BS 2505 .A35 1898 Abbott, Lyman, 1835- 1922 . The life and letters of Pau] the Apo stle ^oofefi bp Ipman Abbott, £).^. THE EVOLUTION OF CHRISTIANITY. i6mo, gilt top, ;^i.2s. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. THE THEOLOGY OF AN EVOLUTIONIST. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF PAUL THE APOSTLE. i2mo, $1.50. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY Boston and New York. %f)t Cife anti iletters of i^aul t!)e apostle BY LYMAN ABBOTT BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY LYMAN ABBOTT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PREFACE This volume is one in a series of wholly inde- pendent volumes, which attempt to apply the prin- ciple of evolution to the elucidation of spiritual truth. Of these there have already been published "The Evolution of Christianity;" "Christianity and Social Problems ; " and " The Theology of an Evolutionist." This volume seeks to employ that principle in the interpretation of the writings of the Apostle Paul. I hope to follow it with one or more volumes in application of the same principle in the interpretation of the other Biblical writers. Much if not most of the interpretation of Paul assumes that he entered on his ministry after his retirement in Arabia with a completed system of theology, that this system underwent no material change, that it was the same in his first preaching as at the end of his life, and is the same in the epistles to the Thessalonians as in the epistle to Colossians or the pastoral epistles ; that, in brief, the various epistles are to be regarded as though they were different chapters in a book written at one time, by one and the same mind, in elucidation of the same system of thought. iv PREFACE This volume is written on a very different as- sumption. It assumes that Paul grew both in grace and in knowledge after his conversion ; that he learned much while he was teaching ; that he neither at once threw off entirely the Pharisaic tra- ditions in which he had been reared, nor acquired at once a completed system of philosophy to take their place ; that the revelation to him of truth was not an instant revelation flashed upon him in the hour when the risen Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus, but was a gradual revelation growing out of that vision ; that some of the con- ceptions of the kingdom of God with which he entered on his ministry were subsequently modified and partly laid aside ; that conceptions of that kingdom which are to be found in his later epistles were only gradually attained ; that there are dif- ferences, and important differences, if not incon- sistencies, in the teaching of the different epistles ; that his point of view underwent material changes, and that these changes can be traced in a careful study of his epistles in the order in which they were written. In short, it is assumed in this vol- ume that, as there is a progress of doctrine dis- cernible in the Bible, and a growth in the know- ledge of God manifested in the difference between the earlier teachings of Moses and the later teach- ings of John, so there is, in a lesser degree, a PREFACE V progress of doctrine discernible in the writings of individual writers in the Bible. Such progress in the writings of Paul this volume attempts to trace. The unity of Paul's theology is — so at least this volume assumes — not that of a system completed at the outset, but that of a system growing in the mind of the teacher, a system which was formed by the very process by which he gave expression to it. If this is thought to be inconsistent with belief in inspiration, my reply is, I regard as erroneous that theory of inspiration which has ignored when it has not denied Paul's declaration concerning himself : " We know in part and we prophesy in part," and " We see in a mirror darkly." Such a theory neither accords with the claims of the Bib- lical writers nor with the nature of their writings.^ For over a quarter of a century the writings of Paul have been a favorite theme of study with me. I have sought, in a somewhat wide range of read- ing, to get such light as I could from the work of previous students. It would be impossible for me to give credit to the authors to whom I am indebted, both because it would involve an extensive biblio- graphy of the subject, and because, doubtless, in many cases, I have imbibed ideas from authors and have now forgotten the source from which they ^ See The Theology of an Evolutionist, chap. iv. : The Evolution of Revelation. VI PREFACE came. The main authority for the interpretation of Paul's writings contained in this volume is Paul's own writings ; next some study of the social condi- tions of Rome in the first century, and of Greek literature — both philosophical and poetical — in that and the three or four preceding centuries. The text of Paul's writings on which I have chiefly relied has been that of Westcott and Hort ; the exegetical commentaries which I have found most helpful are those of Meyer, Alford, Ellicott, Stan- ley, and Jowett. But I acknowledge also especial obligations to Professor McGiffert's " The Apos- tolic Age," whose interj^retation of Paul aj^pears to me the clearest, most rational, and most spiritual which I have met ; Conybeare and Howson's " Life and Epistles of St. Paul," which, in spite of much subsequent development of Biblical criticism, re- mains the best account of the times and circum- stances of the apostle ; Dr. Ramsay's " The Church in the Roman Empire," and " St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen," which furnish fine illus- trations of interpretative insight coupled with and aided by a scholar's familiarity with the surround- ings of the apostle ; Dr. George Matheson's " Spir- itual Development of St. Paul," and A. Sabatier's "The Apostle Paul," — the first of which traces the spiritual development of St. Paul from a study of his epistles, the second of which conversely traces PREFACE Vll the progress of his thought in his epistles from a study of the spiritual development of the apostle. It only remains to add that, in giving extracts from Paul's letters, I have generally followed neither the Old Version nor the New Version, but have given a free rendering of my own, in the endeavor to afford the English reader a clearer insight into the meaning of the original. The pastoral epistles — those to Timothy and Titus — are not included in this volume, partly because there is some uncer- tainty as to Paul's authorship of them, but chiefly because they are ecclesiastical rather than philo- sophical, and therefore do not materially add to our understanding of his spiritual thought. LYMAN ABBOTT. Brooklyn, N. Y., September^ 1898. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Chronological Table xi I. The Point of View 1 II. Paul's Education and Conversion . . .19 III. Paul the Missionary 44 IV. The Early Church 62 V. The Letters to the Thessalonians . . 76 VI. Paul at Corinth . . . . '. . .93 VII. The First Letter to the Corinthians. I. . 116 VIII. The First Letter to the Corinthians. II. . 147 IX. The Second Letter to the Corinthians . 164 X. The Letter to the Galatians .... 181 XI. The Letter to the Romans. I. . . . 211 XII. The Letter to the Romans. II. ... 227 XIII. The Letter to the Romans. III. . . . 253 XIV. The Letter to the Romans. IV. . . . 269 XV. The Letters to the Ephesians and the Co- LOSSIANS . 286 XVI. The Letter to the Philippians . . . 303 XVII. Conclusion 318 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE The following chronological table of St. Paul's Life and Epis- tles is taken from Bishop Lightf cot's Biblical Essays, pages 221- 223. While there is some question about the dates here given, and I have placed Philippians after Colossians and Ej)hesians, there is no reason to doubt that the general order and substantially the dates, of the letters and the main events in Paul's life, as re- corded in the Book of Acts, occurred as represented in this table. A. D. 34 St. Paul's conversion. He visits Arabia, and returns to Damascus. (Gal. i. 17 ; Acts ix. 20-25 ; 2 Cor. xi. 32, 33.) 37 First visit to Jerusalem. (Acts ix. 26 ; Gal. i. 18.) 37-44 To Caesarea and Tarsus, visit to Syria. (Acts ix. 30 ; Gal. i. 21.) 44 St. Paul brought by Barnabas to Antioch. He stays there a year. (Acts xi. 26.) 4.5 Second visit to Jerusalem with alms. (Acts xi. 29, 30.) 46, 47 At Antioch. 48 First missionary journey (Acts xiii. 1-xiv. 26) with Bar- nabas. He visits Cyprus, Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and returns to Antioch. 51 Third visit to Jerusalem with Barnabas (Gal. ii. 1 seq. ; Acts XV. 1 seq.) Second missionary journey with Silas. (Acts XV. 36-xviii. 22.) 52 Crosses into Europe. First visit to Philippi, Thessaloniea, and Corinth. (1 Thessalonians.) 53 At Corinth. (2 Thessalonians.) 54 Leaves Corinth for Ephesus. Returns to Antioch. Third missionary journey. (Acts xviii. 23-xxi. 15.) To Ephesus again. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 55 At Ephesus. Second visit to Corinth. (2 Cor. xii. 14; xiii. 1, 2.) 56 At Ephesus. 57 At Ephesus. 58 At Corinth. (Romans.) Third visit to Philippi. Fourth visit to Jerusalem. 59 At Caesarea. 60 Voyage to Rome, and shipwreck at Malta. 61 Arrival at Rome. 62 At Rome. (Philippians) Spring. (Colossians, Ephesiaus, Philemon) Autumn. 63 Spring. Release of St. Paul. His subsequent history is not known with any certainty. The letters to Timothy and Titus, if written by him at all, were written subsequent to his release. According to a uniform tradition he was beheaded under Nero in Rome ; the probable date, A. D. 67 or 68. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF PAUL THE APOSTLE CHAPTER I THE POINT OF VIEW The literary history of the world furnishes no parallel to the influence exerted by the writings of Paul, except such as is afforded by the history of the Bible in which those writings are found. Of the life of the man himself we have but a fragment, — perhaps I should rather say a series of fragments. The story of his life, as it can be gathered from the Book of Acts, includes nothing of his youth or early education, nothing of his closing years and death.^ What we know on these subjects we are ^ My judgment coincides with that of Dr. Ramsay in " placing the author of the Book of Acts among the historians of the first rank." — St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen, p. 4, ff. Comp. McGiffert, The Apostolic Age, p. 346 : " If anything is clear, it is that the Book of Acts is not a mere collection of documents, but a well ordered and artistically arranged composition." But whether we regard it as written by Luke or edited by some un- known writer out of older documents, among which were the " we " passages from the pen of Luke, so far as Paul's life is con- cerned, the book gives us only a fragment, which it is not always easy to harmonize with the autobiographical memorabilia contained in Paul's Epistles. 2 PAUL THE APOSTLE left to gather from autobiographic references in his Epistles and from a not too trustworthy tradition. The story in Acts begins at his conversion, when he was probably over thirty years of age. It ends with him a prisoner in Rome. Thus a mere frag- ment of his life is all that is afforded us. And his writings are mere fragments. He has left no trea- tise ; no work on philosophy. One of his letters may perhaps be regarded as a summary of his general teaching, but that was not written for the purpose of furnishing such a summary. Jowett's translation of Plato occupies four volumes, in the revised and new edition five volumes, of consider- able size. A part of these volumes is taken up, it is true, with introductions ; but if these were taken out, and we had simply the dialogues of Plato, we should have not less than three octavo volumes of considerable magnitude. If we accept all the extant letters which any one supposes Paul wrote, we have a little less than sixty pages of a moder- ate-sized octavo. If we take those letters which by the consent of nearly all modern scholars are attributed to Paul, we have a little over forty pages. That is all.^ These letters are all we have, and probably all we 'ever shall have, of the writings of Paul. They 1 Few scholars now attribute Hebrews to Paul ; Sabatier and McGiffert both question Paul's authorship of the Pastoral Epistles I. and II. Timothy and Titus. — The Apostle Paul, p. 264 ff. ; The Apostolic Age, p. 398 fP. Ramsay assumes Paul's authorship of them. — The Church in the Eoman Empire, p. 246. THE POINT OF VIEW 3 are letters written to particular chiirclies to meet particular exigencies. In writing tliem Paul liad no conception that he was writing for future gener- ations. He did not dream of his own immortality. He did not consciously write for posterity. He formulated no system, was not ambitious to be the founder of a philosophy. And yet no teacher out- side the Bible has ever been studied as Paul, and no teacher in the Bible has ever been studied as Paul, save only Christ himself. There are libraries in Europe and in this country in which there is a measurably complete collection of what the great Shakespearean scholars have written concerning Shakespeare ; but it could almost be said of the books written and of the sermons preached con- cerning Paul, as John said, hyperbolically, of the things which Jesus did : If they were all recorded and brought together, the world itself could not contain them.^ For eighteen centuries men have been speaking in interpretation of this writer, and they are likely to continue speaking in interpreta- tion of him for centuries to come. How happens it that this Jewish rabbi of the olden time has produced such an impression ? How happens it that, whereas the classical authors of that time are studied by only the few, and the 1 " The literature which bears upon St. Paul is so extensive that a complete account of it would be as much beyond the compass of this article as it would be bewildering- to its readers." — Encyclo- paedia Britannica, vol. xviii. p. 430. A complete bibliography of the subject would itself make a volume of considerable size. 4 PAUL THE APOSTLE rabbinical authors of that time are studied by scarcely any — this man, only a fragment of whose life we possess, and only fragments of whose teach- ings we possess, has been and still is studied with such passionate enthusiasm by the many? It is partly, doubtless, because he is enigmatical ; we are all interested in solving riddles. But the principal reason is this : Paul translates Christianity, which in its original form was Hebraic, into the intellec- tual forms of the Occident. The Hebrew was not a philosopher.^ It might almost be said of him that he did not think, he acted. He concerned himself with truth only as it was life, and for truth apart from life he cared not. A farmer goes to his door in the morning and looks at the clouds. Is it going to rain or clear to-day? he asks. Not because he cares anything about the clouds ; he cares only whether he shall get in his hay or not. But the scientist looks at the clouds to learn what is the truth of meteorology. The teacher goes to the schoolroom and studies there child-nature, simply that, by understanding the nature of the children before him, he may better be able to instruct their intellect, to inspire 1 ' ' One who is devoted to the search for fundamental truth ; m a restricted sense, one who is versed in or studies the metaphysical and moral sciences." — Century Dictionary. It is in this sense I use the word here. The Hebrew was not interested in truth as a science or system, but only in truth as it was applied to and efEective in life. Matthew Arnold has described very clearly the difference between the Hebrew and the Greek mind, in this respect. THE POINT OF VIEW 5 their life, to broaden their horizon, to make them wiser, better, larger men and women. The psycho- logist goes into the same school-room to study child-nature, plying the children with hard ques- tions even more thoroughly than the teacher, but he does this, not for the pupil's life, but that he may, out of the questions and answers, construct a philosophy of child-nature. The Hebrew character was like the farmer's character and the teacher's character. He cared for truth only as it had a bearing on life. We have in the Old Testament a collection of Hebrew literature ; in that collection there is not a book that can properly be called a book of phi- losophy. There are three volumes which are called "Wisdom Literature," — Job, Proverbs, Ecclesi- astes. But no one of these is a book of philosophy in the modern sense of the term. The Book of Job discusses the problem of suffering, but it reaches no conclusion. It is a great epic poem, not a phil- osophical treatise. It begins with life and suffer- ing a mystery ; and it ends with life and suffering a mystery. The teaching of the Book of Job is this : Philosophy is vain and idle ; the answer to the enigma of life which we have borrowed from other nations is false ; there is no answer to the question. How could a righteous God have made a suffering world ? life is an insoluble mystery. The Book of Proverbs is a collection of coined apho- risms, ethical precepts, spiritual precepts ; but it contains no generic philosophical system. Out of 6 PAUL THE APOSTLE them, perhaps, we may construct a philosophy, but they do not of themselves embody a philosophy. Ecclesiastes discusses the mystery of life from three points of view, — that of the pleasure-seeker, that of the cynic, and that of the student, — but ends with simply this : Fear God and keep his commandments. The result of the discussion is not a philosophy of life, but the practical conclu- sion — do right. Accordingly, in the Old Testament we never find definitions. We find some quasi-definitions, such as that of the prophet, " What doth the Lord re- quire of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " but of the kind of discussion of what religion is and how it is to be defined, which we find in Max Miiller, for instance, there is no illustration from Genesis to Malachi. We find in the Old Testament no creeds, no theo- logical system, and no attempt to formulate a system. The Hebrew was content to live. He reverenced God, but he did not define him. He urged men to practical duty, but he did not discuss the theoretical basis of practical duty. He had no theories of life. He lived ; that was all. When Jesus Christ came, he also made no attempt to formulate a philosophy. He disclosed the spirit of life with greater clearness than it had ever before been disclosed. He brought new impulse and new inspiration into life. But he did not define. He did not philosophize. On the other hand, the Greek cared compara- THE POINT OF VIEW 7 tively little about righteousness in life, and very much about truth in thought. He cared also about beauty, both in form and in conduct. Indeed, the word he chiefly used to express excellence of char- acter was a word which means beauty, — nothing else. Paul, coming at a time when Hebraism was breaking from its shell, when Christ was giving to it a new life, translated the new life into terms of Greek thought. He enabled men to think about what before they had only done. He is the link between life and philosophy, the intellectual inter- preter of spiritual life. This is the reason why he is studied and admired ; it is also the reason why he is by so many repudiated. For there are still these two elements in the community. There are many men who do not care to think ; they only wish to do. They do not want a philosophy of life. They are quite willing to live empirically. But, generally in Europe and America, and particularly in the Germanic races, the Greek type of man dominates intellectually. We are not content sim- ply to live ; we desire to harmonize our life and our thinking. And especially the children of the Puritans desire to do so. They wish to think truly as well as to do righteously. Paul is in this sense the founder of theology, as Copernicus was the founder of astronomy. Bacon the father of the inductive system, and Plato the originator of modern philosophy. Paul was the first man to attempt to translate the Hebrew vision of life into the Greek form of thought ; the Oriental 8 PAUL THE APOSTLE perception of life as conduct into the Occidental conception of truth as thought. He is the intel- lectual interpreter both of the Old Testament and of the New ; both of Moses and of Christ. In our study of Paul I ask the reader to lay aside all theological preconceptions. Mediaeval scholas- ticism has overlaid Paul with a formalism of its own, and imputed to Paul a jihilosophy of its own. Paul has been studied in the light of the sixteenth century, not in the light of the first, and in the en- tirely legitimate attempt to apply his teachings to modern problems of thought and life he has been studied as though he had those problems before him when he wrote. Sometimes the conceptions of religion against which he consecrated his life's best energies have been imputed to him ; sometimes a later half-Christianized paganism foreign alike to him and to his age. The desire to find authority for " doubtful disputations " has led the disputants to go to Paul, not to learn with open mind what he has to teach, but to find in his teaching support of the positions of a modern controversialist. And out of this and kindred misuse of Paul's Letters has grown such misconception of his spirit as is indicated in the following letter, not long since ad- dressed to me : — " Has not religious persecution, denominational intol- erance and bigotry, resulted rather from the theology of the Apostles than from the gentle, loving life, spirit, and teachings of Christ? Is there not and has there not always been in the pulpit too much interpretation of the THE POINT OF VIEW 9 teachings of Christ in the spirit of Saul, and too little interpretation of Paul in the spirit of Christ?" The reader who takes up this volume to read it through the atmosphere of such preconceptions, who believes that Paul was the first of that long line of theologians who have corrupted the simpli- city of Christ's teaching by scholastic refinements and far-fetched distinctions, the reader who has been accustomed to regard Paul as the founder of a school of thought rather than as a minister to noble living, and to identify him with the misinter- preted ninth chapter of Komans rather than with the incomparable thirteenth chapter of First Co- rinthians, the reader who measures Paul's teaching by its relations to Augustinianism or Calvinism, Puritanism or Methodism, oblivious of the peculiar thought and life problems of the nascent church of the first century, must lay aside these preconcep- tions altogether, or he may as well lay aside this volume. What I ask him to do is to imagine that he has come unexpectedly across an old and curious collection of nine letters written by one Paul, for- merly called Saul, and that he wonders who and what manner of man this Paul was, and what was the object of his writing, and what the meaning of these letters. If he will take up this volume in this spirit and read it through, he will then be able at the close of his reading to form his judgment as to whether the book justly and fairly interprets the unknown writer. But if he assumes at the outset that Paul is a Calvinist or an Arminian, a Conser- 10 PAUL THE APOSTLE vative or a Radical, the founder of a school or the critic of a philosophy, he will not be able to under- stand my understanding of Paul, since his point of view will be so absolutely diJfferent. Assuming, then, that the reader is willing and able to lay aside his point of view, and for the little time we are together to accept mine, it becomes nec- essary to indicate certain elements in the character of Paul which in this volume I apparently take for granted, though in reality this estimate of his char- acter has grown out of the same studies from which this interpretation of his writings has proceeded. First of all we have to realize that Paul is a prophet, a seer. Some men grope their way to truth; some men rise like birds upon wings, and, looking down upon truth from above, see it spread out beneath them in God's sunlight. These are the poets and seers. Such a man was Isaiah, Plato, Carlyle, Emerson, Browning ; such a man was Paul. He has been studied as though he were a logician, a deducer of truth from premises, a for- mulator of a system for the system's sake, an an- cient John Calvin. The student has been puzzled to trace the logical connection in his Epistles ; often there is no logical connection. Paul is not a lo- gician : he is often unlogical, sometimes illogical. He uses arguments, not because they are philoso- phically sound, but because they will accomplish his purpose. His mind is not of the type of Aristotle ; it is of the type of Isaiah. He was not a student of philosophy. There is THE POINT OF VIEW 11 in his writings nothing to indicate that he was fa- miliar with Greek philosophy ; nothing to indicate that he had even heard of Plato or Socrates.^ He probably had heard of them, but he never refers to them. His life was not that of a philosopher. It was not spent among books, but among men. He was an evangelist, traveling from province to pro- vince and from city to city, preaching sermons and occasionally writing letters of counsel to groups of Christ's disciples who were his friends. He did not use truth as a philosopher uses it, — that is, as one who admires truth for its intellectual beauty, or a system of truth for its harmonious proportions. To him truth was instrumental, — a means, not an end. He used it to help men. " All scripture which is inspired," he writes to Timothy, " is profitable." Profit, not symmetry, is the measure of inspiration. " I kept back nothing," he says to the Ephesian elders, " that was profitable unto you." Profit to the hearers is his standard in teaching. So far as he could see that truth would be profitable to men, he used it — and no further. He was born and bred in a dialectic age, educated in a dialectic school, and speaks to audiences trained in dialectics. He therefore uses the dialectic method. But he does not arrive at truth by logical processes; he per- ceives it. It is, he says, " spiritually discerned." He is a seer and prophet, overlaid by rabbinical education, and using the dialectic method to com- mend truth to an age pervaded, alike in Hebrew, 1 But see note, p. 20, chap. ii. 12 PAUL THE APOSTLE Greek, and Roman communities, by the dialectic spirit. Such a man as this puts language to a severe test, and it breaks down under his use. A pioneer in truth never can use words in their old-time meaning. The missionaries in China to-day are divided into two parties on the question which Chinese word they shall use in order to teach the simple proposition that God is love ; because the Chinese have no word that means God, and this is because they have no conception of God. A per- sonal Father who loves his children is not in their consciousness, and therefore it is not in their lan- guage. Paul had ideas that ran beyond the con- sciousness of his age, and ran, I sometimes think, beyond the consciousness of our age; but he had to use the language that existed in his time and put his ideas into that language. Words cracked under Paul's use of them. He wishes to tell men what righteousness is, but he has no word which will represent his conception of righteousness. He wishes to tell men how he conceives divine right- eousness can be obtained, and there is no language by which his conception can be expressed. The language does not exist, because the idea does not exist. He takes old words and puts new mean- ings into them. Scholars have gone back to the Septuagint to see how the Greek word was used there. They have gone to the classic Greek to find out how it was used there. But Paul does not use the pivotal words in his teaching as they were used THE POINT OF VIEW 13 by the Septuagint or by the pagan Greek. We are to learn Paul's meaning by studying Paul's use, by comparing word with word and phrase with phrase and passage with passage, that we may grope our way to the transcendent life which broke into frag- ments the words which he employed to utter life. Paul was a seer and a prophet ; and as seer and prophet, not as philosopher and theologian, he is to be studied. He used Greek words to express ideas which the Greek mind had never entertained, and we must learn their meaning and clothe his words therewith. He was, moreover, an orator. The ora- tor always thinks of his audience when he speaks or writes. He is not interested in the simple exposi- tion of truth ; he is interested to get this particular truth at this particular time into the minds of the particular men and women before him, — whether in fact or in imagination. Whether he is a writer or a speaker, if he has the oratorical temperament, his object is to put his intellectual life into the life of other men and women ; and that was emphati- cally Paul's character. Men have taken Paul's account of what was said of him by his enemies as though it were a true description of him : " His bodily presence is weak, and his speech contempti- ble." Why do they not go to the life itself ? Look at this man in certain critical epochs of his life. He is set upon 1^ a mob in the temple, beaten, half killed, rescued from the mob by the soldiers, and there, with his garments all disheveled and covered with dust, asks, " May I speak to the mob 14 PAUL THE APOSTLE his hand, and the mob hushes and listens. Henry Ward Beecher himself, in England, never won a greater triumph of oratory than did Paul on the temple stairs at Jerusalem. A mob seizes two of his friends and rushes into a theatre with them. Paul can hardly be dissuaded from rushing into the theatre to rescue his friends, because he feels sure of his power to calm that audience with his words. He preaches before Felix, and Felix trembles, who never was known to tremble before or after, — hard, insensitive, callous Roman that he was. Paul is an orator, and he uses language in oratorical forms. He puts himself into the mental attitude of his auditors ; makes it his business to understand the men he is talking with. To the Greek he became a Greek ; to the Jew he became a Jew ; he became all things to all men. There was no man he did not aim to understand ; no man in whose place he did not try to put himself that he might put life into him. This man with a life too great for the language of his time, enthralled by his dialectic education and breaking through it, using logical forms but not logical processes, logical in his speech but not in his mental structure, full of a passionate devo- tion to truth, but only because truth ministers to life, Hebrew of Hebrews, and using the dialectic method only that he may impart Christian life to the Greek world, and through Gi^ce to the heart of Europe — this man is over-full, and his words pour out of him as water pours out of a bottle when it is held upside down. Sometimes he quotes an THE POINT OF VIEW 15 objection and dismisses it without an answer ; some- times lie answers it ; sometimes it is difficult to tell whether he is a critic or an advocate of a doctrine ; sometimes, like Browning, he hardly knows himself which he is. Nor is this all. He sometimes addresses himself ; argues with himself ; does not see the truth clearly before he begins to utter it, but thinks, as it were, aloud, feeling his way to the truth in his writing. He was born a Pharisee, bred a Pharisee, educated a Pharisee. In his writing we can sometimes see him struggling to free himself from the Pharisaic bands that bind him, and finally emerging and carrying his audience with him by the very strug- gle.i This man — prophet, not philosopher — poet, not logician — orator, not scholastic — has written no treatise, only letters, and a letter is never the sole product of the man who writes it. To know Paul's writings we must know not Paul only, but the men to whom he writes. " There lies the letter, but it is not he As he retires into himself and is ; Sender and Sent-to go to make up this The offspring of their union." ^ This, which is Lord Tennyson's canon for the interpretation of letters, is to no author more appli- cable than to Paul. These letters of his are not 1 See, for illustration of this, j)ost^ eh. xiii. ^From an "Unpublished Sonnet" in Preface to Memoirs of Lord Tennyson, by his son. 16 PAUL THE APOSTLE theological treatises. They are true letters, written by one who possessed the true oratorical tempera- ment, who wrote always for immediate effect, and in the study of whose letters " Sender and Sent-to " must be alike studied. He writes in one way to the Colossians, in another way to the Thessalo- nians, in another way to the Corinthians. He does not care whether he is consistent with himself or not. To him, as to Emerson, consistency is the vice of small minds. He only cares to convince men and win them to himself and to his Christ. Finally, Paul's style has all the vices of letters proceeding from such a man, and dictated extem- poraneously ; for Paul did not write, he dictated. It abounds in parentheses, interpolations, correc- tions, and involved sentences ; sometimes the sen- tence is left unfinished. When the letter was ended, he sometimes added a postscript in his own hand. See what big letters I have written, he says — for he was half blind, and wrote as half blind men do, in large characters.^ Imagine, then, this man writing one of these letters. He has seen a vision of the truth ; he would lay down his life to give that truth to the men he loves, — loves, as he says, the more, the less he is loved. But they do not see ; and he cannot under- stand why they are so blind. He thought they understood him, and they did not. They have fal- len away again ; they have gone away from the ^Gal, vi. 11, Rev. Vers.: "See with how large letters I have written unto you, with mine own hand." THE POINT OF VIEW 17 truth which they once received from him. His heart is full. He sees before him those to whom he wishes to speak ; they are as though they were present with him. He begins to talk with them, as he paces up and down the room ; the amanuensis keeps pace as well as he can with the increasing tor- rent ; the speaker thinks as he speaks, and corrects, modifies, inserts parentheses, and, as it were, inter- lineations, as he dictates. The thought grows in expressing ; the inadequacy of language oppresses him ; he turns the truth back and forth in endeavor to shed its light. He phrases an objection and sweeps it away in one short sentence or leaves it contemptuously to refute itself, or the transcending truth of his own experience passes beyond all bounds of exposition and he breaks forth into a rhapsody of praise or prayer. When the letter is finished, he has neither time nor patience to revise. He adds a salutation, sometimes a longer postscript, sends it in haste, and then goes about other work which Ig pressing upon him. This is the Paul whom we are to study. Not a John Calvin, rather a Browning ; but a Browning on fire with a moral intensity such as Browning never knew ; a Browning who believes that the kingdom of God is close at hand ; a Browning who believes that every day brings it closer and still closer ; a Browning who believes that the night is almost gone and the day-dawn is at hand ; a Brown- ing who believes that he possesses the secret which will abolish injustice from government and fear 18 PAUL THE APOSTLE from the hearts of men, and will usher in the king- dom of righteousness and the glory of God. Philosopher among poets is Browning; poet among philosophers is Paul : prophet, seer, preacher, orator, interpreter of Christ's spirit to the thought of the world. CHAPTER II Paul was born in Tarsus.^ His ancestry was Hebrew, and he was by birth, by inheritance, and by education a Hebrew.^ His city was a Greek city in its atmosphere, though under Roman domi- nation. It was a famous university town ; it was claimed in that time that the university was greater than that of Alexandria.^ It was not only a uni- versity town, but notable for Greek scholarship, perhaps scarcely less so than Athens itself, possibly even more so. Thus this boy breathed a Grecian atmosphere in his boyhood. But he did not receive a Greek education. His knowledge of Greek litera- ture would be something like the knowledge which a Huguenot boy might get in Paris in the time of the Revolution respecting the literature of Diderot and Voltaire ; for the Hebrews regarded Greek literature, and with some show of reason, as grossly immoral.* A Hebrew would no more have set his ^ Acts xxi. 39 ; xxii. 3. For convenience I retain throughout this volume his later name of Paul. 2 Phil. iii. 5. " An Hebrew from Hebrews," {. e. from Hebrew parents on both sides. ^ See Lightfoot's Biblical Essays, p. 205. * He never materially changed his estimate of paganism, Rom. i. 22-26 ; 1 Cor. vi. 5 ; 2 Cor. vi. 14 ; Gal. ii. 15 ; iv. 8 ; 1 Thes. iv. 5. 20 PAUL THE APOSTLE boy to the study of the Greek poets and dramatists than a Puritan in the reign of Charles II. would have set his boy to study the dramatic literature of that age. There are three or four citations from the Greek poets in Paul's writings, but they are simply popular proverbs such as any man might pick up in common intercourse in society. ^ He learned the trade of tent-making, for the ^ " There is no ground for saying that St. Paul was a very erudite or highly cultivated man. An obvious maxim of practical life from Menander (1 Cor. xv. 33), a religious sentiment of Cleanthes repeated by Aratus, himself a native of Tarsus (Acts xvii. 28), a pungent satire of Epimenides (Tit. i. 12), with possibly a passage here and there which dimly reflects some classical writer — these are very slender grounds on which to build a supposition of vast learning." — Lightfoot's Biblical Essays, p. 206 ; com p. McGiffert's Apostolic Age, p. 1 14 note ; Sabatier's Apostle Paul, p. 47. A correspond- ent, however, sends me the following interesting parallel be- tween utterances of Plato and of Paul, as an indication that Paul was not unfamiliar with Plato. He adds, ' ' Of course these quo- tations may be mere coincidences." PLATO PAUL Now if death is like this, I For me to live is Christ, and say that to die is gain. to die is gain. The hour of departure has I am now ready to be ofiFered, arrived, and we go our ways, I and the time of my departure is to die and you to live — which at hand. is better God only knows. To be with Christ, which is far better. I am very far from admitting For now we see through a that he who contemplates ex- glass, darkly, but then face to istences through the medium face, of thought sees them only " through a glass, darkly," any more than he who sees them in their working effects. PAUL'S EDUCATION AND CONVERSION 21 rabbinical law required every boy to learn a trade ; but he was not, apparently, dependent upon it for a livelihood ; there are indications in his life — to some of which I may refer hereafter — that he was not poor, that at least he had means of sup- port independent either of his industry or of the churches which he served. It was his boast that he was not dependent upon the latter ; and he apparently never took anything by way of salary from them, though he gratefully acknowledged gifts, which they occasionally sent to him.^ How long he lived at Tarsus we do not know. By the age of twelve ^ he had gone up to Jerusalem, Then we ought not to retail- See that none render evil for ate or render evil for evil to any evil unto any man. one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him. But necessity was laid upon For necessity is laid upon me ; me — the word of God I thought yea, woe is unto me, if I preach ought to be considered first. not the gospel ! I am a man, and, like other We also are men of like pas- men, a creature of flesh and sions with you. blood, and not of " wood or stone," as Homer says. I speak becaiise I am con- We have wronged no man ; vinced that I never intention- we have corrupted no man ; we ally wronged any one. have defrauded no man. The life which is unexamined Examine yourselves whether is not worth living. ye be in the faith. 1 Acts XX. 33, 34 ; PhU. iv. 10-17 ; 1 Thess. ii. 9 ; 2 Thess. iii. 8. 2 Acts xxii. 3. " Brought up " signifies from early youth. Com- 22 PAUL THE APOSTLE where later, and very likely at that time, his sister was living — whether at that time married or not, we do not know ; she was married afterwards.^ Here he entered the great Jewish university, under Gamaliel,^ one of the great Hebrew scholars of his time, and studied with passionate devotion the lit- erature, the law, and the hopes of Israel. He has told us what the results of this study were. He became not only a Pharisee — that is, a separatist or a Puritan of the time — but one of the strictest sect of the Pharisees, exceedingly scrupulous in belief and in practice.^ He was orthodox of the orthodox. We can therefore tell a little what his beliefs were ; for we know what their beliefs were. He believed that the law had been given to Moses in the mount ; that every word and every letter of it had been so given. He would have been a great deal more impatient of the Higher Criticism than most impatient critics of that criticism are in our time. He would have had none of it. He believed that Moses wrote every word and every letter of the Pentateuch, including the account of his own death ; and that Moses wrote this by dictation, word for word, as God gave it to him ; unless, indeed, he went still further and believed, as some Pharisees did, that God wrote the book himself in heaven and pare Luke iv. 16 and Acts vii. 20. Jewish children were sent away to school at the age of twelve. 1 Acts xxiii. 16. 2 For history and character of Gamaliel see my Com. on Acts V. 34. 3 Acts xxii. 3 ; xxvi. 5 ; Phil. iii. 4-6 ; Gal. i. 14. PAUL'S EDUCATION AND CONVERSION 23 Landed it down to Moses on the mount, finished and ready for reading.^ To understand this law was the supreme object of his study; to obey this law was the supreme object of his life. But that part of this law which most interested Paul was that which interests us the least, — the Levitical or ceremonial part. The argu- ment for the supremacy of this portion of the law was very short and simple, and is not difficult to understand. The moral law — so argued the Phar- isees — relates to man's duty to his fellow-man ; the ceremonial law relates to man's duty to his God. Justice, mercy, kindness, are obligations due by man to his fellow-man ; but to offer the ap- pointed sacrifices, to observe the appointed fasts, to attend the sacred feasts, to obey the Sabbath regu- lations, to fulfill the required ritual in worship, to perform the ceremonial ablutions, is doing man's duty to God. It is a great deal more important to do one's duty to God than to do one's duty to his fellow-men. It is, therefore, far more important that he should offer the right sacrifice, pay the right tithes, comply scrupulously with the Sabbath and festal regulations, and observe the laws respect- ing cleanliness and uncleanliness, than that he should do justly or love mercy. The declaration of the prophet, that to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God ^ was all that God required, ^ See Schiirer : Jewish People in Time of Christ, ii. 1 : p. 306 ff., p. 337 ff. ^ Micah vi. 8. 24 PAUL THE APOSTLE had long ceased to be orthodox teaching. That Christ had attempted to revive this old teaching of the prophets and put righteousness above ritual was one of the charges preferred against him.^ With that teaching Paul would have had no sympathy. He could not believe it. To him ritual was the heart of the law. Religion was obedience to ritual. He practiced what he believed. " As touching the law," he said, " I was blameless." He fasted twice a week : on the fifth day, because on that day Moses had gone up into the mount ; on the second day, because on that day Moses had come down again. His year was full of fastings. He cele- brated in fasts almost every great calamity in the national history : the overthrow of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, the burning of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar, the murder of Gedaliah by Ish- mael, the siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. He was scrupulous about the Sabbath. He would carry no bundle on the Sabbath day ; would not walk any considerable distance, and never, under any circumstances, for pleasure or recreation. He was scrupulous about the Jewish feasts as well. He was always at the synagogue when the Sabbath day came round. Whenever he returned from a walk, the first thing he did was to get the ewer and basin of water that stood in every Jewish household, and to wash at least his hands. He might have touched a Gentile ; then he would have been un- clean ; and had he eaten with unclean hands, the 1 Matt. ix. 11-13 ; xii. 2 ; Luke xi. 37-42 ; Mark vii. 2. PAUL'S EDUCATION AND CONVERSION 25 uncleanness would have entered into him and de- graded him. And yet he was not satisfied ; for he had an ethical nature. He half-consciously believed that there was something more in righteousness than hand-washing, Sabbath observance, synagogue at- tendance, tithe-paying, and fasting. He believed in justice and mercy, in temperance and righteousness ; and although, as touching the ceremonial law, he was able to be blameless, yet his ethical ideal always transcended his practice, and he never attained it. He has given us a graphic picture of himself at this time. It is true that this picture probably represents his later interpretation of his earlier experience. We know that Bunyan's pictures of his own condition are not such as he would have painted when he was a tinker. We know that John B. Gough's account of his own experi- ences is not such as he would have given when he was a drunken stage actor. So the experience of Paul before his conversion was doubtless a vasfue, uninterpreted, strange unrest, not at all the vivid consciousness as he subsequently described it as perceived from the vantage-ground of a higher experience : ^ — " Once I was living without law. But when the com- mandment came, sin lived again, and I died ; and the 1 It must be remembered that his statement that he was the chief of sinners (1 Tim. i. 15), supposing he wrote the letters to Timothy, was made at the close of his life and as the result of his backward look upon it. 2Q PAUL THE APOSTLE commandment, which was in its object life, I found to be in its result death. For sin, taking the command- ment as a base of operations, thereby deceived me, and through the commandment slew me. So, then, the law itself is holy, and the commandment holy, just, and good. Then the good becomes death to me. No, by no means. But sin, that it might appear sin, works out death in me through that which is good ; that sin, by means of the commandment, might become exceedingly sinful. For we know that the law is spirit- ual ; but I am fleshly, sold under sin. For what I am working out in life I do not comprehend ; for not as I would, do I ; for the result of my action I hate. But if the result is hateful to me, I concur with the law that it is good. Now, then, it is no more I working out my life, but that which dwells in me, namely, sin. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwells not any good. For to will is present with me ; but how to work out that which is good I find not. For the result of my life is not the good that I would, but I practice the evil which I would not. But if what I would not is the result, it is no more I that am working out my life, but that which dwells in me, namely, sin. I find, then, the law that when I would accomplish good works evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God in the inner man. But I see another law in my mem- bers warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my mem- bers. O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from this body of death ? " ^ With the study of the law he studied also Israel's 1 Rom. vii. 9-24. PAUL'S EDUCATION AND CONVERSION 27 hope. Through the long vista of the centuries the literature of Israel had been bound together by a golden thread of promise. From the earliest tra- dition, when it was said that one should rise through whom man should grind the serpent's head to pow- der, down to the last prophecy of Malachi, the Old Testament abounds with promises of a Messiah's coming for Israel's redemption. These prophecies and promises he studied, and what he thought about them was something like this : He believed that a Messiah would suddenly appear in power and great glory; that he would put himself at the head of Israel ; that all the enemies of Israel would mass themselves against him ; that he would either de- stroy them or would subjugate them. Then, when they had been subjugated or destroyed, Jerusalem would be renovated ; the dispersed of Israel from all lands would be gathered together in the Holy Land, and Jerusalem would become the imperial city of the world. The saints who had died and were dwelling in the shadowy under-world would emerge, and with the children of the dispersion assemble in Palestine. Wars and famine, blind- ness and disease would cease, and the reign of peace and the glory of the kingdom of God would be ushered in, and Israel would be the world-power and Jerusalem the imperial city of the world.