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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY
Gift of Frank R. Luckey

THE AUTOGRAPHS
OF SAINT PAUL

BY
MARCUS D. BUELL
Profeisor New Testament Greek and Exegesis Boston University
School of Theology

New York: EATON & MAINS
Cincinnati: JENNINGS & GRAHAM

Copyright, 1912, by
MARCUS D. BUELL

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CONTENTS PAGE
Preface  7
Paul the First New Testament Critic. 10
Paul's Sign-Manual  12
The Salutation as a Sign-Manual  14
Paul's New Epistolary Form  15
Can We Apply Paul's Tests?  17
Luke as Paul's Fidus Achates  20
A Common Fourfold Emphasis  21
The Genesis of Paul's Gospel  22
1. Grace Through Christ  23
2. The Immanence of Christ  24
3. Faith in Christ  27
4. Apostleship to the Gentiles  30
A Common Threefold Emphasis  32
1. Paul the Prophet  33
2. Paul the Teacher  35
3. Paul the Organizing Genius  39
Salient Psychological Traits Compared 44
1. The Mind of Paul  45
2. The Heart of Paul  47
3. The Masterful Will of Paul  54
The Autograph Portrait  59
5

6 CONTENTS PAGE
The Date of the Epistles  62
The Two Epistolary Groups  66
The Epistles to Timothy and Titus  71
1. Historical Difficulties  72
What "Sealed the Lips of that
Evangelist"?  73
2. Psychological Difficulties  81
3. Anachronisms  82
4. Ecclesiastical Anomalies  83
5. Linguistic Anomalies  84
The Second-Century "Paul"  89
The Hands of Esau?  90
The Plain Man's Conclusion  91

PREFACE
Paul the tent-maker, working on
Cilician canvas at night in Thes
salonica, Corinth, or Ephesus, would
show an individuality in his cutting
and stitching, one may believe, quite
distinct from that of Aquila or any
other fellow workman. Just so when
his hand held a pen, instead of a
knife or a needle, his writing must
have had a character all its own, as
he himself frequently intimates. And
even more distinctive, he makes us
aware, is the molding touch of his
inner life of thought, feeling, and
purpose upon the content of his writ
ing in vocabulary, sentence structure,
and doctrinal accent and emphasis.
Multitudes of busy people, includ
ing those recently enrolled in Adult
Bible Classes, just beginning to feel
anew the fascination of God's varied
7

8 PREFACE
and unique revelation of himself in
the life, thought, and career of indi
vidual human souls as portrayed in
the divine Record, will find stimulus
and suggestion in this little book, it
is hoped, for a more intimate study
of the rare and wonderful personality
of Paul, who in a real sense lay quite
as close to his Master's heart as did
John the beloved disciple, and who,
for that reason was divinely chosen to
be the first to translate into the lucid
and plastic forms of thought and
feeling then current in the Greek and
Roman world, God's final message to
humanity, "spoken of old unto the
fathers in the prophets, and at the
end of these days spoken unto us in
his Son."

J^JJi^AJiM ZvV/jUXM^

THE AUTOGRAPHS OF
SAINT PAUL
"Whose is this image and super
scription?" This simple but luminous question,
when put by Jesus, instantly con
jured up in his hearers' minds, as
they scrutinized the worn effigy and
dim lettering on the paltry piece of
silver he held in his hand, the august
personality of Tiberius Csesar and the
vast and complex fabric of contem
porary Roman life, law, and civili
zation. Whose is the superscription of the
thirteen earliest books of the New
Testament? The answer is, "Paul's."
Whose is the image — that is, the
individual mind, heart, and will — one
finds bodied forth in these documents
superscribed with this name? What
is the living network of contempora-
9

10 THE AUTOGRAPHS
neous racial, national, and religious
conditions, and what the unique per
sonal history which superscription and
the mental and spiritual image asso
ciated therewith presuppose? For
every reader of these thirteen docu
ments to whom their subject-matter
is more precious and significant than.
any Roman coinage of silver and
gold bearing the effigy of the emperor,
these questions touching date and
authorship, as a part of the reason
for the hope that is in him, have
more than an academic interest.
Paul the First New Testament
Critic
Now it is an interesting fact too
little noticed that Paul himself was
the first one to turn attention to
the purely critical questions that have
to do with the date and authorship
of his own epistles, which comprise
one third of the whole New Testament.
The critical question of authenticity

OF SAINT PAUL 11
had, for the apostle's immediate read
ers, as it has for his latest, an im
portant practical side. Very early,
the discovery was made that his name
was a good one to conjure with.
Some one at Thessalonica, we know,
took advantage of this fact when,
soon after the apostle's first visit,
excitement ran high among his con
verts on account of a rapidly spreading
belief in Christ's immediate visible
return to earth. Although Paul had
repeatedly admonished them that no
man could predict the -day, certain ex
tremists began boldly to declare that
the actual hour had already struck.
They based their startling announce
ment not only upon their own private
interpretations and revelations (2 Thess.
2. 2), but also upon alleged written
communications connected with the
name of Paul or with that of one of
his companions. Obviously, that was
a situation demanding decisive action
such as is disclosed in 2 Thess. 2. 15,

12 THE AUTOGRAPHS
where Paul not only adjures his
Thessalonian disciples to "stand fast,
and hold the traditions which ye
were taught, whether by word or
epistle of ours," but repeatedly "com
mands" them (3. 4, 6, 10, 12) to pay
strict heed to the instructions con
veyed in his letters, in such words
as these: "And if any man obeyeth
not our word by this epistle, note
that man" (3. 14). The question of
Pauline authorship, therefore, what
ever it may mean to others, had be
come a matter of grave concern to
these first readers.
Paul's Sign-Manual
With the facts concerning Paul's
epistolary habits in mind, let the
language he uses here be carefully
examined. First. So far as we know, he never
wrote an anonymous letter. Every
one of the thirteen epistles begins
with his name, thus: "Paul unto the

OF SAINT PAUL 13
church of the Thessalonians" (1 Thess.
1. 1; 2 Thess. 1. 1).
Second. He cautions his readers
that in every genuine letter of his
the customary closing salutation will
be found written in his own hand
rather than in that of his amanuensis
(Rom. 16. 22), and will thus serve as
his personal signature. "The saluta
tion of me Paul, in mine own hand,
which is a SEMEION [sign-manual] in
every epistle."
Third. He intimates that not only
will this closing salutation, serving as
a signature, appear in his own hand
writing, but that the salutation itself
will not be the stereotyped formula
commonly employed for closing an
ordinary letter, namely, the Greek
"ERROSTHE!" ("Farewell"), but will
take an original and personal form
of Paul's own, namely, the Greek
word "CHARIS!" ("Grace to you!").
"The salutation of me Paul in mine
own hand: which is my sign-manual

14 THE AUTOGRAPHS
in every epistle. Thus I [always]
write: 'The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with you all!' "
In four other epistles Paul calls
the attention of his readers in a
similar way to his handwriting as a
visible token of authorship, namely,
Gal. 6. 11; 1 Cor. 16. 20; Philem. 19j
Col. 4. 18.The Salutation as a
Sign-Manual
The custom of authenticating a
letter by appending to it a salutation
or sentiment of personal regard,
instead of one's bare signature, and
putting such a salutation in one's
own - handwriting, was universal in
Paul's day. Thus there is a papyrus
letter now in the Postal Museum
at Berlin, written in the very year
of this Second Epistle of Paul to
the Thessalonians, by an olive or-
chardist in Egypt, which ends as

OF SAINT PAUL 15
does the apostle's, with a personal
salutation in a different handwriting
from that found in the body of the
document. Indeed, we find Wilcken,
the chief German authority on papyrus
and ostraca documents, declaring that
among both Greeks and Romans the
distinguishing mark of a letter, as con
trasted with other kinds of writing,
was the fact that it bore not only
the name of the writer, but also a
formula of salutation in the writer's
own hand (Griechische Ostraka I
Buch, S. 82 Leipzig, 1899).
Paul's New Epistolary Form
The salutation, "Grace to you!" can
be as fully established as true, dis
tinctive, and personal a voucher of
Paul's individuality as any peculiar and
personal trait of his handwriting. Thus
in no fewer than seventy-five passages
in his epistles the word "grace" is used
as denoting the undeserved and forgiv-

16 THE AUTOGRAPHS
ing love of God for repentant sinners
whether Jews or Gentiles, who are per
sonally united to Christ by faith; while
neither in the Septuagint, the Greek
apocryphal books, nor even in the syn
optic Gospels does the word occur in
the Pauline sense; and even in the
Acts the author refrains from the
use of this term in Paul's peculiar
sense until he reaches the period and
the realm of Paul's own proclamation
of "the gospel of the grace of God."
It is equally significant that in the
same book the pillar apostles, even
when addressing a circular letter to
Paul's own Gentile churches in Syria
and Cilicia (Acts 15. 23), avoid Paul's
personal form of salutation, "CHARIS"
("Grace!") for the ordinary secular
formula, "CHAIREIN" ("Greeting!")
employed both by James in his epistle
(1. 1) and Claudius Lysias, the mili
tary tribune, in his official report to
Felix, the Roman governor (Acts 23.
26).

