 
 kingdom declines the alliance of the civil authority in 
 aid of its own pretensions to allegiance, or in effecting 
 the extension of its sway. From time to time, a 
 religious movement has enlisted political sympathies 
 on its side, and may do so again. But the association 
 must be temporary, unless the religion is to be 
 enslaved and corrupted. For its own safety, it must 
 make only a short treaty with material and social 
 interests. The reason lies in the facts, that its in- 
 fluence and action cannot be narrowed to the limits 
 within which political authority and social opinion 
 are contained, that its agent is enthusiasm, and that 
 this sentiment can have only an occasional connection 
 with political utility. 
 
 The mission of Christ is to the world, to save it, 
 to renew it, to sanctify it. He propounds a general, 
 why not a universal forgiveness ? He suffered, the 
 just for the unjust, that He might, as the highest
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE WORLD. 115 
 
 example, commence that service which all those 
 who ponder on His work, and thereupon would be 
 His disciples, must needs continue. Like the runners 
 in the Athenian torch-race, each man who is worthy 
 of this office, and has set himself to the work, is to 
 carry on, unextinguished, and with undiminished fire, 
 his love towards the race of which he is a member. 
 This is the glory of the noblest sacrifice which has ever 
 been made on man's behalf. Do they, who, follow- 
 ing His example, are willing to lose their lives trusting 
 that they may find them, whose hearts' desire and 
 prayer is for the salvation of their people, who can 
 even, in the plenitude of their self-abnegation, wish 
 themselves anathema from all hope, if by such means 
 the whole race may be enlightened, shall they think 
 that the majesty of God is at variance with the 
 fatherly care with which He ever watches His creatures, 
 or that it is not in His counsels that mercy rejoiceth 
 against judgment ? To have the mind of Christ, is 
 to continue the work which He began, to save souls, 
 to take part in the great battle against sin, misery, 
 ignorance, moral death. Such a life is the best 
 
 O ' 
 
 antidote against that morbid dread of God which 
 clouds the religious sense of many, and that indolent 
 egotism which claims to be illuminated, and is lazily 
 confident in its own indefectible perfection.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EARLY in the first century after Christ, a Christian 
 living at Nablous, a city better known by its ancient 
 name of Samaria, addressed an Apology to the 
 Emperor Antoninus on behalf of his fellow-believers. 
 This defence of the new religion was written by 
 one who was well acquainted with the Old Testament 
 and at least three of the Gospels, for he quotes abun- 
 dantly from these books. The writer, who calls himself 
 Justin, comments on the unfairness which treats the 
 Christians with severity, while he defends them from 
 those charges of impiety and licentiousness which were 
 freely uttered against them. In giving a summary 
 of their faith and practice, he informs the emperor 
 of their method of common worship, and describes 
 the ceremony of Baptism, and of the Lord's Supper 
 or Eucharist. Justin gives the earliest account, 
 after the Apostolic age, of the ritual observances 
 peculiar to the new sect. 
 
 " Those," he says, " who agree with and confess 
 our tenets are washed and regenerated in the name 
 of God, of Jesus Christ our Saviour, and of the
 
 CHRISTIANITY IN JUSTIN'S AGE. 117 
 
 Holy Spirit. This washing is called illumination. 
 In this baptism/' he observes, "we do not use the 
 ineffable name of God, for if any one did so, he 
 would be forthwith seized with uncontrollable mad- 
 ness. When we gather for worship, we use common 
 prayers in a loud voice, for ourselves, for the person 
 who has been baptised, and for all others. Then 
 we kiss each other. After this, bread, a cup of 
 water, and another of wine are brought to the 
 person who presides over the brethren. Thanks 
 are offered to God. The president takes the viands, 
 gives praise and glory to the Father of all, by 
 the name of the Son, and the Spirit of the Holy 
 One, offering general thanks because the worshippers 
 were deemed worthy of such blessings from His 
 hands. Then the deacons distribute the bread and 
 wine to those who are present, and carry them to 
 those who are absent. No person, however, is per- 
 mitted to partake of them except those who are 
 believers and are baptised. We offer alms, and 
 are constantly together. We always meet on Sun- 
 days, when we first read the commentaries of the 
 Apostles or the writings of the Prophets. When 
 the reader ceases, the president of the meeting 
 preaches. We then pray, and again receive the 
 bread and wine." 
 
 The first account seems to describe the daily 
 office, and the second to refer only to the Sunday 
 service. It would appear that the common prayers 
 were some set form, and that they were recited 
 by the whole congregation. The method of worship 
 corresponds, generally, to that which is alluded to
 
 118 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 in St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, though 
 disorders and confusion had crept in upon the devo- 
 tions of the Corinthian Christians. It may be 
 observed, too, that at Nablous, if Justin is describing 
 the customs of the congregation in his own city, 
 there is no regular minister, in any modern sense 
 of the word. The word which I have translated 
 "president" does not designate even a permanent 
 officer. The solemnity of the Lord's Supper, and 
 the preaching of the Gospel, are performed by a 
 person who is not necessarily possessed of anything 
 but a temporary function. That such a president 
 was selected by reason of his character and in con- 
 sideration of his capacity for inculcating the doctrine 
 and rule of the Christian life, may be expected ; but 
 Justin gives no hint of an order or a clergy set apart 
 for this office, still less of any sacerdotal mediation, 
 or judgment, or spontaneity. The primitive Church 
 is a congregation, whose creed is excessively simple, 
 whose ritual is an act of mutual sympathy, an 
 expression of common needs. The author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that there were 
 believers who did not even collect together for 
 common worship and mutual exhortation, though he 
 advises the contrary practice. 
 
 The primitive Christians Justin being taken as an 
 instance of their customs set great store on participa- 
 tion in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, or, as he 
 calls it, in the Eucharist. The language which the 
 Apologist uses about this rite is positive as to the 
 belief in its being the means for associating the 
 Christian with Christ, and of its being an essential to
 
 BAPTISM AND THE EUCHARIST. 119 
 
 salvation or at least to religious health and safety. 
 If the Apology of Justin be genuine, and its genuine- 
 ness has been rarely disputed, and if Justin can be 
 taken, as there is no reason to doubt he can, should 
 the first hypothesis be satisfactorily accepted, as the 
 type of the Syrian Christian at the beginning of 
 the second century, the ceremonies of Christian initi- 
 ation, baptism, and the Lord's Supper, are severally 
 treated as illumination, regeneration, and a partaking 
 of the body and blood of Christ. 
 
 The two characteristic offices of associated worship, 
 which the testimony of Justin shows to have been 
 generally practised in the earliest Christian com- 
 munities, are obvious symbols of natural use. A 
 ceremonial purification was not peculiar to Chris- 
 tianity. It is found in Judaism, in those Eastern 
 creeds which influenced the religious sentiments over 
 which Christianity was induced, and in the lustrations 
 of the Greek mysteries. Physical purity was an apt 
 emblem of moral sanctification, and its sign was 
 adopted by the Great Master, as a means of formal 
 admission into the covenant of His Gospel. Baptism 
 in the name of Christ becomes, by a natural feeling, 
 at once a symbol and a power. 
 
 One of the earliest, most lasting, and most widely- 
 spread among the feelings of humanity, is that which 
 exalts association into unity. Under the influence 
 of this sentiment, physical objects which once belonged 
 to some dearly-loved being, or physical acts which 
 recall his presence to the memory, renew the pleasure 
 or felicity which the presence of his being once gave. 
 They form the link by which the soul can bind itself
 
 120 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 to that which has gone out of its sight, and after which 
 it is earnestly longing. Relics and memorials are the 
 means by which the sadness of separation is lightened, 
 by which the reality of that which is so tenderly 
 loved is certified and assured. Hatred, on the other 
 hand, uses the same stimulants that love does. The 
 tenderness which cherishes such mementos is akin 
 to that fierce malignity which collects the relics of an 
 enemy, in order to make them the material for the 
 incantations of magic or witchcraft. As the solicitude 
 with which deep affection gazes on that which it loves 
 seems to guard or protect the object of its care, so 
 men have believed that an envious or hostile glance 
 may wound or weaken those against whom it is 
 directed. Hatred is not only the counterpart of 
 love, but it uses the same associations in order to 
 glut itself. 
 
 Out of these sympathies, assisted by such reminders, 
 men develop the permanent conceptions of family, 
 country, church. It is because they are thus con- 
 strained to perpetuate what they have felt and known, 
 that they are saved from that isolation, which may 
 flatter men with a cynical sense of independence, but 
 which would, if it were generally adopted, wreck 
 society, and all the forms under which society is con- 
 stituted and exists. To say that man cannot live 
 alone is a platitude. But men may seek to gain all 
 the advantages which social life affords them, and 
 contribute nothing to the forces by which they profit. 
 
 The moral progress of man is not due to the fact, 
 that in the struggle of life, the strong have supplanted 
 the weak, or elbowed them out of existence. On the
 
 ASSOCIATION AND US ITT. 121 
 
 contrary, it has been effected by the fact that the 
 strono- have sheltered and cherished the weak, that 
 
 O ' 
 
 they who can strive and conquer have used their power 
 and their success for the purpose of succouring the 
 feeble and the oppressed, for lavishing the tenderest 
 feeling and action on those who cling to them for 
 support and protection, and who have nothing to offer 
 in return for these benefits but untiring and unchang- 
 ing love. It may be that man has been developed to 
 his present condition out of a mere animal savagery. 
 It is certain, that if this be the case, he owes all his 
 progress to actions which are the very reverse of that 
 policy which gives the weak over as a prey to the 
 strong. It is equally certain, that if he does decline 
 hereafter into barbarism, he will owe his moral^deca- 
 dence to the spread of the temper which urges men 
 to live for themselves alone. 
 
 The admiration, the worship, with which men wit- 
 ness the strength and wisdom which are used for the 
 good of others, and not for personal aggrandisement, 
 the homage which they offer to courage, joined to 
 gentleness, are acknowledgments of the great part 
 which such qualities play in the moral government of 
 society. Nor is this admiration less enthusiastic 
 because they who feel it are conscious only of the 
 benefit which goodness and wisdom confer on them- 
 selves, and do not forecast their effects on mankind at 
 large. 
 
 The memory of Christ was riveted in the hearts 
 of His disciples and followers. He had largely 
 availed Himself, in the teaching which He gave 
 them, of the sentiment of Association, by the use
 
 \-2-2 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 of parable and analogy in His discourses and actions. 
 He had instructed them in the doctrine that the 
 unity of mankind was to be found in Himself, and 
 had prescribed a ritual by which that unity should 
 be perpetually suggested. When He was gone from 
 them, the whole meaning of His intercourse with 
 them became apparent and permanent. Before, their 
 hearts were dull, and they could not understand 
 Him, their eyes were holden that they could not 
 see Him. Now everything was clear. 
 
 But nothing seems to have been graven more 
 indelibly on their memory than the scene of the 
 last Supper. It is the one event in the life of 
 Christ which St. Paul narrates. It is the central 
 fact of the fourth gospel, the circumstance to which 
 the discourses in that gospel tend, or round which 
 they are arranged. It was recalled to the mind of 
 all by the necessities of daily life, by the breaking 
 of bread. The reminder was cumulative, the analogy 
 natural. As human nature requires daily sustenance, 
 so the spiritual nature which is contained in the 
 life of man needs daily nurture. As the physical 
 growth of man is due to his daily bread, so the 
 growth to the measure of the stature of the fulness 
 of Christ demands as imperatively the renewing of 
 that spiritual food. The showing forth of the Lord's 
 death is the source of the Christian's life. The five 
 thousand are fed abundantly, and the fragments 
 exceed the necessity. Nay, the practice of Christian 
 man was prefigured in the Law. The heavenly 
 food in the wilderness, the ever-flowing rock which 
 accompanied the wanderers in the desert, are mani-
 
 THE SCRIPTURES OF JUSTIN. 123 
 
 festations of the same spiritual force. Unseen but 
 not undiscovered, He is in the midst. He is the 
 Power of God and the Wisdom of God. 
 
 The readings in the Church whose ritual Justin 
 describes, are taken from the commentaries of the 
 Apostles and the Prophetical books. The term 
 employed to express these commentaries is that used 
 by Xenophon to denote the collection of Socratic 
 conversations which is known as the Memorabilia. 
 It is clear that the Apologist was conversant with 
 the three gospels, for he freely quotes from them, 
 though he does not name the authors of these 
 biographies. It may be that time has spared us 
 only some of these compilations, and that the ruin 
 which fell on Judea during the great war, may have 
 been followed by the loss of many apostolic composi- 
 tions. The considerable space between the age of 
 the first Apostles and that of the earliest Fathers is 
 very imperfectly illustrated, is very inadequately 
 filled by the reminiscences or collections of Irenseus. 
 St. Paul may have adverted to one of these lost 
 books, when he is said to quote, as a well known 
 saying of Christ, that " it is more blessed to give than 
 to receive/' a passage the more remarkable as the 
 Apostle hardly ever refers to these doings and sayings. 
 
 The writings of the Prophets are those books of 
 the Jewish Scriptures in which Justin was very well 
 versed. Born a heathen, and bred a philosopher, 
 Justin tells us that he was converted from meta- 
 physical speculations to Christianity, by the con- 
 versation which he held with an old man who accosted 
 him as he was taking a solitary walk on the sea-shore.
 
 124 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 These prophetical writings were carefully studied by 
 the more learned Christians, as they formed the best 
 polemical weapon against the Jews, their Messianic 
 character harmonising with the history of Christ. 
 
 St. Paul gives us some particulars about the ritual 
 of the Corinthian Church. It had become necessary 
 that the Apostle should put an end to certain dis- 
 orders and confusions, and establish in Corinth a 
 uniformity with the practice of other churches. There 
 was one very notable peculiarity in the churches of 
 this city, which is not mentioned as characteristic of 
 any other church, which is not referred to in the 
 subsequent epistle to the same church, nor in the 
 epistle of Clement. It is the power of speaking in 
 tongues, a power, the manifestation of which St. Paul 
 does not wish to forbid, though he plainly desires to 
 keep it within the narrowest possible limits. It is 
 probable that the discouragement with which the 
 Apostle treats the faculty may have led to its disuse. 
 It is clear that the faculty was abused, that it tended 
 to disorder, and that its only possible value was that 
 it might attract the favourable notice of unbelievers, 
 though this advantage was counterbalanced by the 
 risk, that an excessive or simultaneous exhibition of 
 the power might induce an uninstructed audience to 
 believe the actors mad. 
 
 The persons who possessed the power of speaking 
 "tongues," uttered their sentences occasionally in a 
 foreign language ; but sometimes, it would seem, gave 
 vent to unintelligible sounds. Some of these out- 
 pourings the Apostle compares to the irregular emis- 
 sion of such musical notes as have neither rhythm or
 
 XPEAKIXG WITH TOXGUEX. 125 
 
 melody, or to the blare of a trumpet, which does not 
 indicate any of the known calls to which soldiers give 
 ear. It is probable, the Apostle says, that there is no 
 sound, however numerous sounds may be, which is 
 undevoid of meaning ; but if one does not know what 
 the sound may mean, the utterance will be a jargon. 
 A man, indeed, may pray in language which he him- 
 self cannot comprehend, and the act of devotion will 
 edify his spirit, but his mind will have no benefit from 
 the sounds expressed, and perfect acts of prayer and 
 praise must be intelligible as well as devotional. Five 
 words which may be comprehended are worth more 
 than ten thousand of those obscure sounds. If they 
 must needs be uttered, a very few people should make 
 the ejaculation, and one should interpret it, if it can 
 be interpreted. If no interpretation be forthcoming, 
 it is better for the person who possesses the faculty 
 to be silent, as the sound neither profits himself nor 
 others. There is a danger that an honest enthusiasm 
 may lead him who feels it into strange freaks that it 
 may be simulated by others for sinister ends that it 
 may be misinterpreted, even at its best. It is impos- 
 sible to avoid the inference that the reasoning employed 
 by the Apostle containing, as it does, no small 
 amount of suggestive irony should have checked, and 
 finally eradicated, the habit of speaking in " tongues." 
 
 Far superior, however, to this ecstatic, and some- 
 what superfluous gift, is that of prophesying, as St. 
 Paul calls it. It is the most serviceable of spiritual 
 gifts edifying and instructing individuals and the 
 Church. It may be communicated to all believers. 
 Other gifts may be used with thankfulness when be-
 
 12G PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 stowed ; this is that gift which all should desire to 
 obtain ; it is that, says the Apostle, which I wish that 
 all of you possessed. 
 
 The names and history of those eminent men who 
 had guided the public policy of Israel during the 
 monarchy, were familiar facts to both Jew and Chris- 
 tian. Some of them had written books. At least, 
 their recorded sayings were collected and set in order 
 by their disciples. These works, under the general 
 name of " The Prophets/' were esteemed highly by all 
 who held to the Jewish covenant as a complete revela- 
 tion, and were equally reverenced by those who believed 
 that the Law was imperfect and typical the shadow 
 of that which was to come. 
 
 We are so accustomed to consider the prophet of the 
 Jewish covenant as the expositor of the Divine purpose 
 towards the chosen people and the rest of mankind, 
 that we are apt to lose sight of his attitude towards 
 his own generation to forget that he rebuked and 
 counselled king and nation that he was a statesman 
 and a jurist, who interpreted the politics of his age 
 according to the law of God and the pernmnent inter- 
 ests of His people. The spirit of this law was ex- 
 pounded by the prophet, with breadth and boldness, 
 with force and dignity, with exquisite poetry and 
 pathos. The prophet was the preacher of holiness 
 and righteousness, of religion and morals ; for the 
 Jewish kings constantly exhibited the traits of other 
 oriental sovereigns, and the priests do not appear to 
 have exercised any great social influence by the mere 
 virtue of their office. It is by the prophets and their 
 writings that Israel not only maintained the purity of
 
 THE JEWISH PROPHETS. 127 
 
 his religion, but was saved from sinking either into 
 one of those races which have been long since extinct, 
 or from being degraded into a permanent, but a 
 savage horde. The word of the Lord came to him, 
 was spoken, and endures for ever. To the student of 
 history it is impossible to exaggerate the influence 
 which these men have exercised on the destiny of 
 mankind. Though they were guided by such lofty 
 impulses, and such profoundly religious sentiment, 
 their life and action is intensely real. They were 
 neither philosophers nor devotees, but politicians of 
 the purest type, whose energies were devoted towards 
 preserving the institutions of a petty Syrian kingdom, 
 but whose principles of action were those of perfect 
 political morality, and were therefore of universal 
 significance. They believed in a public conscience, 
 a public duty, a public religion, and they never 
 failed to insist on the obligations which give society 
 all its force and vigour. God had committed to 
 them a great charge, and they dared not be timid or 
 unfaithful. 
 
 History supplies us with no parallel to the influence 
 which these men wielded. They were the leaders 
 of opinion in a kingdom which was neither so large nor 
 so populous as Yorkshire, at an epoch when their coun- 
 try was overshadowed by powerful empires, and was 
 the highway of great contending armies. They had to 
 preserve its independence by their policy. But they 
 had a still harder task to perform, that of maintaining 
 the purity of its religion. Even more dangerous 
 than the political forces which threatened Judah, were 
 the corrupting influences which tended to debase
 
 128 PAUL OF T A RS I >'. 
 
 the Law by their contact ; for no nature- worship was 
 more gross than that of Phoenicia, no fetish more 
 cruel than that of Moab and Aminon, and of the 
 other old Cauaanite races. They had to interpret 
 the Law according to its spiritual meaning, to advocate 
 a higher life than the corn, and wine, and oil, and 
 honey of the older promise ; and to set this loftier 
 example before the State and the Man. Nor were the 
 external difficulties of their position all that they 
 had to contend with. Some prophets were found 
 who, like Hananiah, apostatised from their calling, 
 men whose time-serving falsehood extorted from Jere- 
 miah that bitter complaint which contains in it a 
 summary of ages in the world's history, -The prophets 
 prophesy wickedness, and the priests applaud them, 
 and my people love, to have it so, and what will ye 
 do when the end of these things comes ? 
 
 These prophets were not ignorant enthusiasts, who 
 owed their authority to mere self-assertion. They 
 were trained to such learning as the times possessed, 
 in certain recognised seminaries. These institutions 
 were, it would seem, founded by Samuel, for it 
 is during the age of this Judge that the schools of 
 the prophets are specially distinguished, and were 
 continued down to the great Captivity. At the 
 Restoration, the prophet's place was supplied by the 
 teaching which the Rabban gave his disciples. The 
 Jews were ready to recognise the spirit of the older 
 prophet in the teaching of the Baptist, and the 
 discourses of Christ are the utterances of one who, 
 trained as the prophets were trained, surpassed them 
 all ; completing the sum of Divine wisdom, announc-
 
 THE JEWISH PROPHET A STATESMAN. 129 
 
 ing in all their fulness the counsels of God, and 
 promising the continuance of the Spirit to His 
 disciples. 
 
 As the part of the prophet was one of great 
 honour and authority, so it was one of peculiar 
 danger. Monarch and people were occasionally re- 
 called to their duty by the warnings of these advisers, 
 but as often turned savagely on the unwelcome or 
 intrusive counsellor. The author of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews recounts the sufferings which these 
 patriots underwent. Christ, with full foresight of 
 His own destiny, charges the existing generation 
 of the Jews with an aggregate of that blood-thirsty 
 hate which prompted the death of Abel, and con- 
 summated the slaughter of Zecharias, whose murder, 
 says the Talmud, was committed during the time 
 that Jerusalem was besieged by the Chaldeans, and 
 was mercilessly avenged by Nebuzaradan. 
 
 It is the power, then, of interpreting religious duty 
 in the various occasions of life, of bringing the Spirit 
 of God which dwells within the believer to bear on 
 the course of human action, which St. Paul prays 
 that his Corinthian disciples may possess. He ranges 
 the prophet after the apostle in the rank of usefulness. 
 He would have them all obtain, and all use this gift 
 for personal guidance and mutual counsel. Himself 
 in the fullest sense a prophet, and enjoying abundantly 
 this clear inward light, he longed that all his converts 
 should be equally advanced in spiritual knowledge 
 and wisdom, should equally contribute towards the 
 edification of the Church. He warns them against 
 sectarian differences, reminds them that their allegiance
 
 130 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 cannot be divided or shared, and advises them to aid 
 each other in the great work of wisdom and holiness. 
 
 The time was not come in which this function- 
 to be performed by the members of an obscure and 
 struggling sect should be extended so as to fill the 
 sphere in which the ancient prophets exercised their 
 great ministry. And when the time did come, and 
 an opportunity was offered in which Christianity, 
 having interpenetrated the whole life of society, might 
 constitute a Divine republic, a true civitas Dei, a state 
 in which profound religious energy should go hand-in- 
 hand with clear political sagacity, the Christian world 
 was busied in logomachies, was ruled by monks 
 and ascetics, by logicians and mystics. Then the 
 Church eagerly completed a bargain, under the terms 
 of which the successful portion was empowered to 
 proscribe its rivals, provided only that the whole force 
 of ecclesiastical government should ally itself with 
 the temporary expedients of a demoralised and decay- 
 ing government, with the degraded imperialism of 
 the Constantines. 
 
 The worship in the Corinthian churches is strangely 
 like that of the earliest Quakers. One man had a 
 psalm to recite, another a rule of conduct to announce, 
 a third some linguistic utterance, a fourth some reve- 
 lation, a fifth the interpretation of some obscure 
 passage of Scripture, or of some mystic declaration. 
 To add to the confusion, the women were as eager 
 in their contributions to this bewildering clamour 
 as the men were. Hence the Apostle enjoins silence 
 in the churches on the women, as is seemly, and 
 to avoid scandal. The injunction, it appears, was
 
 CHURCH GOYERXXENT AXD WORSHIP. 131 
 
 peculiarly needed in the Corinthian churches, was 
 special, perhaps temporary. Elsewhere, it is clear 
 that women exercised great influence on the discip- 
 line of the Church, and that they busied themselves 
 with the spread of the Gospel. Priscilla is one of 
 these, so is Junia, whom Paul speaks of as an apostle, 
 also Tryphena, Tryphosa, and Persis, and probably 
 Julia, and the sister of Nereus, to quote those 
 names only which are found in the Epistle to the 
 Romans. The notion that the Apostle discouraged 
 the services of women on behalf of the Gospel, is 
 an exaggerated inference from the language of the 
 Epistle to the Corinthians, and is contradicted by 
 facts. 
 
 If the assemblies of the Corinthian Christians, 
 when St. Paul wrote with the view of checking 
 these disorders, resembled those ecstatic gatherings 
 of the older Quakers, so the religious exercises 
 which he commends resemble the decorous solemni- 
 ties which have characterised the meetings of these 
 sectaries, after the enthusiasm of teachers like Fox 
 was controlled by the good sense of reformers like 
 Penn. There is absolutely no hint given in the 
 epistle of any organised ministry, still less of any 
 hierarchy whatsoever. Every convert, as far as the 
 text of the letter informs us, was on a footing of 
 perfect equality with his neighbour or brother in 
 Christ, was competent to raise his voice or expound 
 in the Church. We do not even find a temporary 
 president of the meeting, such as was set up in 
 the church which Justin describes. The gifts of 
 the Spirit were various, and every convert had
 
 132 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 some gift which he might employ for the general 
 good of the Church. But this silence as to church 
 government and an official ministry is not peculiar 
 to the Corinthian epistles. Only one of the epistles 
 addressed to churches contains any allusion to resi- 
 dent ecclesiastical officers; and this address to the 
 bishops and deacons of Philippi, while it has made 
 some persons suspect that the letter is of doubtful 
 authenticity, has induced those who contend for its 
 genuineness to assign it to the latest period of the 
 Apostle's life. 
 
 But though the epistles to the churches afford little 
 or no information on the subject of the Christian 
 ministry, and present a mass of negative evidence as to 
 the appointment of a regular order, the Apostle gives 
 an account of what the office of the Lord's Supper was, 
 and what it ought to be. The converts came together, 
 each bringing his food and drink with him, though 
 not, it would seem, with the intention of giving it to 
 a common fund. Some were hungry, some indulged 
 in excess ; the rich enjoyed themselves, the poor were 
 put to shame by their inability to vie with this pro- 
 fusion and ostentation. It would appear that the 
 Corinthians imagined, provided they took their meal 
 in the same building, that they were performing the 
 rite which was commanded to believers as a solemn 
 commemoration of Christ's death. St. Paul therefore 
 narrates the circumstances under which the rite was 
 instituted, enjoins its observance on Christians, shows 
 the danger of a profane misinterpretation of it, and 
 the consequences which have already ensued from 
 careless malpractice, inculcates the rule that it is a
 
 CHURCH DISCIPLINE AT CORINTH. 133 
 
 feast in which, all worshippers are equal, and promises 
 to give further details on his arrival. 
 
 The First Epistle to the Corinthians gives some 
 insight into the discipline of the Church. A professed 
 believer had married his step-mother, and this, appar- 
 ently, during his father's lifetime. Such a marriage 
 was discreditable among the heathen. Under certain 
 circumstances, it was, despite the prohibition in Levi- 
 ticus, permitted among the Jews, in consequence of 
 certain decisions in the Talmud, which professed to 
 interpret cases like those of Abraham and Sarah, 
 Amnon and Tamar, Adonijah and Abishag, where 
 marriages between persons who were within close re- 
 lations of consanguinity or affinity were either con- 
 tracted or contemplated. The gloss of these doctors 
 was, that in case the wife was of heathen parentage 
 on the mother's side, the relationship need not be a 
 bar. It has been suggested that the offender was a 
 Jew, who had taken advantage of this opinion of the 
 Jewish doctors, and had thereupon debauched and 
 married his step-mother. It seems to me more likely 
 that the wife had taken advantage of the easy law 
 of divorce which prevailed among the Romans (for 
 Corinth was a Roman colony), and had thus contracted 
 a marriage which the Roman custom branded as inces- 
 tuous, but for which, in so licentious a place as Corinth 
 was, there was probably no punishment. 
 
 Apart from the consideration of its immorality, the 
 act was dangerous to the reputation of the Church. 
 The early Christians had every interest to maintain 
 a character for purity, since scandal would be sure 
 to be busy with them, however careful they were, if
 
 134- PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 it could only catch at any fact. St. Paul therefore 
 commands instant and severe measures. They are 
 to suspend the culprit immediately, in the name of 
 Christ, and by His power, from fellowship with the 
 Church. They are to give him over to Satan, the 
 Apostle using this phrase, familiar to those who knew 
 the histories of Job and Ahab, to imply that the 
 offender should suffer some severe bodily ailment, as a 
 punishment and corrective for his offence. The object 
 of the chastisement was not the destruction of the 
 man, but the repentance of a sinner. We learn that 
 the Church was roused to action by the Apostle's 
 command, that it cleared itself of all complicity in the 
 scandal, that it put public censure on the offender, 
 that the offence was repented of, and that it was 
 forgiven. 
 
 The Founder of Christianity was reproached with 
 His lenity to offenders, was blamed for the readiness 
 with which He welcomed repentant sinners. A scheme 
 of religion which inculcated the doctrine of God's 
 love, gentleness, longsuffertng, which insisted on the 
 impossibility of man's fulfilling all the requirements 
 of a precise and searching law, and which taught that 
 man was reconciled to God through the great sacrifice 
 of Christ, could not be severe to those who sorrow 
 over their sin, could not but welcome back those who, 
 roused by an accusing conscience, seek forgiveness 
 and peace. If the Gospel declares all men to need 
 salvation, if it warns men of the consequences which 
 ensue to those who are impenitent, and even implies 
 that a sharp and purifying fire is needed for them who 
 have lived sensuously, though not sinfully, it is
 
 CHRISTIANITY LENIENT TO PENITENTS. 135 
 
 boundless in its charity to those who seek forgiveness. 
 To grant this forgiveness is the very essence of the 
 Christian religion ; to refuse it is to be implacable, and 
 therefore unforgiven ; to inflict irrevocable punish- 
 ment is to usurp the functions of God ; to desire that 
 such punishment should be inflicted is to be of a 
 spirit of which no man should knowingly be, to league 
 oneself with the accuser and destroyer. The scheme of 
 Christianity admits the great value of human life, but it 
 insists on the transcendant value of the human soul. 
 
 The generosity with which Christianity treated 
 repented sin in primitive times has been permanently 
 characteristic of its later discipline. It has even 
 gone beyond the ancient rule, and has all but 
 ignored discipline itself. But, however lax it has 
 been in dealing with the practice of its followers, 
 it has from time to time been implacably severe 
 on their opinions. It has dealt with morals and 
 belief respectively as the Index dealt with Lucian, 
 permitted the publication of all that is gross, 
 suppressed everything which it considered sceptical. 
 It has, in the hands of those who pretended to be 
 its fathers and doctors, committed the greatest cruel- 
 ties which have ever polluted the world. The dark 
 fears of tyrants have never devised such torments 
 for their victims as the disciples of Christ have 
 perpetrated, and that without the tyrant's plea, 
 without a word of justification from the teaching of 
 Him whom they profess to adore, in the face, even, 
 of His absolute prohibition. They who professed 
 to be the stewards of God's mercy and grace, de- 
 veloped an insane fanaticism out of the fears which
 
 13G PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 they stimulated, and led generations of mankind to 
 
 believe that they were vindicating God's honour by 
 
 permitting, encouraging, assisting a dark and merciless 
 
 hatred against those who were suspected of heresy. 
 
 The Church of the earliest ages is not perfectly free 
 
 from this attempt to usurp the functions of the Divine 
 
 Judge. We shall see that the labours of Paul were 
 
 seriously hindered by the narrowness of those who 
 
 professed the faith of Christ ; that the last days of his 
 
 life were embittered by the apostacy of those who 
 
 owed their knowledge of the Gospel to his unwearied 
 
 energy ; that for a time he was followed by angry 
 
 calumnies. But the fervid zeal of the early Church 
 
 was ready to welcome all who accepted the name, and 
 
 strove to live the life of the Christian. It had not yet 
 
 attempted those definitions which bewildered and rent 
 
 it. It was busied with the belief that the work of all 
 
 religion is to effect the association of man's soul with 
 
 the undoubted Presence of God. It saw that the 
 
 space between God and man, which might be infinitely 
 
 small, and might be infinitely great, could be filled up 
 
 by the person of Christ a Humanity of perfect love, 
 
 of unwearying providence, of such attractiveness that 
 
 it occupies every affection, sanctifies every emotion, 
 
 unites all men by a common bond, but is, withal, the 
 
 power, the glory, the wisdom of God the exemplar of 
 
 all creation, the strength by which everything is made, 
 
 one with God and one with man, the one true 
 
 Priest and Mediator. To accept His mediation is to 
 
 satisfy man's most earnest longings to guarantee the 
 
 law of liberty, or in modern language, the highest and
 
 MEATS OFFERED TO IDOLS. 137 
 
 The Church at Corinth put a question of conscience 
 to the Apostle. The worship of Greece and Rome 
 involved the offering of sacrifices. The same nations 
 practised augury by inspecting the viscera of slaugh- 
 tered animals, these animals being the substitutes for 
 a more ancient rite, which was common in Mexico at 
 the time of Cortez, where human sacrifices were offered 
 for similar ends, the body of the victim being after- 
 wards disposed of in the same way. Having served 
 the purpose of intercession or vaticination, the carcases 
 of these animals were sent to the butcher's shop. It 
 is probable that by far the largest portion, if not 
 the whole of the meat exposed for sale had been 
 previously employed for these sacerdotal objects, and 
 that a conscientious refusal to purchase any of that 
 which had been offered to idols, would be equivalent 
 to abjuring the use of flesh altogether. What is to 
 be done in such an emergency ? Can we purchase 
 such food ? 
 
 To a person whose early training led him to look 
 with horror on any ceremonial defilement, however 
 little it was coupled with a disposition to offend against 
 the Law, the case was one which must have been 
 instantly answered in the negative. The Jews were ex- 
 cessively strict in seeing every condition of ceremonial 
 cleanliness satisfied in the preparation of all animal 
 food, and would certainly have rejected this kind of 
 flesh. But the Apostle thought differently, now at 
 any rate. The idol is absolutely nothing. There is 
 but one God, or, in case people believe there are 
 powers in heaven or on earth, to us at least there is 
 but One, who is the Author of all, and to whom we
 
 138 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 revert, and one Christ, who is the Type of all, and 
 by whom we subsist. They who really know and 
 understand these facts have no need to find any diffi- 
 culty in the case; or, as he subsequently tells the 
 Romans, there is nothing unclean in itself; or, as 
 logicians say, there is no objective impurity in any 
 kind of meat. The uncleanness of food is a subjective 
 impression. 
 
 In a later part of the epistle, the Apostle, after one 
 of his characteristic parentheses, reverts to the case 
 of casuistry which has been submitted to him. He 
 is reminded of it by having alluded to the community 
 of act, thought, and spirit, which are involved in the 
 celebration of the Lord's Supper. He compares it 
 to that fellowship in the sacrifice, which those who 
 partake of the flesh offered at the sacrifice must needs 
 reciprocate. And then comes before his mind the 
 analogy which is presented by participation in flesh 
 previously offered to idols. To participate in the 
 sacrifice is devil-worship, and cannot be thought of. 
 To imagine that the religious feast can be conjoined 
 with an idolatrous symposium, a heathen revel, is to 
 profane it, and cannot be endured. 
 
 The rule of life is, however, clear. What is lawful 
 to an individual, and what is expedient or advantageous 
 to a society are not always identical, and the Christian 
 is bound to consider his neighbour's good. If you, 
 who know that the act of idolatrous sacrifice is a mere 
 farce, see meat exposed for sale, buy it without 
 question or comment. If you are invited to the house 
 of a man who is not a Christian, and you care to go, 
 do so, and eat of any dish set before you, without
 
 MEATS OFFERED TO IDOLS. 139 
 
 question or comment. But if you are expressly 
 informed that the meat has been sacrificed, avoid it 
 for your own sake and that of the person who informs 
 you. Better deny yourself than offend those for 
 whom Christ died. Give no cause of scandal to Jew, 
 Greek, or the Church of God. Take my example, 
 who was a Jew to the Jews, and a Greek to the 
 Greeks, in order to win them over. The example is 
 that of Christ himself, who could not countenance 
 intolerance of race or station rebuking sin in all, 
 encouraging what was hopeful in all. 
 
 Whether this liberty which the Apostle advocated 
 was abused, or they who censured his system of 
 generous interpretation were offended at such counsel, 
 is not clear. But the author of the Apocalypse com- 
 plains that the converts in the Asiatic churches eat 
 things offered to idols, and that in Thyatira, the 
 church listened to the woman Jezebel who claims to 
 be a prophetess, and dares to counsel this practice. 
 It is difficult to avoid the impression that part of the 
 vision in Patmos was directed against the liberty 
 which Paul demanded, though he gave counsel as 
 to the limits of that liberty. It does not necessarily 
 follow, that the writer of the vision was aware of 
 the reasons which induced Paul to decide as he did, 
 or of the cautions with which he surrounded his 
 decision. But it was very hard to wean men from the 
 traditions of the older faith, to induce them to believe 
 that a ritual which was merely symbolical was not 
 of universal and permanent obligation. It is hardest 
 of all to advise successfully, that the spirit of a law 
 should be discovered, and its letter interpreted by such
 
 140 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 a spirit. It may be added that Justin Martyr com- 
 ments unfavourably on those who give permission to 
 eat the flesh of heathen sacrifices. 
 
 If the Apostle granted liberty in this direction, 
 he refused it to those who would thrust the Jewish 
 polity into the Christian Church. He hears that the 
 Galatians are observing days, months, seasons, years, 
 the sabbath of the Jews, the new moons, the stated 
 feasts, the times of the Jewish Law. He dreads that 
 his labour may have been in vain, when men who have 
 learned God's will, and, better still, were accepted by 
 Him, return to such poor and contemptible observances. 
 For Sabbatarian strictness the Apostle has no respect 
 whatever. He tells the Romans that he is indifferent 
 to the recognition of any such day. But when it is 
 made obligatory by reactionary teachers, he even 
 denounces the observance of it totally. The curious 
 fancy which has intruded into some Christian societies 
 a rigorous observance of Sunday, and which has trans- 
 ferred to it the extreme strictness of the Jewish 
 Sabbath, was not only not countenanced by St. Paul, 
 but spoken of as a matter of utter indifference, except 
 when it is intended to suggest allegiance to the Jewish 
 code. Then it was to be repudiated as delusive and 
 dangerous. Even when that code was imperative, the 
 Master had taught that the Sabbath had a purely 
 human purpose; it could not be endured that prejudice 
 should exalt it into a stringent obligation of religion. 
 
 The first day of the week had already been recog- 
 nised as a convenient occasion for common prayer and 
 mutual exhortation. According to Josephus, the days 
 of the Jewish week were known over the civilised
 
 THE SABBATH AND ALMS-GIVING. 141 
 
 world ; and the reason why Sunday was selected for 
 the purposes of devotion is given by Justin. It was 
 the day of the resurrection, and was thence called the 
 Lord's day. St. Paul directs that on this day each 
 man should lay up that which he can spare for the 
 necessities of the poorer brethren, and observes that 
 he gave the same direction to the Galatian churches. 
 The wholesome and purifying custom of systematic 
 charity characterised the Jewish synagogue, and was 
 inculcated on the Christian communities. When men 
 are taught to feel pity for poverty, distress, and sick- 
 ness, they are insensibly schooled into that duty of 
 forgiving injuries which Christianity has made an 
 article of faith. 
 
 The Apostle insists that he is justified in drawing 
 on this fund, or some similar resource, for the excep- 
 tional supply of his own personal necessities. Occa- 
 sionally he accepted the spontaneous assistance of his 
 converts, and particularises some churches which had 
 been eager to supply his wants. But his delicacy of 
 feeling his honest pride in the perfect disinterested- 
 ness of his missionary work, led him to dispense 
 generally with such acknowledgments of his services. 
 He abhorred the thought of making the Word of 
 God a trade of huckstering over the price at which 
 his office should be compensated. A rare self- 
 abandonment ! It is as difficult to imitate the self- 
 denial of an Apostle, as it is to achieve his vigour 
 and success. 
 
 Paul and Barnabas put no charge on the churches, 
 but the other Apostles did. Nay, they travelled in 
 company with their wives, the Apostle specially desig-
 
 142 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 nating the brethren of the Lord and Peter as having 
 used this privilege. An early legend represents the 
 wife of Peter as being- led to death, and as encouraged 
 
 O ' o 
 
 by him to persevere. It is curious and instructive that 
 this disclaimer of the Apostle, and contrast of his 
 habit with the thoroughly lawful practice of the other 
 Apostles, should inform us of the fact that the en- 
 forced celibacy of Christian ministers has no warranty 
 in the conduct of the Apostles, and that the contrary 
 custom is sustained by their example. But the time 
 was not come yet in which worldly policy would 
 recommend a Manichsean tenet as a part of ecclesi- 
 astical discipline. 
 
 The earlier epistles of St. Paul supply us with no 
 information as to the form of church government 
 adopted by primitive Christianity. It probably varied ; 
 its organisation was not settled, nor was it important 
 that it should be settled. Had there been any per- 
 manent, or even regular officers in the Corinthian 
 church, it is impossible but that the Apostle should 
 have made some reference to them. The Corinthians 
 do not seem even to have established the diaconate ; for 
 the contribution which each is expected to make towards 
 a general collection, is not to be paid to some local 
 treasurer, but is to be [stored up in the house of the 
 giver until the Apostle's arrival. Had the Apostle 
 considered it important that the Corinthians should be 
 supplied with a settled ministry, he would have 
 ordained such officers at his previous visit, or in his 
 first letter to them, which has perished, or would have 
 directed them to provide themselves with proper 
 officials from their own body. The disorders which
 
 THE MINISTRY OF TUE CHURCH. U3 
 
 lie wishes to check and the correction of which is the 
 principal motive for writing the epistle are not reme- 
 died by the establishment of a hierarchy, by providing 
 a central authority to which disputes could be referred ; 
 and the same fact may be inferred negatively as to 
 the other churches whom he addresses, with the 
 exception of that at Philippi. St. Paul must have 
 been totally indifferent as to forms of church 
 government, and would have rebuked any intoler- 
 ance which might prescribe a uniform rule in all 
 the churches. 
 
 With the exception of the deacon's office, the origin 
 of which is narrated in the Acts of the Apostles, all that 
 we know of ecclesiastical officers is obtained from the 
 writings attributed to Paul. In his letters to Timothy, 
 the Apostle instructs his favourite disciple in the 
 qualifications which must be sought for in a bishop or 
 overseer. These do not materially differ from those of 
 a deacon. In the letter to Titus, the bishop and the 
 elder or presbyter are identified. In the First Epistle 
 of Peter, the word bishop is applied to Christ, and 
 the Apostle describes himself as an elder or presbyter. 
 The " angel " or messenger of the seven churches in 
 the Revelation has been supposed, somewhat super- 
 fluously, to be the bishop, for it is difficult to see 
 how a personage whose name implies departure from 
 a particular locality should be identified with the 
 resident governor of the Church. 
 
 There is not the slightest trace of any hierarchy in 
 the New Testament, unless, indeed, it be discovered in 
 the Apostolic College at Jerusalem, whose paramount 
 authority St. Paul distinctly repudiated. The Church
 
 H4 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 was a republic of federal congregations, bound together 
 by no administrative tie, though closely united by a 
 common faith and a common charity. Nor is any 
 Apostle tied to a spot. Titus is sent to ordain elders 
 in Crete, is spoken of, therefore, as its first bishop, but 
 in the Second Epistle to Timothy he has gone to 
 Dalmatia. Timothy is left at Ephesus in the first 
 epistle, but is certainly not there at the date of the 
 second, for the Apostle informs him that he has sent 
 Tychicus thither. Where Timothy was does not 
 appear, but he was to call at Troas on his journey to 
 Paul, then in imminent peril at Rome, where, as it 
 seems from the Epistle to the Hebrews, the disciple 
 narrowly escaped his teacher's fate. It is an anachron- 
 ism to speak of an Apostolic bishop, perhaps an 
 anomaly. That this officer's appointment became 
 general at an early period of Church history was 
 due to causes which had no existence, or only an 
 inchoate existence in the Apostolic age. 
 
 The silence of the New Testament on ritual and 
 Church government contrasts markedly with the en- 
 ergy with which these accidents of later ecclesiastical 
 history have been assailed and defended. It can be 
 shown that the three ecclesiastical offices were all but 
 universally recognised by the middle of the third cen- 
 tury, that the function of ordinary bishops was con- 
 ferred by bishops only, that of presbyters by bishops 
 and presbyters, while a less marked solemnity accom- 
 panied the appointment of deacons. According to 
 Selden, however, who quotes St. Jerome, the bishops 
 of Alexandria were elected and consecrated by the 
 presbyters till the Patriarchate of Alexander, in the
 
 EPISCOPACY UNKNOWN IN THE EARLY CHURCH. 145 
 
 fourth century. But the ancient missionary did not 
 delay his labours till he had received a bishop's license. 
 The best claim to antiquity and independence which 
 can be put forward on behalf of the ancient Irish and 
 Gaelic Churches, lies in the fact that St. Patrick ap- 
 pears to have received no ordination whatever, and 
 that St. Columba was singularly independent of epis- 
 copal control. 
 
 It is not remarkable that authoritv, which is natur- 
 
 / 7 
 
 ally apt to identify a fact with the form in which 
 it is contained, or by which it is disguised, should, 
 after the custom of episcopal government became 
 universal, look on the advocacy of an alternative to 
 such a form as disaffection, treason, or heresy. But, 
 unless it can be shown that the form in question is 
 absolutely essential to the maintenance of order, and 
 the security of freedom, its expediency is always 
 open to debate. The policy of episcopal government 
 has been challenged, partly on account of the excessive 
 zeal which its supporters have manifested in claiming 
 for it a Divine authority, partly because it has been 
 sustained by force against reluctant disputants. Now, 
 in ecclesiastical as in civil government, a form of 
 administration which resents criticism on its intrinsic 
 authority is self-condemned ; that which strives to 
 suppress all opinion as to its validity, or value, is sure 
 to provoke active hostility. Had the principle of 
 episcopacy never affected to rest on Divine right, but 
 had been content to found its claims on the obvious 
 convenience of a graduated municipal system, it would 
 have probably been accepted as the best way in which 
 religious thought can be encouraged and tested, 
 
 K
 
 HG PAUL OF TARSUS 
 
 religious action assisted and guided. But its advocates 
 attempted to make its acceptance a condition of 
 Christian brotherhood ; to force its establishment on 
 unwilling minds, and even to inflict the worst atrocities 
 of civil war on those sectaries who were dissatisfied 
 with its regimen. 
 
 It is said that the establishment of a clerical order, 
 and, in particular, of a permanent chief officer who 
 should govern the Church in a town or district, was 
 founded on a necessity for creating some organisation 
 against heretics and schismatics. The theory is plau- 
 sible, but of doubtful proof. It is quite possible that, 
 had St. Paul created some such officers in Ancyra, 
 Ephesus, Corinth, his authority would have been more 
 respected, and the churches of Galatia, Asia Minor, 
 and Greece would have been spared some follies and 
 scandals. But it was not the mission of the Apostle 
 to organise a society, but to teach a religion. He did 
 not fall into the common error of reformers and mis- 
 sionaries that of setting up a precise rule of church 
 government, for he knew well enough that such arti- 
 ficial systems are in the end constantly fatal to the 
 movement which they are intended to further. The 
 Apostle foresaw that his work would be, to a great 
 degree, undone by intrusive tenets. Before his life 
 was over, he witnessed more than once the partial or 
 complete apostacy of churches which he had founded, 
 and of disciples whom he had taught. But with the 
 exception of a few, and these very general, directions 
 to Timothy and Titus, he provides no ecclesiastical 
 magistracy which should meet these imminent mis- 
 It cannot but be the case that he put no
 
 COMMUNISM IN THE EARLY CHURCB. 147 
 
 reliance in those adventitious aids to orthodoxy. It 
 is certain, if he had no confidence in them, that he 
 was guided by his customary prescience. The schisms, 
 heresies, religious parties, of the second and third 
 century were innumerable. It was only when State 
 and Church were allied that outward uniformity was 
 achieved under the mechanism of an episcopal system. 
 
 Apart from the natural tendency to organisation 
 which a common belief and a common practice en- 
 gender, the social habits of the early Church rendered 
 some form of church polity necessary, and even 
 spontaneous. The primitive Church of Jerusalem 
 was poor. It adopted a strict communism, an ascetic, 
 contemplative life. In time, when the resources 
 which its first disciples threw into the common fund 
 were exhausted, it lived on the alms of the faithful, 
 adopting finally the custom of the Jewish hierarchy, 
 who levied first-fruits on their dispersed brethren. 
 Hence the early necessity which arose for establishing 
 a treasury, with officers who should be appointed to 
 distribute the funds, and who should obviate the charge 
 of favouritism. These, we are expressly told, were the 
 motives for establishing the diaconate. In Nablous 
 the duty of distributing the common fund was intrusted 
 to the president. 
 