^ It would be easy, were there room, to quote pas- sages from the Old Testament which seemed to give warrant to these expectations. If we take the Bible 1 Schiirer : Jewish People in the Time of Christ, ii. 2, p. 163 ff. 28 PAUL THE APOSTLE literally ; if we forget that its poetry is truly poetry ; if we regard it as a book of philosophy, not as a book of literature, it is easy to find chapter and verse to warrant every element in this Pharisaic conception of the Messiah's kingdom. An evidence of this lies in the fact that there are to-day those in Christendom who still believe, substantially, that this result is yet to be brought about, and who have been compelled thus far to postpone from time to time the anticipated consummation. Imagine, then, Paul as a man of passionate ear- nestness, whose patriotism was his religion and whose religion was his patriotism ; who believed that the law of Moses was a law handed down direct by God, and who thought that the most important part of that law was the Levitical code ; who be- lieved that a Messiah would come to ransom Israel and make it the dominant nation of the world, and Jerusalem the queen city of the world. To him there come rumors of a strange sect which has arisen in Palestine. We interpret primitive Chris- tianity by the teachings of its converts. We have the Four Gospels, written by those who loved and honored Christ. We have the letters of Paul, writ- ten by one who was his devoted follower, and who delighted to call himself the slave of Jesus Christ. But Paul had no such resources at his command. Not a Gospel was written ; not an Apostle had yet written a line. Paul learned about this new sect from its enemies.^ And if we go, first to the New ^ There is no reason to suppose that Paul had ever seen or PAUL'S EDUCATION AND CONVERSION 29 Testament, and then to the primitive writings o£ the early days which report what the pagans had to say, and finally to ancient rabbinical writings and their later echoes, we can easily reconstruct the conception of Christianity which came to Paul. It was something like this : ^ A child, a boy, born out of wedlock, and with the stamp of a bastard on him, has appeared in Pales- tine.^ He has claimed to be the Messiah, the hope of the glory of Israel. He has gathered about him a ragged regiment of the unkempt, the ignorant, and the vicious, — publicans, harlots, drunkards ; in all the nation no learned man, no man of influence, to do him reverence. He has claimed to heal men's diseases and to feed their hunger. He has appealed to th^ir prejudices and their passions, and so has increased the horde that followed him. He has had no word of condemnation for the openly vicious ; he has never denounced drunkenness, or the extortions of the tax-gatherer. But he has found no satire too keen and no invective too bitter for the church and its honored and orthodox leaders. The men high heard Jesus Christ during the latter's life. Had he done so he ■would almost certainly have referred to the fact. 2 Cor. v. 16 implies the reverse, and the implication is confirmed by the fact that wherever he makes any reference to personal acquaintance with Christ it is to the latter's post-resurrection appearances to him as in 1 Cor. xv. 8. 1 See Isaac Goldstein's Jesus of Nazareth for ancient Rabbinical view of Jesus. ^ That this charge, early brought by Jewish enemies against Jesus, was brought against him in his lifetime is, I think, implied by John viii. 41. 30 PAUL THE APOSTLE in station, the scribes, the theologians, the priests, the members of the Sanhedrim who have descended direct from the seventy whom Moses by the direc- tion of God endued with authority — these he has denounced as liars, robbers, and hypocrites ; he has called them a generation of serpents ; he has told them they cannot escape the damnation of hell. He has not only denounced the lawmakers, he has broken the law again and again. He has set the Sabbath at naught, and told men to carry their bun- dles on the Sabbath. He has scoffed at the sacred ablutions which are a part of the Mosaic law. He has discarded the sacrificial system, venerable with centuries of use, and blasphemously assumed to forgive men their sins without that sacrifice by which and through which forgiveness can alone be won from a just Jehovah. He has declared that the expectation of a Messiah who will make Jeru- salem the queen city and Palestine the dominant na- tion of the world is a delusion ; that Jerusalem will be destroyed, and of the temple not one stone will be left upon another. The nation has condemned him ; Jehovah has condemned him. God puts the stamp of approval on men by their prosperity and victory ; he puts the stamp of disapproval on men by their suffering and defeat ; and this man has suffered the most galling and ignominious defeat. The law declares that " he that is hanged is accursed of God," 1 and this man has been crucified, and thereby thrice accursed : the curse of God as well 1 Deut. 21, 23. PAUL'S EDUCATION AND CONVERSION 31 as the condemnation of tlie nation is upon him. The Sanhedrim has condemned him for blasphemy ; the Koman government has condemned him for treason, — for he was a disturber of the peace as well as a renouncer of religion ; God has condemned him by his providence. His death should have put an end to this strange superstition. But it has not. His followers have now started the story that he has risen from the dead, and, worst of all, men are believing it, and this strange and ignominious sect is growing in numbers. I am ashamed for my race that such folly and such weakness could find a place in their esteem. Something like this was Paul's belief, something such his sentiments concerning the Christian sect. He who wrote to the Romans, " I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ," would not have so written had he not formerly believed that this Messianic sect brought disgrace upon his nation.^ He who wrote to the Corinthians that the foolishness and weakness of Christ were the wisdom and power of God would not have so written had he not once thought the Christian sect notable for its folly and weakness. In this state of mind he was summoned one day to attend a meeting of the Sanhedrim. Whether he was actually a member of the Court we do not 1 See Matheson's Spiritual Development of St. Paul, p. 33 : " Is it not plain that Paul deprecates any feeling of shame concerning Christianity, because he has a distinct remembrance of the time when Christianity did present itself to his mind as a thing to be ashamed of ? " 32 PAUL THE APOSTLE know, but the Sanhedrim had been convened, and a Greek was put on trial. In those times the customary method of rabbinical discourse was his- torical. The rabbi began with the ancient history of Israel, and traced it, in order that he might show the glory of Israel. Stephen, who was origi- nally a Greek and a pagan, but who had become a proselyte to Judaism and then a convert to Chris- tianity, began his speech where the rabbis generally began theirs. Nor did his audience at first sus- pect his meaning. It dawned upon them gradually. It was a very skillful speech : ^ " Abraham, your father," he said, " was called out of the land of paganism. Joseph, the son of Jacob, was seized because of the envy of the patriarchs and sold into Egypt. Moses was driven into exile by the pas- sionate unpatriotism of a Hebrew. And when, after forty years of exile, he came back to deliver Israel by command of God, Israel would not listen to him, but repudiated him. When at last they followed him to the base of Mount Sinai, where the law was received, they put up the golden calf and worshiped it under the very thunderings of Mount Sinai. Despite tabernacle and temple, they have ever since been rebellious against God." Grad- ually the audience began to see what was meant, and Stephen concluded it was time to make his ^ Acts vii. 2-53. It is not necessary to consider -whether the Book of Acts gives us an accurate report of this speech or not. There is no reason to doubt that the author has embodied its spirit and the general course of Stephen's argument. For fine analysis of this speech see Sabatier's Apostle Paul, p. 42 ff. PAUL'S EDUCATION AND CONVERSION 33 application, and he made it with vigor. " Ye stiff- necked and uncircumcised ! " lie cried, " You call us Greeks uncircumcised : you are the uncircumcised ; you have always resisted God ; you have always fought against him; you have always persecuted the prophets ; you have always repudiated his law ; it is no strange thing that when the Messiah came you crucified him ; it was like you in your whole history, from the beginning to the end." Then they gnashed their teeth and set themselves to de- stroy him. Suddenly a light breaks over his face, a light that awes them for a moment, and, looking up, he cries, " I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." This crowns the blasphemy of his speech, the court becomes a mob, the people rush upon him, and, without waiting for judgment, seize him and carry him from the room. Paul follows. Even then, though murder is in the heart of this people, they do not forget the ceremonial law. It is required that the witnesses shall cast the first stone.^ Paul takes charge of the cloaks of the witnesses, that they may cast their stones with the greater vigor with unencumbered hands. On such a man as Paul such a scene must have produced a profound and strange effect. Many men are satisfied to kill an adversary. Paul was not of that kind. Nothing would satisfy him but killing the heresy ; and the heresy was not killed. The blow on the lighted iron sent the sparks 1 Deut. xvii. 5-7. 34 PAUL THE APOSTLE a-flying ; the Christians fleeing from the persecu- tion which followed the death of Stephen went tell- ing the story of the cross and of the resurrection ; ^ and Paul gnashed his teeth in commingled rage and shame at the fanaticism of this heresy and at the temporizing policy of Israel's rulers, inter- preted by that much but falsely praised Gamaliel at whose feet he had sat. Gamaliel had said, " Let them alone ; for if their plan and operations are of men they will come to naught, but if they are from God ye cannot overthrow them." ^ And to him, it is said, the Sanhedrim agreed. Trimmer, com- promiser, coward, was he. It is not true that what- ever is of God flourishes when men are disloyal. And it is not true that whatever is not of God comes suddenly to naught if men who ought to fight it dare not. Paul set himself to extirpate this false religion, nurtured in the very heart of Israel. He perse- cuted its adherents ; became exceedingly mad against them ; went from house to house in search of their conventicles ; spared neither men nor women ; presided at many a cruel scourging; added jeer and insult to the penalties inflicted ; endeavored in vain to induce disciples of the new faith to renounce their Lord ; sent more than one to share with Stephen the martyr's coronation.^ Their effectual non-resistance intensified his passion. The time- 1 Acts viii. 4. 2 Acts V. 34-39. 3 Acts viii. 3 ; ix. 1 ; xxii. 4 ; xxvi. 9-11 ; Gal. i. 13 ; 1 Tim. i. 13. PAUL'S EDUCATION AND CONVERSION 35 serving priests and Pharisees grew weary of his in- tensity. Time-servers and place-holders always do weary of earnest men. They could not understand the spirit of a Paul, who was determined to put down falsehood at every hazard. So when he came to the high priest, and asked for a firman to the Jewish authorities at Damascus, that he might bring to Jerusalem for trial there any whom he might find belonging to this Christian sect, the high priest was very glad to get rid of him, and gave the de- sired authority. And yet during all this time Paul had not him- self been at peace. The audacity of Stephen was of the kind to appeal to his own native audacity. The boldness of a man who dared face a mob was of the kind that he admired. The clear-sighted courage of an opponent who understood the issues commended him to Paul more than the cowardice of time-servers who professed Paul's faith. More- over, the teaching of Stephen and of others began to produce an impression upon Paul. He began to question whether he wholly comprehended Jewish history and Jewish character. The more his mind misgave him the more vehement became his passion against the Christians ; the more vehement that passion the more his mind misgave him. Some- thing such was the condition of Paul when he started for Damascus. It was a six days' journey. He was practically alone. His attendants were not theologians, probably not very pious men. They could not discuss old traditions and new faiths with 36 PAUL THE APOSTLE him. He was left to himself, and he found himself a very uncomfortable companion. The kindliness in his heart was always great, and there marched in the way before him the shadowy forms of those whom he had put to death. He was always cour- ageous, and the boldness of the men who stood for their own convictions unto death stirred him with a new, strange pain. The problem of his own life came up again before him, and he remembered that though he had been blameless in the law, he had never had that peace which the Psalmist and the prophets promised to the man who has the blessing of the Almighty. So he studied and wondered and thought, and fought himself, as before he had fought others. For the man who is strong in his own conviction is rarely angered by opposition. It is the man who only half believes who is roiled and irritated by questioning ; irritated because he fears the questioning will rob him of his faith. To-day in America it is not the men who believe in spirit- ual religion with their whole nature who are angry because their theology is questioned, but the men who are half afraid their theology is false, and there- fore cannot endure to have it put on trial. So was it with Paul. Five days had passed. He was already approach- ing his journey's end, when, at midday, there sud- denly shone a light from the heavens so dazzling that he and his retinue fell to the ground, and a voice cried out to him, " Saul, Saul, why persecut- est thou me? " He answered, still with his native PAUL'S EDUCATION AND CONVERSION 37 independence unbroken, " Sire, wlio art thou ? " The answer, " I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest," was enforced by a vision of the Risen One whom Stephen had seen standing on the right hand of God ; at the same time the Voice discloses to him the conflict which had been going on in his own soul, a secret from all others, scarcely even recognized by himself : " It is hard for thee to kick against the goads." ^ This reading of his heart's secret is more convincing than either Voice or Vi- sion. He surrenders instantly. " Sire," he replies, " what wilt thou have me to do ? " ^ The surren- der was required to be complete. " Go on to Da- mascus, and it shall be told thee what thou shalt do." From one of the despised Christians he was to get his instructions. Such is the thorough work God makes with a soul, and such the thorough work a true soul makes with itself. When Paul surren- dered he surrendered absolutely and entirely.^ I do not propose to discuss here the phenomena that attended Paul's conversion. Similar pheno- mena have been recorded from time to time by men in whom sudden changes have been wrought. 1 The figure is interpreted by Eceles. xii. 11 : " The words of the wise are as goads." His uneasy conscience was the goad, whose prickings he would not follow. 2 The word Kurie, rendered Lord, is not necessarily a recognition of divine authority. It is a general title expressive of respect, and is sometimes translated " Sir," as in John xii. 21 ; xx. 15 ; Acts xvi. 30. But its use by Paul here indicates reverence for the one whom he had formerly despised. 3 There are three accounts of this event in the Book of Acts : eh. ix. 1-9 : xxii. 3-11 ; xxvi. 9-18. 38 PAUL THE APOSTLE Constantine thought he saw a cross in the sky. Loyola thought he saw hosts of good and evil set in battle array against each other. Luther thought he saw the devil coming to tempt him, and flung the inkstand at him. Were these real visions ? I know no reason why we should think they were not.^ Why should we think the celestial sphere may not be all about us, and sometimes, in some sudden and illuminating moment, pierce through the mystic cloud which generally hides it from our vision ? It is true that only Paul saw the Vision, and apparently only Paul heard and understood the Voice.2 It is also true that he afterwards speaks of the Christ who was revealed in him.^ But it is also true that he was blinded by the light and ever after carried about with him, in some physical effect upon his person, what he calls the marks of the Lord Jesus.* How far the Voice and Vision were external, how far wrought within, it is per- haps impossible to determine. But it is also of very little consequence. How far the Vision was produced by a phenomenon in the heavens, how far by a phenomenon in the brain, it is not impor- tant, and perhaps not possible, to determine. Paul was instantly arrested, and his whole life was revo- 1 The fact that Paul was stricken with blindness shows that the phenomenon was partially at least objective. 2 Comp. Acts ix. 7 with Acts xxii. 9, where the phrase " heard not the voice " is to be interpreted as " did not recognize any artic- ulate words." 3 Gal. i. 16. 4 Gal. vi. 17. PAUL'S EDUCATION AND CONVERSION 39 lutionized ; tliat is the important fact, and that is not questioned.! Professor Jowett, of Balliol Col- lege, Oxford, will be recognized by every one as both a great and a thoroughly independent scholar. And this is what he says on the subject : — " There is no fact in history more certain or undisputed than that, in some way or another, by an inward vision or revelation of the Lord, or by an outward miraculous appearance, as he was going to Damascus, the Apostle was suddenly converted from being a persecutor to a preacher of the gospel." ^ Paul began at once to preach in the synagogues in Damascus that Jesus of Nazareth is the Mes- siah.^ The synagogue service made it possible for hearers to ask questions. To such questioning Paul was subjected. How could he reconcile the doctrine that Jesus was the Messiah with historic precedent and the Mosaic law ? Paul was not one to hold inconsistent opinions in different hemi- spheres of his brain. He was not one who could hold certain opinions apart from and inconsistent with other opinions. He felt that he must study. What place so good for study as the foot of Mount 1 Paul's letters abound with references to this conversion ; e. g. Rom. vii. 24, 25 ; 1 Cor. xv. 8, 9 ; Gal. i. 15, 16 ; Ephes. ii. 3-6 ; Phil. iii. 4-8, etc. 2 Jowett's Cora. p. 227. ^ "Immediately preached in the synag-ogues, Jesus, that he is the Son of God." Acts ix. 20. This is the unquestionable read- ing-. See Alford, Westcott and Hort, and Rev. Version. His preaching- was not at this time the theolog-ical doctrine that the Messiah is divine, but the fact that Jesus was the Messiah. 40 PAUL THE APOSTLE Sinai, whither Moses had gone to receive the law, whither Elijah had retreated, and where he had seen the fire and earthquake and tempest, and had listened to the still small voice ? Paul turned his back on Damascus, and retreated for we know not how long — two or three years — to Arabia. There he restudied the prophecies, reexamined the law, recreated his philosophy. There, too, he set- tled, perhaps not without conflict, his life purpose.^ If he attached himself to this Christian sect, he must give up all that most men hold dear, — his ambitions, his friendships, his family ties, every- thing. He has not told the story of the inward struggle, but he has told us of the result : — "If any other one thinks to have confidence in the flesh, I more. Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrew parents, measured by the law, a Pharisee, measured by zeal, persecuting the Church, measured by the standards of righteousness afforded by the law, blameless. But whatsoever things were advantages to me, these have I reckoned to be but loss. Yea, verily, I do moreover continually reckon all things to be loss because of the supereminence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, through whom I suffered the loss of all things and reckoned them but refuse, in order that I might gain Christ, and be found in him, not having my own right- eousness, that which proceeds from the law, but that 1 His subsequent history negatives any notion that he went into Arabia to preach. It was not until fourteen years later that he ac- cepted fully and entered upon his mission to the Gentiles. See Chronological Table on p. xi. PAUL'S EDUCATION AND CONVERSION 41 which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which proceeds from God and is founded upon faith; that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed unto his death, if possibly I might attain to the resurrection from the dead ; not that I have already attained Christ, or am already perfected, but I press on if also I may lay hold on that for which I was laid hold of by Christ." 1 From this retreat Paul came out to enter on his missionary career, bringing with him some of his old Jewish prejudices, bringing also the Levitical forms of speech in which he had been educated. It often happens that a man retains the forms of utterance of his early education when the spirit within him has been entirely revolutionized. Thus Paul still used rabbinical phraseology, still cast much of his thought in rabbinical forms, and still entertained to some extent the rabbinical concep- tions of the Messianic kingdom. He did not at first understand his mission as the Apostle to the Gentiles, or, if he did, he did not enter upon that mission. Eight or ten years appear to have passed away between the time of his return from Arabia and the first true missionary journey of which we have any record in the Book of Acts.^ He began preaching in Damascus. But perse- cution soon arose against him there. He came 1 Phil. iii. 4-12. 2 Probably more rather than less. Lightfoot makes the period eleven years, Biblical Essays, p. 221. See Chronological Table on p. xi. 42 PAUL THE APOSTLE near paying the penalty of his bravery with his life. Damascus was a city surrounded by walls. On these walls were houses with windows looking out upon the country beyond. In one of these houses, as a good Providence had ordered it, lived a Christian, and Paul was let down out of the win- dow of one of these houses, beyond the wall, and so escaped from the guards who were watching the gates to apprehend him.^ Thence he went up to Jerusalem. But he was driven out of Jerusalem also ; 2 if he had stayed there, he would have fol- lowed Stephen to a martyrdom sooner than he did. Thence he went up to Tarsus, his native city. Some time elapsed ; what occurred during this time we do not know. He next appears in Anti- och, a pagan city, given over to philosophy, art, and pleasure.^ Here was a little church where the followers of Jesus had been gathered, some of them originally pagans, some of them Jews. Satire was a prevailing form of humor and a common sub- stitute for argument in those days, and this sect that thought they were going to revolutionize the world and bring in the Messianic kingdom were satirically called Christians, — that is, Messianists.* 1 Acts ix. 24, 25. 2 Acts ix. 29. Comp. xxii. 21. 3 Acts xiii. 1, 2. * The word " Christian " occurs in the N. T. only three times ; Acts xi. 26 ; xxvi. 28 ; 1 Pet. iv. 16. Its satirical nse by Agrippa, and Peter's use of it, as well as the reputation of Antioch for coin- ing derisive epithets, combine to support the interpretation here given of the origin of the term. PAUL'S EDUCATION AND CONVERSION 43 This little church said to Paul, or Paul said to the little church, or God said to both and they both heard and listened, Send Paul and Barnabas on a mission to the heathen. It was the first foreign missionary effort. All the arguments that have ever been made against missionary effort since were tenfold stronger then. But they did not avail against the spiritual enthusiasm of this church. Paul received his ordination to missionary service at a prayer-meeting without a single Apostle there to give him the benediction ; it is doubtful whether a single Apostle in the Christian Church would have given him a benediction had he been there. And so he started forth to convert the world before the Messiah should come again. CHAPTER III PAUL THE MISSIONAKY It is not within the province of this volume to trace chronologically the history of Paul's mission- ary travels. Only in brief outline can I indicate some of the general features and characteristics of the fifteen years of life of which we have any record in the New Testament. It ends with Paul's first imprisonment at Rome. Tradition reports further missionary journeys, and his final death as a mar- tyr by the headsman's axe under Nero, in the six- tieth year of his age, A. D. 67 or 68. In these missionary journeys he preached wher- ever he could. Generally, whenever he went into a town or city, he first looked up his Jewish bre- thren.^ In some of the larger cities there was a Jewish synagogue. He was a Jewish rabbi, recog- nized as such, — probably wore some insignia which served to designate him as a rabbi, so that when he was seen in the synagogue he was invited to the platform to address the congregation. If he was refused a hearing in the synagogue, or was in a city in which there was none, he would preach in the market-place. Every Greek and Roman city 1 Acts xiii. 14; xiv. 1 ; xvi. 13; xvii. 1, 2. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 45 had a market-place, where ideas as well as goods were interchanged with great freedom. Here Paul often talked with people in groups, as he could find them. Sometimes he took a private house of his own, but oftener found his way into the private house of some one who was already of his way of belief, and there talked to the people gathered to hear him. On one occasion he hired a Greek schoolhouse which had probably been abandoned by its teacher.^ He did not confine himself, how- ever, to preaching ; indeed, the preaching was the lesser part of his work. He did a great deal of what we call personal work. He went from house to house. He talked with people singly or by twos and threes. He had no Anglo-Saxon dread of enthusiasm ; was not afraid of emotion ; talked to men, oftentimes with tears in his eyes. For he was on fire with a passionate fervor, and he urged his disciples also to be fervid.^ When he preached to the Jews, he followed very much the line of argument which Stephen had followed. It is interesting to compare Stephen's speech, delivered at the time of his martyrdom, and the first sermon preached by Paul in a synagogue.^ They run along the same lines. Paul begins as Stephen began, with the history of Israel ; he shows how Israel had been expectant of a Messiah, and yet how it had been characterized by unbelief 1 Acts xiv. 8-18 ; xvii. 17 ; xviii. 7 ; xix. 9 ; xx. 7-12. 2 Acts XX. 18-20 ; Phil. iii. 18 ; Rom. xii. 11. ^ Acts vii. with xiii. 15-41. 46 PAUL THE APOSTLE and in all its history had been disobedient to God and recalcitrant ; breaks off the history before it is completed ; states that the Messiah was born of the seed of David, as promised ; that Israel has put him to death ; and then bears testimony as a living, personal witness that this Jesus has risen from the dead. This appears to have been his habitual course of argument with the Jews in his earlier ministry. He bases his whole argument for Christianity on the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, attested not by others, but by his own personal vision of and personal communion with him as a living Messiah.^ When he preaches to the pagans, though he ends with the same prophecy of an approaching judg- ment, he pursues a different course. He does not refer to the Bible ; says little about the Messiah ; speaks of Jesus, indeed, but of Jesus as one coming to fulfill the hopes and expectations to which pagan poets have given expression. The most notable of his reported sermons to the pagans is one delivered in Athens. Athens was the home of Greek philo- sophy and the centre of Greek worship. Petronius says that it was easier to find a god than a man in Athens ; Pausanias, that there were more images in Athens than in all the rest of Greece combined ; and Xenophon that the whole city was an altar, a votive offering to the gods.^ It could not have 1 Acts xiii. 30-37 ; xvii. 2, 3, 30, 31 ; 1 Cor. xv. 3-8. 2 Pausanias writes about a century after Paul's visit, but his description is doubtless applicable to the Athens of Paid's time. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 47 been long after Paul's visit to Athens that the same Council of the Areopagus, which, on his visit, summoned him to give account of his heralding of " strange gods," erected a statue to Nero, and in- scribed upon the Parthenon the legend " The Coun- cil of the Areopagus, and the Council of the Six Hundred, and the Athenian People [to] Emperor Greatest Nero Caesar Claudius, Augustus, Ger- manicus. Son of God." ^ To a city with such no- tions of deity and thus pervaded by idolatry and its attendant priestcraft, comes Paul, and his heart is stirred within him by the ignorance and the super- stition which surround him. He talks as he has opportunity in the market-place. People listen. Crowds begin to gather about him. At length the university takes the matter up.^ There was a council of the university which had authority to regulate religious teaching in Athens ; and this council summons Paul to give account of himself. He is not, indeed, put on trial ; he is not charged with any crime ; but the question is raised. What right has he to teach ? he is no scholar, no gradu- ate from any Greek school, and he knows very little of Greek philosophy. The people compare him to a little bird that picks up a crumb here and a crumb there ; a petty plagiarizer, they call him.^ 1 See Century Magazine, June, 1897, pp. 301-309. 2 For the grounds of this interpretation of the trial, see Dr. Ramsay's St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen, pp. 241- 249. ^ Acts xvii. 18. " Babhler " is literally " seed-picker." It is a word of Athenian slang, applied to a quack teacher who retailed 48 PAUL TEE APOSTLE Others, more seriously, charge him with being a setter-forth of strange gods, — a crime for which Socrates had died four hundred years before. The council lay hold upon him and lead him up to the great platform where the tribunals are wont to be held, and, surrounding him in a circle and standing him in the midst, they ask him to give account of himself and state what his doctrines are, that they may consider whether he shall have license to go on any longer in this university town. And this is his answer : — " Ye men of Athens, in every point of view I see you more than others reverential to the gods. For, passing through your city and looking about upon the objects of your worship, I found here even one altar on which was inscribed ' To an unknown God.' Whom, therefore, without knowing him ye worship, him declare I unto you. The God that made the world and all things therein ; he that is lord of heaven and earth, in no handmade temple dwells, neither by human hands is served, as though he needed aught — he who himself gives life and breath and all things, and has made of one blood all the nations of the earth that they may dwell together, and has fixed the appointed seasons and limits of their abode ; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being ; as certain also of your own poets have said, ' For we are also his scraps of learning which he picked up at haphazard and re- peated. Dean Farrar renders it ' ' jjicker-up of learning's crumbs." See Ramsay's St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen, pp. 242, 243. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 49 offspring.' Inasmuch, then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. And the times of this ignorance God overlooked ; but he now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world by that man whom he hath ordained, giving assur- ance unto all in that he hath raised him from the dead." ^ It has often been noticed with what characteristic skill Paul approaches this council, how he com- mends their reverence for the gods, quotes their own poets, and leads them toward that to which he would direct them, the revelation in Jesus Christ of the God whom, though unknown, they worship. But when he speaks of the resurrection of the dead, they will hear him no more ; and so he goes his way. This sermon may be taken as a type of Paul's spirit in dealing with the pagan world, as the other may be taken as a type of Paul's method of dealing with the Jewish world. With this message, the same in its outcome, though so different in its ap- proach, he travels from city to city and province to province. In this missionary work he has some great ad- vantages. The world is practically one, and under one gov- ernment. He can travel where he pleases. There are no boundaries that he dare not pass over. The time has gone when a man is regarded as a foe if he passes out of his own country into another, for , 1 Acts xvii. 22-31. 50 PAUL THE APOSTLE all the countries in which Paul traveled are parts of the one great Roman Empire. And Paul himself is a Roman citizen. His father and his mother were Jews, but they had become Roman citizens. How we do not know. Perhaps they had paid a great price for it. More j)robably they had been captured in war, and thus became Roman slaves, and then for some service rendered had been manumitted.^ And when the Roman slave became a freeman, he became a Roman free- man. So, while Paul was born and raised reli- giously a Jew, his citizenship was Roman ; as the children of a Russian Jew who has come to this country and here been naturalized, are American- born citizens, though of Jewish parentage. Of this fact Paul more than once takes advantage.^ But this is not the most significant effect of his Roman citizenship upon him. It makes him cosmopolitan. He realizes himself as belonging to the world. He has a certain pride in his Roman citizenship, and this Roman citizenship and the pride which it brings with it has enlarged his horizon and made him a greater man than he could have been simply as a Hebrew. He refers to Roman citizenship more than once in his epistles, and to the privileges which 1 Paul's frequent references to slavery (Rom. i. 1 ; vi. 16, 20) and his evident sympathy with slaves (Ephes. vi. 5, 8 ; Col. iii. 22-25 ; Philem. 12, 16) indicate his intimate familiarity with the conditions of servitude. 2 Acts xvi. 37 ; xxii. 25. Comp. xxiii. 27 ; xxv. 11, 16. Be- cause he was a Roman citizen he was beheaded, not crucified. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 51 it confers, as illustrations of citizenship in the kingdom of God.^ Moreover, the language of the world — that is, the language of the cultivated world — was one. There were many dialects, and the common people were far apart from one another linguistically, but the people of culture spoke the Greek language throughout the Roman Empire, much as fifty years ago the people of culture in Europe spoke the French. And Paul spoke Greek like a Greek, not like a Hebrew. He was born in a Greek city, was brought up with Greek surroundings, and had the apparent culture of a Greek. When the mob set upon him in Jerusalem, and he was rescued by the soldiery, and turned to the officer and asked. May I speak to them ? the officer was surprised, and replied. Canst thou speak Greek 7^ The moment he spoke in Greek the officer paid respect to him. He said to himself. This is a different man from what I had thought ; he is a man of culture. The ability to speak the Greek language as a Greek marked its possessor as belonging to the upper class. It is probable that he was by no means a poor man. It is true that he was a tentmaker ; that at times he labored with his own hands; true that he says nothing himself about his possessions. But the indications are unmistakable that he was a man of some competence. A man could not now, 1 Phil. iii. 20, Rev. Ver. ; Ephes. ii. 19. See Lig-litf oot's Biblical Essays, pp. 203, 204. 2 Acts xxi. 37. 52 PAUL TEE APOSTLE and could not then, travel throughout Greece and Rome without money. He traveled in good fashion. When he went up to Rome, he took two compan- ions with him as his slaves.^ He appealed to Caesar. It was an expensive proceeding to appeal to Csesar.^ Paul took the appeal without any hesitation, — Paul, who had said again and again, I will not be a bur- den to the Church, and will not take charity from them. Paul was not a man to take an appeal to Caesar and then ask the churches to pay the bills. Paul was put in prison, and Felix held him there because he expected a bribe. Felix did not expect a bribe from poor men. This Paul was no un- kempt, ragged, poverty-stricken wanderer. He was a Greek gentleman of culture, a Roman citi- zen of dignity, a gentleman of adequate means for leisurely and measurably comfortable travel.^ 1 For evidence of this, see Ramsay's St. Paul the Traveler and Boman Citizen, p. 316. 2 " An appeal to the Supreme Court could not be made by every- body that chose. Such an appeal had to be permitted and sent forward by the provincial governor ; and only a serious case would be entertained. But the case of a very poor man is never esteemed as serious, and there is little doubt that the citizen's right of appeal to the Emperor was hedged in by fees and pledges." Ramsay thinks that the object of Paul's appeal was to receive an imperial judgment in favor of religious liberty. " Paul had weighed the cost ; he had reckoned the gain which would accrue to the Church if the Supreme Court pronounced in his favor ; and his past expe- rience gave him every reason to hope for a favorable issue before a purely Roman tribunal, where Jewish influence would have little or no power." — Ramsay: St. Paul the Traveler and Soman Citi- zen, pp. 310-312. ^ The fact that he worked at times with his own hands to add to PAUL THE MISSIONARY 53 At the beginning of liis career the spirit of Rome was a spirit, not of toleration, but of that indiffer- ence which at times serves ahnost as good a purpose. Rome did not care for the conflicts of religions. There were a number of deities and a number of religions, and it was the early policy of Rome to allow every people to have their own religion and their own gods. When the Jews brought complaint against Paul that he was interfering with their religion, and brought him before Gallio in Corinth, Gallio said, If it were a question of misdemeanor or crime, reason would that I should bear with you ; but if it is a question of words and of names and of your law, ye yourselves will look to it ; for I have no mind to be a judge of such matters ; and he drove them from the judgment seat.^ In the Book of Acts Paul is never accused merely of being a Christian. That is not the charge against him. He is accused of being seditious, of turning the world upside down, of inciting men to violence, of interfering with trade.^ If it had been sufficient simply to say that he was a Christian, these false charges would not have been invented. It was not his income (Acts xviii. 3 ; xx. 34 ; 1 Cor. iv. 12 ; 1 Thess. ii. 9 ; 2 Thess. iii. 8) is not inconsistent with the belief that he was not wholly dependent on such labor ; and he habitually refused to depend on the churches. 1 Cor. ix. 12 j 2 Cor. xi. 9 j Phil. iv. 17. 1 Acts xviii. 12-17. 2 Acts xvi. 20, 21 ; xvii. 6, 7 ; xix. 26, 27, 37, 38 ; xxiv. 5, 6. Ramsay in The Church in the Homan Empire has given a very clear account of the gradual rise of persecutions against the Christians as Christians. 54 PAUL THE APOSTLE until toward the latter part of Paul's historical career that in Rome Christians were persecuted simply because they were Christians. The indica- tions are that this form of persecution was first instituted by Nero, to deflect the growing indigna- tion against himself because of the burning of Rome. His decree, once issued, remained a part of the imperial policy, sometimes enforced, sometimes unenforced, until well on to the time of Constantine. But not until Paul's first imprisonment in Rome had that decree gone forth. Nor was there at first any very strong religious opposition to Paul on the part of the pagan peoples. The people cared very little about their religion. The philosophers had long since abandoned it. The wits made fun of it. The gods were ridiculed by the comedians. And the people were tired of it. It was maintained by the priesthood, and for their own benefit.^ When there appeared a man saying, Here is a new faith, the people were ready to listen. The sinew of the old faith had relaxed ; the arms of the old religion were paralyzed ; the old religion was decrepit. Add to this that the appeal of Paul was, in the main, to the poorer classes. His congregations were made up, he tells us himself, not of the rich or the strong or the wise or the noble, but of the 1 The attitude of Rome toward the old religion is well epitomized by Gibbon in his famous sentence, " The various forms of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were considered by the peo- ple as equally true ; by the philosophers as equally false ; and by the magistrates as equally useful." PAUL THE MISSIONARY 55 poor and the outcast.^ The religion he taught ad- dressed itself to the freedmen, to slaves, to the out- cast of society. Its message to them was, You yourselves are sons of God. Peasants, I bring you a Messiah who was himself a peasant. Carpenters, I bring you a man who was the son of a carpenter. He is the world's deliverer ; the rescuer of mankind ; he brings in a new reign and a new life into the world, in which you are to share. With this message was another like it : Death does not end all ; there is a life beyond ; and we know that there is such a life because we know the man who was dead and lived again. The power of Christianity inspired by this faith in the resurrec- tion of Jesus Christ it is hard for us now to realize. Eighteen centuries have intervened between our- selves and the living witnesses of the resurrection. But then they were living. And yet there were difficulties which Paul had to encounter, and many of them. It was not plain or easy work. He has given us in one graphic picture, in very few words, his experience : — " At the hands of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one ; thrice was I beaten with rods ; once was I stoned ; thrice I suffered shipwreck ; a day and a night have I spent in the deep. In journeyings ofttimes ; in perils of rivers ; in perils of brigands ; in perils from my kindred ; in perils from the Gentiles ; in perils in the city ; in perils in the desert ; in perils on the sea ; in perils among false brethren ; in toil and weariness ; in I 1 Cor. i. 26-28. 56 PAUL THE APOSTLE sleeplessness ; in hunger and thirst ; in fastings ofttimes ; in cold and nakedness ; not to mention that which is added to these, and which presses upon me day by day, the care of all the churches." ^ FiDancial interests were interfered with, and took umbrage at the interference. Christianity has al- ways had to contend more or less against what men call vested interests. This has been true ever since its birth. Pliny, in his letter to Trajan, written about the year 112, complacently commends the success of his persecution of the Christians, because as a result there had been a great increase in the demand for fodder for the cattle raised for sacrifice.^ There is something humorous in this naive balan- cing of Christianity on the one side and the sale of fodder for cattle on the other, and this estimate of Christianity, in the view of so thoughtful a Roman as Pliny, as the lighter weight of the two. This antagonism of moneyed interest was a prime factor in the opposition which Paul had to encounter. It was because the masters of the poor insane girl saw that their gain was gone when the devil was cast out of her that Paul was arrested and beaten at Philippi. It was because the sales of the images of Diana were interfered with that Paul's compan- ions were mobbed at Ephesus.^ Financial interests were perhaps less venomous than race prejudice. The hostility between Jew 1 2 Cor. xi. 24-28. 2 See Ramsay's The Church in the Roman Empire, pp. 196-201. 3 Acts xvi. 19 : xix. 24-28. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 57 and Gentile was great. The anti-Semitic prejudice of our own time affords but a mild illustration of the anti-Gentile prejudice in the time of Paul among the Jews. When he said to the Jews, The Greeks also are God's children and are sharers of his love and have an inheritance in his kingdom, they rose in wrath against him.^ Even the Christian Church yielded him but a scant and half-hearted support. One faction in it was always bitterly opposed to him, the more bitterly because its opposition was conscientious. This opposition was intensified and strengthened by the conservative element in the Church, which thought that Paul had gone quite too far when he disregarded the whole ceremo- nial law, and, without claiming any special divine authority, discarded that rite of circumcision which had come down to them with the sanction of Mosaic enactment and of centuries of practice. ^ Whether pagans could become Christians at all unless they first became Jews was seriously doubted. A great council was held in Jerusalem to consider this ques- tion. A quasi-liberality finally triumphed in this council, and it expressed the judgment that pagans might become Christians provided they abstained from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication.^ The 1 Acts xiii. 47-50 ; xiv. 4, 5 ; xvii. 5. 2 Acts XV. 1 ; Gal. ii. 3, 4. ^ Acts XV. 23-29. This was not a church council in the ecclesi- astical sense of that term. The churches of Palestine were not represented. It was simply a meeting of the church at Jerusalem to answer the questions brought to them by Paul and Barnabas 58 PAUL THE APOSTLE resolutions were given to Paul and Barnabas to carry to the Gentile churclies. Paul took them, but very soon quietly set aside three of these pro- hibitions. An idol, he told his disciples, is nothing in the world, and meat offered to an idol is just as good to eat as any other meat ; but, if it disturbs the conscience of these weaker brethren, — so with gentle satire he characterized the Apostles at Jeru- salem, — forbear from eating for love's sake.^ In all this career, with the difficulties and the dangers which he had to confront, the character- istics of Paul stand out luminous in the fragmentary sketches which history furnishes us of his career and character. He had passion and intensity, but great self-poise ; versatility, but steadiness ; schol- arly tastes, but great presence of mind in sudden emergencies. He was equally at home before the university in Athens, before a Jewish audience in a great synagogue, before a group of pious women by the riverside, and before Festus or Felix in a semi- royal court. He captivated men by his personal magnetism ; arrested them by his quiet calmness in times of peril. In Jerusalem he is about to be scourged under orders of the chief captain. As they are binding him, Paul quietly asks the cen- turion, " Is it lawful for you to scourge a Roman ■whether the present representatives of that church really repre- sented them in saying : Except ye be circumcised ye cannot be saved. Acts xvi. 1-3. Paul declares explicitly that he would not have submitted his judgment on the main question to any one, whatever authority he might claim. Gal. i. 8, 9 ; ii. 11-14. 1 1 Cor. viii. 4, 7-12. PAUL THE MISSIONARY 59 imcondemned ? " and the centurion, alarmed for his own safety, goes straightway to report to the chief captain. 1 Forty Jews have taken a vow that they will eat nothing and drink nothing until they have killed Paul. His nephew learns that they are lying in wait, gets access to the captive in the castle, and reports the news to him. Paul calls the guard and says, " Take this young man unto the chief captain, for he has a certain thing to tell him." 2 The guard is increased, and Paul is brought safely to his destination. I suspect the Jews broke their vows and did eat something, though Paul was not killed. These qualities of courage, of poise, of magnetism, of versatility, receive perhaps their most dramatic illustration in the story of his shipwreck. He is put on board ship as a prisoner. He carries his two companions with him as body-servants. He is at once made friends of by the centurion, who takes him into his counsel when they debate whether they shall sail from a given port or not. The centurion, who is the commander of this government ship, decides that they shall set sail in spite of Paul, for the captain of the ship counsels it. The storm comes on ; they are in bitter stress of weather ; all hope is gone ; they are in utter despair. Then it is that this little, bent, half -blinded Jew goes about among the frightened sailors and soldiers and says. Be of good cheer ; my God has given me a vision, and sent me a message; we shall all be saved. 1 Acts xxii. 25-29. ^ Acts xxiii. 17. 60 PAUL THE APOSTLE When some sailors under pretense of carrying anchors out of the bow let down a small boat into the sea, that they may get into it and escape, it is Paul who detects the cowardly fraud and calls the attention of the centurion and the soldiers to the deserters, and with a sharp cut of the sword the rope is severed and the boat drifts away into the night. It is Paul, too, who as day dawns makes his way about the slanting and slippery decks and distributes bread among the cowering groups, fam- ished and frightened, and calmly asks the blessing of his God upon the meal, amid the roaring of the tempest.^ This man is no lay figure on which philosophy hangs like clothes on a skeleton in a dry-goods window. He is a hero, a gentleman; Coleridge calls him the gentleman with the finest manners of any man upon record, — cultivated, refined, heroic, versatile, magnetic ; a born interpreter of truth, a leader of men, a creator of life, an epoch-making genius. 