OF SAINT PAUL 17
Paul's exclusive and recurrent use
of the word "CHARIS" ("Grace") as
a formula of salutation and mark of
personal identity is not unlike the
terse sentiment which the Black Prince
coupled with his signature in a docu
ment which he signed in A. D. 1370:
"De par homont ich dene" ("With
high honor do I serve"). What more
appropriate salutation, as sounding
the innermost deeps of his life in
Christ, and concentrating into one
phrase the ruling passion of Paul's
apostolic ministry, could have been
devised? Can We Apply Paul's Tests?
Let us now consider the facilities
of the first readers and of the modern
reader respectively for applying these
several tests for external and internal
evidence. It is obvious enough, then, that any
church official holding in his hand a
manuscript letter purporting to have

18 THE AUTOGRAPHS
come from Paul's hand, could tell by
merely glancing at the first line whether
Paul's name was there; just as easily,
in fact, as can any modern reader with
his printed copy.
In the same way and with like
facility, both the ancient reader of
the original manuscript and the modern
reader of the printed copy could de
termine whether the closing salutation
took the conventional stereotyped form
(such as "Yours truly" in English
letters) or that of Paul's own formula
of final greeting, "Grace to you!"
In applying the third, the hand
writing test, the earliest readers of
the manuscript letter would, of course,
have manifest advantage over later
readers, who would have no access
like theirs to the original document
itself, but only to copies of the same.
Thus Paul's way of writing in such
a document so small a Greek word as
"CHARIS," would be as distinctive,
one may believe, as his look, his

OF SAINT PAUL 19
gesture, or his intonation when he
pronounced the word in saluting a
group of Christians. These same first
readers would also have two other
incidental tokens, which would not
survive the process of copying and
gathering the epistles into a collection
for church use, namely, the address
on the outside of the papyrus sheet
and the day and date in the last line
on the inside.
In applying the psychological test,
"Is the letter like Paul? Does it bear
the marks of his spirit?" not all the
advantages can be said to be on the
side of the ancient reader, even though
he may have known Paul's living
voice and have been personally con
versant with his teaching. For one
thing, none of the earliest readers
would be acquainted, as is the modern
reader, with an entire collection of
Paul's epistles; nor could any of his
immediate readers, save Timothy and
Titus, have had any such lucid, con-

20 THE AUTOGRAPHS
tinuous, and consistent a view of
Paul's whole missionary work, as is
presented to the modern reader in the
Acts of the Apostles.
Luke as Paul's Fidus Achates
Now, it is to be borne in mind
that the method of authenticating his
epistles, which Paul indicated to his
first readers, namely, the observation
of their characteristic internal, as well
as their external traits, is for his
modern readers by no means an ob
solete one. The book of Acts in those
vivid glimpses of the great apostle,
which were first caught by a keen-
eyed traveling companion and co-
laborer, beginning at the psycho
logical moment when he first crossed
into Europe of the Gentiles and only
ending with those two years' ministry
in the heart of the Roman world,
furnishes an incomparable basis for
comparing the portrait of the apostle
drawn by a contemporary, with those

OF SAINT PAUL 21
unconscious self-revelations made by
Paul himself in his extant writings.
One sees emerging from this phenom
enal historical sketch of a long com
plex of providential events with ever
growing distinctness, the lineaments of
a unique and powerful personality,
none of whose words, sentiments, or
acts are at variance with those which
are everywhere disclosed in the epistles.
A Common Fourfold
Emphasis
The most careless perusal of the Acts
cannot fail to show, first of all, that
this historical writer has put the same
extraordinary stress upon the initial and
fundamental spiritual event in Paul's
career, namely, the self-revelation of
Jesus on the way to Damascus, which
the apostle himself has everywhere
employed in his correspondence. This
careful writer Luke, who is never
deficient in his sense of proportion,
has made plain in his threefold repeti-

22 THE AUTOGRAPHS
tion of the story of Paul's conversion
— once in descriptive language of his
own, and once and again in that of
the apostle himself — what is his esti
mate of the transcendent importance
of that crucial event, in a way quite
in keeping with such strong expressions
as those found in Paul's epistles.
The Genesis op Paul's Gospel
One understands, then, why both
Luke and Paul make so much of the
incident on the Damascus road. As the
diamond-mine, when laid open to the
light of day, discovers the place where
mighty primordial forces of pressure
and heat once transformed sooty
carbon into flashing crystal; so there
was to be found the hiding place of
transcendent, transforming spiritual
forces. There and then were evolved
in the soul of Gamaliel's pupil four
dominant religious passions, corre
sponding to four new psychological
facts in his religious consciousness.

OF SAINT PAUL 23
1. Grace Through Christ
What exceptional prominence Paul
gives to grace in Christ, the first of
these dominant religious passions, is
seen in the fact already noted, that
this idea is made the keynote with
which every letter begins and ends.
Nor is this all. Elaborate and pas
sionate discussion of the necessary and
fundamental contradiction between
faith and works is made a conspicuous
feature in such extensive sections as
Rom. 3. 27 to 4. 25; Gal. 2. 16 to 4. 7;
Phil. 3 1-16, where whole chapters are
devoted to the elucidation and enforce
ment of the doctrine. Incidental allu
sions like those in Eph. 2. 9; Rom. 9.
11, 32; 11. 6; 2 Tim. 1. 9 abound, and
show as unmistakably as does the
recurrence more than seventy-five
times, of the word "grace," whose
heart-music is in this insistent refrain.
Who can fail to see how Luke's
historic setting of the scene on the

24 THE AUTOGRAPHS
Damascus road explains Paul's own
emphasis upon that grace of God in
Christ, which he makes the Alpha and
Omega of every epistle; and how first
in that fiery furnace of transforming
religious experience, when as yet "a
blasphemer and persecutor," he "be
held the glory of God in the face
of" the crucified and risen Christ,
the glory of God's grace to repentant
sinners? (2 Cor. 4. 6.) And so it
was that the "chief of sinners found
mercy" (1 Tim. 1. 13-15) and in his
own "body of death" (Rom. 7. 24)
"where sin abounded, grace did much
more abound" (Rom. 5. 20).
2. The Immanence op Christ
Again there is no more distinctive
feature of Paul's epistles than the
remarkable emphasis and reiteration
found in nearly all of them touching
the doctrine of the believer's personal
union with the risen Christ through
his Spirit. Thus the preposition "in"

OF SAINT PAUL 25
is employed, in the novel and unique
sense of intimate relationship with a
person, more than one hundred and
fifty times. Deissmann (Paulus, S., 86)
has noted that every one of the nine
teen functions which Paul ascribes to
the Holy Spirit in the life of the
human soul, such as the inspiration
of faith, righteousness, joy, peace,
love, is referred in like manner by
Paul to the risen Christ dwelling
within. What more authentic auto
biographic echoes, therefore, could one
hear than in such phraseology as the
following: "He that is joined unto
the Lord is one Spirit" (1 Cor. 6. 17) ;
"I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I that live, but
Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2. 20);
"I long after you all in the tender
mercies of Christ Jesus" ? See Phil.
1. 8; Gal. 4. 20; Phil. 2. 5; Rom. 9. 1;
2 Cor. 5. 14; Rom. 8. 35; 1 Cor.
9. 1.
The same emphasis upon the im-

26 THE AUTOGRAPHS
manence of Christ reappears in the
unique expression common to the Acts
and Paul's epistles "the Spirit of Jesus."
In Acts 16. 7 Luke says the "Spirit of
Jesus" did not suffer Paul and his
companions to go into Bithynia, just
as in the previous verse he affirms
that "the Holy Spirit" forbade them
to speak the word in Asia. The same
identification of the risen Christ with
the viewless, omnipresent, manifold
and gracious work of the Holy Spirit
(so variously delineated in the Old
Testament) is the keynote of the whole
book, beginning with Peter's declara
tion at Pentecost: "This Jesus did
God raise up, . . . and having received
of the Father the promise of the Holy
Spirit, he hath poured forth this,
which ye see and hear" (Acts 2.
32, 33). As Paul in 2 Cor. 3. 18,
when referring to the inner trans
formation of the soul united to Christ,
does not distinguish Christ from the
Spirit, but speaks of the Lord Jesus

OF SAINT PAUL 27
and the Spirit as one, so Luke repre
sents the risen Jesus as revealing
himself and shaping the course of
Paul, not only on the Damascus road,
but at subsequent critical junctures in
his whole career from Damascus to
Rome (Acts 22. 21; 16. 7; 18. 9, 10;
19.21; 20.22; 23. 11; 27.24).
3. Faith in Christ
The third religious passion awakened
in the soul of Saul at his conversion,
which sounds an autobiographic note
one hears in all his correspondence, is
the term "faith" employed in his own
peculiar sense of the reaction of the indi
vidual soul in response to Christ's rev
elation of himself as Saviour and Lord
(Gal. 1. 16). Indeed the salient features
of the Damascus-road experience could
be delineated, and not inadequately,
in the incidental language of the epis
tles. Thus it is the epistles that tell
us of an initial state of ignorance
and unbelief (1 Tim. 1. 13) when the