 St. Paul was far too wise to attempt the introduc- 
 tion of this communistic system among the Gentile 
 converts. He knew well enough that such a scheme 
 would be fatal to energy, would be fatal to the Church. 
 For the sake of peace, and as part of his compromise 
 with the Judaizing party, he recognised their claim, 
 that the Gentiles should remember the poor, adding,
 
 US PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 with some irony, that he was ready enough to do so. 
 Nor did he neglect to carry out this promise, for he 
 was engaged in this work of charity, or at least 
 generosity, when the rabble set on him in the temple 
 at Jerusalem. He had no objection to assist the 
 poverty of those pious ascetics, of putting their claims 
 before his converts, though he shrunk from taking any 
 compensation for his own services. 
 
 In course of time, it was inevitable that distress 
 should arise within these Gentile churches, and it was 
 notoriously the duty of Christian men to relieve the 
 wants of their brethren, and indeed of all men. The 
 profound sense of this generous obligation was one of 
 the best gifts which Judaism bestowed on Christianity. 
 The establishment, then, of officers who should collect 
 the alms of the richer, and assist the wants of the 
 poorer brethren was necessary. The office was not 
 limited to the male sex, even when the poorer congre- 
 gation asked the aid of some rich and distant church. 
 Phoebe, the deaconess of Cenchrea, gets an introduc- 
 tion from St. Paul to the churches at Rome, just as a 
 colonial missionary might be introduced to the benevo- 
 lence of a wealthy English congregation. The text 
 implies that her mission was an application for some 
 pecuniary assistance. It is to be regretted that Pliny, 
 in his celebrated letter to Trajan, admits that he felt 
 it expedient to put two of these pious women to the 
 torture, in order to extract the truth from them. But 
 the fact shows the important position filled by the 
 Bithynian deaconess. 
 
 The bishop and his presbytery bear an obvious 
 resemblance to the great or the little Synedrion of the
 
 THE ORIGIN OF EPISCOPACY. 149 
 
 Jews. The former of these was constituted in imita- 
 tion of the seventy elders who were selected by Moses 
 and associated with him; the latter, containing twenty- 
 three members, was supposed to be indicated by 
 certain passages in the book of Numbers. The chief 
 of this assembly of elders naturally became the bishop. 
 Among the heretics, says Tertullian, the bishop's 
 office was temporary, as was also that of the presbyters. 
 The function of such officers was to keep order in the 
 Church, to admit the catechumens, and subsequently 
 to see to the instruction of the young, to preach, and to 
 govern. The office of a judge in matters of doubt- 
 ful doctrine, in heresy, and in any breach of the 
 Church's law, were later developments of the episco- 
 pal office, but were in course of time naturally 
 annexed to it, as the organisation of the ecclesiastical 
 system was more exactly elaborated. It may be added 
 that, as persecution became more general, the post of 
 bishop was that of danger, and, among men who were 
 reproached with a passion for martyrdom, that of 
 honour. The reader need hardly be reminded that 
 men who have been persecuted are not always tolerant. 
 In the history of Christianity, it has frequently been 
 found that they who have suffered most, and most 
 patiently for their creed have, when enabled to give 
 effect to their own judgment, been distinguished for a 
 savage and relentless orthodoxy. 
 
 Again, familiarity with the local magistracy and 
 council of the Roman colonies may have suggested 
 analogous institutions in the Church. The earliest 
 
 o 
 
 churches, when Christianity was so far tolerated as 
 to permit the erection of permanent buildings (and
 
 150 /'-I UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 we read of such buildings as early as the time of 
 Alexander Severus), were built in the form of the 
 Roman basilica, or court of justice. On the raised 
 apex of the building was the bishop's throne, while, 
 arranged in a semi-circle, on either side, were the seats 
 of the presbyters the altar being placed just before 
 the bishop. So the emperor dispensed justice from 
 his tribunal, while his assessors and advisers sat on 
 either side of him, and delivered their judgments on 
 the case before the court. So the Pope sits still 
 during the highest ceremonies. The name by which 
 the area of the bishop's jurisdiction is designated is 
 a word denoting a secular administration. Diocese is 
 used by Lysias, Demosthenes, and Aristotle, to imply 
 the control of expenditure. It was transferred to the 
 Latin language, and in Cicero means the civil divi- 
 sions, or shires, into which a province was parcelled 
 out. 
 
 We shall search in vain, then, for the details of 
 ecclesiastical government in the authority of the Apos- 
 tolic age. They were developed from the necessities 
 of the position, and from the convenience of adopting 
 a process of administration which was familiar in 
 secular experience. Rapidly, episcopacy became one 
 of the conservative forces of the Church, and so fonned 
 a barrier against novelties in speculation and practice. 
 In time, the conflict of opinion, which raged through 
 the fourth and fifth centuries, was waged by episcopal 
 champions the success of the combatants varying, 
 the vehemence and violence of the battle increasing. 
 After a \\liilc, the patriarchal see became the unit in 
 the Church, and the bishop a suffragan to the metro-
 
 GROWTH OF THE EPISCOPAL SYSTEM. 151 
 
 poli tan, as the presbyters had been made the subjects 
 of the bishops. Last of all came the struggle for the 
 primacy, and the submission of the whole Christian 
 republic to a theological Csesar. 
 
 It is not difficult for us to anticipate what would 
 have been the judgment of the author of the Epistle 
 to the Galatians on those who would limit the gifts 
 of God to the subjects of one ecclesiastical administra- 
 tion. We can easily imagine what he would have 
 said of those who assert that a missionary effort is 
 neither successful nor valid, unless it be accompanied 
 with some definite hierarchical organisation, and who 
 would therefore intrude on the labours of others, not 
 that they may plant or water, but that they may clip 
 the tree into some set shape. With a strong effort he 
 had disengaged himself from the trammels of a precise 
 and formal education, and, though willing enough to 
 concede to the prejudices of others, he insisted that 
 the shibboleths of ecclesiastical parties were vain in 
 themselves, and might be tyrannical, reactionary, and 
 even fatal to religious truth altogether. The heathen 
 have been converted and enlightened. In place of 
 some gross fetish, dark rite, or debasing superstition, 
 they have been told of a Father who forgives, of 
 a Brother who leads them to the Divine presence, 
 dwells with them, and familiarises them with that 
 for which heretofore they ignorantly and fruitlessly 
 longed. They feel a new nature are new men have 
 been born again. Then, in the freshness of their faith, 
 some come down to trouble them, and say, Except 
 you adopt the ceremonial, the ritual, the forms, the 
 government of the church to which we belong, ye
 
 152 PA UL OF TARSI'S 
 
 cannot be saved. Can any one doubt what advice 
 Paul would have onven in this crisis, or that his zeal 
 
 o 
 
 for Christian liberty would have forced him to repeat 
 that contemptuous wish which he uttered when he 
 heard of those who troubled the Galatians ? 
 
 We can, with no great stretch of fancy, realise the 
 gathering together at the house of Justus, hard by the 
 synagogue. Prayers are said by the assembled con- 
 verts. Psalms are sung, perhaps those with which 
 the Jews commenced their devotions. Then follows 
 the reading of the Scriptures, and in particular those 
 majestic compositions which, full of dignity, wisdom, 
 warning, hope, have come down to us under the names 
 of the great Jewish prophets. Then some of those 
 present narrate their experience of the new gospel, 
 recount the visions, the ecstatic reveries, the heavenly 
 sounds with which they have been favoured, such, for 
 example, as are told in the Shepherd of Hermas. 
 Others give, in turn, to the whole assembly, or to groups 
 collected there, short exhortations on the Christian 
 life and the Christian hope. Afterwards follows the 
 feast in memory of that which Christ held on the 
 night that He was betrayed ; then thanks are given 
 to God, and the assembly disperses with the kiss of 
 peace.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THERE is probably no man who doubts the historical 
 existence of The Person some of whose acts and words 
 are narrated in the gospels. But to many minds He is 
 represented as an idealised being, the real lineaments of 
 whose life and teaching it is impossible to discover 
 in the cloud of myths by which the figure is enveloped. 
 This opinion has partly risen out of a disbelief in the 
 supernatural a disbelief which has been growing for 
 the last century, and which has been strongly assisted 
 by the progress of physical science, partly out of the 
 impression that the miracles of Christianity are at once 
 essential to its truth, and manifestations of an abso- 
 lutely new power, instead of being, as they profess to 
 be, the exercise of exalted energy, partly from anta- 
 gonism to that dogmatism which, professing to be 
 based on certain positions, the acceptance of which 
 is necessary to salvation, has inflicted, and still inflicts, 
 prodigious injuries on mankind. The theory that the 
 narrative of the gospels is generally mythical, is further v 
 supported by the fact that it contains discrepancies 
 and contradictions, which, on the commonest rules of
 
 154 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 historical criticism, ought to throw grave doubts ou 
 the genuineness of the story. This latter argument 
 seems to me to have very little weight. The notion that 
 genuine history is characterised by an exact and mi- 
 nute attention to details, is wholly modern. It may be 
 doubted whether since no narrative can give all par- 
 ticulars this method of historical composition does 
 not, with all its affectation of reality, present a more 
 unreal presentation of the past, than the artless tale of 
 an interested, but uncritical observer, whether, in 
 short, syncretic history is not exceedingly apt to be 
 untrustworthy or deceptive. Thucydides is the 
 type of an exact and patient historian. Had, how- 
 ever, another author, of an equally critical turn of 
 mind, devoted his attention to the same events, we 
 should, most probably, have two very different stories 
 of the Peloponnesian war. The more accurately two 
 persons narrate their impressions of the same great 
 events, the wider is sure to be the discrepancy 
 between them. No two men see facts in exactly 
 the same light, or direct their attention to exactly 
 the same circumstances. 
 
 Be this as it may. If the narrative of the Evan- 
 gelists is a myth, it is the most magnificent myth ever 
 invented. Assume, if you will, that the Jesus of the 
 gospels is a Jewish doctor, who united in His person, 
 and at that time, the wisdom of a Rabbi and the 
 enthusiastic genius of a Hebrew Prophet, and that 
 two parties the Jewish hierarchy and that bureau- 
 cracy which got the party name of the Herodians 
 combined against Him with a trumped-up charge of 
 treason against the Roman government, and threat-
 
 CHRIST IS THE GOSPELS. 155 
 
 ened Pilate a creature of Sejanus, who might be 
 alarmed at the prospect of being involved in his pa- 
 tron's ruin into getting this inconvenient teacher put 
 out of the way by a legal murder. It is plain that 
 this is the ostensible ground of procedure before 
 Pilate, and it is equally plain that offence, taken at 
 the unsparing reproofs which Jesus uttered against 
 the chiefs of Jewish society, was the motive which 
 weighed with the traditional parties of Christ's day. 
 Such an event is no way remarkable. An oligarchy 
 conspiring against a reformer, and using every effort 
 to crush him, is a familiar historical occurrence. 
 
 But this, though it is, in brief, the prominent fact in 
 the life and death of Christ, and though it is seen 
 clearly in the story of the gospels, is not the concep- 
 tion which occupies the mind of the Evangelists, and 
 absorbs those who have studied their narratives for 
 eighteen centuries. In the epic of the Gospel, if we 
 are to consider these compositions as so many poems, 
 there is one hero. There are other characters drawn 
 in very slight outline, but with great clearness, with 
 rare beauty and nature. The fervid unsteadiness of 
 Peter, the habitual dejection of Thomas, the tender- 
 ness of John, the indecision of Nathanael, the zeal of 
 Zacchseus, the womanly worship of the Magdalene, 
 the contrast between the sisters of Bethany, are 
 portrayed in a word or two. 
 
 But in the centre of all this is the figure of Christ. 
 It is not a colossal form which dwarfs the other actors 
 in the drama, or a prodigious force by the side of 
 which ordinary human energy is lost, or an overmaster- 
 ing will whose resistless action compels submission and
 
 156 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 obedience, but it is an effulgence which extinguishes 
 every other light. It is said that the sun at its 
 highest makes all other flame cast a shadow. Now 
 the Evangelists were so profoundly conscious of the 
 luminousness of that Presence, that, to the reader of 
 the gospels, Christ appears always in the radiant gar- 
 ment and with the visage of His transfiguration. He 
 is as the sun in the splendour of which other luminaries 
 are extinguished. The Humanity of Christ is never 
 lost sight of, He is always Jesus of Nazareth, but He 
 is surrounded by an indescribable and mysterious clear- 
 ness, which we seem to gaze on as the disciples did. 
 In the simplest and most familiar acts of His life 
 among them, He is with them, but not of them. 
 Their relations to Him are not those of a Rabbi to 
 his pupils, but of men necessarily following and 
 wondering at a Person who is wholly superior to 
 themselves, whom they saw constantly, whom they 
 reverenced profoundly, but whom, as they confess, 
 they understood imperfectly. He taught as one 
 having authority, and He spoke and acted with all 
 the authority of His teaching. If the Christ of 
 the gospels is a hallucination of the Evangelists, 
 it is the most amazing and the most attractive con- 
 ception which the imagination has ever framed. 
 
 Attempts have been made more than once to in- 
 vest an historical personage with ideal characteristics. 
 Two such attempts were notoriously undertaken in 
 rivalry of the Christ, as described in the gospels. 
 These are the life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philo- 
 stratus, and that of Pythagoras by Jamblichus. The 
 most unfriendly critic of Christianity would not
 
 CHRIST A ND SOCRA TES. 1 57 
 
 contrast these narratives favourably with the gospels. 
 Besides, both personages are unreal. The existence 
 of Apollonius is doubted, and the first historian of 
 Greek philosophy, Aristotle, though he often speaks of 
 the Pythagoreans, never mentions the name of the 
 sage who was in after tunes reputed to be the 
 founder of the sect. 
 
 But the draft of an idealised portrait has been 
 once made, and by the greatest master of dramatic 
 language which the ancient world produced. Every 
 effort of his imagination was lavished by Plato on 
 completing the picture of his Socrates, and the 
 works of this incomparable writer have come down 
 to us entire. We know that the picture is ideal, 
 for we have a homelier portrait of the wisest Greek 
 from the pen of another disciple whose sketch is much 
 more true to nature. But Plato did for philosophy 
 what the great sculptors of antiquity did for the 
 human form. As they invested their statues of 
 gods and heroes with their highest conceptions of 
 human beauty, so Plato conferred on his imaginary 
 Socrates the possession of the loftiest ideal philosophy. 
 
 The parallel between Christ and Socrates has often 
 been drawn. Both were reformers of society, both 
 suffered on a false charge of impiety, and in deference 
 to a false patriotism. But here the parallel ends. 
 Socrates is the purest example of heathen ethics, 
 and the Platonic system of ethics is sustained by 
 a scheme of emanations which are intended to have 
 the force of a religious authority, and to be confirmed 
 by the laws of thought. But Christ is the founder 
 of a religion. Nay, He is the religion itself. Other
 
 158 PAVL OF TARSUS. 
 
 men have been shadows of the great Original. Here 
 is man in the image of God, man as the ancient 
 seers conceived him to have been originally framed, 
 man as modern optimists conceive him capable of 
 becoming. Here is the type of humanity. Hence- 
 forth religion is the imitation of Christ, because 
 the nature of God has shone forth in the person 
 of man. If this conception is a myth, the grandest 
 poetical character is dwarfed into nothingness beside 
 the narratives of the reformed tax-gatherer, the 
 attendant on Paul and Barnabas, the physician of 
 Troas, and the fisherman of Galilee, who, whatever 
 may be their discrepancies in detail, agree in this 
 magnificent ideal of wisdom, holiness, loveliness. If 
 this conception be a myth, humanity is better in 
 its myths than it is in its verities. 
 
 The easiest road to saintship is by asceticism. 
 Men are instinctively so enamoured of self-denial- 
 are so pleased by a contrast to the wretched clamour of 
 self-interest, which is always stunning them with its pre- 
 tentious noise, that they will honour a fool if he can 
 show himself disinterested. They will even acquiesce 
 in a system which is certain to induce moral 
 and social evil, even if it furthers the worst am- 
 bition which a sinister organisation can gratify, 
 provided only that an ascetic tinge is imparted to those 
 who found the system. Buddhism is the worship of 
 asceticism. Brahmanism owes its continued existence 
 to the austerities of Fakirs and devotees. The 
 founders of the Roman orders have been almost invari- 
 ably rigorous ascetics. Some of them have been crazy, 
 or almost idiotic. There is nothing which is more
 
 CHRIST AND ASCETICISM. 159 
 
 cardinal in the discipline of the Roman Church than 
 the celibacy of the clergy. A married minister of 
 the Gospel is inconceivable to the most liberal layman 
 of the Romish Church. Nothing puzzled the con- 
 temporaries of Talleyrand secularised as he was by 
 the highest authority, so much as his marriage. And 
 yet the truest critics of the social state in Roman 
 Catholic countries have deplored the celibacy of their 
 clergy have seen that the surrender of all domestic 
 ties gives a vigour to ecclesiastical organisation and 
 usurpation which is eminently dangerous to society, 
 and is wholly inimical to liberty. And in another 
 manner, though the Greeco-Russian Church enjoins 
 marriage on the parochial clergy, all authorities latest 
 among them, Dr. Eckhardt concur in stating that all 
 ecclesiastical influence is with the monks, and that the 
 secular clergy are despised and degraded. 
 
 Christ totally repudiated asceticism. He is con- 
 tinually represented at the home of rich men. When 
 He entered on His mission His first appearance is at 
 a wedding. He avows that He came eating and 
 drinking, and we are told that He was calumniated ;. 
 because He did not decline the hospitalities which were 
 offered Him. He recognises the stern courage of John 
 the Baptist, asserts that he was a prophet, nay, even 
 more than a prophet, but speaks slightingly of his 
 pretensions and position as compared with those who 
 are within the kingdom of heaven. He taught, 
 to be sure, that men who follow Him must deny 
 themselves, He put a sharp test to the rich young 
 man who would be His disciple, He avowed that 
 wealth was a danger, and inculcated reliance on the
 
 160 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 providence of God for the supply of daily necessities. 
 The sacrifice of one's own interest may be a condition 
 of the highest morality and religion which the 
 Gospel inculcates, but Christ never makes asceticism 
 the end of life, as the purifier of the soul. 
 
 It is evident that the disciples who walked with 
 Christ, were struck most of all with His insight into 
 men's hearts. He knows man thoroughly. He divines 
 the thoughts of individuals, anticipates their words, 
 reads their very soul. This is the power which is 
 always present in Him. Such a conception is perfectly 
 true to nature. To know mankind is the greatest 
 manifestation of what we call genius. To interpret 
 public opinion, and thereupon to guide it, is the highest 
 effort of statesmanship. To know all this, and to be 
 able also to exercise the same power in particulars,- 
 to discern by an instant intuition all that passes 
 through the mind of another, is to be possessed of the 
 Wisdom and the Power of God. Now this was what 
 the Evangelists perpetually recognised in their inter- 
 course with Christ. 
 
 Joined to this marvellous insight into man, Christ 
 had another notable characteristic, that of profound 
 sympathy for suffering, infinite tenderness for the 
 weak, boundless charity for the penitent. The re- 
 proach was cast at Him that He was the friend of 
 publicans and sinners. The rich man who made Him 
 a feast is amazed at His gracious bearing to the 
 penitent woman who shed tears on His feet. His 
 parable of the Prodigal Son a story which has taught 
 repentance and hope to thousands is the narrative of 
 His own bearing to the sinful soul which yearns for
 
 THE COMPASSION AT ENESS OF CHRIST. 101 
 
 pardon. So, again, with His commiseration for the 
 widow at Nain, His compassion for the bereaved 
 parents in Galilee, His sympathy with the sisters of 
 Lazarus. His unceasing benevolence to the sick and 
 
 7 O 
 
 ailing. There is nothing more touching in the life 
 of Christ than His welcome of children to His arms, 
 and His sorrow at the impending fate of Jerusalem. 
 Now, if wisdom is divine, love joined to wisdom is 
 even more divine. It is the rarest of conjunctions, 
 but the most winning of forces. It turns a terror 
 into a Providence. This exact scrutiny into motives, 
 this distinctness with which thought or purpose is 
 known, would frighten and deter man from companion- 
 ship with so acute and clear-sighted an observer. But 
 when this knowledge is interpreted by love, it becomes 
 infinitely attractive. And the Christ of the gospels 
 is a personage in whom these qualities combine. He 
 has even a word of compassion for the miserable 
 Judas, He utters a prayer for the forgiveness of them 
 who crucified Him. 
 
 The Jews, nineteen centuries ago, were keenly ex- 
 pecting the coming of the Messiah. The teaching of 
 the Rabbis had discovered this manifestation in such 
 phrases as " the Word of God," " the power of God," 
 " the wisdom of God." Some speculated on the mys- 
 tic numbers in the Book of Daniel. Some, mindful 
 of the glorious era of David and Solomon, materialised 
 the promise made to the Fathers. This was the popu- 
 lar view. The multitudes were ready to make Jesus 
 a king. They joined gladly in His processional entry 
 into Jerusalem an act which evidently alarmed the 
 chief men in the city. The last expectation of the
 
 162 PAUL OF TARSI'S. 
 
 Twelve, according to the narrative in the Acts of the 
 
 ' O 
 
 Apostles, is that He should restore the kingdom to 
 Israel. But the wisest men anticipated only a moral 
 revolution a fulfilment of the prophecy of Zechariah, 
 " The Lord shall be King of the whole earth. In that 
 day there shall be one Lord, and His name one." 
 The doctrine of Christ, " The kingdom of God is within 
 you," had no strange sound to Jewish ears. The office 
 of the Word, according to the Talmudists, is to en- 
 lighten the man. The young man who fulfilled the 
 Law was not far from the kingdom of God. The Jew 
 could read and understand the words of Hosea, 
 " What does the Law demand of thee, except it be 
 to do justice, and to love mercy, and to be ready to 
 walk with the Lord thy God." 
 
 During the life of Christ the two characteristics 
 
 o 
 
 which I have referred to were constantly before the 
 view of His disciples. Of course they did not believe 
 that such a person could be delivered into the hands 
 of His enemies. When Peter repudiated the sugges- 
 tion, he, no doubt, spoke the thoughts of all those who 
 were with him. It is probable that Judas did not 
 intend to do more than take money for assisting in an 
 attempt which he was persuaded would fail. Is it 
 possible to believe that John the evangelist, who was 
 the especial object of Christ's favour, and who was 
 known to the high priest, could have witnessed what 
 went on in the pontiff's palace and the prsetorium, and 
 have been silent, if he had not been convinced that 
 this judicial procedure would have ended in an acquittal, 
 or in some manifestation of power, by which Christ 
 would have passed out from the midst of His enemies?
 
 THE DEATH AXD RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 103 
 
 Had not Christ said that He was greater than Solo- 
 mon and Jonah the king and the prophet who 
 severally affected the imagination of the Jew most 
 powerfully ? For the one was the most splendid 
 monarch of Eastern story ; the other was the prophet 
 who, having by his counsel restored the kingdom of 
 Israel to the dimensions it reached in the days of the 
 great king, left unwillingly his office of chief minister 
 at the court of the second Jeroboam, in order to de- 
 nounce the sin and predict the fall of Nineveh the 
 great of the rival, and finally, the conqueror of Israel. 
 
 The narrative of the gospels testifies to the con- 
 sternation of the disciples at the judicial murder 
 of Jesus. But their sorrow soon gave way to joy. 
 They were informed that He was risen again from 
 the dead, and this by eye-witnesses of His revived 
 Presence. The body was no longer in the tomb. 
 
 They who do not believe that death has ever 
 loosed its hold on those whom it has once occupied, 
 are constrained to adopt the hypothesis, that the 
 narrative of Christ's resurrection is a fraud, or a 
 delusion, or both. If the disciples did dispose of 
 the body of Christ, and persisted in proclaiming that 
 He had risen, till they were overpowered by an 
 hallucination which had its beginnings in deceit and 
 falsehood, and if, while occupied by this imagination, 
 they adopted a severe and ascetic life, an exact 
 and precise morality, it is not easy to find the 
 parallel to such a delusion. No rational person can 
 doubt, that the belief in the resurrection of Christ 
 was entertained as firmly by all those who professed 
 His religion, as the belief in their own existence
 
 1G4- PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 was. It is proclaimed before God and man, not, 
 be it observed, for any material end, such as a 
 scheme of conquest, or the foundation of a spiritual 
 despotism, to be exercised by those who could induce 
 their hearers to acquiesce in a supernatural authority, 
 but by men who are charged with advocating so 
 spiritual a system, that they ignored home, friends, 
 country, life itself, for the sake of Him whom they 
 said was risen. 
 
 It seems impossible to doubt the good faith of 
 those simple and devout men, who could have had 
 no possible motive for committing a fraud, and per- 
 petuating a falsehood. Writing twenty-five years 
 after the event, the apostle Paul states that Christ 
 was seen by Peter, by the Twelve, by five hundred 
 at once most of whom, he added, were still alivo 
 at the time of his writing ; by James, and again, 
 by all the apostles. Belief in the resurrection of 
 Christ is not made to depend on the testimony of 
 one or two women, who have visited the sepulchre 
 at the early dawn of a spring morning and been 
 deceived by some appearance and sound, or upon 
 the assertion of some ecstatic visionary, whose imagi- 
 nation has represented the Person whom he had 
 followed so long, the voice which he had so often 
 listened to. The evidence is cumulative ; and, as 
 far as one hears, no single person who had averred 
 that he had seen the risen Christ ever shook off the 
 impression or conviction, or discovered that he had 
 been in error. There is no parallel to so general, 
 so persistent, a delusion. 
 
 According to the narrative in the Acts given
 
 TESTIMONY TO THE RESURRECTIOX. 105 
 
 three times over, and purporting, on two of these 
 occasions, to come from Paul's own lips the conver- 
 sion of the Apostle was due to a vision of the risen 
 Christ. Without relating the circumstances, St. 
 Paul tells the Corinthians that he had an interview 
 with Jesus, and was thereupon an independent witness 
 of His resurrection. Elsewhere, he rests his equality 
 with the old apostolate on the ground that "he 
 had seen the Lord." The author of the Clementines 
 disputes the fact, in order to dispose of his claims 
 to such a dignity. It is clear, then, that when 
 Paul wrote his epistles there w r ere very many persons 
 who were ready to give their testimony to the resur- 
 rection of Christ, to their having seen and conversed 
 with Him. 
 
 The affirmation of the death of Christ is the basis 
 of the doctrine which asserts the redemption of man. 
 The means by which man can be restored, or be 
 created anew, or can commence the process of per- 
 fection, is the suffering of Christ. That the progress 
 of humanity is achieved by the self-sacrifice of those 
 who devote themselves to its good, is a tenet in every 
 religion, and is confirmed by overwhelming experi- 
 ence. The sacrifice of Christ is the apotheosis of this 
 principle. Whether one considers the merit of the 
 sufferer, or the excellence of the doctrine which he 
 taught, the example of Christ is the chief illustration 
 of the seeming paradox, that society gains by its 
 losses, that it conquers by its sacrifices, that a righteous 
 cause triumphs because it spares neither life nor labour 
 in the prosecution of its claims, in the vindication of 
 itself. Christ was the great atonement, but man is
 
 16G PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 always engaged in the work of atonement for his 
 fellow-man, as long as vice, sin, ignorance, have to be 
 combated, wrong redressed, right" done. Too often, 
 indeed, the sacrifice and suffering are wasted because 
 the immediate end is false or unworthy. Whatever 
 else may be its merits, Christianity, in the hands of 
 Paul, puts prominently forward the statement of the' 
 condition under which man may be regenerated, and 
 declares that this sacrifice is vain, even in the person 
 of its highest Exemplar, unless the same course be 
 followed by those who accept the Gospel. Other 
 apostles had affirmed the doctrine that the sacrifice 
 of Christ is the salvation of man. Paul recognised 
 the ethical significance of the statement, extended 
 and developed it, and made it a permanent rule of 
 conduct. The atonement of Christ is not in the hands 
 of this Apostle a magical purification, but an example, 
 the imitation of which is the duty, the glory, the hope 
 of them who would be like Him; and if stress is some- 
 times laid on the immediate effect of Christ's death in 
 those who are enlightened, and less emphasis is put on 
 the continuity of the work which man does for man, it 
 must be remembered that the apostolic generation 
 confidently looked forward to the termination of the 
 world within the lives of those who had witnessed 
 the crucifixion. 
 
 To do unsought and unrewarded benefit to mankind 
 for the sake of God is the essence of the Christian 
 life. It is that which gives perpetual vitality to Chris- 
 tianity, which enables it in spite of its having been often 
 enslaved to a coarse, harsh, false, political system, in 
 >pite of its being perverted by dogmatic logomachies,
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 1G7 
 
 and presented as a set of opinions, to assist and retain 
 the foremost place among civilising agencies. The 
 essence of Christianity is not in the priest, but in 
 the sacrifice. It is to Christianity that we owe 
 school, hospital, reformatory, and other allied agencies 
 by which it is hoped that sin and vice will be 
 discouraged and diminished. It is very possible 
 that many of those who are virtually under its 
 influence, decline, as far as words go, to acknowledge 
 its authority. But men are constantly, for good as 
 well as evil, controlled by traditions, habits, associa- 
 tions which they do not recognise, or which they 
 even repudiate. Other religions have inculcated 
 beneficence, almsgiving, charity ; but Christianity is 
 peculiar, in having taught that man can save man, 
 and that he ought to save man. The civilisation 
 of man is not an induction, but an experience, a 
 harmony, an adaptation of those forces which may 
 enlighten him, and leave him free. 
 
 The sacrifice of Christ, and the significance of that 
 sacrifice, are deduced from the admitted facts of His 
 trial and execution. Both trial and execution were 
 due to personal animosity on the part of the leading 
 Jews, who stirred up the populace to demanding the 
 death of Jesus. People talk of the fickleness of a 
 mob, and ignore the deliberate malignity of an oli- 
 garchy. There is reason to believe that the mob was 
 not one of native, but one of foreign Jews, who, 
 coming up to the temple in crowds, that they might 
 celebrate the Passover, were easily wrought to mad- 
 ness by hearing that Jesus had said He would destroy 
 the temple. Another mob of foreign Jews, twenty
 
 168 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 years or more after this time, was roused to the same 
 madness, when they were informed that Paul had 
 brought Greeks within the Jewish precinct. In these 
 days, the Russian of the Greek Church, and the 
 Frenchman of the Latin, are more easily driven to 
 frenzy by tales about the profanation of their churches 
 in Palestine, than the resident Christians of Jerusalem 
 are. When they visit the sacred places, they are far 
 more fanatical than those are who habitually dwell on 
 the spot. Nor is the more sober judgment of those 
 reformed churchmen who do not stimulate the religious 
 sense by symbolism or local feeling free from liability 
 to similar impressions. Facts, says the Roman poet, 
 have far less influence on the ear than they have on 
 the eye. But distance lends intensity to sentiment. 
 
 The resurrection of the body was a fixed article in 
 the creed of the orthodox Jews. It was affirmed by 
 Christ generally. He predicted it of Himself. As 
 has been stated before, it was believed to have oc- 
 curred in the person of Christ, and there were a host 
 of witnesses who were ready to affirm that they had 
 seen Him in life and in the body whom the chiefs 
 of the Jewish nation had persuaded Pilate to crucify. 
 It may be said that the body of Christ was not iden- 
 tical in its physical qualities with that of His life and 
 passion. He appears suddenly, and disappears as sud- 
 denly. The corporeity of the risen Jesus was unlike 
 that of ordinary men, but it could, according to the 
 narrative of the fourth gospel, be touched and handled. 
 According to Luke, the risen Christ actually ate with 
 His disciples, and soon afterwards disappeared, being 
 carried away to heaven. But no other gospel ascribes
 
 THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY. 109 
 
 to Him those peculiarities of ordinary life, and the 
 authenticity of the passage in St. Luke's gospel is 
 not free from doubt. 
 
 Paul was by education a believer in the resurrection 
 of the body, and had he remained constant to the faith 
 of his youth, he would have insisted as energetically 
 on this tenet as a necessary part of the creed of a 
 spiritual religion, as he did after his acceptance of 
 Christianity. Then he had seen a Person who had 
 certainly been dead. The tenet had been verified 
 by a prerogative instance. Accepted as a fact, the 
 resurrection of Christ became the basis of that doctrine 
 according to which Christ unites and permeates all 
 those who are His redeemed. This is His grace, His 
 peace, His presence or indwelling. So strongly is 
 the resurrection of Christ identified with the spiritual 
 life, that the Apostle cannot conceive the death of 
 Christ to be effectual for the regeneration or salvation 
 of mankind, except on the hypothesis of His subsequent 
 resurrection. " If Christ," says he, "has not risen, 
 that which we preach is valueless, and your trust is 
 delusive. We too are found out to have given false 
 evidence of God, for we have borne our testimony of 
 Him that He has raised Christ, whom He has not 
 raised, if there be no resurrection of the dead. If 
 Christ be not raised, your confidence is vain, ye are 
 still in your sins ; nay, they who have slept in Christ, 
 have perished. As it is, however, Christ is," he 
 adds (using a metaphor familiar from the custom 
 which prevailed among the dispersed Jews, of for- 
 warding offerings to the temple in Jerusalem), " the 
 first-fruits of the dead."
 
 170 /'.1TZ OF TARSUS. 
 
 Paul gives no reason for this connection of the 
 
 o 
 
 resurrection of Christ with the hopes which he held 
 out in his gospel, beyond this statement, that the 
 resurrection is the guarantee of man's immortality, 
 and thereupon of that compensation for the sufferings 
 of life, in which the religious sense assures men. He 
 held, it would seem, that unless there be some fresh 
 garment for the spirit of man, unless it be clothed on 
 by some eternal vestment, it has no individuality, no 
 existence. The body is the instrument of natural 
 life, and the spiritual life of the hereafter needs some 
 similar instrument by which to exhibit and continue 
 its energies. In short, if the death of the body be 
 not a prelude to its resurrection under some new and 
 perpetual organisation, death annihilates the spirit 
 simultaneously with its separation from that physical 
 being which manifestly perishes. To die is not to 
 live, unless the life finds some other dwelling-place. 
 "We know," he says, in his Second Epistle to the 
 Corinthians, " that if our earthly house, which is a 
 tent, be dissolved, we have a habitation from God, a 
 house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 
 In this we groan, longing to put on our heavenly 
 home, to be found clothed, not naked. We who are 
 in this tent groan under our burden, since we do not 
 wish to be stripped, but to be clothed fully, that the 
 mortal part of our nature may be absorbed by life." 
 
 The immortality of the Greek philosophers was 
 vague and shadowy. That force, genius, virtue, could 
 be irretrievably lost with the death of the man in 
 whom they were existent, was an intolerable sugges- 
 tion. That the outrageous injustice with which the
 
 JMMOR TA LITY A ND CONSCIO USNESS. 1 7 1 
 
 life of antiquity was too frequently acquainted, 
 with which all social life is too familiar, should 
 not be rectified by some Power, and at some 
 future time, was so shocking a sentiment, that it 
 could not be entertained without imperilling even 
 that measure of justice which existing society has been 
 able to secure, and without which society would come 
 to an end. But how, and in what form, the soul's 
 immortality and felicity was to be secured, was left 
 indefinite. Plato expounds his conception of the soul 
 of man after death in the form of a vision, vouchsafed 
 to Er the Armenian a myth which, probably, had 
 a Syrian origin. But, while the psychological exis- 
 tence of the human soul was affirmed, the physio- 
 logical conditions of its existence are ignored. The 
 good are rewarded, the bad are punished. But how 
 do the former apprehend their felicity? how do the 
 latter become sensible of their misery ? To know and 
 to feel, to enjoy and to endure, to be sad and to be 
 happy, require the existence of some organisation, 
 through and by which the man receives his impressions. 
 The road of knowledge is by experience and sensation. 
 How can a disembodied spirit preserve its conscious- 
 ness, which is its being ? The instinct which refuses 
 to acknowledge annihilation is intelligible, but what is 
 the process by which identity is secured ? 
 
 With this difficulty Paul attempted to grapple. 
 Nothing appears to indicate more clearly how the 
 Apostle's mind was impregnated with the formularies 
 of the Peripatetic school, than the exposition which 
 he gives of the means by which the personality of 
 the man may be secured in the life to come. Here,
 
 1 7 -2 PA UL OF TA RS US. 
 
 however, it may be necessary to say a few words on 
 the psychology of that school of ancient thought, from 
 which, as the writer believes, the phraseology of the 
 Apostle's statement is derived. 
 
 In the Aristotelian philosophy, all the phenomena 
 of life and consciousness were comprised in one word, 
 for which {^vxn} there is no English equivalent. Per- 
 haps the nearest is " the vital principle." The word 
 is applied to the spontaneous development of any 
 organism whatever with which Aristotle was experi- 
 mentally familiar. Had he been acquainted with the 
 laws of crystallization, there is every reason to think 
 that he would have extended the application of the 
 word so as to include this development, for he does not 
 confine his term to the phenomena of volition only. 
 
 The Aristotelian philosophy takes cognisance of the 
 facts of life and nature. But it takes no note of the 
 transcendental and supernatural. It is entirely sub- 
 jective, entertaining no other evidence than that of 
 sensation and consciousness, if, indeed, it makes any 
 marked distinction between these two terms. It is 
 possible, the philosopher argues, that there may be 
 a life of the man which transcends experience. It is 
 certainly unpopular to dispute the -opinion that the 
 man is immortal, though the body perishes. But of 
 such an existence there is no evidence. Nay, it U 
 impossible to conceive how it may be, however much 
 we believe that it is, because we are familiar only 
 with the machinery by which impressions are received 
 and by which thought is evolved from those impres- 
 sions. The instrument of thought is in the body, 
 ami tin- }><xly perishes.
 
 THE PA ULINE PSYCI10LOG Y. 
 
 The general principle of life, or of spontaneous as 
 opposed to derivative motion, exhibits various stages 
 of development, from mere growth to appetite and 
 will. The highest manifestation of life, that of man, 
 includes the phenomena of the more imperfect forms 
 of existence. Man, besides his own proper organism, 
 has that of the brute and the plant ; he grows and feels 
 as well as thinks. The A.ristotelian psychology, in 
 brief, is incomplete Darwinism, differing from it mainly 
 in the fact, that the progression of existence is con- 
 ceived as co-ordinate, instead of being due to natural 
 selection, this phrase being a euphemism for the fact 
 that the strong prey on the weak, or at least narrow 
 those opportunities of life which the weak would 
 have in the absence of the strong. 
 
 Such an organisation Paul recognises as a " natural 
 body." But he assumes that this natural body contains 
 the germ of a higher organisation, which is destined 
 to receive that part of man's complex nature, "his 
 spirit," and which survives dissolution. The difference 
 between the man of physical creation, and the man 
 of the new or spiritual creation, lies in the fact that 
 the former is life, the latter spirit. The former is 
 of the earth, is the vessel of the potter. The latter 
 is the Lord from heaven. The realities of physical 
 existence are distinct from those of the heavenly 
 nature, though Christianity is the exaltation of the 
 former to the latter. To them who are regenerate 
 the higher life is potentially present, whether they 
 have died or are alive. This only is sure, that when 
 He comes, the transformation w r ill be instantaneous 
 and complete. The dead will rise in their new nature,
 
 174- /M UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 the living will be changed. The risen Christ is the 
 exemplar and prototype of that glorious body which 
 man will receive in exchange for the weakness of his 
 present habitation, and in which he will preserve 
 his individuality. The hope, however, of this resur- 
 rection seems to be limited for the language used 
 by Paul is sometimes perplexed and ambiguous to 
 those who are regenerate, in whom is sown that 
 germ of a new life which endures beyond death and 
 the grave, and in the consciousness of which the 
 Christian can exult over his last and his greatest 
 enemies. 
 
 St. Paul does not accept that coarser theory of a 
 resurrection which confers on the spirit of man the 
 same organism that he had and used during life. It 
 must be something wholly different. It seems 
 likely that this idea of the spiritual body though 
 it had not been unfamiliar to him in the school of 
 Gamaliel was framed on the Vision which he had 
 seen on the road to Damascus, and which was im- 
 pressed so indelibly on his memory. Christ is in the 
 heavens, the place of light, from whence comes life. 
 Hence, relieved of the ordinary conditions under 
 which the human body is limited by the grossness 
 of its nature to one spot, He can show Himself in His 
 glory to the furious enemy who is afterwards to be- 
 come the faithful Apostle can warn, reprove, console, 
 instruct him. And though we have no knowledge 
 of what that nature is, we do know this, that we shall 
 be like Him. It is plain that the Apostle had identi- 
 fied the doctrine of man's immortality with the resur- 
 tion of Jesus, and that he therefore holds a middle
 
 THE NATURE OF THE RISEN BODY. 175 
 
 position to that immortality of the pure intelligence 
 which the Greek philosopher and the Jewish allegorist 
 of Alexandria accepted, and to that perpetuity of 
 physical impulses and feelings which has been fre- 
 quently held by Christian teachers of a later epoch, 
 and also believed by many uncivilised races, to consti- 
 tute the only true immortality of man. Many of 
 these creeds, which strongly affirm the spirituality of 
 God, as strongly affirm a material, and even sensuous 
 resurrection. This, as is well known, is peculiarly 
 the case with Mohammedanism. Our own age and 
 race has developed a still grosser theory in Morinonism, 
 which asserts the being of a material god, and promises 
 its devotees a voluptuous immortality. 
 
 The researches of modern science have shown that 
 the earth is a vast graveyard, wherein are buried 
 not only the bodies of innumerable creatures, but 
 where extinct forms of life, more numerous by far 
 than all existing organisms, lie entombed. Man, 
 the latest born of these forms, has inherited for 
 his portion the sepulchre of a thousand successive 
 worlds. The eternal hills of his experience are, in 
 comparison with regions which look far less permanent, 
 recent structures, built by some vast upheaval out 
 of the bed of a deep but geologically a modern sea. 
 The only unchanged form is the ever-shifting ocean, 
 which has at one time engulfed, at another relinquished 
 the land here and there. And the succession of these 
 epochs involves so prolonged a period of time, that 
 the mind is wholly lost in attempting to give reality 
 to that which is as illimitable as space. Creation 
 reaches back through an incalculable series of years,
 
 17G PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 during which the earth, now shaken by internal fire, 
 now reeking with a continuous summer, now bound 
 in permanent winter, was rushing round the sun, 
 and hurrying with the company of its fellow-planets 
 through space. The beginning is infinitely distant. 
 Man is a being of yesterday, even when the remotest' 
 period which modern speculation suggests is assigned 
 to his appearance on the earth. There are a few 
 inhabitants of the primeval seas w T hich have preserved 
 their organisms, which have remained unaltered 
 through these multitudinous cataclysms which have 
 overtaken the earth, through those furious storms 
 which at various periods have desolated creation. 
 But man has only appeared in the most recent epoch 
 of the world's history. Can his existence be the 
 sign of the world's last renovation, of a peaceful 
 and steady growth, the consummation of which is a 
 new heavens and a new earth ? To the men of the 
 apostolic age, the earth had waxed old, and was ready 
 to pass away. If we, so many centuries after their 
 time, hold to their faith, the race of man was in the 
 infancy of its true destiny, was commencing its 
 career, when they taught that the end of all things 
 was at hand. 
 
 Had the facts of modern science been unveiled to 
 the eyes of Paul, it does not appear that his exposi- 
 tion of the resurrection would have been different. 
 It may be true, he might have answered, that tho 
 experience which we have of life connects it with an 
 organism which is born, grows, decays, perishes. 
 But the experience which we appeal to is assuredly 
 bounded. We may assert, but erroneously, that
 
 THE PAULINE TEACHING AND MODERN SCIENCE. 177 
 
 no other being exists beyond that which we can 
 comprehend. There are, it may be, other forms in 
 which life is continued, nay is exalted, of which our 
 faculties are not and cannot be cognisant, but after 
 which the soul, the heart, the spirit of man strives, 
 in which it trusts that it may escape annihilation. 
 This eager search after life and immortality is the 
 germ of that perpetual and unchangeable existence 
 which resides in this body of death, which ever 
 prompts the man to treat his present life as the 
 preparation for an unlimited eternity. Such a longing 
 for the perfection of God is a gift of unspeakable 
 value to the possessor, is a cause of immeasurable 
 benefit to man, is by its very presence a pledge that 
 it will be certainly satisfied, however little its fulfil- 
 ment comes within the range of experience, or agrees 
 with its inductions. 
 
 The Gospel of redemption and immortality were, 
 according to Paul's teaching, to be preached and 
 offered to all men. It is evident that the Apostles at 
 Jerusalem shrank from carrying the tenets of Chris- 
 tianity beyond the pale of the Jewish nation. The 
 Acts of the Apostles give no colour to those legends 
 which scatter the Twelve in various parts of the earth. 
 St. Paul's words in the Epistle to the Galatiaus indi- 
 cate that the Apostles were at Jerusalem at the time 
 of his conversion ; that they were there three years 
 later, when he went up to visit Peter, but stood aloof 
 from them ; and suggest that they were there still, 
 fifteen years after the first visit, when the mission of 
 Paul to the Gentiles was finally admitted, the teaching 
 of the Jewish converts being reserved to Peter. The 
 
 M
 
 17 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 absence, too, of any allusion to any other apostles in 
 the other epistles and writings of the Apostolic age, 
 seems conclusively to show that the Twelve lived 
 together in poverty and prayer at Jerusalem. At 
 last, Jerusalem having been destroyed, and nearly all 
 having been removed by death, John, in extreme old 
 age, is said to have migrated to Asia Minor. 
 
 The sincerity of conviction, the flexibility of charac- 
 ter, the sagacity which discerned what was essential, 
 the rigour with which the essentials of Christianity 
 were insisted on, the tact with which men are treated, 
 and the perfect catholicity of Paul's mind, gifted the 
 Apostle with peculiar influence in commending his 
 doctrine to the Gentile world. He is troubled with 
 no scruples about race, rank, sex ; and he does not 
 hamper himself with any attempt after effecting a 
 uniformity among his disciples or converts. Critics 
 have affected to discover evidence compromising the 
 authenticity of certain epistles as, for example, those 
 to the Philippians, one to Timothy, and to Titus in 
 the fact that a hierarchy, or, at least, a scheme of 
 general office-bearers, in certain churches is recognis- 
 able in these epistles. By itself, the objection does 
 not seem to me to possess the least importance. Had 
 a particular form of church government been pre- 
 scribed in any of these epistles, the acceptance of 
 which was to be deemed necessary, or even important, 
 grave doubts might well be thrown on the document, 
 or, at least, on the passage in which such a rule might 
 be found. But Paul was absolutely indifferent to the 
 mere organisation which a Christian society might 
 adopt. The man who bade that the service of the
 
 THE PAULINE GOSPEL CATHOLIC. 179 
 
 Church should be conducted decorously and in an 
 orderly fashion, set no store by any particular process 
 for effecting these ends. He even puts little stress 
 on the sacraments. He did not, it seems, practise 
 baptism himself, except in rare instances. He makes, 
 except on one occasion, no marked allusion to the 
 Lord's Supper. With him religion was no outward 
 form, however venerable or sacred it might be, but an 
 inward light, bright enough to guide the whole heart 
 and conscience, and yet capable of being diffused over 
 the nature of the humblest and weakest. 
 
 The Christianity of Paul was the first religion which 
 invited all men into the brotherhood of the Faith. It 
 is true that it did not pretend to attack the prevalent 
 usages of society, to counsel resistance to the imperial 
 system, to seek reform through political agencies, to 
 construct the secular life of the existing generation 
 anew, to prescribe a form of polity, to break down 
 any customary habit which is not in itself morally 
 vicious. It was intended to be a community within 
 a community, which was aggressive only by passive 
 resistance to errors of opinion and grossness of practice, 
 which was intended to absorb, not to reconstitute 
 society. To use a modern phrase, Christianity trusted 
 to moral forces only, and trusted to them without 
 making any reference to their indirect significance. 
 As has been before observed, the conduct of the early 
 Christians was exceedingly like that of the Quakers 
 of Penn's age. They took no active part in opposition 
 to popular practices, but protested passively against 
 them. Hence, at first sight, the Christianity of the 
 Pauline gospel seems to be wanting in that force
 
 180 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 which reprobates or checks social and political wrong. 
 Nay, some have gone so far as to argue that it con- 
 dones or encourages the evil which it does not directly 
 attack. Thus, it has been said to have counselled 
 acquiescence in slavery, to have justified the extra- 
 vagances of despotism, to have substituted a dreamy 
 quietism for that active resistance to the coarse 
 excesses of insolent power which may be the highest 
 duty that man can fulfil for his fellows. 
 