2 1 Acts xxvii. Consult Mr. James Smith's admirable monograph on The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul. ^ " The Paul of Acts is the Paul that appears to us in his own letters, in his ways and his thoughts, in his educated tone of pol- ished courtesy, in his quick and vehement temper, in the extraor- dinary versatility and adaptability which made him at home in every society, moving at ease in all surroundings, and everywhere the centre of interest, whether he is the Socratic dialectician in the agora of Athens, or the rhetorician in its university, or conversing with kings and proconsuls, or advising in the council on shipboard, or cheering a broken-spirited crew to make one more effort for life. Wherever Paul is, no one has eyes for any but him." — Ram- PAUL THE MISSIONARY 61 say's St. Paul the Traveler and the Boman Citizen, pp. 21, 22. For illustrations of traits of character furnished by incidents in his life, see Acts xiii. 10 ; xiv. 15 ; xvi. 3, 25, 37 ; xvii. 16 ; xviii. 5, 9, 18 ; xix. 30 ; xx. 20-31 ; xxi. 37-40 ; xxiii. 17 ; xxiv. 10 ff., 25 ; XXV. 10, 11 ; xxvi. 2 ff., 29 ; xxvii. 10, 21 ff., 31, 33-36 ; xxviii. 3-5, 17 ff. They illustrate his passionate nature, strong emotions, self-poise, presence of mind, courage, tact, oratorical skill, quick- ness in repartee, versatility, consecration, devotion to his cause. CHAPTER IV THE EARLY CHURCH ^ Paul's letters were for the most part written to certain primitive churches. What was the charac- ter of these churches ? When we speak of a church, we think of a highly organized body, Presbyterian or Episcopal or Con- gregational or Roman Catholic, with a clearly defined ecclesiastical power vested somewhere, — in the congregation, or the session, or the wardens, or the priest ; with officers elected to perform certain specified functions ; with a creed, written or tradi- tional, long or short ; and with some order of ser- 1 Authority for most of the statements in this chapter may be found in Dean Alford's Greek Testament, Dean Stanley's Christian Institutions, Dr. Hort's The Christian Ecclesia, Professor Hatch's Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, The Organization of the Early Christian Churches, by the same author, Bishop Lightfoot's The Christian Ministry, and Professor A. V. G. Allen's Christian Institutions. These are all Episcopal scholars of acknowledged authority in the department of Church history. It may be fairly said that now substantially all scholars who treat ecclesiastical history as other history is treated by scien- tific scholars, that is, as a development, agree in the general view underlying the picture of the early churches presented in this paper. For the opposite view the student may be referred to The Church and the Ministry, by Canon Gore, and Sacerdotalism, by Canon Knox-Little. THE EARLY CHURCH 63 vice or ritual, simple or complex. And when we read that Paul wrote letters to the churches, we imagine such organizations as now exist, — Congre- gational or Presbyterian or Episcopal or Papal. But, in fact, there was no well-organized body of Christians whatever when Paul began his mission- ary tour, and certainly none during the earlier years of his missionary tour, when he wrote the first of his letters. The latest of his letters was written probably before A. D. 68, about which time his mar- tyrdom took place,^ and the church did not grow into any definite organization before the middle of the second century, probably not so early as that. Christ formed no ecclesiastical organization. This is not equivalent to saying that he formed no church, — a question I do not consider ; but he prescribed no rules for church government. Twice, and only twice, he referred to a church,''^ but in prophetic terms, as to something future ; but how it was to be organized, what were to be its officers, and what its functions and its duties, he never said. He appointed no officers. Once, in Galilee, he sent twelve of his disciples to preach in the villages, while he preached in the cities. Once, in Perea, a larger district, with a more scattered and diverse population, he appointed seventy to go, two by two, on a similar itinerant mission. But the one organ- ization was, so far as the gospel indicates, as tem- 1 This is Bishop Lightfoot's date ; some scholars would put it a little earlier. 2 Matt. xvi. 18 ; xviii. 17. 64 PAUL THE APOSTLE porary as the other ; it was created for a particular purpose, and ceased to exist when that purpose had been served. Christ prescribed no creed, nor any- thing like a creed. He taught truths, but he never systematized or formulated truth. He prescribed no ritual, and nothing like a ritual. His disciples did, indeed, come to him once, saying, " Teach us, Lord, to pray ; " and he said, " After this manner pray : begin with reverence for your Father ; then ask him for what things you want. Are you hun- gry, ask him for bread ; are you perplexed, ask him for guidance ; are you tempted, ask him for deliv- erance ; have you sinned, ask him for forgiveness. Tell him what things you have need of. That is all ; that is prayer." We have converted this in- struction into a liturgy ; and we have a right so to do. But it is our liturgy, not Christ's, though it is made out of Christ's general instructions. As he neither framed an organization, formulated a creed, nor established a ritual, so he appointed no officers. Whatever may be the meaning of the somewhat enigmatical declaration, " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church," the immediately succeeding history makes it clear that neither Peter nor the rest of the twelve thought that it gave him any supremacy, or appointed him to any permanent office, or conferred on him any power to appoint a successor. When Christ died and rose again, his disciples were inspired by the resurrection with a new hoj)e and a new faith. They did not at first lose their THE EARLY CHURCH 65 Jewish conception of a Messiah who was to come in power and glory and set the world right. They had no conception of any necessity for organization, and accordingly they formed none. They loved Christ, expected him to come at any moment, and in this expectation met together in loving fellowship. They had, of course, no church buildings. They generally met in private houses. Sometimes they would get a hall or a schoolhouse ; or perhaps a whole Jewish synagogue would become practically converted to Christianity, and the synagogue build- ing would become a Christian church. As perse- cution came on, they carried on their worship in secret places. Thus in time the Catacombs became to them a kind of solemn cathedral. They had no ritual. Their meetings were much more like mod- ern prayer-meetings than like modern church ser- vices. They sang together, sometimes the Hebrew psalms ; sometimes some prophet would write a Christian psalm or adapt a Hebrew psalm to Chris- tian use. They instructed one another. Any one might speak ; any one might preach. There was no ordination ; there were no officers.^ These early Christians had no creed. They had no membership ; there was no organization to be- long to. When a man was converted, he was bap- tized, not as a condition of joining the church, but as a sign of his profession of faith in Christ. When a Roman jailer at Philippi was baptized, he was 1 Actsii. 42, 46,47; iv. 23-31; xx. 7, 8; Ephes. v. 19; Col. iii. 16. 66 PAUL THE APOSTLE not admitted to a churcli. There was no church at Philippi to which he could be admitted. He was baptized as a solemn and sacred way of de- claring his faith in the Messiah.^ This baptism at first and for many years was only of adults ; at a later period came in the baptism of infant children .^ Baptism was generally by immersion, but it is by no means clear that it was ever by submersion. The earliest picture we have of baptism is one upon the walls of the Catacombs, in which John the Baptist and Jesus are represented as standing up to their waists in the river Jordan, while John pours water on the head of Jesus.^ It is not at all improbable that the earliest form of baptism was one which has now utterly gone out of use in our churches, — a method of immersion coupled with pouring. Certainly sprinkling was in the Apostolic Church unknown. The Greeks had their voluntary associations, which were sometimes charitable, sometimes reli- gious, sometimes social. They were a festive people, and these gatherings were generally accompanied with a meal. The Hebrews were also a festive people. Their religious forms and ceremonies were accompanied to a remarkable degree with eating. They believed in it as a means of unloosening the tongue and uniting people in good fellowship, and 1 Acts xvi. 30-33 ; comp. Acts viii. 36-38 ; x. 47, 48. 2 See Dean Stanley's Christian Institutions, chap. i. 3 See Smith's Diet, of Christian Antiquities, art. " Baptism ; " Lundy's Monumental Christianity, pp. 62, 63, 385-387. THE EARLY CHURCH 67 in this they were wise. So these early Christians, meeting together in private homes, and expecting the coming of the Messiah straightway to set the world right, not only sang hymns, repeated together extracts from the Hebrew psalms, and administered baptism as a sign and token of faith in Christ, but sat down to a common table together. And when they did thus break bread together, they remem- bered that night when Jesus Christ sat with the twelve, and brake bread with them, and passed them the bread and the wine. But as yet this simple social supper had not become a sacrament. It was not administered by a priest or a minister. No one was appointed for that purpose. Even as late as the latter half of the second century TertuUian claims that the laity are priests, and when there are no clergy present may perform all the priestly functions.^ He was more radical than most minis- ters would venture to be in our time. Any one could administer baptism. Paul him- self was baptized by a layman.^ Any one could preach, and every disciple did.^ The only ordina- tion was that well summed up in the Book of Rev- elation, " Whosoever heareth, let him say. Come." * When the disciples were scattered, they went every- where preaching their simple doctrine. It does not 1 Allen's Christian Institutions, p. 126 ; comp. 82 ; comp. Hatch on Organ, of Early Chs. p. 124 ; Dean Stanley, Christian Insti- tutions, p. 46. 2 Acts ix. 17. 3 Acts vi. 5, 9, 10 ; viii. 4. 4 Rev. xxii. 17. 68 PAUL THE APOSTLE follow that this pattern is to be followed by us now. Preaching has changed its character. There are reasons why men should be especially educated as preachers. There are reasons why the Lord's sup- per should generally be administered by persons appointed for the purpose. But in the primitive churches the story that the Messiah has come, that he has risen from the dead, that he will return soon, that he will set the world right — any one could tell. A theological education for such preach- ing was not required. Thus gradually churches grew up. Wherever there were Christians, they met in some private house, talked with one another, sang hymns to- gether, sat around a Christian festal board, and baptized those who accepted Christ as the Messiah. They required no ordination for preaching or for the administration of what we now call sacraments. Indeed, at first there was necessity for some pres- sure to be brought to bear upon these disciples to meet together. They hardly saw the necessity for it. They had no conception of the work that lay before them. So they were exhorted from time to time not to forsake the assembling of themselves together. But they were urged to do this, not because there was a great work to be done, but be- cause the day of the Lord's coming was at hand.^ When he came, it was well he should find his chosen ones in fellowship and communion. Gradually, however, the necessity for organiza- 1 Heb. K. 25. THE EARLY CHURCH 69 tion impressed itself upon the disciples. The first pressure came from the distribution of charity. These early Christians were almost all of them poor, — freedmen, ex-slaves, half beggars. It is impossible for us to conceive the extent of the pov- erty in the Koman Empire. Those from whom the Church was chiefly recruited were the poorest of the poor. Now and then some rich man also accepted Christ as the Messiah. Those who were not quite so poor as the poorest contributed of their funds, and there began to be a distribution of goods. That is always a difficult thing. Done carelessly, it does more harm than good. It provoked the first controversy in the Christian Church. The Greeks said, " The Hebrews are getting more than their share." And the Hebrews answered them by say- ing, "We will elect a commission of seven, all of whom shall be Greeks, and they shall take the whole matter into their own hands." And so the first step toward an ecclesiastical organization was made.^ There was also, as these assemblies for worship continued, a necessity for some one to supervise and direct the worshiping ; to see that it was done in order ; to prevent those from talking who had not anything to say, — quite an important function to be. performed at times in religious as well as in secular gatherings. Thus there came to 1 Acts vi. 1-6. The names of these deacons are all Greek, which indicates, though not conclusively, that they were Greeks, not Hehrews. 70 PAUL THE APOSTLE be an officer in the worslii]3ing assembly who had oversight over the worship as well as over the charity. Still further oversight was required. It was a migratory period. Men traveled back and forth — not as much as they do now, but still in no small measure — and men came from distant com- munities, saying, " We are Christians ; help us." Just as soon as there was money or food to be given, there were tramps ready to take it. Then, as now, it became necessary to have some one with courage and caution to see to it that the tramp was a worthy tramp, and the beggar a deserving beggar. Thus the local church adopted the method of giv- ing letters to any one who had been accustomed to worship with it ; and when a man went away from home he took a letter from the overseer of his wor- shiping assembly, certifying that he belonged to the brotherhood at Ephesus or Kome, or wherever it might be. The officer who had the authority to grant these letters very soon got, through that, power to determine who should receive the letters and who should not. Still further, after a little, the preaching ceased to be quite so simple as it was at first. Letters were written by various Apostles to different churches. Accounts were written of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. These were sent, first to one church and then to another ; and the churches exchanged these letters one with another. There was a great deal more of fraud and forgery in that time than in ours, and pious forgery and THE EARLY CHURCH 71 pious fraud were not considered altogether illegiti- mate. Thus false letters and false histories were foisted upon the people. There were letters pur- porting to come from Paul and from Peter, which Paul and Peter had never seen.^ It was neces- sary that some one should have charge of these records, and this person who had charge of the records would naturally exercise some judgment whether the records were right or wrong. Thus, little by little, power grew in the hands of the overseer, or episkoj^os^ as he was called, or bishop, as we call him now. At first he was the simple pastor, or overseer, or bishop, of a single church.2 When the churches came into affiliation, he became the bishop of a group of churches in a town, and then of a larger district. Thus, grad- ually, the oversight of the churches grew up : first, out of the necessity for care in the administration of charity ; next, out of the necessity for order in worship ; next, out of the necessity for determin- ing who were members of the nascent organizar tions ; and, finally, out of the necessity for deter- 1 Even in the apostle's lifetime. 2 Thess. ii. 2. 2 Acts XX. 28. The word rendered overseers is episkopoi, else- where rendered bishops. It is generally conceded that epishopos or bishop and presbuteros or elder originally signified the same office, " That the presbuteroi (elders) did not differ from the episkopoi (bishops or overseers), is evident from the fact that the two words are used indiscriminately (Acts xx. 17, 28 ; Tit. i. 5, 7), and that the duty of presbyters is described by the term epi- skopein, to take oversight of the flock." Thayer's Lexicon of the N. T. They were forbidden by Peter to exercise lordship over the churches. 1 Pet. v. 3. 72 PAUL THE APOSTLE mining what were the legitimate documents and the real basis of religious instruction. In the earlier period the organizations grew in different forms, according to different localities. Broadly speaking, they were three. For these Christians, not having any idea of permanent work or permanent organization, naturally took on the form of organization common in the community in which they happened to live. There were three forms of organization current in the first century, — the Jewish, the Greek, and the Roman. The Jewish organization was oligarchic. The elders, or older men, came by a sort of natural prescrip- tion to exercise authority in the village and in the synagogue. It came to them through their charac- ter, somewhat as chieftainship comes in the North American tribes. They were not elected ; they were not appointed ; they greio into their office. But, having taken their office, they ruled. They were the judges ; had the power to discipline ; con- trolled the services of the synagogue ; were the governing body. Where a Christian church was made largely of Jews, it took on the Jewish organ- ization. Then there were elders or 2^'^"^shuteroi^ and these elders were themselves the governing- body in the church. Greece, on the other hand, was a democracy. It is true that it had at this time passed under mo- narchical control, but it is also true that it main- tained its democratic spirit, and, wherever it could, something of its democratic institutions. Our town THE EARLY CHURCH 73 meeting may almost be said to be borrowed from the early Greek democracies. Where Christians were mainly gathered out of a Greek community, they took on the Greek form of organization. Then the whole congregation gathered together ; by a show of hands they elected their officers ; and these officers exercised the same kind of authority and control which they were accustomed to exercise in the Greek associations.^ In Rome the organization was monarchical ; it was centralized. The government was administered on military principles ; it was centred in one man in each city, one man in each province, and, finally, in one man over all, the Emperor, who was com- mander-in-chief of the empire. Where the church was made up of Romans, it took on the Roman form. Sometimes the man was elected ; sometimes he put himself into office by his superior influence, his superior power, or his superior tact. But, how- ever he secured the office, when he secured it, he was recognized, at first as the head of the local church ; then, subsequently, when one of several churches grew into prominence or other churches were organized from it, he became the head of the group of churches. Thus for a time there were the three forms of organization, more or less differen- tiated, — the Jewish, or oligarchic ; the Greek, or democratic ; the Roman, or monarchical. ^ Acts xiv. 23 ; 2 Cor. viii. 19. Cheirotoneo, translated in Acts ordained, in Corinthians chosen, in classic Greek signifies to elect by a show of hands. 74 PAUL TEE APOSTLE When Paul began his preaching, this work of organization had not taken place. He was himself the instigator and inspirer of the life out of which the organization grew. He went from city to city and from province to province. At first, as soon as a few Christians were gathered together, he left them to tell to others the message he had told to them, and went on to the next city. And when those who had accepted the message gathered to- gether, they framed their own organization accord- ing; to their own ideas. As the founder of the little household of faith, Paul exerted a potent influence over them. When they elected officers, they asked his advice. When maladministration crept in, he demanded reform, and in no ambiguous terms. But in the main it may be said of Paul that he was a poet and a preacher rather than an organizer or administrator. We are to conceive, then, of Paul as going from place to place, gathering a few people about him, inspiring them with his enthusiasm and his love for Christ, and, in the earlier part of his ministry, with his hope of Christ's immediate return and the im- mediate establishment of the kingdom of God upon the earth. We are to conceive of him as visiting and living with these little bands, some of them converted Jews, more of them converted pagans, with no creed, no ritual, no order, nothing but a faith and an expectation. We are to conceive of him as getting word from time to time of difficul- ties which they had encountered, of dangers and THE EARLY CHURCH 75 corruptions and false beliefs wliicli had crept in among them, and then of his writing letters to them of counsel, of friendship, of encouragement, or of rebuke, as circumstances demanded. These letters of Paul have been studied as theo- logical treatises for many years ; but they are not theological treatises. They are not in any proper sense of the term pastoral epistles or bishop's letters, written with the authority of an ecclesiastic to the church over which he has a right to exercise con- trol. They are not literature and are not to be studied as literature. They were not written for literary purposes and have not literary form. They are letters of a friend written to friends. They are personal, affectionate, individual. The writer never thought that they would last eighteen centu- ries. He never thought that the Christian Church would last eighteen centuries. He never conceived for a moment that eighteen centuries would pass over the world before Christ would come again and set all things right. If he had, he would have written very different letters. They, perhaps, would have been more philosophical and less fragmentary, but they would not have tingled with life and been red with his own heart's blood. CHAPTER V THE LETTERS TO THE THESSALONIANS Almost immediately after his conversion, Paul went to Arabia and began his study of the Old Testament prophets in order to reconcile his new view of the Messiah with the Scriptures ; and as he re-read these Scrij)tures he got a new concep- tion of the extent, and in some measure of the nature, of the Messiah's kingdom. He no longer believed that it would be for Israel only. He found in the Old Testament prophecies abundant evidence for the belief that the Messiah was to be a Saviour for other nations ; that the Gentiles should come to his light, and the heathen to the bright- ness of his rising. One brief prophecy from the Book of Isaiah, the forty-ninth chapter, may serve as a type of promises which, studied with an open mind, would give him this conception : — "And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel : I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth. Thus saith the Lord, the redeemer of Israel, and liis Holy One, to him whom man despis- eth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers : Kings shall see and arise ; princes, and they shall THE LETTERS TO THE THESSALONIANS 77 worship ; because of the Lord that is faithful, even the Holy One of Israel, who hath chosen thee." ^ With this new conception of the breadth and largeness of the kingdom, he started upon his mis- sionary tour to the Gentiles. But, although he had a new conception of the largeness of the kingdom which the Messiah was to initiate, there is no reason to think that he had a new conception of the nature of that kingdom or of the secret of its power and the method of its initiation. On the contrary, there is reason to think that he still entertained the old Jewish conception, so far as its nature and method of operation were concerned. What he believed, as we gather from his earlier writings and his sermons, was that the Jesus who had died and risen again would presently descend to the earth ; that he would bring with him the celestial forces from heaven ; that he would gather together Israel ; that he would put himself at the head of this army, celestial and terrestrial ; that he would conquer — utterly, abso- lutely, entirely, and forever ; that he would extir- pate the enemies of God, and would reign King over kings and Lord over lords. It is not unrea- sonable to think that he was confirmed in this opinion by the reports which came to him of the trial of Jesus. In one passage dealing with this subject he says that he speaks "by the word of the Lord." This is very generally understood to mean 1 Isaiah xlix. 6, 7. Paul refers to such prophecies in the 0. T. of the ingathering of the Gentiles, in Acts xiii. 47 ; Rom. iv. 17, 18 ; ix. 25-29 ; x. 11, 14-20 ; xv. 9-12, 21. 78 PAUL TEE APOSTLE by a revelation which had come to him from heaven. I do not think that is a correct interpretation. " The Lord," in Paul's use of the term, generally, if not always, means the Messiah. " The word of the Lord " means the teaching of this Messiah as it had been reported to him. How much he knew of the teaching of Jesus we cannot tell ; but we do know that he had reported to him not only the fact of the crucifixion, but the details of that crucifixion ; for he refers to these details with some specificness. We do know that he knew of the facts of the resurrection and some details re- specting the resurrection. And it is reasonable to suppose that he knew the facts of the trial ; that he knew that Jesus was arrested and put on trial for blasphemy ; that the nature of this blasphemy with which Jesus was charged was his claim to be the son of the living God; that when this trial pro- ceeded, no witnesses were found who could agree and whose testimony was adequate to justify a ver- dict of guilty even by a packed jury ; that then the high priest, violating the Jewish law, called Jesus himself to the stand and administered the oath, adjuring him " by the living God that thou tell us whether thou be the Messiah, the son of God ; " that Jesus replied, " I am, and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." ^ It is not strange, then, that Paul, holding to his early belief of a kingdom that was to be inaugurated by celestial 1 Matt. xxvi. 62-64: Mark xiv. 61, 62. THE LETTERS TO THE THES8AL0NIANS 79 and supernatural force, felt that this belief was confirmed by the vision which had been afforded him of the risen Christ and by the report which had come to him of the words of Christ at the time of his trial. That Paul entertained any other view in the earlier part of his ministry there is no rea- son to think ; that he did entertain this view there is abundant reason to think. We have reports, as we have already seen, of two of his sermons, — one to the Jews in Antioch in Pisidia ; one to the pagans on Mars Hill in Athens. They both reach by different routes the same con- clusion. In the synagogue in Antioch Paul begins by praising the history of the Jewish people, breaks off in that history, narrates the birth, the death, and the resurrection of Christ, and brings his dis- course to a conclusion with a picture of a judgment which this Christ will initiate at his coming. At Athens he does not begin with the Old Testament Scriptures, for his auditors knew nothing of them. He says nothing of prophecy, for his auditors knew nothing of prophecy. But, beginning with the revelation which God has made in nature, speaking of the spiritual ignorance in which men are living, as attested by their altar to an unknown God, he comes to the same conclusion that he did in the synagogue in Antioch : God will judge the world by that Man whom he hath ordained, and he has demonstrated this judgment because this Man has risen from the dead.^ 1 Acts xiii. 16-41 ; xvii. 22-32. 80 PAUL THE APOSTLE Such, doubtless, was also his preaching at Thes- salonica. It was one of the largest cities in ancient Greece. Salonica, the same city under a different name, is said to be the largest city in European Turkey, excepting only Constantinople. It is one of the few cities which have survived the decay that has fallen upon that unhappy empire of the olden time. It had and still has a noble harbor. It then was the capital of the Roman province of Mace- donia. In this city there were a great number of Jews, as there still are. It has been throughout its history a Jewish centre. Paul began, as was his wont, preaching in the synagogue. He preached three Sabbaths; then his preaching in the syna- gogue came to an end. The Jews would hear him no longer, and he went out to preach to such as would hear him in the town. Where and how he found his preaching-places we do not know, nor how long he continued his preaching ; but this was his message, — the message he had given in Antioch, the message he had given in a different form in Athens : " The Messiah has come ; he has been put to death ; he has risen from the dead ; he is living ; he will presently return with power and great glory ; he will bring his angels with him, and he will judge the world ; but he will not judge them by a race standard ; lie will judge them by stand- ards of absolute righteousness ; then all those who love God and look for his appearing will be gath- ered into his kingdom, and all those who oppose God and desire not his appearing will be destroyed THE LETTERS TO THE THESSALONIANS 81 with everlasting destruction from the presence of this coming Messiah." He still thought that the power of this kingdom would lie in the power of an almighty King. He had yet to learn, what in our next chapter we shall see he did learn, that the secret of its power would be the love of a Father who suffers long and still is kind. What aroused the particular excitement against him in the city we do not know. Envy, perhaps, by the Jews against this man who was opening the kingdom of God to the pagans ; perhaps general religious hostility ; perhaps, as at Ephesus, the in- terference of his preaching with what men are pleased to call vested rights. At all events, a mob was gathered together. In the outskirts of this city was a suburban population of peasants, super- stitious, ignorant, an easy prey to demagogues. The word pagan means villager. The word heathen means heath-dweller. The villagers and the dwell- ers on the moors and uplands and away from the cities were for a long time repudiators and resisters of Christianity. They were the pagans and the heathen of the olden time. Some of these rural marketmen had come into the city selling their wares.^ Among them a mob was aroused, which came to the house where Paul was staying, — the home of a kinsman of Paul's, Jason by name, who had taken him in and made him his guest. The mob demanded that Paul and Silas and Timothy 1 See Acts xvii. 4-9, and my commentary thereon ; Ramsay's St. Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen, p. 226 £f. 82 PAUL THE APOSTLE should be given up. Jason would not give tliem up. He concealed them or contrived their escape. Then Jason himself was seized by the mob and brought before the rulers of the city. The com- plaint was made against Paul, Silas, and Timothy that they were proclaiming a new kingdom ; that they were heralds of some one coming to reign in the place of Csesar ; that the old Roman imperial- ism would be swept away and a new kingdom put in its place. The charge was not without show of reason. Paul did declare a new kingdom : he did declare the overthrow of the present base Roman Empire and the establishment on its ruins of a new kingdom of the Lord. Then occurred just what happened more than once in the anti-slavery riots of our own country. It was the duty of the ruler of the city to preserve peace in the city. He said to himself, *' We cannot have these disturbances here." It is generally supposed to be easier to stop one man from speaking than to stop a mob from opposing his speaking. In our own anti-slavery time it was not supposed that Isaiah Rynders and the mob disturbed the peace of New York ; it was Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison and Henry Ward Beecher. It was not the man who led the mob, it was the man who made the speeches. So the attempt was made, not to quell the mob, but to silence the speakers. And this was the method adopted in Thessalonica. The city magis- trate took bonds of Jason that there should be no more rioting in the city, and there was only one THE LETTERS TO THE THESSALONIANS 83 method by whicli Jason could prevent rioting in the city ; it was by putting a stop to the preaching. This was a very ingenious device. If Paul could have met the mob, he would have met it gladly. He who said of himself that he had fought wild beasts at Ephesus would have been willing to fight these wild beasts in Thessalonica. But if he con- tinued in his ministry, he would endanger the man who had generously taken him into his house and cared for him. This was too much for the chivalry of Paul ; this he would not do. So he retreated from Thessalonica and left the infant church just born. It appeared to have in it greater promise than any church which Paul had up to that time visited. It included some Jews ; a few Greeks ; a great multitude of proselytes ; and some noble and wealthy women. No mention is made of its includ- ing any noble or wealthy men. But though Paul could no longer preach in Thessalonica, he could write letters. A letter would not arouse a mob as a speech would. So, on arriving at Corinth, he takes the first opportunity which is afforded to send back a letter to the Thessalonians. This letter is full of warm, tender, earnest affection. It is mainly a friendly personal letter. There is very little theology in it. It is quite as remarkable for what it omits as what it contains. It says nothing about Christ crucified, whom Paul tells the Corinthians he determined in Corinth to make the subject of his ministry ; only an incidental reference to Christ's 84 PAUL THE APOSTLE death, because he must have died in order to be raised from the dead ; nothing about his patient endurance of evil ; nothing about his life and ex- ample ; nothing about his teachings. Paul begins by recalling to the Thessalonians their reception of him, and his affection for them, and the evidence he gave of that affection by the service he rendered them, by the life he lived with them, by his refusal to be at any expense to them whatever for support, by the work he did with his own hands. He re- calls to them how gladly they received his gospel, how they put aside idols in order, as he says, to wait for the coming of the Lord. He reminds them that from their church went forth such reports, that the cities of Macedonia round about learned of this remarkable gathering in which Jew and pagan, poor and rich, were united, for the first time, per- haps, in Grecian history, certainly in the history of this particular city. He urged upon them the high- est standards of righteousness, purity, and truth ; and the ground on which he urges this is that the Messiah is coming, and coming soon. But some have already died. Will they lose this Messianic kingdom? Have they been banished to the sha- dowy Hades in which the Greeks believed? And are they there to remain, losing the glory of the coming of the Lord ? No. They will come first, and we who still live will follow after. " But I would not that you should be ignorant, breth- ren, concerning them that have fallen asleep, in order that ye should not grieve as do the rest — those who have no THE LETTERS TO THE THESSALONIANS 85 hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so also those that, because of Jesus, have but fallen asleep, God will lead forth with him. For this we say to you, by the word of the Lord, that we, the living, who remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those that are asleep. For the Lord himself, with a shout of com- mand, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, shall descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise up first. Then we, the living, who remain, shall be snatched up together with them in the clouds, unto a meeting with the Lord in the air ; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Therefore, strengthen one another with these words. But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write to you. For ye yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. When they are saying, peace and safety, then sudden destruc- tion comes upon them, even as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape." ^ Paul then goes on to explain that this hope which he has put before them of a kingdom close at hand is given to them not for their mere delectation ; it is given to incite them to higher, nobler, purer living. Because this kingdom is coming, because it is close at hand, they are to live pure and holy lives ; they are to be industrious and honest ; they are not to be drunken ; they are to watch as senti- nels watch upon guard ; they are to care for one another and comfort one another ; they are to re- joice even in times of persecution, buoyed up by 1 1 Thess. iv. 13-v. 3. 86 PAUL THE APOSTLE this hope of a speedy deliverance and a speedy victory. And he ends with this prayer : " And the very God of peace sanctify you completely ; and may your spirit and soul and body be entire and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." ^ The letter begins by calling on them to turn aside from idols, to look for the Coming ; it goes on to answer objections to that Coming and to develop the doctrine of the Coming; and it closes with a prayer that they may be so kept that they shall be blameless at the Coming. What was the effect of this letter on the Thes- salonian church we do not know. We have only two sources to guide us in answering that question. One is the effect which a similar faith has had at other epochs in Church history ; the other, a second letter which Paul wrote to the Thessalonians. In the beginning of this century an enthusiastic and devout man by the name of Miller, as a result of study of the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments, came to the conclusion that Christ would come at a certain date. He went about preaching in the Northern States this Coming of the Lord. He also thought that the secret of the f orcef ulness of Christianity was a visible power and glory. He thought it would come with " observa- tion," and men would be able to say, " Lo here, lo there." Great numbers of adherents flocked about him. Men were not incited by this expectation to live holily, without blame, with purity and with 1 1 Thess. V. 23. THE LETTERS TO THE THESSALONIANS 87 industry. They laid aside their industries, forgot the common duties of life, were absorbed in the ex- pectation of a sudden miraculous Coming. Wher- ever that wave of excitement swept over the country it left behind it a moral and spiritual desolation. The excitement of to-day was followed by death to- morrow. Like a prairie fire, it left but burnt grass. Some such effect seems to have followed in the church at Thessalonica. The Thessalonian Chris- tians seem to have stopped their work, given up their industry, and folded their hands while they watched for the Coming of the Lord in power and clouds and great glory. And so Paul writes his second letter to the Thes- salonians to correct the errors into which they have fallen. He reiterates the Coming of the Messiah ; re-declares that the Christ will come in power and glory, and will destroy his enemies and will establish his kingdom. But he tells them that he will not come immediately. Daniel, living in the age of Antiochus Epiphanes, has painted the picture of that strange, mad, brilliant king. He has painted him in colors none too vivid, as the embodiment of all that is blasphemous, profane, and wicked. Paul recurs to this picture, and he tells the Thessalo- nians that the coming of Christ cannot be until such a man of sin appears, and comes to the full- ness of his growth. Had Paul ever heard the story of the tares and wheat ? Did he know that the wheat could not be gathered until the tares had grown, also, to their ripeness ? Had he ever heard 88 PAUL THE APOSTLE the story of Christ's talk with his disciples, just before his death, as they sat on the hill overlook- ing Jerusalem, when he told them that not one stone should be left above another, and warned them that wars and rumors of wars and decadence in the Church must first come? At all events, in some way or other Paul reached the conclusion that the kingdom of God could not come until the kingdom of evil was itself perfected. And thus he cautions the Thessalonians : — " But we beseech you, brethren, for the sake of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering to- gether unto him, that you allow not your understanding to be lightly overthrown nor yourselves to be thrown into tumult ; neither by your own spiritual ecstasy, nor by the speech of others, nor by an epistle as from us, so as to imagine that the day of the Lord is close at hand. Let no one deceive you by any means ; because that day shall not come except there come the falling away first, and the man of sin be unveiled, the son of destruction, who sets himself against and exalts himself above every one that is called God or is an object of worship, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth that he is God. Remember ye not that while I yet was with you I said these things to you ? And now ye know that which holds him back in order that he may be re- vealed in his own time. For already the mystery of lawlessness is at work, only there is one that restraineth now, until he be taken out of the way ; and then will be unveiled the lawless one, whom the Lord shall destroy by the breath of his mouth, and bring to naught by the glory of his coming : — that lawless one whose coming THE LETTERS TO THE THESSALONIANS 89 is accompanied with the superhuman working of Satan, with all power and lying signs and wonders, and with all deceitfulness of unrighteousness for those that are per- ishing because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved." ^ He ends this epistle, as he ended the other, with practical counsel — that men be quiet, that they attend to their own business, that they go on with their industries, that they do not think they hasten the coming of the kingdom by sitting and looking for it, but by living righteous, holy, and godly lives. As a simple interpretation of Paul's letters this chapter should, perhaps, stop here. But the reader has perhaps, if he cares, a right to know what im- pression these letters have produced on my own mind, and what I hold respecting the subject of them, — the Second Coming of Christ. I speak on this subject with great hesitation ; not because I have not studied it, but because the more I have studied, the more hesitation I feel about speaking dogmatically upon it. Some things are, however, very clear to me ; some are less clear. It is, in the first place, very clear to me that Paul believed that the Messiah was to come again, and to come in his own generation.^ " We which 1 2 Thess. ii. 1-10. 2 Not necessarily while lie was living-, but certainly during- the lifetime of that g'eneration. This declaration " We which are alive" agrees with the declaration, " We shall not all sleep." 1 Cor. XV. 51. 90 PAUL THE APOSTLE are alive," he says. He speaks in the present tense. It is equally certain that this expectation has not been fulfilled. Even if we suppose, as some do, that all that which was true in the prophecy was fulfilled by the destruction of Jerusalem, that de- struction does not fill to the full Paul's picture of the coming of Christ in clouds and glory, of the dead arising and being caught up in the clouds, and of the instant destruction of all sin and iniquity from the world. But Paul was mistaken not only in his conception of the time of the Messiah's com- ing ; he was mistaken also in his conception of the secret of the power of the kingdom. The kingdom of God does not come with observation. Men are not to say, " Lo here, lo there." The glory of the kingdom of God is, as Paul told the Corinthians a little later, the glory of the cross, the glory of self- sacrifice. It is the glory of crowned suffering. It is not by clouds and angels and archangels, not by the pomp and circumstance of war, terrestrial or celestial, that Christ conquers, but by the " invin- cible might of meekness." All this is true, and yet it does not follow that there is no truth in Paul's expectation. It does not follow that there is no meaning in the prophecies of the Old Testa- ment, the prophetic words of Christ himself as they are reported in the Gospels, and these pro- phetic words of Paul in the Epistles to the Thes- salonians. The Bible looks upon all history as a revelation of God. That is the end and object of it. The THE LETTERS TO THE THESSALONIANS 91 divine end of human development is not what we call civilization, — steam engines and highways and railroads and telephones and ceiled houses and fine clothes and luxurious food ; it is not a comfortable and easy time ; it is not even merely liberty and riohteousness. It is the revelation of God to the sons of men, because they are sons of God. In the Old Testament times this revelation of God is made through divers prophets and patriarchs, speak- ing in various ways that which God has witnessed to them in their own consciousness. This revela- tion of God in the Old Testament times is itself, in the Hebrew conception, a preparation for another, a clearer and a better revelation of God, which has come to pass in the New Testament : in the manger at Bethlehem ; in the life that follows ; in the cross ; in the resurrection. But this is not the consummation of the revelation. This much seems to me clear in the teachings of Christ and the Apostles. This revelation and all that has grown out of it, this revelation and the love which has flowed from it, this revelation and the brother- hood which it has helped to cement together, this revelation and the witness of the Spirit of God that could not come until men had some conception of the divine love to men — this revelation is itself the preparation for a further revelation yet to come. The end is not yet. The book of Revelation is not a closed book. As the Old Testament was a preparation for the New, so the New Testament is a preparation for some disclosure of the glory 92 PAUL THE APOSTLE of God not yet understood by us. Now, as in his earthly life, Christ walks incognito. How few there are who pierce the disguise and comprehend his divinity ! To many still he is but the son of a carpenter. To many still he is no Son of God. And the revelation of divinity will not come to its completion until that disclosure which he has made of himself, in humbleness and in love, is supple- mented and perfected by a revelation so splendid, so shining, so universal, that the men who will not see cannot help but see ; and mankind, looking back from the splendid manifestation of divinity yet to be flashed upon a startled world, and connect- ing it with the manger, and the life of suffering, and the Cross, will see the splendor of that earthly life as they cannot see it until it is interpreted by the splendor of the celestial. Not by standing with our faces turned upward looking into the heavens are we to prepare for this greater glory, nor yet by walking forward with our face always turned backward to Christ in the manger or on the Cross, but with our expectant faces toward the future, believing that the hymn we sing, " Nearer, My God, to Thee," will yet find its fulfillment, and the hope and sometimes anguish of faith long de- layed will find its answer in a revelation which no man can interpret because no man can understand. CHAPTER VI PAUL AT CORINTH Forty-five miles from Athens lies, or rather formerly lay, the city of Corinth. Athens was the intellectual metropolis, Corinth the commercial me- tropolis of Achaia. Even more than Athens it at this time reflected the national character. It was situated on an isthmus between two seas, the ^gean on the east, the Ionian on the west ; and on a plain between two ranges of hills separating northern from southern Greece. Foreign com- merce, to avoid the stormy peninsula, came to Corinth, where either the goods were trans-shipped or the vessels were carried by a kind of roadway from one sea to the other ; domestic traders de- siring to pass from northern to southern Greece were compelled to pass at Corinth through the mountain ranges which separated northern and southern Greece. Hence Corinth was the gateway of both internal and marine commerce. It was the commercial metropolis of ancient Greece. And its glory and its shame were those of a great com- mercial metropolis. It had been a great and a glorious city. " The light of all Greece," Cicero calls it. But two hun- dred years before Paul's visit it had been visited by 94 PAUL THE APOSTLE a Roman army, and vengeance had been taken upon it for some real or fancied insult put upon Rome. It had been given over to sack. The men had been killed, the women and the children had been sold into slavery, and the city, with its temples and its altars and its public buildings, had been given to the flames. For a hundred years it lay in ruins. Then Julius Caesar resolved to rebuild it. He sent thither Roman colonists, and it regained something of its ancient eminence. This city, with a great foreign population gath- ered in it, still had a great commerce and enjoyed commercial privileges and some political and social privileges as well. For it was the natural capital of Greece. And whatever example Corinth set, Greece was likely to follow. What Paris has been to France, that in some sense Corinth was to Greece. It was pervaded by the commercial spirit. We are mistaken if we imagine the Greeks to have been exclusively an intellectual people. They were also a very commercial people. Five hundred years and more before, Pindar had said, " Money, money, money makes the man," in bitter satire of his countrymen ; and this spirit that money makes the man was nowhere in Greece embodied as it was in Corinth. It was a city given over to luxury and to the vices of luxury. Greece was never a very highly moral state, and Corinth was preeminently an immoral city even for Greece. The religion of that day had nothing to do with morality. There was no attempt on the part of the priests in the PAUL AT CORINTH 95 temples to promote moral life. It is said that there were a thousand prostitutes connected with the temple to Venus. That simple fact is sufficient to indicate how little effect the religion of Greece had in promoting moral life. The women of Corinth were left, for the most part, to grow up in ignorance, and were kept in seclusion in their homes. Only the prostitutes were educated. They had their receptions, and in them the wisest and the best, the philosophers and the moralists, were wont to gather for brilliant conversation with one another and with women who in our time we would not allow within our homes. So far had this gone that it became a proverb in Greece ; for a woman to become devoted to a life of shame was called in Greece to Corinthian ize. This moral quality of Corinth had affected its intellectual quality. Philosophy was no longer philosophy. It was sophism. The sophists were teachers of a pseudo-philosophy.