28 THE AUTOGRAPHS
god of this world had blinded his
eyes (2 Cor. 4. 4), so that the cross,
the token and proof of God's for
giving love, was a stumbling-block to
him (1 Cor. 1. 23). They inform
us that it pleased God to take away
the scales of prejudice, the veil of
unbelief upon his heart (2 Cor. 3. 16)
and to reveal Christ in him (Gal. 1. 16),
and by the renewal of his mind (Rom.
12. 2), endow him with new powers
of spiritual vision, even the mind of
Christ (1 Cor. 2. 16). Just as the
ethereally sensitive antennae of the
wireless apparatus put the modern
man in mysterious but immediate touch
with a friend far off in the trackless
wastes of the sea, so the faith alike
of the Damascus road and of the
epistles, is that spiritual faculty which
makes Christ at home in Paul's heart
(Eph. 3. 17), and Paul at home with
Christ in the viewless heavenly places
(Eph. 2. 6).
Here again the author of the Acts

OF SAINT PAUL 29
shows in whose company he has been.
The one thing needful for the blinded,
bewildered Saul in the house of Ana
nias; for the Philippian jailer ready
to perish by his own hand; for the bar
barians of Lycaonia, sacrificing to false
gods; for the Athenians, ignorantly
worshiping an unknown god; for the
publicans and harlots of Corinth, the
proconsul Sergius Paulus, Felix and
Drusilla, Festus, King Agrippa and
Bernice was to enter the "door
of faith which God had opened unto
the Gentiles" (Acts 14. 27), the faith
in "the Lord Jesus Christ by which
they should be saved" (16. 31) and
sanctified (26. 18) ; that faith by which
"every one [Jew or Gentile] that be
lieveth is justified from all things,
from which ye could not be justi
fied by the law of Moses" (13. 39);
that faith which not only "made the
lame man strong" (3. 18), but the
faith by which Christ reproduced in
fullness of measure his own holy Spirit

30 THE AUTOGRAPHS
of courage in the heart of Stephen
(5. 5) and his own goodness in the
soul of Barnabas (11. 24).
4. Apostleship to the Gentiles
Of all the fervors bound up with
the very heartstrings of Paul, the
amazing mercy of the Christ of the
Damascus road, in that he called him
to be his apostle to the Gentiles, is
by no means the least conspicuous
characteristic of the epistles that go
by his name. Paul feuvently declares
that he was "separated from his
mother's womb and called through
God's grace to receive the [personal]
revelation of God's Son, that he might
preach him among the Gentiles" (Gal.
1. 15, 16). Three times over in his
letters he makes his apostolic call as
distinctive and personal a matter of
divine favor as the forgiveness of his
sins. In ten of the epistles we find
their author referring to himself as an
apostle, in nine of them employing the

OF SAINT PAUL 31
term as an official title; and in six
ascribing his apostolic appointment to
the call or will of God.
Multifarious and strong as is the
apostle's increasing insistence upon his
premundane divine appointment (Eph.
3. 1-13; Rom. 15. 15-18) as the
apostle to the Gentiles, the stress
which his companion Luke lays upon
the same theme is not less notable. It
is he who tells in historic terms more
vivid and detailed than even Paul
himself used in his epistles, of
the providential election, preparation,
phenomenal guidance, and super
natural protection of Paul as Christ's
apostle to the Gentiles. It is in the
Acts that one reads of the initial
revelation to Ananias that the cruel
persecutor was Christ's own "chosen
vessel to bear my name before the
Gentiles and Kings" (9. 15); of the
two Jerusalem messages from Jesus,
one in the temple — "I will send thee
forth far hence unto the Gentiles";

32 THE AUTOGRAPHS
and the other in the castle dungeon —
"Be of good cheer: for as thou hast
testified concerning me at Jerusalem,
so must thou bear witness also at
Rome" (23. 11); and of the timely and
cheering words heard in a stormy Medi
terranean midnight: "Fear not, Paul;
thou must stand before Caesar" (27. 24).
"The things which happened" unto
Paul on the road to Damascus, then,
left the permanent "marks of the
Lord Jesus" upon his individual soul,
the tokens of which are seen in the
fourfold doctrinal emphasis which is
laid upon the grace of God in Christ,
the immanence of Christ in the heart,
the saving potency of faith in Christ,
and Christ's call to apostleship, as well
in all the Pauline epistles as in the
contemporary history of the Acts.
A Common Threefold
Emphasis
Paul thinks of the ministry of Christ
as having, according to individual en-

OF SAINT PAUL 33
dowment, a threefold function: "First
apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly
teachers" (1 Cor. 12. 28; compare Eph.
4. 11). 1. Paul the Prophet
It cannot be denied that Paul, in
his revelations of his inmost con
sciousness, as truly and earnestly
classes himself with the prophets as
he claims for himself a place among
the apostles. He declares that it had
pleased God to call him from his
birth, just as he called Jeremiah to
the prophetic office, that he also should
be a "prophet of the nations" (Gal. 1.
15, 16). He knows a man in Christ
who was caught up, whether in the
body or out of the body, God only
knows, and given visions and revela
tions of the Lord of exceeding great
moment (2 Cor. 12) ; revelations which
in other generations were not made
known unto the sons of men, as they
are now revealed unto Christ's holy
apostles and prophets in the Spirit

34 THE AUTOGRAPHS
(Eph. 3. 5). Great is the boldness
of this apostle's prophetic speech.
He^ "speaks as of God, in the sight
of God," and by the "manifestation
of the truth commending ourselves
to every man's conscience in the
sight of God" (2 Cor. 2. 17; 4. 2).
Altogether sure of his authority, he
dares write to the Galatians: "Though
we, or an angel from heaven, should
preach unto you any gospel other than
that which we preached unto you, let
him be anathema" (Gal. 1. 8).
Turning to the Acts, one observes
that the apostle made the same im
pression upon his companion Luke,
namely, as being one who spoke with
prophetic insight and authority. His
first public appearance in the synagogue
of Damascus is in the role of one with
•jfaspjred confidence "proclaiming Jesus,
-that he is the Son of God," as later in
Jerusalem "preaching boldly in the
name of the Lord" (Acts 9. 20, 29). At
Antioch he is recognized by the Church

OF SAINT PAUL 35
as one of the Christian "prophets and
teachers" (Acts 13. 1). In Jerusalem,
in Antioch of Pisidia, and in Bithynia
he is forbidden by the Spirit to speak
the word; and again at Corinth, "con
strained by the word" and commanded
by the Lord Jesus not "to be afraid,
but to speak and hold not his peace"
(Acts 22. 18; 16. 6, 8; 18. 5, 9), quite
after the manner of the Old Testament
prophets. Thus, in the Acts Paul's
career closes as it begins — with a refer
ence to his prophetic activity where he
is last seen, "preaching the kingdom of
God, and teaching the things concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ with all bold
ness" (Acts 28. 31). Obviously Luke
would have his readers recognize in
Paul the speech .of one whose lips have
been touched with the sacred fire of
prophetic inspiration. ,
2. Paul the Teacher
The Paul of the epistles claims for
himself not only that he is an apostle

36 THE AUTOGRAPHS
and a prophet, but also that he is a
teacher. So he styled himself in his
speech to the mob at the temple gate in
Jerusalem, "Brought up in this city,
at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed
according to the strict manner of
the law of our fathers" (Acts 22. 3).
So he calls himself at the very end
of his life, "A teacher of the Gentiles"
(1 Tim. 2. 7). Accordingly, he reminds
the Colossians that his is not only
the prophetic function of "admonish
ing," but also that of "teaching"
every man (Col. 1. 28), as he does
the Romans also when he tells them
that it was a specific "form of teach
ing whereunto ye were delivered"
(Rom. 6. 17) when they received what
he denominates "my gospel" (2. 16),
and warns them against those whose
influence is "contrary to the doctrine
which ye learned" (Rom. 16. 17).
Everywhere are disclosed the teacher's
habits of thought and his characteristic
turns of expression, as well as the versa-

OF SAINT PAUL 37
tility, adaptability, and mental alert
ness of the born and trained master,
accustomed to varieties of mental dull
ness, stubbornness, prejudice, and con
ceit. He that runs as he reads would
say that no closet philosopher, and no
philosophical writer like his contempo
rary Philo, ever wrote these epistles.
The Paul of the Acts also, like the
Paul of the epistles, is nothing if
not a teacher. Luke's insistence that
Paul was divinely called, prepared and
appointed "a teacher of the Gentiles,"
is quite as emphatic as that of the
apostle (1 Tim. 2. 7), in his first account
of Paul's conversion where he quotes the
very significant words of Jesus in the
vision of Ananias: "He is a chosen
vessel unto me, to bear my name
before the Gentiles and kings" (Acts
9. 15). Again, he cites words of
Paul's own, not found in any of his
epistles, which remind his readers of
his signally providential foreordination
and training for his lifework. Thus one'

38 THE AUTOGRAPHS
is reminded of his birth as "a Pharisee
of Pharisees" in Cilicia, the meeting
place of East and West; of his birth
right as a "citizen" of Tarsus not only
but also of the Roman empire, and of
his residence in his most impression
able years at that seat of Greek and
Jewish learning, and his resultant in
timate acquaintance with the indus
trial, commercial, social, political, and
religious life and ideals of the three
civilizations — Jewish, Greek, and Ro
man — in such telling quotations from
Paul's lips as his answer to the sur
prised query, "Dost thou know Greek?"
in the words, "I am a Jew, of Tarsus
in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city"
(Acts 21. 37, 39), and his reply to
the astonished question of the military
tribune, Claudius Lysias, "Tell me,
art thou a Roman?" in the calm
response, "Yea ... I am a Roman born"
(Acts 22. 27, 28); and in utterances
such as these: "These have beaten
us . . , men that are Romans" (16. 37)