 But this charge is in many particulars unjust, and 
 even unintelligent. It ignores the circumstances of 
 the age in which Christianity was developed. It 
 ignores the fact that the triumphs of passive resist- 
 ance are more numerous, and have been more lasting, 
 than those of energetic opposition. It fails to notice 
 that a creed, which puts all men on the same level 
 of necessity, and offers all the same magnificent hopes, 
 is the heaviest discouragement to secular distinctions. 
 It does not acknowledge that the genius of Christianity 
 is a perpetual assertion of the equality of man, nor 
 see that it meets that haughtiness which affects 
 superiority over the general lot of humanity, or which 
 disdains to acknowledge any right or any justice 
 which has not been conceded by power, with the 
 example of Christ, who made Himself of no reputa- 
 tion. It is the essence of Christianity, as taught by 
 Paul, that man is bound to consider his duty before 
 he asserts his rights, and that there is no claim which 
 he can set up for eminence, which he ought not to 
 substantiate by the service which he has done for it. 
 Hence, the natural tendency of the Christian temper 
 is towards political and social equality. The Judaizing
 
 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIETY. 181 
 
 teachers would have made it communistic, and Paul's 
 good sense detected the peril of such a theory. If we 
 look at his teaching from a modern point of view, 
 the Apostle, in so far as he contemplated the recon- 
 struction of society by the aid of Christianity, accepted 
 the two leading conditions of what is called popular 
 government, that all social distinction should be 
 personal, and that it should be won by public service. 
 
 A sufficient refutation of the statement, that the 
 social theory of primitive Christianity sustained or 
 encouraged the harshness of the relations which sub- 
 sisted between master and slave, is to be found' in the 
 eagerness with which the latter accepted it. Slavery, 
 it is true, was a far less bitter lot in antiquity than 
 it has been made within societies which are professedly 
 Christian. The emancipation of slaves was common. 
 They were frequently treated with kindness and 
 consideration. They were permitted to acquire 
 property, and even to purchase their own freedom. 
 Their condition improved under the empire ; for 
 slavery is never more cruel than when it is practised 
 by a people having free political institutions, is always 
 least onerous when all classes of society are in the 
 grasp of a common despotism. It was made a social 
 reproach against Christianity that it enrolled such 
 numbers of slaves among its members. Bishops, in 
 early times, were elected from this class of persons. 
 Thus, Callistus, bishop of Rome 218-233, was, accord- 
 ing to Hippolytus, a slave of one Carpophorus, a con- 
 fidential person in Csesar's household ; and, if we can 
 trust the report of this author, who vouches for his 
 personal acquaintance with the facts, he was a swindler
 
 182 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 and knave. There will be no great attraction 
 in a religion which does not seek to ameliorate the 
 condition of those who embrace it. Besides, it is 
 known that from early times, the possession of slaves 
 was considered by Christian writers and teachers as 
 contrary to the Christian notion of justice, which 
 imposes the duty of doing as one would be done by. 
 It is certain that this notion has finally succeeded in 
 proscribing the practice as antichristian and inhuman, 
 and that oppressed races have to thank the teaching 
 of the New Testament for immunity from slavery. 
 
 This' doctrine of absolute equality between the 
 members of a common religion was accepted in a 
 still more practical form by Mohammed and his 
 successors. As the promoters of this religion appealed 
 to the sword, they were able to enforce such a 
 general equality. It must be allowed that the 
 success of Mohammedanism was as much due to 
 the promise of equal privilege, in the case of all 
 who accepted the new faith, as it was to the valour 
 and enthusiasm of primitive Islam. The facility 
 with which this religion is even now extended is 
 to be accounted for by the fact that it is constantly 
 brought in contact with a system of privileged castes 
 and races, and that it effects the destruction of all these 
 distinctions by conferring equal dignity on all its 
 converts. It does not fall within the compass of 
 this work to discuss the causes which have arrested 
 the civilisation which the Mohammedan creed achieved, 
 and which have even caused it to retrograde from 
 the height which it reached ten centuries ago, at 
 Bagdad and Cordova. It is sufficiently clear that the
 
 THE WORD OF GOD. 183 
 
 doctrine of the natural equality of man within the 
 limits of the faith, and the comparative tolerance with 
 which Islam treated dissentients from its tenets, account 
 for the remarkable phenomenon of a few Bedouins 
 establishing a mighty empire, and developing science 
 and philosophy, when these were almost unknown 
 names to a mediaeval Christianity. Nor is it less 
 clear, that the chief reason of the decline of Islam 
 does not arise from its contact with European civilisa- 
 tion, but from the barbarism of its later political 
 system, and from the fanaticism of its Rabbis. 
 
 As, according to Paul, the beginning of the Chris- 
 tian life was trust in Christ, so the perseverance of 
 the Christian was due to the grace of Christ, or, as 
 it is sometimes called, the Spirit of Christ. The 
 teaching of the book of Proverbs personified the 
 wisdom of God ; the communications made from the 
 Almighty to the Prophets of the Jewish monarchy, 
 of the- captivity, and of the restoration, were effected 
 by the instrumentality of the Word of God ; and 
 these conceptions were still more fully solidified in the 
 book of Sirach, in the Wisdom of Solomon, and in 
 the Alexandrian theosophy. That God therefore 
 visited man by the instruments whom He had created 
 or chosen, was a familiar form of thought to the Jews 
 of the Christian era ; and when Paul speaks of Jesus 
 as the power by which the union between God and 
 man was achieved, he is using language which was 
 perfectly intelligible to his hearers. In course of time 
 the Word of God had ceased to be an abstraction, and 
 was conceived to be a Person. But the Personification 
 was complete when this conception was united to an
 
 184 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 historical man, who alone among men had, after 
 suffering the common lot of humanity, vanquished the 
 common enemy, was risen, was glorified, was out 
 of the dominion of death, and had become the 
 assurance of life and immortality. 
 
 If men have any belief in God, and if they acknow- 
 ledge, in their relations to Him, anything beyond 
 what is purely secular if they do not allow His 
 personal existence to disappear in Pantheistic gener- 
 alities, they are forced to recognise some mediator 
 between themselves and Him. Thus, in the language 
 of Paul, Moses was the mediator between the God 
 of the Hebrews and that people, as Mohammed is 
 said to be to Islam. So, in a far higher sense, be- 
 cause gifted with a far more exalted being, Christ is 
 the Mediator of the new covenant, as well as the 
 great atonement for mankind. And just as, during 
 His life on earth, His Gospel formed a perfect rule 
 of life a sufficient exposition of the faith a full 
 ground of hope, so He is present by His power, His 
 Spirit, His grace, though He no longer appears to the 
 ordinary vision of men. He is known better to the 
 believer than He was known to His disciples in the 
 days of His flesh. Whatever other intermediary there 
 might have been previously between God and man, such 
 agencies are superfluous in the spiritual presence and 
 life-giving power of Christ. He unites all the im- 
 perfect and divided functions of priest, angel, spirit, 
 in the intercourse which He holds with His people, 
 in the grace, peace, strength, hope, which He gives 
 them. No phrase is too strong to express the power 
 which He wields, the authority which He possesses,
 
 THE ALTERNATIVE TO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 185 
 
 the gifts and graces which He can bestow. He lifts 
 men from the sin and weakness of their mortal nature, 
 bestows on them a new creation, reconciles them to 
 God, supports and strengthens them in the toil of a 
 transitory life, and conducts them finally to the pre- 
 sence of His Father and theirs. 
 
 Paul dwells but little on the alternative to this 
 picture of the Christian life. The world around him 
 was full of sin and wickedness, of ignorance and de- 
 formity. There are those who have no place in the 
 kingdom, who have no -inheritance with the saints 
 with those who have been made holy by the sacrifice 
 of Christ and by trust in Him ; but very little is said of 
 such persons, apart from reprobation of their life. The 
 Apostle does not dwell upon the lot of the unblest 
 does not attempt to describe the condition of those 
 who are cast aw r ay. He is not responsible for those 
 theories of endless torment inflicted on unforgiven sin, 
 still less for that scheme of the Divine justice and 
 mercy, which would, in accordance with no moral 
 sentiment whatever, capriciously condemn some per- 
 sons to eternal banishment from the sight of God, to 
 the perpetual company of mocking and malignant 
 fiends. Christ died for the godless; His love is 
 sufficient for the salvation of the whole human race. 
 It is enough to know how great is His mercy to those 
 who love Him. It is superfluous to enquire into the 
 future condition of those who disregard His Gospel, 
 still more so to speculate on the lot of such men as 
 have never heard the Word. Nay, if love be the most 
 enduring of the Christian graces living when trust is 
 realised, and hope is satisfied and if this be the chief
 
 186 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 attribute of God and His Son, it is incredible that 
 He should be pitiless who commands pardon and pity 
 as the best offering which man can make Him. The 
 Gospel which Paul preached has much to win men, 
 little to terrify them. The presumptuous insolence 
 which seeks to make the Almighty the author of un- 
 charitable and merciless judgment was unknown to 
 the man who was all things to all men, in order that 
 he might gain some, and who believed that he had the 
 mind of Christ. 
 
 Christianity owes the form which it has assumed, 
 when it has been best interpreted, to the Pauline 
 scriptures. The gospels give us a history, in which 
 the facts of a life, the sayings and lessons of a great 
 Teacher are narrated. But, except in the fourth 
 gospel, the theology of the narrative does not develop 
 much more religion than can be found in the pages of the 
 evangelical prophets. "With the first three evangelists, 
 Christ is the last, though incomparably the greatest, of 
 those to whom the Vision of God was vouchsafed, 
 in whom the Spirit of God was manifested. In the 
 fourth gospel, He is the Word incarnate, in whom 
 exist the loftiest powers, who is with God from the 
 beginning, who is in full communion with the 
 Everlasting Father, who has life from the Father 
 in Himself, as the Father Himself is the source 
 and centre of all life. 
 
 In the gospel of Paul, Christ is an Example, but 
 also a Power. He is the source of man's salvation, 
 and the origin of all graces. Paul tells us that he 
 announced a simple creed, that " Christ died for our 
 sins according to the Scriptures ; that He was buried,
 
 CHRIST AN EXAMPLE AND A POWER. 187 
 
 and rose again the third day, according to the 
 Scriptures ;" and that abundant evidence was supplied 
 to the fact. This is his gospel. Out of it he 
 constructed his theology, by it he insisted that the 
 reconciliation between the creature and Creator 
 was effected. This is the chief element which he 
 imparts into the ancient doctrines of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures, as they were understood by the doctors of 
 the Christian era. God is still there, as He is 
 described in the Prophets, a Being of infinite love, 
 patience, gentleness. The commandment of God is 
 still imperative on man, and must be interpreted, as 
 heretofore, by its real spirit. Only the Law is done 
 away the ritual of Moses its ordinances, sacrifices, 
 ceremonies, with all the glosses of tradition. Not, in- 
 deed, that the repeal of these enactments, the aban- 
 donment of this symbolism, is to inaugurate a period 
 of licence to release man from his allegiance to that 
 spiritual religion which purifies the heart. Far from 
 it. The epistles of Paul abound with directions as to 
 how man may live holily, reiterate the obligations of 
 those who ally themselves to this new religion. Every 
 one of the relations of domestic and social life pass 
 under the Apostle's review, and are commented on 
 repeatedly. The Christianity which he taught does 
 not inform men that the acceptance of certain tenets 
 can be made substitutes for the regular fulfilment of 
 moral duties that obedience to stated ceremonies is 
 the obedience with which God is satisfied, or is in 
 itself a purification. He allows no man to say Cor- 
 ban, and thus pretend that a gift to the altar is a 
 release from human ties. He exacts honest, persever-
 
 188 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 ing, intelligent work, as strictly as a political econo- 
 mist does. He knew that the largest power of doing 
 good was contingent on the fulfilment of very homely 
 and everyday offices that few men are able to do real 
 public service who neglect their ordinary business, and 
 sacrifice common sense to some ideal wish. He had 
 too much practical wisdom to be ignorant of the fact, 
 that a man is not the worse Christian because he mas- 
 ters the cares of this life by his diligence, and that the 
 best way to use one's substance well, is to earn one's 
 substance honestly. That which binds the whole of 
 Christianity together which effects the unity of re- 
 deemed humanity which constitutes the Church is 
 the presence, the indwelling of Christ. In this Christ 
 are united all the power which God has given or will 
 give, and all the tenderness of that devoted and cease- 
 less love which made Him a sacrifice for man. But the 
 gospel of Paul is neither ascetic, nor contemplative, 
 nor dogmatic. Man is illuminated, not to dream, but 
 to labour. He is to earn his living to seek by the 
 toil of his life the means for conferring benefits on 
 others, to work out his own salvation, to seek the 
 salvation of others, and, as he best may, to commend 
 his faith by the diligence, holiness, and perseverance of 
 his life. 
 
 It has been said truly by M. Vacherot, that Paul 
 was the greatest of innovators and the least of sec- 
 taries. His gospel was intended for all mankind. 
 The hopes which he held out to those who believed 
 were not bounded by caste, or race, or sex, or con- 
 dition of life, or age, or habit of thought, or power 
 of thought. Had it been possible for those who
 
 PAUL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 189 
 
 constructed a theology from his writings to have 
 apprehended the spirit in which those writings were 
 composed, the world would have had a different his- 
 tory. The disciples of a great teacher, however, are 
 not those who learn his formularies, and busy them- 
 selves with methodising his principles, but they who 
 seek to gather to themselves the mind of the teacher, 
 who are followers of him in his attempt to evangelise 
 the world. 
 
 But, in fact, the dogmas which have been defended 
 by the teaching of St. Paul, are not contained in his 
 writings, but are developments for which those who 
 propounded or accepted them strove to find proof or 
 warranty. The Christianity of many modern sectaries 
 is like the Salaminian ship, which, still pretending to 
 be the vessel which carried Theseus, has now, by 
 reason of perpetual repairs and additions, little left of 
 the original timber. For Paul is not, technically 
 speaking, a theologian, since his theology is, except in 
 one important particular, that of Gamaliel and the 
 other orthodox teachers of later Judaism. Even after 
 his conversion he could call himself a Pharisee. Upon 
 Judaism he induced the office of Christ, as the only 
 and the complete solution of the question which had 
 long agitated all religious minds, How can man be 
 saved? This question is still asked by those who 
 have repudiated Christianity, and, denying the immor- 
 tality of the individual, assume the immortality of the 
 race. And these persons answer the question in the 
 same manner that Paul does, that man in the aggre- 
 gate is made perfect by the sacrifice of man, that 
 humanity gains by them who offer themselves as vie-
 
 190 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 tims for its moral progress. Both agree that no good 
 deed is wasted ; but the Apostle of the Gentiles, while 
 he insists on the conditions which govern the regene- 
 ration of mankind, claims that a recompense remains 
 for them who have devoted themselves on behalf of 
 their fellows, and that the identity of the agent is as 
 enduring as the force of the action. 
 
 It is part of the irony of history, that men are 
 often credited with opinions and motives which never 
 controlled, or even influenced them. Of this perverse 
 judgment, popular ideas about the Apostle faul are 
 conspicuous instances. He is sometimes considered 
 as the author of those subtleties which took their rise 
 in Alexandria, after Christianity was made to con- 
 tribute to the syncretic philosophy of Philo, and 
 which culminated in the dialectical refinements of the 
 fourth and fifth centuries. He is really a preacher 
 who took Jewish monotheism, engrafted on it those 
 limitless energies which he recognised in the mediation 
 of Christ, and inculcated an intensely spiritual, as 
 well as an exactly practical morality. He is occasion- 
 ally spoken of as an egotist. But he was really a 
 man of great judgment and gentleness, of attractive 
 manners, of immense activity, one side of whose 
 nature was occupied by an absorbing love of Christ, 
 the other by a passionate longing to communicate the 
 joys and hopes which he entertained as widely as 
 possible throughout a suffering world.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE apocryphal or legendary literature of early 
 Christianity is very copious. Much has been already 
 printed, and additions are constantly made to what 
 is known. Dr. Tischendorf has lately collected a 
 fresh volume of these writings. But his publication 
 probably embraces only a part of that which still 
 exists in manuscript. If all these relics of theological 
 romance were collected, they would form only a small 
 fragment of what has been written. Some of these 
 writings enshrine historical facts and genuine tradi- 
 tions. According to the modern canons of criticism, 
 the fact that a story is unknown out of the particular 
 region in which it is current, rouses a suspicion of its 
 genuineness, which is quite distinct from its intrinsic 
 likelihood or improbability. But modern criticism is, 
 perhaps, apt, in interpreting the genuineness of records, 
 to be led into conceiving that the writings of ancient 
 authors were constructed on the method employed 
 in our own day. In much ancient history, when the 
 writer lives amid or near the events which he narrates, 
 the facts are subordinated to the inference, or coloured
 
 192 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 and selected to assist the inference. But the narrative 
 may still be a real reflexion of the age in which it is 
 written. It seems to me an extravagance of scepticism 
 to look on the Annals of Tacitus as little better than a 
 political romance, the biographies of Suetonius as a 
 mere epitome of court scandal. 
 
 These apocryphal writings of early Christianity 
 may be subjected to one easy test. The dramatic 
 tendency which certainly influences the authors of 
 these narratives, generally supplies the means for 
 detecting the age of the story, and sometimes the 
 motive for its composition. We have historical 
 evidence of the growth of theological dogma; and 
 when divisions arose in the Church, during the time 
 that dogmas were being crystallised, the temptation 
 to make the story a vehicle for the transmission or 
 defence of a dogma was irresistible. The absence of 
 dogmatic colouring is not a proof of the authenticity 
 of such writings, but is good evidence of their antiquity. 
 
 Some of the most ancient of these compositions, 
 as the Pastor of Hennas, and the epistle of Barnabas, 
 were introduced into early manuscripts of the New 
 Testament Scriptures, and, for a time at least, were 
 received as authorities. Some of these, which a later 
 criticism accepted as canonical, were rejected or sus- 
 pected in an earlier age, as for example the Apocalypse. 
 It is not unlikely that this acceptance or rejection 
 was due, in the first instance, to the fact that some had 
 been widely distributed and others had only a local 
 circulation. 
 
 Among the earliest specimens of this legendary 
 literature, is a story entitled the Acts of Paul and
 
 THE BODIL Y PRESENCE OF PA UL. 193 
 
 Thecla. The story, alluded to by Tertullian, has 
 latterly been republished in the original Greek, by Dr. 
 Tischendorf. It is a narrative of the sufferings under- 
 gone by a damsel of Iconium, who had heard the 
 preaching of St Paul, and who resolved to abandon 
 all lover, home, friends for the sake of the gospel 
 which he preached, and in honour of the preacher. 
 The earnest and self-denying attachment which the 
 early Christians bore to their teachers in the Faith, 
 is frequently alluded to by the Apostle, and is scorn- 
 fully commented on by Lucian, in his narrative of the 
 exploits of the charlatan Peregrinus. Thecla, like 
 Lydia, was one of those female converts of primitive 
 Christianity, whose heart the Lord opened, and who 
 ministered to the wants of the apostles. 
 
 The Acts of Thecla give a portrait-description of 
 the Apostle's person and physiognomy. This descrip- 
 tion is probably the origin of those other accounts 
 of Paul's appearance in the flesh, which are found, 
 for example, in John Malalas and Nicephorus. He 
 was, we are told, short in stature, almost bald, bow- 
 legged, stout, with eyebrows meeting, and with a 
 prominent nose. Other accounts add that he had 
 small but piercing gray eyes. His manner was, it 
 is said, singularly winning. His face and figure 
 must have been markedly of the Hebrew type. 
 He has himself commented on the meanness of his 
 personal appearance, and the unattractive delivery 
 which characterised his speech. To translate his 
 homely phrase, his oratory, he says, was nothing to 
 speak of. But he, nevertheless, could call to 
 witness the success of his ministry, when he claimed 
 
 N
 
 194 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 to possess a transcendent treasure, enclosed though 
 it was in an earthen vessel. The poverty of the 
 casket served to assist the lustre of the jewel it 
 contained, the plainness of the setting called attention 
 to the worth of the gem. 
 
 The great Apostle, then, was a man who did not 
 possess the two gifts which were most prized in the 
 ancient world personal beauty and fluency of speech. 
 He did not command attention by the majesty of 
 his person, or rivet attention by the eloquence of his 
 utterances. To outward appearance, he must have 
 looked like some common-place travelling Jew, whose 
 rapid and confused speech provoked the Athenians 
 into calling him a babbler, when, quitting his ordinary 
 province, that of arguing with the Jews and their 
 proselytes in the synagogue, he essayed to dispute 
 with the polished loungers in the Athenian agora. 
 But this speech, homely, unadorned, rugged as it 
 might have been, possessed two characteristics which 
 are more persuasive than the subtlest oratory. The 
 speaker was thoroughly convinced of that which he 
 said, and profoundly in earnest when he commended 
 his convictions to others. The great master of ancient 
 eloquence said that dramatic action was the first, 
 second, third requisite of successful pleading ; but no 
 art can rival in its effects the outspoken utterances 
 of disinterested sincerity, no address is more certain 
 to command the sympathy of an audience, than that 
 of a man who pleads from his heart. 
 
 Paul was born at Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, no mean 
 city, as the Apostle called it, with the natural feeling 
 of a man for his birth-place, and the home of his
 
 THE CITY OF TARSUS. 195 
 
 childhood. The city was built on a plain at the foot 
 of Mount Taurus, and through it flowed the stream of 
 the Cydnus, which, rising in the snows of the moun- 
 tain, and gushing through deep ravines, was notable 
 for the coldness of its waters. The river, says Strabo, 
 divides the town, and the gymnasium of the youths 
 was on its bank. 
 
 The same author informs us, writing at a time 
 when St. Paul must have been a child in this Cilician y x 
 city, that the inhabitants of Tarsus were so addicted 
 to philosophy, and took such a general interest in 
 every branch of education, that the reputation of the 
 city exceeded even that of Athens and Alexandria 
 the great centres of intellectual activity and of 
 high culture. And it is remarkable, continues this 
 authority, that the students are not strangers who 
 visit the city, as they do at most of these ancient 
 academies, but are the natives of the district ; most of 
 whom, when they have gained the 'learning which the 
 schools of Tarsus supply them with, migrate to other 
 places, and rarely return. 
 
 There is very little recorded about the family of 
 Paul. He tells us himself, that he was of pure 
 Hebrew descent, the phrase that he uses being 
 probably the equivalent of that which a Spaniard 
 took pride in when he called himself an old Chris- 
 tian. He was of the tribe of Benjamin, and was 
 perhaps named after the gallant, wilful king whose 
 chivalry, comeliness and lofty stature were so excep- 
 tional. We are informed that his father belonged to 
 the strictest school of the Pharisaic sect, and that his 
 son was reared in the same discipline. We know
 
 196 I' ACL OF TARSUS. 
 
 further, that his father was a Roman citizen, either by 
 purchase or grant. Add the facts that his sister had a 
 son, who either lived at Jerusalem, or, as is equally 
 probable, had come up to the holy city at the time 
 when his uncle made his last unfortunate visit there, 
 and that he had five other kinsmen, two of whom had 
 become Christians before himself, and all that we 
 know of his family is told. The alternative name of 
 the Apostle, that by which he is best known, was ap- 
 parently part of the Gentile name, by which, in 
 conformity with Roman usage, the citizen was desig- 
 nated. Paulus is a cognomen shared by many 
 families, as might have been easily the case, for it 
 means a person of small stature, and such nick-names 
 were common in the days of republican Rome. 
 Silas or Silvanus, a companion of St. Paul, was 
 similarly a Roman citizen, and so, it would seem, was 
 Lucas or Lucanus, whom we know as the third 
 Evangelist, and the author of the work called the 
 Acts of the Apostles, in which are contained a few 
 selected incidents of the Apostolic age. Paulus is 
 only one of three Roman names which the Apostle 
 bore. We know nothing of the other two. 
 
 The fact that St. Paul learned a trade in his youth, 
 gives us no hint as to the social circumstances in which 
 he was born and brought up. It is well known that 
 the doctors of the Jewish law prescribed the instruc- 
 tion of every male child in some handicraft. Eastern 
 nations have no conception of an hereditary aristocracy, 
 of a class which is made leisurely by the posses- 
 sion of inherited wealth. As among Mussulman com- 
 munities at the present day, so among the Semitic
 
 THE ED UCA TION OF PA VL. 197 
 
 races of the Christian era, a king might lift a beggar 
 from the dunghill to set him among princes, and as 
 easily compel him to revert to his original condition. 
 Some occupation, therefore, was universally taught to 
 the youth, by which, should misfortune overtake him, 
 the man might earn his bread. " He who does not 
 teach his son a trade," said the Rabbis, " teaches him 
 to be a thief" i.e., a Bedouin, or a brigand. So the 
 young Saul, living at Tarsus, was instructed in the 
 craft of a local industry the manufacture of goats' 
 hair into a strong cloth for tents. This cloth was 
 called cilicium, from the province in which it was first 
 manufactured, and in low Latin was used perhaps is 
 still used- to designate the hair shirt worn by ascetics 
 and devotees. There was a time in his life when the 
 Apostle found his skill useful, though it does not, 
 I think, follow necessarily, that he was actually 
 engaged in the manual labour of a hand-loom weaver 
 at Corinth. 
 
 After a time, but at what time we know not, the 
 youth was sent to Jerusalem, to be taught by the 
 most eminent of the Jewish doctors, the last and the 
 greatest of the Hebrew schoolmen. Gamaliel was the 
 grandson of Hillel. As the Acts of the Apostles tell 
 us, he was an honoured teacher among the Jews, and 
 a man of good sense and moderation. The Gemara is 
 full of stories about him, illustrating his influence, 
 orthodoxy, and wit. Thus, he is made to talk famil- 
 iarly with Csesar, by whom is probably meant 
 Augustus, and to have vindicated the Jewish nar- 
 rative of man's creation, and the doctrines of the 
 soul's immortality and the body's resurrection, by cit-
 
 198 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 ations of Scripture and ingenious parables. It is 
 possible that his pupil Saul was one of those Cilician 
 Jews who disputed with Stephen. We know that he 
 was in that furious rabble which, goaded by the re- 
 proaches of the eloquent and zealous deacon, shed the 
 first Christian blood. As Paul obtained his know- 
 ledge of Greek literature in Tarsus, so he learned the 
 mysteries of Jewish casuistry at the feet of Gamaliel 
 in Jerusalem. It appears, too, that Paul had some 
 permanent home in Tarsus, for there Barnabas sought 
 and found him, when the two Apostles of the Gentiles 
 set out on their first formal mission. 
 
 It does not seem that Paul's circumstances were 
 mean. He constantly travels by sea, and with some 
 retinue. That he freely spent his substance on his 
 companions, and on those who might need his assist- 
 ance, is to be expected from the generous character 
 of the man. That he was intensely sensitive to any 
 suspicion of mercenary motives, is well known. That 
 he did not hesitate to assert his right to the assistance 
 of his converts, and that he was exceedingly averse 
 to insisting on the satisfaction of that right, are per- 
 fectly consistent traits. But this jealous love of in- 
 dependence did not deter him from accepting assistance 
 which was urged on him, nor did any false shame 
 prevent him from acknowledging such gifts with 
 affectionate gratitude. He knew distinctly that any 
 service, however great it may be, is instantly suspected, 
 and certainly tainted, if any charge of self-interest can 
 be alleged against the doer of it. That he suffered 
 occasional privations, due to temporary causes, was 
 to be expected from the missionary life which he under-
 
 HIS CIRCUMSTANCES. 199 
 
 took. But a pauper could not have lived for a long 
 time in Ephesus. It was the most frequented city 
 in Asia, and therefore was a place where no one 
 could have resided except at considerable expense. 
 Besides, during his residence he made acquaintance, 
 in a somewhat intimate fashion, with some of the 
 " chiefs of Asia." It appears that when he was im- 
 prisoned at Csesarea, Felix expected that he might 
 make offer of a hribe, so as to procure a release from 
 his confinement, and the bribes which corrupt Roman 
 governors took were large. Nor again at the closing 
 period of his recorded history, when, if at any time, 
 his circumstances would have been desperate, does 
 he seem to have been impoverished. Some of his 
 friends accompany him, apparently as passengers, in 
 the ship whose sign was Castor and Pollux ; and in 
 Home, where Juvenal tells us the cost of subsistence 
 was excessive, the Apostle lives in his own hired 
 house, the soldier who kept him in a kind of free 
 custody being quartered on him. We find that this 
 house was large enough to receive such visitors as 
 waited on him, and to contain an audience. 
 
 I have commented on these facts, not with a view 
 to attempting a life of the Apostle, an undertaking 
 which has been frequently essayed, and never, I think, 
 with success, but because the circumstances which 
 have been adverted to should be stated, in order to form 
 an estimate of St. Paul's character as a man, and his 
 work as a missionary. For he is really the missionary- 
 Apostle, chosen, set apart to carry the good tidings 
 to all the nations, to found churches, to train preachers, 
 It was he and his disciples who "turned the world
 
 200 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 upside down." With three exceptions, the names of 
 those who had followed Jesus up to His passion dis- 
 appear from sacred history after the catalogue is given 
 in the Acts of the Apostles, always occupy an inferior 
 place to Philip, Stephen, and James. In the infancy 
 of the Christian Church, John is associated with 
 Peter ; a little further on, and James the brother of 
 John drinks of the cup and undergoes the baptism, 
 which Christ, with affectionate sadness, predicted 
 would be the lot of the sons of Zebedee. Later 
 legends give us the history of the apostolic dispersion, 
 and at last assign his mission to each of the Twelve and 
 describe the acts of his martyrdom. In all likelihood, 
 however, as they were at Jerusalem on the occasion 
 of Paul's first visit, so most of them remained there 
 as an apostolic college, under the presidency of James, 
 known as the brother of our Lord, till death removed 
 them one by one, or till the survivors, foreseeing the 
 fall of the Holy City and the ruin of their race, fled 
 to some place of refuge beyond the Jordan. It is 
 probably at this time that the voice from Patmos is 
 raised, and the Christian Church is instructed in the 
 mystic vision of the future Providence of God. Last 
 of all, the gospel of Christ's discourses is published. 
 
 It seems clear that the resident Christians of Jeru- 
 salem excited little animosity on the part of those 
 rival sects whose hatred toward Christ was so furious 
 and so inveterate. It is true that immediately on the 
 formation of the Church the boldness of men like 
 Peter, and John, and Stephen brought persecution 
 cu the faithful. But at that time the death of Jesus 
 fresh in the memory of men, and the hierarchy
 
 THE ZEAL OF THE DISPERSED JEWS. 201 
 
 became alarmed and indignant at being charged with 
 his murder. Nor do we know what were the causes 
 which led to the execution of James and the imprison- 
 ment of Peter. 
 
 The author of the Acts of the Apostles tells us that 
 the execution pleased the Jews. It is possible that, 
 for a few years after the crucifixion, the events which 
 preceded the Easter of His Passion may have recurred 
 to the memory of those who took part in that crime, 
 and that the hate which, as the Roman historian tells 
 us, is felt by the wrong-doer to his victim, may have 
 roused the people to acts of hostility against the com- 
 panions or disciples of Christ. During the middle 
 ages, it was a common thing for the populace to be 
 roused to excesses against the Jews by inflammatory 
 orations preached on the Passion of Christ at Easter 
 time. It is seen, too, that the dispersed Jews who 
 did pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the Passover were 
 more easily stirred to fanatical outbursts of rage than 
 the settled inhabitants of the city : and they who 
 profited by their first-fruits and their offerings were 
 not unlikely to conciliate them by zeal against those 
 who might be supposed to be unfriendly to Jewish 
 nationality and the Law of Moses. It may be, too, 
 that James and Peter one of whom, by reason, it 
 seems, of the vehemence of his character, was sur- 
 named, with his brother, "the son of thunder;" the 
 other, the chief witness of Christ's life may have pro- 
 voked this sudden onslaught by reproaches similar to 
 those which were uttered by Stephen, and have led 
 Agrippa to consider that policy demanded the sacrifice 
 of these troublesome sectaries. It was the last attack
 
 202 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 on the Apostolic college, as far as we have information 
 in the Acts of the Apostles. Afterwards, we are told, 
 the Word of God grew and multiplied. There was 
 nothing, indeed, in the character and practice of the 
 Jewish Christians which could cause permanent hos- 
 tility to the Church of Jerusalem. 
 
 Agrippa had been one of those adventurers of royal 
 blood, who swarmed at the courts of the Roman 
 emperors. Following the traditions of the Republic, 
 the emperors maintained a number of dependent 
 monarchs in the outlying parts of the empire, as in 
 the interior of Africa, in Syria and in Asia Minor. 
 They set up, and deposed these puppets at pleasure. 
 They encouraged pretenders to plead their rival claims 
 at Rome. Sometimes a kingdom was made a province, 
 and afterwards constituted anew into a kingdom, with 
 the same or altered boundaries. 
 
 The imperial house had hitherto shown great favour 
 to the Jews. Julius Caesar had received important 
 assistance from the nation at a crisis of his fortunes, 
 and he had not been ungrateful. Augustus followed 
 the same policy. He confirmed Herod the Great in 
 his sovereignty over Judea, and, during the reign of 
 this astute king, the Jews prospered and preserved a 
 form of independence ; for Herod's wrath fell mainly 
 on his wives, his children, and his nobles. The jest of 
 Augustus, that he would rather be Herod's hog than 
 his son, is well known. Either by design or from 
 caprice, the monarchy of Herod was not continued to 
 his sons, for they received only small portions of their 
 father's extensive dominions, while the greater part 
 of Palestine was committed to the rule of a procurator
 
 AGRIPPA, THE FRIEND OF CALIGULA. 203 
 
 who was subordinated to the proconsular governor of 
 Syria. Such a procurator was Pilate, who was in the 
 first instance a creature of Sejanus, and had, perhaps 
 to please his patron, as well as to indulge his natural 
 savageness of temper, treated the Jews with extreme 
 harshness. The fall of Sejanus occurred a little before 
 the murder of Christ ; and the affectation of justice, 
 the comparative gentleness of the procurator's manner 
 in dealing with the Jewish authorities, the symbolical 
 protest against the iniquity of condemning the 
 righteous, and the concession to the threat of being 
 represented as unfaithful to the jealous and suspicious 
 Tiberius, point to the alarm and anxiety which Pilate 
 felt at the crisis when the priests led Christ before the 
 governor. 
 
 Agrippa had been the friend and companion of 
 Caligula, and the confidant of his secrets. He had 
 shared those furtive pleasures which Caligula ventured 
 on, during the lifetime of Tiberius, when the man's 
 real nature was unknown to any one but his closest 
 associates, and to the dark, shrewd old emperor. In 
 order to maintain his appearance at court, and to 
 further his intrigues after the throne of the great 
 Herod, Agrippa had involved himself terribly in debt; 
 for, in those evil days, nobles and princes borrowed 
 largely in order to find the means for profligacy and 
 bribery, with the certainty that they would be able to 
 recover their fortunes from subjects or provincials if 
 they could get a kingdom or the administration of a 
 province. Thus, Agrippa borrowed largely of Alex- 
 ander Lysimachus the rich Alabarch of Alexandria, 
 stipulating that half the sum should be paid at
 
 204- PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 Alexandria, the other half at Puteoli (another 
 illustration, by the way, of the manner in which the 
 Jews carried on their banking operations) ; of Antonia, 
 the mother of Claudius; and, finally, of a rich Samaritan 
 who lived at Rome and was a freedman of Claudius. 
 But, up to the time when Tiberius died, Agrippa had 
 been the unluckiest of adventurers. His prospects 
 were then at the worst, for the emperor had not only 
 slighted his suit, but had cast him into prison. 
 
 On the accession of Caligula, he was instantly 
 released and loaded with favours. The emperor gave 
 him a chain of gold, the weight of which was equal 
 to that of the fetters with which he had been loaded. 
 He made him king of the Jews, bestowing on him 
 that which he had so long sought for in vain. 
 Agrippa hastened to take possession of his kingdom, 
 but was imprudent enough to exhibit himself in royal 
 pomp at Alexandria, where the Jews were at that 
 time exceedingly unpopular. The last recorded 
 circumstance of his public life a similar but a more 
 scandalous exhibition of vanity is well known to all 
 who read the Scriptures, and is also narrated by 
 Josephus. 
 
 Agrippa seems to have been the only man whom 
 Caligula really loved. When the emperor became 
 insane, and the whole world was subjected to the 
 caprice of a cruel and sensual madman, Agrippa still 
 influenced him. At last, Caligula declared himself a 
 god, and bade the empire worship him, and the empiiv 
 submitted with alacrity to the amazing degradation. 
 The Jews alone refused to commit this act of impiety, 
 and Caligula ordered that a statue of himself .should
 
 THE .CO URA GE OF A GRIP PA . 205 
 
 be forthwith set up in the Temple at Jerusalem. Had 
 the command been obeyed at once, there is little doubt 
 that the outbreak which tasked the energies of 
 Vespasian and Titus, would have been anticipated by 
 thirty years. 
 
 At this crisis, Agrippa threw himself in the very 
 path of the madman, as he was on the full course of his 
 frenzy. He addressed a letter to him, in which he im- 
 plored him not to take this step. The letter is pre- 
 served in that work of Philo which narrates the 
 sufferings of the Alexandrian Jews, and the attempts 
 they made to conciliate the emperor. The effort must 
 have cost Agrippa infinite anxiety. It was certainly an 
 act of singular heroism; it was as if he had cast himself 
 to the wild beasts of the circus, for he risked life and all 
 that he had lived for. Agrippa had been a voluptuary 
 and an adventurer, he had been the meanest thing the 
 world had ever seen a courtier of the early empire, 
 but in this act he showed the courage of the Maccabees >- 
 from whom he was descended. It is only justice to 
 him to believe that he counted the cost, and that he 
 deliberately ventured everything to save the Temple 
 from profanation, the Jews from an inexpiable insult, 
 and the empire from a desperate war. He gained 
 delay by his remonstrance, and Caligula's death put 
 an end to the danger. 
 
 I have mentioned these facts in the life of Agrippa, 
 because they show that, although he had been 
 corrupted by the influences of the Roman court, 
 and had flattered the worst vices of the worst men 
 in the worst age of the world's history, he was yet 
 saved from utter degradation, and roused to courage
 
 20G PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 by the religion which kept its hold on him. That 
 motive, which was strong enough to make a hero of 
 Agrippa, and which might have made him a martyr, 
 if the dagger of Chaerea had not shortened the career of 
 Caligula, animated every Jew. The Jew was of a race, 
 according to Cicero, that was born for servitude. But 
 no race ever struggled more earnestly for its faith and 
 its nationality than that of Israel did ; and, dispersed 
 and broken as it is, none has ever maintained both 
 with greater fidelity, none has illustrated more clearly 
 how powerful passive resistance may be. 
 
 I have observed that from the days of the elder 
 Agrippa, the Church at Jerusalem enjoyed unbroken 
 quiet. Its chief officer was a devout ascetic, for 
 James lived according to the strictest rules which 
 the Law prescribed to the profession of a Nazarite. 
 His mode of life resembled that of those anchorites, 
 the Trappists of ancient history, who lived by the 
 Lake Mareotis, under the name of Therapeutre, and 
 were probably the representatives of the Buddhist mis- 
 sion which was sent to Egypt in the days of Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus. The knees of James became horny 
 by the constant attitude of prayer. Josephus, who 
 narrates the circumstances of his death, states that 
 the man was highly honoured and respected. Strict 
 in the fulfilment of those obligations which the Lu\v 
 imposed, the college at Jerusalem may have been 
 looked on as a mere offshoot of the Pharisaic sect, 
 which provoked no antipathy on the part of the 
 Jewish hierarchy, because it advised no innovation 
 on the practice of orthodox Israel. 
 
 The physical constitution of St. Paul was weakly,
 
 PAUL'S THORN. 207 
 
 as in the case of many men who have been characterised 
 by great mental vigour and unsparing energy; his 
 bodily powers seemed wholly inadequate to the task 
 which he undertook. Besides, he underwent labours 
 and hardships which were sufficient to try the 
 endurance of the strongest frame, of any frame ; for 
 it is often the case that certain privations are borne 
 better by the weakly than by the robust. It is well 
 known, moreover, that he speaks of some peculiar 
 trial to which he was subject, a trial which he 
 designates as a messenger of Satan. It has been 
 suggested that this was some sensuous impulse. But 
 this interpretation is erroneous as well as offensive. 
 The " thorn" is some sudden racking pain ; some con- 
 stitutional infirmity which agonises or prostrates the 
 sufferer for a time. The word which has been trans- 
 lated thorn, is properly a sharp stake. A verb formed 
 from it is used to denote crucifixion or impalement. 
 A paroxysm of such pain would leave the patient 
 "buffeted," i.e. sore and uneasy; the word expressing, 
 in popular language, the feeling of having been bruised 
 or beaten. It may be observed, that such bodily 
 afflictions were supposed, in accordance with the 
 language employed at the commencement of the book 
 of Job, to be injuries inflicted by Satan the accuser, 
 who is permitted by God to stretch forth his hand 
 against the servants of the Most High, but who 
 cannot touch their life. The dominant notion of 
 modern theology, which makes the incitement to 
 sensual impulses, and other sins against the holiness, 
 the majesty, the providence, and the will of God, 
 an act of an ever-watchful and malignant spirit who
 
 208 PAUL OF TARSCS. 
 
 tries to drag down into his own misery those who are 
 ordained for a higher destiny and loftier hopes, was 
 at least an undeveloped opinion in the Apostolic age. 
 St. James tells us, that sin is the spontaneous 
 following of a man's own lusts and appetites. The 
 devil of St. Peter's epistle who goes about, seeking 
 whom he may devour, is plainly a human, and not a 
 spiritual foe a persecutor, but not a seducer. 
 
 The Apostle suffered, then, from some intermittent or 
 recurrent malady. It was probably to this disease 
 that the pallid look, which all his descriptive portraits 
 specify of him, was due. I have little doubt that the 
 disease was neuralgic. One conjecture as to its nature 
 has been made, which appears to be plausibly sup- 
 ported by certain passages in the epistles and else- 
 where. It is that he suffered from weakness of sight. 
 It is supposed that his writing to the Galatians " in 
 such large letters" is one hint. Another is in his 
 saying, that some who loved him would have plucked 
 out their right eyes for his service. A third is 
 gathered from his mistake about the high priest. 
 But not one of these passages is conclusive, and none 
 suggest the strong fierce pain which the word em- 
 ployed by the Apostle to describe his suffering, 
 naturally signifies. It is, however, a matter of obvious 
 interest to know what was the physical hindrance 
 which Paul suffered from, and from which his resolute 
 and devout spirit gathered consolation and even 
 strength. The honour we entertain towards those 
 who have conferred inestimable benefits on mankind, 
 is not lessened when we learn what were their physical 
 ailments, what were the personal hindrances which
 
 WAS PA UL MARRIED '! 209 
 
 they had to battle with, in addition to the enormous 
 toil which must be undergone by those who, in God's 
 name, and for man's sake, strive to teach an ignorant, 
 and purify a corrupt world. We do not care to know 
 these things because they show that such eminent 
 persons are so much like ourselves, but because we 
 would understand how the power which stirred and 
 strengthened them, was so vast, so effectual, so divine, 
 as to overcome what seem to be insurmountable 
 obstacles. 
 
 It was an early question whether the Apostle was 
 married. The passage in the Epistle to the Corin- 
 thians, in which he speaks of himself as unincumbered 
 with domestic cares, does not preclude the notion that 
 he might have been a widower does not even prove 
 more than that he went on his missionary journeys 
 alone. On the other hand, he speaks of his assent 
 to the death of Stephen, and of his commission from 
 the Sanhedrim, functions and powers which could 
 not well have been exercised by a man who was not 
 a member of that council. But we are expressly 
 told that this great assembly of the Jews included 
 only fathers, in order to secure a merciful interpreta- 
 tion of the Law. An early explanation, too, of the 
 "true yokefellow" at the Church in Philippi, whom 
 he bids labour to reconcile or assist Euodia and 
 Syntyche, recognises the wife of the Apostle in the 
 phrase. The epistle was, it may be said almost 
 certainly, written from Rome, and during the time of 
 that imprisonment in which the perils of the Apostle's 
 situation were aggravated by sorrow, and ultimately 
 by the desertion of many among his friends.
 
 210 PA UL OF TARSUS 
 
 The ascetic spirit which has induced men to forego 
 domestic ties, and with them the reciprocal gentleness, 
 unwearied love, unvaried patience, persevering energy, 
 which should belong to the relations of husband and 
 wife, parent and child, which do belong to them 
 generally, and which constitute the strongest sanctions 
 of social life, has been developed and inculcated for 
 various reasons. There are persons who have, deliber- 
 ately and of purpose, shut themselves out from those 
 attachments that they may serve their fellow-men the 
 better, and so serve God. The very purity and beauty 
 of these relations, and their paramount value in the 
 organisation of society ; the fact that they are com- 
 mended at once by clear reason and tender affection, 
 make the sacrifice of him who could delight in them, 
 but who resolutely avoids them, that he may give his 
 undivided will and powers to the good of mankind, the 
 highest effort of self-abnegation. Christ recognises 
 such a sacrifice ; but with the significant hint that 
 the sacrifice must be made with a real and intelligible 
 purpose. 
 
 Again, the celibate state was recommended by St. 
 Paul expressly for temporary reasons. In view of the 
 "present distress," the tempest which was threatening 
 the infant Church, it might be expedient to lessen 
 the trials of life by diminishing the number of its ties. 
 The Apostle's advice is simply that of a prudent man, 
 who foresees the strain which human nature will be 
 put to, and who dreads the risk. It is counsel given 
 in aid of human weakness, while the case which Christ 
 puts is of that strong and persistent heroism which 
 knows no weakness. The Apostle bids men avoid
 
 (KL1EACY. 211 
 
 suffering ; the Master contemplates the example of the 
 man who resolves to give his undivided and unim- 
 peded energies to the highest ends. 
 
 A third series of arguments in favour of celibacy 
 was derived from that dualism which characterised 
 Aryan theosophy. In the view of this scheme, the 
 body was an evil beast, to which the soul was linked, 
 and from which it should seek freedom by a continual 
 practice of austerities. The Creator of man had, for- 
 sooth, bound him, Mezentius-like, to a corrupt and 
 loathsome nature, from which he must strive to liber- 
 ate himself from which, in thought at least, he must 
 live apart. The body was not, from this point of 
 view, the instrument of life the mechanism by which 
 God's will might be done but an evil and insatiate 
 power, an ever-present enemy, which must be beaten 
 down and crushed. That it should be allowed any 
 pleasure, however innocent and pure, was to concede 
 something to a foe who would seize every opportunity 
 for mischief. It is not unnatural that this morbid 
 misconception of human life should have its reverse, 
 and that there have been individuals, and even sects, 
 who have carried their theory of the dual nature of 
 man to such a length, as to believe that the indulgence 
 of any appetite, however gross of any practice, how- 
 ever debasing, may leave the soul untouched and un- 
 tainted. Such a sect, we learn from the Gemara, 
 existed among the Jews in the time of Gamaliel. 
 " There are men," it is said, " who assert that they 
 cannot sin, either with the soul or with the body. If 
 the spirit is divested of the body, it flies away like a 
 bird. If the body is separated from the soul, it lies
 
 212 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 as senseless as a stone." The answer of the Jewish 
 schoolman is in the form of a parable. " A certain 
 king had a rich garden, full of ripe fruit, and he put 
 as guardians into it two keepers one lame, the other 
 blind. The lame man, however, climbed on the blind 
 man's back, and together they robbed the garden. 
 When the owner came, and found that such a deed 
 had been done, both culprits denied the act. How 
 could I see the fruit ? said one ; how pluck it ? said 
 the other. The wise king, however, was not deceived. 
 He bade the lame man get on the blind man's back, 
 and, binding them together, thus judged and pun- 
 ished both." 
 
 And, lastly, the practice of celibacy has been 
 advocated, because it has been found to suit the 
 policy of religious despotism, and has aided in estab- 
 lishing an organisation which has subserved a fac- 
 titious object, by denying the affections any natural 
 centre. It is almost superfluous to urge how entirely 
 this practice has been enforced for sinister ends, how 
 completely akin it is to the ultimate authority on 
 which the Christian polity is founded. It was un- 
 known to the Jewish discipline, it was a mere accident 
 of the Apostolic age. It owes its sanction to the 
 worst ambition which has ever perverted men, the 
 desire to control the religious sympathies of humanity 
 in the interests of intolerance and aggression. 
 
 The revelation of the Almighty, in describing His 
 love for His creatures, can use no more expressive 
 word to denote His Providence than that of Father ; 
 with all that it suggests of unwearied patience, 
 forethought, goodness, towards helpless infancy, trustful
 
 THE WOMEN OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 213 
 
 childhood, inquiring and impetuous youth. It has 
 sanctified that affection which belongs peculiarly to 
 mankind, by transferring it to the nature of God. 
 And, similarly, the relations of the great Evangelist, 
 the Mediator, the Saviour of Humanity, to the 
 nature which He has exalted and redeemed, are 
 figured under the similitude of that other tie which 
 constitutes home, with its affections, its reciprocal 
 duties, its graces, its labours, its purposes. They 
 who employed those facts of social life to illustrate 
 the dealings of God with man, were, we may be 
 sure, wholly devoid of that perverse spirit which 
 has enslaved men to a morbid asceticism, or to a 
 politic scheme of ecclesiastical government. Certainly, 
 if Paul remained a celibate after his conversion to 
 Christianity, his motive must have been that which 
 Christ recognised and commended under such excep- 
 tional circumstances. 
 