^ They organized their schools, plied the arts of the rhetorician- and, perhaps it should be said, of the logician, certainly of the dialectician. They plied them for money, — which was perhaps legitimate ; they plied them not for truth, — which was certainly not at all legiti- mate. The average teacher in Corinth had that idea of the duty of a professor of instruction which 1 It does not come within the scope of this volume to do any more than give the merest outline of the schools of philosophy dominant in Corinth in Paul's time, and only for the purpose of interpreting his life and letters. 96 PAUL THE APOSTLE is entertained and frankly avowed by some jour- nalists at tlie present day respecting the profession of journalism. They say that the newspaper is a commercial enterprise ; it gives to the people what the people want ; if you do not like the newspaper, you must change the appetite of the people. So these professors of rhetoric and logic in Corinth said, " We are conducting a commercial enterprise, and we give the people what the people want." And what the people wanted was ingenuity in in- tellectual fence. The sophist pretended to know everything and to teach everything. He would talk to you on any subject his auditors might choose for a theme. Much, again, like some mod- ern journalists. It made little difference to him whether he knew anything about it or not ; he had skill in intellectual fence, and that was enough. He would discuss, therefore, all manner of ques- tions, — political, moral, philosophical, abstract, concrete, religious, secular, terrestrial, celestial, present, future. Long before this time Plato had, with biting sarcasm, characterized these teachers of sophism, with whom Paul was to come in conflict in Corinth, and this is his characterization of them : *' A sophist," he says — these are not, indeed, his exact words, but Jowett's ej)itome from one of his dialogues — "a sophist is one skilled in a contra- dictious, dissembling, undivine, fantastic, juggling- with-words art of imposition." That is a Greek philosopher's definition of Greek sophism.^ ^ See Plato's Sophist and Jowett's Introduction thereto. PAUL AT CORINTH 97 Sucli a spirit necessarily issued in universal skep- ticism. The sophists agreed in assuming that the mind could only know external phenomena; these were only the manifestations of reality ; the reality itself could not be known. Even these phenomena could be known only approximately. For percep- tion of these would differ with different men, and would depend upon their temperament, education, and circumstances, and in the same man would differ at different times. Man therefore could know nothing with certainty ; he knew all things only relatively. There was no standard or crite- rion by which he could judge between the true and the false impression. He could therefore never be sure of what he did know, or thought he knew. He must therefore suspend judgment ; hold all his knowledge tentatively; never say, I know, only. So it appears to me now.^ The issue of this mental philosophy of Greece, at this period, is not unfairly represented by the sentence attributed to one of this school, " I only know that I know nothing." Such was the mental philosophy of Corinth. Moral philosophy existed in two schools : Epicu- reanism and Stoicism, both dating from about the beginning of the third century before Christ.^ The ^ For a good brief description of this pseudo-philosophy, see Windelband's Hist, of Phil. 197 &. Paul's " We know in part and we prophesy in part " and " We see through a glass darkly " is a recognition of the truth in skepticism, while his affirmation, Nevertheless, as things are, faith and hope and love abide, and of these we are sure, is his reply to skepticism. 2 Epicurus lived b. c. 342-270 ; Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, dates of birth and death unknown, flourished about b. c. 290. 98 PAUL THE APOSTLE doctrine of Epicurus was tliat the object of philoso- phy is practical, not theoretical ; it aims not to give us a theory of the universe, but a happy life. His philosophy, that happiness is the end of life and therefore the object of philosophy, easily degener- ated into that conception with which his name is popularly connected — the doctrine that enjoyment of animal pleasures is the chief end of life. It had already become before Paul's time what Lecky calls it, " little more than a principle of disintegra- tion or an apology for vice, or at best the religion of tranquil and indifferent natures, animated by no strong moral enthusiasm." ^ If philosophy may be judged by its tendency. Epicureanism, as a system of moral philosophy, is justly condemned by the moral degradation into which it speedily descended. But in the teachings of Epicurus it was no defense of sensualism. It is not possible, he said, to live happily without living prudently, honorably, and justly. He distinguished between the lively plea- sures of energy and the quiet pleasures of repose, and urged his disciples to seek the latter and higher happiness. For he put mental joys above those physical pleasures which are due to self-in- dulgence ; in other words, he put happiness above pleasure, though his disciples, in practice, soon reversed the order. But in whatever order the vari- ous kinds of ha23piness are ranked, it was of the essence of his system, not merely that virtue tends to produce happiness, but that it is virtue because ^ Lecky : Hist, of European Morals, i. 186. PAUL AT CORINTH 99 it tends to produce happiness, and that is the great- est virtue which produces the greatest happiness. Stoicism was a far more strenuous and muscular form of philosophy. It was a genuine and earnest protest against the universality of pleasure-seeking and the superficiality of the sophists. But though more earnest in its spirit and more moral in its tendency than the rival system of Epicurus, it was scarcely less materialistic. The Stoic was what we call in modern times a monist. He thought there was only one thing in the world, namely, matter and force, the latter being a subtle form of matter, and that God and the soul were themselves forms of matter and of force. He did not recognize a per- sonal God ; but he did recognize law. There was an inherent, an indestructible law, and men should obey this law, not because they must, as though they were machines, but because obedience was reasonable. The Pharisee rested the duty of obli- gation to law upon conscience ; the Stoic rested it upon reason. Thus Stoicism was a protest against the immorality of the time, because it was irrational ; and equally a protest against the superficial philo- sophy of the time, because it was irrational. Yet, though reason was appealed to, it was that it might interpret necessitj^. It was equally impossible to escape Fate or Destiny or to modify it. It is not possible, practically, to differentiate Stoicism from fatalism. It did not in terms deny the freedom of the wil] ; but it denied that the will could achieve anything. And in its reaction against the happi- 100 PAUL THE APOSTLE ness theory of the world it discarded wholly the sentiments. Of the faith which perceives the invis- ible, of the hope which believes that righteousness brings reward here or hereafter, peace now or peace in eternity, and of the love which feels a sympathy for men and a desire to serve them with unrewarded activity, there is scarce any trace to be found in the writings of the Stoics, who were the moralists of the first century. There is very little of it to be found even in Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic of a later age, already pervaded in some measure by the spirit of Christianity. This threefold philosophy has reappeared in our own time, somewhat modified by the difference in temperament between the Anglo-Saxon and the Greek, and by the intellectual difference between the first and the nineteenth centuries. In our time the skepticism is known as agnosticism, the Epicureanism as utilitarianism, the Stoicism as de- terminism. The first is the doctrine that nothing can be known with certainty concerning that real- ity which lies back of phenomena, that unity which makes of them a universe ; the second is the doctrine that the only rational motive for action is the ex- pectation of happiness, the only basis of ethics, the power of action to produce happiness, and the only standard of virtue tl;e results of action in happiness ; the third is the doctrine that all the events of life are determined for man by a law or power outside himself, that his freedom is apjiarent, not real.^ 1 The first, — agnosticism, is illustrated by Huxley's quotation PAUL AT CORINTH 101 Into the city of Corinth with its commercial spirit, its grossly immoral life, and its religion con- pounded of these three elements, — a skepticism fatal to all intellectual earnestness, an Epicurean- ism making happiness the end of life, and a fatal- ism destructive of all sense of personal responsibi- lity, came Paul, discouraged and disheartened. His mission up to this time may well have seemed to him a failure. He had started out from Arabia, after his three years of study, with high hopes, and had returned to Damascus to tell the Pharisees, of whom he was one, that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah ; and they had driven him from the city. He had then gone up to Jerusalem. Surely, he had said, they will hear me ; they know me ; they know how earnest I was in persecuting the Chris- tians, and now that I have the light I can give it to them. He tried to give it to them, and they from Kant {Some Controverted Questions^ p. 276) : " The greatest and perhaps the sole use of philosophy is, after all, merely nega- tive ; . . . and instead of discovering- truth has only the modest merit of preventing error ; " the second, utilitarianism, hy the def- inition of John Stuart Mill ( Utilitarianism, p. 9) : " The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility, or the great- est happiness principle, holds that actions are right in propor- tion as they tend to produce happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain ; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure ; " the third, determinism, by the affirmation of J. Cotter Morrison {The Service of Man, p. 289), "A man with a criminal nature and education, under given circum- stances of temptation, can no more help committing a crime than he could help having a headache under given conditions of brain and stomach." 102 PAUL THE APOSTLE treated him, or would have treated him if they could, as they had treated his Master. He had to flee from Jerusalem. He had undertaken almost singlehanded to carry this message into Greece. The Christian Church had very little faith in his mission. It did not believe that Christianity ap- plied to the pagans. And he had gone out with almost no support except the benediction of the prayer-meeting at Antioch ; and nothing had come of his mission. He had gone to city after city, to synagogue after synagogue, and every synagogue had treated him as he had been treated at Damas- cus and Jerusalem. When he turned from the synagogue to the pagans, he had found himself at once confronted with the charge of endeavoring to raise an insurrection, to create animosity to the Roman empire and the Roman emperor, and to initiate a new kingdom. He was silenced by the Roman authorities. In no single place had he been able to stay more than a few days or a few weeks at the utmost. No wonder that he came to Corinth disheartened and discouraged. " I was with you," he says, " in fear and in weakness, and in much trembling." He reviewed the past, and he saw that his mes- sage of a second coming of Christ within the present generation to revolutionize the world had accomplished nothing. He looked upon Corinth, and he saw that the hope of a sensuous glory yet to come was but a poor weapon with which to attack a present sensuous glory ; that a picture of a future PAUL AT CORINTH 103 kingdom of heaven would have in it no power to stir the heart of a people given over to commercial and luxurious splendor in their own time. They might well have answered, had they known the proverb, " A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," and their answer would not have been wholly unreasonable. Moreover, he had been following the Christ, and he had received more and more the Christ spirit. He had come to see what at first he did not see, the glory of humiliation, the riches of poverty, the ex- altation of abasement, the radiancy of self-sacrifice. He began, as he had in other cities, at first, appar- ently, accomplishing nothing. But when compan- ions came, he took heart of courage, and went into the synagogue and preached. There he met with the same experience he had met before. The Jews would not hear ; they reviled him. But he did not meet opposition as he had met it before, by fleeing to another city. He cast down before the Jewish opponents the gauntlet of defiance ; took refuge in a house adjoining the synagogue ; took with him the ruler of the synagogue, who had been con- verted to Christianity ; and set up what might be called a rival synagogue adjoining. Thus he be- gan his real ministry in Corinth. The Jews presently tried the same tactics they had tried successfully at Philippi and Thessalonica. They made an assault upon him and brought him before the Koman governor, a brother of the famous Seneca. But now they had no charge 104 PAUL THE APOSTLE wliich they could bring against Paul. They could not charge him with preaching a new king and a new kingdom ; for the theme of his preaching had changed. And when Gallio had investigated and heard what they had to say, his answer was, in substance, this : " If this concerned Roman law, I would hear it ; but it is a matter of words and names and your own religion : to be a judge of these matters I have no mind." And he drove them from his judgment-seat. And when the Greeks took the ruler of the synagogue who had brought the com- plaint against Paul, and beat him before the judg- ment-seat, Gallio let them do it ; he did not care. So much for Paul's outward experience. He remained in Corinth a year and a half. What did he preach? The omissions of the Bible are marvelous, and some of them inexplicable. Why is it that Luke gave us the report of Paul's sermon at Athens, when nothing came of the preaching, and has given us no report of any sermon at Cor- inth, out of which grew the first considerable and prosperous church ? But if Luke has not reported the Corinthian preaching, Paul's first Letter to the Corinthians indicates its character. The second chapter in that Letter defines his philosophy, and describes his method of meeting both the agnosti- cism and the utilitarianism of his time. How he met determinism we shall see when we come to consider his letters to the Romans. This second chapter is as follows : ^ — ^ The word -which I sometimes translate " wisdom " and some- PAUL AT CORINTH 105 " And T, when I came to you, brethren, came not with an ambition to excel other teachers in rhetorical or sophis- tical skill, in declaring to you my testimony concerning God. For I did not choose to know anything among you but Jesus Christ, — and him crucified. And in weakness and in fear and in much trembling was I with you ; and my speech and my preaching were not in the persua- sive rhetoric of sophism, but in demonstration of spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wis- dom of men but in the power of God. Yet we speak wisdom, among those who are full grown, but not the wisdom of this age, neither of the rulers of this age, who are becoming quite good for nothing. But the wisdom we speak is the wisdom of God, a mystical wis- dom, a hidden wisdom, which God prepared before the ages and which is to result in our glory, which none of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had under= stood it they would not have crucified the Lord of this glory. But, as it is written. Things which the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard and which have not entered into the heart of man to conceive, these God has prepared for those who love him.^ But God has re- vealed them to us through the spirit ; for the spirit [of man] searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the experiences of man ex- cept the spirit of man which is in him ? So also the ex- periences of God knoweth no one except the Spirit of God. But we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which comes forth from God, in order that times "sophism," in this paraphrase, is the same word in the Greek. There is a play in the Greek which I have not found possible to represent in the English. 1 Isaiah Ixiv. 4, 106 PAUL THE APOSTLE we may understand the experiences which are freely im- parted to us by God. These also we speak, not in forms of speech which can be taught by human wisdom, but in such as are taught by the Spirit, interpreting to spiritual men spiritual truths. But the unspiritual man ^ does not receive the experiences of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. But the spiritual man discerns all experiences, but he himself is discerned by no one. ' For who knew the mind of the Lord ? who shall counsel him ? ' ^ but we have the mind of Christ." ^ Paul feared lest he should be confounded with the Greek sophists, and Christianity should be regarded as simply a new school of philosophy. When we remember how often it has been so regarded, how often, even to-day, theology and religion are con- founded, how often to believe a system of philoso- phy is accounted the same as to believe in Christ, how often the creed or formulation of a system of theology is made the test of the Church, and of the loyalty of the ministry, we cannot think Paul's apprehension groundless. Against this misappre- hension he guards himself in the most explicit terms. The Greeks, he says, seek after a philoso- phy ; they are given over to sophism, dialectics, ingenious fence, fine rhetoric. With all that I would have nothing to do. I came to proclaim a Person, not to teach a new philosophy. Not by the acceptance of a philosoj^hy but by contact with a Person do we acquire wisdom and righteousness 1 Literally, psychic man. ^ Isaiah xl. 13. ^ 1 Cor. chap. ii. PAUL AT CORINTH 107 and purity and deliverance from this present evil world. ^ But with clearness of vision he sees the half- concealed premise which underlay the skepticism which confronted him, and with his accustomed boldness he frankly accepts, and indeed vigorously affirms, the logic of the conclusion. If its premise be granted, its logical result must be accepted also. Let it be granted that man is only a higher kind of animal, that he has only those avenues to knowledge which the animal pos- sesses, that he can know only what he sees, hears, touches, tastes, and what by his reasoning powers he can conclude from these sensible phenomena, and all the great religious convictions which are the foundation of the higher life of humanity dis- appear. The " natural " man is necessarily an ag- nostic ; and by "natural" man Paul does not mean a wicked man. The transliteration of the Greek gives us the best interpretation of his meaning, — the psychic man. The psychic man, he says, re- ceiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. That is, the man who depends for his knowledge upon his senses and his reason, upon the use of those facul- ties which he possesses in common with the animal, though they are in an immeasurably higher state of development, must be an agnostic. Paul's issue is not with the conclusion of the agnostic but with his 1 1 Cor. i. 22, 23, 29, 30. 108 PAUL THE APOSTLE premise. Every man, Paul affirms, possesses a two- fold nature. Sometimes he speaks of man as three- fold, — body, soul, and spirit ; but generally he com- bines the body and the soul, that is, the material mechanism and the psychic or immaterial portion which he j)ossesses in common with the animal, in one nature, which Paul calls the flesh. This soul of man includes the social faculties, and the reasoninof powers, which he shares with the animal though they are developed in an eminent degree beyond that of any other animal. But in addition to this, man possesses a spirit. This includes his conscience, whereby he perceives the essential and inherent distinction between right and wrong ; faith, whereby he perceives immediately and directly the invisible realities, whereby he looks upon the things which are not seen and are eternal ; ^ hope, which enables him to look forward to that which transcends any present experience and prophetically to realize it ; ^ love, which according to Paul is no sensual passion, but a spiritual and divine experience, transcending and outliving, not only the body but the higher psychic experiences.^ By this spirit man is linked to God, by it he is provoked, excited, coerced to search that he may know more than phenomena, that he may understand the eternal reality which lies behind all phenomena. For he is never satis- fied with simply knowing phenomena ; he searches the very depths of God himself ; and this restless spirit of inquiry constitutes itself an argument that 1 2 Cor. iv. 18. 2 Rom. yiii. 24. 3 i Cor. xiii. 8. PAUL AT CORINTH 109 man is by his nature fitted for acquaintance with God.i Thus we know God, as we know one another, through the medium and in the domain of personal experience. We have received both in creation a spirit akin to God who has made us in his own image, and in redemption the spirit of God himself, which dwells within us ; the double gift having been conferred that we may be sharers of the divine experience, partakers of the divine na- ture. These experiences cannot be interpreted except by analogues in spiritual experience. The gulf between the material and the spiritual is im- passable ; we can understand the spiritual only in and through the spiritual. Out of this philosophy grows Paul's conception of preaching. The preacher is a prophet ; he does not argue from phenomena to prove to the psychi- cal man the probable truth of realities that are un- seen. He is a herald, a witness ; he testifies to the things which he knows, and he endeavors to evoke 1 " The spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God ''^ (1 Cor. ii. 10) may mean that as we turn our thoughts inward to search ourselves, so God searches, as it were, himself. The refer- ence, then, would be to divine self -consciousness, and the argument would be that we know God, not by reasoning, but by the impres- sion, as it were, of the divine self-consciousness on our own soul. This appears to be the common interpretation ; but it seems to me to impute to Paul a metaphysical refinement foreign to his nature. The same word is throughout his writing used to designate the spiritual nature in man and the Spirit of God, and it is only by the context that the reader can determine which significance is to be given to it. See, for illustration, Rom. viii. 16, " The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit." 110 PAUL TEE APOSTLE a spiritual perception in the natural man, by call- ing into activity his dormant spiritual nature. Thus the power of the preacher is the power of a personal witness ; it does not rest in rhetorical excel- lence, though that may be made an instrument in the testifying. It does not rest in philosophical argument, though the preacher may show by phi- losophical argument that the truth to which he tes- tifies is consistent with the phenomena perceived by the natural man. But the real secret of the preacher's power is his ability to reveal his own living spirit to the dormant spiritual man, and so awaken in him the capacity to receive the Spirit of God, which speaks in and through and to the spirit of man. This is the mysticism of St. Paul. Nor is he less radical in his method of meeting the utilitarianism of his time. Happiness is neither the end of life nor the criterion of virtue. The highest of humanity was a sufferer. Epicurus divided pleasures, as we have seen, into two classes : the pleasures of activity and the pleasures of repose : the first sensuous, the second intellectual. Christ knew neither. He was poor ; deprived not only of the luxuries but of the ordinary comforts of life ; without place, power, or the gratification of ambi- tion. His life wore all the aspects and involved all the hardships of failure. He was without the intellectual pleasures of education, literature, con- genial friendships, or the still more subtle pleasures of meditation, quietude, repose. After three years of PAUL AT CORINTH 111 life, spent in poverty and in increasing obloquy, lie died a shameful death. To follow him involved all his followers in a similar discarding of happiness and acceptance of crucifixion. If one would be his disciple he must take up his cross and follow him ; must chose as his portion " pain and the privation of pleasure." Such was the Leader and such the life Paul resolved to present to the Corinthians. Among you, he says, I did not choose to know anything ex- cept this Messiah, and to know him only as crucified. This declaration of Paul has been often mis- quoted ; as though he affirmed as a principle of his life, which limited all his teaching, the determina- tion never to know anything save Jesus Christ and him crucified ; as though this was the one and only theme of his instructions. But this is not what he says ; nor was his preaching thus limited. What he says is, I did not choose among you to know anything save Jesus Christ and him crucified. It is as if he had said, I came to a city mired in luxury and in self-indulgence ; notorious for its in- famous license ; tickling itself with a pseudo-philo- sophy which did not affect the moral life ; a city whose only moral movement was a movement founded on pure reason, not on conscience ; a city in which meekness, gentleness, forgiveness, kind- ness, self-abasement, and humiliation were abso- lutely unknown, or known only to be scoffed at ; and I resolved to put away all the instruments on which I had before relied, all the methods I had before employed, and rely wholly upon the story 112 PAUL THE APOSTLE of Christ and his cross ; I resolved that I would rest my preaching, not on the glory of a Christ yet to come, but on the glory of a Christ who has al- ready come ; not on a glory to be revealed in clouds and angels and power, but on a glory which is revealed in poverty, humiliation, crucifixion. In doing this, I resolved, too, that I would appeal to the spiritual that is in man. I would not appeal to men's ambition, and think to sanctify it by pre- senting to them a celestial picture to respond to their ambition. I came to see that in every man there is a power of insight, and I resolved that I would try to awaken that, dormant as it is, and make men see the invisible. In brief, Paul's answer to utilitarianism is self- sacrifice ; his answer to agnosticism is spiritual in- sight. Up to this time in Paul's experience he has said nothing about the crucifixion, except incidentally to refer to the death of Christ as a basis for setting forth the resurrection of Christ. From this time forth he has little to say about the resurrection of Christ ; so little, apparently, in his preaching to the Corinthians that some of the church came to the conclusion that there was no resurrection, and he writes them at length on the subject. In his pre- vious sermons and in his previous letters to the Thessalonians he has nothing to say about the cru- cifixion and much to say of the second coming ; in his future letters, little to say of the second coming. Instead : he will depart and be with Christ ; he will PAUL AT CORINTH 113 be absent from the body and present with the Lord ; a crown of righteousness prepared for him awaits him.^ Christianity becomes more and more to him a present life, less and less a mere hope of a future life. It is after this that he writes to the Romans that men are justified by faith alone. It is after this that he writes to the Philippians that because Christ hath humbled himself, and taken the form of a servant, and been obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross, therefore God hath highly exalted him. It is after this that he writes to the Galatians, in mystical phrase, that he is crucified with Christ, nevertheless he lives ; yet not he, but Christ lives in him. It is after this that he writes to the Corinthians that, even if he had known Christ after the flesh, he would not care for the knowledge, so surpassing is the mystical and spiritual vision of the ever-present Christ.^ From this time forth he is the preacher of these two things : first, the glory of self-sacrifice ; and, secondly, the mystical life of the inward faith. Thus we have traced in Paul's experience three stages. In the first we see him a Pharisee. He is conscientious ; he has studied the law ; he believes in it ; he endeavors to fulfill it ; and as regards what we call the ceremonial law — that is, as re- gards the law defining man's especial obligations to 1 Phil. i. 23 ; 2 Cor. v. 6-8 ; 2 Tim. iv. 8. In his Epistles to the Corinthians there are only incidental references to the second coming : e. g., 1 Cor. i. 7 ; xv. 23. 2 Rom. ii. 28; Phil. ii. 6-11 ; Gal. ii. 20 ; 2 Cor. v. 16. 114 PAUL THE APOSTLE God — he Is blameless. But he has hope of a Messiah who is coming to make Jerusalem the queen city of the world, and when he sees a sect arising: which declares that the Crucified One is the Messiah, he will have none of it, and when it grows strong he sets himself to work to destroy it. In the second stage of his spiritual experience he has seen this crucified Saviour risen ; he has thus brought to him the consciousness of the resurrec- tion ; in that consciousness of the resurrection he gets his conviction that Jesus is the Messiah. But he still believes in the Pharisaic conception of the kingdom of God ; he still thinks that the Messiah is straightway coming to bring about that kingdom of God, and he goes forth as the herald of a coming king. In the third stage of his experience he is no longer a Pharisee, and he is no longer a Pharisaic Christian. He sees there is no glory like the glory of self-abasement and self-sacrifice ; that there is no evidence of religion like the evidence of the in- ward witness of the soul itself. He speaks as a mystic to mystics, as a spiritual man to spiritual men, and he sets forth the glory of the life which has been lived on the earth. And when the glory of the risen Christ or the glory of the Christ before the beginning of the world is referred to, it is only that it may intensify the glory of the earthly career. Along with this change comes a change in his conception of his function and his work. He be- gins to see now that the Roman Empire is to last. He begins to see that the Christian religion must PAUL AT CORINTH 115 be made the religion of tlie Roman Empire. He no longer goes from place to place as a mere herald of a coming king. He stays a year and a half in Corinth ; he stays two years in Ephesus. He plans also to extend his missionary tour. He resolves that he will go to Rome.^ A little later he re- solves to go from Rome to Spain,^ the westernmost boundary of the Roman Empire. He has enlarged the conception of his mission, — it is to make faith in Christ the faith of the Roman Empire. He has changed his conception of the instrument of power, — it is no longer the glory of the Coming One, it is the glory of One who has come and has dwelt upon the earth. And he has changed the method of his address, — he does not appeal to the reason, endeavoring to win men by philosophical argument : he does not address himself to the appetite for the marvelous, promising in a second coming a miracle greater than any that has been wrought; he ad- dresses himself to the spiritual in man, awakening in him that which shall perceive the divine love. 1 Acts xix. 21. 2 i^oui^ XV. 24, 28. CHAPTER VII THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians was written from Ephesus, three or four years after his departure from Corinth, in answer to a letter from the Corinthian church which brought him some sad news and some suggestive inquiries. In his re- sponse Paul deals with six topics : — 1. The spiritual basis of knowledge. 2. Certain factions which had arisen in the Co- rinthian church. 3. Certain immoralities which had entered into and threatened to destroy it. 4. Certain specific questions addressed to him by the church. 5. Problems growing out of varieties of spiritual gifts claimed by different members. 6. Immortality and the resurrection. In the previous chapter I have considered Paul's treatment of the first topic ; the others I take up in the order in which Paul treats them. THE FACTIONS Within a quarter of a century after Christ's death there had already appeared that sectarianism THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 111 which was to be the future bane of the Christian Church. And it had appeared in much the same form. Factions arose which called themselves after the name of eminent prophets and teachers. It is a curious illustration how little the Church of Christ has really bowed to the authority of Scrip- ture, which in its creeds it has so much exalted, that, in spite of Paul's earnest condemnation of these Corinthian factions, they have been so con- stantly repeated since. Not to mention the Domin- icans and Franciscans and Benedictines, — follow- ers respectively of Dominic, Francis of Assisi, and Benedict of Mersia, or the Jansenists and Jesuits, one of them avowed followers of Jansenius, the others really followers of Loyola but taking the name of Jesus, — we have had Augustinians, Lu- therans, Calvinists, Arminians, Wesleyans, — that is, parties doing exactly what Paul condemned, one saying I am of Calvin, another I am of Luther, exactly as in Paul's time one said I am of Paul, and another, I of Apollos. Indeed in one respect the parallel has been even more exact ; for we have had in modern times three separate sects disavow- ing sectarian principles and sectarian creeds, and endeavoring to avoid the appearance of sectarianism by calling themselves by the name of Christ. Concerning the four parties mentioned by Paul nothing is with certainty known. Their names as ecclesiastical parties do not reappear in the history of the Church. The spirit of faction has been per- manent, particular factions have not. But we 118 PAUL TEE APOSTLE know enough to form a reasonable surmise as to their constitution and character. There is no reason to suppose that either of the individuals mentioned approved the organization of the party which assumed his name, or intended to make him- self its leader. It is certain that Paul did not. There is no reason to suppose that either ApoUos or Peter did. It is certain that the great leaders in the Church, in subsequent ages, had no such purpose. It was not the design of Augustine or Luther, of Calvin or Wesley to form a sect or school of followers. Each of these great prophets saw some great truth which the world needed, and gave expression to it. Men of similar tempera- ment, attracted by his message, accepted and re- peated it, in varying forms, and then the school was formed, which subsequent debates, growing out of self-defense or of attack upon rival or antago- nistic schools, crystallized into a party or sect, with its creed, its form of worship, its order of govern- ment, — in short, into a church, no longer simply of Christ, but of Luther, or Calvin, or Wesley as the case might be. It is probable that history has repeated itself, and that neither Paul, ApoUos, nor Peter intended to form a party, and that neither gave any sanction to the party which claimed to follow him, and that those who said " I am of Christ " followed Christ no more truly than did the others. The first faction probably grew out of the Jewish element in the Christian Church. Christianity had THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 119 grown out of Judaism, and there was a large and at first dominant party in the Church, with head- quarters at Jerusalem, which held that Christianity was a phase of Judaism ; that the pagan must be- come a Jew before he could become a Christian ; that the laws of Moses were of perpetual and uni- versal obligation, and that the Church of Christ was subject to them.^ This party insisted, there- fore, that converts from paganism must be circum- cised, that they must not eat meat offered to idols, that they must not intermarry with pagans, and if already intermarried must separate, that they must observe the Jewish feast-days, especially the Sab- baths, — in a word, that they must be conscientious Jews. They cited chapter and verse from the Old Testament in support of their contention, and might have coupled therewith the declaration of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount that not one jot or tittle of the law should pass away till all be fulfilled. They took the name of Peter as their leader, because he was in some special mea- sure an apostle to the Jews and had remained pre- eminent in the Jewish Church ; but there is small reason to believe that he personally sanctioned their principles, their policy, or their spirit. The ana- logue of this Jewish or Pe trine faction is the con- servative party in our own time, the Puritan of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Covenant- ers of Scotland, the Huguenots of France, and the 1 This party and its development in the Church will be described more fully in the chapter on Paul's Letter to the Galatians. 120 PAUL THE APOSTLE most scrupulous and observant in tlie Roman Church in all ages. In short, this party is ana- logous to that which regards the Christian religion as a law of God, and obedience to that law as the chief characteristic of the Christian life. The second faction was born of and supplied by the Gentile element in the Christian Church. The Gentiles knew nothing of Judaism, and cared no- thing for it. Its feast-days and fast-days, its sacri- ficial system, its regulations concerning clean and unclean, its practice of circumcision, were all no- thing to them, and to these they were naturally indifferent. But this was not all ; the Greeks and Romans were not accustomed to identify morality with religion. The idea that God is a righteous God, and demands righteousness of his children, which is the fundamental doctrine of Mosaism, was a novel doctrine to them. They were more ready to accept the hope of a present emancipation from galling bondage, ecclesiastical and civil, or an ex- pectation of a great enfranchisement in the future with the second coming of the Messiah, than they were to accept such a change of character as would make them truthful, pure, generous, self-sacrificing. They disregarded the Levitical law, and were quite ready to disregard also the moral law. They claimed Paul as their leader, though it is certain that Paul, as we shall see in this First Epistle to the Corinthians, repudiated very vigorously their repudiation of the moral law, and their separation of morality and religion. The analogue of this THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 121 Pauline party is to be found in history in the liberal and progressive party in the Church in our own time, in the Cavaliers of the seventeenth century, in the more lax and careless spirits in court circles in the Koman Church in the Middle Ages, and in the Antinomians and Anabaptists of Germany in the time of Luther. The third party grew out of an endeavor, which had been made previous to Christ, to unite Gre- cian philosophy with the Jewish religion. This endeavor had given rise to an Alexandrian school, Greco-Jewish in its character, and deriving its name from Alexandria, where its chief activity was seen. This school, b}^ a process not necessary to describe here,^ endeavored, by allegorizing the Old Testament Scriptures, so to explain them, or to explain them away, as to make them appear rational, and consonant with Grecian philosophy. Apollos had come from Alexandria; and this Greco-Jewish school, importing its allegorical and rationalistic spirit into the Christian Church, called itself after the name of Apollos. The ana- logue of this school is to be found in what is called the New Theology of our time, and in the School- men of the Middle Ages. Finally, there was a party which claimed to be no party, which put aside Peter and Paul and Apollos, and with them the Old Testament Scrip- 1 This party and its development will be described more fully in the chapter on Paul's letters to the Colossians and the Ephe- 122 PAUL THE APOSTLE tures, and such New Testament records and tradi- tions as existed, or gave to them a wholly secon- dary place, and claimed direct and immediate fellowship with Christ, and inspiration from him. It called itself, therefore, by his name, and claimed preeminently to derive its principles and its au- thority from him. It was the mystical, the sancti- fied, the holiness party of the first century. It has its analogue in that party in more modern times which discards all traditions, including the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, which recognizes no other authority than what is called the inward witness of the spirit, and which assumes preeminence in vision and faith. It is historically illustrated by the Brethren of the Common Life, the Illuminati, the Quietists, and other similar mystical sects. If the reader thinks that in these characteriza- tions essential distinctions are ignored, and incon- gruous qualities are strangely intermixed in a blurred picture, he must remember that distinc- tions are thus ignored and qualities are thus inter- mingled in actual history. Loyalty to conscience merges by insensible degrees into a despotic and dwarfing literalism, liberty into a dangerous and self-indulgent license, intellectual activity into con- founding dogma with truth and creed with life, the spirit of faith and hope into a disembodied religion, incapable, because disembodied, of effec- tive warfare in this world. Each of the four parties which Paul entitles by the names of the THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 123 leaders which they had respectively chosen pos- sessed, it may safely be assumed, both the virtues and the vices of analogous parties in subsequent times. They possessed severally the excellencies and the defects, the truths and the errors of the more modern forms of conservatism, liberalism, in- tellectualism, and mysticism. Thus there were four nascent factions in the Corinthian Church : the conservative, or legal, or Puritan ; the radical, or liberal, or Gentile ; the philosophical, or scholastic, or Alexandrian; and the mystical, or transcendental. Each of them took the name of a leader famous in the Church, though probably not one of them had the leader's authority for so doing. Each separated itself from the others and constituted an independent party if not an independent organization. Thus began sectarianism in the Christian Church. Thus Paul condemned it : — " Now I beseech you, brethren, in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you ; but that ye be perfectly united in the same mind and in the same purpose. For I have been given to understand concern- ing you my brethren, by members of Chloe's household, that there are strifes among you. What I mean is this : that each one of you says, I am of Paul, but I of Apol- los, but I of Peter, but I of Christ. Christ is divided. Was Paul crucified for you ? or were you baptized into the name of Paul ? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, lest any one should 124 PAUL THE APOSTLE say that ye were baptized into my own name. And I baptized also the household of Stephanas ; besides I know not whether I baptized any other. . . . When one saith I am of Paul, but another I am of Apollos, are you not acting in a very human fashion ? ^ What then is Apollos ? And what is Paul ? Servants through whom ye became believers. And each served as the Lord gave him the ability. I planted, Apollos watered ; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, nor he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. But he that planteth and he that watereth are one, and each shall receive his own reward accord- ing to his own labor. For we are laborers together with God. God's husbandry, God's building are ye. . . . Therefore let no one glory in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come : all are yours ; and ye are Christ's ; and Christ is God's." 2 The reader has but to substitute the names of Luther, Calvin, and Wesley for the names of Paul, Apollos, and Peter, and this trenchant rebuke and earnest appeal would be literally as appli- cable to the Church in the nineteenth century as in the first. How then would Paul meet these sectarian divisions with the sectarian names, — 1 The best reading* is ^.vQpwtToi, not aapKiKol, "Are ye not men ? " not, " Are ye not carnal ? " but the phrase is to be interpreted by the parallel passage in the preceding verse (1 Cor. iii. 3): " Are ye not walking after the manner of men ? " 2 1 Cor. i. 10-16 ; iii. 4-9, 21-23. TEE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 125 Lutherans, Calvinists, Wesleyans ? How did he meet them in his own time? He would not meet them by either one of the four methods which have been proposed in our modern times as a cure for sectarianism, — a mutual agreement to accept as the basis of union the Bible, a Church order, the Church sacraments, or a com- mon creed ; certainly it was not by either of these methods that he proposed to the Corinthians to cure their dissensions. He did not propose and could not have proposed the acceptance of the Bible as the foundation of ecclesiastical unity, for the Bible did not exist. The Old Testament existed, but he could not have called upon them to unite upon the Old Testament, because he said over and over again in his Letters that Christians were not bound by the laws of the Old Testament ; they were freed from the law. And the law constituted a large part of the Old Testament. He could not, therefore, have united them on the basis of their acceptance of the Old Testament as a final and absolute authority. And he certainly could not have united them on the acceptance of the New Testament as a final and absolute authority, for the New Testament did not exist. He was himself, in this very letter, writing a part of the New Testament. Its books were not brought together in one collection, whose authority was recognized by the Church, until the second or third century. In truth, the notion that the Church is or can be founded on the Bible is a curious in- 126 PAUL THE APOSTLE version of the j^erfectly well-known historical order. The Jewish Church, if not founded by Abraham,^ certainly existed as a definite ecclesiastical organi- zation in the time of Moses ; but the Old Testa- ment in its present form was not completed till over a thousand years later. In a similar manner, the Christian Church was brought into existence at Pentecost, if not before ; but the New Testament, as we now have it, was certainly not completed until the end of the first century or early in the second. The Bible is the creation of the Church, and therefore the Church cannot be founded on the Bible. The basis of the Church cannot be the literature which its own life has created. Nor did Paul make the unity of the Church de- pend upon acceptance of any particular form of ecclesiastical organization. Neither here nor any- where else does he lay stress upon the supremacy and authority of either Peter or the Twelve. It is impossible to reconcile his utterances with the idea that he recognized any such supremacy and author- ity. He habitually claimed to be an apostle, the equal of the other apostles, and to bear the witness of his apostleship not in any ordination by other apostles, but in the spiritual fruits of his work and thus the ratification of his apostleship by the Spirit of God.2 Not once does he directly aj^peal to the ^ As Dean Stanley regards it in his History of the Jeivish Church. 