OF SAINT PAUL 39
and "I am standing before Caesar's
judgment seat. . . . No man can give
me up ... I appeal unto Caesar"
(25. 10, 11). With his Hebrew soul,
his Greek mind, and his Roman will,
Paul was divinely endowed as no
other disciple had been, to hold forth
the gospel of Christ's cross before the
whole world, as did the inscription
over the head of the Crucified, "written
in Hebrew and Greek and Latin."
3. Paul the Organizing Genius
Finally, the Paul of the epistles
betrays the peculiar gift of a born
leader and commander of men. The
organizing genius is one who knows
his men not only as a mass but also
as individuals. Such is the Paul of
the epistles. His is "the harvest of
a quiet eye." He sees clear through
every one of the Jewish and Roman
officials he encounters, whether of high
degree or low; his Claudius Lysias,
his Thessalonican politarchs, his strut-

40 THE AUTOGRAPHS
ting, petty Philippian magistrates, his
friendly Asiarchs and town-clerk of
Ephesus, his proconsuls Sergius Clau
dius and Gallio, his Palestinian over
lords : Felix, the rapacious and cunning
"fox," and Festus, the weak-kneed; his
kind-hearted centurion, Julius of the
Augustan cohort, and his bronzed ship-
captain of the Alexandrian corn-fleet.
Even better than any or all of these,
of course, Paul knows his own lieu-
tenarits, and every man and woman
of his rank and file on whom he has
ever set eyes. One finds their names
by the score in his letters; twenty-
eight of them at the end of the Ro
mans, not counting allusions to asso
ciated groups, where greetings to house
hold slaves are found side by side with
salutations to their well-to-do high
born masters, such as Aristobulus,
Narcissus, Chloe, and Philemon. One
sees in Paul, therefore, the Napoleonic
gift of touching and energizing the
living individual unit.

OF SAINT PAUL 41
And Paul exhibits the higher gift,
as did Alexander, Julius Caesar, and
Augustus, of coordination, combina
tion, and organization. There is no
Pauline epistle without personal mes
sages to individuals or exhortations
to the whole body, which remind one
of the drill-master molding the indi
vidual in the camp, and the general
on the field, seeking to kindle with
burning words the contagion of enthu
siasm and courage in the whole body
of troops. His very metaphors, based
as they are on the division of labor
and the coordination of living units
in the organization of an army or of
a great system of civil service; on the
master builder's selection and cunning
adaptation of diverse materials to a
structural plan; and his wonderful sim
ile of the human body, with its unity of
life and diversity of function (borrowed
from some Stoic teacher at Tarsus
perhaps) all show how deeplyTie had
meditated upon the necessity and diffi-

42 THE AUTOGRAPHS
culty, as well as the possibility, of
knitting together in the love of Christ
the mutually repellent individuals of
a household, a neighborhood, a church,
or a group of churches of differing
races and nationalities, "till we all
attain unto the unity of the faith,
and of the knowledge of the Son of
God, unto a full-grown man, unto
the measure of the stature of the
fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4. 13).
This organizing genius of Paul, the
apostle, prophet, and teacher, is as
conspicuous a feature of his portrait
as drawn in the book of the Acts as
it is in the epistles. At the very
beginning, before his conversion, he
comes on the scene with a matured
and comprehensive scheme for corpo
rate, nation-wide action in a carefully
planned campaign of inquisition and
doctrinal purification, covering not only
Judaea but the Diaspora as well.
Already, therefore, he is brought be
fore the reader's mind as one who

OF SAINT PAUL 48
thinks not merely in terms of the
local synagogue and Gamaliel's school,
but in terms of the whole Roman
empire. The very ground-plan of the
book of the Acts, indeed, is intended
to show how Christ's own imperial
design of giving his gospel to the
entire Roman world, first foreshadowed
at Pentecost in the gift of his Spirit
to representatives from every quarter
of the vast Roman domain and in
augurated by Peter and others, nec
essarily contemplated the emergence
in due time of Christ's own "chosen
vessel to bear his name before" the
Gentile world and its rulers. Accord
ingly, one is not surprised to be told
by Luke that Barnabas's narrower
scheme for evangelizing the synagogues
of his native island, when once under
Paul's preaching so influential a Gen
tile as the Roman proconsul has been
won to the faith, gives place to Paul's
bolder program for carrying the gospel
to the vaster region of the mainland

44 THE AUTOGRAPHS
to the northward. Thence onward
one follows with breathless interest
Luke's absorbing story of Paul's de
veloping and commanding apostolic
strategy (too bold in its conceptions
for Barnabas and Mark, as it was at
first for Peter, James, and John), a
strategy which, clearly discerning the
comprehensiveness of Christ's gospel
as divinely intended for the whole
world, and vindicating with masterly
argument and convincing demonstra
tion its adaptation to the Gentiles,
plants the cross of Christ in the
metropolitan centers of the four great
Eastern provinces of the Roman em
pire, one after another: Galatia, Mace
donia, Achaia, and Asia.
Salient Psychological Traits
Compared
One other class of psychological
tokens, which reveal personal identity
quite as distinctly as those thus far
considered, are those salient idiosyncra-

OF SAINT PAUL 45
sies of mind, heart, and will which
are found in the biographical data
respectively of Paul's letters and of the
Acts. 1. The Mind of Paul
The Pauline intellect, as disclosed
in the epistles, is the morning star
of the New Testament firmament.
No other harbinger of the Light of
the world has caught so much of his
own dazzling intellectual brightness.
Who of the apostles as fully understood
Jesus of Nazareth? Who so thoroughly
grasped the principles of his teaching
in their symmetry and their adapta
tion to the most varied and complex
relationships of Gentile and Jewish
life? What apostle had so vivid an
acquaintance with Christ's doctrines of
the Fatherhood of God and the brother
hood of man, as he whose heart grows
warm in every reference to "the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,"
and in every allusion to his fellow man,
whether "Greek or Jew, circumcision

46 THE AUTOGRAPHS
or uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian,
bondman, or freeman"? (Col. 3. 11.)
Who but he ever gave so lucid, com
pact, and comprehensive an exposition
of the Sermon on the Mount as is
to be found in 1 Cor. 13? Who saw as
clearly the bearing of his Master's
anti-Pharisaic teaching, namely, that
it is not one's diet but one's moral
nature that is the source of evil, as
did he who wrote the seventh chapter
of Romans? Who fathomed Christ's
filial and redemptive consciousness so
sympathetically as the discerning spirit
who speaks in Romans and Galatians
and Philippians? Where shall one
look for such insight into the august
and infinite majesty, holiness, and
mercy of God as in Ephesians, Colos-
sians, and Romans 9 to 11? It is
only in the Christology of John's
prologue and the opening chapter of
Hebrews that the depth and sublimity
of the Christology of the epistles is ap
proached; and in these latter there are

OF SAINT PAUL 47
not wanting transcendent vistas and
visions of Christ's unique glory quite
peculiar to the Paul of the epistles.
If it be asked whether Luke's Paul,
as seen in the Acts, was a person of
such phenomenal intellectual powers,
one needs only to sit down with him
in the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia,
or on the stairs of the Tower of Antonia
in Jerusalem, or on the curbstone
among the barbarians at Lystra, or
on one of the benches of the Areopagus
at Athens, and ponder meanwhile the
breadth, the depth, and the cogency
of the arguments employed, and note
the effects that follow, to be convinced
that the author of the Acts knew no
equal of Paul in the quality and
range of his mental powers.
2. The Heart op Paul
The hidden man of the heart en
shrined in these thirteen letters shows
a face such as his Master's was, in
moments when men saw his eyes blazing

48 THE AUTOGRAPHS
with anger, and his hps quivering with
sympathy (Mark 3. 5). Ever and
anon the tone and the vocabulary of
the epistles are those of vigorous
combat. To this letter-writer fife is
a race with swift and dangerous com
petitors; a stand-up fight with hard-
hitters (1 Cor. 9. 26); a personal
encounter with "messengers of Satan"
advancing as "angels of light" (2 Cor.
11.14). His normal condition is "fight
ings without," after the manner of
men with human "beasts at Ephesus"
and elsewhere (2 Cor. 7. 5; 1 Cor.
15. 32), for, though there is always
an "open door," there are "many
adversaries" (1 Cor. 16. 9). And
life is a "good fight" to be entered,
endured, and waged with zest. Nor
does the writer ever betray any penury
of expression when addressing those
whom he deems to be enemies of the
truth. One reads of "false brethren"
(Gal. 2. 4), of "false apostles, de
ceitful workers, fashioning themselves

OF SAINT PAUL 49
like Satan into angels of fight" (2 Cor.
11. 13, 14); of "dogs, evil workers and
the concision" (Phil. 3. 2), as to whom
the bitter wish is uttered that they
would be as consistent as were the
heathen priests of Cybele, who in
their fanatical zeal mutilated their
bodies (Gal. 5. 12), and of "enemies
of the cross of Christ, whose end is
perdition, whose god is the belly, and
whose glory is in their shame" (Phil. 3.
18, 19). Verily, here was a tempera
ment showing fierce and prompt re
actions against the enemies of God
and his righteousness. For "the man
or the angel from heaven" who should
"preach any other gospel" or "any
other Jesus" than he had preached in
Galatia and Corinth, and for any man
in Ephesus who did not regard the
Lord Jesus with warm human love
(note the Greek word in 1 Cor. 16.
22), the writer to each of these groups
promptly awards, as does the "Shig-
gaion of David" (Psa. 7), "mischief,