 As the Christians of the Apostolic age held marriage 
 in honour, so they emancipated woman. The equality 
 of all believers in the sight of God tolerated no social 
 difference, no pride of race, no theory of an inferiority 
 of sex. The Apostle would not break down the sub- 
 ordination of a wife to her husband in the household. 
 To have announced the domestic equality of the sexes 
 would have been too violent a paradox for the age in 
 which he lived, and Paul is at the pains to warn believ- 
 ing matrons against presuming in temporal matters on 
 account of their equality with men in the Church. 
 
 In the world outside the Christian Church, women 
 were generally in a position of marked inferiority. 
 They were, according to the custom of Semitic nations,
 
 PAUL OF TAXXI'X. 
 
 carefully secluded among the Jews, for Philo reckons 
 it among the grossest injuries which Flaccus did the 
 Alexandrian Israelites, that he permitted the mob to 
 break open the harem of the Jewish family, and to com- 
 pel the women to remove their veils. What the Jews 
 thought of women generally may be gathered from 
 the Book of Ecclesiasticus a work written during 
 the time of the Syrian domination. The civilisation 
 of Greece never extended to her women. It is true 
 that the haughty Roman heiress and matron had 
 assumed great independence custom allowing an 
 easy divorce. But this independence had become 
 in many cases synonymous with licentiousness if 
 we can credit satirists and historians though occa- 
 sionally there might have been wives who deserved 
 such grief as that of Paullus, whose virtues are 
 celebrated in the exquisite elegy of Propertius. 
 
 But Christianity raised women at once to the level 
 of men. They presided over churches, they travelled 
 as evangelists, they formed the earliest permanent 
 order in the Christian ministry, under the name of 
 deaconesses. It is true that at Corinth Paul would 
 have silenced their preaching, but the command is 
 probably local, and founded on special reasons. Try- 
 phsena and Tryphosa are the types of a class. Aquila 
 and Priscilla always mentioned together were the 
 founders of the Church in Rome, the teachers of 
 the learned Apollos, and continued their joint-labours 
 so long that they were the object of Paul's latest 
 greetings. In Lucian, the old women and the 
 widows take up the case of the impostor Peregrinus, 
 and importune for liis release.
 
 THE PURITY OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 215 
 
 This equality of women with men, this honour paid 
 to devout maidens and matrons, this dignity assigned 
 to them in the domestic life of early Christianity, led, 
 of course, to scandalous and malignant calumnies at 
 the hands of unbelievers. The apologists of Christ- 
 ianity engage themselves in refuting these slanders. 
 Justin tells a story of a young man of Alexandria 
 who wished to publicly demonstrate his personal 
 morality by the severest test. There was a little 
 colour for suspicion in the fact that Christianity was 
 necessarily a secret society, and it was only too 
 notorious that, among the heathen, mystical religious 
 rites, to which only the initiated were introduced, 
 were often a veil for gross debauchery. The circum- 
 stance which induced the expulsion of the worship 
 of I sis from Rome was, if we may trust Josephus, 
 a scandalous intrigue, furthered, in consideration of 
 a heavy bribe, by the priests of the Egyptian goddess. 
 
 It is almost superfluous to say, that the Pauline 
 epistles, in common with the rest of the New Testa- 
 ment Scriptures, are full of exhortations to purity- 
 full of warnings against unchastity in deed, word, and 
 thought. It was an age of excessive grossness, of 
 coarse licentious speech, and the Apostle would have 
 no compromise with it whatever ; prescribed complete 
 seclusion from its practices as the only preservative 
 against its contagion. He exhorts his disciples to 
 remember the pledge which they have given to their 
 Maker and their Redeemer, and to utterly put away 
 from themselves everything which might lure them 
 back to the wantonness which popular Paganism per- 
 mitted, or even commended which was suggested
 
 216 I' M r L OF TARSUS. 
 
 publicly, and practised openly. The discoveries at 
 Pompeii confirm the description given of the morals 
 of Antioch. 
 
 The powers which the Apostle possessed for the 
 furtherance of his mission were not, as has been stated, 
 those of an imposing presence and rhetorical skill. 
 He did not win his converts by impetuous denuncia- 
 tions, or by magnificent promises, or by practising 
 on morbid fears. To the Jews he argued as one of 
 their doctors would, that Christ was prefigured in the 
 Law, and in the Prophets, and in the Holy Scriptures, 
 
 in the three divisions of the Jewish Bible. It was 
 not difficult to do this, partly because the habit of 
 interpreting these writings in an allegorical sense was 
 very familiar, as we may see from the Talmud and 
 the writings of Philo ; partly because the Old Testa- 
 ment is full of Messianic anticipations, of unfulfilled, 
 but glorious promises. Doubtlessly, the history of the 
 Messiah, His rejection by the Jews, His condemnation 
 by priests and council, His crucifixion by the Roman 
 governor, was a vast difficulty, a perpetual stumbling- 
 block. Some of the believers in Christ met the 
 difficulty by denying the reality of the crucifixion 
 altogether. But great as the crime was, it was a crime 
 of ignorance. It was due to the fact that God's coun- 
 sels were hidden from the princes of the world, who 
 would not otherwise have crucified the Lord of glory. 
 To those, however, who rightly understood the revela- 
 tion of God, it was clear that Christ must suffer, in 
 order that such glory should be won. The condition of 
 all progress, all growth, all restoration, all perfection, 
 
 is sunWmjj. It \vns a cardinal tenet in the morality of 
 

 
 THE PREACHINGS OF PAUL.TO JEWS. 217 
 
 Judaism, that the just are the expiatory victims of 
 the wicked, that the regeneration of the world is to 
 be hoped for and obtained by the self-abandonment 
 of those whom God raises up for this high end. 
 Hence, the Apostle could speak of himself as one 
 who was helping, by his own self-sacrifice, to fill up 
 what was not even completed by the death of Christ, 
 the perpetual expiation which man makes for his 
 fellow-man the waste which is demanded from the 
 believing soul, in order to compensate for the waste 
 which is caused by the sinful soul. As far as humanity 
 is concerned, the sacrifice, the crucifixion, the shame, 
 the loss is still going on, in order that humanity may 
 be exalted and redeemed. The Apostle appeals to 
 the consolations which must be afforded to those who 
 are convinced that they are aiding the work of human 
 redemption, by identifying their efforts with the 
 supreme effort of Christ's Passion. Christ, I grant 
 (it is as though he should say), was crucified, but ye 
 are crucified also. Your life-long struggle with the 
 temptations and trials which beset you, with the 
 passions which are crowded into your mortal nature, 
 with the foes within you and the foes without you ; 
 your work for your own salvation and for that of 
 others, are similar to that grief which He endured for 
 you, which He suffered whom I preach to you as 
 your Saviour and your Example. The shame of the 
 death is done away by identifying it with the most 
 ardent struggles after the purification of your own 
 souls, and the regeneration of the world. Met by 
 the scandal of the crucifixion, and it was an over- 
 whelming scandal, Paul boldly made it a matter of
 
 218 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 satisfaction, and insisted that it was not only the 
 initiative in the redemption of man, but the type of 
 that great struggle in which death and the grave are 
 baffled at the very moment of their apparent victory. 
 The difficulties which afterwards arose as to the nature 
 of Him who suffered, and as to the part which men 
 play in their own salvation and that of their neigh- 
 bours, were as yet latent. 
 
 With the heathen world there was another difficulty. 
 St. Paul tells us that to the Greeks the name is gen- 
 eric the Gospel he preached was folly a sheer ab- 
 surdity. To common habit it must have seemed so. 
 We can imagine such persons arguing as follows : 
 Here is a well-informed man, who has travelled much, 
 and seen much of the world. He is, to be sure, a 
 Jew, and therefore believes in such a conception of 
 God as is just and pure, though the belief is overlaid 
 by a host of antiquated observances and superstitions. 
 We can accept the monotheism which the Jew teaches. 
 The best and wisest men of our own race have held 
 such opinions, and have repudiated those vulgar ideas 
 of the Divine nature which are current with a mob of 
 profligates, with illiterate villagers, and with the rab- 
 ble of towns. But this is not a teacher of monotheism. 
 He proposes to us a deified, or, at least, heroic re- 
 deemer of mankind a new incarnation of the Deity. 
 And who is his strange God ? It is a Syrian peasant, 
 who possessed certain powers which were probably 
 magical, and who ended his career by a violent death, 
 inflicted by judicial sentence, and, as we may reason- 
 ably suppose, for having taken part in some local in- 
 surrection. That a wise and holy person should suill T
 
 TO GREEKS. 219 
 
 death for his opinions is not without a parallel that 
 such a person should have sprung from an ignoble 
 origin is not without precedent ; but that he should 
 have sprung from such an origin, in such a people, 
 have limited his teaching to a section of his own race, 
 have perished by the hands of those he instructed, and 
 should now be held up before us as an object of rever- 
 ence as a person who, having died, has risen, lives, 
 and is a God, passes the bounds of credulity. What 
 Festus uttered as Paul pleaded before Agrippa what 
 the Athenian Literati said, when they invited him to 
 expound his doctrine on Mars' hill, must have been 
 in the mind of many who heard him speak. 
 
 With such persons the Apostle dealt by teaching 
 the common interests of mankind, the universality 
 of the Divine Providence, the certainty of the Divine 
 judgment, and the appointment of a Person by whose 
 agency that judgment should be declared ; who, having 
 lived among men, and having died the death of men, 
 was recalled from death in order to fulfil this inevi- 
 table purpose. To live is to prepare for death, to 
 die is to enter into the vestibule of the Divine judg- 
 ment-seat. So he reasons with Felix, and with the 
 Athenians. No part of the Greek theology exercised 
 a more powerful restraint on the conduct of men, 
 than the tribunal of the stern, strict judges before 
 whom the dead were arraigned, and by whose sentence 
 the pious and the guilty were rewarded and punished. 
 But, in the scheme which the Apostle proposes, and 
 which affirms those elements of a primeval faith, 
 there is coupled the tenet, that he who is to be 
 judge is also advocate, that he who will hereafter
 
 /'-I UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 utter the sentence is renewing the nature of those 
 who will appear before his tribunal. To the Greek 
 mind, initiation into sacred rites, the knowledge 
 
 ' ' O 
 
 of which was confined to those who were fit to receive 
 the revelation, and who would be purified by the 
 knowledge, was a familiar process. The Apostle 
 appropriates the word which designates this purifying 
 knowledge to the Christian faith, and the Gospel 
 becomes a mystery. 
 
 All the descriptive portraits of the Apostle affirm 
 that, whatever may have been his physical appearance 
 and utterance, his manner was singularly graceful 
 and winning. Of the attachments which he inspired 
 we have abundant proof. Of the affection which 
 he felt for his converts and disciples we have similar 
 evidence. If he endured enmities he consolidated 
 friendships. His intense personality makes his asso- 
 ciates or disciples shadowy and almost impersonal. 
 At first, indeed, Paul seems to be subordinated to 
 Barnabas, whose name (two occasions excepted in 
 which active hostility is shown to these fellow- 
 labourers) is always put before that of his great 
 colleague. But after the quarrel between them, 
 when Barnabas disappears from the narrative, and 
 Paul becomes almost the only personage in the 
 history, the associates of the Apostle are his disciples, 
 probably his converts. Such were Silas, Luke, 
 Timothy, Titus, and others. 
 
 Nothing, it has been said, illustrates the grace of 
 Paul's manner more completely than his letter to 
 Philemon. Very likely it is the sole remaining 
 \;un|)le of many similar epistles, written as occasion
 
 PAUL AND PHILEMON. 221 
 
 arose, to those with whom he was united in the double 
 bond of teacher and friend. The circumstance which 
 gives occasion to the letter is well known. The 
 fugitive slave of an opulent citizen of Colossse as 
 we may surmise the master was has been converted 
 by the Apostle, and is employed as a messenger to 
 the Church which Paul had planted there. The 
 master had also been a convert, and St. Paul writes 
 by the slave's hand at once to the Colossians, and 
 to the master, with a view to disarming the anger 
 of the latter against the runaway. Nothing can show 
 greater tact than this epistle. The writer begins by 
 thanking Philemon for the kindness and generosity he 
 had shown to the Christians in his neighbourhood. 
 Then he introduces the subject of his letter; alludes 
 playfully to the name which the slave bore "the 
 Profitable;" states that he would have gladly kept 
 him as an attendant on himself, but could not do so 
 without consent; and prays that he may not only 
 be forgiven, but treated hereafter as a fellow-Christian. 
 Then he offers to pay for any loss which has occurred 
 to Philemon by the fraud or misconduct of his servant ; 
 hints at the relations which have already subsisted 
 between Philemon and himself; assures himself 
 that more than his request will be granted ; and 
 expresses a hope that he may be spared to pay 
 Philemon a visit. Nothing can be less intrusive, 
 less importunate in its tone, than this letter, and 
 yet nothing can more earnestly express the wishes 
 of the writer, and avow more courteously his assur- 
 ance that the favour will be granted. 
 
 Equally marked is the sensitiveness which appears
 
 222 PA M OF TARSUS. 
 
 in the Epistles to the Corinthians. In his anxiety to 
 restore unity to the distracted Church in that city, and 
 to cure scandals which had infested it, the Apostle 
 uses the greatest caution in administering rebuke and 
 counsel. We learn from these epistles what were the 
 leading characteristics of those primitive Christian 
 communities, what were the internal dangers to which 
 they were exposed, and how great was the tact needed 
 to direct and control them. And we can also learn 
 from the genuine portions of the Epistle of Clement 
 to the Corinthians, that the Apostle's advice had the 
 effect of quelling their disorders, though they broke 
 out with redoubled mischief after St. Paul's death. 
 The Corinthian Christians were only too apt to imitate 
 those faction fights of the Jews and Romans (for the 
 Corinth of the Apostolic age was hardly a Greek city), 
 which are described as having been waged before the 
 tribunal of the philosophic Gallic. 
 
 But though the Apostle was notably discreet in his 
 treatment of those with whom it was important to be 
 conciliatory, his temper was not absolutely imperturb- 
 able. It is fortunate for the future of the Christian 
 religion that his patience had its limits. He was too 
 sagacious not to see that the attempt to fasten Juda- 
 ism on his followers would simply ruin Christianity, 
 and that the attempt must be met resolutely and at 
 once. And as a man in whom the feeling of self- 
 respect was heightened by the consciousness of his own 
 energetic temperament, by the knowledge of his pro- 
 digious success as a missionary, and by the ever- 
 present conviction of a special revelation from Christ, 
 to which revelation, and to which alone, he owed
 
 PA UL'S LETTERS. 223 
 
 his knowledge of the Gospel he taught, he was 
 thoroughly exasperated by the attempt of his adver- 
 saries to disparage, to even deny his apostolic author- 
 ity. The result of this anxiety for the future of 
 Christianity, and this necessity of self-defence, was the 
 Epistle to the Galatians, in which the Apostle vehe- 
 mently asserts the authority of his mission, gives the 
 history of his call to the apostolate, and his early reso- 
 lution to act independently of the college at Jerusalem, 
 attacks the consistency of two such men as Peter and 
 Barnabas, and then announces the necessity of separ- 
 ating, at once and for ever, the Christian Gospel from 
 Jewish practices. He plainly declares the ceremonial 
 parts of the Mosaic covenant to be abrogated, an- 
 nulled, antiquated ; nay, that obedience to them is 
 inconsistent with the fellowship of Christ, taking a 
 position from which retreat was impossible, affirming 
 a principle which nothing could explain away or 
 qualify. He rebukes the levity with which his con- 
 verts had supplemented his teaching ; assures them 
 that his gospel needed no addition ; and expresses a 
 wish that he could be with them instantly, and solve 
 his doubts as to their attitude towards him and his 
 gospel by speech, rather than by the slower process 
 of communicating to them by letter, and waiting for 
 a reply, to change his written word for word of 
 mouth. A man of warm affections, Paul always pre- 
 ferred to treat men with gentleness and consideration, 
 even when he was prescribing a strict rule of spiritual 
 life ; a man of strong convictions, he could not suffer 
 the essentials of his ministry his independent author- 
 ity as a teacher, and his complete knowledge as a
 
 1'AUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 missionary to be disparaged or trifled with. He 
 affirms the former by an unwonted and emphatic 
 adjuration ; he pronounces an anathema on those 
 who change his gospel, add to it, or substitute any 
 other teaching for it. 
 
 The method of the Apostle's reasoning is often 
 obscure, generally abrupt, never, in the technical sense, 
 logical. He expressly repudiates the use of such an 
 instrument of persuasion as the formal method of 
 demonstration. The subject did not admit it, except 
 in so far as, in dealing with Jews, he appeals to the 
 authority of the Old Testament Scriptures. For 
 religion is not an affair of evidences, does not admit 
 of demonstration. It may be questioned whether 
 faith has ever been aided, or doubt resolved by the 
 logical apparatus of theology. It has been proved 
 that the religious sense may become nearly extinct 
 in an age to which dogmatism has supplied the 
 strictest definitions, the most elaborate conclusions. 
 To win a man over to God's will, to instruct his 
 heart in the belief that God is a real Being whom 
 man can love, and loving, will obey, and to nerve him 
 for the struggle which such love and obedience in- 
 vites him to, against the sin, the meanness, the selfish- 
 ness, the arrogance, the vanity, the ignorance of a 
 mere worldly life, is not the function of logic, which 
 may perhaps raise a man to a passive acquiescence 
 in a Power, or at best to the cold admiration of some 
 unvarying Law. "The affections believe," says Paul, 
 and reason takes the impulse as a principle of action. 
 And what is true of a religion which gains man to 
 God, is even more manifest in the exhortations by
 
 THE STYLE OF PA CL'ti 
 
 which the Apostle bids men believe in Christ. He 
 appeals to loyalty, to that mysterious sentiment, 
 which, apart from the prospect of past and future 
 benefit, binds men to the incarnation of perfect love, 
 wisdom, gentleness, purity,- the power and the wisdom 
 of God. If men do and can claim this loyalty because 
 they exhibit in faint and imperfect outline some of 
 these divine attributes, or evoke it because they 
 merely represent the cohesion of social life, how much 
 more should He claim an all-absorbing devotion who 
 
 O 
 
 was on earth a pattern of perfect goodness, and has, 
 given infallible guarantees of future perfection to His 
 disciples. Such a loyalty, ever present, ardent, 
 untiring, but glowing more brightly, working more 
 fervently as his experiences accumulated, governed 
 the Apostle's nature from the day when he drew near 
 to Damascus, to that in which he saw the time of 
 his departure at hand. This he commended to his 
 converts, not by any weight of reason or wisdom, 
 but by his perpetual experience of Christ. 
 
 Even, however, if every allowance is made for the 
 subject which the Apostle treated, and for the preg- 
 nant brevity of his phrases and expressions, it cannot 
 be denied that the method of the Pauline epistles is 
 singularly inconsecutive. The style abounds in paren- 
 theses, inserted argumentations, recollections of topics, 
 which are introduced into matter foreign to them, or 
 diverse from them, in the most puzzling fashion. 
 Sometimes, also, so many words are omitted from 
 a sentence that it requires the boldest conjecture to 
 supply the missing terms. It seems as though the 
 
 clause had been inserted between the lines of the 
 
 p
 
 226 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 manuscript, and that space failing for the whole 
 sentence, the expression was condensed into inextric- 
 able ambiguity. Thus, for example, in the case of 
 that celebrated passage, " a mediator is not of one, 
 but God is one," it is said that at least two-hundred- 
 and-fifty renderings have been given of the eleven 
 words in the original. The sentence bears every 
 mark of having been written in. It is not essential 
 to the argument. The Apostle is stating that the 
 mission of Christ is the fulfilment of a promise made 
 through Abraham to mankind, ages before the Mosaic 
 covenant was promulgated and confirmed. The Law, 
 on the other hand, was not an immediate revelation, 
 was an addition to existing promises, and was added 
 in order to obviate sins of disobedience or reckless- 
 ness, was communicated by subordinate authority, 
 was put into the hands of an intermediary, plenipoten- 
 tiary, ambassador, or mediator. Then, to emphasise 
 the difference between the earlier promise and the 
 later law, he defines such an agent as Moses was by a 
 parenthesis. A mediator implies the existence of two 
 separate parties, between whom the person delegated 
 to such an office acts. But God is an original Power, 
 He is one of the parties to the covenant or promise, 
 and His direct relations with the person to whom He 
 makes the promise are of a far higher significance 
 than the revelations which He communicates to man 
 by man. 
 
 Instances could be multiplied of these after- thoughts, 
 parentheses, recollections, glosses on what has been 
 already written down, and is being read to the 
 Apostle by an amanuensis. Let us take an example.
 
 HIS PARENTHESES. 227 
 
 The Corinthians ask him what they are to do in the 
 case of purchasing meat which has been offered to 
 idols, or is suspected of having been offered. He com- 
 mences his reply in the eighth chapter of the First 
 Epistle, and in the course of this states his own feeling, 
 that if any act of his, however innocent in itself, were 
 to shake the faith of his brother, he would in con- 
 science abstain perpetually from the act. This leads 
 him to comment on his apostolate, and his claims to 
 consideration. This suggests his right to maintenance 
 at the hands of his converts, did he choose to claim it 
 a right which he vindicates at length, and by many 
 analogies. The fact that he makes no claim leads him 
 to expound the principles which have guided him in his 
 public career, and to insist on diligence and consistency 
 in the Christian life. Here he illustrates the risk of 
 falling away by showing how large was the Divine 
 favour to the Jews in the wilderness, and again 
 parenthetically detects a spiritual significance in the 
 Providence which supplied their wants. In the face 
 of these benefits they fell into idolatry, and, as the 
 Apostle is reminded, into other offences against the 
 majesty of God. Their example is your warning, for 
 your trials are not beyond your endurance. Then, 
 reminded of the idolatry of the Israelites, and simulta- 
 neously of the food and water in the wilderness, he 
 abruptly speaks of the feast which is held in remem- 
 brance of Christ and His betrayal. He justifies his 
 statement that this rite is a communion of Christ, 
 by the community which exists between them who 
 partake of the sacrifice ; and this brings him back to 
 things sacrificed to idols, on the use of which he now
 
 228 I'-iUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 gives a full opinion at the conclusion of the tenth 
 chapter. The course of the reasoning is traceable, 
 it is not incoherent, for it is associated ; but no better 
 illustration can be given of what Aristotle calls in- 
 consecutive utterance, as contrasted with methodical 
 statement, than this passage does. With very rare 
 exceptions, it is always possible to discover the con- 
 nection of thought in St. Paul's dictations to his 
 amanuensis, or in the copy which the amanuensis 
 made ; but the association between the connected 
 statements, though real, is vague. 
 
 If the reader of the Pauline epistles can disengage 
 himself from two superstitions, one which urges him 
 to discover a Divine revelation in every sentence 
 and word of these writings, and another which seeks 
 to tie a hearty, earnest, shrewd, religious man to 
 some prim system of composition, such as might 
 be congenial to a literary pedant ; the one dictated 
 by a spirit of divination, the other by an unnatural 
 affectation, he will find more freshness, spontaneity 
 and reality in the epistles of St. Paul, even in their 
 obscurest and most involved passages, than in any 
 more exact compositions. The writer understands 
 what he is talking about, and means what he says. If 
 he staggers under the greatness of his subject, if he 
 is distracted by the infinity of the interests which 
 he treats, if every word which rises to his lips suggests 
 a host of profound and large associations, if his 
 care of all the churches gives every fact a varied 
 but a real significance, the intensity of which is 
 heightened by the energetic affectionateness of his 
 nature, and the vivid way in which he sees tin;
 
 THE REAL MERITS OF HIS STYLE. 
 
 bearing of everything which occurs in the course 
 of his ministry, human speech must be blamed 
 for its poverty, human experience, which has de- 
 veloped speech, for its narrowness. His life was 
 in his hand, his heart was on his lips. The heart 
 was often too great for the speech. It learnt much 
 and suffered more. Short of those mysterious hours 
 which were passed between the garden of Gethsemane 
 and the darkness on Calvary, the world's history 
 has uttered nothing more tragic than the words of this 
 aged missionary, " At my first defence no one came 
 to my assistance, but all deserted me." Is this 
 to be always the lot of such men as Paul ? He 
 has his consolation, " The Lord stood by me and 
 strengthened me." 
 
 Though the general style of the Pauline argument 
 is obscure and involved, there are passages of astonish- 
 ing beauty scattered up and down these epistles. 
 Such, for example, are the magnificent episode on 
 Christian love ; and the exposition of the resurrection. 
 Nothing can be more clear and succinct than the 
 narrative of Paul's early apostolate, which is contained 
 in the Epistle to the Galatians, or his resume of 
 the depravity into which gross superstitions had 
 degraded the Roman people. So, again, the letters 
 to Timothy are full of affectionate solicitude and 
 fatherly counsel, as that to Philemon is a pattern 
 of high breeding and tact. 
 
 The antecedent likelihood, that many of the Pauline 
 compositions are lost, is strengthened by distinct evi- 
 dence. One at least, which was sent to Corinth, 
 has perished. It is probable, that in his care of
 
 230 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 all the churches he despatched many other letters 
 to the numerous cities in which he had planted his 
 gospel, from Antioch in the east to the extreme 
 west where, as Clement of Rome informs us, he 
 preached after his first trial. Tradition gives him 
 as wide a missionary enterprise in the West as history 
 shows him to have accomplished in the East and 
 in the centre of the then known world. We could 
 have wished that the vigorous sketch which he gives 
 of his earlier labours had been continued in the 
 last epistle which came from his hand, and that 
 we had been informed in his final charge to Timothy 
 of the conclusion of that noble struggle, that complete 
 race, on which he congratulates himself at the con- 
 summation of his career.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE conversion of St. Paul is the greatest fact in the 
 history of the Christian Church. Other men, from 
 having been persecutors, have become preachers, have 
 cherished that which they previously wasted. The 
 zeal of a convert is proverbial, and the zeal of the 
 early Christians, certainly of the Gentile converts, was 
 unwearied. Nothing can exceed the boldness with 
 which the Fathers of the Apostolic age, and their 
 successors during the days of persecution, defied the 
 power which crushed them, but could not root them 
 out. Every age has witnessed the heroism of 
 martyrdom ; and Christianity counts her confessers 
 from the days of the Neronian persecution to those 
 of the slaughter in Madagascar. It is impossible to 
 coerce the human will, except it be first debased ; and 
 Christianity made the human will divine in the sacri- 
 fice and glorification of Christ. He was the Example 
 as well as the Redeemer of humanity. By the grace 
 of God, men could be made like Him who is the 
 Captain of their Salvation. No sex, no age, no rank, 
 no race, was excluded from this great emancipation. On
 
 2']'2 PAUL OF TARSI'S. 
 
 the one side was a despotism, vast, unavoidable, all-em- 
 bracing, iron, a military occupation of the world, at 
 the head of which was some scion of a worn-out aristo- 
 cratical family, which in its best days was notorious- 
 even among the Roman nobility for hardness and 
 licentiousness. Four emperors of the Claudian race 
 occupied the triple function of commander-in-chief, 
 chief judge, and high priest. Beneath this system 
 lay a world of despair. There was no refuge from the 
 violence of government except obscurity, no opiate by 
 which to forget the terror except sensual indulgence. 
 On the other side was the promise of God, the new 
 light of a glorious future, which faith affirmed and 
 hope made near. The coming of Him who had 
 ascended was daily expected. He would be seen in 
 His glory before the generation in which He lived 
 had passed away. And when men murmured because 
 He delayed His coming, and said that His promise 
 was slack, they were comforted with the assurance 
 that He was not slack, but merciful ; they were told 
 that we who are alive and remain, shall be caught up 
 with the dead to meet Him in the bright region above 
 them and to dwell with Him for ever. To interpret the 
 zeal of the early Christians we must measure not only 
 their hope, but the contrast which experience presented 
 to that hope, the dead, hateful, cruel world of sight, 
 the fresh, lovely, joyous world above. The heathen 
 called them mad, but they knew that their hope was 
 sober truth. In the world, they were most miserable; 
 in Christ, they are already blessed. Woe to man, 
 i such enthusiasm vanishes. The mission of 
 humanity is over, if the Judge comes, and finds no
 
 Til K ( '(L\ VMIS10X <>F I' A UL. 233 
 
 faith, no trust, no confidence in the world, nothing but 
 blank apathy, or easy self-indulgence. This was the 
 temper of the early Church. 
 
 Of this zeal, hope, endurance, faith, Paul was the 
 most conspicuous example. He had always been 
 eminent for his activity. In the days when he per- 
 secuted the Church his energy was unbounded. 
 Having harried the Christians of Jerusalem, he jour- 
 neyed to strange cities, taking advantage of the 
 general anarchy which the furious despotism of Cali- 
 gula permitted. In those times of darkness his hope 
 was in all that the Rabbis had taught, or could teach, 
 of the immortality of man's soul, of the resurrection 
 of the body, of angel and spirit. In misdirected faith, 
 in impetuous endurance, he travelled madly over the 
 plain which leads to Damascus, under the burning 
 mid-day sun, eager to vindicate the law of Moses on 
 those recreant Jews. 
 
 The narrative of St. Paul's conversion ; the vision in 
 the way, the light from heaven above the brightness 
 of the sun, the voice from heaven, the solemn question, 
 not the less solemn, because it used a familiar meta- 
 phor, the summons to obedience, and the acquies- 
 cence in the command ; the change of heart, purpose, 
 life, though not of character, is given three times over 
 in the Acts of the Apostles. St. Paul does not in 
 his own writings refer to the circumstances of this 
 great crisis in his life, but simply states that he perse- 
 cuted the Church, that God revealed the Son to him, 
 and that Christ appeared to him last of all. And this 
 omission is the more remarkable, because there are 
 several occasions in the epistles, in which reference to
 
 234. PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 the supernatural event would seem convenient or ap- 
 posite as, for example, when his claim to the apostolic 
 office was challenged, or questioned, or impugned. 
 For the Apostle was assailed from two quarters. The 
 Jews never forgave him for his desertion of the cause 
 in which he exhibited his earliest activity. His name, 
 his person, his mission, were odious to them. They 
 did not forget that this ringleader of the sect of the 
 Nazarenes had once been the bitter foe of the society 
 to which he had apostatised. 
 
 They who recognised the mission of Christ, but clung 
 closely to the Jewish ritual, were little less hostile to 
 Paul. Shortly after the death of Christ, there arose 
 a sect which went by the name of the Ebionites, 
 which still existed in the days of Jerome, perhaps 
 in those of Justinian. Some traced these men to a 
 teacher called Ebion ; others said that the name meant 
 nothing but "the poor," and that they were those 
 Judaizing Christians who gave so much trouble in An- 
 tioch and Galatia. These men hated the Apostle, and 
 denounced him as a heretic and latitudinarian. They 
 circulated a wild story about his conversion. They 
 v said that he was a pagan, who, for love of the high 
 priest's daughter, became a Jew, but that, being dis- 
 appointed of his wish, he abjured Judaism, and wrote 
 against circumcision, the Sabbath, and the Law. The 
 story is told by Epiphanius. 
 
 Among the relics of early Christian literature is 
 a narrative, referred to already, which gives certain 
 imaginary conversations between St. Peter and other 
 Scriptural personages on the one hand, and Simon 
 th<j magian on the other. The authorship of the
 
 HOSTILITY TOWARDS HIM. 235 
 
 work is ascribed to Clement of Rome. But this is 
 a manifest absurdity. The date of the composition 
 is probably the middle of the second century. But, 
 though the title of the book is a forgery, it un- 
 doubtedly depicts the opinions of those sectaries 
 who existed up to the fourth century in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Dead Sea, and who, recognising 
 the twelve apostles as the only source of authority, 
 united Judaism to Christianity. At one time they 
 were a powerful party, and, as they combated with 
 Paul in his lifetime, so they succeeded, for a century 
 at least, in overturning his authority in the Eastern 
 churches. The Homilies of Clement represent Peter 
 as arguing against, and demolishing the sophistries 
 of Simon. Some of these are the fantastic tenets of 
 Gnosticism. But, in many particulars, Paul is plainly 
 glanced at. Thus, the authenticity of a personal 
 revelation is distinctly repudiated, Peter alleging 
 that even an angel could not address man except 
 through the interposition of a human body ; and, 
 when Simon replies that a vision is given to none 
 but the good, Peter quotes examples to the contrary 
 from the Old Testament. " If," says he to Simon, 
 "you have been visited by him, taught by him in 
 an hour, and made an apostle ; utter his words, 
 interpret his sayings, love his apostles, and do not 
 proclaim war against me, who have lived with him. 
 You have withstood me, who am the solid rock 
 and foundation of the Church." It is difficult to 
 avoid concluding that St. Paul is referred to in these 
 expressions. 
 
 It is not easy to detect the extent to which Judaism
 
 230 1' A UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 dominated in the churches of Palestine. But it 
 appears certain that the measure of its influence is 
 the measure of hostility to St. Paul and to his preten- 
 sions as an Apostle. The extreme party denied his 
 authority altogether, and even circulated fables to his 
 disadvantage. Even the more generous were not 
 without fear at his boldness, and suspicion as to his 
 motives and acts. This is shown by the language used 
 to him by those residents in Jerusalem, who persuaded 
 him that he should make a show of respect for the 
 Law, t}y associating himself with certain Nazarites, 
 and presenting himself in the Temple with them. 
 This concession was followed by disastrous conse- 
 quences, by the riot in the temple, and the inter- 
 ference of Lysias, the imprisonment at Caesarea, the 
 voyage to Borne, and the captivity there. Every one 
 can see how constantly Paul strove to conciliate the 
 Jews, and how constantly he was repulsed. 
 
 Two defects were discovered in his claim to the 
 apostolic office. He had been a persecutor. He did 
 not satisfy the definition which the college at Jerusalem 
 gave to the status of an apostle that of one who had 
 been in the company of Christ during all the course 
 of his ministry, from His baptism by John till His 
 final disappearance. This was the qualification of 
 Matthias. It is probable that as long as there 
 remained any alive who had seen and followed Christ. 
 vacancies in the Apostolic College were filled up from 
 their number, and that, even afterwards, they who 
 had conversed with the apostles were treated witli 
 peculiar respect, as the recipients of these memorabilia 
 which the apostles narrated or compiled. In course of
 
 HIS APOSTOLATE DISPUTED. 237 
 
 time, it is true, all these witnesses would be removed 
 by death. But the prospect of this cessation of 
 ocular testimony to the facts of the Divine life did not 
 disturb the early Church, for \i always looked forward to 
 the speedy reappearance of Christ upon earth. When 
 this hope was delayed, many adopted Chiliasm, and 
 believed that the personal reign of their Saviour, to 
 last for a thousand years, was close at hand. Such, 
 for example, was the belief of Justin. Here, then, was 
 the great difficulty in the case of Paul. Even if it were 
 possible to exalt to the eminence of an apostle one 
 who had persecuted the Church (and at first the 
 disciples seriously distrusted him), how could they 
 admit the claims of one who had probably never seen 
 Christ during His course on earth, who certainly had 
 never listened to His teaching or witnessed any of 
 these great facts which were certified by the other 
 apostles. In the first instance, these difficulties were 
 overcome by Barnabas, who introduced Paul to the 
 other apostles, sought him out at Tarsus, whither he 
 had departed, and was for a time associated with him 
 in the ministry, till the friends were estranged 
 Antioch. 
 
 But Paul was distinctly resolved to own no man 
 as his superior in the work before him. He in- 
 sisted, that in every particular he was the equal V 
 of those who were acknowledged as apostles ; he 
 asserts that he did not for an hour yield to any 
 dictation. To have done so would have imperilled 
 everything, his own authority as a teacher, the 
 reality of the revelation delivered to him, the liberty 
 which he assured his converts in the Gospel. There
 
 238 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 are some who may see in this resolute attitude of 
 the Apostle, the inevitable egotism of a strong will 
 and a clear purpose ; but, it is more reasonable to 
 discover in such a temper, an unshaken conviction 
 in the reality of the mission which was intrusted 
 to him, and a distinct persuasion that this mission 
 was to be fulfilled in one way only, and by those 
 specific means which he had been already adopting. 
 And, to us who can understand the effect of this 
 uncompromising temper upon the history of Chris- 
 tianity it is manifest that the Apostle's persistency 
 is the reason why Christianity did not become a 
 mere Jewish school, which might have had a faint 
 existence in the Ana of some Talmud or Cabbala ; 
 or would, more probably, have been completely lost 
 in the general havoc of the great Jewish war. As 
 it is, the teaching of the Pharisee of Tarsus has 
 given method to modern civilisation, has erected 
 religion into a social system, and has constantly 
 been a standard by which the Christian republic has 
 been measured and reformed. 
 
 The Epistle to the Galatians contains the most 
 . emphatic declaration of St. Paul's authority and 
 independence as an apostle, though it is not the 
 only protest against those who might impugn liis 
 right to the position which he had assumed and 
 vindicated, for nearly every epistle of the Apostle 
 contains allusions to the same subject. The most 
 sceptical critic has never questioned the authenticity 
 of this composition, or hinted that it is affected by 
 any of those canons of forgery which have been so 
 very variously affirmed about the sacred writings
 
 HIS INFLUENCE ON CHRISTIANITY. 239 
 
 of Christendom. Rough and plain-speaking to excess 
 as might have been expected from a man whose 
 anger was roused at the intrusion of mischievous 
 busy-bodies and pedants among his converts, and at 
 the foolish facility with which the former had imposed, 
 and the latter had acquiesced in, a vain and super- 
 fluous ritual the letter is full of gentle passages 
 and affectionate appeals. It is to be observed, too, 
 that no name is associated with that of the Apostle 
 in the preamble to the epistle ; that no salutations 
 from individuals, or to individuals, are found at its 
 conclusion. The grievance of which the Apostle 
 complains is his own though shared by his com- 
 panions but he could not, or would not, associate 
 any individual with himself in the expostulation 
 which he addressed to these vacillating disciples. 
 He wrote too, we may conclude, hastily, even im- 
 petuously, immediately on receiving the vexatious 
 news of which his communication treats, and he has 
 had neither time nor inclination to collect and send 
 the messages which are so general in his other 
 epistles. 
 
 In preparing the way to an exposition of the 
 authority under which he spoke and acted, the Apostle 
 reiterates a statement that the Gospel which he had 
 preached was complete, that it needed no addition, 
 and that no alteration in it could be permitted. He 
 couples with this assertion an emphatic excommunica- 
 tion on those who hold the contrary. He varies the 
 expression in the fifth chapter, announcing that he 
 who troubles them shall bear his judgment, whoever 
 he be, the phrase seeming to denote that the emissaries
 
 PAUL OF TARSI'S. 
 
 of Judaism alleged the authority of some persons in 
 the Apostolic College, and that the Galatians were 
 overawed by the pretensions of those who " had seen 
 Christ," or at least were the mouth-pieces of those 
 who had -enjoyed such important experiences. And 
 then he asserts that his announcements which he had 
 made to them were not received from men, but by 
 the revelation of Jesus Christ. By this he appears 
 to imply that he had not accepted the traditions of 
 the teachings which Christ uttered, nor had ranged 
 himself as the disciple of any apostolic master, but 
 had interpreted the circumstances of Christ's life and 
 death by the Spirit of Christ which dwelt within 
 him, and which sufficiently revealed the significance of 
 these great and absorbing facts. It is unnecessary to 
 argue that this knowledge was conveyed to him in any 
 supernatural manner. The facts were patent enough. 
 St. Paul could appeal to the younger Agrippa 
 as to the absolute notoriety of the events which 
 attended the life and death of Christ. The importance 
 of the revelation does not consist in the mere fact that 
 Paul knew the events. In all likelihood, he had heard 
 them over and over again during the days in which he 
 was a persecutor. What was significant, was, that 
 knowing them he interpreted them, and that they 
 ceased to be a stumbling-block to a man who had made 
 such advances in the knowledge of Judaism. 
 
 St. Paul was resolved immediately on his conversion. 
 He understood that his mission was to the Gentiles, 
 and, as he tells us, he associated himself with no man 
 whatsoever, not even taking a journey to Jerusalem 
 in order to confer with the apostles, but withdrew
 
 HIS DOINGS AFTER HIS CONVERSION. 241 
 
 into privacy to some part of the region which was 
 vaguely called Arabia, and which was sometimes made 
 to include Damascus, just as Xenophon extends the 
 district of Syria so as to contain the Euphrates. 
 After a time he returned to Damascus, and announced 
 himself as a convert and a missionary of the Naza- 
 renes. Thence, as he tells us in his Second Epistle to 
 the Corinthians, he escaped by being let down in a 
 basket from the window of some house which overhung 
 the wall of the city. 
 
 Three years after his conversion he went to Jeru- 
 salem. But, faithful to his determination not to 
 involve himself with the Jewish Church, he saw, as he 
 asseverates with an oath, only one of the Twelve, and 
 James the brother of Christ. Those, indeed, were 
 men of the highest eminence and consideration, whom 
 it was at once seemly and prudent to acknowledge. 
 But he saw no other apostle, and remained in Jerusalem 
 fifteen days only, during which time he was in the 
 company of Peter. These days were doubtlessly spent 
 in conversation about the mission and life of Christ; 
 and it seems certain, though St. Paul repudiates the 
 presumption that he derived any part of his authority, 
 or of the exposition which he gave of the Gospel, 
 from any person whatsoever, that he must have 
 heard during this fortnight many of these facts of 
 the private life of Christ, which were so well known 
 to the chief of the Twelve, and many of these discourses 
 which Peter so clearly remembered. 
 
 The Apostle of the Gentiles returned to his work. 
 For a time, according to the Acts, he resided at 
 Tarsus ; whence he set out with Barnabas on those 
 
 Q
 
 242 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 early journeys of which we know little, but which, 
 probably, extended over Asia Minor, and, in particular, 
 over Galatia. During this time he was absolutely 
 unknown by face in the Jewish churches. He was 
 only reputed to be a preacher of that very Gospel 
 which he had previously harassed. After a lapse 
 of fourteen years from his first visit, he went again 
 to Jerusalem with Barnabas, in order, it appears, 
 to appeal against the importunity of those who wished 
 to bring the Gentile Christians under the ceremonies 
 of the Jewish law. Titus, also a Greek, accompanied 
 him. It seems that the Apostle gave way in the 
 case of Titus, as he took the initiative in that of 
 Timothy, only as a means of conciliating prejudice, 
 though he protests that this concession was not of 
 necessity. The debate at Jerusalem led to an 
 amicable separation. The Twelve saw that Paul 
 was really and generally the Apostle of the Gentiles ; 
 Peter, of the circumcision ; and that both were 
 eminent in their calling. The chiefs of the Church 
 sided with him no more than he did with their local 
 customs ; but the most eminent among them James, 
 Peter, and John (and St. Paul speaks somewhat 
 disparagingly of their pretensions to hierarchical 
 authority) admitted the mission of Paul and Bar- 
 nabas, leaving them to carry out their function 
 without let or hindrance, and reserving the teaching 
 of the Jewish race to the Twelve. They exacted only 
 one obligation, that the proselytes of Gentile origin 
 should not forget the poor, ascetic, contemplative 
 Church at Jerusalem. The risks of rupture were 
 avoided, and Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch.
 
 LIBERTY AND RULE. 243 
 
 But the inveterate passion of the converted Jews, 
 which urged them to reduce all men who agreed with 
 them on doctrinal points to the same ceremonial and 
 ritual, was not extinguished by this compromise. The 
 college at Jerusalem might acknowledge the wisdom 
 of conciliation, might concede to the energetic and 
 resolute bearing of St. Paul, might find it impossible 
 not to "glorify God in him," seeing how successful 
 had been his mission. But, with the rank-and- 
 file of religious sectaries, uniformity is everything; 
 and ambitious men, those who " wish to glory " in 
 the largeness of their following, know that they can 
 always stimulate the rank-and-file to demand uni- 
 formity, just as politicians can trade on a sham 
 patriotism, and that they can always, by watching 
 for their opportunity, precipitate a crisis. The 
 believing Jews at Antioch waited for such an 
 opportunity. 
 
 Meanwhile, St. Peter went down to Antioch. 
 The fact is mentioned, but not the occasion. For a 
 time matters went on smoothly. St. Peter had 
 himself, according to the Acts of the Apostles, 
 preached to the Gentiles, attended on their con- 
 version, baptised them, eaten with them, been re- 
 ported to the apostles at Jerusalem for a breach 
 of the ceremonial law, had explained matters, and 
 had been exonerated from blame. Now, a further 
 decision had been given in favour of liberty, and 
 Peter was not slow to acknowledge and act on it. 
 But the unfortunate facility of being ashamed of 
 his duty at a crisis, which seems to have been 
 a special weakness of this apostle, which led him
 
 24 i PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 to deny Christ after vehement protestations of loyalty, 
 and which is implied in the legend of his martyrdom 
 at Borne, misled Peter in this emergency. Cer- 
 tain emissaries came to Antioch from James, and 
 apparently reproached Peter for having abandoned 
 the exclusive rule of the Jews. He was afraid, 
 and withdrew himself from Gentile company. The 
 other Jews, we are informed, played the same under- 
 hand part; and, worst of all, even Barnabas, who 
 had been chosen as an apostle to the Gentiles, and 
 had laboured with Paul for years, joined the secession. 
 For this unworthy conduct, Paul rebuked the chief 
 apostle publicly, charged him with inconsistency, 
 and reminded him of the grounds on which the 
 Gospel was founded, as compared with those on 
 which the Law rested. We do not know the effect 
 of this rebuke; but, judging from the character of 
 St. Peter, we may be certain that it caused no real 
 division between the two great apostles. If Peter 
 was rash and timid, he was affectionate and ready 
 to repent of offence committed. It is exceedingly 
 probable, too, that the persons who had perverted 
 J . the Galatians w r ere some of these Antiochene Jews ; 
 and that, when St. Paul tells the story, the Galatians 
 were not at a loss to identify the emissaries who 
 had unsettled them. 
 
 The narrative whose leading characteristics Imvr 
 been stated and commented on, was intended to prove 
 three things. St. Paul wished to show that his apos- 
 tolate, both in its origin, and by the tenor of the facts 
 which preceded his second journey to Jerusalem, was 
 independent of the Twelve, and derived no authority
 
 THE DISP UTE AT A NTIOCH. 245 
 
 from Jerusalem. He could not brook rival, still less 
 superior, in the work which was before him, nor 
 submit to any control whatsoever, on the part of any 
 man, however eminent he might be. This had been 
 his constant determination, from the first day of his 
 Christianity, and he was not likely to forego it after 
 so many years of missionary labour, and in the case 
 of persons who owed all their knowledge of the Gospel 
 to him, till such time as these meddling emissaries 
 had striven to misrepresent him, had repudiate^ his 
 authority, and called in question the completeness of 
 the Gospel which he preached. 
 
 Next, although he protests against having sought 
 it, or sacrificed anything to gain it, he asserts that the 
 Twelve made the concession, or arrangement, that the 
 Gentiles should not be constrained to accept Jewish 
 rites, and implies that a division of labour was effected, 
 by which he had the guidance of the Gentile, Peter of 
 the Jewish converts. This compromise seems to be 
 indicated as still valid in the introduction to St. Peter's 
 first epistle, which is especially addressed to the dis- 
 persed Jews. Not, indeed, that St. Paul would object 
 to any association with the special ministry of Peter, 
 on the contrary, he frequently addressed the Jews, 
 but the rule w r as a general one, and in effect most 
 important, because it was a formal acknowledgment of 
 Paul's mission, and of its total independence. Hence- 
 forth the two churches were to be one in faith and 
 mutual goodwill, but different in their ritual, cere- 
 monies, and government. The church which Peter 
 was to instruct was national, that which was put under 
 the guidance of Paul was oecumenical. The story that
 
 216 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 Peter ruled the Church of Rome for a quarter of a 
 century is, of course, contradicted by the facts told in 
 the Epistle to the Galatians, and is plainly a baseless, 
 though ancient fable, which has been maintained and 
 amplified in order to serve particular ends, and to 
 justify ecclesiastical Caesarism. 
 