2 Rom. xi. 13 ; 1 Cor. i. 1 ; ix. 1-2 ; Gal. i. 1, 19-22 ; ii. 4-6, 11 ; Col. i. 1 ; 1 Tim. ii. 7 ; Titus i. 1. TEE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 127 apostles for decision on a doubtful question ; and in the one case in which an appeal is made to apos- tles and others in Jerusalem, he declares that he would not have accepted their decision had it been adverse to the doctrine of liberty ; and such deci- sion as they reached he speedily though quietly dis- regarded.i He does not suggest to the rival factions at Corinth that they submit their differences to any ecclesiastical authority. He does not refer them to Peter, or to the apostolic college, or to a pres- bytery, or an assembly, or to a special council to be called for the purpose. He does not advise them to unite in any existing form of ecclesiastical organization, — papal, episcopal, or presbyterian. Indeed, if I have correctly traced the growth of the Church as an organization, ^ he could not have done so. For neither papal, apostolic, or presbyterian authority existed. There was as yet neither pope, bishopric, synod, or general assembly. Different churches were organized on different models in dif- ferent localities. The form of organization is the mechanism which life uses in its work ; and the unity of life cannot be based upon the mechanism which it uses. Paul might, perhaps, have made a common ac- ceptance of the sacraments a basis of union, for they were doubtless in common use ; but he did not do so. One might as well base the unity of the home as the unity of the Church upon a common meal. 1 Gal. i. 9-12. Comp. Acts xv. 28, 29 with 1 Cor. viii. 4-8. 2 See chapter iv. 128 PAUL TUB APOSTLE Certainly Paul does not propose any such founda- tion. He does not mention the Lord's Supper in this connection at all, and though he mentions bap- tism, it is to dismiss it as a matter of wholly sec- ondaiy importance. " I thank God," he says, " that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius, lest any one should say that I baptized in my own name. And I baptized also the household of Stephanas. Besides I know not that I baptized any other ; for Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel." It is scarcely possible to conceive that the writer of this sentence, after treating baptism, in whatever form, in so cavalier a fashion, would have made acceptance of a partic- ular form of administering baptism a condition of church union. Certainly Paul did not attempt to secure Chris- tian union by uniting these factions in agreement upon a common philosophy of religion, or a com- mon symbol as an expression of such philosophy. If the Bible is the child of the Church, the creed is more evidently its child. It is what the Church has come to think as the result, in part at least, of a study of the Bible. If unity must be based upon the creed, then unity was not possible till the third or fourth century, for not till then did the Church have any creed, even the simplest. It was at first too busy living to philosophize about its life. And in this very letter to the Corinthians Paul expli- citly disavows the notion that the Church can be built upon philosophy, as though it were only a new TEE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 129 school, with a new theory of life. He argues at length that philosophic definitions of religious truth afford no basis for Christian union. What he calls " wisdom " we might without misinterpretation call scholastic philosophy. The " wisdom " which the Greeks sought after was the philosophic formula- tion of all truth, and the whole of the second chap- ter is taken up with showing that spiritual truth cannot be adequately rationalized, that it tran- scends intellectual definitions. It is not, he says, with wisdom of words or excellency of speech — not, that is, by a philosophy or a skillful phras- ing of philosophy in a common symbol — that the Church can ever be made one. History- abundantly confirms his argument that theology affords no basis for Christian union. The creeds have been wedges to split the Church asunder, not bands to bind it together. If we except the Apostles' Creed, their object has been not to include all dis- ciples of Christ but to exclude some who at least called themselves disciples. Thus the Nicene Creed was framed to exclude Arians, the Heidelberg Catechism to exclude Romanists, the Westmin- ster Confession to exclude Arminians, and the Creed of Pius IV. to exclude Protestants. The object of the creed maker has been to frame a shibboleth which the supposed heretic could by no possibility pronounce. It has been exclusive, not inclusive. Finally, Paul would not say, as sometimes is said in our time, that denominations are a blessing, 130 PAUL THE APOSTLE and that we must have Congregational and Bap- tist and Methodist and Episcopal and Presbyterian and Roman Catholic bodies, to the number of a hundred and twenty-five or a hundred and thirty separate and often rival and contending sects, be- sides independent congregations. This division of the Church into separate parties he vigorously con- demns. It is the result, he says, of eartliliness ; it is produced by envy ; it leads to strife. By such sectarianism Christ is divided. The human leader is treated as though he were the Master who had been crucified for the world. The body of Christ must not be divided ; it must not be rent in sunder; there must not be in it factions and parties. Paul's remedy for sectarianism, his basis of Church union, is very simple, far simpler than any of those which modern reformers have proposed. There is, he says, one foundation, Jesiis Christ. Other foundation can no man lay. Loyalty to Christ, — not to a creed about Christ, not to a sacrament in honor of Christ, not to a Church which Christ has founded, not to a Book which tells about Christ, but loyalty to Christ himself, is the basis, and the only basis of union which Paul recognizes. "I beseech you, brethren," he says, " by the name [that is, with the authority] of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you, but that ye be perfectly united in the same mind and in the same purpose : . . . that ye speak the TEE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 131 same thing," — you have one message to give; it is the message of a Christ who came into the world, lived, suffered, died, rose from the dead, will come again. Give that message. " Be perfectly joined together in the same mind" — perceive him, see him, understand him, let your perception of him, your understanding of him, unite you ; and " in the same judgment," — the same fundamental pur- pose, the bringing of the kingdom of Christ upon the earth ; thus " bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." ^ Cooperation in Christian activity is Paul's remedy for schism and sectarianism in the Church of Christ. This simple proposition is confirmed by certain modern experiments in the Church : by the cooperation of Christian missionaries of different denominations in foreign lands; by the endeavor, unhappily frustrated, of the Japanese Christians to make one Japanese Christian Church ; by the practical unity of widely differing Chris- tians for Christian service in such organizations as the Young Men's Christian Associations, the Young Women's Christian Associations, the King's Daughters, and the Young People's Societies of Christian Endeavor. In all these cases there is a general acceptance of the Bible as containing the word of God, but there is generally no agreement upon either doctrinal statements, church symbols, or ecclesiastical government ; and yet while others have debated Christian union, these organizations, 1 ICor. i. 10; 2Cor. X. 5. 132 PAUL THE APOSTLE acting on the counsel and in the spirit of Paul, have secured it. On the other hand Church his- tory abundantly illustrates the hopelessness of at- tempting to secure ecclesiastical union by the other and more formal methods. The Church of Rome, founded on Papal authority, has been rent by fac- tions quite as bitter as any that have split Pro- testantism into contending sects. Protestantism, based on the acceptance of the Bible as a final authority, has not been protected thereby from being broken into scores of sects. All Protestant Churches accept the two Sacraments, but this has proved no effective bond of union. And as to the creed, the fact that there are in Scotland half a dozen Presbyterian denominations, all accepting the same creed and each independent of the other, proves, if proof were necessary, how utterly hope- less it is to attempt to build Church unity on ac- ceptance of a common symbol.^ THE IMMORALITIES IN THE CHURCH Gross immoralities had entered the Christian church in Corinth. They had been fostered by 1 It does not come within the province of this chapter, which is simply interpretation of Paul's Letters, to discuss the question whether organic union of aU Christian churches in one ecclesi- astical hody is either practicable or desirable. It is enough to point out that (according to Paul) the basis of unity must be spiritual, not ecclesiastical, literary, liturgical, or theological. Therefore mutual respect for each other's ecclesiastical, literary, liturgical and theological conception must precede organic vmion or even efficient cooperation. THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 133 that spirit which in Greece, but by no means con- fined to Greece, dissociated ethical principles from religion. The object of pagan religion in Greece and Rome was not to make men better. Indeed, it may be said, almost without exception, that the object of pagan religion has never been to make men better. It has generally been either to pla- cate an angry God or to bribe a corrupt one ; and the angry God must be placated, and the corrupt one bribed, without regard to the moral character of the worshiper. Thus the forms of pagan wor- ship have generally been, not only dissociated from morality, but often themselves grossly immoral. The worship of Ashtoreth among the Phoenicians, and of Astarte among the Greeks and Romans, was accompanied with immoralities so gross that they cannot even be mentioned in modern litera- ture. These gross immoralities connected with the pagan temples and worship of Corinth had crept into the Christian Church. The arguments for them were such as have been often heard since : The body is a mere transient dwelling- place ; the man is not soiled because the body is soiled ; a white soul may live in an evil body. As a man is not made leprous because the house is leprous, so he is not made leprous because his body is leprous. That was the argument then, and it has been often repeated since. Something nearly approximating it has been taught by repre- sentatives of pagan religions, impliedly if not ex- plicitly, in American cities within our own times. 134 PAUL THE APOSTLE The apologists for immorality cited Paul himself. Christianity, they said, is freedom ; we are free from the law; therefore there is no longer any law; Thou shalt not steal, and Thou shalt not commit adultery, are abolished ; we are free to do what we will. A similar separation of religion and morality has been not uncommon in later his- tory. An ancient record thus characterizes Car- dinal Lorraine, of France : " He is not much beloved ; he is far from truthful ; he is naturally deceitful and covetous, but he is full of religion." And there is no reason to think that the chronicler intended a satire. Criminals have sometimes been excessively religious, if religion consists, not in doing righteously, as the only method of being acceptable to a righteous God, but in paying de- votions to a God who cares not for character so Ions: as he receives what is due to himself.. Paul meets this incursion of immorality into the Christian Church with fiery indignation. He never suggests that the Church shall excommunicate a man for false opinion, for heresy, for untrue creed, nor even for schism and self-separation from the Church. He never suggests that any one be ex- communicated because he does not agree with his brethren on a doubtful question of ethics. The followers of Paul and the followers of Peter, the men who eat meat offered to idols, and the men who think it wicked to do so, are to live together in fellowship in the same Christian Church. But lie who is openly and frankly immoral Paul insists THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 135 shall be at once excommunicated. "Are ye not aware," he says, " that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump ? " A little corruption in the Church is sufficient to taint the whole body. " You are not," he says, " to keep company with fornicators : with such an one not even to eat." Yet even in this indignation he illustrates that practical com- mon sense which in this extraordinary man is so singularly intermingled with his uncompromising fidelity to principle. You are not, he says, " to separate yourself under all circumstances from all evil doers ; in that case you would have to go out of the world. But if one of your brethren gives himself up to vicious life he is no more worthy to be called a brother ; you may eat with the heathen,^ but with such a pseudo Christian as this you are not to eat." " I wrote unto you in that letter ^ not to keep com- pany with fornicators. Not that you should altogether separate yourselves from the fornicators of this world, or the greedy of gain, or the extortioners, or the idol- aters ; for in that case you must needs go out of the world. But my meaning was that you were not to keep company if any one who is called a brother is a forni- cator, or greedy of gain, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner ; with such an one you are not even to eat." ^ 1 Gal. ii. 11-14. 2 " Not this present epistle, . . . but a former epistle which has not come down to us." — Alford in loco. 3 1 Cor. V. 9-11. 136 PAUL THE APOSTLE SOME PRACTICAL QUESTIONS Paul next comes to certain questions which have been asked him. The first of these relates to marriage. In reading what Paul says about marriage we must remember two thino^s. Marriao:e in that agre O O o was very different from marriage in ours. There was no religious ceremony and no enduring bond. Under the Roman Empire, in the first century, the man and woman entered into partnership, lived to- gether as long as both of them liked to live together, and then separated. The bond could be dissolved at the pleasure of either one. How readily it was dissolved is illustrated by an instance related by St. Jerome, who tells us that in his time " there existed a wife who was married to her twenty-third husband, she herself being his twenty-first wife." ^ When, therefore, Paul talks about marriage, he talks about the advisability of a woman's entering into such a commercial and easily dissoluble re- lationship with some man — something very differ- ent from marriage in a Christian community as it exists under the influence of Anglo-Saxon civiliza- tion and Christian teaching. We must remember, too, that Paul, when he wrote this letter to the Co- rinthians, believed that the world was soon to come to an end ; that there would be great distress, and many persecutions ; that the j^erils to the Church 1 Lecky's European Morals, vol. ii., p. 325. He furnishes also other striking illustrations of the effect of this liberty of divorce. THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 137 were likely to grow greater rather than less ; and that thus the condition of the times rendered mar- riage, especially to the Christian, inexpedient. His advice, which is, on the whole, against marriage rather than in favor of it, is such as a Puritan might have given in the time of Charles the First, or a Huguenot in the time of Catherine de Medici. His judgment in favor of virginity is based on the fact of " the present distress." Upon the other question, whether the Christian husband is to put away his pagan wife, or the pagan wife the Chris- tian husband, he is more explicit. Ezra, five hun- dred years before, had required the people to put away their pagan wives.^ Paul discards this pre- cedent without even referring to it. " Unto the married," he says, " I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband, . . . and let not the husband put away his wife." His authority is the explicit teaching of the Master : " Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, commit- teth adultery." 2 The second question asked of Paul relates to meat offered to idols. The worship of idols was a sacrificial worship. Cattle were offered in great numbers on pagan altars. The blood having been 1 Ezra X. 10-17. 2 1 Cor. vii. 10, 11 ; Matt. xix. 9. I see no reason for thinting' that the phrase " not I, but the Lord," indicates a special revela- tion to Paul. It is his recognition of the authority of the teaching of Christ on this subject, which he had learned either by tradi- tion or through one of the Gospels already written. 138 PAUL THE APOSTLE poured out as a libation to the gods, the meat was afterwards sold in open market, presumably for the benefit of the priesthood and the temple service. The Jews thought that, by eating meat which had once been offered to idols, they participated in the idolatrous worship ; and the Jewish Christians held the same view. The Gentile Christians, on the other hand, saw no harm in buying and eating such meat as they had always been accustomed to do. They even seem sometimes to have eaten in the idolatrous temple, thus sharing in the pagan and semi-religious feasts.^ The question was addressed to Paul, May we eat meat offered to idols? In reply he declares that an idol is nothing in the world. There is none other God but one. Meat offered to an idol is offered to a nonentity. You are as free to eat such meat as to eat any other. '^ In estimating the radicalism of this utterance, the reader must remember that no less a body than the Council at Jerusalem had issued a formal resolu- tion counseling Christians to " abstain from meats offered to idols and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication." ^ They had thus treated the ceremonial and the moral obligations of Moses as of equal force. Paul quietly, though without referring to it, sets this resolution of the Ecclesiastical Council at Jerusalem one side, and, having vigorously condemned the fornicator, de- clares that meat is not polluted because the animal from which it is taken has first been sacrificed in a 1 1 Cor. viii. 10. ^ i Cor. viii. 4. 3 _^cts xv. 28. THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 139 pagan temple. But, he goes on to say, All men will not understand this principle, nor recognize it. Some will think it is wrong to eat such meat, and if they think it is wrong, to them it will be wrong. For it is always wrong to violate one's conscience in order to indulge one's appetite. Therefore do not eat if by so doing you will entice others less in- telligent than yourself to violate their consciences. And he declares for himself, " If food entices my brother into sin, I will eat no flesh throughout all time, lest I entice my brother into sin." ^ There are no more idols, and the Christian is no more perplexed respecting meat offered in sacri- fice ; but there is perhaps no text in the Bible more frequently quoted or more often misused than the famous text just quoted. It cannot be taken out of its relation to what has gone before, without being misinterpreted and misapplied. Two principles Paul lays down ; and the second is de- pendent upon the first. The first is liberty ; the second is service. He puts them together clearly in Galatians : "Ye are called unto liberty, bre- thren ; only use not your liberty for an oppor- tunity to serve the flesh, but by love serve one another." ^ One may not select one of these principles and reject the other, and think that he has Paul as an authority. He cannot say, I am a free man ; I may do what I like, no matter how it affects others. Neither can he say. No man may do what he likes, because I think it will injure 1 1 Cor. viii. 13. 2 Gal. v. 13. 140 PAUL THE APOSTLE another. The one interpretation is as false as the other. The fundamental principle is this : Every man has conscience given him to be his own law- giver ; not to be a lawgiver for his neighbor. He has no right to lay down the law for another ; but the liberty which his conscience allows to him he must use in the spirit of love to others. The Christian is indeed urged by Paul to surrender his liberty for the sake of his weaker brother, but he cannot surrender what he does not possess. If, for example, he is not free to drink a glass of wine, he has no power to surrender his freedom to drink a glass of wine. Freedom is essential to temperance, for temperance is self-control, and if one is not allowed to control himself, he cannot be truly temperate. He cannot be controlled by another and exercise self-control at the same time and in respect to the same subject matter. A con- vict in the State prison, while he is under the control of the warden and his food is measured out to him, may be undergoing a training which will prepare him to exercise temperance when he is discharged ; but while he is in the prison he cannot exercise temperance, because temperance is seZ/'-control, and he is not allowed to control himself. These two principles, liberty and service, are of universal application. When, as in our times, men, sometimes individually and sometimes collec- tively, through resolutions, platform addresses, and public journals supposedly edited in the interest of THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 141 public morality, deny the liberty of the individ- ual to determine for himself the principles of his own action and the methods of his own con- duct, the first duty of the Church is to reaffirm with vigor and courage the Pauline principle of freedom. Law, that is, the collective action of the majority in a democratic community, may, and often must, prevent the individual from acts which interfere with the rights of his neighbor. But it may not interfere with the individual's liberty to follow the dictates of his own conscience in those matters which do not violate the rights of others. May I go to the theatre ? may I drink wine ? may I play cards ? may I walk, or ride, or sail, or call, or play games on the Sabbath ? The first answer to these and all kindred questions is. Each individual must decide for himself. " Who art thou that judgest another man's servant ? To his own master he standeth or falleth." ^ If there ever was a com- munity in which the restrictions of law imposed from without were necessary, it was Corinth — the corruptest city of the corruptest state in its cor- ruptest epoch. If there ever was a church which the religious teacher should surround with restric- tions and prohibitions, to which he should have said, There are some places to which you must not go, some beverages you must not drink, some pic- tures you must not look at, some teachers you must not listen to, it was the infant church at 1 1 Rom. xiv. 4. 142 PAUL THE APOSTLE Corinth. But Paul does not attempt tlius to hedge them about with prohibitions. On the contrary, it is to the Corinthians he says, " All things are yours ; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come ; all are yours ; and ye are Christ's ; and Christ is God's." ^ And this he says in the same letter in which he condemns them for dividing into parties, and following severally Paul and Apollos and Peter, and in which he condemns them for acquiescing in and countenancing, in one of their members, gross immorality. So Tertullian, when asked. May we visit the pagan theatres ? replied, " Places do not contaminate, but what is done in the places." So Gregory the Great told Augus- tine, missionary to Canterbury, not to destroy the pagan temples, but to consecrate them. So John Wesley said, " The devil has had the good music long enough." ^ The method of Paul is consecra- tion, not restriction ; the liberty of love, not bond- age to another man's conscience.^ 1 1 Cor. iii. 21-23. 2 Stanley's Commentary on Corinthians, p. 176. ^ The political right of the community to regulate the keeping and sale of dangerous articles of commerce, such as gunpowder or dynamite, or poisons such as arsenic or prussic acid (and alco- hol may be, and by some is, included in the list of dangerous poisons), is not inconsistent with the liberty of the individual, which is always subordinate to the safety of the community. This right of the State rests on the same principle as its right to take the property of the citizen in taxation, though for expendi- ture which he does not believe in, or to draft him for service in war. THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 143 But the exercise of tliis liberty is always to be subordinated to the higher law of love. The fun- damental question for every Christian to ask him- self is, How can I best serve the world? — that is, his world. He cannot serve it at all unless he is a free man. He will not serve it at all unless he uses this freedom in the spirit of love. He must be equally ready to employ his liberty for love, and to forego it for love. If he believes the glass of wine, the game of cards, attendance at the theatre, Sunday recreation, will be innocent, harmless, even beneficial for himself, he has not yet given to his question a Christian answer. He must also ask and answer the question what the effect of his j^ro- posed act will be upon others. Sometimes he can serve others best by using his liberty, and teaching them that the Christian is free. Sometimes he can serve others best by foregoing his liberty, and teach- ing others that the Christian rejoices in self -limita- tion and self-sacrifice. In which way he can serve his brother, whether by using or by foregoing his liberty, is a question which each individual must decide for himself in each case as it arises. Though Paul said, " If food entices my brother into sin, I will eat no flesh," I doubt very much that he was all his life a vegetarian. The third question specifically addressed to Paul respected the relation of women to the Church, and their place and conduct in its worshiping assem- blies. In the city of Corinth the women of evil repute had liberty ; women of good repute, none. 144 PAUL THE APOSTLE To go into a public assembly of any kind unveiled, and to take public part in it, was at once to mark tbe one who did it as a woman of the town. But Paul believed, and later certainly said, perhaps had already said in Corinth, that in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female ; that woman also is God's child ; that where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty; that, therefore, there is liberty in the Church of Christ. Some women, availing themselves of this, had come into church assemblies unveiled, and had taken part in them, and were bringing evil reputation upon themselves and upon their church. Paul argues at length that the wo- men should always wear their veils in the church assemblies, and should not speak in them. " But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ ; but the head of the woman is the man ; but the head of Christ is God. Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoreth his head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head unveiled dishonoreth her head ; for that is even all one as if she were shaven. For if a woman be not veiled, let her also be shorn : but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be veiled. For a man indeed ought not to have his head veiled, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God : but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man was not created from the woman ; but the woman from the man. Neither was the man created for the woman ; but the woman for the man. Therefore ought the woman to have upon her head the sign of her subjec- THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 145 tion, because of the angel witnesses. -^ Moreover neither is the woman to be accounted apart from the man, nor the man apart from the woman in the Lord. For as the woman was created from the man, so is the man also born of the woman ; but all things are of God. Judge for yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered ? Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man wears his hair long, it is a shame unto him ? But if a woman wears her hair long, it is a glory to her ; because long hair is given to her for a veil." ^ A little later in the same letter he adds : — " Let your women keep silence in the public assemblies ; for it is not permitted to them to talk, but they should keep themselves in subjection, as also saith the law. And if they would learn anything let them ask their own husbands at home ; for it is disgraceful for women to speak in a public assembly. " ^ This counsel is an excellent illustration of Paul's oratorical temperament. He desires to prevent women from taking such a course in the Christian assemblies in Corinth as will bring disgrace upon them and upon the church, and he uses those argu- ments which he thinks will appeal to them, and which are suggested to him by his rabbinical train- ing. His conclusion is one of practical common sense. Some of his arguments, few, if any, Amer- 1 This paraphrase expresses what appears to he the hest inter- pretation of a confessedly enigmatical passage. 2 1 Cor. xi. 3-15. 3 1 Cor. xiv. 34, 35. There is no douht this was the fact in Corinth. Women of notorious reputation, and none other, were accustomed to take part in public discussions. 146 PAUL THE APOSTLE ican readers believe to be sound. They do not believe that woman was made for man. They be- lieve that God made man, male and female, in his own image; not for woman man, more than for man woman ; but each for the other, and both for God. Self-reverent each, and reverencing each, Distinctive individualities, but like each other, Ev'n as those who love. It is no longer true that it is a shame for a woman to be uncovered in church. Most preachers cer- tainly would find the inspiration of their presence greatly lessened if the women auditors sat behind inpenetrable veils. Whether there are angels look- ing on or not, it is not material to inquire. If we believe there are such unseen companions in our worship, their presence would be no reason why women should wear veils. And there is just as little reason for insisting that women may not speak in church meetings because they could not do so with propriety in Corinth, as there is for in- sisting that all women in a Christian congregation shall go veiled in Oriental fashion because in the first century and in the city of Corinth the absence of the veil was a symbol of disgrace. The subject of spiritual gifts and of the resur- rection I reserve for the next chapter. CHAPTER VIII THE FIKST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS (CON- TINUED) SPIRITUAL GIFTS There were in the church at Corinth men pos- sessing or claiming to possess extraordinary gifts, and there was an emulation, not wholly divine, be- tween these men. Paul gives us in the twelfth chapter a catalogue of these gifts. They are wis- dom, knowledge, faith, healing, working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, various tongues, in- terpretation of tongues. Of these gifts we readily recognize five as existing in the Christian Church to the present day — wisdom, knowledge, faith, prophecy, and discernment of spirits : wisdom, or the logical or philosophical faculty, which belongs to what we might call the rational element in the Church ; knowledge, or the intuitive perception, which directly and immediately perceives the higher and diviner forms of truth ; faith, or the spiritual imagination, by which men behold the invisible world and walk as on mountain-tops in the clear light of heaven ; prophecy, or that kind of elo- quence by which one with great spiritual passion moves on the hearts and emotions of men — what 148 PAUL THE APOSTLE we sometimes call spiritual magnetism ; arid dis- cernment of spirits, or good common sense discrim- inating between different teachers and different types of teaching. These various forms of gift are not uncommon in our times, and those who possess them not in- frequently look down upon those who possess a different form from their own. Thus, the philoso- phical mind is apt to look with disregard upon the intuitive, and the intuitive upon the rational or philosophical, while both of them call the man who walks by faith a mystic ; the mystic is more humble than a great many mystics are if he does not dises- teem the man who walks by philosophy and reason ; and the discerner of spirits — that is, the man of practical common sense — does not always discern charitably or judge wisely. But there are gifts in Paul's catalogue which have no parallel in our own time, even if they have an analogue. Of the healing, we might say, per- haps, that there is an analogy to be found in the claims of Christian Scientists and Faith Curers to cure physical disorder through purely spirit- ual means. Of the gift of tongues, we may cer- tainly say that there is an analogue to be found in the claims of the Catholic Apostolic Church, more popularly known as the Irvingites, who professed to exercise exactly this faculty of speaking in unknown tongues. But, for the most part, in orthodox or evangelical churches of every branch, there is nei- ther a claim to heal physical disorder by spiritual THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 149 means nor to speak in unknown tongues. How are we to regard these so-called gifts ? Are we to think of them as really manifestations of a Divine Spirit ? as belonging to that early age, because the early age had not yet drifted away from the touch of Christ ? Are we to think that in the Apostolic Church there were powers which since have died out from the Church — powers which it has since lost ? There are some objections to this, which is the current view ; for it is to be observed that these gifts of healing and of tongues do not appear to have existed, to any considerable extent, outside the church at Corinth. We should naturally look for them where the spirit of God was the strongest, where the life was the purest, where the faith was the clearest — that is, at Philippi or Ephesus, rather than in the church at Corinth, which was the one in which there was the greatest departure from purity of faith, the greatest sign of human deficiency and imperfection ; Corinth, into which error and heresy and strife and immorality had entered. Moreover, we find Paul speaking with greater freedom of some of these gifts than we should expect him to do if he regarded them as signs of the Divine Spirit. " I would rather," he says in substance, " say five words that others can understand than ten thousand words that others cannot understand." ^ Are we, then, to consider 1 True, he also says, " I thank God I speak with tongues more than ye all ; " but this must be interpreted as equivalent to I have the gift and could exercise it if I chose. See Alford on 1 Cor. xiv. 18. 150 PAUL THE APOSTLE these gifts of tongues and of healing as evidences of superstition? Do they belong to a credulous age and a degraded church ? Possibly. And yet there are difficulties in this view ; for Paul treats them as gifts of the Spirit of God ; he commends them in some measure ; and he urges his readers to strive for the best and highest attainments in these gifts. I am inclined to think that the truth lies mid- way between these two views and embraces them both. Any state of great spiritual exaltation is liable to be accompanied with great excesses, and more liable in an ignorant than in an educated commmiity. The phenomena which attend revival meetings among the colored peoj)le in the South, and have attended revival meetings in the West, especially in the earlier years of our nation's his- tory, are not wholly vicious, and certainly are not wholly virtuous. They are indications of a great excitement in which the sensuous and the spiritual are strangely intermingled. We sometimes wish, perhaps, that the world were differently con- structed, that all the virtues were in one utensil and all the vices in another. But, in fact, the good and the evil are strangely intermixed in every society and in every man ; and if the evil are not as black as they are painted, neither are the good as white as they are painted. Most men are gray, or black and white in alternation. And as it is with the individual, so has it always been in society — the truth and the error intertwined ; in THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 151 times of great religious excitement the religious fervor and the superstitious passion intertwined. So I accept neither the explanation which regards these gifts as purely a manifestation of a Divine Spirit, nor that which regards them as simply a manifestation of a superstitious age, but rather that explanation which regards them as the mani- festation of a spiritual excitement in a superstitious age. It is not, however, necessary to answer this question positively in order to ascertain the princi- ples which Paul applies, and to apply them our- selves in the solution of our own problems. He says, in the first place, that no man can call Jesus accursed by the Spirit of God. That seems, at first, a needless remark, and yet we must re- member that Paul himself had thought God had put the mark of curse on Christ by allowing him to be crucified. That was before Paul's conver- sion ; but at a later epoch in the Church there were Christians who still entertained that view. They held that the Spirit of God entered into Christ at baptism, because it could not be thought that the Son of God should grow from childhood, and that the Spirit departed from him on the cross when he cried, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " because it could not be thought that the Son of God could die. So, on the one hand, the Son of God did not grow from boyhood to manhood, and, on the other hand, the Son of God was not put to death by the hands of man. Paul says, first, that nothing can be truly spiritual 152 PAUL THE APOSTLE which does not conform to and interpret the char- acter and the career of Christ from the manger to the cross. Any doctrine which tends to take men away from Christ, to make them think less of Christ, to cause them to substitute something in the place of Christ, may at once be discarded by the Christian without further argument. The principle may be apj)lied to certain forms of so- called religious instruction in our own time — such, for example, as the popular forms of theosophy, which are taking men away from Christ to some- thing other than Christ. The second test Paul applies is profitableness. If the gift is not of use, it is to be discarded. He applies this at some length, in his argument re- specting the gift of tongues. It is clear from Paul's argument in this Epistle that the speaking in tongues was not a speaking to men of different races in their different languages for missionary purposes. There was, indeed, no need of that in Corinth, for all the people in Corinth spoke the one Greek language and understood it ; and al- though there were different dialects in Greek, they were not so different in a city like Corinth that a missionary must be supernaturally endowed with power to speak in a tongue which otherwise he must have laboriously acquired by study. Paul's argument shows that this talking with tongues was a kind of babbling, a talking without meaning or significance, the parallel to which is to be found in the inarticulate cries which sometimes accompany THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 153 what certain persons call "getting religion." Paul says this cannot be of any use to any one ; the gift, to be of value, must be profitable. His third principle is that useful gifts are not mutually exclusive, nor competitive, but coopera- tive. Society is like a human body. It has what we now call solidarity. It is not merely a mass of individual units ; it is itself a unit ; but made up of different members with different functions. As the eye, the ear, the hand, the foot, are all neces- sary for the one body, so all the varied gifts of life are necessary for the one church. We are to recognize variety of function, and at the same time the unity of organism. Count Tolstoi urges that every man should fulfill all functions — work with his brain in the morning, and cobble shoes in the afternoon. The result would probably be that both the shoes would be poorly cobbled and the brain work inadequately done. Certainly Tolstoi's is not Paul's plan. He said. Let the foot be a foot, and the eye an eye, and the hand a hand, but all united in their various functions to make the one organism. It is a prophet's perception of the great principle of " division of labor," only Paul puts it more wisely, more philosophically, and more truly than it is in that much-abused phrase. His fourth principle is that this unity of organism is to be preserved in and through a variety of function by self-respect and mutual respect. " If the ear shall say, ' Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,' is it therefore not of the body ? 154 PAUL THE APOSTLE If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole body were hearing, where were the smelling ? " Every man is to respect his own vocation. If he is in a vocation which he can not resj^ect, he should leave it. No man is to say, My calling is not a worthy calling. If it is a call- ing wherein he can serve society, it is a worthy, calling. And every man is to respect his neigh- bor's calling. " The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee ; nor, again, the head to the foot, I have no need of you." Society, government, the church, each is an organism; each made up of men with different gifts ; each is to use his own gift for the service of humanity ; each to respect his own gift ; each to respect his neighbor's gift ; and in this self-respect and this mutual respect in and through the variety of func- tion the unity of the organism is to be maintained. And so from a study of the strife and jealousies in the Corinthian church Paul educes his psalm to love : — " Are all apostles ? Are all prophets ? Are all teach- ers ? Are aU miracle-workers ? Are all faith-liealers ? Do all speak with tongues ? Do all interj)ret ? But de- sire earnestly the greater gifts. And yet I show you a way which excels all others. " If I should speak with the tongues of men, and even of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I should have the gift of jDrophecy, and should know all the mysteries of God's councils, and should have universal knowledge ; THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 155 and though I should have fullness of faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I should dole out in alms all my possessions, and though I should deliver up my body that I may re- ceive the martyr's glory, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. " Love bears long with offenders, and is helpful ; love is not envious ; love does not show itself off ; does not bear itself proudly ; does not behave unbecomingly ; seeketh not her own things ; is not irritable ; does not keep account of the evil ; rejoices not in injustice, but rejoices with the truth ; silently endures all experiences ; trusts in them all, hopes in them all, is patient under them all. " Love never loses its power. Are there prophecies, they shall be done away ; are there tongues, they shall cease ; is there knowledge, it shall be done away. For we know truth only in a fragment and we prophesy only in a fragment, but when the perfected life has come to us, that which has come in a fragment will be put away. When I was a little child, I spake like a little child, I felt like a little child, I reasoned like a little child. But now that I have become a man I have put away the ways of a little child. For now we see truth through a mirror, in enigmatical reflections, but then face to face ; now I know only in a fragment, then I shall know thoroughly, even also as I am known thoroughly. But even as things are, there abide faith, hope, love — these three. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Luther said, " Thank God for my sins ! " The 1 1 Cor. xii. 29-xiii. 13. 156 PAUL THE APOSTLE Church of Christ may almost thank God for the strifes and jealousies of the Corinthian church which occasioned Paul's psalm of love. THE KESUKRECTION. The last subject which Paul treats in his first letter to the Corinthians is the resurrection. There were at the time when Paul wrote, and perhaps it may be said there still are, four concep- tions respecting the future life. The first is that at death, or after a succession of lives and deaths, the soul, completing the spiral of its existence, comes back into God again and is absorbed by him. The soul lives forever, only as the river lives in the ocean — that is, not at all. The second is that the soul lives in another body. When the man dies, the soul passes over into some other physical organ- ism. There is what is known as the transmigration of souls, or reincarnation ; a view which is now brought before us in America by the Theosophists. The third view is that the body itself is to be pre- served, either by human care or by divine miracle. The Egyptians preserved it by human care, em- balming it with the utmost caution ; and from them we have inherited a little of that fashion, though we have abandoned the superstition which led to it. We seal the bodies of our dead, sometimes, in leaden caskets, trying to keep the mould and the corruption away, though we know it to be in vain. In the fourth place, there was the conception of the THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 157 Greeks and the Romans, that when the soul left the body it did not return to God or the gods, but lived in a vague, shadowy under -world, without organization, without real life. These four con- ceptions of the future there were : First, absorp- tion into God ; second, transmigration of souls, or living in another body ; third, living in one's own body, embalmed for the purpose, or gathered from the four winds of heaven by a miracle at the resur- rection, at the last day ; and fourth, life in a disem- bodied state in a shadowy underworld. Out of the resurrection of Christ there grew a fifth conception respecting the future life : a strong, firm belief in the personal resurrection and the personal immortal life of the dead, based upon and inspired by faith in the fact that Jesus Christ had died and had arisen again from the dead. But truth never makes its way in an atmosphere of error without difficulty; and the truth of a personal resurrection came, before long, to be doubted. Paul writes to correct this error. He argues the personal resurrection and personal im- mortality by these considerations : First, if the soul does not rise from the dead, then Christ has not risen. But we have borne our testimony to you that Christ has risen. If he has not risen we are false witnesses, and Christianity is a fraud. If the dead do not rise, if as individuals they do not live personally in another life, then your dead are perished, then it is not true that Christ will brins: with him his beloved. If the dead do not 158 PAUL THE APOSTLE rise, if there is no resurrection, no personal immor- tality, then Christ has not the victory which he foretold when he said. The gates of hades shall not prevail against my Church.