50 THE AUTOGRAPHS
violence," and "anathema" "upon his
pate" (Gal. 1. 8; 2 Cor. 2. 4).
The author of the Acts, however
disposed in his revision of gospel ma
terial, to minify the faults of the
original apostles, leaves no reader un
aware of this prominent trait of the
Gentile apostle, whom he first intro
duces as "breathing out threatening
and slaughter" (Acts 9. 1). Later
quotations from Paul's own hps keep
this idiosyncrasy of his temperament
in mind. One hears his indignant
outburst, as he fastens his eyes on
Elymas, the sorcerer: "0 full of all
guile and villany, thou son of the
devil, thou enemy of all righteousness!"
(Acts 13. 10.) Again, when Ananias,
the high priest, in response to Paul's
claim to an honest conscience, com
mands him to be smitten on the
mouth, the quick rejoinder: "God shall
smite thee, thou whited wall!" leaves
no one in doubt as to one tempera
mental trait of the speaker. So it is

OF SAINT PAUL 51
in Luke's report of Paul's defense
before Agrippa, where Paul himself
alludes to this same personal trait
of his in no ambiguous terms: "And
punishing them oftentimes in all the
synagogues, I strove to make them
blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad
against them, I persecuted them even
unto foreign cities" (Acts 27. 11).
Equally distinct are the disclo
sures which the epistles make of the
gentler side of their author's temper
ament, corresponding to its sterner
qualities. Thus he writes his converts
that both "night and day he prays
exceedingly that he may see their
face" (1 Thess. 3. 10). He calls
God to witness how he longs after
them "all in the tender mercies of
Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1. 8), whose "love
constraineth" him (2 Cor. 5. 14) to
"have them in his heart" (Phil. 1. 7),
"to die together and live together"
(2 Cor. 7. 3); to remember them "in
every supplication" (Phil. 1. 4); to

52 THE AUTOGRAPHS
inspire in him the "gentleness" of a
mother "nursing her own children"
(1 Thess. 2. 7), as well as the mother's
anxiety for their spiritual welfare, as
poignant as her own birth-pangs (Gal.
4. 19) and the unselfish devotion of
a father to his own children (1 Thess.
2. 11; 1 Cor. 4. 15), separation from
whom is "bereavement" (1 Thess.
2. 17), bad news from whom is death
(2 Cor. 1. 9) as good news is life
(1 Thess. 3. 8).
Does Luke know anything of his
great companion's warmth of heart?
Yea, verily! But for him, one remem
bers, we should not have known how
Barnabas, the first of all other apostles
to find in Saul that new tenderness of
soul wrought by his vision of Christ,
had joyously brought him to his fellow
apostles, who, as yet, were aware of
nothing but his sanguinary zeal; or
how a swift and arrowy word of
personal solicitude, "Do thyself no
harm!" in return for brutal treatment,

OF SAINT PAUL 53
had won the Philippian jailer to
Christ; and how Paul became the
ministering angel to two hundred and
seventy-six despairing souls on the
doomed Alexandrian freighter. If a
man's having friends proves that he
has shown himself friendly, then it
must have been the kindly demeanor
of Paul which mollified the native
military harshness and rigor of Julius
the Roman centurion, who "treated
Paul kindly, and gave him leave to
go to his friends and refresh himself"
(Acts 27. 3), and who afterward, when
the vessel foundered, disregarded the
soldiers' counsel that Paul and all
the rest of the prisoners should be
put to the sword, lest they should
escape (Acts 27. 42). And one likes
also to think that Julius had some
thing to do with Paul's obtaining, on
his arrival in Rome, special permission
to abide those "two whole years in his
own hired dwelling" (Acts 28. 30).
Does Luke ever forget in any place to

54 THE AUTOGRAPHS
exalt his great friend while hiding
himself (as John also does in the Fourth
Gospel), by the use of the more modest
pronoun "we"? As the latter disciple
counted the love of his divine Master
the perennial miracle of grace, so the
author of the Acts must have gloried to
the very end of his life in the fact that
his human master, Paul, called him
his "beloved" physician (Col. 4. 14).
One is glad to note also how Luke has
rescued out of a sore controversy, much
of which he feels constrained to pass by
in silence, the same precious adjective,
"beloved" as the one which the twelve
in an official document applied to Paul
(Acts 15. 25). Who fails to identify
the human source of the glow reflected
in Luke's face whenever he refers to
Paul? 3. The Masterful Will of Paul
No other temperamental trait is
more in evidence in the thirteen epis
tles than that of a personal will of

OF SAINT PAUL 55
superb driving power. A glance at
the Greek concordance will show that
he uses that word for "power," from
which our English words "dynamo"
and "dynamite" are derived, four times
as often as any other New Testament
writer. A similar instinctive fondness
for other words suggestive of force,
moving under the sway of conscious
intelligence, is equally noticeable.
Thus the word from which our English
term "energy" is derived, occurs no
less than twenty-five times in these
epistles, while it is used once by each
of three other writers. An especial
favorite in the epistles is the verb
"will," while in Eph. 1. 19 all four
of the most expressive Greek words
for efficient force are called into requisi
tion, and even these are reenforced
by a strong superlative: "the exceed
ing greatness of his power to us who,
believe, according to that working of
the strength of his might which he
wrought in Christ." Ex pede Her-

56 THE AUTOGRAPHS
culem. Intuitively in dealing with
the issues of the spiritual hfe the
author of these epistles adopts the
idioms of the toiling and the strong-
willed: the field laborer (1 Thess. 2. 9),
the Grecian athlete (1 Cor. 9. 24),
and the soldier (1 Cor. 9. 7). It is
nothing less than an imperial cam
paign which appeals to the ambition
of the writer, who, when he has "fully
preached the gospel from Jerusalem
round about to Ulyricum" (Rom. 15.
19), "must also see Rome" (Acts 19.
21). But Rome, on which his heart
has been set "these many years," is by
no means the ultimate goal, but only
a station on his way to the pillars
of Hercules (Rom. 15. 24).
The iron hardness of will which
this good soldier of Jesus Christ uni
formly manifests in all the epistles
is by no means passed unnoticed in
the Acts of the Apostles. One finds
Luke quoting Paul's favorite metaphor,
which more than any other would

OF SAINT PAUL 57
suggest to Greek readers the familiar
but inspiring figure of a racer, with
concentrated gaze and muscles tense,
struggling with dogged and exhaust-
less resolution toward a distant goal.
So Luke notes how Paul spoke of
John the Baptist as on the last lap
of his race (Acts 13. 25), and lets
us hear him tell the Ephesian elders
that his mind was set on "finishing
the run" (see the Greek) which the
Lord Jesus had entered him for, just
as we note how, at the end of it all,
he tells Timothy, his Greek comrade,
that he had at last "finished his run"
(2 Tirh. 4. 6). Indeed, this Pauline
figure of steady progress, under the
inspiration of a great ideal and in
the face of desperate odds, may be
said to have shaped Luke's whole
account (from Acts 9 onward) of
Paul's heroic advance. Thus, while
the epistles only incidentally name the
chief stations of the triumphant jour
ney "from Jerusalem, and round about

58 THE AUTOGRAPHS
even unto Illyricum" (Rom. 15. 19),
Luke fills in the intervening spaces
with graphic and detailed accounts of
the way in which this born "kicker"
against goads (Acts 26. 14), this strong
"wrestler" (Eph. 6. 12), this doughty
"boxer" (1 Cor. 9. 26), this hard
"fighter with beasts" (1 Cor. 15. 32)
— as we hear (and as Luke himself
may well have heard), the author of
these epistles calling himself — met and
overcame one after another such an
endless variety of obstacles, personal
and impersonal, as no returning Ulysses
of those Eastern Mediterranean coasts
could recount; from that midnight
hour on the Damascus wall, when he
was let down in a basket (Acts 9. 25),
to that noonday some twenty years
later, when he passed through the
open gate in the wall of Rome, "an
ambassador in chains" (Eph. 6. 20)
indeed, but taking courage and thank
ing God (Acts 28. 15), "who always
leadeth us in triumph in Christ, and

OF SAINT PAUL 59
maketh manifest through us the savor
of his knowledge in every place"
(2 Cor. 2. 14). One notes too that
Luke tells, in his own independent
way, of "the secret," as Paul calls it,
of his unconquerable energy of will,
namely, that again and again at criti
cal points of the apostle's progress
he was strengthened from within (Phil.
4. 12) by timely words of cheer and
encouragement from the risen Lord
Jesus. The Autograph Portrait
The distinctive traits of personal
identity disclosed in the thirteen epis
tles which go by the name of Paul
the apostle have now been shown to
be such as the following: a peculiar
emphasis upon the Christian doctrines
of grace, faith, personal union with
Christ and his own apostolic call;
the consuming rehgious passion of a
prophet, a teacher, and an organizer;
an intellect of rare penetration, dis-