 In the third place, St. Paul intends to imply that 
 the circumstances reported to him as to the state of 
 the Galatian churches justify a suspicion of bad faith 
 on the part of the college at Jerusalem, and, in parti- 
 cular, of James. It is plain that the agents of this 
 eminent person disturbed the peace of Antioch, 
 brought about the vacillation of Peter, and even per- 
 verted Barnabas. It is difficult to avoid the conclu- 
 sion, that the same authority had been employed to 
 sanction the Propaganda in Galatia. What else is the 
 meaning of those allusions to some great personages 
 in " the angel from heaven," " those who seemed to be 
 something," who " seemed to be pillars," they " who 
 would shut you out of the Church that they may be 
 the objects of your admiration," of him " who is to 
 bear his own judgment, whosoever he be ?" These ex- 
 pressions can hardly apply to obscure and unauthorised 
 preachers, who, without any personal or external re- 
 commendation, were traversing the Apostle's doctrine. 
 Impressible as the Galatians might have been, they 
 would hardly have been turned from the freedom 
 which St. Paul's gospel gave them, at the hands of 
 such a missionary, to submit to the Jewish rite and 
 the Jewish ceremonial, and this by the arguments of 
 strangers, unless those persons had come armed with 
 very full credentials. Luther docs not denounce Tet-
 
 THE EMISSARIES OF JAMES. 247 
 
 zel, but the Pope whom Tetzel represents. St. Paul 
 is not thinking of nobodies, when he is so exceedingly 
 plain-spoken in the wish which he utters against those 
 who troubled his converts. 
 
 Nothing can be more false and more delusive than 
 to imagine that the first teachers of the Christian 
 religion were men whose harmony of opinion and 
 action was complete, who entertained one view only 
 of the Gospel, and who had neither difference, nor 
 debate, nor quarrel. They were not unconscious 
 mouth-pieces of a supernatural inspiration, auto- 
 mata of some uncontrollable enthusiasm, unanimous 
 machines, but were men of like passions with our- 
 selves, men with characters, impulses, affections, fears, 
 dislikes were human in the mistakes they made, and 
 in the truths which they embraced and enunciated. 
 It is sheer superstition to treat them as more than 
 men, as other than men, however highly we may 
 value their labours, and reverence the spirit which 
 generally guided their thoughts, their actions, and 
 their words. If we make them unreal and transcen- 
 dental personages, we do them a great injustice, 
 and ourselves a certain mischief, because all free 
 enquiry into their motives and feelings is suspected 
 as a challenge of their authority, and every other 
 form of commentary becomes mere verbiage shed 
 around a foregone conclusion. They are not stars fixed 
 round the great central Light, and differing only in 
 glory and goodness from Him who is the centre of 
 their system. But they have what light they possess 
 from reflection, and feel themselves immeasurably 
 distant from the Power which illuminates them.
 
 248 PAUL OF TARSUS, 
 
 Such men as St. Paul, who have seen much of the 
 world, have made human nature and human charac- 
 ter their careful study, and who know how much of 
 both nature and character is due to circumstances, 
 education, association, habit, are inevitably tolerant, 
 invariably indifferent to mere varieties of feeling 
 and peculiarities of manner. When men of St. Paul's 
 intelligence are animated by a desire to do good to 
 those with whom they are brought in contact, they 
 use these differences discreetly, and easily accommo- 
 date themselves to idiosyncrasies of race and character. 
 In a word, they possess tact, and a conscientious, 
 self-denying, earnest, active, generous nature, which 
 is also gifted with tact or discretion, wields among 
 those with whom it is conversant an irresistible in- 
 fluence. And, on the other hand, they who live in 
 a little world of their own, be they apostles or ordin- 
 ary men, contract a narrow and exclusive temper, set 
 great store by trifles, are conservative and tenacious 
 on minor points, insist on literal obedience, are pas- 
 sionately fond of conformity, are jealous for the letter, 
 are slow to understand the spirit. As time went on, 
 and Paul became more catholic in his teaching and 
 manner, the ascetic college at Jerusalem became 
 more scrupulous, precise, rigorous, exacting. In the 
 presence of a great and comprehensive genius, they 
 are willing to effect a compromise, will acknowledge 
 that there is a world beyond their experience. But 
 when he is gone, the old exclusiveness usurps its place 
 anew in their minds, they forget their concessions, 
 they torture themselves with the idea that they have 
 too far, and seek to retract what they 1m vc
 
 A PHASE OF HUMAN NATURE. 249 
 
 granted. When St. Paul was at Jerusalem, James 
 gave him the right hand of fellowship. When he is 
 gone to Antioch, the emissaries of James follow him 
 in order to revoke in detail all that had been pre- 
 viously allowed. 
 
 The spirit which influenced the apostolic society at 
 Jerusalem is by no means extinct. It is possible to 
 conceive the case of some missionary who has spread 
 the light of the Gospel among the heathen, and has 
 won over abundant converts. These converts run well, 
 suffer many things. They may even submit to mar- 
 tyrdom with courage and constancy, braving death 
 and torture on behalf of the creed which they have 
 embraced, and in the faith or confidence which they 
 entertain. A persecution as bitter as any to which 
 the early Christians were subjected, may fall upon 
 them, and they may perish numerously man, woman, 
 child under the hand of pitiless enemies. They may 
 be exposed to the most dangerous calumny which can 
 be raised against one who wishes to reform or restore 
 the society in which he lives, that, namely, of un- 
 friendliness to established institutions of being un- 
 social, unpatriotic, traitorous. The remnant which is 
 left after the hurricane may win tolerance from its 
 persecutors may even convert them. Unluckily, 
 however, when the heroes of this spiritual warfare 
 attract the attention of such Christian societies as have 
 lived at ease, it is found that they are destitute of 
 some form, or mode of government, or ritual, which 
 is accepted among certain other communities. They 
 have, it is true, faith in Christ, and have obeyed the 
 law of the Gospel, striving unto death. The}' have
 
 250 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 never heard of the form, ritual, or mode of govern- 
 ment, for the Scriptures are silent on such topics, and 
 they have learned little beyond what is written in the 
 New Testament. But they are now to be informed, 
 that unless they accept the system of which they now 
 hear for the first time, they cannot be saved ; that 
 faith in God and His Christ is nothing except they 
 have faith in a hierarchy and a liturgy. It is easy 
 to anticipate what would have been the attitude of 
 St. Paul towards such intruders. He has left it on 
 record in the Epistle to the Galatians. He tells us 
 his own practice when, in the Epistle to the Romans, 
 he repudiates building on another's foundation. 
 
 In quitting this topic of the vexations which St. 
 Paul had to endure at the hands of the Church in 
 Jerusalem, it is proper to remark that, if we can trust 
 the genuineness of the First Epistle to the Thessa- 
 lonians and the weight of internal evidence is over- 
 whelmingly in its favour there was a time in which 
 the example of the Jewish churches might be held up 
 to Gentile converts. St. Paul speaks of the Thessa- 
 lonians as followers of the churches of God which are 
 in Judea. But it is not likely, after he had borne the 
 provocation which was given him in Antioch and 
 Galatia, that he could have used such language of 
 those "who came from James." 
 
 St. Paul rests his claims to the apostolate on the 
 providence of God, and on the marks of favour with 
 which his mission had been supported. In these 
 particulars he did not fall short of those who affected 
 to be specially apostles. He uses a term familiar 
 in the nomenclature of the Aristotelian logic, to
 
 THE LOYALTY OF PA UL. 251 
 
 denote his destination for the high office which he 
 fulfilled. He was separated as an Apostle, defined, 
 so to speak, to the duty. Christ was revealed to him, 
 not, as has been suggested, to tell him the facts of 
 the Master's life, or to implant in him the discourses 
 of the great Teacher, or even to narrate to him the 
 wonders which He wrought, for it is impossible to 
 doubt, that had this been the case, frequent quotations 
 from such a literal revelation would have been given 
 in the epistles, but to inform him as to the spiritual 
 significance of Christ's coming, and to impart to him 
 the Gospel which he should convey. Except, there- 
 fore, in the passage where he describes the institution 
 of the Lord's Supper, Christ is not a man who lived 
 among men and taught them, but a Divine being who 
 wields the power of God, and by Himself associates 
 man with his Maker. In the Gospels, Christ is 
 perfect Humanity. He is deified Humanity in the 
 Apocalypse. But in the Epistles of Paul, though 
 He is intensely personal, He is a Power, an Illumina- 
 tion, a Lord of dead and living, a Redeemer, a Judge, 
 a Being whom men tempt, whom men love, reverence, 
 serve. In the gospels, He is the highest of Teachers ; 
 in the epistles, He is the Son of God and the Brother 
 of man. 
 
 The intense and unvarying loyalty which St. Paul 
 felt towards Christ, the profound faith or trust which 
 he had in Him, were his hope and consolation, the 
 guarantee of his mission, the absorbing object of his 
 life. This comfort was clouded only by one recollec- 
 tion, the fact, namely, that he had once persecuted 
 those who believed in his Master. Hence, in no
 
 252 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 tone of hyperbole, but in sober and sad earnest, he 
 speaks of himself as chief among sinners, because he 
 had blasphemed Christ, persecuted His followers, 
 insulted His Gospel. He can excuse himself, nay, 
 can explain God's mercy to him, only on the ground 
 that he was ignorant, and had none of that trust in 
 Christ, which is now his safety and his comfort. 
 Similarly, he speaks of himself to the Corinthians as 
 the least of the apostles, as unfit to be called an 
 apostle, and for the reason that he persecuted the 
 Church of God. He refers to his previous career in 
 his energetic letter to the Galatians, and again in the 
 last epistle which he wrote to any company of his 
 converts that to the Philippians ; when his mind was 
 most completely absorbed in the retrospect of his 
 ministry, and when, having seen that his life was 
 Christ, he reckoned that his death was gain. In the 
 midst of his consolations, in the best season of his 
 hope, this remorse was always before him. 
 
 It is quite in nature that this memory was far 
 keener to the Apostle than it was to those who a 
 few years before were persecuted by him. Men 
 forget the wrong done to them more easily than the 
 wrong they have done. They remember the latter in 
 one of two fashions. They either hate energetically 
 the object of the injury rousing themselves by every 
 motive they can frame to excuse the wrong, and con- 
 tinuing it; or they are full of tenderness towards those 
 whom they have dealt unjustly by eagerly seeking out 
 occasions, long after all other recollection of the facts 
 has faded, to relieve themselves by showing kindness, 
 by accumulating benefits on those whom they liav-
 
 HIS EARLIER MEMORIES ENDURINu. 253 
 
 injured. It is in keeping with this feeling, that Paul 
 speaks so lovingly of those who were in Christ before 
 him, that he declares he would lay down his life nay, 
 even be rejected from the Divine favour, if he could 
 only secure the salvation of those by whom he would 
 have dealt so savagely if they had embraced the 
 Gospel in the days when he " breathed out threats and 
 murder." 
 
 What does he mean in the Epistle to the Galatians ^ 
 when he speaks of the excessive persecution and 
 havoc which he inflicted on the Church of the 
 believing Jews ? Does it not seem as though he had 
 tortured them, as he had himself been tortured, 
 when he reckons up the sufferings of his apostolic 
 life ? Once in the history of the Israelite nation, the 
 tribe to which Saul belonged had nearly been extermi- 
 nated, and the survivors were thereafter no way 
 lacking in zeal. The fugitives of Rimmon, the 
 residue of Gibeah, the remnant of men, women and 
 children who escaped that terrible slaughter were 
 head-strong and fanatical in future. Paul had the 
 spirit of his ancestor, who sought to slay the Gibeonites 
 in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah. And 
 when he was converted, he retained not only the 
 recollection of Stephen's death, but of the multiplied 
 murders which he had ordered or encouraged, when, 
 during the wild anarchy of Caligula's reign, he sought 
 and obtained authority from the chief priests to bind 
 and slay, following the Nazarenes to strange cities 
 and compelling them to blaspheme Christ. His 
 resolution and strength of purpose were the traits of 
 his youth, his manhood and his age. Thus, in later
 
 254 /M UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 days, when the real work of Paul was understood and 
 acknowledged, and the old jealousies had become 
 extinct, the Christian commentator interpreted the 
 blessing of Jacob, and discovered in his prophecy 
 the career of the greatest among the sons of 
 Benjamin, "Benjamin shall devour in the morning 
 as a ravenous wolf, and in the evening give nurture." 
 
 When St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Romans, 
 his missionary labours had extended in a circle, as he 
 roughly names it, from Jerusalem to the eastern coast 
 of the Adriatic, this vast region having been untrodden 
 by any Christian foot except his own, and those of his 
 disciples. As yet, he had not visited Rome, nor did 
 he visit it till he came thither as a prisoner. He 
 remained at Rome for two years ; the statement made 
 at the conclusion of the Acts of the Apostles implying 
 that his residence in the metropolis ceased at that 
 time. The narrative of his labours after this period 
 is wholly lost to us. He had intended a journey 
 to Spain, and had resolved to take Rome on his way. 
 It is reasonable to conclude that he carried out his 
 purpose, and that the origins of churches in the far 
 west of the ancient world were the preaching of this 
 unwearied Apostle. There are legends of his having 
 visited Gaul and Britain. That his writings were 
 known in these western churches is plain from Irenaeus; 
 that his authority as a teacher of the Gospel was 
 recognised in those regions, even before it was accepted 
 in the eastern world, is plain from the quotations which 
 the early Fathers of the west make from his writings, 
 from the store which they set by his robust and 
 practical doctrine.
 
 PAUL A STATESMAX. 255 
 
 In point of fact, St. Paul possessed, together 
 with the spirit of a missionary, much of the shrewd- 
 ness of a statesman. But he was no doctrinaire. 
 He was the founder of churches, not the frarner 
 of constitutions. He had none of that pedantry 
 which insists on a uniform, method of ecclesiastical 
 government, and disdains any diplomatic intercourse 
 between diverse forms of church administration. He 
 knew that religious, just like civil, communities 
 can, if they are left to themselves, discover and 
 adapt to their own ends the machinery of their own 
 organisation. Hence, even in the pastoral epistles, 
 where we should naturally expect some distinct theory 
 of church government, his advice bears rather on 
 the qualifications of those whom the churches should 
 select as their officers, than on the administration 
 or government of the Church. Deacons there must 
 be, for the essence of the Christian life in the 
 early ages of the Church was mutual succour. 
 Elders there might be, for the habits of Judaism 
 naturally influenced the Christian converts. Or 
 there might be some special overseer, or overseers, 
 who made themselves responsible for the good govern- 
 ment of the Saints. Or there might be no officers 
 whatsoever, beyond some temporary chairman ap- 
 pointed to keep order, as was the characteristic of 
 the Corinthian church, and, apparently, that of 
 Justin's place of worship at Nablous. But no one 
 can cite the Apostle as an authority on the creation 
 of a caste of ecclesiastics, as the founder, or even 
 the adviser of a hierarchy. 
 
 The activity of the Apostle's mind, the energy
 
 256 I'-^UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 of his spiritual nature, continued to the last days 
 of his life ; and, unfortunately, so did the bitterness 
 of his enemies. It is manifest that the Second 
 Epistle to Timothy was written just before his 
 second trial and condemnation; when, in the general 
 desertion of his friends, he was expecting death; 
 and when he almost dreaded that his beloved disciple 
 would join the timid or the malcontent. But the 
 words of the epistle are as full of religious con- 
 fidence as any which he ever penned or dictated 
 before, when his career was in mid-course. He is 
 still the preacher, the apostle, the teacher of the 
 Gentiles. There are sayings which may be trusted, 
 even in the darkness of unbelief and worldliness ; 
 and these sayings are to be continued through a 
 long and unbroken succession of teachers. There 
 is no sign in the last words of the Apostle, that 
 old age, imprisonment, ingratitude, sickness, had 
 worked any weakness in his will, or diminished, in 
 any single particular, that which had been the absorb- 
 ing interest of his life. He has enemies as well as 
 false friends, Phygellus and Hermogenes, HymenaBus 
 and Philetus, Alexander the coppersmith. And he 
 has friends Luke and Onesiphorus, besides those 
 who were faithful to him at Rome, and in whom 
 antiquaries have discovered a Roman bishop, a Roman 
 senator, and a British princess. He has his word 
 for his enemies, his expressions of loving regard 
 for his friends. With such men as Paul, there is 
 no cessation in the fervency with which they carry 
 out the purpose of their life. They relinquish their 
 hold on the work before them, only when they die.
 
 THE PERSEVERANCE OF ST. PA UL. -J.T7 
 
 The veteran falls on the field in full panoply. The 
 helmsman is torn from the rudder while his grasp 
 is as vigorous as ever. 
 
 It is a matter for profound regret, that the world, 
 has had to undergo the irreparable loss of the letters 
 which the Apostle wrote during the last years of 
 his life, and of the narrative in which it is probable 
 that Luke recounted the events of his western jour- 
 neys, of his second captivity, and of his death. I 
 cannot resist the impression that the Acts of the 
 Apostles is a series of mutilated fragments, the 
 remains of a far larger history, which conclude abruptly, 
 but which originally contained a complete narrative 
 of Paul's life. Were this narrative preserved, we 
 should le^rn what was the activity of those five 
 or six years which elapsed between the residence 
 in the hired house at Rome and the chain of which 
 Onesiphorus was not, though so many others were, 
 ashamed. We might, perhaps, hear also how. it 
 was that all in Asia, who had owed so much to 
 the Apostle, were turned away from him ; and what 
 were the machinations by which Phygellus and 
 Hermogenes were constituted the leaders of this 
 schism. That it was the old rancour admits of 
 little doubt. These intruders must have brought 
 forward the old charges, that he had advised a 
 compromise with idolatry, that he had taught every- 
 where against the people, and the Law, and the 
 Temple. The malice of polemical rancour knows no 
 bounds, is unsleeping, implacable, insatiable. Paul 
 had offended the conservatism of the Jewish Chris- 
 tians, and their vengeance kept no truce.
 
 258 /M UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 More than once in his writings, Paul has described 
 the labours and troubles of his apostolate, and always 
 with exceeding clearness and concentration. For 
 example, he recounts the characteristic traits of his 
 ministry in a passage of great beauty and eloquence, 
 when writing his last existing epistle to the Corinth- 
 ians. He begins by avowing his anxiety to avoid 
 offence. We know that he accommodated himself to 
 all, Jew or Gentile, when no real question of conscience 
 was involved; that he discouraged sectarian narrowness, 
 and dissuaded his followers from these theological 
 cavils which he rightly named doubtful disputings. 
 This lenity of opinion was of course misrepresented, 
 and Paul was charged with the vice of a perverted 
 casuistry, of having advised to do evil that good 
 might come of it. But the motive which he had in 
 practising this wise complaisance, was that of preserv- 
 ing the office of the evangelist from ridicule, of 
 disarming dislike to the strange doctrine which he 
 preached, that, namely, of salvation by reason of the 
 resurrection of a crucified prophet, by careful and 
 studied courtesy. He knew very well that earnestness 
 and conviction seldom fail to win men over, if they 
 are coupled with a genial consideration for the feelings 
 of others ; with the charity which suffers long and is 
 gentle; with the love which he had previously des- 
 cribed in so exalted and so impassioned a strain. 
 
 As he defers so much to the habits and feelings of 
 men, so he is unsparing of himself, as becomes the 
 minister of God. The most obvious and recurrent of 
 his experiences are those pains and penalties which he 
 undergoes in order to commend the Gospel which he
 
 HIS ENDURANCE. 259 
 
 preaches, the endurance, the heavy cares, the straits, 
 the hair-breadth escapes, the personal violence, the 
 imprisonments, the restlessness, toil, sleeplessness, 
 privations which he has to bear on behalf of his con- 
 victions. But there are also exacted from him a 
 blameless life, a copious knowledge, extreme patience, 
 gentleness, enthusiasm, unsuspected and disinterested 
 devotion, truthfulness of spirit, the power which God 
 gives the pious, a scrupulous and perpetual fairness, 
 the armour of righteousness, as he calls it, on either 
 side. And all this is to be maintained against discredit 
 and calumny, or, perhaps harder still, amidst good 
 repute and fair report. Nor, is it to be wondered at, 
 that this apostolic character is in appearance made up 
 of contradictions, is interpreted variously. Paul 
 himself understood it to be so, and states the different 
 picture which it presents to those who can understand 
 it, and those who look on it as Festus did. 
 
 A life of this kind seems a daily death, while it 
 gains perpetual vitality : one of ceaseless grief, and yet 
 of constant consolation : of deep poverty, but copious 
 in its power of enriching others : as utterly destitute, 
 and yet grasping at and containing a wealth which 
 transcends all worldly possessions. For, in fact, if tried 
 by any human standard, these endless toils, and cease- 
 less dangers would warrant men in those contemptuous 
 jibes which were commonly cast on the early Chris- 
 tians. But they balanced against misery and con- 
 tempt that certainty with w r hich their enthusiasm 
 supplied them, of an assured victory, an everlasting 
 triumph over their enemies, and the enemies of their 
 Master. The glory to come is infinitely greater than
 
 260 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 the present distress, the toil of the race, the abstinence 
 and hardship which constitute the training for this 
 supreme struggle, is as nothing when compared with 
 the prize which the righteous Judge is certain to 
 bestow. So enraptured were these men by the pros- 
 pect, that they scorned the world and its treasures; so 
 assured were they of the future, that they took no care 
 for the present. They were even so entranced with 
 the blessedness of the time to come, of the day which 
 they believed to be at hand, that they did not care to 
 pray for vengeance on their foes. They do not seem 
 to have thought of that alienable privilege of wretch- 
 edness, the invocation of the wrath of God on the 
 persecutor and wrong-doer. The Gospel is more 
 concerned with the unspeakable comfort and consola- 
 tion of trust in God, and in his Christ, than with 
 the misery of those who forget the one and repudiate 
 the other, is more conversant with mercy than with 
 judgment. 
 
 The life of Paul was one of enthusiasm, but of en- 
 thusiasm coupled with a sober judgment, and lofty 
 morality. With him faith was the guide of action, 
 action was the manifestation of faith. To sucli a 
 nature nothing is impossible. It can, of a truth, turn 
 the world upside-down reconstruct it. There is no 
 state of society, no general habit of thought which 
 can come in contact with it, and yet remain unaffected 
 by its power. Give it power of speech ; and Jet human 
 nature be ever so cold or sluggish, it will stir it 
 up to warmth and energy. It is an error to imagine 
 that mankind is less impressible in our own age than 
 it lias been in bygone times to believe that enthusi-
 
 THE FORCE OF ENTHUSIASM. 261 
 
 asm is a mere historical force to think that it is 
 impracticable, in these later days, and, in the greatness 
 of modern society, to move nations by a vast and 
 wide-spread sympathy. The hour for such an upheaval 
 is always at hand, it is only the man that is wanting. 
 There was never an age in which men's hearts so 
 much failed them for fear, as that in which Paul be- 
 gan his missionary labours, no state of society which 
 was less likely to be roused to religious zeal, less apt 
 to fervently accept a spiritual creed. A period of 
 great social suffering is no way favourable to a reli- 
 gious impulse, but is more likely to advise that license 
 of despair which gives the gloomy counsel, " Let us 
 eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." At that mourn- 
 ful epoch, one man laid deeply the foundations of 
 a new faith, certainly through half, and probably 
 through the greatest part of the vast Roman empire. 
 To repeat the same events, it is only necessary that 
 the same characters should reappear with the same 
 purpose, the same zeal, the same perseverance, the 
 same judgment, the same tenderness and courage. 
 But a great missionary is, perhaps, even rarer than a 
 great general, for his genius is higher, his task more 
 difficult. 
 
 There always will be those who seek to conquer or 
 enlist the sympathies of men. If they whose culture is 
 high, and whose motives are pure, disclaim all enthusi- 
 asm, and, in their attempts to assist the progress of 
 mankind, shun warmth, fervour, sympathy as irrational 
 and deceptive impulses, and substitute for the awak- 
 ening of man's moral sense the hard logic of a bare 
 
 O <J 
 
 moral system, they will never wield the deliverer's rod,
 
 262 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 will never be able to rescue a nation from the bondage 
 of a merely material life, and renew the image of God 
 in the soul of man. The religious sense is no inven- 
 tion of human policy, though it may be made its tool. 
 It is the necessary outcome of two facts. Man is, col- 
 lectively, far from having reached the virtue which 
 some have arrived at -still farther removed from that 
 which all might achieve. The only means by which 
 the growth of this perfection can be assisted, is the 
 disinterested self-denial of those who set to the work of 
 saving and serving their fellows. But the willingness 
 to serve man in this manner comes from the conviction 
 that such beneficence is the work of God, and the will 
 of God. 
 
 It is a mournful sight a sad presage, when the 
 natural leader of men refuses his office, and flies to 
 that Epicurean ease which, in the early ages of Chris- 
 tianity, in the flourishing times of Judaism, in the 
 best days of practical Stoicism, and even during the 
 last struggles of a reformed Paganism, was abhorred 
 as the worst treason against human duties and human 
 hopes. But it is a more mournful spectacle, a sadder 
 presage, when they who can guide and reform a world 
 by speech and action, bow down to and worship suc- 
 cessful force. 
 
 Such a degradation of genius and power is the last 
 consequence of neglecting these public duties which 
 men owe to men, and in the disinterested satisfaction 
 of which the great Apostle not only saw that he was 
 a follower of Christ, but avowed that he was filling 
 up that which is left of Christ's sufferings. They 
 who will not lead when they can, must in the end
 
 ANTICHRIST. 263 
 
 honour those who usurp their office, will extol the 
 charlatan, will walk contentedly in the triumphal 
 procession of those who win the foremost place by 
 chicanery, fraud, or violence, and will even shout a 
 paean over the humiliation of mankind. It may be 
 that they will, like the four hundred who stood before 
 Ahab, promise their hero victory, and assure him that 
 God is on his side, while no Micaiah is left to foretell 
 the inevitable doom of licence and injustice. Human- 
 ity is never so degraded as when its highest powers 
 are worshipping its lowest forces, when genius utters 
 an encomium on wickedness in high places. 
 
 To the early Christians, and notably to the apostle 
 Paul, power used for merely selfish and sensual 
 ends was Antichrist. The mission of Christ, accord- 
 ing to these votaries, was the recovery of the human 
 race, by the agency of moral forces, disinterested 
 labour, fervid self-sacrifice. They believed that Christ 
 deliberately relinquished power which made Him 
 higher than all created beings, in order to restore 
 mankind to the image of God, and that during His 
 life on earth He could have returned to that power 
 had He chosen to leave the regeneration of man 
 imperfect, since it was possible to effect that regenera- 
 tion in no other way but by self-abnegation. They 
 had not yet attempted to define the process by which 
 this enormous boon was conferred on mankind through 
 the life and death of Christ, but they were assured 
 that the boon had been given, and that it was given 
 only by reason of that voluntary sacrifice. 
 
 The spirit of Antichrist is precisely the reverse. 1 1 
 uses pow^r for selfish ends, and it must degrade man-
 
 /M UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 kind in proportion to its success. It was the policy 
 of the Greek tyrant, says Aristotle, to keep his people 
 impoverished, mean-spirited, suspicious of one another, 
 and this has been the policy of every oppressor ever 
 since. All virtue, courage, truth, are his enemies; all 
 baseness, meanness, falsehood are his allies. And 
 just as they who work according to the pattern of 
 Christ's life, are the perpetual representatives of His 
 mission ; so they who follow the sordid ends of a cold 
 selfishness, are incarnations of Antichrist, while they 
 who extol such a theory of human life and action 
 are .the preachers and apostles of this devilish revela- 
 tion. In the days of Paul, and to the author of the 
 Apocalypse, Antichrist was incarnate in the cruel 
 and frivolous sensuality of Nero. The same power 
 has been recognised in every personage who has con- 
 strained mankind to assert that he is the agent by 
 which the mystery of iniquity works ; for human 
 nature has produced her monsters and portents, and 
 has been amazed or distressed at their doings. 
 
 The ancient world busied and tortured itself with 
 the origin of evil up to the time when the question was 
 finally settled by the dogma of original sin, by which 
 is meant the transmitted vice with which an act of 
 disobedience infected all the reputed descendants of 
 a reputed ancestor. Between the Gnostic who made 
 evil a god, and the Pelagian who asserted that it 
 was subjective and acquired, a host of thinkers occu- 
 pied themselves with this mysterious and inexplicable 
 fact, some tending to dualism, some to that Nihilism 
 which makes all acts, in so far as they bear on the 
 only, indifferent in their effects; few recog-
 
 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. SELF-SACRIFICE. 265 
 
 nizing the truth, that the victory of man's moral 
 nature lies in the fulness with which man refers 
 all the facts of his own being, and all the principles 
 of his own action, to the behests of that Divine Law 
 whose stringency and completeness are demonstrated 
 by overwhelming experience. 
 
 Infinitely more startling, however, than the question 
 of the origin and purpose of evil, is the truth referred 
 to above, that the moral progress of mankind can 
 be effected only by the suffering of man. The hopes 
 of humanity do not lie in the fulness with which 
 science discovers and employs the forces of nature. 
 On the contrary, there is no danger which is more 
 imminent than the appropriation of these powers 
 by the coarsest despotism which can enslave and 
 corrupt its subjects. It does not consist in what 
 is called culture, because art and poetry are easily 
 made the slaves of that wealth which is willing 
 to have its existence certified, and its power acknow- 
 ledged by the homage of cultivated parasites. It 
 is not learning which can save man; for, at the 
 best, learning .only influences a few, and is very 
 apt, in those who possess it, to degenerate into 
 self-sufficiency and ease. Least of all, do the hopes 
 of man lie in the aggregation of wealth; for ex- 
 perience tells us that wealth is not only apt to be 
 arrogant and domineering, but that it tends to the 
 formation of a coarse and harsh oligarchy, which 
 is degraded by low tastes, and is prone to ferocious 
 fears, and that it is perhaps better to discourage 
 the growth of opulence than to admire and wel- 
 come it. Nor, finally, do the hopes of humanity
 
 266 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 reside in the adoption of any form of polity. It 
 may be that one form of administration is better 
 than another, because it offers least resistance to 
 the influence which ought to leaven society, gives 
 a freer course to those forces which can chasten and 
 exalt mankind. Despotism degrades us, but it does 
 not follow that liberty purifies us. The atmosphere 
 is cleared of its accumulated poisons by some furi- 
 ous storm, which does in the end bring health to 
 the many, but bestows its benefits amidst the waste 
 and ruin of those whom it smites. And so the 
 moral purification of society is effected by the suffering 
 of those whom the cleansing storm catches in its 
 course ; the victory of the most righteous cause 
 demands the suffering and death of some among those 
 who enter into the battle. When the stronghold of 
 truth and virtue is to be built, the foundations are 
 laid in the first-born, and the youngest perishes before 
 the walls are finished. Everywhere we have to 
 witness the reign of the same mysterious law. There 
 is no joy which is not bought with sorrow, no happi- 
 ness which is not secured by pain. The Syrian 
 is before, and the Philistine is behind, and men 
 must perish in arresting the march of each, before 
 it is possible that the day should come in which 
 His government and His peace shall increase, and 
 have no end. 
 
 It has been observed that the Jewish race has 
 furnished splendid examples of dominant energy over 
 almost every subject upon which human power has 
 been able to exercise itself, in other words, that 
 it lias exhibited abundant and marvellous examples
 
 THE JEW AND CIVILISATION. 267 
 
 of concentration and force. Perhaps the vigour 
 which it really possesses has been exaggerated. 
 But, it is certain that the world is indebted to the 
 Jew for two great principles. Israel has taught 
 the unity of God, and, therewith, has affirmed the 
 reality of religion, and the obligation of man to 
 society. Other races have inculcated the necessity 
 of loyalty to a form of government. The Athenian 
 and the Roman did so. But loyalty to a govern- 
 ment inevitably degenerates into fetish worship, if 
 it is made to constitute political virtue. The Jew 
 was saved from this risk by the fact that his loyalty 
 was not wasted on an institution, but concentrated 
 on his race. His loyalty, too, was not aggressive 
 but defensive. Only once in the long annals of 
 this people was Judaism a military power. This 
 transient splendour is even now remembered in the 
 East, where historical memory is ordinarily only 
 of yesterday. 
 
 But the Jew has suffered a perennial martyrdom 
 for his monotheism, while he has been leavening 
 civilisation with his belief. For the sake of this 
 tenet, he has been an alien among nations, has 
 been persecuted, scorned, trampled on. But he has 
 not been crushed. His tenacious vitality is a stand- 
 ing proof that it is impossible to annihilate a germ 
 of true life. He has given to mankind a great 
 doctrine. His race supplied humanity with one 
 and that, a perfect Teacher, a perfect Example, the 
 chief Saviour of mankind, the Master of all them 
 who attempt the same office. His race gave the 
 world the great exemplar of the missionary the
 
 268 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 wise, loving, fervent, resolute man of Tarsus, the 
 Apostle of the world. Pity that the veil is still 
 on their hearts, as it was when Paul wrote and 
 predicted that it should be taken away. That it 
 has not been removed, is the fault of those who 
 have never acknowledged what mankind owes to 
 the testimony of Israel, and, therefore, have never 
 echoed that desire of the heart and prayer which 
 he who suffered so much for his own nation con- 
 stantly entertained and uttered, when he thought 
 upon the deeds God had done for Israel, and the 
 service which Israel has done for humanity and 
 Christendom.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " To us," says St. Paul, " whatever may be believed 
 to exist elsewhere and by others, there is one God, 
 the Father, the source of all existence, the object of 
 our being ; and there is one Lord Jesus Christ, by 
 whose agency all things exist, and by whom we are 
 what we are." Throughout his epistles this contrast 
 is perpetually stated. God is our Father, Christ is 
 our Lord. The Lordship which Christ exercises is 
 frequently designated. The disciples of Christ, the 
 recipients of His Gospel, are His servants or (the 
 word bore a far more gentle meaning to the ancient 
 world) His slaves. He has purchased them, and 
 they are His ; He has renewed or regenerated 
 them, and they are thereupon a new creation. He 
 is their future Judge, for He is to come from 
 heaven again in order to execute His last office in 
 the great scheme of redemption. He is to gather 
 His own together, in order that they may receive 
 those indescribable joys which will reward their 
 patience. And, meanwhile, He is related to them in 
 the closest and most personal manner. Every phrase
 
 270 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 which can denote the nearest and most indissoluble 
 connection of which we can have experience, is adapted 
 to indicate the relation of Christ to His people. The 
 favourite analogy which St. Paul uses, is that of life 
 and intelligence in union with the corporeity of man. 
 Christ is to His Church what the life, soul, intellect, 
 spirit, are to the human organism. 
 
 Except during the instant ecstasy on the road to 
 Damascus, it does not appear that Paul ever claims to 
 have seen Christ. He had not sat at His feet, and he 
 had not heard that voice to which even the soldiers 
 who were sent to take Him were constrained to listen, 
 and listen wonderingly, when they said on their return 
 after a fruitless errand that " never man spake like this 
 Man." The Twelve had enjoyed the benefit of His 
 instruction for a lengthened period. He had ex- 
 pounded to them the depths of the Divine Law, and 
 had revealed to them the mysteries of the kingdom of 
 heaven. He and His had lived together, as a little 
 community, in terms of the closest intimacy, with a 
 common purse, sharing plain lodging and humble fare. 
 Christ had taught the Twelve continuously. The 
 recorded sayings of the wise Master do not represent 
 in quantity more than one day's discourses of those 
 three momentous years, are but the scantiest fragment 
 of the childhood, youth, manhood, of the great 
 Nazarene. The author of the fourth gospel, with a 
 pardonable exaggeration, says that the doings of Jesus 
 could fill all the books that the world might contain. 
 We possess but a slender portion of those parables by 
 which He illustrated His teaching, of those discourses 
 in which He expounded the new commandment; of that
 
 CHRIST A PERSONALITY TO ST. PAUL. 271 
 
 grave irony with which He exposed the pretensions of 
 self-seeking teachers ; of those indignant reproaches with 
 which He drove hypocritical Pharisee, time-serving 
 Herodian, well-born or wealthy Sadducee, to insatiable 
 wrath. 'These things, forsooth, were not done in a 
 corner. The light was set on a hill. They came to 
 Paul, as they come to us, from the narrative of eye- 
 witnesses, from the memory of listeners. He had 
 heard of them, no doubt, to a far larger extent than 
 later generations have, when he was in Damascus, 
 in Arabia, but most fully during the fifteen days of 
 his visit to Peter. It may be that a summary of what 
 he heard and told his own disciples is, as antiquity 
 believed, contained in the gospel of Luke. It is not 
 a little remarkable, however, that he does not allude 
 in his epistles to the discourses, miracles, command- 
 ments of Christ, but only to the supreme facts of his 
 life and death. Whatever he may have known of 
 those events which are narrated in. the gospels, he 
 does not make them the basis of his teaching. 
 
 It would be, however, a total misconception to be- 
 lieve that, in Paul's eyes, Christ, the Son of David, 
 the Prophet of Galilee, the rejected of His people, the 
 Saviour of mankind was, in any sense whatever, an 
 abstraction. On the contrary, He is always a vivid, 
 manifest, real personality the very intensity of indi- 
 vidual being. Many of the expressions used of Christ 
 were, of course, familiar to Jewish ears as formularies 
 in Rabbinical theology. Such were "the Word of God," 
 "the Son of God," "the power and the wisdom of God." 
 The personification of those exalted qualities was natu- 
 ral enough to the mind of antiquity. But the Christ
 
 272 PA UL OF 
 
 of Paul was no incaniation of a Divine attribute ; .nor, 
 conversely, was it the apotheosis of a Jewish Augus- 
 tus, in whom might be supposed to reside the loftiest 
 manifestations which the world had ever seen of 
 moral goodness and intellectual power. Paul always 
 preached Christ crucified. It was not easy to treat a 
 crucified person as a glorified, deified being, merely 
 from the fact that he was a teacher of the highest 
 righteousness, and had been slain by those whom he 
 came to instruct and benefit. That event is and has 
 been too common. If men worshipped all the teachers 
 whom they have sacrificed to their jealousy, their sus- 
 picion, their weariness, the gods of the human race 
 would be as numerous as those of the Egyptian 
 Olympus. 
 
 Towards the Christ whom he preached Paul enter- 
 tained the most ardent affection. The love of Christ 
 for man is reciprocated intensely by the love of this 
 man towards Christ. It is the one great and abiding 
 consolation in all the labours of his energetic life. He 
 was not without other joys. Sorely tried and harassed 
 as he was, by secret and open enemies, by his craving 
 after sympathy, by his enforced distrust of men, by his 
 unsatisfied claim for fidelity, he gained, as such ardent 
 natures do, many devoted friends. He had warm 
 attachments, and no man, however enthusiastic, disin- 
 terested, persevering, wise, he may be, can conciliate 
 men's affections, unless he be genial and affectionate 
 himself. But there was one friend who was closer 
 than any other could be, who never failed him, who 
 watched and strengthened him in his labours. And 
 hence he can boldly ask, after enumerating every in-
 
 HIS CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 273 
 
 fluence which can hinder human weakness from the 
 consciousness of the Divine presence whether trouble, 
 penury, persecution, hunger, want, danger, or the pros- 
 pect of death can separate him from the love of 
 Christ, can confidently, nay, triumphantly, assert that 
 in the face of all these hindrances, he is overwhelm- 
 ingly victorious by the love of Him, and that no 
 created force or power can seclude him from this per- 
 petual warranty of his hopes. The other apostles 
 speak almost faintly of the personality of Christ when 
 they are compared with the last of the chosen, the 
 Benjamin of the new Israel. Hence Paul is the per- 
 manent teacher of that school of Christians, which has 
 dwelt with such tenderness on the humanity of Christ, 
 which worships Him as God because it loves Him as 
 man, which delights itself in any association which it 
 can frame in order to designate the inclusion of every 
 affection of which the human heart is capable in the 
 love of Jesus. Paul is the apostle of the Quietists, of 
 the Passionists, of those who would seclude themselves 
 from every part of the business of life, in order that 
 they may occupy their hearts with the absorbing con- 
 templation of that glorified, but veritable humanity. 
 So comprehensive was the nature of Paul's faith, that 
 he the most active and cool mind which Christianity 
 has ever enlisted in its service is, from this tenderest 
 part of his character, the perpetual example of those 
 women, and those womanly -hearted men, who have 
 suffered themselves to dwell with such loyal intensity 
 on the merits of their Lord, who have clung to him 
 (the simile is Paul's own) with much the same trusting 
 attachment that a pure-hearted and earnest wife docs
 
 274- 1'A UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 to the husband of her love, and pride, and happiness. 
 With such natures faith supersedes a creed, for there 
 is no power by which the emotions of the heart its 
 trust, which is the faith of the New Testament can 
 be translated into a set, dogmatic avowal, which is too 
 frequently the faith or the creed of later Christianity. 
 
 And yet St. Paul has also become the Apostle of 
 dogmatic Christianity throughout ecclesiastical history. 
 It is from his writings, almost exclusively, that con- 
 troversialists and polemics have forged their weapons. 
 A text or two in his epistles has been made the basis 
 of some definition or article of faith which has agitated 
 or divided Christianity from time to time. The Gnos- 
 tics acknowledged no authority except his catholic 
 epistles, with the Gospel which he was supposed to 
 have dictated or revised ; while the earliest Christian 
 Fathers, who contended with these sectaries, drew 
 their replies from these very writings. When men 
 entered into controversy about the nature of Christ, 
 both Arian and Athanasian appealed to the Pauline 
 epistles in support of their rival theories. The grim 
 logomachies of Sabellius and Eutyches and Nestorius 
 were defended and impugned from the same authority. 
 Again, the world of Christendom was threatened with 
 disruption in the days of Pelagius; and the irrepressible 
 question as to the harmony of man's free will, witli 
 the divine scheme of redemption, was made a forbidden 
 topic for many a century by reason of the energy of 
 Augustine, and by virtue of a quotation or two from 
 St. Paul's writings. Slowly, it is true, and indirectly, 
 the Christian world slid back into a theory akin to 
 that of Pelagius ; and Luther, who well kuc-.v that
 
 MADE A DOGMATIST IN SPITE OF HIMSELF. 275 
 
 the best way to depose the Pope was to prove him 
 heretical, insisted on the doctrine that man is justified 
 by faith, understanding by faith the acknowledgment 
 of certain abstract propositions on the nature of good, 
 of Christ, and of man. 
 
 The Pauline epistles were ransacked, and his words 
 subjected to an elaborate exegesis, in order to prove 
 that the divine economy of Christianity commanded 
 the universal establishment of an episcopal form of 
 church government. Nay, some of the more eager 
 and imaginative of these controversialists have dis- 
 covered the authority for a liturgy, and that ritualism 
 which deals in costume, in the parchments and 
 cloak which were left at Troas. No words ever 
 written have been studied more carefully and more 
 persistently than those of St. Paul, none have been 
 quoted more confidently on behalf of foregone and 
 repugnant conclusions. And yet there is no writer 
 in the latter part of the New Testament more free 
 from formal definitions than St. Paul is, none the 
 articles of whose creed are plainer and fewer. With 
 how strange an irony is he who discouraged the 
 Roman converts, in admitting men to church member- 
 ship, from entering on doubtful disputations made 
 the chief authority for the attack and defence of 
 theological subtleties. 
 
 The fact is, no large-hearted man is ever intolerant 
 of opinion. He may be persuaded that unless he 
 comprehends and affirms his creed as emphatically 
 as he holds his faith, he is in peril. But, in dealing 
 with others, he is certain to be considerate. There 
 are times in which creeds lose much of their hold on
 
 276 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 men's minds ; but faith, real trust in God, manifested 
 by patience, and demonstrated by earnest and self- 
 denying love to man, is stronger than at other periods 
 of ecclesiastical history, when controversy has been 
 sharp and definitions have been more exact. The 
 gospel which Paul preached is singularly free from 
 anathemas, even when the preacher is strongly pro- 
 voked. He does not fly to that armoury of polemical 
 strife, whence some men have scattered imprecations 
 on every thought and action which seems likely to 
 challenge authority, or threaten usurpation. He 
 would rather win than terrify. Even when he is 
 constrained to insist on curing a grave scandal by 
 sharp discipline, he is careful to excuse the act on the 
 plea of its absolute necessity, and to limit its stringency 
 as narrowly as possible. He knew that the best way 
 to obviate quarrels was to recognise differences. He 
 was well aware that men may work for a common 
 purpose, even though their several methods of pro- 
 cedure may be so various as to seem incongruous, 
 and that, provided the means be just and honourable, 
 identity of end is a sufficient bond of unity. Experi- 
 ence proves that the higher is the object which men 
 propose to themselves, the easier is it for them to 
 invite the co-operation of different forces. The wisdom 
 of the statesman consists in effecting a harmony of 
 interests, that of a great religious reformer in enlisting 
 all action on behalf of one grand purpose. Both wreck 
 their reputation when they ally themselves to party 
 cries, and narrow rules. 
 
 No writer in the New Testament, however, has 
 written so much as St. Paul has ; and none has
 
 THE OFFICE OF CHRIST TO WARDS MAN. 277 
 
 written nearly so much about the nature of Christ. 
 It occurred to him in pursuance of his charge over 
 the churches which he had planted to communicate 
 by letter to his disciples or followers, on topics 
 which, though they seemed temporary or incidental, 
 have a perpetual interest, because they perpetually 
 recur. In these communications he had to deal 
 broadly with the Christian character and the Chris- 
 tian system, as became, to use an analogy, the great 
 statesman of the infant Church. Had he been a 
 personage of ordinary temper and character, he would 
 have had a policy, as partisans always have. But 
 a great statesman has no policy; he accepts a few 
 leading principles, his wisdom being to show how 
 these principles apply to the various occasions of 
 human life. And, similarly, the leading rules of 
 St. Paul's gospel were a few inductions, the appli- 
 cation of which is universal. But the acuteness and 
 wisdom of the teacher is found in the aptitude with 
 which he points out the universal character of the 
 position which he affirms. In St. Paul's teaching, this 
 is the redemption of man by the sacrifice of Christ. 
 But the four facts contained in this formula are 
 of enormous extent, and are exhibited under a multi- 
 tude of phases, redemption, the nature of man, 
 sacrifice, the nature of Christ. Can any conceptions 
 be more vast ? can any interest be more absorbing ? 
 And need we wonder that, in explaining these con- 
 ceptions, distinct as they are from each other, it 
 is impossible to gather any clear notion of the mechan- 
 ism by which the harmony between these facts 
 and operations is effected, except by estimating them
 
 278 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 from every point of view which can possibly come 
 within our ken ? The Pauline interpretation is multi- 
 form; but, under no circumstances is it presented 
 as a harsh, dry, monotonous analysis, in which the 
 fire, spirit, life, of the Christian polity has totally 
 evaporated. Paul has, perforce, been made the 
 authority for speculative opinions ; the warm-hearted, 
 impetuous, earnest, resolute, loving man has been 
 treated as though he were a cold doctor of arid 
 logomachies, a chief of the schoolmen, the convener 
 and presiding genius of an assembly or a synod. 
 If the Apostle were estimated by the use which 
 men have made of his writings, we might say that 
 no man has ever inflicted so much evil on mankind. 
 But, in fact, if men had been content to judge him 
 by what he says and means, and not by what they 
 wish to prove, Christianity might be understood 
 in all its tenderness, generosity, attractiveness and 
 power. 
 
 It is said that the earliest Christian sectaries, those 
 Gnostics, who, not having developed the theogony of 
 Valentinus, merely busied themselves with the place 
 which Christ occupied among the emanations from the 
 supreme Being, retained or reconstructed those gospels 
 only which narrate the facts of the Saviour's child- 
 hood. The object of these persons was to find 
 authority for the theory which they entertained about 
 the nature of Christ. For a different reason, there 
 is hardly any part of the gospel narrative which 
 awakes our sympathies so profoundly as the story of 
 the Child-Christ. The gentle mother, the journey to 
 Bethlehem, the birth in the stable, the cradling in
 
 THE CHILDHOOD OF CHRIST. 
 
 a manger, the visit of the Magi, the flight into Egypt, 
 the escape from Herod, the return to Nazareth, the 
 obedience to Mary and Joseph, the visit to Jerusalem, 
 the scene with the doctors in the Temple, are of the 
 deepest interest, are the vehicle of a thousand tender 
 associations, justify that reverence for childhood which 
 is the most marked characteristic of Christian society. 
 In no part of His life is Christ more human than in 
 His childhood, in no part is the feeling of affection 
 towards Him more keenly felt than in the recurrence 
 of the season which reminds us of His birth and 
 growing up. Christ has granted the Shechinah to 
 childhood, has invested it with the white robe of His 
 holiness. To this St. Paul bears witness. They who 
 care little for the circuit of the Christian year, its 
 times and seasons, its reminders and its memories, are 
 drawn perforce to the children's festival, the time of 
 Christmas, the record of the birth of Jesus. 
 
 The fullest statements as to the mission and work 
 of Christ are found in the shorter epistles. Thus, in 
 that to the Ephesians, we are told that the mystery of 
 Christ was not known to mankind in former generations 
 as it is now revealed to His apostles and teachers by 
 the Spirit ; that by the Gospel preached to them the 
 nations should be reckoned as heirs, incorporated, and 
 made partners of the promise contained in Christ. 
 And then St. Paul goes on to speak of the undiscovered 
 riches of Christ, of the work of creation being done 
 through Christ, of the wisdom of God dwelling in 
 Christ, of God as the Father of Christ, of Christ's 
 indwelling in His people, of the glory which comes 
 from the presence of Christ in His Church. Several
 
 280 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 of these expressions are indeed familiar phrases of 
 Jewish theology, and would be perfectly intelligible to 
 those who were acquainted with the language of the 
 Jewish doctors ; but together they form a weight of 
 significant epithets, each of which illustrates some 
 relation in which the Founder of Christianity is 
 supposed to stand to His people, and all by reason of 
 the relation in which Christ Himself stands to God. 
 