^ For if his saints are kept perpetual prisoners in hades, the gates of hades do prevail against his Church ; his promise is found false ; he is defeated and God is defeated. Then, with an argumentum ad hominem, which Paul is not afraid or unwilling to use at times, he refers to a custom which we know existed later in the Church and which we may fairly presume had already begun to exist. When a man died unbaptized, his friends baptized the corpse, or sometimes vicariously some one for the corpse; and Paul says. If there is no resurrection for the dead, why do you baptize for your dead ? Finally he meets an objection — an old one, a familiar one — " How shall the dead rise, and with what body shall they come ? " Many scholars have read the fifteenth chapter of the First Corinthians as an argument for the resurrection of the body. It seems to me clearly, explicitly, palpably, unmistakably, a cumulative argument against the resurrection of the body. Against those who thought that God would absorb individuals, Paul stands for personal immortality ; against those who thought the body must be em- balmed or the soul must find its resting-place in some other body, or the soul must live in a shad- owy underworld without a body, he argues in the 1 Matt. xvi. 18. THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 159 latter half of this chapter. " With what body shall they come ? " This is his reply : You plant a seed in the ground. It dies. Nor will anything come from it unless it dies. But when something does come, it is not that which you put in the ground. The same life which was in the seed comes to the surface, but clad with a new body. God's resources are not so few as you imagine, if you think that he who has made this body cannot make another. There is one flesh of birds, another of cattle, another of fishes. There is one glory of the moon, another glory of the sun, another glory of the stars, and, moreover, star differeth from star in glory. And so shall it be in the resurrection of the dead. That which thou sowest is a mere seed ; that which rises has a new glory of its own. If there is a natural body adapted to the needs of this life, that is itself a reason for believing that there is another, a spiritual body, adapted to the needs of the other life. Christ came to earth. Did he bring a body with him? In what body did he live before he came to earth ? Was he then disembodied, a shadowy creature in an under- world, lamenting his state, as the Greeks and Ro- mans thought their heroes were? Was he wan- dering over the globe, transmigrating from body to body, as the Hindus think their dead were? Was he waiting for some body to be prepared for him, that he might come into the fullness of life ? If it were possible for the body of flesh to rise, it would do no good. If God were to bring together 160 PAUL THE APOSTLE froQi all the quarters of the globe all fragments of the body, it would serve no purpose ; for flesh and blood can never inherit the kingdom of God, since that which is essentially corrupt cannot inherit the incorruptible, nor that which from the moment of its birth begins to die inherit the immortal. Even we that are living when the trump shall sound cannot enter the kingdom of God with our bodies. There must be a new organism and a new habita- tion for a new life. In this is Christ's supreme victory. For now we see that death is no destruc- tion. Now we see that the end of death is not the perishing of the seed in the ground. The end of death is the uprising of a new and larger life. Death no longer conquers. Death no longer has a victory ? Death no longer even pricks as the sting of a wasp. Death is deprived of its sting ? Death is the advent to a larger life, and God shall clothe that life with glory, as it pleaseth him. Kead Paul's argument in his own words, and see whether I have misinterpreted it : — " But some one will say, How are the dead raised, and with what body do they come ? FooHsh fellow ! That which thou thyself sowest is not made to live except it die ; and that which thou sowest is not the body which is to be, but a mere seed, as, for example, a seed of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as it pleases him; and to each of the seeds its own body. Not all flesh is the same flesh ; but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fishes. There are also heavenly THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 161 bodies and bodies terrestrial ; but the glory of the hear venly is one, the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars — for star differeth from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead : Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption ; sown in dishonor, raised in glory ; sown in weakness, raised in power ; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. And so it is written, the first Adam became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural ; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy ; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy ; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are hea- venly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God — neither doth corruption inherit in- corruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incor- ruptible, and we shall be changed. For it is necessary that this corruptible put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. When this corruption has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall come to pass the word that is written : Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, death, is thy victory ? Where, O death, is thy sting ? The sting of death is sin, but the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord 162 PAUL THE APOSTLE Jesus Christ. So, then, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." ^ If the New Testament means to teach the resur- rection of the body, if Paul means to teach that doctrine, it is very strange that the phrase itself never occurs in the New Testament. The notion that the body which is laid in the grave must rise again in order to preserve personal immortality is the relic of a paganism which ought long since to have been forgotten. The body that lies in the grave will rise in grass and flowers only. Nor are our beloved to wait until some far-off time, while their bodies sleep beneath the sod and the cold winds play and the cold rain beats upon their bed. Nor do they wait in some shadowy underworld until the time of their redemption. To die is to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Every death is a resurrection ; and the mother who stands looking down into the grave and hear- ing the clod falling upon the coffin should turn and lift her eyes and see the loved one at her side trying to caress her. For she should know, not that there will be, but that there is, a spiritual body, and that the last gasp on earth is contempo- raneous with the first great inhalation of a new and spiritual life in the celestial sphere.'^ 1 1 Cor. XV. 35-58. 2 No one of the lectures, as originally given, -which have formed the material out of which this book is composed, gave rise to more questionings than this one on Paul's doctrine of the THE FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 163 resurrection. To go into the whole subject of even the Bible teaching- concerning immortality and the resurrection would take me too far from the object of this volume, which is simply to interpret Paul's Letters. It must suffice to say here, very briefly, that in my judgment there is no one uniform teaching on this subject by the Biblical writers. The conception of immortality grew up gradually among the Hebrews as among other peojjles ; , the earlier Hebrews had little or no conception of immortality ; the later Hebrews entertained substantially the same conception as that of the Greeks — a vague ill-defined notion of a dark underworld, a Sheol or Hades, where the dead maintained a dis- embodied and impalpable existence ; the Pharisees in Paul's time generally expected for the devout a resurrection from Sheol simul- taneously with the advent of the Messiah, and this was probably Paul's earlier view. Christ taught his disciples a different faith ; he told them that this world was not the only dwelling place of life, that in his Father's house, the universe, were many dwelling places, that he was going to his Father and that they should come to him to dwell with him and with his Father, and share their glory; that his disciples could be kept in no underworld, that whoever lived and believed in him could not die but should live a continuous and unbroken life. Whether when he rose from the dead he came back and animated his physical body, and so re- vealed the continuity of his life to his disciples, or whether he ap- peared to them in a spiritual body, and their eyes were opened to discern him, is a question on which the cautious student will not speak with assurance, — though the former seems to me the more probable opinion. What we do know is that the continuity of his life was ocularly demonstrated to his disciples. Paul passed gradu- ally from his Pharisaic to his later Christian conception of death and resurrection, as we all pass from the cruder to the higher and more spiritual conceptions of life ; this transition in his faith accompanied the change of his faith from the expectation of a future Messiah coming in clouds and glory, to a perception of and rejoicing in a crucified Messiah as the power and the wisdom of God ; and this fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians marks, more clearly than any other passage, his new faith in the continuity of the spiritual life and its independence of all physical conditions. CHAPTER IX THE SECOND LETTEK TO THE COEINTHIANS The overture to " Parsifal " contains the motifs which are afterward worked out in the opera. Like such an overture is the second of Paul's epistles to the Corinthians. It contains the motifs of his subsequent writing, the germs which he later de- velops. It is, indeed, hardly too much to saj^ that the seeds of everything wrought out more fully in the epistles to the Galatians, the Romans, the Philippians, the Ephesians, and the Colossians, are to be found in this epistle. And yet they are simply seeds. They can hardly be called thoughts. This is of all the epistles the least theological, the least like a treatise, the least systematic. It has less than any other a topic. It is a letter of per- sonal experiences.^ If we might compare the other letters to sermons or addresses, we might compare this letter to the kind of address in which one gives his experience in a prayer-meeting. And yet, it is for this very reason in some respects 1 No other of Paul's letters is of equal importance to this second letter in its bearing- on the history of his inner conscious- ness. Sabatier's The Apostle Paul, p. 165. Comp. Stanley on Corinthians, p. 345. SECOND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 165 the most vital and the most interesting. Its frag- mentary character, its seed-like character, adds to its value. For all vital theology is born of ex- perience. The theology which a man works out in his study through books is of comparatively little use. The theology which has been wrought out of him by actual experience in life takes hold of men, because in such theology there is life. All the great theologians have thus been men of great experiences : Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Bushnell — in them all we can trace the secret of their thought in their lives. It is true that, when we take up this Epistle to study it, we have to study it with comparatively little information respecting the outward experi- ences from which it was born. The student of Paul's life and epistles has to construct Paul's ex- periences somewhat as a skilled scientist constructs an ancient animal from two or three bones. So out of single phrases, almost out of single words, in this letter, scholars construct the experiences out of which it sprang. {, Paul has gone from Corinth to Ephesus. From Ephesus he has journeyed to Jerusalem. He has come back from Jerusalem to Ephesus again. He has made visits to the churches in Asia. Mean- while he has had strange experiences at Ephesus — some of great exaltation, some of great depression. He was overworked at Ephesus. Luke has given us a picture of Paul's work in an address made to tlie elders of the city. He went from house to 166 PAUL THE APOSTLE house. He entreated men with tears. He labored by day and by night. And he added to his mission- ary labors toil with his own hands to eke out his inadequate income, for he would not be dependent on the churches. He has had wonderful success, and he has met with very great hostility. He has fought, he says, with the wild beasts at Ephesus, for to wild beasts he compares the mob which threatened his companions. In his journeyings, too, he has met with great perils, by land and by sea, from robbers and from storm. But, more than that, he has carried with him the care of the churches, which, he says, came upon him daily. Every new church is not a new support, but a new burden ; and the heresies, the crudities of opinion, the immoralities of life, which are depicted with some fullness in the First Epistle to the Corinthians are rej)orted to him from other churches also. He bears them all vicariously. " Who is weak," he says, " and I am not weak ; who is tempted into sin, and I am not on fire ! " ^ With these burdens of the churches and these external persecutions, he had also some physical deformity. We do not know what it was ; we can only surmise. He calls it a thorn in the flesh. He says that with it Satan buffeted him. It was, or seemed to be, a hindrance to his work. Some have thought it an affection of the eyes, produced by the sudden glare of the light at the time of his conversion ; some, his weak bodily presence, which 1 2 Cor. xi. 29. SECOND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 167 stood in his way when he undertook to address audiences ; some, a stammer or impediment in his speech, which he overcame with difficulty ; some, a fever or other periodic disease. Whatever it was, it was an impediment, or seemed to him so to be, so great that he said, " I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me." By this he means not that he offered three prayers for its depar- ture, but that three times in his experience he was confronted with it ; three times it seemed to him almost like an insuperable obstacle ; three times he wrestled in prayer with God that it might be taken away from him.^ His adversaries cited the existence of this " thorn in the flesh " as an evidence of God's dis- pleasure with Paul. The old Jewish law required the priest to be physically blameless, and Paul was not physically blameless, and the Jewish party cited this fact as an evidence that he was no true priest of God. Truth came to Paul by degrees, as it does to the rest of us, and through hard ex- perience. So at last it dawned upon him that the weaker he was and the less able by any means of his own to produce great impression, the stronger was the testimony to the power of the truth and the greatness of the divine life of which he was the minister. And he says that when he dis- covered that, when he saw that in his weakness the greatness of God was glorified, when he saw that because of his stammering speech, his weak 1 2 Cor. xii. 1-10. 168 PAUL TEE APOSTLE body, his defective vision, men could not say, " He magnetizes his audience by his eloquence," but must see that the j^ower lay in the truth and not in the speaker — when he realized this, he gave thanks, and could glory in his tribulations, since by them he could glorify his Father. But he did not come to this conviction at first. Not only was he hindered by this j^hysical defect, but he was very sick — so sick that he thought of himself as one under sentence of death, awaiting the executioner's sword. " I had," he said, " sentence of death with- in myself. My only hope for the future lay in a God who can raise even the dead to life again." ^ Oppressed, persecuted, burdened by the care of churches, overwrought and overworked, with this physical infirmity tripping him up and buffeting him, sick nigh unto death, there was brought to him by Titus further news from the church in Corinth. It was not altogether bad news. There had been a grossly immoral person in that church, and Paul had written with vigor that they should at once excommunicate him. They had not done so. There had been a battle over the question, and, apparently, what we should call a compromise had been reached. The church voted not to ex- communicate this immoral person, but to censure him, and it had reached even this conclusion only by a majority.^ Still Paul had accomj^lished his 1 2 Cor. i. 8, 9. 2 Comp. 1 Cor. v. 3-5, 11, with 2 Cor. ii. 6; "sufficient for such an one was this reprimand inflicted by many." SECOND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 169 real purpose ; the immoral person had repented of his immorality and come back into the church again, and the church" had welcomed him, and Paul was glad th^t his advice was not too strictly- followed. I forgive him, too, he says, so that he returns to a right and true life.^ Paul had not a small nature. He was not ambitious of per- sonal victory. When his counsel was not followed and better results were reached, he was still glad. His was no mean pride ; his pride was great, and great pride is good. It is only little pride that is evil. But his enemies were still virulent. They de- clared that he had received no ordination ; Christ had not appointed him ; the Twelve had not ap- pointed him ; he had no right to claim to be an apostle ; his witness was not true ; he had never seen Christ, he had never been with Christ, he knew nothing of Christ ; his preaching was not true ; he set the law aside ; his motives were not good ; he was a deceiver, a false prophet, a false teacher ; he was preaching the gospel in order that he might live by the gospel ; his motives were mean and sordid. Such were the accusations which his ene- mies in Corinth and elsewhere brought against him. And they claimed authority for their accusa- tions. They produced letters.^ Were these true 1 2 Cor. ii. 10, 11. 2 The charges of Paul's enemies are deduced from his defence against them. See 2 Cor. i. 17, 18 ; iii. 1 ; v. 12, 13; x. 10, 11; xi. 6, 9, 12-14, 21-23 -, xii. 14, 19 ; xiii. 6. 170 PAUL THE APOSTLE or forged letters ? There is some reason to think that they were not true. Did they come from Jerusalem ? We do not know. But the presump- tion is that they purported to come from Palestine, if not from Jerusalem. Do I need letters ? he says. Do I need to have any one vouch for me ? You know me ; you are my children ; you were brought into the kingdom of God by my ministry ; you are my letters, and I want no other than those which I have written in your own heart's expe- riences. To those I appeal. They are my author- ity.i Still, he was perplexed. I believe this is the only time in his life in which he shows indecision. At first he resolves that he will go to Corinth. He is indignant at these charges made against him, and he resolves that he will go and confront his enemies and put them down. In his wrath he starts on the journey; but after he has gone a little way he thinks better of it. It seems to him not well that he should go while he is in that state of mind ; it will do more harm than good ; and he abandons his proposed visit. Then it is brought as a new charge against him that he is weak and vacillating, that he makes great pretense in his letters, but when the time comes he fails in his promises and does not fulfill them.^ It is out of Paul's varied experiences, extend- ing over a period of two or three years, that the Second Letter to the Corinthians is written. He 1 2 Cor. iii. 1-3. 2 2 Cor. i. 15-23 ; ii. 1, 2. SECOND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 171 defends himself at length against the charges which have been preferred against him. He goes into autobiographical memorabilia, which I have briefly outlined and from which scholars have deduced some of these incidents in his experience. He urges on the church at Corinth that they take up a collec- tion for the poorer Christians in Jerusalem. The church at Corinth was not a rich church, but still there were more people able to give in Corinth than in some other cities, and he urges that they take up a collection to be sent to the church at Jerusalem. If some of the letters written to undermine his authority were from Jerusalem, it was a noble and wise Christian method of meeting that attack to propose to carry back a contribution to the poor church at Jerusalem from the very church which the men in Jerusalem had been stirring up against him. But the parts of his letter which will interest us the most are those parts in which, speaking from his own personal experiences, he deduces the truths which, in later epistles, he is to elaborate. He has learned, in the only school in which we can learn that lesson, the power of God to comfort men in trouble, and how to comfort others in trouble. "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all com- fort ; who comf orteth us in all our afflictions, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any affliction, by means of the comfort wherewith we ourselves are com- 172 PAUL TEE APOSTLE forted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so also, through Christ, our comfort aboundeth." ^ Later we shall find in the eighth chapter of Ro- mans this experience expanded into a doctrine. We shall find him stating how, waiting for the final redemption, lie is able to glory in tribulation, know- ing that nothing can separate him from the love of God. Meanwhile we learn where he gets this faith which is triumphant over sorrow and trouble. He gets it in the school of trouble. Persecuted, oppressed, overworked, sick, carrying the troubles of others in his own person, he learns how to share the sorrows of others ; learns that when grief as- sails, it brings ordination with it. The way in which God ordains us to comfort our fellow-men is by our own affliction. Mourning is a priestly gar- ment if we only knew it. He has been assailed by the defenders and main- tainers of the Jewish law, for maintaining that men are to be saved not by law, but by Christ. The time has been when he also was a maintainer of the Jewish law. Born and bred in the school of Phar- isaism, he believed that the Jewish law was glori- ous and was final ; and now he is attacked by those who hold the same Pharisaic faith — although they are in the Church of Christ ; and who impugn his motives and attack his character and assail his doc- trine, because he has departed from this Pharisaic faith in the integrity and greatness of law. To their attack he replies. 1 2 Cor. i. 3-5. SECOND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 173 The law, he says, is glorious, but the law is trans- itory. Moses came down from the mount, his face aglow with the glory and presence of Jehovah, but when he finished speaking to the children of Israel he put a veil on his face and departed from them again into the mountain-top. To this incident Paul gives a new interpretation. Moses, he says, put the veil on his face that the people might not see the glory fade away therefrom, for the glory of Mount Sinai and the glory of the law fade av/ay.^ Men will never be made glorious by taking the law from Mount Sinai and shaping themselves according to it, but by another and very different fashion. We all, as from a mirror reflecting the image of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory. It is by understanding Christ and by trying to repeat Christ to others — not, as the Old Version says, by " beholding as in a glass," but, as the New Version, by " reflect- ing as a mirror " the glory of the Lord — that we are changed from glory to glory ; not by shap- ing our life to conform to an external standard, nor by merely looking at it, but by receiving the splendor of the divine life, and repeating a reflec- tion of that splendor to others.^ Has he done this ? Paul, who is ready enough to defend himself against the charges of his enemies, ^ 2 Cor. iii. 7-18. See Rev. Version for what seems to me the true rendering' of this passage, though there is good authority for the rendering of the Old Version. 2 2 Cor. iii. 18. 174* PAUL THE APOSTLE is ready enough also to acknowledge the imper- fection of his life. No, he has not done it. He does not truly reflect the glory of Christ ; he reflects it only from a dim and blurred mirror. " For we proclaim not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord ; and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For it is God, he who said, Let the light shine out of the darkness, who has shined in our hearts, for the purpose of giving the illumination which comes from the recog- nition of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthenware utensils, that the preeminence of the power may be of God and not come from ourselves. On every side we are pressed, but we are not in straits ; perplexed, but not in despair ; hunted, but not abandoned ; struck down, but not destroyed ; always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, in order that the life of Jesus might be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always delivered unto death on account of Jesus, that the life of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh." ^ But although he does not reflect fully the glory of the Christ, still he looks upon him, he sees him, he appreciates him, he approximates him. And this is faith : to see the Christ, to appreciate him, to follow him, and to in any wise approximate him. Men have taunted him with his blindness, and he answers. It is true that this outward world is veiled from me, because I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ. I look not at the things that are seen. But I see the more clearly the 1 2 Cor. iv. 5-11. SECOND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 175 things that are unseen ; and the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal.^ Later, one of Paul's disciples illustrates and interprets this declaration by what is the best definition of faith in the New Testament, and traces in a wonderful historical panorama the story of the saints of the olden time, who lived a noble life, be- cause they looked at the things that are unseen and are eternal, not at the things that are seen and are temporal.''^ This looking at the unseen world has wrought education in Paul. He has been nigh unto death, and no man of a serious temper can go down to the gates of death and look through the dark door and wonder what is the unknown beyond, and not have his life affected by the experience. Paul had been thus affected. He had been brought up in the Pharisaic faith that all men's bodies would wait in the grave until some general resurrection, their spirits meanwhile remaining in an intermediate state until the day of general resurrection, when the graves would open and the bodies would come forth and the spirits would be rehabilitated. But he had been down to the gates of death, and had looked through the mystic door into the unknown world beyond, and this hope in a general resurrec- tion of the just and the unjust, in some far-off day, 'did not sustain him, any more than it sustained Martha and Mary to believe that their brother would rise in the general resurrection at the last ^ 2 Cor. iv. 18. ^ Hebrews xi. 176 PAUL TEE APOSTLE day.^ He has been living, too, in the spiritual world, and the body has seemed less and less to him and the spirit more and more, and the concep- tion of death which he will hereafter carry with him is very different from that of his earlier Pharisaic faith. "For we know that if our tabernacle-home upon this earth is dissolved, we have a structure from God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. Moreover in this eartlily tabernacle we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our dwelling from heaven ; seeing that we shall be found clothed and not naked. Moreover being in this tabernacle we groan, being burdened, not be- cause we wish to be unclothed, but because we wish to be clothed upon, that what is subject to death may be swallowed up by life." ^ Never again shall we find Paul referring to any general resurrection at the last day. Never again shall we find Paul thinking of a day in which all the dead shall rise from their graves, and the sea shall give up its dead. No ! hereafter for him death is swallowed up in life ; dying is itself a resurrec- tion ; and to die is to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. But it is not on the future only he has looked by faith, but on the present also. He has been think- ing more and more of the life of Christ, and his life has led him more and more into sympathy with the spirit of Christ, and he has come more and more to understand how it is that Christ will 1 John xi. 24. 2 2 Cor. v. 1-4. SECOND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 111 conquer tlie world. His enemies have said that he has never seen Christ, has never heard Christ teach, is no apostle. We learn, if we are wise, from our enemies. As Luther learned liberty from Roman- ism, and John Wesley from High Churchism, as Henry Ward Beecher learned love from law in Puritanism, and Horace Bushnell learned the power of vision from the rationalism of New Eng- land, so Paul learned the power of the gospel and the true character of Christ from the very men who assailed him. Even if we had known Christ after the flesh, he says, we should not now so know him.^ We have come to understand him better. The spiritual vision is worth more than the material vision. The sight counts for nothing; the spiritual vision is the all in all. Paul does not wait for God to show himself by a revelation of a Messiah in a Second Coming. He sees that revela- tion in the Christ who has come. " God was in Christ, reconciling the world to him- self ; not reckoning up their transgressions against them ; and has laid upon us the message of reconciliation. We then are ambassadors for Christ. As though God spoke through us, we beseech in Christ's stead : ' Be ye recon- ciled to God.' For him who knew no sin, he hath on our behalf made sin, in order that we might become the righteousness of God in him. " ^ This is, I think, the first clear enunciation by Paul of the divinity in Jesus Christ ; at all events, 1 2 Cor. V. 16. 2 2 Cor. v. 19-21. 178 PAUL THE APOSTLE none so clear as this before. And he will never lose it, never grow away from it. Clearer, plainer, certainly more elaborate statements of the person and work of Christ will follow it, but they will grow out of it. But how shall this ministry of reconciliation be made effectual ? In what way, by what process ? There is but one way. It is by having the same passion for the truth which there was in Christ. Hereafter we shall find Paul dwelling on this : that he is to die with Christ in order that he may rise with Christ. We shall find Paul saying that he follows after, that he may know the sufferings of Christ and be conformed unto his death. We shall find him saying that through Christ the world is crucified to him and he to the world.^ We shall find him entering into the passion of Christ, not that by the passion of Christ he may enter into a heavenly glory by and by, but because the passion of Christ is the glory of Christ, and no man shares the glory of Christ who does not share the passion of Christ's self-sacrificing love. This he expresses in these paradoxes of Christian experiences : — " In all things, as ministers of God should, we re- commend ourselves, — in much patience ; in oppressions, in necessities, in straits, in stripes, in imprisonments, in dissensions, in labors, in sleeplessness, in fastings ; in purity, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in kindness, in a holy spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God ; by the weapons of righteousness on 1 Gal. vi. 14. SECOND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 179 the right hand and on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report ; as deceivers yet true, as unknown yet well-known, as dying, yet behold we live, as chastened, yet not killed, as sorrowful, but always rejoicing, as poor, but making many rich, as having no- thing, yet possessing all things." ^ He who was so poor that he knew not where to lay his head has diffused wealth throughout Chris- tendom — making many rich ! He who was so little known that no pagan history mentions his name has now a name that is above every name, at which every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess him to be Lord, to the glory of God the Father. By these facts we are to interpret these paradoxes of Paul : " As unknown, yet well known ; as dying, yet behold we live ; as poor, but making many rich ; as having nothing, yet possess- ing all things." From this time we shall find in Paul only the growth of these seeds and germs of experience. We shall find him explaining in philosophic terms how one may have victory, not only over sorrow, but in sorrow ; showing the futility of the law, and explaining the glory of the gospel; interpreting faith, and showing how the mere aspiration and desire after righteousness is counted by God as the beginning of righteousness ; we shall find him re- joicing in the anticipated coronation when he is to be offered as a sacrifice on the altar at Rome ; finding in Christ's passion and death the world's 1 2 Cor. vi. 4-10. 180 PAUL THE APOSTLE hope and the Church's glory ; seeing in Christ the very image and glory of the Infinite and Eternal Father; we shall find in the apostle's later writ- ings the elaboration and fulfillment in teaching of these seeds of the divine life, which have been sowed by the hand of God, in a heart ploughed and harrowed by trouble. But all, or nearly all, which we shall find explicit in Galatians, Romans, Ephe- sians, Colossians, and Philippians we find implicit in this letter of personal experiences — the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. CHAPTER X THE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS ^ The primitive Church, as it existed in Paul's time, was composed of three elements, distinct and sometimes antagonistic, though merging by insensi- ble degrees one into the other ; they were respec- tively composed of Jews, Gentiles, and proselytes. The former brought into the Christian Church their Jewish faith and Jewish traditions ; the second knew nothing, or almost nothing, of either the Jewish faith or the Jewish traditions ; while the third, those who had repudiated Greek polythe- ism and accepted faith in Jehovah as the one true and righteous God, occupied a position midway between the other two, and were probably the most liberal and independent of the three par- ties. The Galatian churches were composed largely of Jewish converts. In order to understand the 1 I assume that the Galatian Christians, to whom Paul addressed this epistle, were in the cities of Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derhe, which, according- to the book of Acts, he visited ; not in the so-called North Galatia, a district lying to the north and east of Lycaonia and Phrygia, and constituting- only a part of the great Roman province of Galatia, a region which we have no rea- son to think he ever visited. The question is not, for the inter- pretation of the letter, very important. The South Galatia view is held by Renan, Weizsacker, Ramsay, and McGiffert. 182 PAUL THE APOSTLE epistle to the Galatlans, and its bearing upon certain ecclesiastical and theological questions of our own time, it is necessary to comprehend, not only the nature of the Jewish party in the time of Paul, but also its tendency and its history in subsequent developments in the Christian Church. The essential faith of Mosaism was that God is a righteous God, and demands righteousness of his children. The essential principle of Mosaism was obedience to the laws which God has made, and which have been by his prophets promulgated, by divine authority. The essential symbol of Mosa- ism was the Ten Commandments which present, as the sum of human duty, reverence for God, respect for parents, regard for the rights of person, pro- perty, and reputation, and the safeguarding of the family. This simple principle of Mosaism, that God is a righteous God, that he demands right- eousness of his children, and demands nothing else, and that the principles of righteousness are those illustrated by the Ten Commandments, had, by the time of the Restoration from the Exile, been greatly modified. An elaborate ecclesiastical system had grown up, partly imported from pagan- ism, with a priesthood, a ritual, and a central tem- ple. It is not necessary for my purpose here to consider how far the Levitical code is a divine code, really organized and promulgated by Moses, and how far it is a human addition to and corrup- tion of the simple ethical and spiritual principles which characterize the Book of the Covenant, THE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS 183 which is the oldest book in the Bible.^ It must suffice to say that in the time of Christ this Leviti- cal code was universally accepted by the Jews as of divine authority, equal in its obligations with the simpler and earlier law. The distinction be- tween what we call the ceremonial and the moral law was, if not absolutely unknown, entirely ig- nored. Indeed, so far as the distinction was recog- nized at all, the stricter and more orthodox of the Pharisees gave preeminence to the ceremonial code and regarded the ceremonies inculcated by the Levitical law as more important and more sacred than those inculcated by the second table of the Ten Commandments.^ This Levitical code im- posed on its votaries numerous obligations, three of which chiefly concerned Paul's attention in the Epistle to the Galatians : their obligations to and through the priesthood, and the correlative rights and duties of the priesthood ; the obligation of circumcision ; and the obligation to observe cer- tain sacred days, chief of which was the Sabbath Day. Let us consider these separately. In the Jewish history the most casual reader of the English Bible will note two classes of sacred officers, priests and prophets. The priests were officially connected with the Temple. It was their function to offer sacrifice ; they must belong to the family of Aaron, and therefore were necessarily of the tribe of Levi. They were supported by a reg- ular tax levied upon all the worshipers, the amount 1 Exodus XX. 1-xxiv. 7. ^ See chap. ii. p. 23. 184 PAUL THE APOSTLE of which was fixed, though no provision appears to have been made for compelling the payment. It was a profanation for any one, not in the priestly succession, to enter the priests' court in the Temple, or to offer the sacrifices, and no one could come acceptably to God without a sacrifice. According to an ancient tradition, when Dathan and Abiram proposed to offer sacrifice to the Lord without authority, the earth opened and swallowed them up.^ When Uzzah, who was not a Levite, ventured to put forth his hand to prevent the ark from falling off the cart on which it was being carried, he was instantly struck dead.^ Whether these stories are historically accurate, or whether they were incorporated into Jewish history at a later period, in order to give historical sanction to the claims of the Jewish priesthood, first formu- lated at the time of the Restoration, it is not im- portant for us here to determine. Those claims were universally accepted, and these stories were imiversally believed to be historical, by all devout and orthodox Jews in the time of Paul. The prophets, on the other hand, belonged to no class and received no ordination. They were taken sometimes from the court and sometimes from the farm ; sometimes they were educated, and sometimes, relatively speaking, uneducated. No appointment and no ecclesiastical approval was required. Any one might prophesy. If he felt, or thought he felt, the spirit of God upon him, he 1 Num. xvi. ^ 2 Sam. vi. 6, 7. THE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS 185 was at liberty to give utterance to his message. Freedom of religious teaching was as absolutely secure under Judaism as it could be made in that olden time.^ In this air of freedom there were then, as there are now, true prophets and false prophets. When the Christian Church was born, the Jews, coming into the Christian Church, brought with them the Jewish conceptions concerning the priest- hood, the sacrifices, and the Temple. They re- garded the twelve apostles as the representatives of the twelve tribes. They believed that the pecul- iar authority of the priesthood passed over to the apostles and their successors. At first they continued the sacrificial worship in the Temple. When the Temple was destroyed, the sacrificial worship could no longer be continued, because the law prohibited the offering of sacrifices except at the Temple ; but still the essential idea lingered in the mind of the Jewish portion of the Christian Church, that approach could be made to God ac- ceptably only through a priesthood and by means of a sacrifice. That idea, in a certain portion of the Christian Church, remains to this day. The Christian ministry are regarded as the legitimate successors of the Jewish priesthood ; that priest- hood is regarded as permanent, its sacredness as ^ Imposture and treasonable speech were punishable, but not erroneous doctrine. Deut. xiii. 1-5 ; xviii. 20-22. For illustra- tions of freedom of speech, see 2 Sam. xii. 1-7; 1 Kings xxi. 17-24. 186 PAUL THE APOSTLE enduring, its office as essential to tlie institution of religion. The modern clergyman is therefore regarded as a priest, as truly as was the ancient Jewish Temple official. It is true that he no longer belongs to the house of Aaron or the tribe of Levi, but he is no less in a churchly succession. He must receive his authority from priests who preceded him, and they from still preceding priests, and so he must be able to trace his ecclesiastical lineage back to the apostles, through whom he derives his priestly authority from Christ. And these priests have the same substantial office to perform as did the priests in the old Jewish Temple. The simple supper which Christ told men to take in memory of him is converted into the bloodless sacrifice of the mass, and every time the bread is broken and the wine is poured out, a new sacrifice for sin is offered by the Christian priest. This Christian priest, offering this sacrifice, must have an altar ; and so the simple supper-table, on which the me- morial of Christ was celebrated in the primitive Church, is converted into an altar, set apart for sacrificial purposes. The analogy to the Priests' Court in the ancient Temple, which only the priest might enter, is a sacred chancel which only the clergyman may enter. The church edifice is no longer a meeting-house or an assembly for, wor- shipers ; it is a temple, with the various parapher- nalia of the ancient Temple, if not literally repeated, at least symbolically represented. Thus, according to this conception, Christianity is a law, THE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS 187 righteousness is obedience, the clergyman is a priest, the Lord's Supper is a sacrifice, the commun- ion-table is an altar, and the church is a temple. The second element in the Jewish Church, with which the Epistle to the Galatians deals, is the rite of circumcision. A difference of opinion respect- ing the origin of this rite exists, similar to the dif- ference of opinion which exists respecting the origin of the sacrificial system. It is certain that circumcision was known outside of Jewish circles in times preceding the age of Moses, and it is al- most certain that it was borrowed by the Jews from other nations. That is no argument against its divinely appointed function, for it seems generally to have been the divine plan not to create new ceremonials, but to take ceremonials which already existed and give them a new and sacred signifi- cance. Thus, Christ took the simple family supper, which constituted the most essential feature in the Passover celebration, and gave to it a new signifi- cance by making it a memorial of himself, and of the deliverance which he brinofs to all mankind. At what time circumcision became incorporated in the Jewish national life as a required ceremo- nial is not altogether clear. Apparently, however, it originated in the days of Abraham, was main- tained during the Egyptian captivity, fell into abey- ance during the wanderings in the wilderness, and was revived under Joshua.^ It is certain that it had existed among the Jews for eleven or twelve 1 Gen. xvii. 10 ; Exod. iv. 25, 26 ; Josh. v. 4, 5. 188 PAUL THE APOSTLE hundred years ; perhaps for seventeen or eighteen hundred, and it was a distinguishing characteristic of the Jewish people in the time of Christ. No man could become an heir of the Jewish pro- mise, no man could be recognized as a true wor- shiper of the true God, unless he was circumcised. The most vigorous and intense term of reproach which a Jew could apply to another was the phrase " an uncircumcised dog." Thus circumcision was wrought into the very life of the Jewish nation, and made the entrance door to it. As in the Jewish conception of Christianity, the church, the ministry, and the Lord's Supper have taken the place respectively of the Temple, the priesthood, and the sacrifice, so, in that conception, baptism has taken the place of circumcision. In the time of Paul, when a pagan became a Jew, he was baptized ; that is, he was led into the water and immersed in it, and, according to the later rabbinical teaching, entirely submerged in it from head to foot. It was contended by the stricter sect of the Pharisees that if this submersion was in any respect incomplete, the baptism was ineffectual. In this ceremony his old faiths were washed away. He was said, in rabbinical phraseology, to be buried in baptism and raised a new creature. This cere- mony, which the Jews had used as a means of en- trance for pagans into the Jewish Church, John the Baptizer employed, giving to it a new signifi- cance, as a means of solemn profession, of new life, among the Jews. This last of the Hebrew prophets THE LETTER TO TEE GALATIANS 189 said in effect to those who listened to him : You need cleansing as much as the pagans ; your faiths are no better than theirs ; you need repentance no less than they ; you also must be submerged, and wash away your old faiths and your old sins, and rise into a new life, in which you will cease to do evil and learn to do well. Baptism was never used by Christ during his life, but it was employed by dis- ciples of Christ who had previously been disciples of John the Baptizer ; ^ and it received Christ's sanc- tion after his death, and in this sanction a new direction and a new meaning. The apostles were told to baptize men, not into the Jewish Church, not merely into a repentance which ceases to do evil and learns to do well, but into the power and authority of a new life with God — into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.^ Baptism thus became an entrance door to the Chris- tian Church, as circumcision had been an entrance door to the Jewish Church. It was administered only to adults, and to them only on confession of their faith. It was the way in which the convert confessed his faith in Christ, a solemn symbolical expression of that faith and of the consecration which accompanied it, and of the new hope and new life which grew out of that faith and that con- secration. But as the Church increased in numbers and in solidity of organization, and as time passed on, and 1 John iv. 1, 2 ; comp. John i. 35 ff. 2 Matt, xxviii. 19 ; comp. Acts xix. 1-5. 190 PAUL THE APOSTLE the second coming of Christ was more and more postponed in the thought of the Church to a re- mote future, the Church became dissatisfied with a rite which brought only the convert into the Church, and left his household outside. He wished to bring his children with him. Was he a Jew ? his children were born into Judaism. Was he a Christian ? he wished his children to be born into Christianity. Thus the Jewish conception of cir- cumcision and its office passed over into baptism, which was transformed from its original purpose to meet the new demand made upon it. The in- fant Christian was baptized, as the infant Jew had been circumcised, and by this baptism he was made a Christian, as by circumcision the Jewish infant was made a Jew. As a natural consequence, it came to be believed that no one could be a Chris- tian who was not baptized, as no one could be a Jew who was not circumcised. But Christianity was recognized even by the most formal and ecclesi- astical in the Church as in some sense a new life, and a new and vital relation to God. Hence bap- tism came to be regarded as a means by which this new life was conferred, this new and vital rela- tion formed, this transformation of character into that of a child of God effected. Thus the doctrine of baptismal regeneration found its way into a very considerable section of the Christian Church ; ^ ^ " By baptism we are cleansed from sin, adopted into God's family, being made his children by spiritual birth, so that his First-begotten Son is not ashamed to call us brethren." — Blunt's Theological Dictionary, article " Baptism." THE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS 191 the transformation was completed ; and the free gift of God, received by faith, was made dependent on a purely mechanical process, not in the least understood by the babe who was subjected to it. The third characteristic of Judaism with which the book of Galatians deals was the setting apart of certain days for special sacred observance. Some of these were fast-days ; more of them were feast-days. The most important of all was the Seventh, or Sabbath day. So important was this that the command enforcing it found a place among the Ten Commandments. It is the only approxi- mation to a ceremonial law found in that primitive code of Mosaism. But the Fourth Commandment can hardly be classified with ceremonial laws or even as akin to them, since, as defined in that com- mandment, the Sabbath was simply a rest-day. The word " holy " as there used simply means set apart, and is explained by the specifications which follow : " Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath [that is. Rest] of the Lord thy God ; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates." The priests early and very legitimately made use of this day for additional Temple services, and the proj^hets habitually and wisely made use of it for religious instruction. This, however, if not an afterthought, was certainly a secondary use. Gradually there grew up additions to this simple law and this 192 PAUL THE APOSTLE national liabit of religious observance.^ By the time of Christ, the day which God had appointed for freedom had become a day of bondage. When Christ cured the cripple on the Sabbath day, he was condemned by the ruler of the synagogue for breaking the Sabbath law ; ^ and when he bade the cripple take the mat on which he lay, and which he could easily roll up and carry under his arm, and take away with him, the man was condemned for violating the Sabbath day, because he bore a burden.^ Christ deliberately and publicly set at nausrht these Pharisaic and Jewish additions to the primitive law, but it cannot be said that he in terms set the law itself aside. He treated the Sabbath as he treated circumcision and the sacrifices. He de- clared that the faith of the uncircumcised centurion was greater than any he had seen in Israel ; but he did not in terms discard circumcision. He forgave men their sins, without ever sending them to the temple to offer sacrifice as a condition of forgiveness ; * but he did not in terms discard sac- rifices. So he repudiated the burdensome regula- tions with which the Sabbath had been hedged about ; but he did not in terms set the Sabbath day aside. 1 A striking illustration of this development of the Sabbath is afforded by the account in Nehemiah xiii. 15-22. 