60 THE AUTOGRAPHS
crimination, and range; and, befitting
both, a moral will of exceptional
vitality. As a portrait painter, there
fore, observing the salient and dis
tinctive lines and contours of light
and shade, and the gradations of
color in an individual living human
face, and reproducing these separate
and varied elements upon his canvas,
one by one, in a complete and con
sistent whole, finds he has fixed there
that subtle but unmistakable attribute
of the invisible spirit which we call
individuality, so that even the un
learned and ignorant, looking at his
handiwork, say with one accord, "It
is he!" even so, the altogether ex
ceptional, distinctive, but mutually
harmonious traits which lurk here and
there in unstudied variety on well-
nigh every page of these wonderful
letters, leave in the average mind no
suggestion of a blurred and tenuous
figment of the imagination, like an
idealized and artificial character in a

OF SAINT PAUL 61
novel or a play, but the sharp and
deep impress of a living, breathing,
thinking, feeling person of flesh and
blood. The impression of historic
and objective truth is immeasurably
strengthened, moreover, as has been
shown, when one finds in the pages of a
contemporary writer like Luke wholly
independent but equally unstudied and
undesigned allusions to identical traits
of character, in like harmonious combi
nation, and that, moreover, in a person
whose words and deeds are seen to be
part and parcel of whole series of pro
gressive historical actions, of many of
which the epistles give no intimation.
It is as if one had on his wall, side
by side, two portraits of the great
Rembrandt — one of them being one
of the dozen or more likenesses which
were made by the artist himself, from
time to time; and the other ones painted
by a contemporary, representing the
shapely and noble head not only, but
showing in the background the canals

62 THE AUTOGRAPHS
of Amsterdam, with sky, atmosphere,
and architecture; with moving figures
of boats, domestic animals, men,
women, and children; and with every
costume and shape true in all details
to the period and the place. Even
so, the portrait head looking forth
from the epistles agrees with the full-
length landscape figure of the Acts.
"As face answereth to face in water,"
so does the Paul of the epistles to
the Paul of Luke.
The Date of the Epistles
The epistles of Paul are in their
form and contents widely different
from mere subjective and abstract
meditations written down by a recluse,
living apart from men. Like all real
letters from man to man, every one of
them bore in its original autographic
form, the name of their author and
that of the person or persons ad
dressed, besides a particular day and
date. Every one deals not only with

OF SAINT PAUL 63
"fears within," but also with very
critical and altogether unique "fight
ings without." In fact, they reflect
situations so varied, peculiar, and com
plex in local color and circumstantial
detail as to lend little aid or comfort to
theories of fictitious or pseudepigraphic
invention, or of opportunist inter
polation. Thus the little Epistle to
Philemon in its incidental naming of
no less than ten persons, some of them
in the circle of the reader and others
in that of the writer; in its allusion
to circumstances and events in the
life of his correspondent, his wife, his
son, his household slave Onesimus, as
well as in vivid glimpses of the author's
situation for the time being as a
prisoner in Rome; and especially in
its wonderfully delicate and discrim
inating personal appeals and sugges
tions to Philemon and the members
of his household, may serve as a
typical example of the intricate but
natural way in which every one of

64 THE AUTOGRAPHS
these epistles is interlaced with a
contemporary local situation, quite be
yond the skill of any pious romancer,
conjured up by the exigencies of
academic theory.
So general is this fact admitted as
respects the historical warp and woof
of real events, which these epistles not
only presuppose, but which are actually
confirmed by contemporary New Tes
tament hterature, that there is no need
here for any detailed discussion. It
is but uttering a commonplace to say
that the external conditions of time
and place, and the characteristic fea
tures of ethnic, national, municipal,
social, and religious life incidentally
mentioned in the Epistles to the Gala
tians, the Thessalonians, the Corinth
ians, the Romans, the Colossians, the
Philippians and Philemon answer with
substantial consistency and reasonable
completeness to the vicissitudes and
successive stages of Paul's missionary
career, as described or suggested in his

OF SAINT PAUL 65
letters; as they also correspond to the
graphic and circumstantial outline of
that same career sketched in the second
part of the Acts. Particularly striking
is the agreement disclosed in many
obviously undesigned coincidences, as
Paley long ago pointed out. Thus,
for example, the spirited defense of
his apostolic authority in Galatians
fits no situation so well as that critical
juncture described in Acts 15. Just
so the excitement concerning Christ's
second coming, and the attacks upon
the motives of Paul and his colaborers
in First and Second Thessalonians,
find their natural explanation in the
unique circumstances depicted in Acts
17. In like manner the local con
troversies, party divisions and insinua
tions against Paul, which are discussed
in First and Second Corinthians, are
not inconstent with the turbulent con
ditions suggested in Acts 18; just
as the markedly different features
of the false doctrinal teaching com-

66 THE AUTOGRAPHS
bated in Colossians are such as one
would expect from the heated and
unstable religious atmosphere of the
Asia of Acts 19. 20. Similarly, the
Epistle to the Romans is exactly such
a retrospective and summarizing state
ment of Paul's apostolic teaching to
the end of A. D. 55, as the recapitu
lating topographical and historical no
tice in Acts 19. 21 calls for. So also
in Philippians the reminiscences of
persistent generosity, the references to
differences between two female leaders,
and the pointed allusions to the present
phase of his trial before the imperial
court, answer to no other church so
well as to that whose traits appear
in Acts 16, and to no other period
so naturally as to the two years
mentioned in Acts 28.
The Two Epistolary Groups
In all ages of the Church the dis
tinctive religious, spiritual, and mental
idiosyncrasies of the thirteen epistles

OF SAINT PAUL 67
which go by Paul's name and coun
tersign, have satisfied the uncritical
reader, eager most of all as he is,
for that "scripture which is profitable
for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
for instruction which is in righteous
ness" (2 Tim. 3. 16), that every one
of them came in its present form from
the hand of the apostle whose name
they bear, and that each of them was
intended for the person or group of
persons to whom they are severally
addressed. It was not until the middle
of the second century, when Marcion
omitted from his Scripture manual for
the use of his churches the pastorals
(First and Second Timothy and Titus),
that any discrimination or preference
was expressed; and it was not until
about the same time that Pantaenus
suggested that Hebrews was an epistle
of Paul's, accounting for the omission
of the apostle's name from the docu
ment on the novel but very dubious
ground that since Christ, and not

68 THE AUTOGRAPHS
Paul, was the real apostle to the
Hebrews, the Gentile apostle had not
ventured to connect his name with
this epistle, as he does with his epistles
to the Gentiles. As for Marcion's
preference for the ten earlier epistles
of Paul, that fact cannot be reckoned
as expressing doubt on his part touch
ing the Pauline authorship of the
three pastorals, any more than his
exclusion from his manual of every
one of the books of the Old Testament
and every one of the New Testament,
except the first ten Paulines and a
mutilated copy of Luke's Gospel, can
be ascribed to doubts as to the author
ship of those other fifty-five biblical
books. We know very well from his
contemporaries that his reason for his
wholesale omissions in the latter case
was subjective and doctrinal rather
than historical and critical. It is
probable, therefore, that it was no
question of authorship, but such stress
as that in 2 Tim. 3. 16 on the value

OF SAINT PAUL 69
of the Old Testament for doctrine, such
strictures as those in 1 Tim. 4. 3 upon
ascetic teaching, and such denials as
that in 1 Tim. 2. 5 of all other media
tion between God and man save that
of Christ, had much to do with Mar
cion's omission of the Pastoral Epistles
from his collection of profitable biblical
writings. Marcion was, indeed, the
pioneer of all Bible societies that print
and circulate "parts" and "portions"
of Ahe Scriptures. The fact that
Eusebius, about A. D. 325, declares
that the pastorals are among the
New Testament books "accepted by
all" is in keeping with similar state
ments and specific citations reaching
back through Tertullian (200), Clement
of Alexandria (193), the Muratorian
Canon (190), Irenaeus (180), to Poly-
carp (110), and Ignatius (110).
Marcion's division of the Pauline
epistles into two groups (made un
wittingly perhaps), namely, the ten
earlier, whose historic origin, motive,

70 THE AUTOGRAPHS
purpose, content, local atmosphere,
and background are so variously illu
minated and confirmed by the con
temporary narrative material of the
Acts; and the three latest, the Pastoral
Epistles, for which neither the Acts
nor any other New Testament book
furnishes such corroborative material,
seems to have attracted little attention
from his remote era almost to our
own day. It may be said that the
beginnings of such a formal division
were first made by F. C. Baur in 1835.
In his case, as in that of Marcion, it
was a subjective prepossession which
gave motive and zest to his investi
gations and deductions. Applying to
the Pauline writings as a whole the
Hegelian philosophical formula con
cerning the three alleged necessary
stages of all historical processes,
namely, thesis, antithesis, and syn
thesis, he found himself constrained to
deny Pauline authorship not only to
the Pastoral Epistles but also to all

OF SAINT PAUL 71
but four of the other ten. In a sur
prisingly short time, however, with
a kind of poetic justice, his own
axiom of antithetic reaction began to
assert itself in his own academic house
hold, until in our own day the great
majority of his school admit and de
fend the Pauline authorship of Mar
cion's ten epistles, with lingering excep
tions here and there as to Ephesians
and Second Thessalonians.
The Epistles to Timothy and Titus
Now, while it may be affirmed that
the authenticity of the ten earlier
epistles has been removed from the
realm of debate by the exhaustive
investigations and discussions of the
last seventy-five years, it must be
acknowledged that, in the absence of
such illuminating and confirmatory
independent historical data as those
afforded by the Acts, the critical and
historical argument for the authen
ticity of the Pastoral Epistles can by