 The Epistle to the Colossians contains even fuller 
 statements on this subject. The Colossians do not 
 seem to have been the converts of St. Paul, if we take 
 the words, " those who have not seen my face in the 
 flesh," as applying to the persons who are to receive 
 the letter. But here Paul speaks of God as One 
 "who has saved us from the control of darkness, 
 and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son of 
 His love, in whom, and by whose blood, we get 
 redemption namely, the remission of sins; who is 
 the image of the invisible God, the first-born of 
 every creation, since in Him are all things created 
 things in heaven and earth, things visible and 
 invisible be they thrones or lordships, governments 
 or powers; all of them have their creation by 
 Him and for Him; He is before everything, and 
 all things exist in Him ; and He is the Head of 
 
 o 
 
 the body of the Church ; He is the beginning, the 
 First-born from the dead, that He may be chief in all 
 things, because all the fulness " (a word which after- 
 wards was used in a strange significance) "was content 
 to dwell in Him, and by it to conciliate everything to 
 Himself, who brought about peace by the blood of 
 His cross, by Himself, to whatever is on earth and in
 
 CHRIST IN THE CHURCH. 281 
 
 heaven. A.nd you," he adds, " who were once alien- 
 ated, and foes to Him in mind by wicked deeds, He 
 hath now conciliated in the body of His flesh, by His 
 death, so as to bring you before Hun holy, spotless, 
 and irreproachable, provided ye remain firmly founded 
 and settled in your trust, and are not distracted from 
 the hope of the Gospel which you have received a 
 Gospel which is proclaimed in every creation under 
 heaven, and of which I, Paul, am a servant." 
 
 Much, again, of this ascription of attributes to the 
 person of Christ, is identical with that which the 
 Hebrew teachers recognised in the Word. But all 
 that portion of the Apostle's exposition which trans- 
 fers the power of the Word to the work of human 
 redemption, and which makes the agency of that re- 
 demption to consist in the death of Christ, is distinc- 
 tively Christian, and is characteristic of that Gospel 
 which Paul had preached throughout his life. 
 
 A little further on in the same epistle, St. Paul 
 returns again to the declaration of the effects which 
 were secured by the sacrifice of Christ. He is warn- 
 ing these Colossians against the figments of a vain 
 and treacherous philosophy, against the traditions of 
 human science, against the materialism of physical 
 laws. To these unsatisfying pretensions he opposes 
 Christ. "He is the incarnate habitation of the fulness 
 of Divinity, and ye are filled by Him, derivatively. 
 He is the head of all authority and rule ; He has 
 given you a spiritual circumcision, that of Christ, 
 by stripping off the body of fleshly sin. You are 
 buried with Him in the baptism, and by His means 
 ye are awakened up through trust in the work of God
 
 282 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 which raised Him from the dead. Once ye were dead 
 in sins, which are the uncircumcision of your flesh, and 
 now, having made you the gift of pardon from your 
 sins, God is raising you to life in Him." He hath 
 blotted out that which was written against us, which 
 stood in our way the letter of the law has taken it 
 out of our path, has nailed it to the cross of His Son, 
 has stripped of their authority other masters and other 
 rulers, and has publicly exhibited them " when (as a 
 Roman general did the captured kings and van- 
 quished commanders in the procession of victory) He 
 celebrates His triumph over them in the victory of 
 the cross." Here, again, in a passage of dithyrambic 
 exultation, the Apostle starts from the same topic 
 the fact that Christ represents the fullest incarnation 
 of God which the theosophy of his age allowed, 
 and thence argues to the prodigious effects which the 
 sacrifice of so glorious a personage must have worked 
 for the regeneration and exaltation of humanity, for its 
 freedom from sin, for its reconciliation with God, for 
 its introduction to a new, a final, a holy covenant. 
 
 It is impossible to compare these passages from the 
 two epistles written, it would appear, at the same 
 time, and that late in St. Paul's life with those 
 which are to be found in such writings as the epistles 
 to the Thessalonians, without discovering a great de- 
 velopment in what we may call Christology. The 
 epistles to the Thessalonians are the earliest parts of 
 the New Testament. St. Paul had not yet been 
 driven into an open rupture with Judaism. He still 
 commends, among Gentiles, the imitation of the Jew- 
 ish churches. The expectation of a spivdy
 
 CHRISTOLOGY A DEVELOPMENT. 283 
 
 of Christ was at its height, and men were looking 
 forward, with feverish anxiety, to that coming in the 
 clouds of heaven which had been predicted and pro- 
 mised. It is true that the Apostle invokes, as is his 
 wont, the grace and peace of God and Christ on his 
 converts, at the commencement of the first epistle, and 
 utters the same blessing at the conclusion of each. 
 But there is little or no trace of that mystical force 
 which is ascribed to the death of Christ in the pas- 
 sages just commented on. We read of the hope of 
 Christ, of the imitation of Him, of His endurance, of 
 His death at the hands of His people, of His resur- 
 rection and its pledge, of His presence, of His Gospel, 
 of the commands which He communicated, of the 
 salvation effected by Him, of His speedy advent. It 
 may be that the larger theory of His constructive 
 office, in the regeneration of Humanity, was present 
 to the Apostle's mind, but it is not expressed. There 
 were, indeed, abundant reasons why that which was 
 not revealed in the earlier, should be insisted on in 
 the later epistle. As a religion, Christianity was in- 
 complete, until it not only guided the life, but satisfied 
 the needs of the soul, in its search after the means of 
 union with God. We do not know, and never shall 
 know, what were the struggles of men after a theology 
 in the early days of Christendom. We cannot see the 
 thick of the fight, but we know something about the 
 forces which stood in most marked antagonism to each 
 other, and yet with some similarity of equipment. 
 The Christology of St. Paul is before us, and so is the 
 theosophy of the Gnostics. 
 
 The purpose of the Epistle to the Romans is to
 
 284 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 show, though in a less marked manner than is done 
 in the letter to the Galatians, that the Jewish ritual 
 and ordinances are superseded by the revelation of 
 Christianity. Hence the Apostle insists on the 
 effects which have been induced by the sacrifice of 
 Christ, in the reconciliation of man to God, and on 
 the guarantee which the resurrection of Christ affords 
 that this reconciliation is complete. Here, then, 
 Christ is the perfect man, who stands in contrast to 
 Adam ; the First-born among many brethren ; the 
 Advocate of man in the presence of God ; the Lord 
 of dead and living ; the Judge of men ; the Minister 
 of circumcision, whose mission it was to confirm the 
 promise made to the Fathers ; the descendant of David 
 according to the flesh, but the Son of God in power ; 
 by whom we are heirs of God, fellow-heirs with 
 Christ ; who, if we suffer with Him, may be glorified 
 with Him in the end. He is exalted and glorified, 
 because He has been humbled, betrayed, put to death ; 
 He reigns over all, because He has undergone, for 
 man's sake, the lot of a servant. He is the perfect 
 Type of humanity, in whom converges every grace, 
 power, gift, function, which may be needed for the 
 grand purpose of His coming, that of recovering the 
 race of man, of aiding the suffering and groaning 
 creation in gaming that which it expects so earnestly, 
 the redemption of the body, the adoption into sonship, 
 which even the first-fruits of the Spirit need. 
 
 In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, there is a 
 passage which is full of beauty, tenderness, and hope, 
 and has thereupon been selected as a most consolatory 
 exhortation to those who are saddened by the bereave-
 
 CHRIST IN THE EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 285 
 
 merit of their dearest and best beloved. In the chapter 
 which is read at the Anglican burial service, occurs a 
 remarkable statement as to the place of Christ in the 
 Divine economy. Beginning from the position laid 
 down in the Epistle to the Romans, that death is the 
 lot of the sons of Adam, life the gift of Christ's resurrec- 
 tion, the Apostle proceeds to say that this regrant of 
 life is exhibited in a definite order, that the first- 
 fruit of the great harvest is Christ ; next, those who, 
 at the sudden presence of Christ, are His. And then, 
 St. Paul continues, " the end will come. Christ will 
 then deliver up the kingdom to God and the Father, in 
 order that He may bring to an end all rule, authority 
 and power Christ must reign till He hath put all 
 enemies under His feet ; the last enemy who is to be 
 brought to an end being death. God, " says the 
 Apostle, quoting the words of the Psalmist, when 
 he speaks of the power conferred on man, " has put 
 all things under His feet." "But," he adds, "the 
 words, 'He hath put all things under him,' imply 
 that the Being who has granted this authority is 
 external and superior to such a dispensation ; and that, 
 therefore, when this subjugation is finally accomplished, 
 the Son Himself must be subject to the God from 
 whom this authority is derived, that God may be 
 supreme in everything." It is impossible to explain 
 away these unambiguous words, which distinctly ex- 
 press the Apostle's conviction that the present relation 
 of Christ to the Father, and to the creation which He 
 has saved, are determined by the cessation of the 
 visible creation, by the second coming of Christ. This 
 event, as we have already seen, was perpetually ex-
 
 286 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 pected by the believers in the Apostolic age, and is 
 nowhere declared to be more immediate than in 
 this very passage. " I tell you," he says, " a mystery. 
 We shall not all die, but we shall all be transformed." 
 The existing generation is to see the greater advent, 
 and, with it, the reabsorption of all imparted power 
 into the unity of God. In the Pauline Christ ology, 
 the perfection of Christ's Being is achieved by the 
 death on the cross. " He puts on the figure of a slave, 
 exists in the likeness of man and in the fashion of a 
 man, humbles Himself, subjects Himself to death, the 
 death of the cross ; and is therefore highly exalted by 
 God, is gifted with a name above every name, is the 
 object of reverence to everything in heaven, earth, and 
 hell, and is confessed to be Lord by every tongue, to 
 the glory of God the Father." The completion of 
 His office is contained in His second coining, in His 
 judgment, and in the final and eternal reconciliation 
 of man to God. Then His work is done, His mission 
 is a glorious memory, He is again the perfection of 
 humanity, the first-born of all creation, the first-born 
 among many brethren. Such a Christology differs 
 largely from that of the Nicene doctors. It is bounded 
 by the period which lies between the death of Christ, 
 or rather His resurrection, and that consummation of 
 all things which the Apostle thought so near. 
 
 But, though the Christology of Paul contained 
 none of the exact definitions which the conflicts of 
 later theology developed, nothing, on the other hand, 
 which we can conceive, is so intense to the Apostle as 
 the personality of Him whom he saw on the road to 
 Damascus, and saw but once. None < -\ en of
 
 THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST TO PAUL. 287 
 
 who had passed the three years in His company, 
 
 had so vivid, so permanent an apprehension of Christ 
 
 as Paul had. The Master, Saviour, Redeemer, 
 
 Advocate, Judge, is present to him in every act, 
 
 in every relation of life. Christ, a real, living Person, 
 
 is the beginning and end of his thoughts, is ever in 
 
 his heart, always on his lips. He never loses sight 
 
 of the vision. It carries him how, he knows not 
 
 to heaven, and fills his mind with Divine voices, with 
 
 words which, like the name of the Almighty, were 
 
 incommunicable. In all his bodily weakness, in all 
 
 the trials of his life, he is triumphant, a conqueror 
 
 through Him who strengthened him. He is never 
 
 alone, he can never be separated from the love of 
 
 Christ. Christ has literally come to him, and taken 
 
 up his abode with him. He has the mind of Christ, 
 
 bears the marks of Christ on his body, fills up what is 
 
 left of His afflictions, knows and exults over the deep, 
 
 the unsearchable riches of Him whose servant, 
 
 minister, apostle he is. The fourth gospel tells us 
 
 of one whom Jesus loved. The Pauline epistles 
 
 depict us a man who loved Jesus, with a perfect, 
 
 all-absorbing, unremitting devotion. Other men have 
 
 served Him, worshipped Him. Paul dedicated his 
 
 whole nature to the Person whom he once persecuted, 
 
 but now loved with every power of a large heart, 
 
 a vigorous will, and an imaginative mind. However 
 
 long we may search into the history of religious 
 
 emotions, we shall find no parallel to this man's 
 
 concentrated love for Christ. He combines what 
 
 is seen or told to us in the characters of Peter, 
 
 Mary Magdalene, John ardent zeal, loving ad or-
 
 288 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 ation, rapt contemplation. To such a person, the 
 definition of that which is beloved would be un- 
 natural and even odious. Who attempts to analyse 
 his own heart, when it is occupied by one engrossing 
 affection ? 
 
 In degree, this feeling towards Christ was shared 
 by the early Christians. The celebrated letter of 
 Pliny to Trajan is evidence of its prevalence in 
 Bithynia; the contemptuous sneers of Lucian are 
 proof that it lasted in Syria and Greece. Gradually, 
 however, as the personal memories of Christ faded 
 away, and the survivors of the Apostolic age became 
 fewer and fewer as the expectation of His coming 
 grew more distant by delay, and men even murmured 
 at the slackness of His promise as the watching 
 for His appearance was superseded by the dream 
 of Chiliasm as the thousand years of the Petrine 
 Epistle, and of the Apocalyptic vision, were developed 
 into the belief in a visible reign of the glorified 
 Son over an impregnable Paradise on earth, into 
 which the faithful should be gathered, Christ ceased 
 to be a person, a man, and became a nature, an 
 hypostasis, a debate, a disputation. The love of 
 Christ was ultimately strangled by the growth of 
 opinion. The faith of the Apostolic age originally 
 trust in a living, present, energetic power, which 
 was able to save to the uttermost all who came to 
 God through Him, as the author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews declares became the acceptance of a series 
 of abstract propositions, not one of which touched the 
 heart, or strengthened the will. But Christianity 
 is always compelled to seek for its sanctions in
 
 REVIVALS OF CHRISTIANITY. 289 
 
 something more impulsive than a series of definitions ; 
 perpetually revives itself by tearing to pieces, or 
 breaking through the cobwebs of a subtle logic ; 
 and always puts before the believer's mind a personal 
 Christ, a perfect Man, a Being to love, to live for, 
 to labour for, to die for, to hope in. The humanity 
 of Christ makes martyrs ; disputes about the nature 
 of His divinity have bred schoolmen and inquisitors. 
 The teaching of Christianity always encounters the 
 typical Jew and the typical Greek ; the one, being 
 occupied by the dream of an exact system, finds 
 impassioned faith a stumbling-block, a wild enthu- 
 siasm ; the other, wrapt up in the invulnerable armour 
 of his own intelligence, moralises on the weakness 
 of humanity, its liability to impulse, its uncritical 
 acquiescence in sentiment and emotion. But, when 
 once the religious sense is thoroughly aroused, these 
 critics cavil in vain. The love for the perfect man, 
 Christ Jesus whose wisdom, beneficence, self-sacrifice, 
 are so old, and yet so new ; so wonderful, and yet 
 so familiar; so wide in their effects, and yet so 
 intensely personal in their appeal to individual 
 sympathy again occupies the heart of man, and 
 gains its fervid allegiance. In brief, whenever Chris- 
 tianity is reconstructed, and the mind of Christ reigns 
 in man, man reverts to the pattern of the Apostolic 
 age, exhibits an intense affection for the humanity 
 of Christ, and inaugurates a fresh epoch of charity 
 towards his fellows. But, as soon as dogmatism 
 reasserts itself, Christ is lost in a maze of definitions, 
 and the preacher of the Gospel is tempted to become 
 a persecutor and injurious.
 
 290 P&VL OF TARSUS. 
 
 The reader will not, of course, conclude that this 
 attempt at expounding the Pauline Christology 
 intends to indicate a judgment on any theological 
 hypothesis as to the Nature of Christ. The utmost 
 inference which I am forced to make is, that the 
 popular belief in that which since the days of the 
 Nicene Fathers has been accounted orthodox, finds no 
 positive proof in the Pauline epistles, but rather, to 
 judge from the important passage already quoted from 
 the First Epistle to the Corinthians, is repugnant to this 
 Apostle's conception of Christ's place in the Divine 
 economy. It is possible that, had Paul been ques- 
 tioned as to the Nature of Christ, he would have 
 answered according to the Nicene symbol, and that 
 he might not have considered the phraseology of this 
 creed a mass of those dialectical subtleties which he 
 advises the Roman Christians to avoid. It is idle to 
 inquire what would have been the attitude of the 
 Apostle towards the heresiarchs of the third and fourth 
 centuries, had their opinions been matured in the 
 earliest age of Christianity, just as it is superfluous 
 to ask what he would have recommended as a perma- 
 nent form of church government, had he been 
 appealed to by the first advocates of the Roman 
 primacy, or by the opponents of ecclesiastical cen- 
 tralisation. 
 
 Nor can it be denied that the author of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, who was certainly not St. Paul, 
 whoever else he may have been, makes far more 
 positive declarations as to the Nature of Christ than 
 Paul does. The first chapter of this epistle indicates 
 a development in the history of Christology which
 
 THEORIES AS TO THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 291 
 
 goes beyond the Pauline utterances. It is true that, 
 in the course of the argument, the humanity of the 
 Saviour is made the basis of the parallel between 
 Him and the chief of a superseded ceremonial ; the 
 eternal priesthood having been, in the language of the 
 writer, conferred on Christ by the initiative of God. 
 In other particulars, the epistle ascribes to Christ 
 those qualities and attributes which the philosophers 
 of the Alexandrian Jewry assigned to the Messiah of 
 their hope. But the fullest witness to the Nicene 
 doctrine is given by the author of the Apocalypse and 
 of the fourth gospel. It was not, then, without reason 
 that the emperor Julian was, as we are told, accustomed 
 to say, that the Divinity of Christ was no tenet of the 
 three Evangelists, or of Paul ; but of John, the John, 
 who is the reputed author of the fourth gospel and the 
 Apocalypse; for the epistles ascribed to this apostle 
 do not go beyond the Pauline doctrine. 
 
 It is possible that the doctrine of the Nicene 
 Fathers is nothing more than a necessary inference 
 from the position which the earliest teachers of Chris- 
 tianity assigned to the great Founder of their faith. 
 The mission of Christ was to save a Avorld, and this 
 function could not be fulfilled by any but one person. 
 In view of this great office, it was natural, perhaps 
 necessary, to accumulate on His person the attributes 
 of the Almighty. As men came more and more to 
 feel and believe that the salvation of each man was a 
 mystery of miraculous power, they were more and 
 more led to see that He who was gifted with this 
 exalted mediation was in the counsels of the Father 
 from the beginning, and that He shared for ever in
 
 292 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 the majesty and power of the Eternal. To lower His 
 Nature was to disparage His work. To exalt it was 
 to confess the unworthiness of man, and the mighty 
 mercy of God. The harmony of the human and the 
 Divine nature occupied, as is well known, the keenest 
 intelligence of the Eastern world, then the centre of 
 dialectical skill and philosophical speculation. The 
 result is to be found in those creeds which were gradu- 
 ally elaborated during the fourth and fifth centuries, 
 and notably by the termination of the last great theo- 
 logical controversy that in which the teaching of 
 Pelagius was formally condemned, and the nature of 
 Christ was formally and precisely defined. It is pro- 
 bable that soon after this, the last of the creeds that, 
 namely, which has been ascribed to Athanasius was 
 constructed. 
 
 The death and resurrection of Christ were the 
 special facts on which St. Paul insisted. The 
 former was not of course disputed, though, after 
 a time, a strange sect pretended that a phantom 
 was crucified, the true Christ having been mys- 
 teriously conveyed away. But the resurrection was 
 no novel utterance from the mouth of Paul, at least 
 to the Jews,- who generally accepted the doctrine 
 of a corporeal resurrection. It was a characteristic 
 tenet of the Pharisees; and the story of St. Paul 
 having created a diversion in his own favour, by 
 affirming that he was charged with maintaining 
 the resurrection of the dead, is completely in accor- 
 dance with what we know of the dissensions which 
 prevailed on this topic among the Jews. The rational- 
 ists denied and ridiculed, the mystics affirmed the
 
 LIFE AFTER DEA TIL 293 
 
 doctrine. On the other hand, the heathen world 
 thought, with Festus, that a man who held the 
 resurrection of the dead to be a possibility was a 
 madman. The mass of the people believed in a 
 world of spirits, as men have almost invariably 
 believed. Much of the familiar theology of the 
 ancient world was based on spirit-worship. The 
 Penates of the Roman household appear to have 
 represented the deceased ancestors of the family. 
 The early civilisation of Borne gathered from the 
 mysterious Etruscan race who were, probably, a 
 fragment of that great family which throve in ancient 
 Egypt, and still exists in Eastern Asia the charac- 
 teristic tenet of reverence for the spirits of departed 
 relatives. But this worship had become an archaism 
 in the Christian era. The gentry of the Boman empire 
 accepted that notion of a comfortless immortality which 
 is stated in the Odyssey in its naked gloominess, 
 and which is pictured in the phrase, " Let us eat 
 and drink, for to-morrow we die." The lowest con- 
 dition of life was better than the best hopes of the 
 dead. So Achilles, the type of Greek heroism, is 
 made to think. The last representative of Etruscan no- 
 bility, Maecenas the friend and minister of Augustus ; 
 the patron of art, learning, poetry shuddered at 
 the change from life to death, and welcomed any 
 suffering if he were only left with the boon of exis- 
 tence. This dread is not fear of annihilation, of 
 absorption into a universal essence. It is a belief 
 that sensation survives death, and that the departed 
 soul exchanges for the gladness, the light, the warmth, 
 the energy of corporeal existence, a sad, dark, cold,
 
 294 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 motiveless being, in which the memories of departed 
 and irrecoverable enjoyments remain, to curse rather 
 than to console. This exchange of death for life 
 from the point of view taken by the Epicurean who 
 believed in the soul's immortality has never been 
 described with such precision as by Shakspeare, in 
 the words put into the mouth of Claudio, 
 
 " Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; 
 To lie in cold obstruction and to rot ; 
 This sensible warm motion to become 
 A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
 To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
 In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; 
 To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, 
 And blown with restless violence round about 
 The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst 
 Of those, that lawless and incertain thought 
 Imagine howling : 'tis too horrible ! 
 The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
 That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
 Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
 To what we fear of death." 
 
 The resurrection of Christ was, according to St. 
 Paul, the earnest of a general resurrection. Whether 
 he held that they who had failed to reach the Gospel 
 of the Divine mercy, would partake of the resurrection 
 which Christ had secured for them who were His at 
 His coming is not clear. In the Acts of the Apostles, 
 he is represented as holding the view of a universal 
 resurrection in his address to Felix, in which just and 
 unjust shall appear before the Judge. But, in the 
 epistles, the hopes of the resurrection are generally 
 limited to them who believe, though he speaks in the 
 Second Epistle to the Corinthians, of all appearing 
 before the judgment-seat of Christ, each to receive
 
 PAUL AND THE RESURRECTION. 295 
 
 good or evil according to what he hath done in the 
 body. But, as has been observed before, the theocracy 
 of St. Paul does not concern itself so much with those 
 who are rejected as unworthy of salvation, or with the 
 destiny of those who refuse to accept the Gospel, as 
 it does with the hopes and the blessings of those who 
 receive and keep it. It is enough that a glorious 
 immortality is promised to them who love Christ. 
 There was no interest in curiously investigating the 
 case of the wicked and unbelieving. 
 
 To this resurrection of the just, Paul clings with 
 intense earnestness and confidence. Take it away, 
 and all the purpose of his life is gone, every sacrifice 
 which he has made is valueless, the redemption of 
 man has not been achieved, they who have fallen 
 asleep in Christ are perished. They who have lived 
 in this hope are the most pitiable of all men ; the only 
 alternative in this blank despair is a life of epicurean 
 enjoyment. And this expectation of a bright future, 
 an eternal existence of rest and joy, is heightened by 
 the conviction that he will live with the object of his 
 unwearied love, the glorified man Christ Jesus. In 
 some undefined place, in the third heaven, at the 
 right hand of God, in some house not made with 
 hands, but eternal in the heavens, He, the Lord 
 Christ is, and there His disciples, His new creation, 
 will meet Him and dwell with Him, what time this 
 earthly habitation this mere tent of passing life is 
 dissolved or destroyed. It is in the air, the heavens, 
 the symbols of light and brightness, and purity. But 
 these places are a figure, as the resurrection is a 
 mystery, the representative of an un expounded future,
 
 296 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 of a new Jerusalem, the eternal home of the true and 
 just. As yet, however, though we cannot see Him 
 with mortal eyes, this Jesus, the Saviour and the 
 Friend, is present everywhere. They put Him on; 
 He dwells with them. Hereafter the union will be 
 closer, the presence perpetual, the vision one of inex- 
 pressible glory. 
 
 The Apostle anticipates the retort of those who 
 object to him, and who may raise the question, How 
 are the dead raised, and in what body do they come ? 
 In the visible world there are diversities of existence, 
 and the analogy holds in its invisible or transcendental 
 counterpart. And then he compares the resurrection 
 to the growth of the plant from the seed, in language 
 well known to every one, the figure being worked out 
 with great poetical beauty. Such comparisons between 
 physical development and growth, and the resurrection 
 of the body, were instituted by the Jewish doctors. 
 Thus the Gemara contains a conversation between 
 Gamaliel and Csesar by whom is probably meant 
 Augustus in which the great Rabbi is represented 
 as victoriously refuting the emperor's scepticism, 
 and proving that the resurrection of the body, 
 wonderful though it be, is paralleled by the perpetual 
 occurrence of other and greater wonders in the ordinary 
 process of physical generation. 
 
 To accept the doctrine of the resurrection, and to 
 extend it to the race of man, or at best to the 
 faithful, was a difficult problem to the Gentile mind. 
 That audience at Athens which listened with attention 
 to the Apostle while he discoursed of the spiritual 
 Nature of the Almighty, the unity of the human race,
 
 THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE DOCTRIXK. 297 
 
 the providence of God, the search which man must 
 needs make after Him, the coming judgment, and the 
 person of the Judge, were startled into contempt 
 when they heard him speak of the resurrection of 
 the dead. But the doctrine, once accepted, was full of 
 profound consolations. They who believed this tenet 
 were afterwards afraid of nothing. Assured of a real, 
 a conscious eternity of unimaginable blessedness, they 
 could endure any calamity with confidence. The 
 restitution was to be complete, perpetual. The loss, 
 suffering, scorn which could be inflicted on them by 
 any human power was transient, trifling. They who 
 believe that a happy immortality is the reward of this 
 life and labour are invincible. And thus, as by antici- 
 pation, the Apostle speaks of those who have been ad- 
 mitted into the commonwealth of Christendom as already 
 dead. His words appear to have been misinterpreted 
 by some who heard them, and who, like Hymenseus 
 and Philetus, alleged that thereupon the resurrection 
 had happened already. But to the mass of them who 
 believed, death was an exchange from a life of sorrow, 
 persecution, \veakness, into a perfect and glorious eter- 
 nity, as soon as ever the second coming of Christ took 
 place an event which was daily expected. Then, im- 
 mediately on the sound of the trumpet which should 
 summon them to accompany Him who would meet 
 them in the air, the kingdoms of the world, the cruel 
 empire of Antichrist, would be shattered, and every- 
 thing would be made subject to God and His Christ. 
 
 To this belief in a risen Christ, who has all that 
 profound sympathy with human nature which makes 
 Him so winning all that gentleness which invests the
 
 298 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 Saviour with such ineffable grace all that holiness 
 which at once attracts the soul, and yet constrains it 
 to be ever watchful, lest some contamination should 
 hinder intercourse with Him Paul links his concep- 
 tion of a church, his rule of Christian life. From 
 Christ came all gifts. In Him is the unity of the 
 brotherhood. In Him begins the life of the believer. 
 In Him the believer rests. For Him the believer 
 labours. In Him he gets his strength. By Him he 
 has abundant confidence in the mercy and love of God. 
 The derivation of Christian duties from a trust in 
 Christ is a matter of frequent exhortation in the 
 Pauline epistles. Take that, for example, in the 
 letter to the Ephesians. " I who am a prisoner in 
 the Lord, exhort you to walk worthily of the vocation 
 to which you have been called. Show all conciliation, 
 and gentleness, and patience, considerate love for each 
 other, making it your business to maintain oneness of 
 spirit, in the bond of peace. There is one body, one 
 spirit, just as you have one hope in the fact of your 
 calling ; there is one Lord, one trust, one baptism, one 
 God and Father of all, who is over all things, who 
 permeates all things, and is in all of you. Each one 
 of us has His grace conferred on him according to 
 gifts of Christ. This is what the text means : 
 ' Having ascended to the height, He led captivity 
 captive and gave gifts to men.' The expression 
 ' ascended ' implies that He previously descended to 
 the lowest region of earth. And He that ascended is 
 the very Person who has ascended above the whole 
 heavens, that He may occupy all things. And this 
 Person has of his gifts made some apostles, some
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 299 
 
 preachers, some evangelists, some shepherds and 
 teachers, in order to effect the perfection of the saints, 
 for the work of service, for the building up the body 
 of Christ, to continue till we all converge in the 
 unity of our trust, and of our acquaintance with the 
 Son of God, into a perfected manhood, to the measure 
 of that growth which contains Christ. Be not, there- 
 fore, any longer foolish children, tossed about and 
 twisted round by every blast of dogma, by the 
 tricks of men, who, for sinister ends, would cunningly 
 entrap you in error; but, on the contrary, uttering 
 the truth in love, let us grow in everything up to 
 Him who is the head, the Christ, from whom the 
 whole body is fitted and brought together in every 
 joint of its perfection, and, according to the vigour 
 which belongs to every member, who effects the 
 growth of the body for its own construction in love." 
 
 This passage is only one among many in which 
 the Apostle comparing the union of Christian men 
 to the highest living organism intends to imply 
 that Christ is to the Church what life and intelligence 
 are to the physical nature of mankind, the source 
 of its vitality and enlightenment. Nothing can be 
 more simple than the elements of the creed with 
 which this analogy is consistent. To know that 
 Christ lived and taught, died and rose again, in order 
 to redeem man from bondage, reconcile him to God, 
 save him, was the knowledge needed for that primi- 
 tive faith. To know this, and know it thoroughly, 
 was to trust in Him and the Father, and, thereupon, 
 to obtain the benefits of Christ's coming. Then 
 comes the perpetual indwelling of Christ, the trans-
 
 300 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 formation of man's moral nature, and the code of 
 duties, which, flowing naturally from the conditions 
 of a Christian polity, have a permanent sanction, by 
 being fulfilled in the highest Exemplar of human 
 life, the life of Christ ; and by becoming, as they 
 are fulfilled by the disciple, the pledge and requisite 
 of His indwelling. 
 
 It cannot be said that this perpetual reference of 
 the Christian life to the assistance of a glorified 
 Person, who sustains, exalts, and perfects it, is accom- 
 panied by any concession to laxity of practice or con- 
 duct. On the contrary, the rule of the Pauline 
 morality is as high as can be conceived. He utterly 
 broke with the ceremonial law, his indifference to 
 Judaism growing into complete antipathy to it as he 
 had greater experience of its narrowness, its pedantry, 
 its inconsistency with Christian liberty. He is mani- 
 festly careless about observances which were exacted 
 rigorously in his own time from the Jewish Christians. 
 For example, he speaks of keeping the Sabbath as a 
 matter of indifference, in the Galatians as even a mark 
 of feeble compliance with what he calls the " beggarly 
 elements." He assigns no overwhelming importance 
 to those rites which are peculiarly Christian the 
 Sacraments of the Gospel for he expressly declares 
 that he did not himself baptise, except on rare 
 occasions, and he makes only one marked reference 
 to the Lord's Supper; when, indeed, he strongly 
 condemns the practice of those who perverted it into 
 a scene of selfish jollity, of grossly unbecoming levity. 
 He is practically silent on church government. He 
 speaks almost contemptuously of the Twelve, and of
 
 PA UL A MORALIST. 301 
 
 their pretensions to authority. So little was he 
 characterised by exactitude of phrase, and precision 
 of definition, that those heretics of the first ages, 
 against whose tenets much of the early controversial 
 theology of the Christian fathers is directed, acknow- 
 ledged his authority, and quoted from his epistles in 
 confirmation of their theories. 
 
 On the other hand, St. Paul is, after the Master, 
 the moralist of the Gospel. His directions as to con- 
 duct are numerous, precise, exhaustive. Besides 
 those which address themselves to the individual, 
 and which exact from him obedience to a pure and 
 searching code of conduct, he gives directions as to 
 the behaviour of men as members of churches, as 
 holding intercourse with the world around them, as 
 united in the great brotherhood of Christianity. He 
 lays down rules for families, on the relations of hus- 
 band and wife, parent and child, master and servant, 
 all these rules being genial and rational. He 
 commends neither asceticism, first preached by the 
 Buddhists, and afterwards affirmed by Manichean 
 perversity; nor monachism, which is a form of apathetic 
 communism. His Christian is a man in the world, 
 who must, perhaps, considering the purpose of his life, 
 and the peculiar trials of his calling, abstain from 
 what is in itself lawful and expedient, in order that 
 he may be disentangled from the temporary risks 
 which his profession ran. But, on the whole, the 
 Pauline morality is personal arid domestic. The 
 advice which he gives to the Corinthians, that, under 
 existing emergencies, a single life is the safest, is 
 professedly an opinion. In the Epistle to Timothy,
 
 302 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 he expressly speaks of compulsory celibacy as a 
 doctrine of devils. This plain-spoken sentiment may 
 be a contemptuous allusion to the Ebionite Christians, 
 who had given him so much trouble, but the experience 
 of society is not adverse to the judgment of St. Paul. 
 He would have people work for their living, inculca- 
 ting the duty of industry in terms as plain as those 
 which are used by the Political Economist. His 
 language about those who lazily depend on chance or 
 charity for the wants of their family or their dependents 
 is even stronger, for he speaks of such as denying the 
 faith or trust they should have in God, and as lower 
 in tone than the unbeliever. That he was no advocate 
 of niggardliness towards such as need help, is proved 
 by his continual advice to those who were able to 
 assist poverty or distress from their abundance ; for 
 he knew that poverty will always exist, and that the 
 habit of judicious almsgiving is a good means of moral 
 culture ; but he was slow to receive assistance himself, 
 and it is hardly possible to fail of seeing a covert 
 sarcasm in the solitary injunction which he confesses 
 to having received from the Apostolic College, that 
 he and his associates should remember the poor, by 
 which is meant the community at Jerusalem. He 
 did remember them, and owed his imprisonment at 
 Caesarea and Rome to his efforts on their behalf. 
 However ascetic Christianity may have become in 
 the second and third centuries of our era, there is no 
 warranty for such a theory of religion in the Pauline 
 teaching of the first. 
 
 It is unfair to the great moralist and statesman (if 
 we may employ the latter phrase) of the infant Church,
 
 HIS MORALITY UNIVERSAL. 303 
 
 not to distinguish him from those who succeeded to his 
 mission. Christianity was charged has been charged 
 continually with making men austere, reserved, un- 
 patriotic, dreamy. There is no warranty for this re- 
 proach in the teaching of Paul, whose estimate of the 
 claims which even the corrupt society of the time in 
 which he lived, and in particular that of Corinth, is just 
 and forcible. In a true spirit of toleration, he would 
 not have his converts avoid the society of idolaters, 
 though he would as every respectable heathen would 
 have advised recommend them to abstain from inter- 
 course with profligate or immoral persons. He does 
 not advise married persons, one of whom may be 
 brought under the influence of the Gospel, while the 
 other clung to heathenism, to use the freedom of 
 divorce which the Roman law gave, and this for 
 domestic as well as for religious reasons. Even his 
 advice of patience to slaves is part of the theory 
 which he held, that Christianity can accommodate 
 itself to any condition of society, provided men are 
 obedient to the Divine law, are scrupulous in the fulfil- 
 ment of all duties. 
 
 They who charge the Christianity of the New Tes- 
 tament with timidity and want of spirit, should, I 
 repeat, remember what the social state was in which 
 it began its work. The world never saw before or 
 since so relentless, so wide, so jealous, so immoral a 
 despotism, has never seen one which was so strong 
 in sheer force. Now, there are two ways in which a 
 reformation of morals and opinion can be attempted. 
 The one is resistance which is rarely efficacious, and 
 in this case would have been madness; the other is
 
 304 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 endurance, which generally succeeds, and which 
 would have succeeded far more completely in the his- 
 tory of Christianity, had not the Christians of the 
 fourth century clutched at power as soon as they were 
 able to grasp it. The Roman empire became Chris- 
 tian by the patience of the first three centuries ; but 
 Christianity failed to regenerate society, because it 
 readily became the tool of the later empire became 
 an establishment instead of a gospel, a logomachy in- 
 stead of a rule of life. The dower which Constantine 
 gave the Church was, as Dante says, the parent of 
 vast mischief, and more than counterbalanced the 
 splendour of the imperial conversion. Let any one 
 compare for himself the theoretical teaching of Paul 
 with the practical bearing of all that he affirms, and 
 he will have no difficulty in determining what would 
 have been the history of the world if those who came 
 after the Jew of Tarsus had been representatives of his 
 spirit, as well as successors to his office.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE soul of man longs for illumination and pardon. 
 It is ignorant, and led astray by evil impulses. It is 
 conscious of transgression, whether the law which 
 it has violated be natural or, to speak in the spirit of 
 modern philosophy, one which society has elaborated 
 and enforced for its own preservation ; or conven- 
 tional by which must be understood some rule of 
 municipal custom ; or divine that is, has been pro- 
 pounded by an authority which claims to be instructed 
 by God. The construction of human society renders 
 it necessary that interruptions of its peace, or in- 
 vasions of that security which all political institutions 
 profess to warrant, should be repressed and punished. 
 Punishments inflicted by human law are sometimes 
 treated as vindictive, sometimes as corrective, accord- 
 ing as it seems necessary to avenge a wrong, or to 
 prevent the recurrence of an injury ; to compensate 
 the sufferer, or to protect the general order of society 
 by deterrents which intending criminals can appreciate 
 and dread. A later theory of punishment, which has 
 been developed from humanitarian Christianity, and
 
 306 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 from it alone, proposes to effect the reformation of the 
 offender. It is possible that the acceptance of this 
 humane theory of punishment may be assisted by the 
 fact, that the judgment of law is fallible, both in its 
 decision of the act and in its interpretation of the 
 motive, and that, therefore, the case of the criminal is, 
 and should be open to favourable consideration. But 
 this is not the original theory of social defence. Men 
 must accept the risk which the administration of law 
 by a fallible judge involves, since they obtain the 
 advantages of its administration, for the latter are 
 immeasurably greater than the former. If a legis- 
 lature seeks to reform its criminals, it does so because 
 it has been interpenetrated by that instinct of the 
 religious sense which makes the salvation of a human 
 soul at once a duty and a merit. In this country 
 such an opinion is strongly entertained. But there 
 have not been wanting jurists and moralists who, 
 looking at society from the standpoint of utility, have 
 entertained a harsher theory of punishment, have 
 conceived that crime is best checked by relying on the 
 deterrent force of punishment only, is even stimulated 
 by the machinery of a reformatory in which criminals 
 are to repent and amend. 
 
 It is to be observed that law ignores many offences 
 against morality, and frequently punishes acts which 
 are no violation of morality whatever. A man may 
 lead a life which is profligate and scandalous, may set 
 an evil example, may mislead or debauch others. 
 But, however mischievous his course of action may 
 be, society may not visit him with any penalties 
 of law, partly because it has seen good reason to
 
 THE RANGE OF HUMAN LA W. 307 
 
 limit the operation of criminal justice ; partly because 
 the evil which the culprit does is legally imponderable 
 or vague in its effects ; sometimes because the check 
 which law could impose might induce other practices 
 quite as mischievous, or even more dangerous in their 
 effects, but less open to detection or reprobation. For 
 it must not be forgotten that custom has a wider 
 range of corrective action than law has, and that 
 its preventive power is even more efficacious than that 
 of judicial punishment. And, on the other hand, 
 both law and custom visit with penalty and rebuke 
 practices which are not in themselves immoral. The 
 laws of nearly every country inflict disabilities, and 
 prohibit acts which are in themselves just and natural. 
 Thus, for instance, they have disabled persons who 
 entertain particular beliefs, or are unable to entertain 
 other beliefs, sometimes treating certain opinions as 
 the highest crimes. They who challenge the value or 
 advantage of established institutions, whether political 
 or ecclesiastical, have been visited with nearly equal 
 rigour; have been condemned, proscribed, banished, 
 though their opinions have been simply speculative. 
 Over and over again it has happened that the 
 fathers have slain, and the sons have canonized 
 the prophets. Christianity has lasted for nearly 
 nineteen centuries, and Christian men have not yet 
 accepted the command laid down by the great Master 
 of their religion, " Let wheat and tares grow together 
 till the harvest." 
 
 It is inevitable that man should recognise among 
 the attributes of God, the functions of a judge. He 
 does so from the analogy of civil society. The office
 
 308 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 of the judge is the most beneficent and the most 
 sacred of human institutions. Reverence for law is 
 the first condition of civilisation ; the administration 
 of law is the most permanent and useful service which 
 a citizen obtains from the State ; obedience to law 
 is the first civil duty, and the judge is the impersona- 
 tion of these benefits. This is the power to which the 
 Apostle commands subjection ascribing its authority, 
 even when wielded by the heathen, to the direct 
 ordination of God. But human law is confessedly 
 imperfect, cannot right all wrongs cannot punish all 
 injuries. Hence they whom law does not reach, and 
 they whom law does not aid, will inevitably be cited 
 to appear before the Judge of all, in order that the 
 question may be tried, and right may be done. So the 
 religious sense, whenever it entrenches itself in moral 
 obligations, always affirms. Recompence, restitution, 
 are assured in that judgment ; patience, hope, faith are 
 developed from a confidence that it will be pronounced. 
 The Divine tribunal is a permanent court of appeal 
 from human error and human partiality. It is set up 
 in the mythology of Greece and Rome, in Eastern 
 nations, in the polytheism of Egypt, in every creed 
 which is spiritual. In the Mosaic theology the Judge 
 chastises the offender with temporal suffering, rewards 
 or recompenses the injured person with temporal bless- 
 ing the appeal being immediate, the providence secu- 
 lar, since the ancient Israelite is always represented 
 as living under the direct government of Jehovah. 
 The people were in view of the Shekinah, and the 
 doctrine of hereafter remained undeveloped in the 
 majesty of His presence.
 
 GOD A JUDGE. 809 
 
 They who cherish the thought that God is a judge 
 between man and man, cannot but confess that their 
 own acts are open to His interpretation, and within 
 the scope of His judgment. Sometimes, indeed, per- 
 sons have believed that they run no risk of His anger, 
 that they are elect, impeccable, assured of His per- 
 petual favour ; that, in their case at least, judgment is 
 foregone. But the conscience of most men is proof 
 against this egotism. They are not arrogant enough 
 to claim perfection, but, on the contrary, are alive to 
 faults in themselves to infirmity of purpose, negli- 
 gence in practice, readiness in yielding to temptation, 
 forgetfulness of duty, unfair or ungenerous dealing 
 towards others. They know that such acts and feel- 
 ings, if unchecked, are the beginning of those offences 
 which even human law reaches ; and if they know so 
 much, how much more must He know, whose equity 
 as a judge is the consequent of His perfect wisdom, 
 transcendent knowledge, universal providence. 
 
 The range of the Divine judgment, therefore, must 
 be vastly wider than that of human law. Man can 
 deal only with that which is actual, but the prescience 
 of the Almighty detects the offence in its beginnings, 
 when it is only potential, when the germ of the evil is 
 commencing its growth. Man can deal only with 
 some offences those, namely, which inflict a definite 
 and intelligible injury on individuals or on the security 
 of society ; but God judges that which offends His 
 holiness, or does damage to the civitas Dei. Man 
 adjudicates on intentions when they are developed 
 into action; the Divine sight takes cognizance of 
 thoughts, from which actions may spring. The falli-
 
 310 /ME T Z OF TARSUS. 
 
 bility of man constrains him to treat doubtful cases 
 with leniency, unless justice is to become unduly 
 severe and intolerably capricious ; but in the light of 
 God's countenance there is nothing doubtful, in the 
 clearness of His judgment nothing fallible. It is no 
 wonder then, that when this conception of the great 
 Judge occupies the religious sense, no sacrifice is too 
 costly to deprecate the anger which He may be sup- 
 posed to feel at the offence which He sees so plainly 
 and so unerringly, the extent and meaning of which 
 He recognises with far greater distinctness than the 
 tenderest and most susceptible conscience can conceive 
 it. To acknowledge the judgment of God is, by in- 
 evitable sequence, to confess and know that a clear, 
 vigilant, penetrating eye is always fixed on the inner- 
 most nature of each man, and that as this vision sees 
 everything, so it forgets nothing. The scriptures of 
 the Old Testament, and particularly the Psalms, con- 
 stantly affirm the unwearied and watchful scrutiny of 
 the Divine presence. The language of the New is not 
 less precise as to the universality of the same Provi- 
 dence. 
 
 The conception would be intolerable, were it not 
 that so sensitive a religious instinct invariably assigns 
 to the Almighty a beneficent regard for His creatures, 
 a willingness to accept repentance, a readiness to 
 bestow strength and deliverance, the qualities of for- 
 bearance, long-suffering, patience, compassion. He 
 is the Father, who not only supplies the wants, but 
 bears with the petulance and disobedience of His 
 children. His wrath is roused against those only who 
 deny Him his due honour, who say He is not, who
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF GOD. 311 
 
 go astray after other gods, who repudiate His authority, 
 as well as disregard His injunctions. But to those 
 who acknowledge Him, He is always placable. He 
 always invites them to repent, He always accepts 
 their penitence, He always grants them forgiveness. 
 It is everything to know Him, for when He is known, 
 the awful features of the great Judge become a vision 
 of ineffable tenderness and pity, of sympathy for weak 
 and struggling humanity, of Fatherly love for way- 
 ward childhood, of watchfulness over feeble steps, of 
 attention to the utterance of wants and desires, of 
 solicitude, bounty, gentleness. He is the wise and 
 tender Father, who shows compassion to all His 
 children. 
 
 One thing, however, He exacts, as He is merciful, 
 so man must be merciful. He will not forgive the 
 unforgiving. The surest sign of impenitence is a hard, 
 imperious, unpitying temper. It is as though He 
 could not but exact on behalf of those who are wronged, 
 whatever is their abstract right ; but as though with 
 this, He would give nothing but that bare right to him 
 who mercilessly rejects the suit of another. Man can 
 forgive the offence which has been committed against 
 himself. For thus far, at least, he still retains that 
 image of God in which he was created. But if he 
 insists on his literal due from his neighbour, he cannot 
 expect consideration from another, and least of all 
 from Him who knows how imperfect has been the 
 obedience of His creatures, and how unwarrantable 
 it is for man to be implacable, when he most needs 
 such forgiveness himself. To be unmerciful and un- 
 forgiving is to deny the Fatherhood of God, and to
 
 312 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 look on Him only as a Judge. " To him," says the 
 Apostle James, speaking in the spirit of the Hebrew 
 prophet, and as the servant of Christ, " who does no 
 mercy shall be pitiless judgment given; mercy has 
 higher claims than judgment." 
 
 It is inevitable, in so far as a belief in God and in 
 His Providence exists, that religion should develop, to 
 a greater or less extent, such conceptions of the rela- 
 tion in which man stands to the Maker, the Judge, 
 the Father, as have been stated above. The Law must 
 be stricter and more rigorous than that which human 
 society can enact, the Lawgiver must take clearer 
 cognisance of facts and motives than human legislation 
 can achieve or attempt. The justice of the All-wise 
 will be tempered with mercy. On the other hand, 
 as no injury can, except by a figure of speech, be 
 put on the Almighty, but only on those who are 
 equally the objects of His Providence and Love, 
 the mercy which He shows can be anticipated by 
 forgiveness, granted on the part of those who aiv 
 wronged, and can only be obtained on the condition 
 that the penitent is willing to accord the pardon 
 which he begs for. And, in a more or less perfect 
 form, these religious tenets characterise all theological 
 systems which have ever contained a just conception of 
 the Deity. The forgiveness of injuries is no peculiar 
 maxim of Christian ethics. It is Jewish, Zoroastrian, 
 Pythagorean, Platonic, Stoic. So is the great defen- 
 sive rule of social morality that of doing as we would 
 be done by. It is not without reason that the Psalm- 
 ist having averred that the fool hath said in his 
 heart, There is no God pnrtrays the converse of that
 
 THE DIVINE MERCY. SIX. 313 
 
 picture which a lively conscience of God's presence 
 exhibits, narrates the deeds of those who deny His 
 Providence and Justice, and accounts for that social 
 panic, that fear where no fear is, which follows on the 
 extinction of the religious sense the absence of God's 
 fear before men's eyes. 
 