2 Luke xiii. 14. ^ John v. 10. 4 Luke xvii. 14 is not an exception. The lepers were sent to the priest for examination and the health certificate which the law required before they could mix again with men. Lev. ch. TEE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS 193 When the Jews came into the Christian Church, with their notion of priestly authority and the obligation of circumcision, they brought with them also their belief in the perpetual obligation of the Sabbath day. When, on the other hand, the Gen- tiles came into the Christian Church, they knew as little of a Sabbath day as they did of circumcision or the Jewish sacrificial system. But both Jewish and Gentile Christians could not forget the first day of the week, on which Christ rose from the dead. This was their great gala day, not imposed upon them by any obligation from without, but observed with joy and gladness by a natural im- pulse from within. Thus at first two holy days were kept in the Christian Church, — the Sabbath, or seventh day, because it was Jewish ; the Lord's day, or first day of the week, because it was the day of Christ's resurrection. As the pagan element increased and the Jewish element decreased in numbers, the seventh day gradually fell into dis- use, the first day alone lived.^ But when the seventh day fell into disuse, the 1 The question is often asked, What is the authority for the change of day ? There is none except that general authority which God has reposed in his children everywhere to worship him according to the dictates of their own conscience and in the way that best suits their spiritual life. There is nowhere in the New Testament a statement of divine authority explicitly given for any change in the day. Those who think themselves under obligation to maintain the Mosaic law are right in thinking that they should observe the seventh day rather than the first. Sunday belongs to the liberty of the children of God. 194 PAUL THE APOSTLE law which had created it and had imposed it upon the Jewish people was transferred to the first day. The notion came to be diffused in the Church, and exists to the present time, that all the obliga- tions of the seventh day were transferred to the first; that the Fourth Commandment is of per- petual obligation, but that the observance which it imposed is fulfilled by the observance of another day in the place of the one originally appointed. A part of those who hold this view — a very small part, it is true, but more logical than the rest — maintain that the Jewish law remains still in force, that it is the seventh day that is sacred and not the first, and that we shall never have a true Sab- bath, nor a true Christianity, nor a true religion until we go back to the seventh day, and thus fulfill the obligation imposed, as it is claimed, on all mankind by the primitive code of Mosaism. But the great majority of Christians regard the Fourth Commandment as in part obligatory and in part not, without having any clear idea of how they are to distinguish between what is and what is not obligatory. Thus there has come into the Christian Church from the Jewish Church its fundamental concep- tion of religion as consisting in obedience to a law of God imposed on mankind from without ; and this conception is illustrated in three characteris- tics of the Jewish Church, perpetuated, though in a modified form, — namely, the priesthood and its sacrificial system, as a necessary condition of THE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS 195 acceptable approaeh to God ; circumcision trans- formed into baptism, as a necessary means of entrance into the Church ; and the Sabbath as a special day of religious observance universally obligatory because of the Fourth Commandment. When Paul first came into Galatia, preaching, he denied the fundamental postulate of this sys- tem. He denied that religion consists in obedi- ence to a law imposed by God upon mankind. " Be it known therefore to you, men and bre- thren," he said, " that through this man to you is proclaimed the remission of sins ; and from all from which you could not be justified in the law of Moses, in him, every man having faith is justi- fied." ^ The sending away of sin, the deliverance from its power, its burden, and its penalty, the being made right in one's self, the being brought into right relations with God, cannot be accom- plished — this was the substance of the message — by living in the law of Moses. It can be accom- plished only by living in Christ, who is the revela- tion of God, the wisdom of God, the power of God. Paul and his message were received with great enthusiasm. Despite the recurrence of that mys- terious malady to which he seems to have been at times subjected, despite some obscuration of the vision and some mark upon his face which ren- dered him in appearance repulsive, especially to those who had been taught to believe that every 1 Acts xiii. 38, 39. 196 PAUL THE APOSTLE sucli physical blemish was a sign of divine displea- sure, the Galatians welcomed him with ardent affection. " If it had been possible," he says, " 3^ou would have plucked out your own eyes and have given them to me." ^ But their enthusiasm was too intense to be long lived. Apostles of a Jewish Christianity, claiming, if not possessing, the authority of the Church at Jerusalem, followed Paul here, as they did elsewhere, in order to op- pose him.2 They insisted that Paul was no apos- tle ; that he had received no authority from the Twelve, and none from the Church at Jerusalem ; that he was setting aside the laws of God, the au- thority of the priesthood and apostolate, the sacred rite of circumcision, doubly sacred from its divine origin and its identification with the history of God's chosen people, and the law of the Sabbath day, placed by its very position in the Ten Com- mandments on the same level with the laws against idolatry, profaneness, murder, theft, and adultery. They even charged him with inconsistency, and with preaching the necessity of circumcision when he preached to Jewish congregations.^ The Gala- tians hesitated, halted, went backwards. They questioned whether the leader whom they had received with such enthusiasm had not spoken without authority. They questioned whether they must not reinstate the rite of circumcision which 1 Galatians iv. 13-15. 2 Gal. i. 7 ; iii. 1 ; iv. 17 ; v. 7-12 ; vi. 12, 13. s Gal. V. 11. THE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS 197 they had abandoned. They began again the Jew-' ish observance of the Sabbath day. The news of these changes was brought to Paul. It is to re- monstrate with the Galatians, and to reply to the apostles of Jewish Christianity, that he writes his letter. In it he offers no compromise, suggests no retraction and no apology. He reaffirms his radi- cal position that righteousness does not consist in obedience to law, and accepts all the conclusions which that affirmation involves. He begins with his own personal experience. In the opening words of his letter he repudiates, as explicitly as words can repudiate, the notion that a Christian minister's authority is dependent on any human or ecclesiastical appointment. " Paul," he says, "an apostle, not deriving his authority from men, neither through the instrumentality of men, but through Jesus Christ and God our Fa- ther who raised him from the dead." ^ And then, as if to emphasize the equality of all men in the Christian Church, Apostles and non- Apostles, he adds, " And all the brethren which are with me, to the churches of Galatia."^ He will have no compromise with Judaism in the Christian Church. " If any other man," he says, " or we ourselves, or even an angel from heaven, preach any other gos- pel unto you than that which we have preached 1 TlavXos aTr6 "^ 1. Keligion, according to Paul, is the life of God in the soul of man. Such a life necessarily in- volves the complete consecration of man to God. He is to give himself wholly in the spirit of love to his Father. " I beseech you," he says, " by the mercies of God that you present even your bodies a living sacrifice." In Jerusalem, and indeed in every heathen city as well, was a temjile ; and to this temple sacrifices were brought and laid upon the altar, that thus they might be given to God. So Paul says, we are to give ourselves to God. But this sacrifice is to be a living sacrifice. Both Jew and Gentile slew the sacrifice they offered to God. r According to Paul it is not by dying but by living we are to offer ourselves to our Father. Christ had before pointed out the same contrast between true and false religion : " The thief cometh not but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy ; I am come that they might have life and might have it more abun- dantly." ^ This affords one test for distinguishing 1 John X. 10. THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS 271 between true and false religion. Whatever, under any guise of sanctity, purposes to lessen the life of humanity, belongs to the false ; whatever purposes to enlarge and enrich it, belongs to the true. Self- sacrifice is never true sacrifice of self ; it is never real self-immolation. It is always the sacrifice of a lower for a higher phase of life. As Paul does not recognize any form of self-de- struction as a religious act, except as death leads on and up to a resurrection and a higher life, so neither does he recognize any of the too common compromises involved in a partial consecration. He knows nothing of the notion that one tenth of one's income belongs to God and nine tenths to oneself. Tithing as a fixed proportion for what men are pleased to call benevolence is wholly for- eign to Paul's conception of religion. All, accord- ] ing to Paul, belongs to God ; how much of that all each one shall spend on his own family, how much in business activities, all of which are im- moral if they are not beneficent, and how much on unremunerative benefactions which we call charities, is a question which each child of God must determine for himself according to his cir- cumstances. So Paul knows nothing: of the notion that there are some days which belong to God and other days which belong to men. They are all God's. The Sunday is no more truly the Lord's day than Monday ; it is to be used in a different way, but for the same essential purpose. Uncon- sciously keen was the satire of the little child who 272 PAUL THE APOSTLE said to her mother, " Was n't it generous o£ God to give us six days for ourselves and keep only one for himself ? " So Paul knows nothing of the pop- ular distinction between religious and secular. To him there are not certain activities which are reli- gious and certain other activities which are not religious ; the whole life and all its activities are to be the outcome of the life of God in the soul of man. Religion is thus simply the art of living ; I will not even say right living, for any other is not living, according to Paul. When we are in. tres- passes and sins we are dead.^ The whole life and all its activities are to be given to God. And in thus giving himself to God, not because he fears a penalty or hopes for a re- ward, but because he has received God himself into his life and has entered in a new life in God, man gives himself to his fellow-men because the Father- hood of God carries with it the brotherhood of man, and faith in God as the universal Father involves a perception of humanity as one great family.^ Therefore all the activities of the child of God are to be employed by him as a member of this family and to promote and enrich its life. It is the life of God in Christ, as the head, which binds this family together ; therefore he cannot sever himself from the family without severing himself from the life. But in this family all his activities must be, and if he be truly a child of God, will be, spontaneous, free, unforced. Does he preach ? he 1 Ephes. ii. 1. ^ Ephes. iii. 14. Rev. Ver. THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS 273 will preach according to the proportion of his faith — that is, according to the measure of his spiritual experience. Does he give? he will give with liberality. Does he exercise mercy ? he will exer- cise it ungrudgingly. Does he govern ? he will govern with diligence. Is he engaged in business ? he will put new life and new energy into his busi- ness. Does he pray? he will pray with a new fervency. This new spirit will show itself in all his life. It will prevent all social hypocrisies ; his love will be without false pretense. He will be patient, generous, hospitable, sympathetic, lowly minded. In nothing will this new life show itself more evidently than in the changed attitude of the soul toward personal enemies. It will be the attitude of him who, persecuted, beaten, spit upon, desired no revenge ; desired only that his assailants might be forgiven. He cannot always live peace- ably with all men ; but he will always wish to do so, and wiU do so if it be possible. He will not seek even to vindicate himself from threatened wrong or unjust aspersion. He will leave his vindication to his Lord. Pity for the wrongdoer will always overcome anger because of the wrong done ; and the only victory over an enemy which will satisfy him will be the victory of love which converts him into a friend. " I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this age, but be ye 274 PAUL THE APOSTLE transformed by the making anew of your mind, that ye may prove what is the will of God — namely, that which is good and well pleasing and perfect. For I say through the grace given to me, to every one that is among you, not to be high-minded, above that wliich he ought to be minded, but to be so-minded as to be sober-minded, as God hath distributed to each one the measure of faith. For even as we have many members in one body and all members have not the same office, so we being many are one body in Christ and severally members one of another. " But having gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy ac- cording to the proportion of our faith ; or service, let us give ourselves to our serving ; or he that teacheth, to his teaching ; or he that exhorteth, to his exhortation. He that giveth, let him do it with singleness of heart ; he that ruleth, with diligence ; he that showeth mercy, un- grudgingly. Let love be without false pretense. Abhor the evil, cleave to the good. In love of the brethren be kindly-affectioned one with another, in honor preferring one another ; in diligence, not slothful ; in spirit, fer- vent, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation ; continuing steadfastly in prayer ; sharing in common with the saints in their necessities ; pur- suing hospitality. Bless them which persecute you ; bless and curse not. Rejoice with them that rejoice and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but be led away by the things that are lowly. Be not wise in your own conceits. Give back to no one evil in return for evil. Take heed beforehand that your conduct be hon- orable in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as TEE LETTER TO THE ROMANS 275 much as in you lieth, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, do not seek to vindicate yourselves, but yield to the wrath of your enemies. For it is written : ' Vindication is mine ; I will requite, saith the Lord.' ^ Wherefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him ; if he thirst, give him drink ; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good." ^ 2. In the thirteenth chapter Paul takes up the more specific question of the relation of the child of God to the state of which he is a member. How is he to regard the authority of government ? And in considering Paul's answer to this question we are to remember that the government of Rome at this time was as I have described it in a previ- ous chapter, — despotic, cruel, corrupt. In what way will one who possesses the life of God in his soul regard such a government, if he is a subject of it ? This is Paul's answer : — " Let every soul subject himself to the higher powers. There is no power but from God ; those that exist are ordained by God. So that he who arrays himself against the power arrays himself against the ordinance of God." « Are we to understand that Paul declares that aU law is divine and aU disobedience sinful? 1 Deut. xxxii, 35. ^ Rom. xii. 2 Rom. xiii, 1, 2. There is a play on the words in the orig-inal, which might be thus interpreted to the English reader ; the powers that exist have been placed by God ; so that whosoever displaceth the power arrays himself against the placing of God. 276 PAUL THE APOSTLE Would Paul maintain that Daniel was wrong when he refused to bow the knee to the idol reared in the Chaldean plain? That the apostles were wrong when to the command that they cease from preaching the gospel they refused obedience, re- plying, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than God, judge ye ; for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard ? That William H. Seward was wrong when he contended that there was a " higher law " than any congressional enactment ? No ! Paul does not say that we are always to obey all governmental powers ; he says we are to be subject to them. Daniel was subject to the powers when he allowed himself to be cast into the lions' den. The apostles were subject to the powers when they were brought before the court and an- swered the accusation. Jesus Christ was subject to the powers when he stood before the courts of Caiaphas and of Pilate unresisting. Subjection to government does not always involve obedience to its laws ; one is equally subject if he disobeys and patiently endures the penalty. Nor does Paul's teaching, properly understood, condemn all revolutions. It cannot be affirmed that he would stigmatize as wrong the overthrow of Bourbon despotism in Europe ; or the Puritan revolution against the Stuarts in England ; or the American revolution. To change one government is not to array oneself against all government ; to revolutionize a particular government is not to THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS 211 destroy all government. Paul affirms that govern- ment is a divine institution. So is the family ; so is the church. He who sets himself in array against them sets himself in array against the divine order. But he who in Paul's time insisted that marriage ought not to be treated like a com- mercial partnership, that it should be restored to the primitive form, in which love bound husband and wife together for life, would not thereby have set himself against the divine order. Luther did not set himself against the divine order when he endeavored to array Germany against the form which the Church had assumed in his time, and bring it back to something like its primitive sim- plicity. Neither did Wesley, when he sought to recast the Church and revivify it with a missionary spirit which it had lost. So Cromwell and Wash- ington, Hampden and Hamilton did not set them- selves against the divine order when they attempted to overthrow a corrupt government, which had ceased to fulfill the ends for which government is organized, and substitute a new and better govern- ment in its place. They did not seek to abolish government ; they sought to improve it. There are three conceptions of the foundation of government. The first bases it upon force. It regards law as the will of a superior addressed to an inferior ; and what makes him the superior is the fact that he has power to enforce his will by penalties attached to disobedience. The sec- ond bases it upon the consent of the governed. 278 PAUL TEE APOSTLE According to this conception government is simply a compact, by which men have agreed to relinquish some of their natural liberties for the real or sup- posed advantages derived from social order and organization. This doctrine, of which Eousseau was the preeminent expounder, was very popular in the latter part of the last century and in the be- ginning of this, and was apparently the doctrine entertained by a part, though certainly not by all, the founders of our United States Constitution. The third is the doctrine which Paul here affirms. Political organization is a part of the divine order. As it is a part of the divine decree that men should be not solitary but set in families, so that in the divine order every man is born into a family, so it is a part of the divine decree that men should be organized in political communities, so that men are born into the nation. Government is not a neces- sary evil ; the less of it the better. It is not an order rendered necessary only or chiefly by the vices and sins of men. Its end is not merely nor mainly the restraint of men who will not restrain themselves. It is the ordered life of humanity. It may be corrupted ; it may be diverted from the ends for which it is divinely ordained. But still it is better than none. The worst government is better than anarchy. Disobedience to law may become a duty, enforced by reverence for a higher law. Revolution may become necessary in order to secure a government more in harmony with the divine order. But neither fact militates against THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS 279 the truth that government is part of the divine order, or modifies the general principle that revo- lution is right only when in it there is a hope not merely of overturning a bad government but of substituting a better in its place. Paul's doctrine that government is a divine order, and that the foundation of its authority is neither force in the human superior, nor the consent of the governed, but the will and authority of God himself, to which the governor must conform, whether he be king, oligarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, is not inconsistent with a revolution like that of 1776 which aims at maintaining government, renovated and reformed ; but it is inconsistent with all such pseudo-revolutions as those of the Nihilists of Russia and the Revolutionaries in Armenia, which prepare no well considered plans of practical politi- cal reform. No revolution is justifiable unless it is constructive. And it hardly needs to be said that when Paul wrote his Letter to the Romans a revolution in Rome would have been more hopeless of achieving any beneficent results than to-day a peasant revolution in Russia or an Armenian revo- lution in Turkey. 3. In the fourteenth and part of the fifteenth chapters of Paul's letter to the Romans he takes up a general question which he discusses at somewhat greater length in his first Letter to the Corinthi- ans. I need speak of his treatment of this question here, therefore, only very briefly. There are certain practical questions about right 280 PAUL THE APOSTLE and wrong, upon which men are generally in sub- stantial agreement; there are others concerning which judgment depends very much on education. These doubtful questions vary from time to time. In Paul's time the doubtful questions concerned the eating of meat offered to idols and the observance of certain feasts which belonged to the Jewish ritual. They have long since disappeared ; but other doubtful questions have taken their place. Is it right to play cards ? to dance ? to go to the theatre ? These and kindred questions are the ones on which now Christians are disagreed, as then they were disagreed on the questions, Is it right to eat meat offered to idols ? and to ignore the seventh day of the week? In his letter to the Komans Paul lays down three principles by which the indi- vidual can guide himself in answering these doubt- ful questions. The first principle is that the moral quality of an act depends not on the act, but on the spirit of the agent doing the act. It is of the very essence of Paul's teaching that there is nothing evil in meat that has been offered to an idol, and nothing sacred in one day above another. But if one thinks it is wrong to eat meat that has been offered to idols, to him it is wrong ; if he thinks it his duty to observe the seventh day of the week because the Fourth Commandment prescribes that day, for him it is duty. To disobey one's conscience is always wrong. It is contrary to the very essence of Paul's teaching to suppose that we can draw lines and THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS 281 imagine that everything on one side of the line is right and everything on the other is wrong. There are no such lines. Life is all to be given to God ; whatever helps the divine life is right ; what- ever hinders it is wrong. But if a man does in fact, however mistakenly, draw such a line, then for him to transgress it is wrong, because to trans- gress it is to hinder his own divine life, violate his conscience, and so obscure his moral judgment and weaken his moral will. It is difficult to say why it is wrong to play a game with colored figures on bits of pasteboard and right to play a similar game with historical names printed on them ; why it is right to knock balls about on green turf, — that is, play croquet, — and wrong to knock balls around on a green table, — that is, play billiards ; why it is right to witness charades in a parlor and wrong to witness legitimate drama in a theatre. But if education, or prejudice, with or without reason, has led one to draw these lines, he is not to disregard them because others do not draw them. " What- soever is not of faitli is sin^ Everything in con- duct is to be the natural spontaneous outgoing of the new life of God in the soul. This new life will not at once, perhaps will not ever, sweep away old prejudices. If a Hindu Christian feels that it is wrong to destroy life for food, for him it is wrong. Whatever one does contrary to his own concep- tion of righteousness is wrong. The morality of the act depends on the spirit of the one who does the act. 282 PAUL THE APOSTLE The second principle has been well expressed in the phrase " Thy conscience for thyself and not for another." The conscience of each man is a law- giver to him, but it is not a lawgiver to his neigh- bor. Therefore neither may he that eateth despise him that eateth not, nor he that eateth not condemn him that eateth. The Liberal is not to look with contempt on the Puritan, nor the Puritan with con- demnation on the Liberal. He who allows himself largeness of liberty as a child of God is not to de- spise his stricter neighbor for his narrowness, nor he who lives under law and within fixed lines to condemn his freer neighbor because of his laxity. Finally, while every man is to govern himself by his own conscience no man is to live in disregard of the conscience of his neighbor. The fundamental principle is, that is right which promotes the life of God in the soul of man ; that is wrong which hin- ders this divine life. Though it does not hinder that life in the one who acts, it may be wrong if it hinders the life in another who is looking on. " No- thing is unclean of itself ; but to him that account- eth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. If because of thy meat thy brother is grieved, thou walkest no longer in love." Love is not only " the greatest thing in the world," it is the only thing. God is love ; to walk not in love is to sej)arate one- self from God. I am not to impose my conscience on another ; but I am to accept my neighbor's con- science as a restraint on myself. For " we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS 283 not to please ourselves." Our pleasure is not to overbalance another man's life ; but neither is his pleasure to overbalance our life. We may regard his conscience ; but we may not make it our law- giver. If I may never do anything to which the conscience of some neighbor objects, I can never do anything. The Roman Catholic could not go to a Protestant church because the Roman Catholic thinks it is wrong ; and he could not go to a Ro- man Catholic church because the Protestant thinks it is wrong. The Protestant could not go to a Ro- man Catholic church because the Protestant thinks it is wrong, and he could not go to a Protestant church because the Roman Catholic thinks it is wrong. He could not go to church if another man's conscience and not our own is to be our law- giver. The whole principle of life is summed up in the one counsel: "Let us follow after the things which make for peace and the things whereby we may build one another up," i. e. in the divine life. All comes back to this at last : How shall we best promote the divine life in our- selves and others ? The divine life is the source of all truly righteous conduct; the divine life is the standard by which all conduct is to be tested. Paul's letter to the Romans, then, to sum up these four chapters in one brief paragraph, I under- stand to be this : Neither society nor the individual can be made righteous by attempting conformity to a law external to one's self, whether it is human or divine. Man cannot be made righteousness by 284 PAUL THE APOSTLE any external process. He is not repousse work. There is only one way of living aright; it is by freely receiving the gift of life freely given to the soul by God. When one has received this free gift of God into the heart, a new life springs up in him spontaneously. He is as one married, who gets a new life of love in his marriage. He is as one emancipated ; set free from the old bondage and the old relation of servitude. He is as a dead man who has been called from the grave by the overmastering voice of the Christ. To such an one even tribulation seems joyful, for tribula- tion is working out character, and character is all he cares for. To whom does God offer this free gift ? To all the world. There is, it is true, a destiny or fate which overrules us. But it is not as the Romans think it, a blind necessity ; nor as the Greeks think it, a fate whose only office it is to punish the wicked by avenging sin ; nor as the Jews think it, an autocratic and irresponsible par- tialism. The end of this destiny, the object of this fate, the purpose of this Providence is infinite and eternal mercy ; and when it has accomplished its result, the law that has seemingly shut men up unto disobedience will be seen to be God's prepara- tion for giving them newness of life. That new- ness of life will mean for us here and now giving ourselves wholly and unreservedly in the spirit of joyous love to the service of our fellow-men be- cause to the service of our God ; loyalty to the church, to the state, and to the family because THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS 285 they are a part of God's ordinance ; the settlement of all doubtful questions by the voice of God within us ; and respect for the voice of God as it speaks to others, or seems to others to speak to them ; in brief, it will mean the life of faith, which is the life of joyous freedom, — the glory of the liberty of the sons of God. CHAPTER XV THE LETTERS TO THE EPHESIANS AND THE COLOSSIANS At the time of Christ's birth, intellectual su- premacy had passed, in a measure, from Greece to Egypt, and was centred in Alexandria, which for some centuries remained the intellectual capital of the world. This city was situated at the con- fluence of three streams of intellectual and spirit- ual life, — the Oriental, the Jewish, and the Greek. Rome at this time hardly influenced Alexandria at all, and from Alexandria as yet influences had not passed out by migration into Rome. The Oriental dreams ; the Greek defines ; the Hebrew acts. These three sentences may serve as a characteriza- tion of the distinction between the influences that met and strangely intermingled in Alexandria. For they did intermingle, and out of their conflu- ence there grew up a scheme of combined dream- ing, thinking, and practical ethics, which consti- tutes what is known in history as the Alexandrian School. Those who have made a study of the sub- ject will have to exercise some indulgence towards me in the endeavor here made to define in a very brief compass the teaching of this school. It is LETTERS TO EPHESIANS AND COLOSSI ANS 287 very difficult to translate Oriental dreaming into Occidental thought ; and to translate a composite school, which was inconsistent with itself and in- congruous and self -contradictory in its results, into forms of thought which the lay American can understand, without having studied these schools of philosophy, is not an easy task. The Oriental then regarded and now regards God as the Absolute and the Unconditioned. There can be nothing outside of him ; for if there is anything outside of him, then he is limited. Therefore God is the all, and the all is God. This Unconditioned and this Absolute could not create, because what he had made would be apart from himself, and he would be limited by the very re- sult of his creation. But Hebraism had centred its faith in a personal God, — a God who was a king over Israel, a God who created the world and ruled it. The very essence of Hebraism was that God had created and was apart from his world, not identical with it. Thus there was apparently an irreconcilable contradiction between the Ori- ental and the Hebraic conception of God. This contradiction the Alexandrian School endeavored to solve, these conceptions it endeavored to unite by its hypothesis of emanations ; that there had proceeded from this Unconditioned, this Absolute, certain secondary causes or deities, who were called by various names, such as chiefs, rulers, powers, principalities, eons. These secondary causes or deities — it is difficult to know which appellation 288 PAUL TEE APOSTLE to give them — were the creators of the world. The Infinite, the Eternal, the Absolute, had not created anything ; but from him had proceeded these secondary beings, and these secondary beings had created, and thus an imperfect world was made by imperfect gods who had proceeded from a perfect God. Thus the Hebrew found a God whom he could believe in as a Person, and the Oriental a God whom he could recognize as the Absolute and the Unconditioned. But this Infinite, this Unconditioned, was also the Unknown and the Unknowable. The idea that God is the Unknown and the Unknowable does not date from the time of Herbert Spencer, nor even from the time of the Alexandrian school ; it is to be found far back in Oriental philosophy. But the very essence of Hebraism was that man should know God ; must become acquainted with him ; must obey him ; must recognize and revere him. And here again were two antagonistic conceptions : a God who could not be known and a God who must be known, or whom man must ever strive to know. So these secondary deities served another purpose. The Infinite, the Unconditioned, the Absolute, could not be known, but the chiefs, the rulers, the principalities, the powers, the eons, could be known. Thus there was room, on the one hand, for the Hebraic acquaintance, on the other hand, for the Oriental non-acquaintance. There is evil in this world — natural evil, that is, suffering, and moral evil, that is, sin. But if God LETTERS TO EPHESIANS AND COLOSSI AN S 289 is perfect, he cannot produce either natural evil or moral evil. And yet God is the all. How, if God is the all and is in the all, can there be nat- ural evil and moral evil ? how is it possible to re- concile these two conceptions, the one of God, the other of life? The Alexandrian school did so, somewhat after this fashion : The Absolute, the Unconditioned, is the fullness that filleth all things with himself ; there is, therefore, a perfect spiritual life, and in this perfect spiritual life there is no pain, no suffering, no disease, no sin, neither nat- ural evil nor moral evil. But there is matter. Some said it was eternal. Some said it was not real, but only a, shadow which existed in the imagi- nation of men. But whether it was a shadow or eternal, it was, or it seemed to be. And the evil was all in the shadow, the matter ; not in the real- ity, the spiritual life. There really was no evil. Out of this there sprung two schools of thought again which were singularly contradictory. Be- tween them, so far as I know, no reconciliation was attempted. Both schools started with the affirma- tion that matter is undivine. One school said. Since matter is undivine, since in matter resides evil, therefore we must get rid of it. The issue was asceticism. The other school said, Since mat- ter is undivine, it has no real existence ; we may utterly disregard it. Licentiousness of the body is not a reality, it is only a pretense. Drunkenness is not a reality, it is only a shadow. There is no harm iu the shadow. Therefore be drunken if 290 PAUL THE APOSTLE you like and be licentious if you like. There is no disease, and there is no sin. Believe that you are well and you will be well; believe that you are virtuous and you will be virtuous. Sin and disease were regarded only as what a modern school of philosophy calls " mortal thoughts." Modern Christian Science is an inheritance from the Alex- andrian school. This Alexandrian school of philosophy, with its dreaming about God and its definition of God, and its dreaming about sin and its definition of sin, passed over into Greece, and was found at Ephe- sus. And when the Ephesian church became a Christian church, this Oriental philosophy mixed with the Christian doctrine, and out of this inter- mixing of Oriental dreaming, Greek definition, Hebrew activity, and Christian doctrine there grew up what are known as the Gnostic sects of the early Church. So far as history gives us any account of them, they did not grow into definite organization until after Paul, but there are abundant evidences of their germ in the epistle to the Ephesians and in that to the Colossians. It would, indeed, seem as though Christian philosophy and this Oriental philosophy were absolutely antagonistic one to the other. This Orientalism was pantheistic. The essence of the Christian religion is the personality of God. This Orientalism was in thought, if not in name, polytheistic. The essence of Christianity, as of Hebraism, is monotheism. This Orientalism regarded law as only a form of nature ; Christianity LETTERS TO EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS 291 regards it as the expression of a wise and righteous will. This Orientalism regarded sin as only a sem- blance or appearance, or, at best, only an imma- turity in the development of the race. Christianity regards sin as a willful setting of man's will against God's will. Orientalism said that by and by all life would come back into God by a natural pro- cess, as the clouds come back to the ocean. Chris- tianity held that no man could come back to God without deliberate repentance and deliberate faith. Orientalism held to the absorption at last in the Infinite and the Eternal. Christianity held to an immortal personality. Still, Orientalism entered the Christian Church, and was a greater peril to it than either paganism or Judaism. Paganism fought Christianity ; an open foe is not much to be dreaded. Judaism would have imprisoned Chris- tianity ; it was not impossible to open the door and let Christianity out from its cage. But this Orien- talism entered the Christian Church itself, cor- rupted it at its very fountain, claimed to be the supreme Christian sect, and looked down with dis- dain upon other and simpler-minded Christians as far below them, ^ — not altogether unlike some- thing we have seen in our own time. Paul wrote the epistle to the Ephesians and that to the Colossians with this mental state of the Christians in the province of Asia in mind. The phrases which he uses in these epistles, which to 1 This peril is admirably described by Sabatier : The Apostle Paul, pp. 221, 222. 292 PAUL THE APOSTLE many of us are unmeaning, were full of significance to those Asiatic Christians. " Principalities," "powers," "rulers," "fullness," these and kindred words were familiar words in the Alexandrian phi- losophy, to describe these secondary gods, these emanations, these manifestations, these representa- tions of the Infinite and the Absolute. Paul does not directly attack Orientalism. He sets before his readers Christianity as containing all that which is necessary to satisfy both the intellectual wants and the spiritual wants recognized by the Alexan- drian schools, because it can satisfy the intellectual wants and the spiritual wants of all humanity. He recognizes in these men a seeking after truth, and he uses their own phrases to show them that Chris- tianity fulfills all that they seek. The epistle to the Ephesians was probably written as a circular letter, and sent, not to the church at Ephesus alone, but to a number of churches, and the copy which has come down to us since is known as the ej)istle to the Ephesians because it chances to be the copy sent to that one church.^ The epistle to the Colos- sians was probably sent to the church at Colossse alone ; still, it follows substantially the same line of argument, and expounds substantially the same philosophy, and sets forth substantially the same truths, as the epistle to the Ephesians. It may 1 See McGiffert, The Apostolic Age, pp. 275, 379 ff. Comp. Cony- beare and Howsou, Life and Epistles of Paul, ii. 405 fF. Alford's reply in the Proleg'omena to his Commentary on Ephesians appears to me inconclusive. LETTERS TO EPHESIANS AND COLOSSI ANS 293 almost be said to be another copy of the circular letter, although not written by a coj)yist, but freshly rewritten by the apostle. It is not certain which was written first, and it is not material to determine which was written first. I treat Colos- sians first because that sets forth more fully Paul's conception of Christ, which constitutes the founda- tion of his entire treatment of this Alexandrian school of religious philosophy. Christ, he says, is himself the one in whom all fullness dwells, and in whom all principalities and powers are centred. He is the image of the invisi- ble God, the first-born of the whole creation. In him — that is, by means of him, as the only inter- mediary cause ^ — were all things created that are in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principal- ities or powers. He does not deny that there are invisible agencies ; he does not affirm that they ex- ist ; but he says, if there are any, they are aU cre- ated by and through Christ. " All things are created through him and for him, and he is before all, and in him all things have their unity. And he is the head of the body — the Church ; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in all he might have the preeminence ; for it pleased the full- ness of all to dwell in him." ^ 1 eV : the instrument or means by or with which anything is accomplished. — Thayer's N. T. Gr. Lex. 2 Col. i. 16-19. Literally : It pleased the whole fullness to dwell in him. 294 PAUL THE APOSTLE I do not know where in Paul's epistles you will find a better statement of his conception of Christ : the first-born of all creation ; the intermediary in- strument through whom the Infinite and Absolute has become the creator ; the image of the Unknown and the Invisible, and so the revelator of the Un- known and the Invisible ; creator of all, centre of all, authority over all. And this Christ w^ho is thus above all principalities and powers, this Christ in whom the fullness of divinity dwells, the fullness which, according to the Oriental school, dwells in all nature and makes all nature God, this one has himself brought together pagan and Jew and be- come the head of the Church and the fullness o£ the Church. And because he dwells in us, and be- cause he dwells in all things, we are not to be afraid of anything ; we are not to become ascetics ; we are not to set off certain arbitrarily selected things as inherently and essentially evil. " Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or sabbath days : which are a shadow of the things to come ; but the body is Christ's." ^ Shadows ! yes, there are shadows ; they are these ascetic rules which the Alexandrian school has borrowed from Oriental philosophy, mingled with Hebrew legislation, and endeavored to impose on the free children of God. Substance ! yes, there is a divine substance, a reality — not an Absolute 1 Col. ii. 16, 17. LETTERS TO EPHESIANS AND COLOSSI ANS 295 and Unconditioned; but the Christ, who reveals the Inj&nite to men. " If ye died with Christ from the rudiments of the world,^ why, as though living in the world, do ye sub- ject yourselves to ordinances, Handle not, nor taste, nor touch (all which things are to perish with the using), after the precepts and doctrines of men ? " ^ Are we, then, to adopt the other hypothesis of Orientalism and conclude that we may use all things as we will ? No ! for if we have this spirit- ual life we shall be lifted above sin, if not above temptation. " If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory. Put to death, therefore, your members which are upon the earth ; for- nication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetous- ness, which is idolatry ; for which things' sake cometh the wrath of God ; in which ye also walked aforetime, when ye lived in these things." ^ These Orientalists hold that all human relation- ships are but shadows. It is said of Ramkrishna, 1 That is, the primary rides and regidations which belong to world-life. 2 Col. ii. 20-22. 3 Col. iii. 1-7. 296 PAUL THE APOSTLE the modern Messiah of the Vedantic philosophy, that he separated himself from his wife in order that he might live a pure and holy life. But Paul says that we are to carry the new and divine life into these relationships, not to escape from them. Therefore he bids wives obey their husbands ; hus- bands, be gentle and loving to their wives ; children, obey their parents ; parents, provoke not their children ; servants, be obedient to their masters ; masters, be considerate to their servants, remem- bering that they also have a master. In short, Paul, starting with this doctrine that Jesus Christ is the only intermediary between the Infinite and humanity, the one mediator between God and man,^ and is thus mediately the Creator, the Kevealer, the Redeemer, declares that life from him is to flow into God's children ; and this life will, on the one hand, make them free from the prohibitions of as- ceticism, and, on the other hand, will lift them above corruption. This is Paul's letter to the Colossians, briefly stated. His letter to the EjDhesians begins with a similar definition of Christ, but proceeds rather along spir- itual than along ethical lines. In it Paul declares, more elaborately, that this Christ has reconciled pagan and Jew. He declares more fully how this life dwelling in man makes a new life to proceed from him, and he defines, more eloquently than anywhere else in Scripture, the essence of the Christian religion. 1 Comp. 1 Tim. ii. 5. LETTERS TO EPHESIANS AND COLO SSI ANS 297 "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power by means of his Spirit in the inward man ; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith ; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may have the ability to apprehend with all the holy, with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height [of love] ; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled even unto all the fullness of God." ^ This, as we have already seen, is Paul's concep- tion of religion ; it is not obedience to any external law, whether human or divine, though such obedi- ence proceeds from religion ; it is a new and divine life, a life from within, the life of God in the soul of man, who is to be filled absolutely full, even unto all the fullness of God. And it is that men may thus be filled with God that he has appointed a church, and in it ordained various officers. The whole scope and end of the Church, its sole function, is making divinely filled men, conform- ably to Christ, who is the ideal Man, that he may be the first-born among many brethren.^ " And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teach- ers, for the perfecting of the holy in the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all come unto the unity of the faith and of the perfect knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect manhood, unto the 1 Eph. iii. 14-19. 2 Rom. ^iii, 29. 298 PAUL TEE APOSTLE measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ ; in order that we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried hither and yon by every breath of teach- ing, in the mere hap-hazard of men, in all sorts of ways after the method of the wanderer ; but, speaking the truth in love, may in everything grow up into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, fitly joined and knitted together, by that bond of union which is furnished by all the joints, makes increase of the body unto the building of itself up in love, as the vital energy is effectual in every part."