72 THE AUTOGRAPHS
no means be brought so near a demon
stration. The difficulties that beset
the purely critical and historical argu
ment are fivefold: historical, psycho
logical, chronological, ecclesiastical, and
linguistic. 1. Historical Difficulties
No place can be found either in
the narrative of the Acts or in the
historical framework of the other epis
tles for such references to persons,
places, and things as those to Timothy
and Ephesus in 1 Tim. 1. 3; to Trophi
mus and Miletus, and to Erastus and
Corinth in 2 Tim. 4. 20; to Tychicus
and Ephesus in 2 Tim. 4. 12; to Titus
and Crete in Titus 1. 5, and Nicopolis
in 3. 12, and to Apollos in 3. 13; and
to a cloak, books, and parchments
left by Paul at Troas, in 2 Tim. 4. 13.
The conclusion is inevitable, therefore,
that if Paul wrote the Pastoral Epis
tles, he must have been released at the
end of the two years' imprisonment

OF SAINT PAUL 73
at Rome referred to in Acts 28. 30,
and must have thereafter made new
visits to the shores of the iEgean, of
which no notice is to be found outside
those same epistles. The attempt to
vindicate the authenticity of the pas
torals on independent historical grounds
must therefore give place to con
siderations of no greater cogency than
a balance of probabilities on one side
and the argument from silence on the
other. What "Sealed the Lips of
that Evangelist"?
Was Paul released from custody at
the end of his first Roman imprison
ment for an eastward journey, accord
ing to his own confident expectation,
as voiced in Phil. 1. 25f.; 2. 24; Philem.
22; or was he executed? The writer
of Acts 28. 30 probably knew. Why,
then, did he not say what happened
at the end of the two years? One
can only guess at his reason for silence.

74 THE AUTOGRAPHS
If the theme of his second "treatise"
(Acts 1. 1) was the extension of the
gospel from Jerusalem to Rome (Acts
1. 8), then the phenomenal "two
whole years' preaching and teaching"
in Rome would certainly form a fitting
climax to his narrative. Nor can it
be said that such a climax would re
quire that the fact of his subsequent
death should be mentioned. It was
the living Paul who brought the Gen
tile gospel to the Capitol. Every read
er would know what became of Paul,
whether released or executed, but not
every reader would discover, without
such a reminder as that in Acts 28.
30, 31, that Paul's last two years in
Rome gave ideal completeness to his
whole apostolic ministry in the eastern
provinces of the empire. Again, it
may be urged that the apologetic
purpose as respects Roman public
opinion, which is obvious enough in
the Acts as a whole, would certainly
suggest the omission, especially .at

OF SAINT PAUL 75
the end of the treatise, of any
reference to the awkward and stub
born fact (if such was the fact) that
Paul, "the ringleader of the sect called
the Nazarenes," had been condemned
to death by the Roman court of last
resort. Especially after the persecu
tions which began under Nero, one
can understand how any mention of
this final reversal of the Roman policy
toward Gentile Christians in the case
of their great leader might be thought
to annul the force of the whole apol
ogetic argument. Once more, it has
been often suggested that, granting
Paul was acquitted and made journeys
to Spain and the East, Luke may
have reserved for a third "treatise"
some account of the progress of the
gospel westward. But may not Paul's
progress into Spain, even if it ever
took place, have proven, as did his
work in Athens, less opulent in such
results as would furnish adequate ma
terials for a suitable sequel to so

76 THE AUTOGRAPHS
stirring a history as that of the Acts?
In more than one case besides that
in which he alludes to Paul's meager
success at Athens, the author knows
how to maintain a judicious reticence
concerning the stony ground of in
difference, or the thorns of contro
versial spirit which caused the good
seed to yield little or no fruit. Nor
would Luke, who throughout the Acts
gives so exclusive attention to the
breaking of new ground, and makes
only bare mention of Paul's return
pastoral visits to Galatia, Macedonia,
and Achaia, be likely to find promising
material for a new chapter to be
added to that completed dramatic
history which culminated in the apos
tle's Roman ministry, in those details
of organization, administration, and
personal instruction, which form the
bulk of the Pastoral Epistles. The
dominant note of the pastorals, it
may be confidently declared, is in
keeping with the historical situation

OF SAINT PAUL 77
presupposed by them. No such pros
pect of new undertakings as those
referred to in the epistles of the first
imprisonment appears, no such re
quests for prayer that the writer may
show courage in preaching the Word;
but a turning almost exclusively to
the activities of others who are hence
forth to be his successors, and whose
first business it will be to train, gather,
and consolidate the scattered and un
disciplined forces called into being
by the earliest missionary labors. If
the roseate dream of "fully preaching
the gospel from Jerusalem round about
to Illyricum" not only, but from Rome
round about to the Pillars of Hercules
had failed of any adequate realization,
and "Paul the aged, and prisoner also
of Christ Jesus," saw at last that a
task far too great even for himself,
must be committed to other "faithful
men," then the diminishing vigor, the
spirit of resignation, the reminiscent
tone of the pastorals is quite consistent

78 THE AUTOGRAPHS
with one's conceptions of the last
stages of Pauline biography.
The Pastoral Epistles yield far too
few data for the construction of such a
supplementary and final chapter in
the hfe of Paul as would command
the assent of all scholars. AUusions
to new local situations, new events,
fresh developments in social and reli
gious life, the activities of persons
whoUy unknown to us, as well as new
developments in the character and
life of some whose names are known
to us, however transparent to the
recipient of these letters, must in the
nature of the case remain obscure
in many particulars to all others. But
if such obscurity occurs in Paul's ear
liest letters, in spite of all the sidelights
which the Acts afford, why should
the same obscurity be thought sur
prising in the pastorals, for which
there is no contemporary sidelight?
Examples abound. Who knows, for
instance, whether Paul visited Corinth

OF SAINT PAUL 79
in the interval between First Corinth
ians and Second Corinthians? Who
can name even one of the five syna
gogues in which Paul, as he informs
us, received forty stripes save one?
Who can tell us in what other two
provincial courts besides Phihppi, he
was beaten with the rods of Roman
lictors? (2 Cor. 11. 24,25). Who will
give day, date, and site on the Medi
terranean coast of any one of the three
shipwrecks to which he alludes? With
only the Epistle of Romans in his hands,
who would feel any surer that either
Paul's projected journey to Jerusalem
or the subsequent formidable voyage to
Rome was ever realized, than that
the proposed extension of his itinerary
into Spain ever took place? Who
would suspect, if he had, say only
the three Greek words of Phil. 1. 12
(translated "the things which have
happened unto me"), that they covered
in the readers' minds such a whole
series of stirring events as those which

80 THE AUTOGRAPHS
befeU him on that very real journey
to Jerusalem — his arrest there, his
two years' imprisonment in Caesarea,
and his memorable voyage Romeward?
The assumption is reasonable, there
fore, that allusions to persons, places,
and events found in the pastorals, as
well as in the other Pauline epistles,
however dark they may be to us, may
have been transparent and significant
enough to the recipients. If some
Luke had only seen fit to narrate
the events of that final chapter in
Paul's hfe, following his first Roman
imprisonment, it may fairly be sur
mised that as many missing links
in the chain of events would be forth
coming and as much light would be
cast upon allusions and phraseology
now otherwise difficult and incompre
hensible, as is the case with the mu
tual illumination one finds between
the Acts and the Epistles.

OF SAINT PAUL 81
2. Psychological Difficulties
That Paul should put so much
emphasis upon his claims to apostle-
ship in personal letters to such intimate
associates and trusted lieutenants as
Timothy and Titus, and that he should
exhort them touching matters of their
individual conduct, has been deemed
anomalous. But it is altogether possi
ble to hold, when one remembers the
bitterness and violence with which
Paul's apostolic claims were assailed
from first to last, that he had reason
to fear that even such devoted and
loyal associates as were these two,
would have difficulty in maintaining
the thesis on which he himself had
always based his gospel to the Gentile
world, namely, that God had revealed
that gospel to his apostle through
the risen Christ. Nor can it be thought
surprising if Paul, who had a whole
some fear that he himself after preach
ing to others, might be found a

82 THE AUTOGRAPHS
castaway (1 Cor. 9. 27), deemed it
"safe" and not "irksome" (Phil. 3. 1),
in view of infirmities of character
disclosed in the stress of actual service,
to utter plain warnings and exhorta
tions to those leaders to whom he
was committing so weighty a trust.
3. Anachronisms
The attempt has been made to
discover in the reference to "gnosis
[knowledge] falsely so called" in 1 Tim.
6. 20, and to the "different doctrine"
consisting in "fables and endless geneal
ogies" in 1 Tim. 1. 4, the hand of a
second-century writer, attempting to
controvert, in Paul's name, the gnos
ticism of Marcion or some later and
more developed form of the same
protean heresy. It is not difficult,
however, to show, as Hort has done
in his Judaistic Christianity, that the
language is as fully appropriate to
Jewish as to Greek ascetic doctrines,
and to the allegorical interpretations