 The Epistle to the Romans contains the Pauline 
 doctrine of sin. The passage just referred to, or 
 rather two passages grouped together from the Psalms 
 the fourteenth and the fifty-third are cited in order 
 to prove the universality of sin. The narrative of the 
 fall of Adam is made the basis of a similar general- 
 isation. Death was the penalty annexed to the 
 offence committed in the garden, death has been the 
 lot of humanity ever since, and, therefore, the sin of 
 the first progenitor of mankind was propagated through 
 his offspring. This position, on which St. Paul insists 
 more than once, was derived from the teaching of the 
 Rabbis. The facts of the Mosaic cosmogony were 
 admitted, and the explanation was obvious and con- 
 venient. It is to be observed, however, that the 
 derived sin of Adam's descendants was inferred from 
 the mortality of man's body, the dogma of transmitted 
 guilt was a gloss. 
 
 That the Apostle fully believed in the sufficiency of 
 his explanation as to the origin of moral evil will be 
 readily allowed. That he quoted the passages from 
 the Septuagint in which David is celebrating some 
 victory over his foreign and domestic enemies, and 
 contrasting their evil doings with the character of the 
 generation of the righteous, as though it were a 
 theological declaration about the universal depravity
 
 314 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 of mankind, and that he made the quotation in perfect 
 good faith need not be doubted. The allegorical 
 interpretation of Scripture was so customary among 
 the Jews of the Pauline era, and was adopted so 
 naturally by Christian teachers, that we need not 
 be surprised at the citation of this passage, in which a 
 slight analogy is taken to be a conclusive proof. A 
 glance, indeed, will show that David did not mean to 
 affirm, in the passages quoted, the universal depravity 
 of man's nature, still less to apply these words to those 
 who are under the Law, as the Apostle implies that 
 he does. It is possible that he was thinking of his 
 rebellious son and the associates of his revolt ; but, it 
 is far more likely that, when he speaks of the bones of 
 them that besieged Zion, he had before him Chemosh, 
 or Milcom, or Moloch, the abomination of the nations 
 round about ; whose worship the Israelite contemptu- 
 ously, perhaps justly, called fornication; and who 
 had been eating up Israel as though they were eating 
 bread. 
 
 And, similarly, it may be proved that the varieties 
 of the human race cannot be referred to a common 
 origin ; that the history of humanity is not retrogression 
 from a pure exemplar, but progress from comparative or 
 actual barbarism ; that the prune val Adam, at least of 
 many races, was no dweller in a Paradise, who talked 
 with God, and had the gift, or, at least, the prospect 
 of immortal life, but a savage who slowly elaborated 
 the arts of domestic life, who maintained a warfare 
 against wild beasts, and who lived at so remote a 
 period, that many species of animals have disappeared 
 since he first walked on the earth. Tf such a theory
 
 THE ORIGIN OF SIX. 315 
 
 can be maintained, there is no escape from one of 
 two alternatives. Either the man and woman of the 
 Mosaic account are the progenitors of one family of 
 mankind, and, therefore, have transmitted their sin 
 and their hope to those only who have sprung from 
 them ; or the story of Adam and Eve is one of those 
 allegories in which men have always delighted, and by 
 which they have wished to express the conviction, that 
 the facts of later social life represent a decline from 
 primeval purity, just as the Greeks consoled them- 
 selves in the depravity and violence of their own epoch 
 with the dream of a golden age, with a Hyperborean 
 felicity, with the islands of the blest, with the garden 
 of golden fruit, and similar schemes of an imagination 
 which protests against the evil which it sees, but 
 cannot or will not cure. Under neither explanation, 
 however, can the narrative of the garden be an 
 exposition of the origin of evil. 
 
 The historical origin of sin, vice, infirmity of pur- 
 pose, selfishness, sensuality, is not so important a 
 matter for consideration as the fact that these things 
 are. The discovery and application of remedies for 
 those evils is a problem, pending the solution of 
 which all creation groans and travails in pain. Every 
 religion which contains in itself a spark of the Divine 
 fire professes to have discovered a more or less effec- 
 tual remedy for such mischiefs". Every religion which 
 has actually found out some aid towards the moral 
 progress of mankind has done its part in the general 
 scheme of social regeneration. It is matter of very 
 little consequence whether this or that teacher has 
 accurately traced out the sources of the disorder
 
 316 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 which he has learnt to rectify. It is enough to cast 
 out devils in the name of Christ. In the treatment of 
 disease, moral no less than physical, it is important 
 to know the cause of the sickness only when the cause 
 and effect exist and cease to exist simultaneously. 
 When the infection has been taken, it is of very little 
 importance to the patient or the physician to be able 
 to identify the origin of the malady. In such a 
 crisis, the first thing which has to be considered is the 
 treatment. Nay, when the symptoms are grave, and 
 the situation is urgent, it is worse than a waste of 
 labour to speculate on the source of the complaint 
 to wrangle over theories, and to abstain from prompt 
 and decisive action. 
 
 St. Paul thinks that he has the Spirit of God. He 
 says so modestly, and if ever man could say it, he says 
 so truly. If life and labour such as his was, if in- 
 tense activity, and equally intense love, such as con- 
 stituted his very nature, were delusions, he might 
 well call himself of all men most miserable ; we might 
 despair of the human race, and assert that the heaviest 
 curse which has fallen on mankind is that gift suici- 
 dal, as we should then justly call it of a disinterested 
 and self-sacrificing sense of duty. If it be the case 
 that they who have diligently set themselves to profit 
 by the order of society and the convictions of others, 
 in order to gather together the means of rank, wealth, 
 pleasure, ease, are the equals or superiors of those who 
 have slighted such advantages, in order that they 
 may effect a permanent improvement in the lot of 
 their fellow-men, if a refined and temperate selfish 
 ^ a shrewd, cold prudence, i> as good an end of
 
 THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN PA UL. 317 
 
 human life as a lofty perseverance after great and 
 generous objects, no delusion can be more gross than 
 Christianity. But, it must be added, that the awak- 
 ening from this delusion would arrest civilisation, and 
 rapidly drive men back to savagery. For a tune, 
 indeed, power might ally itself with intelligence, and 
 might oppress mankind. But very speedily every 
 man's hand would be against his fellow-man, and the 
 sneer of the sophist would become the law of nature. 
 Justice would be the interest of the strongest, and 
 internecine war the unchanging lot of humanity. 
 
 There is an inveterate difficulty in believing that 
 the Apostle is the mouth-piece of a positive revelation. 
 If there is reason to know that he misquotes, or mis- 
 understands the authority to which he appeals, or that 
 the historical statement to which he refers, in order to 
 substantiate his generalisation, is no fact at all, but an 
 apologue or a parable, we may, we ought to decline 
 acceptance of the proof. His conclusions may be tine, 
 though his premises may be irrelevant or false. When 
 a conclusion is certified by experience, formal and pre- 
 cise proof is not always necessary in order to secure 
 conviction, just as it is not always possible. Such a 
 condition is frequent in moral science, all but uni- 
 versal in the case of religious conviction. And so it 
 does not follow that the Pauline conclusion is false 
 because the Apostle's premises are irrelevant. The 
 words of the Psalmist may not mean that human 
 nature is universally corrupt, the derivation of sin 
 from the taint of Adam's transgression may be a 
 paradox, as it certainly seems to be at variance with 
 what we believe of the Divine justice; but man's
 
 318 PAUL OF TARSI'.*. 
 
 nature may } T et be universally corrupt, man may be 
 naturally inclined to evil, we may have no truth in 
 us, and deceive ourselves if we say that we have no 
 sin; we may still need a Teacher, a Saviour, a Re- 
 deemer. St. John is as powerful a witness to the 
 sinfulness of man as St. Paul is, though he does not 
 ascribe this infirmity to the hereditary taint of descent 
 from a disobedient ancestor. 
 
 It matters nothing whether man has sprung from a 
 savage ancestry, the mental powers of which were 
 hardly higher than those of the other animals with 
 whom the primeval barbarian herded, or whether he 
 is the defaced copy of a Divine Exemplar. The fact 
 of interest is that he is now liable to impulses which, 
 if unrestrained, would make instant havoc of society, 
 and which are therefore partly coerced by law, partly 
 by custom, partly, and most of all, by the religious 
 sense. Take away the influence which the latter 
 exercises, and it appears that no substitute can be 
 found for it, and it seems inevitable, either that social 
 forces, which are nearly equal in strength, will engage 
 in the fiercest struggle for supremacy, or that power 
 will create a rigorous and jealous despotism, under 
 which the ruler and his instruments need only to be 
 active and cunning, and the people will be permanently 
 sunk in ignorance and degradation. 
 
 Philosophers and publicists have frequently busied 
 themselves with the project of constructing a common 
 life for voluntary associations; but they have never been 
 able to discover anything which shall be strong enough 
 to make these associations cohere together. There are 
 n> secular Coenobites. Religious associations, on the
 
 SINS AGAINST RELIGION VARIOUS. 319 
 
 other hand, have existed in plenty, and have had a very- 
 tenacious vitality. The apostolic college at Jerusalem 
 is the earliest Christian exemplar. The French mis- 
 sionaries found monasteries in abundance through cen- 
 tral Asia, among the Buddhists. In the United 
 States there are several communities of Coenobites. 
 So vast is that country, and so little is any attrition of 
 sects felt in the rural districts of the Union, that these 
 social experiments have a fairer chance of success and 
 endurance in America than they would have else- 
 where. But every one of these communistic schemes 
 is founded on a religious basis even when, as is 
 charged against some of them, the practice of the 
 community is licentious. A religion may consist of 
 little more than dogma, or it may ignore dogmas and 
 court asceticism, or it may be neither dogmatic nor 
 ascetic, but demand an active charity and a pure heart. 
 Each of these religions has its schedule of offences. 
 In the first the sin is called heresy ; in the second it 
 is called worldliness ; in the third it is a breach of the 
 inner law, which God has ordained and conscience 
 sanctioned. In each case it is supposed that the com- 
 mission of the sin secludes the man who commits it 
 from his Maker, leaves him to the anger of the Judge, 
 excludes him from the love of the Father, cuts him off 
 from illumination and pardon. 
 
 An offence against religion is called a sin. The 
 word commonly used for this state is one which 
 expresses an error, mistake, misconception, less culpa- 
 ble than deliberate or wanton wickedness, but blame- 
 worthy because care and forethought would have 
 prevented its occurrence. The sinner is one who has
 
 : ; L ',, 1'Al'L <>F TARSUS. 
 
 missed his way, whose path has been dark, and who 
 has therefore strayed from it. The word suggests 
 excuse, pardon, reconciliation ; is contrasted with 
 another state in which the light is deliberately put 
 out; in which the offence is wilful, daring, insolent; in 
 which the man is lawless or unjust. Thus, the synop- 
 tic gospels affirm that there is a sin against the Holy 
 Ghost, against that Power which enlightens, strength- 
 ens, teaches men. The author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews contemplates the case of those who have 
 been enlightened and have repudiated the gift, in 
 language containing the strongest phrases of nascent 
 Gnosticism, the phraseology of the Alexandrian 
 Theosophists. The beloved disciple declares that there 
 is a sin unto death. Paul speaks of the rejected, those 
 who fail on being tested; or, as our version gives it, 
 though with a force which familiarity has weakened, 
 the cast-away, the vessels which the potter has 
 framed and found to be unsound or unserviceable. 
 But, generally, the language of the New Testament 
 is merciful towards sin, excluding no one from 
 penitence and pardon. " This is good and approved 
 before God our Saviour, who wills that all men 
 should be saved and arrive at an insight into the 
 truth," says the Apostle in the first letter to Timothy. 
 The charity of Christ is universal, the love of God is 
 unbounded, the door to repentance is open, and the 
 Gospel of the New Covenant is as merciful as the 
 teaching of the Prophets. 
 
 A> n Ti'/ioii k-ans to the contemplative, the ascetic, 
 or the practical consequence of illumination or regen- 
 ration, so it stigmatises as sin a departure from tli--
 
 SINS OF 0PM 10 .V MULTIPLIED. 321 
 
 rule of the life which it has inculcated. It has 
 happened that the first of these forms of religious 
 opinion has exercised so energetic an influence, that 
 conformity to written creeds is treated as the highest 
 duty, divergence from them as the most grievous sin. 
 The Roman Church, for example, has multiplied the 
 "articles of faith," and has uttered its anathema 
 against those who decline to accept any of its dogmas. 
 It is probable that the terrors of this denunciation 
 have been weakened, but there are millions of professed 
 Christians to whose conscience doctrinal heresy is the 
 highest crime that can be committed against the 
 Majesty of God. Perhaps there has been no country 
 where this dread of unbelief has been more general 
 than in Spain. Here the suspicion of heresy was 
 more feared than the reputation of any moral de- 
 pravity. So there are parts of Italy, where people 
 have united the profession of brigandage with the 
 most scrupulous and sincere orthodoxy. It is 
 obvious that the most lively horror at the imputa- 
 tion of unsound opinion on theological topics is 
 quite compatible with the utter absence of all the 
 other elements of the religious life, and that the 
 strictest, the most heartfelt profession of a creed is 
 no guarantee of a single Christian virtue. 
 
 To any one who considers how different are the 
 capacities of men for comprehending facts and reason- 
 ing out conclusions, how difficult it must be to form 
 any comprehension whatever of those remote and 
 exalted conceptions which theology attempts to define 
 and limit, how much less responsible, on the plainest 
 principles of justice, a man must be for an error of
 
 ;\-2-2 PAUL OF TARSI'S 
 
 judgment or opinion, than he is for an offence against 
 virtue or morality, it must seem strange that false 
 opinion has been treated as sin. Hitherto, indeed, old 
 and new forms of religious organisation have been at 
 one on this point, and have held the non-acceptance of 
 a tenet as a criminal act, as one which should be visited 
 with social or even legal penalties. 
 
 They have even asserted, perhaps in justification of 
 their practice, that theological error is the consequence 
 of moral guilt. But men have constantly lived in 
 accordance with the highest and purest moral virtue, 
 while they have been sceptical or heterodox on spec- 
 ulative questions. And conversely, men whose ortho- 
 doxy has been unimpeached have often set an evil 
 example of conduct, have allowed their lives to belie 
 their profession, have even attempted a compromise, 
 under the terms of which strictness of conformity is 
 made to compensate for laxity of practice. Such 
 persons have frequently been treated with the greatest 
 leniency by those who agree with them in opinion. 
 But if theological error were the causes of vice, it 
 ought to follow that the possession of theological 
 truth must be a guarantee of holiness. 
 
 There are opinions, positively entertained, which are 
 immoral in their tendency. Any opinion, for example, 
 which separates a man from those relations to God, 
 which are at once the pledge of his trust in God, 
 and which exact a constant watchfulness over life or 
 action ; any tenet which would induce a man to sub- 
 stitute any other agency than his own conscience, or 
 his own duty, in tin- satisfaction of a moral obligation, 
 is in itst-lt' immoral. The guide may be a Pharisee,
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND DOCTRINAL DOUBT COMPATIBLE. 323 
 
 and the blind may lead the blind ; the ceremonial 
 need not purify the heart, but may leave the man a 
 whited sepulchre. 
 
 There is, however, a serious danger involved in the 
 doctrine that the acceptance of certain definitions and 
 tenets is the necessary foundation of the Christian 
 character. What if overmastering doubts, honest 
 disabilities of judgment, make men decline to admit 
 certain statements, or formulas, or presumed facts ? 
 What if such doubts and difficulties are met by stern 
 declarations and angry anathemas ? Is it not possible 
 to conceive that men may be alienated from a bene- 
 ficent religion by the harshness of its advocates ? 
 Has it not, unhappily, been the case that Christianity 
 has been rendered distasteful to many by the intem- 
 perate severity of those who pretend to expound it ? 
 
 The time must come in which the teaching of 
 Christianity -if it is to retain its hold on the hearts 
 of men must ignore differences of opinion, or, in other 
 words, must accept the fact that while men agree 
 closely on the ground of common duty and common 
 action, and are willing, nay anxious, to make duty 
 more stringent and action more heroic, they cannot 
 all be made to think alike. When this teaching is 
 current, the reunion of Christianity becomes possible, 
 because the teacher has reverted to the examples 
 which the Founder of the faith has given. To have 
 the mind of Christ, it is not necessary to busy 
 oneself with abstract and dark speculations ; but it is 
 necessary for each to do the work wliich God has given 
 him to do, and thereafter commit oneself to Him who 
 judges righteously. To forget the mind of Christ,
 
 324 ^- l VL OF TARSUS. 
 
 and abandon the continuity of that great office which 
 His life, and the life of those who conformed to Him, 
 began, in the vain struggle after effecting a uniformity 
 of opinion, is to nail Him anew to His cross, and then 
 to cast lots for His garment. The faith which rt- 
 moves mountains is not that which creates stumbling- 
 blocks, but it is the zeal which is unsparing of itself, 
 and gentle to others, the love which Paul commends 
 as the greatest and most enduring of the Christian 
 graces. 
 
 That morbid asceticism which believed that motive- 
 less and inactive self-torture was the highest form of 
 the religious life, which made austerity a virtue, and 
 the enjoyment of God's blessings a sin, has probably 
 passed away for ever. This extravagant theory of 
 perfection was imported into Christianity, it would 
 seem, from Buddhism, through the imitation of those 
 devotees who, before the Christian era, congregated 
 in the deserts of Lower Egypt. It is difficult for us 
 to conceive the process by which men, who voluntarily 
 lived a brutish life in caves, or passed their existence 
 on lofty pillars, or went through sharp and meaningless 
 penances, came to imagine that their practice was the 
 truest service that could be rendered to God, and that 
 they were the peculiar favourites of Heaven. 
 
 This strange opinion, derived, I believe, from the 
 practice of rival devotees in the Brahman and Budd- 
 hist creeds, once completely permeated Christianity. 
 It formed the leading characteristic of many religious 
 orders. It still lingers among the more rigid sectaries 
 of the Roman Church, its Carthusians and Trappists. 
 It has peculiar attractions to those who have lived a
 
 THE ASCETIC TEMPER, ITS EVILS. 325 
 
 while in reckless pleasure. It is really akin to that 
 Manichsean doctrine, which, holding that matter is 
 evil, has divided creation between a beneficent God 
 and a malignant demon, and assigned the largest and 
 most important share to the latter. 
 
 In a modified form, it has developed that unhealthy 
 anxiety about personal salvation which has tormented 
 so many good men, has cast a blight on their lives, 
 has benumbed their energies, has crippled their useful- 
 ness. There is no sadder sight than that of a tender 
 and loving nature, which, giving itself up to this 
 dread of God, thereby dishonours His love, and 
 doubts His mercy ; which creates for itself a valley 
 of the shadow of death, a vale of misery; which brings 
 the terrors of Sinai into the region of the Gospel. 
 But Christianity has no claim on society does no 
 service to mankind, if it is to be considered only as 
 the machinery for saving the individual soul, least 
 of all if that soul is only to be saved by an agony of 
 dread. Christ did not live to save men but man. 
 They who are Christ's have the same purpose before 
 them, and any anxiety about their personal safety is 
 superfluous and debasing. 
 
 Christianity demands that man should do good to 
 man for God's sake, and for no other object besides. 
 The opportunities are multiform ; the claim on the 
 individual is perpetual. To such an extent only as is 
 needed for the satisfaction of this great function, does 
 religious duty assume the ascetic spirit. It is possible, 
 when men resolve on such an employment of their 
 powers, that they have to forego not only the regular 
 reward of their labours, but the legitimate enjoyments
 
 OF TARSUS. 
 
 of life. Christ, who expressly repudiated the ascetic 
 life in its mildest form, drawing a contrast between 
 His own practice and that of the Baptist, contem- 
 plates the case of the man who sacrifices domestic 
 happiness to a high sense of public duty. St. Paul 
 takes credit for the self-denial with which he adopted 
 celibacy, or at least suspended that companionship 
 which he considered honourable and pure. He even 
 urges, in his anxiety to detach his followers from the 
 temporary dangers qf their calling, and to accustom 
 them to the contemplation of Christ's immediate ad- 
 vent to judgment, that they should be celibates also. 
 James, the head of the communist church at Jeru- 
 salem, inveighs against the rich, only as forgetful of 
 duty and sunk in sensuality. Now, it is undoubtedly 
 the office of Christian men to avoid temptation, and 
 to keep their passions, appetites, impulses, in check. 
 The favourite metaphor of St. Paul is that of the 
 palaestra. He "keeps under" his body, the word 
 being equivalent to that which Horace employs when 
 he speaks of Sybaris as bruised by the exercise of the 
 gymnasium. The Christian, to use a modern phrase, 
 is always in training is under a permanent regimen 
 and diet. 
 
 The world owes everything to voluntary labour. 
 The energy which pursues knowledge for no material 
 profit, and which eagerly imparts it ; the true pleasure 
 which is felt at conferring lasting and general benefits ; 
 the temper which gains the highest satisfaction by 
 knowing that the cause of humanity, civilisation, pro- 
 gress, has made a firm advance by reason of some ;K t 
 which has strengthened and assisted them ; the addi-
 
 DIFFERENCE FROM THE CHRISTIANS SELF-DENIAL. 3^7 
 
 tion to the knowledge which lightens the sorrow's of 
 mankind, and extends the blessings of an all -wise 
 Providence to the largest possible number of His 
 creatures, and therefore to brutes ; the self-devotion 
 which visits the sick, aids the poor, builds and sustains 
 school, hospital, and a pure Church ; the courage and 
 gentleness which check oppression and disarm anger ; 
 the tenderness which tames savage nations, and re- 
 claims desperate, but not impenitent vice, speaking 
 peace and pardon to them who are fallen, but not 
 incurable; the love which wins the young, and thereby 
 confers the most exquisite pleasure on those who gain 
 the confidence and receive the caresses of childhood, 
 are examples of the Christian temper, imitations of 
 Him who bade little children run to His arms, and 
 who, on the eve of His Passion, with the sad presenti- 
 ment of His own destiny, and the sadder sense of the 
 ruin which brooded over the beloved city, would still 
 have gathered her people to Him, as a hen gathereth 
 her chickens under her wings. 
 
 The greatest victory, however, which the spirit of 
 Christianity achieves is obtained when it permeates 
 the mind of the statesman. In the days when the 
 Gospel was first preached there was no opportunity for 
 sketching the career of such a man, and the Scriptures 
 of the Gospel do not portray undeveloped characters. 
 But the statesman of the divine commonwealth is 
 contained, by implication, in those descriptions of 
 Christian worthiness which Paul loves to draw. To 
 win assent by patient and persistent vindication of the 
 truth, to wait for neither honour nor reward, to use 
 power wisely, never desiring it and never wasting it,
 
 328 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 to bear misconstruction patiently, and to learn vigilance 
 and forbearance from the bitterness of hostile criticism, 
 to outlive calumny by perfect simplicity and candour, 
 to administer affairs justly, and to cherish every force 
 by which social morality and mutual good-will may be 
 strengthened and made permanent, to make no com- 
 promise between ambition and honour, to be unmoved 
 and just amid the din of rival sects and clashing 
 interests, to defer not for an instant to the selfish 
 clamour of a factious mob, whether the mob be one of 
 grandees or peasants, of partisans or opponents, to 
 withstand the subtlest of all temptations, the gratifica- 
 tion of a sordid patriotism, the flattery of a selfish 
 nationality, to be prudent, incorruptible, alert, these 
 are some of the qualities of a Christian statesman. 
 A few men have been such examples, and they have 
 been the apostles of a Divine wisdom, have left 
 ineffaceable traces on the history of mankind, have 
 brought back on the scarred and distorted visage of 
 humanity some features to the likeness of God. Man 
 can give them no reward for their benefits; the 
 recompense of their labour is laid up in the treasury 
 of God. Man could not stimulate them to such efforts 
 and such sacrifices as they make. It is the Spirit of 
 God which dwells within them, and by which they 
 follow the great Captain of man's salvation, like Him 
 being made perfect by suffering. 
 
 The man who counselled the avoidance of doubtful 
 questions in the reception of members into the Chris- 
 tian brotherhood, and who spoke contemptuously of all 
 ascetics, whether they were the emissaries who un- 
 
 li-d the Galatians, or the punctilious forerunners of
 
 THE CHRISTIA N STA TESMA N. 329 
 
 Gnostic idealism, was not likely to have taken part in 
 those theories which have made conformity in religious 
 opinion the most essential feature in the Christian 
 character, or to have discovered any special sanctity in 
 unmeaning austerities. According to the simple creed 
 of the Apostolic age, there is one God. This is the 
 contribution of pure Judaism to the Christian Church. 
 There is one Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. This Man 
 died and rose again. He is the Power of God, the 
 Word of God, the Redeemer of mankind, the present 
 Saviour, the perfect Example, the future Judge. In 
 Him, through Him, for Him we live, work, suffer, 
 hope. This, St. Paul could say, is my gospel, and from 
 this teaching I derive my religion. There are other 
 forms in which the Gospel is preached, but if they 
 preach the Spirit of Christ, I am indifferent to vari- 
 ations in the manner, and heed not hostility to 
 myself. "Some, indeed," says he in one of his last 
 letters, "preach Christ enviously and contentiously, 
 some generously. They who do it contentiously, have 
 no pure purpose, for they think that they w r ill make 
 my chains gall me the more. They who do it lovingly, 
 know that I live in prison to defend the Gospel. 
 But what of this? In every way be it with a 
 sinister or an honest purpose Christ is announced, 
 and this is and shall be matter of congratulation to 
 me." What a comment on the rivalry of sects ! 
 How naturally does the writer go on to warn his 
 beloved Philippians against cavillings and logomachies 
 the perennial curse of Christendom. 
 
 The danger of doctrinal sin is made of little account 
 in the Pauline religion. There are traces, indeed,
 
 /'ACL <>F TARSUS. 
 
 of the idea, that misapprehension as to theological 
 tenets is an offence, or, at least, a danger. There were 
 men, according to the second pastoral epistle, who 
 entertained views about the resurrection, which con- 
 travened the habitual teaching of the Apostle. There 
 were IIK-II whom the Apostle anathematised in his 
 wrath, because they renewed the yoke of Judaism, and 
 frightened the Gentiles into the acceptance of super- 
 fluous observances. There were conceited visionaries, 
 who prided themselves on a special illumination, on 
 a knowledge which puffed them up, who were given 
 over to the deadly delusion of spiritual pride, the 
 heretical men who were to be twice warned and then 
 avoided. But, of the later doctrine which harsh 
 creeds have engendered that the non-acceptance of 
 ecclesiastical definitions is a sin against God, a wicked 
 error, an act of treason against the Divine majesty- 
 there is no trace. The common sense and sagacity 
 of the Apostle would have scouted the idea of those 
 jurists, who, having recognised the conception of 
 conspiracy, rebellion, treason against the human ruler, 
 have applied it to those who will not, or cannot, accept 
 the precedents of successful polemics. Men have 
 asserted, that the result of an attempt to define the 
 transcendental mysteries of Divine Providence ought to 
 be as plain to ordinary minds as those human laws are 
 which may be unjust, but are certainly intelligible, 
 and they have added to this fallacy another which is 
 .still more gross. They have affected to consider that 
 a misapprehension of the Divine nature is the same- 
 sort of offence as that which seeks to overthrow 
 the authority of a secular ruler, who is a man as
 
 PAUL ON DOCTRINAL SIX. 331 
 
 much as the malcontents are ; and that hesitation as 
 to allowing some of the attributes which they assign 
 to an omnipotent God, is identical with the crime 
 of seeking to destroy a government by violence or 
 fraud, of subverting a power which cannot exist 
 and continue without weapons of defence. Alas, to 
 be ignorant of His beneficence and justice ; to live 
 without knowledge of Him, is no matter for anger, 
 but occasion for pity, for that compassion which 
 the strong should feel towards those who are weak; 
 the wise for those who are ignorant ; the rich for 
 those who are poor ; the child whose father and mother 
 love him, and whose home is cheerful and happy, 
 for the fatherless, the orphan, the destitute, the home- 
 less; the man of strong, clear, active mind, for the 
 hypochondriac who suffers under baseless illusions. 
 But sometimes the armour of confident assertion 
 is the cloak of doubt. Shall we admire or pity the 
 audacity which utters the famous paradox of Tertul- 
 lian, " Credo quia impossible est ? " 
 
 For the sin of the ascetic, Paul mentions to dismiss 
 it with disdain. It was no part of this Apostle's 
 theory that his converts should go out of the world, 
 that they should be sour, mortified, recluse. The 
 advice which he gives, and of which so much has been 
 made, as to marriage, is given for temporary and 
 special reasons. Elsewhere, he commends the con- 
 nubial state, and reckons among the signs of the 
 latter times, of the days of wandering spirits, and the 
 teachings of devils, the repudiation of marriage and 
 those alimentary restrictions which ascetics have 
 always insisted on. There is, it may be, some benefit
 
 332 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 in the subjection of the body to discipline ; but piety, 
 religion, is of universal benefit, for it conveys with 
 itself the promises of the present and of the future life. 
 It remains, then, that the sin which the Apostle 
 denounced, and against which he uttered his warnings, 
 was that against the Moral Law, such sin as the 
 Jewish prophets condemned, and made the object of 
 God's wrath, and, in particular, the sins of sensuality 
 and greed, the sins of a reprobate intellect. The 
 details of such a depravity are described in the first 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, where, in 
 accordance with the teaching of the Hebrew jurists, 
 the tendency to these offences is connected with 
 ignorance of the Being and Providence of God, with 
 the absence of the religious sense, with the folly, as 
 David says, which denies God in the heart. So, 
 again, it is the flesh against the spirit, the animal 
 impulse of man contravening and degrading the 
 diviner element, which leads to the sin which dis- 
 honours man. In one remarkable passage, the Apostle 
 compares the logical act of appetite with the logical 
 act of the nobler nature of the spirit, and notes their 
 antagonism, his contrast being probably suggested by 
 the familiar language of Aryan dualism. Sin, then, 
 is partly the consequence of unworthy conceptions of 
 God, partly a yielding to the temptation which is 
 perpetually recurring in the body of this death, in the 
 facile obedience to an imperious law which campaigns 
 against the law of my intellect (the origin, according 
 to Aristotle, of all law), and which takes me captive to 
 itself, to the law of sin which exists in my body, and 
 in its passions.
 
 APPETITE AND REASON. 333 
 
 This contest between appetite and reason, between 
 the flesh and the spirit, is elaborated in the Epistle to 
 the Galatians. " Walk by the spirit, and you will not 
 satisfy the desire of the flesh. The flesh has its 
 impulses which would subdue the spirit, the spirit 
 those which would subdue the flesh. These contravene 
 one another, and so you do what you do not wish to 
 do. If ye are led by the spirit, you are not subject to 
 a law ; " or, as is explained a little afterwards, when the 
 Apostle has sketched the vices and virtues of those 
 contrasted forces, " there is no law against those who 
 practise the latter." Law, be it ceremonial or munici- 
 pal, is directed against those who break it, and has no 
 practical existence to them who are exempted from 
 obedience to a ceremonial code, or whose conduct is 
 such that they do not incur the penalties of municipal 
 legislation. 
 
 Whenever the Apostle utters his warning against 
 sin, and enumerates its various phases, he invariably 
 reckons unchastity as the greatest or most prominent 
 of vices. The extraordinary impurity of social life 
 among Romans, Greeks, Syrians, the shamelessness 
 with which licentiousness was practised and avowed, 
 may have induced the Apostle to lay great stress on 
 the necessity for purity among his converts. In the 
 Epistle to the Corinthians he speaks of incontinence 
 as specially degrading. In that to the Thessalonians 
 he urges the necessity of keeping the body pure, in 
 contrast to Gentile practice. But, apart from the 
 immediate effect of this particular vice, the Apostle 
 knew what were the associations of ancient prostitution. 
 The practice was part of the system of nature-
 
 PAUL OF TARSI'*. 
 
 worship. Antioch, where St. Paul resided so long, 
 was notorious for its dissoluteness, for the openness 
 with which wantons were recognised and patronised. 
 In Corinth, Paphos, and a hundred other cities, prosti- 
 tution was considered, not merely as some of our 
 publicists have reckoned it a social necessity, but a 
 culte, an act of worship. The earlier Scriptures of the 
 Old Testament allude to the women who lived near the 
 precinct of some idol shrine. The story of Israel and 
 Moab bears testimony to the close connection between 
 licentiousness and idolatry. For this reason, fornica- 
 tion is commonly used in the Old Testament as a 
 synonyme for idolatry, and sometimes in the New, as 
 for example in the Revelation. As the Jewish creed 
 grew more strictly monotheistic, it proscribed with 
 peculiar energy any practice which was associated with 
 that nature- worship which it detested and despised. 
 
 To the moralist, sin is vice, which, as far as its 
 influence extends, wrecks society. Violence, fraud, 
 rapine, endanger the institution of property ; licen- 
 tiousness insults the sacredness of home, the dignity 
 of woman, the instincts of paternal fondness and 
 care. It is not because the effects of unchastity 
 are less mischievous than those of lawlessness, that 
 criminal law does not take cognisance of, or punish 
 the former, but because the machinery of repression 
 or punishment is less easy. No civilised community, 
 I believe, neglects, however free it leaves the Press, 
 to punish those who sell indecent or immoral books, 
 pictures, and the like. Nor, were it possible or con- 
 venient to check the vice to which these publications 
 pander, in tin- interest of society, is tlu-iv any doubt
 
 THE SOCIAL EFFECTS OF SIN. 335 
 
 that a legislature might and would use the forces at its 
 control in order to purify, as it does to protect society. 
 
 The effect of sin on the individual is, that it deadens 
 the religious sense. It perverts the sight of God, 
 inducing the man to frame such notions of the Deity 
 as characterised the nature-worship of Greek, Roman, 
 and Syrian. God, argues the Apostle, had made 
 Himself known, the invisible verity being made 
 intelligible by the analogy of the visible creation ; as, 
 for example, the eternal power and divine majesty 
 of the Almighty. But, though the heathen world 
 knew God, its inhabitants "gave Him not the glory 
 and praise that was His due, but argued themselves 
 into folly, so that they were darkened in a senseless 
 heart. Calling themselves wise they became stolid, 
 and transferred the glory of the unchangeable God 
 to some image of changeable man, or to that of 
 bird, beast, or reptile." Hence, he goes on to infer, 
 their vices, on which he dwells with vehement disgust, 
 concluding with a description of the depravity into 
 which the heathen had fallen, and the satisfaction 
 which they felt in their depravity. 
 
 The sight of God which sin perverts, the revelation 
 of God's justice which is made in the Gospel, and 
 which leads to an ever-increasing trust in God, -that 
 process from faith to faith, according to the Hebrew, 
 a formula of growing intensity, -is no mere knowledge. 
 Men may be acquainted with everything which has 
 been alleged, proved, accepted on behalf of a doc- 
 trinal system, and may acquiesce in every tenet 
 which theologians have affirmed, may be of unim- 
 peached orthodoxy, may dread heresy as though it
 
 33G PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 were some dangerous or deadly contagion, and still 
 be far removed from the apostolic sight of God, 
 from the manifestation, the revelation, which Paul 
 thought the choicest gift of the Gospel which he 
 preached. Nay, a precise orthodoxy may be coupled 
 with those very vices which are denounced in the 
 Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians. The 
 history of Christianity can supply abundant illus- 
 trations of the fact, that no religious system, however 
 positive may be its tenets, is any guarantee against 
 that laxity of practice which the Apostle speaks of 
 as the proof of a reprobate mind, or as the logic of 
 the appetite, or as the works of the flesh. Faith, as 
 commonly understood, is neither the life of Christ 
 nor the sight of God. And, conversely, if the sight 
 of God and the life of Christ are the highest hopes 
 and the best pattern which can be before the mind of 
 man, it is possible that heresy, free-thought, resolute 
 inquiry into the ground of our belief, may be no bar 
 to the imitation of the latter, and the possession of 
 the former. The sight of God is not, in the economy 
 of Christ's teaching, reserved for the learned theolo- 
 gian, but for the pure in heart. In this particular, the 
 Apostle's doctrine does not swerve from that of the 
 Master. Man may become the temple of God, but the 
 building must be cleansed for the Divine indwelling. 
 
 In the system of St. Paul, the process of illumina- 
 tion and reconciliation, of forgiveness and hope, is 
 simple. To trust in Christ, to believe in the mercy 
 of God, is sufficient for pardon, is a pledge of grace 
 given, of mercy vouchsafed. The symbol of this trust 
 is baptism into the name of Christ. The warranty of
 
 THE WORK OF GRACE. 337 
 
 the hopes which baptism affirm is the Passion of Jesus. 
 The gospel of the Apostle contains, as has been said, 
 a few facts, and one simple act of initiation. Nothing 
 can be more brief than this gospel of doctrine, for it 
 ascribes the salvation, the regeneration, the reconcilia- 
 tion of man to the sublime self-sacrifice of the risen 
 Christ. It is stated in its most succinct form to the 
 Philippian gaoler, "Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and thou shalt be safe." In the symbolism of the Alex- 
 andrian gloss on the Jewish covenant, as expounded 
 in the Epistle to the Hebrews; before Christ came 
 there was a vail shutting men out from the Schekinah. 
 The proof that God was there was afforded by the 
 occasional entrance of a Jewish priest. He came and 
 the vail was for ever taken away. Every one has a 
 right to enter now. Salvation is no longer the heritage 
 of a race, it is the right of all the families of the earth. 
 Eagerly accepting the universality of the Saviour's 
 mission, the apostles, who treated Christianity in a 
 catholic spirit, were satisfied of the fact that He has in- 
 vited all men to the mercy of God, and that the Cove- 
 nant of Abraham is extended to the whole human race. 
 But when the convert is admitted to the Gospel, 
 the work of grace commences. The change of conver- 
 sion is vast, it is no less than a new creation, a new 
 birth. But it would be rash, irrational, ruinous to 
 suppose that the great work is achieved in the instant 
 of confession and in the avowal of allegiance. The 
 growth of the spiritual man, like that of the natural 
 man, is from babyhood to manhood. The work of the 
 Spirit is solid and gradual. Men are builded up, 
 increase, grow to a full stature. The life of the Chris-
 
 338 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 tian man needs care and watchfulness, self-denial and 
 self-control. The religious change is one of slow 
 accession, of anxious and continual watchfulness. It 
 could not be effected but by the aid of the Divine 
 Spirit, by the presence of Christ, by the perpetual 
 practice of Christian duty, by the concurrence of the 
 will of man, and the help of God. " It is not," says 
 the Apostle, " in my presence only, but in my absence 
 still more, that I insist on the rule that you should 
 accomplish your own safety with fear and with 
 anxiety ; for it is God whose energy effects this in us, 
 that we should will, and we should show our energy 
 in the direction which pleases Him." St. Paul uses 
 the same emphatic word a word for which philosophy 
 is indebted to Aristotle to show that the will of God 
 and the will of man are simultaneously operative in 
 the Christian soul. Man is no inert matter, but 
 without God the man can do nothing. 
 
 Each man is aided in this great work of regeneration 
 and reconciliation by the Spirit of God, and is thereby 
 renewed in the likeness of the Great Father. But 
 surrounding, combining, pervading, knitting and bind- 
 ing together them who are engaged in the labour of 
 the spiritual life, is the glorified Christ. He begins 
 the redemption of the individual, by constituting these 
 units into a Church. Man cannot live in a religious 
 solitude, any more than he can dwell apart from the 
 social life in which he moves. Christianity is a fellow- 
 ship, a company, a community. In this association, 
 no man can say to his neighbour, I have no need of 
 thee. The aggregate of Christian men is a building, 
 in which the individuals are tlu> separate stones, a
 
 GOD WORKING WITH MAN'S WILL. 339 
 
 body of which they are the separate members. Christ 
 is the life which pervades them, by which they are 
 mutually sensitive, by which they exist, move, grow. 
 " We have," says St. Paul " our commonwealth in the 
 heavens. From this we are expecting our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, who will transfigure the body of our humilia- 
 tion so that it shall take the shape of the body of His 
 glory, in accordance with the living energy by which 
 He can marshal all things under Himself." Then the 
 illumination is completed, the pardon is sure, the 
 victory is won, the sight of God is everlastingly 
 obtained, and the mission of Christ is ended. 
 
 That the great scheme of human redemption and 
 moral progress should fail for want of advocates who 
 can win assent, and gather forces for the battle against 
 selfishness and sin, is not to be believed. To entertain 
 this doubt, to sit with folded arms while the course of 
 humanity goes backward, to be dismayed at the 
 present, to despair of the future, is the highest offence 
 which a clear conception of truth can commit against 
 duty. " Woe to me," said Paul, " if I preach not the 
 Gospel ; to do it is no cause for boasting ; I must needs 
 do it." To decline the work is to sin against God's 
 Spirit, to refuse Him who speaks, to enter into the 
 peril of that sin which is, above all, inexcusable. And, 
 on the other hand, it is certain that they who, for no 
 other purpose than that of doing justly, and curing the 
 hardships and sorrows of life, seek the good of man, 
 will find that they are, though perhaps unconsciously, 
 the truest teachers of the Gospel of mercy and grace, 
 "though Abraham be ignorant of them, and Israel 
 acknowledge them not."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THEY who have busied themselves with the chrono- 
 logy of the New Testament, generally set a period of 
 about thirty-three years between the time at which 
 the "young man Saul," eager to vindicate the Law, 
 set out for Damascus, and that at which, in his last 
 imprisonment, " Paul the aged " declared that " he 
 had fought a good fight, had finished his course, and 
 was now ready to be offered." This interval had been 
 spent in founding and in confirming churches. The 
 Acts of the Apostles give us an account of somo 
 among Paul's many labours. His own Epistles supply 
 us with a little further information. But the narra- 
 tive in the historical work is imperfect, even where it 
 professes to state the facts, and is silent as to the last 
 years of Paul's life. The letters which the Apostle 
 wrote, were, we must believe, very numerous. His 
 care of all the churches certainly led to frequent 
 communications with them, so that, even at a com- 
 paratively early period in his career, his letters were 
 reckoned to be weighty and vigorous. But only a 
 small number of these can have been preserved. His
 
 THE RAXGE OF PA UL'S LABOURS. 341 
 
 labours were incessant, and he was always seeking to 
 occupy new ground. But we hear about none of his 
 doings from the time in which he rented a house at 
 Rome, six years before the commonly-received date of 
 his martyrdom, to the final consummation of his career, 
 when he stood, almost friendless, before the judgment- 
 seat of Nero, and was looking forward to his rest and 
 his reward. 
 
 During this vigorous life he had preached the 
 Gospel over the Western world, avoiding only those 
 districts where other men had laid the foundation, and 
 renewing by letter, when absent, the teaching which 
 he had given by word of mouth. Some of these 
 congregations must have kept archives, and a few of 
 these archives were preserved till such time as the 
 Jewish reaction abated, and the surviving writings of 
 Paul were sought after, especially by the Latin Chris- 
 tians, in order to develop a systematic theology. It 
 was for this object especially that the Epistles of Paul 
 were collected, studied and expounded. But there was 
 nothing less before the eyes of Paul than the founda- 
 tion of a school. His aim was to establish a divine 
 commonwealth, which, dwelling within the organisation 
 of the Roman empire, should leaven, purify, and finally 
 reform society. The universal acknowledgment of 
 Christ is a part of the recompence of His suffering. He 
 is to have the homage of every knee and every tongue. 
 Such a result, however, is impossible, unless the 
 Gospel of Christ is capable of reaching every heart, and 
 instructing every mind. Now, nothing is more certain 
 to hinder this universality, than a hard and dry system 
 of definitions and restrictions. Hence the Apostle
 
 342 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 warns men against these refinements. " Do what you 
 do without them," he says in his last public epistle 
 that to the Philippians. " Have peace among one 
 another," he enjoins in his earliest epistle that to 
 the Thessalonians, whom he speaks of as an example 
 to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. 
 
 It is plain that justice is the foundation of civil 
 society, and that the essence of secular justice is to 
 grant each man full freedom to labour, and to secure 
 each man that he should enjoy the fruits of his labour, 
 subject only to the condition that the exercise of his 
 faculties shall not inflict wrong on others. Nor is it 
 less plain, that the organisation of civil society is 
 perpetually exposed to attack on that side which forms 
 the most vital part of its existence, and that it can 
 only by perpetual effort ward off force and fraud, the 
 success of which is fatal to its being. Government 
 exists to do justice, though the decline and fall of 
 nations has been due to the fact that the power of 
 government has not only not been employed for the 
 primary object of its existence, but has perpetually 
 aided rapine and oppression. The Platonic Socrates is 
 made to show that any theory of government which 
 warps justice, even in appearance, to the sustentation 
 of particular interests, contains that which is in the 
 end certain to effect the dissolution of civil society. 
 
 The profound sympathy of Paul, which made him 
 suffer with any distress, and be indignant at any offence 
 which his disciples endured, suggested a striking and 
 exact illustration of that distributive justice which 
 constitutes the key-stone of civilisation. He bids 
 men n. at each other as members of the same physical
 
 PAUL'S THEORY OF SOCIETY. 343 
 
 organisation, urging that injury done to one part 
 induces suffering and disease on the whole. Such a 
 theory of civil government corresponds with that of 
 those economists who allege that, from a material point 
 of view, society is best off, not when the largest 
 amount of wealth is collected, but when the largest 
 amount of persons live in affluence or comfort by 
 means of labour naturally or spontaneously distributed. 
 In the social and economical state alike, the spontan- 
 eous distribution of these benefits which industry and 
 order collect, is of more profound significance than the 
 circumstances which attend on their production or 
 collection. In the physical body, nature effects this 
 distribution ; health being the state in which such 
 an equipoise is indicated or affected, disease an abnor- 
 mal growth or a local repletion. In the Pauline 
 hypothesis of a perfect society, the rectification of a 
 wrong is not due to the clamour or plaint of that 
 which is immediately distressed, but to the sympathy 
 felt by the whole of society towards the suffering or 
 the injured part. From St. Paul's point of view, a 
 social evil sends a pang through the whole body, 
 urging it to take note of the disease and to discover 
 the remedy. That the remedy can be found, and the 
 disease subdued, he did not for an instant doubt. To 
 ignore the disease, or to deny the remedy, is to ac- 
 quiesce in the wreck of humanity. 
 
 Conceive, if you can, a public conscience so keen and 
 tender as to be instantly alive to the moral evils which 
 corrupt, enfeeble, blemish those powers whose unin- 
 terrupted action designates the vigour of true and 
 unbroken progress, and so wise as to instantly busy
 
 344- PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 itself with their cure. Imagine men, comprehending 
 that the corrective forces of public morality are not, 
 except indirectly, concerned with the reformation of 
 offenders, but principally with the purification of 
 mankind itself from some taint which it has ignorantly, 
 wilfully, or carelessly contracted. Picture a society 
 busily engaged in finding out the means by which 
 poverty, ignorance, vice, selfishness, can be chastised or 
 healed, not because the victims of those morbid 
 growths are afflicted, but because society itself is 
 degraded and dishonoured by the presence of such 
 calamities, and is therefore restless till it cures or 
 alleviates them. Whenever man begins to purify the 
 society in which he lives, under the stimulant of these 
 feelings, and from these motives, he begins to construct 
 the divine commonwealth, the perfect man, as Paul 
 conceived and expounded it. Well would it have been 
 if the reformation of man had but been continued in 
 this spirit. The utmost that men have done as yet, is 
 to concede a right, perhaps no more than the right of 
 complaint to the sufferer. But they will find no 
 remedy for the diseases and depravity of social life, 
 till they recognise that the worst part of the case is the 
 influence of these malignant growths upon the health 
 of humanity itself, and perhaps on its very life. 
 
 It is not, therefore, Utopian to project a social 
 system which shall be formed and governed upon 
 the principle that vice and misery must be obviated 
 in the interests of society itself. Nor is it visionary 
 to conceive a force which shall so permeate the 
 <-mmon life of men as to sustain such a policy 
 wli.-n it has once been adopted, and, therefore, form
 
 SIN AND HOLINESS. DISEASE AND HEALTH. 345 
 
 an obstacle to the beginning of that which demoralises 
 and degrades all in the depravity of a part. We 
 may imagine, with perfect reasonableness, a community 
 where wrong is unknown, and, therefore, from which 
 misery is banished. No excellence, either of the State 
 or of the individual, is impracticable simply because 
 it has hitherto been ideal, and has transcended 
 experience. Paul, who avowed that man was de- 
 praved, contemplated his social perfectibility. 
 