^ Yet it is no mystical experience apart from life, which Paul commends to his readers. As he has told the Romans, in the twelfth chapter of his let- ter to them, what practical results will flow from the life of sonship with God, so in his letter to the Ephesians he condemns that pseudo-piety which disregards morality, and makes the liberty of the children of God an excuse for living like the chil- dren of the flesh. " This I say therefore and testify in the Lord, that ye no more walk as the other nations walk, in useless thoughts, being darkened in the understanding, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance which is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts; who being without feeling, have given them- selves over to outrageous conduct, to work out every form of impurity in their inordinate desires. But ye have not so learned Christ, if indeed ye have paid heed to Him and been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus ; that ye put aside that which accords with your former 1 Eph. iv. 11-16. LETTERS TO EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS 299 manner of life, the old man, that which is corrupt, that which is formed in accord with delusive desires ; and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind [i. e. the spiritual faculties of your nature] and invest yourselves with the new man, that which is created in accord with God, in righteousness and in that piety which is of the truth." ^ In our own time Oriental philosophy lias again crossed the ocean and come to America, borne on the wings of the wind in literature, or brought by missionaries of an Oriental faith. Their messages are welcome. There is something we have to learn from them. For we must not forget, as we often have forgotten, that Christianity was born midway between the Occident and the Orient ; that it is neither Oriental nor Occidental in its origin ; that it has something of the quality of both. We must not forget, what we sometimes have been inclined to forget, that we are Occidentals, and perhaps have seen Christianity only in part. We must remember that all our creeds and confessions re- present, not Christianity, but certain Occidental phases of Christianity : the Apostles' Creed, primi- tive Christianity ; the Creed of Pius Ninth, Ro- man Christianity ; the Westminster Confession of Faith, Calvinistic Christianity ; the Thirty-nine Articles, Anglican Christianity ; and even the writings and sermons of Maurice and Brooks and Erskine and Bushnell and Beecher, modern Anglo- Saxon Christianity. Mozoomdar has taught us by his " Oriental Christ " that there is a concep- 1 Eph. iv. 17-24. 300 PAUL THE APOSTLE tion of Christianity possible to the Oriental which we, who are inclined to think that nothing is true which cannot be mathematically defined, have not yet been able to comprehend. And if these mes- sengers from the Far East, setting their Oriental philosophy before us, shall compel us to reexamine our Christianity, and the character and the life of Christ, not in the light of any of our creeds, an- cient or modern, but in the light of the larger knowledge of the nineteenth century, they will render us a service. But, on the other hand, if we meet this philoso- phy in the spirit of Paul, we shall not meet it as those who say. We can take something from Ori- entalism, something from Christianity, and amal- gamate them, and out of them get a universal religion. Christianity is absolutely exclusive, be- cause it is absolutely inclusive. There is but one God — not a Jehovah and a Jupiter and an Odin and a Thor : one God. And there is but one Lord Jesus Christ — not a Confucius and a Soc- rates and a Siddartha and a Mohammed and a Joe Smith and a Jesus Christ : one Lord Jesus Christ. And to accept Christianity is to accept him as the one and only Messiah of the world. That is what the apostle means when he says there is none other name given under heaven among men whereby we can be saved. Jesus Christ is the world's Saviour ; not a Saviour of the Hebrew race or of a Christian people, while other people are to be saved by their own religions LETTERS TO EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS 301 in other ways. And this Christianity is an exclu- sive religion because it is an inclusive religion. Maurice has said that Christianity has in it all that is best and true in other religions. We may use other spiritual thinkers to interpret this our religion ; but we may not amalgamate this with other religions, or think we have yet to search the world for a universal religion because we think that the one we now have is provincial. Religion as a philosophy has four questions to an- swer : What is God ? What is man ? What is the relation between God and man ? What is the life which man is to live when he understands and en- ters into that relation ? There is no other question than these four. Christianity has given its answer to each one of these four questions. What is God ? God is one ; the true, righteous, loving, helpful Father of the whole human race. And God is love. And love, God's love, perfect love, is inter- preted by the life Jesus Christ lived on the earth.' What is man ? Man is in the image of God. If he is not, if he fails in that, he fails of being truly a man. Not until he has come to be in the imag-e of God will he be a man. Is this a statue ? I can see a nose and a mouth emerging from the half- hewn marble. No, it is not a statue ; it is a half-done statue. Wait until the sculptor is through with his work, then shall we see the statue. Not till God is through with his work shall we see a man ; and the world has seen only one true man, the man Christ Jesus. What is the relation be- 302 PAUL THE APOSTLE tween this God and this man ? It is that of the most intimate fellowship of which the human soul can conceive ; one life dwelling in the other life, and filling the other life full of his own fullness. No closer relationship between God and the human soul than that can be conceived. When this full- ness has been realized, when we have the fullness of God in us, when God has finished the man, what will be the result in life ? Just such a life as Christ lived, with all the splendor of self-sacrifice, all the glory of service, all the heroism, all the enduring patience. What has Orientalism to add to this response which Christianity makes to the problems of life ? It offers reincarnation on earth for a new and nobler life in a spiritual sphere. It offers a dream of the Infinite for a living com- panionship with a living God. Sin and repentance it knows not ; nor redemption, for it cannot know redemption save as it knows sin and repentance. And for the eternal life which the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ offers, and for the rest which comes from fullness of life, it offers Nirvana — the rest of the grave and of an endless sleep. CHAPTER XVI THE LETTER TO THE PHILIPPIANS Paul had been mobbed in Jerusalem, and ar- rested because he was mobbed, and then brought before the judge, and, finding little hope of justice, had taken an appeal, as a Roman citizen had a right to do, to Csesar. He had been put on board a government vessel for Rome. He had taken a long and dangerous passage — dangerous in the winter season, and proving itself especially dan- gerous in his case. He had come up to Rome a prisoner in bonds. He had appealed to Caesar, and more depended on the appeal than his own personal liberty ; for he stood for religious free- dom. Up to this time religious freedom had been recognized in imperial Rome. The various reli- gions of the various provinces had been suffered to live, and to proclaim their tenets ; there had been no governmental persecution of any of them ; and Paul stood for this right to preach the religion which he himself professed. But the case dragged, as cases will even in our time. For two years he remained in Rome a prisoner, though with liber- ties. Part of the time he appears to have been chained to a soldier to prevent his escape ; part of 304 PAUL THE APOSTLE the time he went, as it were, on parole and lived in his own hired house, and men came to him and he instructed them in the principles of the gospel of Christ. It was at this time that he wrote the epistle to the Philippians. It is of all the epistles the least a treatise, except that very short letter, which is hardly more than a note, called the Letter to Philemon. It contains no distinct theological doc- trine, though it is theological as everything which Paul wrote was theological — that is, pervaded with a deep religious spirit formulated in theologi- cal statements. The Philippians had sent him what I may call a missionary box as a token of their affection, and as a provision for his supposed needs. His letter is a letter of personal thanks to them for this remembrance of him. In it, more than in any other of his epistles, we see the heart of Paul — his inmost life. Says Lightfoot, "It is the noblest reflection of Paul's personal character and spiritual illumination, his large sympathies, his womanly tenderness, his deli- cate courtesy." To the same effect is Sabatier: " These pages were written from a single inspira- tion. We may add that they do not so much exhibit the apostle's theological creed as the feel- ings of his heart and the maturity of his religious life. There is here a wealth of Christian experi- ence, a fullness of faith, a strength and delicacy of affection, which remind us of the finest chapters in the second letter to the Corinthians. There is TEE LETTER TO THE PHILIPPIANS 305 the same overflowing inner life ; only prolonged meditations have deepened, calmed, and matured it." Equally explicit, and not less eloquent, is the witness of our own great American scholar. Dr. McGiffert, of Union Theological Seminary : " The whole epistle, in fact, with its warm expression of affection, with its hearty recognition of the devo- tion of the Philippians, and with its unaffected gratitude for their liberality, combined with its kindly and yet frank and earnest admonitions, furnishes one of the most charming illustrations we have of the apostle's personal character, and of the closeness of the ties which bound him and his coevals together." It is not easy to phrase such a letter in words other than those in which the writer himself has phrased it. It is not possible to reformulate it, as one can reformulate theology, in different and modern language. We must try to see what his life has been, what his present circumstances are, and then turn to the epistle itself and read in his own words some of these utterances which express his heart's inner life. It is twenty-eight or thirty years since Paul's conversion. They have been years full of hardship and disappointment. When he was first converted, with the enthusiasm of a young convert he thought that he had but to expound his faith, and the Phar- isees, of whom he was one, would accept it. He argued with the Lord that Jerusalem was the place for his ministry, because the Pharisees knew him, 306 PAUL THE APOSTLE understood his prejudices, and would listen to his message.^ Hard as his experience and bitter as his disappointment were, he never seems to have gotten over this sanguine faith in man. Whenever he went into a new city he always went into the syna- gogue first, always preached to the Jews first, al- ways seems to have expected that they would hear him, and to have suffered a new disappointment when they refused. One cannot but admire this hopefulness, that nothing can discourage, nothing can overthrow. Twenty-eight or thirty years have passed by, and Israel, whom he so loves that he says, " I could al- most be willing to be accursed from Christ myself if I could only bring them to know him and to love Lim," still rejects the Christ and will none of him. But it is not alone in the old church which he has left that he is disappointed ; in the new which he has entered he is also disappointed. From the very first he was looked upon with suspicion. The dis- ciples knew him only as one who had persecuted them, and feared that he was pretending conversion that he might get into their conventicles and the better carry on his persecution. He knew none of them, he says, by face, except one or two.^ Even the leaders looked at him askance. If subsequently he withstood Peter to his face, doubtless Peter withstood him to his face also. James was doubt- ful about his course, and counseled him to take a different one, — counsel to which in one unwise 1 Acts xxii. 17-21. 2 Gal. i. 18, 19. THE LETTER TO THE PHILIPPIANS 307 moment he yielded, bringing disaster into liis life.^ This faction in the Christian Church which looked on him with suspicion never ceased while Paul lived, nor for many years after. Wherever he went he was followed by Judaizing Christians, who could not understand his gospel and. who vigo- rously antagonized it. It is not easy to stand in a Christian pulpit and preach a Christian gospel and believe that you are interpreting the Christ, and have brethren of your own in the church think that you are undermining faith and destroying it, and misunderstand and misreport and misrepre- sent you. This was Paul's experience at a time when the opportunities for correcting misappre- hension were far less than in our own time. Disappointed in the Christian Church, he was again and again disapjDointed in his expectation from the Gentiles. He looked out upon its dark- ness and its misery, and he felt sure that he had a faith which, if he could put it into the hearts of the children of men, would revolutionize the world, dissipate the darkness, take away the misery, eman- cipate mankind, bring in the kingdom of God. But in this also he was disappointed. Athens laughed at him. Corinth listened, for the most part, contemptuously, and went back to its worldli- ness. Philippi persecuted him. Ephesus mobbed his companions, and would have mobbed him could the mob have reached him. His auditors among the pagans were gathered from the poorer and lower 1 Acts xxi. 18-30. 308 PAUL THE APOSTLE classes. You see, he said, not many rich, not many wise, not many noble, are called.^ He was, as Cole- ridge has said, one of the finest gentlemen of whom history gives any record ; not without some means ; a man of culture ; of fine education ; who had added to education that culture which travel brings ; and yet his constituency were the poor, the outcast, the ignorant, the despised, the freedman, and the slave. There were few among the people whom he knew from whom he could draw life. Moreover, his own churches, those which had grown up under his ministry, turned against him. Again and again the planting of his own hands he saw perverted or corrupted. He had been received by the Galatians with enthusiasm ; and he had seen them dropping away from him, suspecting his motives and abandoning his ministry, and going back into Judaism. He had been welcomed by enthusiastic disciples in Corinth ; and he had seen them dividing into sects, and himself traduced by emissaries who undermined his authority and ques- tioned his motives. He had been so aroused with indignation that once he started to go back to Co- rinth, by his own personal presence to do battle with those who had misrepresented and misreported, and then stopped because he did not quite dare to trust his temper under the circumstances. He had seen corruption enter into the churches of Ej^hesus and Colossse ; he had seen them turned away from the simplicity which was in the Lord Jesus Christ 1 1 Cor. i. 26, 27. THE LETTER TO THE PHILIPPIANS 309 by the Orientalism which had been imported from Alexandria, and under its influence a mongrel reli- gion grow up — polytheistic and pantheistic, lack- ing the simplicity of the Hebrew faith. And these were the churches he had himself established. Sometimes the question must have come upon him whether anything he had done would stand after he had left. " The care of the churches which comes upon me daily," he puts as the climax of all the burdens which he bore. And yet there was a still heavier burden. Dis- appointed in his own people, disappointed in the Christian Church, disappointed in the instability of the pagans, disappointed in the recreancy and the apostasy of the churches which he had himself established, he was disappointed in his own spiritual hopes. He had fully believed that Jesus Christ would come in a very little while. He had looked for his return from month to month, from day to day. He had entered on his mission with a strong faith that the Lord was about to establish by power the kingdom of God on the earth, and he had thought that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the attes- tation and evidence that he would so come and would overthrow imperial Romanism and establish the kingdom of God in its place. But the days had lengthened into months and the months into years, and the years into more than twoscore years, and still there was no sign of his coming. Hope deferred might well have made the heart sick. He no longer looked for the coming of the Lord 310 PAUL THE APOSTLE and the establisliment of the kingdom in his own time. Then hope had taken a new form : the hojDe that Rome, imperial Rome, would itself become a Chris- tian power. Four centuries later it did ; but four centuries is a long while to wait. Paul had hoped to live to see the day. And now he was beginning to question whether he should even be permitted to give the message of this Christ in the Roman Em- pire. The clouds of approaching persecution were gathering upon the horizon, the mutterings of the coming storm could be distinctly heard, while he stands in Rome for that liberty which up to that time never had been denied. And he was alone ; a prisoner ; part of the time chained to a soldier companion ; forsaken by others ; his own compan- ions scattered ; alone ; uncertain as to the issue of the trial ; wondering whether it would end in death, not only to him, but to the liberty of the gospel ; or in his emancipation and in a larger liberty and a larger opportunity. What is more likely to take the life out of man than this j)erplexity and uncer- tainty ? But more than all this, suppose he won a victory, what then ? Already his prophetic vision forecast the future. He saw — he could not have failed to see, and this epistle to the Philij^pians gives us hints that he saw — that the Judaistic faction which had followed him all his life was about to triumph over him in the church which he had founded. That faction would enthrone itself in Rome. If THE LETTER TO THE PHILIPPIANS 311 imperial Rome became Christian Rome, Chris- tian Rome would also become imperial Rome ; the Christianity which would centre itself there would not be a gospel of liberty ; it would be a law proceeding from a human head and enforced by human pains and penalties. The shadow of this fear crossed his path and added to his sad- ness. Disappointed in his own people ; suspected in the Christian Church ; more than once deserted by the churches which he had founded ; disappointed in his own earlier faith of Christ's speedy coming ; beginning to question whether he would not be disappointed in his second expectation of the con- version of the Roman Empire ; alone ; imprisoned ; forbidden the liberty of action in which such a soul as his finds relief ; and already beginning to fore- shadow defeat in that which was vital to him — the liberty wherewith Christ makes free — he writes this letter to the Philippians. It records Paul's religion under trial. It would not have been strange if such a man in such circumstances should have written a letter like the Forty-second and Forty-third Psalms. It would not be strange if in this letter were found hope struggling with despair in the alternate cry, " O God, my soul is cast down within me ! " and the answer, " I shall yet trust in him who is my God." What do we find? Joy — thanks : and this is the motif of this symphony, which runs through it all : — "I thank my God upon my every remembrance of 312 PAUL THE APOSTLE you, ahvays in every supplication of mine on behalf of you all making my supplication with joy for your fel- lowship in furtherance of the gospel from the first clay until now ; being confident of this very thing, that he which began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ : even as it is right for me to be thus minded on behalf of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, ye are all par- takers with me of grace. For God is my witness, how I long after you all in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus. And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment ; so that ye may approve the things that are excellent ; in order that ye may stand the test of the light, nor cause others to stumble, even unto the day of Christ ; being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are through Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God." 1 Joy sings through this letter from beginning to end. This is the song of the apostle whom one might well expect to have been discouraged, and ready, if not to abandon hope, to cling to it with despair. He has told the Corinthians that the last enemy to be destroyed is death; the last enemy has been destroyed for him. He fears him no longer. " For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if to live in the flesh, — if this is the fruit of my work, then what I shall choose I know not. But I am in a 1 Phil. i. 3-11. THE LETTER TO THE PHILIPPIANS 313 strait betwixt the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ ; for it is very far better : yet to abide in the flesh is more needful for your sake." ^ I have stood by the bedside of men who wished to die, and who, coming back to life again, saw recovery as a defeat ; and I have stood by the bed- side of men who wished not to die, and to whom the going was like a crucifixion. But here is a man who, when death knocks at his door, says, Come in and I will rejoice ; stay out and I will re- joice ; for to live and continue in my work is good, but to depart and be with Christ is still better. He tells the Philippians what is Christian life and Christian character in a passage which is often quoted for its doctrinal bearing on the person of Christ, but which, as Paul used it, is chiefly an exposition of what should be the spirit of the Christian : — " Be intent within yourselves on this on which Christ Jesus was intent, who, although formerly he bore the form of God, yet did not think that this equality with God was something to be eagerly clung to, but emptied himself of it, so as to assume the form of a servant, in that he became like unto men, and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross." ^ This the mind — not to count even equality with God a prize to be seized upon ; ready to step down from any office or any rank, how high soever it be, in order to serve others ; ready to empty one's self 1 PhU. i. 21-24. 2 Phil. ii. 5-8. 314 PAUL THE APOSTLE of scholarship, wisdom, place, honor, emoluments, so that by emptying himself he may fill others. Easy to preach ; not so easy to live. But when one has this life, then he can say, as Paul says a little later, " I know both how to be abased and how to abound." That is a difficult knowledge. There are some men who know how to be abased and walk in humility ; there are some men who know how to abound and walk in wealth and larpfe- ness of life ; but to know how to go from the val- ley to the mountain top and from the mountain top back into the valley again, and go singing all the time, alike in fog and sunshine, alike in dark- ness and light — who knows this secret, save him who has the mind which was in that One who emptied himself and was made in the form of a servant ? and where in human history will you find the man who shows more of this mind of Christ Jesus than this Apostle Paul ? And yet he does not count himself to have it, he only counts himself eagerly to desire it : — " Howbeit what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss by reason of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord : through whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which proceeds from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which proceeds from God and is bestowed upon faith : that I may know him, and THE LETTER TO THE PHILIPPIANS 315 the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death ; if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead." 1 Observe the strange climax ! First, the power of Christ's resurrection; next, the fellowship in his suffering ; last of all, conformity to his death — this the highest, this the most desired. " Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect : but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold on him : but one thing, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I j^ress on toward the goal unto the prize of the upward caUing of God in Christ Jesus." ^ As Matthew sat at the receipt of customs, and Christ came and touched him on the shoulder and said, " Follow me," and he left his table and fol- lowed, so Paul conceives himself as sitting in the market-place, and Christ coming and touching him and saying, " Follow me," and himself rising up to follow him. Yet he always follows a fleeing Christ ; always drawing nearer, yet always seeing Christ still on beyond ; always hearing the voice crying to him, " Onward ! forward ! " rejoicing even in the dangers and the failures and the dis- appointments, because out of them grows a larger, a richer, a diviner life. Do we not wish that Paul had told us how we 1 Phil. iii. 7-11. 2 ptii. iii. 12-14. 316 PAUL THE APOSTLE might enlarge this life of ours ; how in our poverty, in our imperfect Christian experience, we might grow into the larger, richer life ? These words "Have faith in Christ," have almost lost their meaning ; they are too conventional ; we do not un- derstand ; we want some plain, practical, simple directions how to cultivate in ourselves this life that will rejoice in wrestling, in conflict, in disap- pointment and in sorrow ; that shall follow on and never attain, and yet always rejoice to follow on ! Paul gives it to his friends and readers : — " Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatso- ever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; whatever is vir- tuous, and whatever is praiseworthy, think on these things. Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace shall be with you." ^ Look out, he says, upon this world. You may look on its bad side, its cruel side, its shameful side, but there are other things to see. There are pure things and honorable things, there are glori- ous things and heroic things ; there are noble sides to human nature and splendid sides to human life. Look on those things, think on those things, feed on those things, and then, thinking, feeding, look- ing, seeing, do those things, and the peace of God shall dwell with you. Paul is acquitted. The right to preach the 1 Phil. iv. 8, 9. THE LETTER TO THE PHILIPPIAN8 317 gospel is triumpliant. And he goes his way, and travels as far west as Spain, preaching; and comes back again ; and three or four or five years later is rearrested and brought again to Rome. The era of cruel persecution has set in ; the charge against Nero of setting: fire to Rome Nero has determined to escape by putting it upon the Christians. Paul is brought to trial, and there is no offense found in him, save only this, that he is a Christian. And now he has no hope — or shall I rather say, no fear ? — of acquittal ; now he sees that presently he shall indeed depart and be with Christ, which is far better ; and he sums up the whole story of his life, all his past, and the whole prophecy of his life, all its forelooking in one luminous sentence in his second letter to Timothy : ^ " I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which God the righteous Saviour will give to me, and not to me only, but to all them that love his appearing." The whole of Paul's theology is summed up in that last parting word of his to his friends in Jesus Christ. Life is a battle — fight it bravely ; life a course — run it eagerly ; life a faith-keeping — hold it firmly; but do not think to win the righteousness by your battle, by your race, or by your faith-keeping : God will give it to you ; it is his free gift, if you simply love him and wish to see him. 1 Whether he wrote the letter or not this sentence is thoroughly Pauline in its spirit. CHAPTER XVII CONCLUSION In bringing this volume on the life and epistles of Paul to a close, I purpose, in this chapter, to indicate the relation of his theological teaching, as here interpreted, both to the theology which jDre- ceded and to that which has followed it. Paganism has generally represented God or the gods as wrathful with men because of their sins. It has represented, therefore, the necessity of ap- peasing that wrath in order to secure the forgive- ness of sins. The religious ceremonials of pagan religions, with few if any exceptions, have been, not for the purpose of ascertaining the will of God, or of praising him, or even of confessing sin to him, but chiefly for the j^urpose of placating his anger and avoiding the evil consequences which would come from that anger. They have generally also assumed a great gulf between man and God, and the necessity of some intermediary to mediate between man and God or the gods ; and these inter- mediaries they have called priests, the object of the priest being to represent man to God, because man was so estranged from God by his sins that he could not himself come into the presence of God or the gods. CONCL USION 319 Thus has grown up the system of sacrifices and of priests, with all that which has gathered about them. The essential principles of Mosaism — that is, of the teaching of Moses, as it is to be found in the oldest book of the Bible, the Book of the Cove- nant ^ — struck at the heart of this whole expiatory conception. Its fundamental declaration was this : God is a righteous God, and he demands righteous- ness of his children, and he demands nothing else. On the one hand was the affirmation that, no mat- ter what sacrifices are offered and no matter what priests are employed, if man is not righteous he will not appease God's wrath, and will not be satis- factory to him. On the other hand was the decla- ration that, if man is righteous, if he obey God's law, if he does do what God has told him to do, God will ask nothing else, he will be satisfied. By obedience and only by obedience can man be recon- ciled to God, and be acceptable to him.^ Thus there were two conceptions presented be- fore the world : First, the conception that God or the gods are angry and must be satisfied by sacri- fices offered to them ; second, the conception that God is a righteous God and is satisfied by obedi- ence to his law. These two intermingled in the Jewish nation, and out of them grew the Levitical system. In this system the original and simple teaching of Moses was radically modified. The 1 Exodus XX. -xxiv. 7. ^ See for example Ex. xv. 26 ; Lev. xxvi. 3 £P. ; Deut. xxviii. IflF. 320 PAUL THE APOSTLE Levitical system insisted upon sacrifices, but very- much simpler sacrifices than did the pagans. The pagans measured the value of sacrifice by the cost of the thing sacrificed. The Levitical system reversed this ; it forbade giving to God an imper- fect gift of little value to the giver, but it put no emphasis on the cost of the gift: a man might offer a bullock or a lamb or a pair of doves or a sheaf of wheat. The value depended, not on the thing offered, but on the spirit of the offerer. But still, under the Levitical system, sacrifices were required, and in its later development they were required to be offered in one place (a certain tem- ple in Jerusalem), and they were required to be offered through a certain priesthood appointed for that purpose, and no one else was permitted to approach the Almighty with those sacrifices. The priesthood was necessary ; the sacrifices were ne- cessary. Thus the old paganism, modified by Mosaism, was wrought into the Levitical law. Against it the prophets protested again and again. Again and again they declared of Jehovah that he desired not sacrifices, that the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; again and again they repeated, in substance, the declaration of Micah, " What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God ? " Thus there were in Jewish history three systems — the pagan system, the Mosaic system, and the in- termingling of the two in the Levitical system. When Jesus Christ came to the world, he re- CONCL USION 321 peated the teaching of the Old Testament prophets. So far as we know, he never offered a sacrifice him- self, and he never advised others to offer sacrifices. When men confessed to him their sins, he told them their sins were forgiven ; never did he send them to the priest to make the offering for sin which, under the Levitical code, as under the pagan sys- tem, was regarded essential in order to secure the forgiveness of sin.^ He thus disregarded, though he did not directly assail, the pagan and the Levit- ical system. And, further, he undermined it by denying its fundamental postulate. He always represented God as a Father who is ready at once to receive the erring child the moment he returns to his Father with contrition and confession. ^ But he went far beyond Mosaism, even as it had been interpreted by the most radical of the prophets. Mosaism had said. You must render yourself acceptable to God by obedience to law. But Christ in the Sermon on the Mount declared that obedience to external law is not enough. A man might not commit adultery and yet might be impure. A man might not be guilty of profanity and yet might lack in simplicity of nature. A man might not kill and yet be wrathful. Nothing, he said, will satisfy the law of God except purity of heart. " Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees," that 1 The case of the leper told to show himself to the priest is no exception. Luke xvii. 14. See ante, p. 192. r? 2 Luke XV. 20 fE. 322 PAUL THE APOSTLE is, unless there is something very different from and something far beyond obedience to laws which you suppose God has issued from his judgment throne, your righteousness will not avail. You must have an inward life. Your outward life must flow from this inward life. And then, in the close of the Sermon on the Mount, Christ tells his disci- ples how this inward life is to be obtained. As a father will give to the child that which it asks, so the heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those that ask him.^ " Ask, and ye shall receive ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Life is God's gift. Ask for it, obtain it, then live it. This is the Sermon on the Mount. The disciples, however, did not understand ; and after Christ died they interpreted this message of the gospel through Mosaism, and later theology modified it to make it harmonize with Leviticalism. To Paul above all the apostles we owe the inter- pretation of this gospel of Christ, as contrasted with paganism, with Leviticalism, and even with Mosaism. According to Paul, God gives his own life freely to all who are willing to receive that life. This gift of life Paul customarily calls grace, a word identical in origin with the word gratis, which we have borrowed from the Latin. It means free gift. Paul, then, declares that God gives life as a free gift. It is not to be purchased. The pagan is wrong in thinking that it must be pur- 1 Luke xL 13. CONCLUSION 323 chased by great sacrifices ; the Levitical law is wrong in thinking that it must be purchased by any sacrifice ; and the Pharisees are wrong in thinking that it must be purchased by obedience to law. It is not to be purchased at all. There is no price to be paid for it. It is not bought by a sac- rifice, nor by obedience, nor by repentance ; it is not bought at all. God gives life to all who are willing to receive it. And this willingness to re- ceive it, this desire to possess it, this determination to have it, this choice of it with all which that choice involves, this is faith. So Paul says the pagan is wrong, there is no wrath of God to be ap- peased by sacrifice ; the Jew is wrong, there is no distance from God to be bridged by a priest and an altar and a Jewish ritual ; the Pharisee is wrong, there is no satisfaction of God to be purchased, no reconciliation with him to be bought, by obeying the laws which he has issued. We are simply to take the free gift of God — his life — and then live freely, spontaneously, naturally, because we have received it. " Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." ^ Hardly had the Roman Empire been nominally converted to Christianity, before the northern bar- barians conquered imperial Rome. Then began a gradual process in which the paganism of the northern barbarians and the Judaistic Christianity of Rome, that is. Paganism, Judaism, Mosaism, and what I wiU call Paulinism, intermingled to 1 Rev. xxii. 17. 324 PAUL THE APOSTLE make historic Christianity. The days of our week borrow their titles from paganism. Monday is Moon's day ; Sunday is Sun's day ; Tuesday is Tiw's or Zeus's day ; Wednesday is Odin's day ; Thursday is Thor's day ; Friday is Freyja's day ; Saturday is Saturn's day : each a day dedicated to a pagan god or goddess. It is not possible that we should have borrowed so much of our life from paganism as to have entitled the very days of our week by the names of pagan deities, and not bor- rowed something of their thought and incorporated it in our theology and our ecclesiasticism. If our secular life became thus pervaded by the traditions of a northern paganism, it ought not to surprise us that paganism entered our church services, our sys- tems of theology, and our church life. By the fifteenth century Christianity was so modified by the legalism of Judaism and by the paganism of the barbarians that it is difficult to say how much of the Christian churches was Christian and how much was pagan. They had borrowed certain essential features from paganism. Christian theologians believed and taught that God was a wrathful God, whose wrath must be appeased. They believed and taught that a great gulf stretched between this God and his children, so that he must be interceded with by the Son, and the Son must be interceded with by the Virgin Mary, and the Virgin Mary must be interceded with by the saints, and the saints must be interceded with by the priests. So far had ecclesiastical teachers gone from the teach- CONCL USION 325 ing of Christ that God is like the father who ran out to meet the wayward son when the son turned toward home.^ It is true that pagan sacrifices were no longer offered, but there was a temple and an altar. It is true that the Levitical sacrifices were no longer of- fered and no bloody torrent poured down from the altar to be carried away by underground conduits ; but in place of these bloody sacrifices was what is known as the bloodless sacrifice of the mass. The doctrine was taught that the priest, who must be the intermediary between man and God, offered in every communion service a real sacrifice in which he poured out the actual blood of Christ and in which he broke his actual body. The sacrifice was offered afresh every Sabbath day. That is the doctrine of the mass in the Roman Catholic Church to the present time. While thus theologians borrowed theology and ceremonialism from paganism, they borrowed legal- ism from the Jews. One could reach the mercy of God only through the intercession of priests. He could reach it only through a bloodless sacrifice. But he could also reach it only by obedience to the laws of God as they were embodied in an elaborate ritualism. The disciple must come to the priest ; he must tell the priest what he had done, and the priest prescribed the things which he must do to 1 This is not saying that this was the official and authoritative teaching of the Roman Church ; but it would be easy to show that it was taught, without serious protest, in the Roman Church. 326 PAUL THE APOSTLE win back the lost favor of God — the penances he must suffer, the money he must pay, the pilgrim- ages he must make, the duties he must perform. Thus there was in mediae valism an intermingling of paganism and Judaism, but an intermingling also of Christianity. For under the Greek philo- sophy no prayers, no entreaties, no sacrifices, could avail to placate the wrath of the avenging Nemesis following close on the heels of the sinner. But in mediaevalism there was mercy. Let the sinner es- cape to the cathedral doors, enter, lay hold, as it were, on the horns of the altar, submit himself to the priest's direction, accept the benefit of the bloodless sacrifice of the mass, obey directions and perform the prescribed penance, and he would have mercy ; the avenging Nemesis would stay his foot- steps, the penalty would not fall upon him, he would be forgiven. Thus mediaevalism borrowed forgiveness from Christ, law from Judaism, sacri- fice from paganism, and intermingled them in one common amalgam. In the sixteenth century arose Luther. He had studied the Bible ; especially the Gospels and the writings of Paul. He had been spurred to read them by the wretchedness of a heart tossed and tortured by the belief that he must buy the favor of God. He learned from Paul and from Christ another lesson — the lesson of the unbought love of God. He repudiated the whole intercessory system, the whole sacrificial system, the whole legalistic system of Bome, and declared that no CONCLUSION 327 intercession was necessary. Every man shall give account of himself ; that was his first declaration. There is nothing to be paid for God's favor and * forgiveness : that was his second. Justification by faith was his fundamental tenet ; the doctrine that it is enough to accept the life which God freely gives. Thus Christianity received a fresh equipment of life through Luther. Lutheranism was a revival of Paulinism. If all Protestants had been as radi- cal as Luther, the Christian world would have made more rapid progress toward Christian life and Christian liberty. But progress in the world is very slow, and Protestantism resumed in a dif- ferent form phases of paganism and Judaism from which Luther would have emancipated it. It pre- sently divided into two streams, and in these two streams were seen, in varying ratios, the pagan element of sacrifice and the Jewish element of law. On the one hand, there still remained in the Lu- theran and the Anglican communions the temple, the altar, the sacrifice, though greatly modified from the Roman Catholic forms. On the other hand, there remained in the Puritan churches the conception of law : the notion that men cannot be acceptable to God except by obedience to certain laws, ceremonial or ethical. Sometimes it was, You must be baptized by immersion or you cannot enter the church. Sometimes it was. You must pay particular observance to a particular day or you cannot be a good Christian. Sometimes it 328 PAUL THE APOSTLE was, You must obey the Ten Commandments, or the epitome of the Ten Commandments — the two commandments, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself — or you cannot receive the love of God. But in all these forms of teaching, the doctrine was taught that the only way to win God's love is by obedience to God's law ; that his love must be bought by obedience, ceremonial or ethical. The doctrine that God's love is freely given to the undeserving was practically, if not in words, denied. Thus there grew up in the Reformed Churches these two elements intermingling with Christianity which we have seen before intermingling — the paganism that demanded a sacrifice, and the legal- ism that demanded obedience, before one could be a child of God. And still the voice of Paul might have been heard, if the clamor of theological con- troversy had not deafened the ears of men, and still what Paul would have been saying would have been this : " For his great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins." Nevertheless there was more Chris- tianity, more gospel, more Paulinism, in the Re- formed churches than in the Roman Church, as there was more in the Roman Church than there was in the Jewish Church. Paganism said there must be sacrifices, and their value is dependent upon the cost of the object sacrificed ; men must be ready to sacrifice their own sons in order that CONCLUSION 329 they may placate the wrath of God. Leviticalism had said : An ox, a lamb, a pair of doves, a sheaf of wheat, will suffice. Romanism had said : Neither ox, nor lamb, nor pair of doves, nor sheaf of wheat is needed ; a bloodless sacrifice will suffice. Pro- testantism said : If you will only believe that some one else has offered the sacrifice for you, that is sufficient. The sacrifice was banished from the temple and the altar to the creed. I shall not attempt here to trace still further the progress of Paulinism. I shall not try to point out how the two Wesleys, John and Charles, brought a larger gospel to the world and re-repeated the message of Paul — the unbought love of God. They taught, indeed, that there had been a sacrifice and that it was necessary, but they taught that the sacrifice had provided a free gift of love and life for all, which all might have who would take it. They gave Paul's message of free grace, though they based it on a foundation other than that of Paul. I shall not try to point out how this mes- sage of free grace was repeated again by Coleridge in philosophy ; by Robertson and Maurice and Erskine, prophets of the Old World ; by Horace Bushnell and Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks, prophets of the New World. It is not necessary further to elucidate my proposition that the history of actual organic Christianity through the ages is the history of the intermingling of these three conceptions: The pagan conception of God as one whose wrath must be satisfied by a sacri- 330 PAUL THE APOSTLE fice ; the Jewish conception of God as a Lawgiver who can be approached only by obedience to his laws ; and the Christian conception of God as a Father who gives life freely to all who will accept the gift. Still these three ideas are strangely intermingled in our conglomerate theology. Still the gospel of God's infinite and unpurchasable love finds its way gradually, slowly, but surely, to the hearts of the children of men. For Paul was not only in ad- vance of his own time ; he is still in advance of all times. Wherever we find in modern theology the doctrine taught that man can be saved only by a sacrifice offered to placate the wrath of an angry God, we find a relic of paganism. Wherever we find the doctrine taught that man can trust the love of God only as he has first proved himself a righteous man by obeying the law of God, we find a relic of Judaism. Wherever we find men put- ting up an altar and a sacrifice and a priest, and insisting upon it that only through the altar, the sacrifice, and the priest can one come to God, we find a relic of paganism. Wherever we find men putting up a law, whether ceremonial or ethical, and teaching that there is no way to acceptance with God except through water baptism — sprin- kling or immersion — or that there is no acceptance with God except by compliance with some ritual or- ceremony, or insisting that the essence of the gospel is the Ten Commandments, or the epitome of the Ten Commandments — Thou shalt love the CONCL USION 331 Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul, and thy neighbor as thyself — insisting, in other words, that the essence of the gospel message is not what God does for man, but what man should do for God, we find essential Judaism. And wherever we find the message that God is infinite and eternal love, that the way to his heart is always open, that he gives life without price, whether we find it in the free gospel of the Methodist, or in the large and spiritual teaching of such ministers as Brooks and Beecher and Maurice and Robertson, or in such movements as the Keswick Movement, so called, or such ministries as the ministry of the so-called Higher Life, or such theologies as the misnamed New Theology, we find a revival of Paul's teaching. Whatever there is in the teaching of Jesus Christ that seems to confirm the notion that a sacrifice is necessary to appease the wrath of an angry God — and confessedly there is very little such in his teaching, almost nothing but his institution of the Lord's Supper, and his interpretation of it in the sixth chapter of John — it is capable of a much clearer, simpler, and more rational and spiritual interpretation. Wherever there is such language in Paul's epistles, it is because he uses the lan- guage of a philosophy he does not believe in order that he may counteract it. And wherever it is found in the Old Testament, it is the expression of an as yet imperfect spiritual apprehension of God and God's love as the secret of man's true life. There is a sacrifice. But it is not a sacrifice 332 PAUL TEE APOSTLE which man offers to God ; it is a sacrifice which God offers for man. There is an intercession. But it is not an intercession which man must make to secure the favor of God ; it is the in- tercession which God makes with man to bring his erring child back to him again. There is a priest^ if a priest means one who stands between God and man, to bring man and God together ; but this priest comes from God to man in Jesus Christ to reveal the divine love, infinite and eternal, to his blind and erring child, not from man to God to find a mercy hard to be entreated. There is a law of God — the law of his own in- finite and blessed life ; the law which we observe, not that we may receive that life, but because we have received it. The earth does not yield its flowers to beseech the shining of the sun ; the sun bathes the winter-clad earth that the earth may be clad in flowers. This is the gospel of Paul. By God's free gift we are saved ; " not of works ; we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works." Earth gets its price for what earth gives us : The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in ; The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us ; We bargain for the graves we lie in. At the devil's booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold ; For a cap and bells our lives we pay ; Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking : 'T is heaven alone that is given away, 'T is only God may be had for the asking.^ 1 James Kussell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal. CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS U. S. ) ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO. Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 1 1012 01252 4825 Date Due h R 3 B 23 44 r' ; '^ J^ - . niTTifnttrTu mm^'y^x-f"'-^-' ^ m %"M':^IMm ,5^i ?v^ '■' •■-'/•^' ■;"v'V",Vi-.-,''"r''>f'Bv '''•l';!(;;i^-vli!;^i;;fWii;^l;-\*^^