 Now, whether it be that man has departed from 
 the pure original in which he was once created 
 as is commonly conceived, or, that he has, conversely, 
 made some progress towards the perfection which 
 may be developed in the future by the gradual 
 growth of a wise morality, but that he has, histori- 
 cally, no higher origin than that of mere animal 
 life ; it is clear, on either hypothesis, that society has 
 hardly attempted to govern itself on the principle 
 which has been adverted to, that of righting wrong, 
 and checking vice, in consideration of its own safety 
 and health. It is also clear, that prodigious heroism 
 is needed on the part of individuals who, foreseeing 
 the only means by which society can be regenerated, 
 seek to grapple with the evils whose ultimate con- 
 sequence must be so disastrous. Such persons have 
 been violently crushed, or mercilessly ridiculed at 
 best, have provoked into active antipathy a host 
 of interests, which can easily get credence for the 
 fallacy that custom is nature, or that an habitual 
 wrong becomes a prescriptive right. And, even if 
 this angry panic of imperilled or alarmed self-interest 
 be wanting, there is always the obstacle of inert
 
 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 apathy which calls enthusiasm a madness, and would 
 rather indolently shut its eyes, than rouse itself 
 to knowledge and incur the anxieties of resolution. 
 
 o 
 
 Paul was not wanting in courage. Testimony to 
 his lofty and unshaken perseverance is to be gathered 
 from the sufferings of his life. He is still unshaken 
 as he contemplates the apparent failure which sad- 
 dened his retrospect, when, deserted by his friends, 
 he had the immediate prospect of a violent death. 
 He had laboured for more than thirty years, and 
 all those in Asia Asia, which had been the principal 
 scene of his energies were turned away from him, 
 had left him alone. His career is an example of 
 the trouble, the animosity, the disappointment which 
 attend on those who strive to purify the world. The 
 indomitable vitality of a true Christianity has rendered 
 it impossible that the career of Paul should be a 
 warning. 
 
 But Paul did not, and could not, attempt to grapple 
 with society as a whole. As has been several times 
 observed, he believed that the world was rapidly 
 approaching its dissolution. There was some reason 
 for this belief. Mankind has not even yet recovered 
 from the desolation which was caused by the Roman 
 Empire, and from the destruction of ancient civilisa- 
 tion. That empire and that civilisation perished by 
 their own vices, by the persistent indifference of 
 the Imperial government to all public duty. But, 
 even if the Apostle had anticipated the duration of 
 the world, he could not have directly attempted the 
 task of a social reformation in the Roman Empire. 
 Thu uflort would have been a forlorn hope. There
 
 THE CIVITAS DEI. 347 
 
 was risk enough in the indirect attempt, risk which 
 any but the boldest spirit would have hesitated to 
 run. But to have openly defied the power of Roman 
 conservatism, would have been to provoke instant 
 destruction. And the sacrifice would have been as 
 fruitless as that of Savonarola. 
 
 Hence Paul set himself to work to construct a 
 society within a society, which should challenge as 
 little attention as possible, beyond that which would 
 be accorded to the blameless and virtuous lives of 
 its members. Under circumstances which would 
 not cause scandal or retort upon the Christian pro- 
 fession, he counsels his disciples to ask no questions 
 for conscience' sake, to go into general society. With 
 the same purpose he dissuades the believing wife 
 from using the right of divorce against the unbelieving 
 husband, because he anticipates that the latter v Ul 
 be won over to the Gospel by the pure and scrupulous 
 life of his wife. The advice marks all the difference 
 between a needless and offensive protest against the 
 conduct of one's neighbour, and a rigid regimen of 
 one's own life and action. If one's own reputation 
 for consistency is challenged, the Apostle counsels 
 no reticence, justifies no evasion, permits no cowardice. 
 But it is neither good manners nor tact to blurt out 
 one's own convictions in any company, or, under all 
 circumstances, to perpetually protest against whatever 
 one sees and hears. It was the vice of the 
 Christianity which followed on the Apostolic Age, 
 or, rather, on the age which followed the revival of 
 Paul's teaching, for the professed Christian to court 
 persecution by indiscreet and superfluous avowals.
 
 348 PA UL OF TARSUS. 
 
 Hippolytus, in telling us, from the Christian side, 
 what was the career of the worthless Callistus, 
 whom the Roman Church subsequently elected as 
 its bishop, and has even canonised, is evidence 
 of the eagerness with which an adventurer affected 
 martyrdom ; and Lucian, from the heathen side, 
 narrates, in the history of Peregrinus, how devotees, 
 whose reputation was doubtful, wantonly affronted 
 the habits of society in the third century after Christ. 
 The man who intrudes such crude beliefs on his 
 own age, becomes the orthodox persecutor of a time 
 when his beliefs are accepted. When Gibbon says 
 that the virtues of a clergy are more dangerous to 
 civil society than their vices are, he is thinking of 
 those virtues of courage or rashness which simply 
 aid the ambition, or affirm the egotism of those 
 who exhibit them. It is not clear whether Paul 
 knew the parable about the good seed and the tares, but 
 it is clear that his advice is quite in accordance with 
 the teaching of Christ. It is doubtful whether he 
 had ever heard of those disciples who wished to call 
 down fire from heaven, but it is certain that he 
 was not of that spirit which Christ rebuked. It is 
 manifest that he was all things to all men, if haply 
 he might gain some, that he was indifferent to those 
 who preached Christ of contention, provided only 
 that Christ was preached, that he was thoroughly 
 of the mind of Christ, who prayed that His disciples 
 might not be taken out of the world, but be pre- 
 served from the evil of the world. 
 
 The Gospel which Paul preached was not intended 
 to govern nit-ii, but to influence them. It was not
 
 CHRISTIANITY REFORMS SOCIETY. 34<) 
 
 intended to confer authority on its teachers, advocates, 
 disciples, hut to lay duties on them. " The Son of 
 Man came not to be the object of service, but to serve, 
 and to give His life as a ransom for many," is said by 
 Christ when he was enforcing the great tenet of 
 Christianity, that personal power and influence are to 
 be dedicated to public service. The object of the 
 Christian life is to restore, to regenerate mankind ; not 
 to assure the individual of his personal salvation, in 
 the first instance at least, but to assist in the recon- 
 struction of society. The reward of this labour is an 
 eternal identity in the midst of assured felicity, "a 
 place in the kingdom of God," a share in that " which 
 has been prepared by Christ " on behalf of them who 
 wait for Him. And in order that as many persons as 
 possible may be included within the number of those 
 who have this great object before them, Paul was 
 prepared to do away with every hindrance and obstacle 
 in the way of union. What the difficulties were with 
 which this plan was beset, has been repeatedly stated 
 in these pages. They were not obviated during Paul's 
 life; they recur in other forms after the obstacles which 
 Paul sought to remove had become unimportant, when 
 the Christian sects reproduced the temper, after aban- 
 doning the tenets, of conservative Judaism. The 
 Church of Christ is not a society bound together by 
 a written constitution, or by a set of formal rules, 
 but by the work and the fruit of the Spirit. 
 
 Every epistle of Paul bears witness to his convic- 
 tion, that the victory of Christianity is to be found in 
 the holiness of its adherents. Having commented on 
 the variety of powers and gifts, which the followers of
 
 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 the faith may possess and exercise, he lays down in 
 the Epistle to the Romans a series of injunctions on 
 the details of the Christian life. " Let your love be 
 genuine. Loathe the evil, cling to the good. Into 
 your mutual brotherhood carry the feelings of natural 
 affection. Show that grace of courtesy which makes a 
 man defer his own dignity to that of his fellow. Be 
 diligent in the business on your hands, be eager in the 
 spirit of your profession, serve the occasion which lies 
 before you, feel joy in your hopes, constancy in your 
 trials, confidence in your prayers. Be generous to 
 the wants of those who hold your own belief, be eager 
 to practise friendly intercourse with all, meet those 
 who harm you with kind words, with blessing and not 
 with cursing. Give the sympathy of cheerfulness and 
 sorrow to those who need it. Have unanimity with 
 one another, avoid haughtiness of spirit, condescend 
 to be gentle with men of lowly station. Do not think 
 of nothing but yourselves, do not retaliate evil. In 
 your general intercourse with mankind, be anxious for 
 a good reputation, and, if it be possible, for your part, be 
 peaceable. Do not seek, my beloved, to exact satisfac- 
 tion, but give place to anger, according to the scripture, 
 ' Vengeance is mine, I will punish wrong, saith the 
 Lord.' If thine enemy, then, hunger, feed him ; if he 
 thirst, give him drink,- for by doing so thou shalt heap 
 coals of fire on his head. Let not evil-doing vanquish 
 you, but overcome it by the good you do." 
 
 Such is a paraphrase of the conduct which Paul 
 
 commends as the means by which the Gospel may be 
 
 approved of, and its influence extended. It will be 
 
 u that these injunctions apply principally to the
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. SECULAR GOVERNMENT. 351 
 
 mutual intercourse of Christian men, and to their 
 dealings with the world around them. They con- 
 tain the quintescence of common sense. They are 
 followed by a general rule of obedience to secular autho- 
 rity, and an acquiescence in the course of Providence, 
 as indicated in the existing authority of the civil 
 power. The arguments on w r hich this acquiescence is 
 based are these : The Apostle urges that there is no 
 reasonable ground on which Christian men can be 
 apprehensive of that power which the magistrate 
 wields. Law is for the wrong-doer, not for the just, 
 whom Law virtually respects and defends. Next, the 
 civil administration of affairs is part of the moral 
 government of the world, and therefore resistance to 
 authority is resistance to the implied Providence of 
 God. Lastly, and this is most to the purpose, the 
 order of the world is temporary, and will not long 
 endure. " The night is far advanced, the day is near." 
 In immediate proximity to that great change which 
 will follow instantly on the appearance of Christ, it is 
 idle to disturb oneself with the merely secular question 
 of human government and law. 
 
 Had Paul anticipated the prolonged duration of 
 the visible world, had he foreseen that the course of 
 things would have remained unchanged for centuries 
 after his own life and work were finished, he could not 
 have varied the advice which he gives to the Christians 
 whom he instructed. Had he contemplated a time in 
 which absolutism would give way to popular govern- 
 ment, and the Christian man would not only be invited, 
 but would be bound to exercise his judgment on ques- 
 tions of public policy, and to take part in the administra-
 
 352 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 tion of affairs, he would still have counselled obedience 
 to law and authority, even if the authority were sel- 
 fish and the law unjust. Better have a bad adminis- 
 tration than anarchy, better partial law than general 
 confusion. But to suppose that he would have 
 counselled indifference, or passive acquiescence in 
 tyranny or wrong, is to misapprehend the whole tenor 
 of his teaching. Christianity is a perpetual protest 
 against evil, whether it be temporal or spiritual, 
 whether it be that of ruler or subject, whether it be 
 crime or sin. If it have the opportunity of using the 
 force of civil authority conjointly with its moral 
 influence to do what is just and right, it will not 
 hesitate to employ such powers as Providence has 
 bestowed on it. Men do not put off their civil duties 
 to the generation in which they live, because they 
 profess to believe in a religion which promises them 
 certain future benefits. They will still " walk in 
 wisdom to those who live without their action, and will 
 pay the price that it is worth for the use of the 
 occasion which lies before them." It is true, that the 
 best force which Christianity can exercise is to be 
 found in the example of life which the Christian spirit 
 affords. But the man who held that Christian men 
 shall judge the world, shall, in the language of the 
 Rabbinical schools, judge angels, and much more what 
 belongs to the interests of this life, would certainly 
 not have precluded Christianity from aiding natural 
 morality and justice with all the forces at its disposal. 
 
 Besides, the mind of every Jew who cherished 
 any recollection of his nation's glory, its prestige 
 and its mission, was occupied with the memory of
 
 THE PA TRIOTIC FEELING OF PA UL. 353 
 
 that ancient time, when the prophet stood before 
 the king, and, if need be, rebuked him for falling 
 away from the covenant of Israel, and the command- 
 ment of God. Paul never forgot the greatness of 
 the race from which he sprung; never, even when 
 he had been forcibly severed from both parts of it, 
 from the Jews of the old faith, for his unpardonable 
 conversion ; from the Jews of the Apostolic College, 
 for his equally unpardonable indifference to ritual, 
 did his tenderness for the ancient people of God fail 
 to break forth, did his pride of race forsake him. It 
 is not without design that he lays so much emphasis 
 on the prophetic office, implying by it the function 
 of bearing testimony to the truth of God before an 
 unbelieving and demoralised world ; as the prophets 
 of old did from the days of Samuel to those of 
 Malachi. 
 
 The Jewish prophet is the representative of the 
 principle, that the forces of government are, and 
 should be subordinated to justice, mercy, and con- 
 science; ,and that no office, however high, is, or 
 ought to be out of the reach of reproof or correction. 
 Armed with the Word of God, the prophet is as 
 we are told by Jeremiah a defenced city, an iron 
 pillar, and brazen walls against king, prince, priest, 
 and people. A high office, but one full of danger 
 to him who fills it; for Jeremiah, though constantly 
 the counsellor of king and people, is frequently in 
 great peril on account of his far-sighted candour, 
 most of all, at the hands of dishonest rivals, who 
 prophesied smooth things, and deceived the people 
 with the hopes of safety or impunity. It was in a
 
 PAUL OF TARSI'S. 
 
 spirit like that of a Hebrew prophet, a Jeremiah, 
 a Micah, or an Amos, that Paul stood in the 
 presence of Felix, and reasoned with him on justice, 
 and self-restraint, and a future judgment, till the 
 adventurer and man of pleasure trembled before liis 
 prisoner. In the same manner Paul argued with 
 the younger Agrippa, though with less success, 
 since he only extorted from the king an ironical 
 compliment. 
 
 It must not, however, be forgotten, that the prophet 
 of old addressed such a monarch, a prince, a priest, 
 and a people, as whatever were the short-comings 
 in the practice of each professed allegiance to the 
 la\v of Moses. Even Israel had not really revolted 
 from God; only from David and the worship at 
 Jerusalem. The prophet of Israel does not reproach 
 king and people for the dissent which reared the 
 chapels in Dan and Bethel, but for the rebellion 
 which led them to worship Baal and Ashtaroth in 
 the place of the God of their fathers. Here, except 
 during the dynasty of Ahab, there was, at least, a 
 nominal acceptance of the national religion ; and the 
 prophet though he incurred frequent risk for the 
 boldness of his manner, and, occasionally, for the 
 inferences which his denunciations suggested had 
 nothing to fear on account of the matter of his speech. 
 Elijah, Micaiah, Elisha, are menaced or punished 
 for their attitude to the king, not for their religion ; 
 and the false prophet, Zedekiah, who urged Ahab 
 to his destruction, employed the common prelude 
 to the prophetic utterance, "As the Lord liveth." 
 So, also, Jeremiah declares, "Then the Lord said
 
 THE PROPHETS. 355 
 
 unto me, the prophets prophesy lies in My name ; 
 I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, 
 neither spake unto them." This hypocrisy did not 
 render these time-servers less bitter in their treatment 
 of the true messenger, but it acknowledged that his 
 mission, like theirs, was in the name of the God of 
 Israel, and that he was justified in speaking openly 
 before king and priest. Had the office of Paul fallen 
 in times like those of the Hebrew prophet, he would 
 have dealt as largely with the political circumstances 
 of his day as his predecessors did, as boldly as he 
 himself spake before Ananias and the Sanhedrim. 
 
 The teaching of St. Paul is as precise when he 
 touches on the internal life of the Christian. Keenly 
 alive to the reality of sin, occasionally using language 
 about it which strongly savours of the dualism which 
 was adopted by the stricter Gnostics; firmly holding 
 that the beginning of deliverance is the purchase 
 which Christ has made of the enslaved soul by 
 the price of His Passion; the lesson which he reads 
 his disciples is, in the highest degree, practical. 
 He would have them look perpetually to the law 
 of their mind, their conscience, the Spirit of Christ 
 which inhabits them, and to gather a rule of life 
 from its guidance. He is perfectly plain-spoken 
 about the vices which he condemns, the sensual and 
 selfish practices which he saw everywhere about him, 
 and of which he says, that they who permit the 
 growth of these habits shall not inherit the kingdom 
 of God. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, gladness, 
 peace, forbearance, gentleness, kindliness, trust, good 
 temper, self-control," he tells us in the Epistle to
 
 350 P&VL OF TARSUS. 
 
 the Galatians. "Put on, then/' (he says to the 
 Colossians,) "as elect, holy, beloved of God, hearty 
 compassion, gentleness, modesty, good temper, for- 
 bearance." He has advice to give to husband and 
 wife, to parent and child, to master and servant, 
 to men as members of churches, to individuals as 
 engaged in the earnest struggle of the Christian 
 life. " My exhortation, brethren, is," says he in the 
 first of his epistles, "that you reprove the unruly, 
 that you comfort the low-spirited, assist the weak, 
 be forbearing to all. Take heed not to retaliate 
 evil for evil, but always follow after what is good 
 to each other and to all. Be always glad. Pray 
 regularly. Give thanks on all occasions, for this 
 is God's will in Christ Jesus on your account. Do 
 not put out the light of the Spirit. Do not make 
 scorn of teaching. Test everything, and hold what 
 is worthy. Abstain from any kind of evil." Similar 
 lessons of moral virtue are given to the Ephesians, 
 if, as some have doubted, the letter which goes under 
 this name was intended for the Church of Ephesus, 
 and are scattered up and down every epistle. A holy 
 life, a blameless demeanour, a gentle temper, a win- 
 ning manner, are the means by which Paul would 
 have every man use the gift which is bestowed on 
 him, and do his part in effecting the perfection of 
 humanity. 
 
 Christianity recognised the corruption, imperfection, 
 weakness of man's moral nature, and, withal, saw that 
 this infirmity not only impaired the progress of the 
 individual, but hindered the development of society. 
 It discerned that the regeneration of man was to be
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIETY. 357 
 
 effected by the sacrifice of man, and it discovered the 
 original of this sacrifice in Jesus of Nazareth. These 
 two facts constitute the basis of this religion. Further- 
 more, and by implication, Christianity affirmed the 
 fundamental equality of all men, equality in the 
 necessity of an atonement and a mediation, equality 
 in the right to both. It acknowledged neither sacer- 
 dotal nor secular privilege, for its highest officer is a 
 preacher or minister. As its advocacy is so lofty a 
 self-abnegation, and as obedience to its tenets is so 
 thoroughly spiritual, it was, and ever is, absolutely 
 separated from that nature-worship, which destroyed 
 the civilisation which it attempted to influence, and 
 which, under one form or other of materialism, has 
 survived its earliest manifestations. As it was in- 
 tensely sympathetic, it was driven into antagonism 
 towards that Gnostic particularism which offered its 
 devotee perfection, by the contemplation of a wisdom 
 which might be achieved by culture and knowledge, 
 but which never sought to regenerate or benefit the 
 world. 
 
 It is by means like those which have been recounted, 
 that Paul contemplated a general leavening of society 
 by the genius of Christianity. He knew who had 
 better personal experience of the fact ? that a 
 resolute and wise spirit is certain to attract attention 
 and win allegiance. For thefe is at least this consola- 
 tion to those who, being credited with disinterested- 
 ness, seek to impress their opinions upon their fellow- 
 men, that even though a very moderate amount of 
 freedom may be given to those who strive to reform 
 society, the effect of every lofty purpose is rendered
 
 358 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 more intense and lasting by reason of its exceeding 
 rarity. Even those who are sunk in sloth, sensuality, 
 and selfishness, are attracted by the energy which 
 disdains their pleasures and purposes, and shapes out 
 for itself some novel, but beneficent end. The only 
 real resistance which earnestness and activity meet, 
 is that of being confronted with an antagonist resolu- 
 tion, which is equally persevering and determined. 
 A strong will can be withstood only by collision with 
 another will, whose weapons have been tempered by 
 the same, or by an equally skilful armourer. To such 
 an energy as that of Paul there was no antagonism, 
 either in the sluggishness and ignorance of popular 
 idolatry, or in the subtle but nerveless refinements of 
 ancient philosophy. His tenets interpreted, metho- 
 dised, and modified, permeated ancient civilisation 
 rapidly. But, unhappily, the master-builder had no 
 true successor. His mantle fell on no one. No Elisha 
 obtained a double share of the Christian prophet's 
 spirit. 
 
 No successor of St. Paul, no disciple, no companion 
 is known to us as having laboured like him, or as 
 having written like him. With the exception of Luke, 
 none of his associates in the ministry have even been 
 canonised. There are other compositions of the Apos- 
 tolic Age, which have never, or only temporarily, been 
 admitted into the Scriptures of the New Covenant. 
 There are others which may have been written by those 
 who had heard the apostolic teachings. But, they are 
 wholly inferior to those relics which were collected 
 and compiled into the volume of the New Testament, 
 schools of the prophets provided a succession of
 
 THE SCRIPTURES OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 359 
 
 teachers from the days of Samuel to those of the 
 restoration, and during six centuries the same teaching 
 was proclaimed with unabated vigour and spirituality. 
 But the Scriptures of the New Testament are con- 
 cluded within a brief epoch, and are concluded ab- 
 ruptly. One successor of the Apostle Clement of 
 Rome is a faint reflection from the man of Tarsus, 
 speaks neither with his authority nor with his fulness 
 and depth. It is not difficult, even if we look at the 
 facts from no supernatural point of view, to discover 
 why the Church, when it framed its canon, and when it 
 had decisively admitted the authority of Paul, treated 
 him as eminently inspired ; for no teacher of Christ- 
 ianity ever possessed so great a genius, none was ani- 
 mated by so intense a religious sense, or enlightened 
 by such profound sagacity, and endowed with such 
 admirable tact. 
 
 It will be curious, perhaps instructive, to consider, 
 in concluding this estimate of Paul and his times, 
 what would have been the consequence had other 
 men, equally gifted with the Pharisee of Tarsus, suc- 
 ceeded him in the conduct of the Church ; and what 
 would have been the attitude of such a man as he 
 was, if he were to appear among us now, if, according 
 to the fancy which was prevalent among many theo- 
 rists of his age, the spirit of Paul were to re-animate 
 some human body, and to guide anew some human 
 will. 
 
 The Christology of Paul might have been progres- 
 sive. The epistles of Paul say nothing of the birth 
 or childhood of Christ. They assign Him no miracu- 
 lous origin ; they speak of Him as merely a descen-
 
 3GO PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 dant of the stock of David. The language of these 
 writings implies that the perfection of Christ was 
 finally effected at His death and resurrection, that it 
 was the recompence of His perfect self-sacrifice. The 
 critical passage in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 
 from which it appears that the dignity of Christ was 
 a development, and His office one which would ulti- 
 mately be superseded by the Almighty Father, when 
 its work was completed, indicates that Paul had by 
 no means attempted that harmony between Tritheisiu 
 and Monotheism, which tasked the energies of the 
 Nicene Fathers, and which has finally been accepted 
 by the general voice of Christendom. Minute and 
 laborious search into the epistles proves nothing more 
 than a general acquaintance, on the part of Paul, with 
 the spirit of Christ's teaching, and gives no idea of his 
 having been informed of those details which are found 
 in all the gospels, and particularly in the last. He is 
 thoroughly acquainted with the moral perfection of 
 Jesus ; he affirms the completeness with which the 
 Lord satisfies the Messianic hope, and vindicates His 
 claim to being the Founder of the Gospel, and of the 
 kingdom of God. He asserts that Christ is not only 
 the power of God, and the wisdom of God i.e., that 
 He satisfies the conditions under which, according to 
 Jewish teaching, God is manifest in the flesh, but that 
 He has become to us wisdom from God, justice, purifi- 
 cation, redemption. He is the source of all hope and 
 strength. But Paul never forgets that while there is 
 one Lord Jesus Christ, there is one God. 
 
 Still, it does not follow that, as time passed on, and 
 ili- int. -us.- l.i-licf in the humanity of Christ, and tin
 
 THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 361 
 
 nearness of His second coming grew fainter, Paul 
 might not have developed more fully that theory of 
 the nature of Christ which was first debated by the 
 Gnostics, and ultimately settled by the Alexandrian 
 theosophists. The Eastern mind was thoroughly im- 
 pregnated with the idea of emanations from God. 
 The Western was accustomed to apprehend the incar- 
 nation of God in man. The union of these two concep- 
 tions may have been the inevitable consequence of a 
 religion which assigned the most exalted functions to 
 its Founder and its Victim. As Paul lived, the breach 
 between his teaching and Judaism became wider. 
 Thus, had his spirit, his wisdom, his quick apprecia- 
 tion of what was necessary to the scheme of Christi- 
 anity, been continued in his successors, it is possible 
 that the monotheistic tenets which are comprised in 
 his epistles, might have been modified, or developed 
 even into the Athanasian symbol. 
 
 But of this we may be sure. Paul would never 
 have mistaken faith for belief the trust in Christ and 
 God for any mental assent to definitions of opinion 
 and statements of fact. With him Christianity was 
 intensely social and personal, and therefore never 
 could have become dogmatic and logical. If he had 
 admitted these formularies of belief, he would have 
 treated them as matters of secondary importance as 
 positions which are inevitably and invariably obscure, 
 as doubtful disputations, as attempts to know the 
 mind of God, which is inscrutable, as imperilling that 
 other knowledge which man may possess that of the 
 mind of Christ. He would have discouraged any 
 investigation, the practical side of which is not mani-
 
 362 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 fest, whose solution is no aid to the Christian life. 
 He would have been still more dissatisfied with these 
 inquiries, if he found that they were rending the 
 Church into fragments, that they were exposing it 
 to the derision of the heathen, that they were pre- 
 venting that quiet and steady leavening of society with 
 a high sense of public and private duty, which it 
 was the mission of the Church, in Paul's eyes, to 
 achieve. 
 
 Again, a man whose theory of Christianity was so 
 earnest and so practical, would have discountenanced 
 any persecution on the ground of mere opinion. It 
 was not to be expected that a Jew would have had 
 any respect for the caricatures of God which the 
 heathen worshipped, or would fail to connect the 
 depravity of the ancient world with that debased idea 
 of the Divinity which was popularly entertained. 
 The history of his own race, and the history of other 
 races proved, or seemed to prove, that a false religion 
 and a low morality are reciprocally cause and effect. 
 Paul knew that the revolution of the Maccabees was 
 a reaction, as well against the tendency to Greek idol- 
 atry, as it was against that impulse towards Syrian 
 sensuality, which, as is plainly enough seen from the 
 book of Sirach, infected Jewish manners. Still, Paul 
 contents himself with strongly expressing his convic- 
 tions on the connection between a false religion and 
 general immorality. But he preaches no crusa<l< 
 against the former. He is no iconoclast. He does 
 not counsel his disciples to affront the devotions \\liirh 
 th.-y witnessed, any more than he himself did those 
 I' At Inns. No one would have condemned more
 
 PERSECUTION. DISCIPLINE. 8G3 
 
 strongly, more energetically, than he would have, the 
 mad fury of Cyril, or have denounced more indig- 
 nantly the murder of Hypatia. There were men in 
 his day who erred concerning the faith, who made 
 shipwreck of it; and Paul, believing that physical 
 suffering raises the moral, and purifies the spiritual 
 sense, invokes, in the Hebrew phrase of deliverance to 
 Satan, some physical evil on them, that they may 
 be chastised into abandoning their profane avowals. 
 But he never identified himself with Satan, or with 
 Satan's function. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that Paul was indifferent 
 to discipline. An ecclesiastical society can no more 
 endure the presence of notorious offenders against the 
 conditions of its moral being, than a civil society can 
 neglect to chastise or coerce criminals. But Paul 
 counsels the avoidance of such persons rather than 
 their formal exclusion from the Church. Public 
 notice must indeed be taken when the scandal is 
 flagrant ; but the penitent is to be restored upon 
 submission. He could not have countenanced the 
 proceedings of those who wished to brand the weak- 
 ness or timidity of the lapsed after the Decian perse- 
 cution, any more than he could have advised the rash- 
 ness which provoked that onslaught. The discipline 
 of an ecclesiastical organisation, he would have argued, 
 is a means to an end, that end being the approval of 
 the Gospel in the sight of men, and the conversion of 
 those whom Christ came to save. To avoid the ap- 
 pearance of evil, to be scrupulously exact in the fulfil- 
 ment of human duties, which is as much the law of 
 God as it is of man, ought to be instinctive in every
 
 364- PA VL OF TARSUS. 
 
 Christian community. Hence the avoidance of such 
 persons as compromise the reputation of the Christian 
 brotherhood is only an act of self-preservation. But 
 discipline is much more easily effected by the gentle, 
 sometimes silent, rebukes of wise men, or by just 
 public opinion, than it is by law and verbal regula- 
 tions. Paul trusted more to his own presence for the 
 correction of faults in practice at Corinth, than he 
 did to any code of statutes which he might draw up. 
 He had to found a church, not to compile a written 
 constitution. The commission which he had received, 
 his call to the apostolate, might be vouchsafed to other 
 men, who might continue his work in his spirit. 
 
 He would have been totally indifferent to forms of 
 ecclesiastical organisation. Various forms of govern- 
 ment may equally secure freedom and order both in 
 Church and State. What is to be deprecated is that 
 fanatical adherence to any form of government under 
 which men seek to force their habits on the life of 
 others. What is to be learnt from such a fanatical 
 adherence, is that individuals are able to seek and 
 find their own, not the general or public good, in 
 every form of government. We can gather from the 
 Second Epistle to the Corinthians, that there were 
 men who, within that particularly democratic church, 
 huckstered the word of God; for St. Paul's term, which 
 \\ c translate " corrupt," alludes as much to the petty 
 manner in which the great office of man's redemption 
 was treated, as to the adulteration with which these 
 men had disguised its tenets. The reform of a church 
 government may be necessary. Its institution may 
 have leen radically vicious, its conduct may have
 
 CHURCH GO VERNMENT. 365 
 
 stereotyped the faults of its origin. But he is a very 
 bad judge of human nature, and knows very scantily 
 the history of the process by which human nature may 
 be permanently bettered, who believes that changes 
 in the form of an administration are organic, and there- 
 fore may be considered final. Least of all is this the 
 case with a church, which, to be faithful to that by 
 which it consists, must depend for its true vitality on 
 moral can hardly, except it be bent on suicide, trust 
 to external forces. In Church and State, that is 
 the healthiest condition in which they, who having 
 accepted or allowed a form of government, arid who are 
 clearly alive to their duties as members of a religious 
 or civil polity, are indifferent to the details of the 
 constitution under which they live. 
 
 It has been stated above that Paul discerned in the 
 low morality of the age through which he lived, and 
 in the degrading conceptions which, as he saw every- 
 where, men entertained of God, a reciprocal connection. 
 But unhappily, a neglect of public and private duty, 
 an indifference to natural morality, and a habit of 
 low and degrading vice, are not peculiar to heathendom. 
 Such vices were witnessed during the prophetic age. 
 There is, indeed, no reason to believe that Paul was 
 imperfectly acquainted with those parts of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures in which the deeds of a corrupt society in 
 Judah and Israel are stigmatised and denounced. 
 The transgressions of the two kingdoms were precisely 
 those which have been committed in times of prosperity 
 and wealth, and even in those of adversity and suffer- 
 ing, when men become effeminate and licentious, 
 insolent and hard-hearted. That the rich should
 
 3C6 PAUL OF TARSI',*. 
 
 oppress the poor, that the strong should prey on the 
 weak, that wealth and power should be employed for 
 selfish and base ends, for low and coarse pleasures, 
 are contingencies to be expected, for they have per- 
 petually happened. But the corruption of society 
 consists in the applause with which such malversations 
 are witnessed, in the acquiescence or congratulation 
 with which vice is recognised or commented on. 
 
 There are no grounds on which to infer that human 
 nature has been materially changed since the day in 
 which Amos testified against the depravity of the Is- 
 raelite nobles, and Paul drew his inferences from the 
 corruptions of the Roman world, though the Syrian 
 kingdom and the military empire have passed away. 
 Whatever may be the origin of those personal and 
 selfish impulses which debase the man if they are un- 
 checked and gratified, they are still the same as in the 
 days of the Syrian prophet and the Christian Apostle, 
 have the same consequences, need the same remedies. 
 It cannot be denied that the world has made vast 
 material, much moral, progress, but the work of 
 maintaining the latter, not less than the former, has 
 to be continually renewed in each generation of man- 
 kind. The labour of perpetuating the highest moral 
 law, or, in the language of the New Testament, the 
 kingdom of God and His Christ, is even more difficult 
 than that of transmitting to posterity the conquest 
 which man's intelligence has made over the material 
 world; because the inductions of science, though arrived 
 at wit! i vrreat difficulty and after long research, an- 
 communicated easily, since they can be easily verified, 
 wink- th- infusion of the divine law into the individual
 
 THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY PERMANENT. 367 
 
 mind demands exactly as much pains now as it did 
 when a pure morality and a spiritual religion first 
 asserted themselves on behalf of civilisation and 
 progress. 
 
 Perhaps, if any well-informed person were asked, 
 what are the chief difficulties which a preacher and 
 apostle like Paul would meet with were a mission 
 like his to recommence at the present day, he would 
 answer that they would be found in the attitude in 
 which religion and science stand to each other. He 
 would say, that there has long been a breach between 
 them, and that the breach is gradually widening, that 
 their relations are ordinarily those of avowed hostility, 
 at best, of cold and hollow courtesy. He would point 
 to the alienation of the inductive sciences from theo- 
 logy, to the scepticism with which even the philosophy of 
 consciousness treats everything which is supra-sensuous. 
 He would observe that there is an active and increas- 
 ing school of thinkers who have assigned its distinct 
 place in the history of human thought to the super- 
 natural or religious movement; who assert that this 
 phase of the human mind has now become an exploded 
 fiction, and that it is destined never again to influence 
 any high intelligence. He would add, that, to the 
 foremost minds of the age, the reign of law had com- 
 menced ; that this is the philosophy of the definite, 
 while the philosophy of the infinite is transcendental 
 and unreal. He would conclude that the deference 
 which is still paid to religious belief is, on the part of 
 those persons, transitional and politic ; that it is partly 
 due to the unwillingness with which such men would 
 provoke interests which, however indefensible they
 
 PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 are, are yet powerful, and partly to the fact that they 
 consider it superfluous to attack that which will one 
 day or other collapse by the gradual decay of its 
 foundations. 
 
 Much of this is apparently true. But no man who 
 has ever busied himself, though cursorily and super- 
 ficially, with the facts of human life, can fail to see how 
 far man is from having arrived at even a moderate 
 standard of justice and goodness, even under the most 
 favourable circumstances. Nor will he fail, also, of 
 discovering that the prospect there is of elevating the 
 moral nature of the individual, and of progressively 
 purifying society, does not consist in the development 
 of knowledge, or in the control which man has gained 
 over the forces of the physical universe. He will see 
 that it has been by the self-devotion of earnest and 
 patient men that a generation has been purified, and 
 that it is by the continuity of these moral forces that 
 the work, once begun, can be maintained and extended. 
 Now, it is not too much to say that no motive except 
 the religious sense (by which I understand the practice 
 of virtue and holiness, for the sake of a Being who is 
 absolutely good and absolutely holy), has ever supplied 
 the perseverance necessary for this labour of bettering 
 mankind. Every religion must have its martyrs, the 
 kind of martyrdom varying with the difficulties which 
 have to be overcome. And there is too much reason 
 to believe, that much of the hostility which exists 
 between science and religion is not due to the fact 
 that they are incompatible, but to the manner in 
 which the professional advocates of the latter have 
 the inductions of the former.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE. 369 
 
 In the hands, at least, of a man like Paul, the 
 difficulty could not be capital. The difference be- 
 tween the secularism of the Mosaic system, and the 
 spiritualism of the prophetic teaching, is far greater 
 than that between the theology of Paul in his epistles, 
 and such a harmony as he would try to effect between 
 the deductions of modern science and the fundamental 
 tenets of his gospel. He would have taken the fact 
 of sin, of human depravity, of which there is too 
 mournful and too general a proof, without troubling 
 himself with its origin. He would have made no 
 more stir about the cosmogony of Moses than Philo 
 did, and would have recognised the hand of God in 
 science as he did in natural morality, as he did in the 
 order, as far as he understood it, of the physical 
 universe. He would have experienced no difficulty 
 in admitting the proofs which geology gives of the 
 vast duration of the world. He would even have 
 allowed, comparatively speaking, the eternity of 
 matter, because he could have induced upon it the 
 plastic power of a Divine intelligence, which creates 
 by one method of law as much as by any other. He 
 would have easily dispossessed his language of those 
 phrases which imply a physical heaven ; have dis- 
 covered his new creation in conditions apart from 
 locality; and perhaps have rejoiced in the prospect 
 which science offers of the cognition of infinite 
 space and endless worlds. 
 
 For, it must be repeated, the characteristics of the 
 Pauline gospel are a few facts, none of which contra- 
 dict human experience, and in many particulars obtain 
 
 its support. He holds that man is, and has been, 
 
 2 A
 
 370 PAUL OF TARSUS, 
 
 saved by suffering; and that the progress of humanity 
 is due to the unbought and unpaid diligence of high 
 and persistent well-doing. He affirms that the begin- 
 ning, and well nigh the whole of this work was done 
 by One, in whom the power and the wisdom of God 
 were immeasurably manifest; and that it is by the 
 Spirit, and in the indwelling of this Personage, that 
 the residue of man's appointed work is to be com- 
 pleted. How this work has been done, and must be 
 done, is often expounded, and need not be repeated. 
 How the agent is aided and consoled is equally 
 affirmed. That the service done to man is paid by 
 the perpetual consciousness of the benefactor, or, in 
 other words, that the life of such a person is not lost 
 in death, is a matter of natural belief, and of natural 
 justice. The assistance which this belief gives 
 towards the construction of society, and the aid 
 which it affords to the regeneration of humanity, 
 is of such profound significance, that its importance 
 is well nigh a test of its truth. And over all this 
 system of lofty moral philosophy, and gentle catholic 
 religion, is the wise, the loving, the beneficent 
 Father, who claims the homage of His children's 
 labour ; who has given them for their guidance, their 
 safety, their example, their hope, their stay, the 
 object of their trust, His first-born Son, their Brother 
 and their Lord, to watch over their work, to aid 
 His Providence, to be with them always, even to 
 the end. Such a gospel is intensely probable, 
 prodigiously strong, profoundly consolatory. If 
 it cannot be proved to demonstration, it is certain 
 that, were it fully accepted, it would work without
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE WORLD. 371 
 
 flaw or slip, and would realise the dream of the 
 most sanguine optimist. If Christianity be not the 
 light of the world, it is because the world is still 
 lying in darkness. 
 
 Nor would such an apostle as Paul have had much 
 more difficulty in dealing with that other hindrance to 
 Christianity, which is derived from the impatient ob- 
 jection, that it fails to meet misery, suffering, injustice, 
 wrong. The answer is instant, It is no fault of the 
 Christian spirit, it is the fault of those who will not 
 accept and obey it. The gospel of Paul is not a com- 
 munistic dream, but it is hard work and mercy; honest 
 labour and patience. For no words can surpass in 
 exhaustive force those in which he describes the spirit 
 which should animate a Christian society, when deal- 
 ing with the extraordinary gifts which the Christians 
 of Corinth had, or believed they had he tells them 
 and us what is the force and what is the working- of 
 
 O 
 
 love. It is sufficient to say, that the language rivals 
 that of the great Master Himself. It is the loftiest 
 poetry, the most exalted morality, the purest religion, 
 the most consummate wisdom. It is no marvel 
 that Paul, when he sums up, in superlative man- 
 ner, his magnificent wishes for the grace and power 
 of his Corinthian brethren, utters his thanks to 
 God for so indescribable a gift as that which he 
 prayed might be the character of all. 
 
 His heaviest task, beyond doubt, would not have 
 lain in the objections which science and misery might 
 make to the sufficiency of his teaching, and in the 
 answer which he might give to their doubts or to 
 their wants, but in the dull, heavy obstacle of that
 
 S7i> PAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 selfish, sensual, sordid, self-interest which is the Anti- 
 christ of the Pauline gospel. But who can trust him- 
 self to describe it, and why seek to picture that 
 which is, and will be, the manifest, the perpetual 
 enemy of mankind ? 
 
 What, then, is the hope of the Divine common- 
 wealth ? It does not consist in a new revelation, for 
 the moral progress of humanity is bound up with the 
 principle which forms the foundation of Christ's death, 
 of Paul's life, of the life of all who have done true 
 service to mankind. It does not require the promul- 
 gation of a new code, for the tenets of Christian mor- 
 ality are rather exhaustive and exact than novel. 
 That there is no foundation but Christ, that is, that 
 society is constructed on the basis of self-sacrifice, was 
 dimly, but certainly, seen by Plato, who commits the 
 government of his ideal state to men whose life is to 
 be one of unceasing toil and self-denial, endured from 
 the profound conviction that they are developing their 
 own highest nature, by spontaneous and diligent ser- 
 vice to man. But in the Pauline teaching it is as- 
 serted, that to labour on this foundation is the duty 
 and good of every man, that each can, and must 
 contribute his share of work to the mighty edifice, 
 and give such work as will stand the test of the 
 severest trial to which work can be put. This gospel 
 is as new as yesterday, because it is conterminous 
 with the necessities of humanity, because it can, and 
 should still exert its forces as long as "the perfect 
 man " is inchoate and undeveloped. 
 
 To many men, indeed, Christ is not risen. He i> 
 still in the grave to them ; still garrisoned by the sol-
 
 THE OBSTACLE TO CHRISTIAN TEACHING. 373 
 
 diers who are set to watch the body ; still a wasted 
 energy a dead power. For the significance of His 
 resurrection is the commencement of His kingdom, 
 not only to each heart, that believes in Him, and 
 trusts in Him, and seeks communion with Him, and 
 feels His presence ; but to the race of man, which is 
 still wrestling, in its long agony, with the forces which 
 seek to debase, degrade, oppress, misuse it. When 
 the preacher bids those who are smitten down by the 
 coarse, hard hand of wrong and iniquity, to raise their 
 eyes to Him who is lifted up to open their ears to 
 His Gospel, he often speaks to dim eyes and deaf ears, 
 to hearts hardened by misery, to men who say or 
 think, What is this Christianity which you preach to 
 us ? how does it deal with the toils of our life ? how has 
 it influenced those who profess to have governed human 
 society by its precepts? He dwells, you tell us, in 
 the midst of his worshippers. But His law is as far 
 as ever from being the guide of life, is still treated 
 as Utopian, is unfulfilled, unacknowledged. If he 
 be the power of God, and the wisdom of God, how is 
 it that the power is not exercised, the wisdom not 
 obeyed ? What a mockery, they say, is this world 
 of Christendom ! what a phrase ! what a deception ! 
 It hardly protests against the evils it pretends to 
 cure. To us, Christ is a history, a remote event, not 
 a present and a living energy. 
 
 The Gospel of Christ, you would tell us, can answer 
 every question which bears on the moral nature, the 
 hopes, the fears of man, can remedy every wrong, 
 can heal every wound, can soothe every sorrow. 
 How is it dealing with the problems of human life ?
 
 .57.J. /M VL OF TARSUS. 
 
 To what extent does it confront that harsh and grip- 
 ping greed which accumulates its own pleasures on the 
 misery of thousands, which divides society into two 
 camps, one of which is arrayed against the intolerable 
 sorrow of its condition ; the other is anxiously occu- 
 pied in disarming the despair which it has created ? 
 How many, calling themselves by the name of that 
 Master who, with such intense pungency of indigna- 
 tion, with such bitter irony, exposed and denounced 
 the hard hypocrisy of His own age, follow His ex- 
 ample in speaking after His Spirit to their own ? 
 "Where is the champion of oppressed, of degraded 
 humanity ? Who seeks to lay bare the ulcers which 
 fester in what men glibly call modern civilisation, 
 and, laying them bare, is prepared to discover and 
 apply their cure? "The harvest is past, the sum- 
 mer is ended, and we are not saved." So said 
 the wise prophet of a nation which was then about 
 to enter into the valley of the shadow of death. 
 Is Christendom to find no prophet; is there to 
 be no physician for the sorrows of the people- 
 no one to set forth Christ plainly as Paul set 
 Him forth ? 
 
 Thus, the chief difficulties which lie in the way of 
 those who trust in the force of a revived and restored 
 Christianity, do not arise in a discovery of the means 
 by which the work should be set about, but in inter- 
 preting and combating the forces which will resist 
 or withstand it. Debarred by the terms of its origin 
 from any appeal to force ; taught by the experience of 
 centuries tluit its great obstacle has been that alliance 
 with hi.-i-iilur power which captivated and demoralised
 
 THE WORK OF CHRISTIANITY PERPETUAL. 375 
 
 it in the fourth century, the divine commonwealth 
 must not be led for an instant to desire a renewal 
 of that ancient and disastrous association. The his- 
 tory of Christianity has been like that of Samson. 
 It has been seduced by the charms of a Delilah, 
 has been shorn of its strength and beauty, blinded, 
 and set to work in the prison-house of political expe- 
 diency. But though it ought to have no recognised 
 understanding with secular government, it can exhibit 
 no antagonism, to the organisation of civil authority. 
 If it fulfils its mission wisely and efficiently, it will 
 guide and purify the public conscience, and eventually 
 supersede the functions of secular authority, by reduc- 
 ing it to a form and a routine. Appropriating all the 
 forces of social life, and giving them one direction, 
 while recognising every variety of power and function, 
 it can in this way only effect the fulfilment of the 
 Apocalyptic vision, " The kingdoms of the visible 
 world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of 
 His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever;" or 
 as the prophet saw it in his ecstacy, " Great is 
 His government, and there is no boundary to his 
 peace." 
 
 Such a reconstruction of Christianity, such a re- 
 newal of the Pauline church, may have its origin in 
 a fusion of sects, or it may commence in a movement 
 external to them all. Men are weary of words, and 
 turn away from the arid strife of polemical disputants. 
 Traditions have ceased to hold a mastery over them. 
 Day by day it becomes less easy to renew the ancient 
 bitterness of controversy, and to array the facts of the 
 Gospel against its spirit. There is less and less pros-
 
 376 /'-I t-'L OF TARSUS. 
 
 pect of effecting a union between some of those who 
 profess the name of Christ, against others. There is 
 even less power of rousing passion against those who 
 stand aloof from acknowledging the name of Christ at 
 all, or from confessing His office. But however 
 gentle our age may be towards opinion, it is not 
 behind any in its admiration for the exact fulfilment 
 
 v 
 
 of duty, and in the homage which it pays to self- 
 devotion, kindliness and love. It neither inquires 
 into the creed of misery, nor into that of charity. 
 But it is conspicuous for its tenderness towards the 
 former, and for the honour which it shows towards 
 the latter. The world in which we live has, at least, 
 understood the maxim of Christ, that " he who is not 
 against us is on our part." Pity that the example is 
 rare. 
 
 The greatest strength, however, which a New Re- 
 formation will require, lies in the need there is for a 
 Religion. What is called civilisation in our day, is, 
 in many particulars, a failure. It has become a hot 
 and bitter struggle for life, in which one may see, on 
 the one hand, an ever-increasing wealth, surrounded 
 by guarantees and securities of enjoyment, securities 
 which were accorded in no previous age of the world's 
 history, wealth which is too often, and with coarse 
 ostentation, paraded with cynical insolence, wor- 
 shipped with sordid adulation. And on the other 
 band, there is a vast and growing misery, for which 
 ordinary palliatives are inoperative, for which ordi- 
 nary explanations are superficial and unsatisfactory, 
 for which no remedies are found, because few care to 
 discover them, fewer still dare, on discovery, to an-
 
 THE NECESSITY OF RELIGION. 377 
 
 n ounce them. Must we wait till men ask, and in 
 terms of increasing menace ? What, then, if the only 
 fruit of those labours to which we have given our lives 
 is to increase our own misery, to tie us down more 
 firmly to inevitable privation, and to swell the opu- 
 lence which mocks our want ? For us, and we are 
 many, society needs reconstruction. 
 
 The attitude in which an earnest religion would 
 stand to this morbid and dangerous condition, would 
 not be that of stupid acquiescence in an inevitable 
 destiny, but of an active and general determination to 
 discover the remedy for that which dishonours and 
 degrades mankind. The patience and content which 
 are inculcated by the Christian temper, are not indif- 
 ference at the result, but the acceptance of a fact, for 
 which there must be, and shall be a cure. Indivi- 
 duals may, as Paul says of himself, " learn to be con- 
 tent, whatever be the condition imposed on them." 
 But the corporate action of Christian man is one 
 which is the very reverse of this passive content. 
 " The struggle," says Paul, using his favourite meta- 
 phor of the palaestra, " is not with flesh and blood, but 
 with authorities and powers, with the world's rulers 
 of this state of darkness which prevails in our gen- 
 eration, with the spiritual forces of wickedness in 
 heavenly places." It is as though he had said, We 
 have no quarrel with human government ; we take 
 up no arms to fight against civil authority. Our con- 
 test is with that godless and blind selfishness, which 
 arrogates to itself the right of associating its aims with 
 the destinies of man, and governing the course of 
 society, which makes that light which is darkness,
 
 I' ACL <>F TARSUS. 
 
 that sweet which is bitter; which affects to consider 
 the rule of its own conduct as the rule of man's exis- 
 tence ; which installs itself in the place of God, 
 against which the deadliest foe which humanity en- 
 counters it is needful for Christendom to take the 
 panoply of God, and to be steadfast in the work which 
 it has to do. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BT ROBERT MACI.KIIOSK, AMI.
 
 
 University of California 
 
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