OF SAINT PAUL 83
of bibhcal genealogies already current
in Paul's day.
4. Ecclesiastical Anomalies
Titus is told (1. 5) to appoint
elders in every city. The moral,
mental, and social qualifications of
bishops (who are also called elders)
and of deacons are set forth in First
Timothy and Titus. It has been
claimed that here is unwittingly be
trayed the notion of a monarchical
episcopacy broached by Ignatius in
the early second century. The fact
should not be ignored, however, that
Paul and Barnabas on their first mis
sionary journey appointed elders in
every Galatian city where they had
founded a church, as the necessary
first step in organization (Acts 14. 25).
It should also be noted that not long
afterward Paul exhorts the Thessalon
ians (1 Thess. 5. 13) to "esteem . . .
exceeding highly in love for their
work's sake" those who are "over

84 THE AUTOGRAPHS
them in the Lord," and that nowhere
in the Pastoral Epistles is to be found
any statement so strong, concerning
the esteem due to such officials. In
fact, the whole conception of the office
of church leader is quite primitive,
informal, and practical; emphasis being
exclusively laid upon those personal
gifts — moral, intellectual, and spiritual
— which in each community would
determine what persons would as lead
ers wield the most influence for good.
It is not too much to say that only
without bias or prepossession can one
discover in the Epistles to Timothy
and Titus any signs of ecclesiastical
development which could not have
taken place in any Pauline church
before the apostle's first imprison
ment. 5. Linguistic Anomalies
A notable number of words and
several set phrases occur in the pas
torals which are not found in the

OF SAINT PAUL 85
earlier epistles. Out of the 897 words
in the three epistles, some 171 words,
or nearly one fifth, are not found
elsewhere in the New Testament. This
looks formidable. The Epistle to the
Hebrews (covering seventeen pages to
twelve of the pastorals) has fewer
peculiar words. The Epistle of James
in five chapters has fewer than First
Timothy has in six. The Revelation
in twenty-two chapters has only 156
novel words. Findlay has shown
(Sabatier's Paul the Apostle), however,
that this species of verbal versatility
is quite characteristic of the acknowl
edged letters of Paul. Thus while
in the two early Thessalonian epistles
there appear five unique words to the
chapter, Romans, belonging to the next
chronological group, has seven; Colos
sians and Ephesians, later on, taken
together have eight; Philippians, later
still, no less than ten. So that one is
quite prepared by this variety and
copiousness of Paul's vocabulary for

86 THE AUTOGRAPHS
the thirteen unique words to the chap
ter that appear in the pastorals. The
remark of a modern physiologist
concerning Gladstone when in his
ninetieth year, that his brain never
grew old, might fittingly apply to
the brain of Paul the apostle. One
so much ahve as he, so responsive to
new situations, so capable of finding
language suited to every new kind
of experience should not be thought
of at any stage as furnished with
only a closed and fixed vocabulary.
If Xenophon, who in his roaming
about the Greek world used new
words in his later writings which do
not occur in his earlier writings, would
it be different with Paul the traveler?
If the vocabulary of the Thessalonians,
therefore, contains such reminiscent
echoes of Paul's earliest missionary
preaching in Macedonia as "wait for
his Son from heaven," "the wrath to
come," "the Lord himself shaU descend
from heaven with a shout," "eternal

OF SAINT PAUL 87
destruction from the face of the Lord,"
"and the man of sin be revealed";
and the Galatians and Romans sound
such characteristic key-words of the
Gentile apostle's life-and-death struggle
with the Judaizing teachers as "justi
fied by faith," "Christ is the end of
the law," "neither circumcision is any
thing nor uncircumcision but a new
creature," "crucified with Christ"; and
the epistles of the first Roman im
prisonment preserve such watchwords
of the defense against the new attacks
in Asia upon the sovereignty of Christ
and his exclusive mediatorial office, as
"fullness of the Godhead," "His body
the church," "principalities and pow
ers," "this mystery among the Gen
tiles which is Christ in you," "in whom
are all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge hidden," can it be thought
strange if the changing winds of heret
ical doctrine, which Paul predicts as
certain to blow over the churches of
Asia (Acts 20. 30) should call forth

88 THE AUTOGRAPHS
fresh formulas, which as aptly met
changed conditions of spiritual war
fare, as had those verbal weapons,
earlier forged by him? Who shall
say that new exigencies of attack and
defense would not demand new forms
of expression, such as "faith un
feigned," "good conscience," "sound
doctrine," "faithful is the saying,"
"made shipwreck concerning the faith,"
"the words of the faith," "strive not
about words," "foolish and ignorant
questions," "turn aside to fables,"
"maintain good works"? And can
anyone who remembers how deeply
all Asia had been shaken by the
ministry of the apostle, and how even
Paul himself "marveled" (Gal. 1. 6)
at the swiftness with which false teach
ing invaded his Galatian churches,
declare a space of three or four years
too brief to require such strategic
changes of terms and statements as
those found in the pastoral epistles?

OF SAINT PAUL 89
The Second-Century "Paul"
Biblical scholarship has confirmed
the unprofessional reader of the Pauline
epistles in his traditional confidence
in the apostohc authorship of the
first ten of the series, but in the case
of the last three has as yet furnished
him, in place of the great apostle
himself, only a spectral, timid, and
anonymous imitator, who, out of frag
mentary, random and casual ref
erences, admitted to be reliable, but
drawn from some unknown source, and
relating to persons known and un
known, and to some places visited and
others not previously visited by Paul,
and, finally, to such incidental and
trivial matters as a lost cloak, certain
missing books and documents (2 Tim.
4. 13), the state of Timothy's digestion
(1 Tim. 5. 23), and approaching in
clement weather-conditions (2 Tim. 4.
21), has concocted three spurious epis
tles, each bearing the familiar apostolic

90 THE AUTOGRAPHS
signature and countersign, his pious
aim in thus using Paul's name and
stray sentences from genuine letters
of his, being that he may thereby the
more sharply rebuke certain Gnostic
heretics living at some place in the
Roman empire at some time in the
second century. The Hands of Esau?
While the hypercritical critic may
insist that he finds second-century
hairs on the hand that wrote the
Pastoral Epistles, plain people who
have wintered and summered with the
Paul of the ten epistles, and who
carry his manner of speech in their
hearts as the blind patriarch Isaac
carried that of his beloved son Jacob,
will continue to say: "Nay, verily!
The voice is the voice of Paul!"
It seems probable that for a con
siderable time to come those for whom
the Scriptures possess more than a
dilettante or professional interest, but

OF SAINT PAUL 91
have to do with "business and bosom,"
will continue to find in the Pastoral
Epistles the image and superscription
of "Paul the aged," who, well aware
that "the time of his departure is
at hand," turns with strong yearning
to those to whom he is about to
transfer the unspeakably responsible
trust hitherto committed to himself;
whose heart burns stiU as of old
against new enemies of the truth of
the gospel intrusted to him, and whose
characteristic instinct for organization
and discipline is still a ruling passion
as strong as it was in the beginning
of the gospel in Galatia, Macedonia,
and Achaia.
The Plain Man's Conclusion
The autograph sentence which Jesus
stooped down and wrote in the dust
was no doubt soon obhterated by
the wind and the rain, but when he
arose and spoke with his tongue what
his finger had written, namely, "He

92 THE AUTOGRAPHS
that is without sin among you, let
him first cast a stone at her! Woman,
where are they? did no man condemn
thee? Neither do I condemn thee:
go thy way; from henceforth sin no
more" — who does not discover that
in those self-revealing words one has
a more complete and satisfying proof
of identity than one would have in
any facsimile reproduction of his hand
writing either in Aramaic or Greek
(if such diplomatic evidence should
ever be procurable), however exact
and faithful such transcript of his
autograph might be? What disciple
of Jesus, however wanting in the
technique of critical learning, on a first
reading in any language in any Chris
tian century, those "words of grace"
spoken to the woman taken in adul
tery, would not unhesitatingly ex
claim, as once the disciple did who
had lain on his breast, "It is the
Lord!"? The German privatdocent, of course,

OF SAINT PAUL 93
may be expected to go on diligently
cultivating "historic doubts." It is a
way he has for gaining notice and
academic promotion. Not even Na
poleon Bonaparte's existence as a real
person, or Shakespeare's authorship of
the works that go by his name is
permanently secure from learned at
tacks. The Lomans, Stecks, and Van
Manens will arise and learnedly and
boldly declare that the so-called Pauline
epistles were written, not by Paul,
but by another man in the second
century who took the name of Paul,
with the same motive of "love to
Paul" professed by that presbyter of
Asia Minor who composed the spurious
"Acts of Paul and Thecla," when he
was arraigned and deposed for his
attempted deception. It will continue
to be the fashion in certain quarters
to give ready assent, without due
challenge and investigation, to views
which, though not yet a generation
old, are, nevertheless, quite as deserv-

94 THE AUTOGRAPHS
ing of the reproachful epithet of "tra
ditional" as any that have come down
from the original recipients of Paul's
epistles. So the great Harnack warns
us both consciously by precept, and
unconsciously by example.
Consciously, when he writes :
"It is well known how quickly
hypotheses that are questionable and
burdened with the greatest difficulties
— such, for example, that Rom. 16
is a separate epistle, or part of an
epistle, to Ephesus — have arrived
at even unquestioned recognition"
("Acts," p. 291).
Unconsciously, when he writes:
"Dagegen kann man in dem I. Tim
otheus brief auch nicht einen Vers
nachweisen, der den Stempel paul
inischer Herkunft deuthch truege"
(Chronologie, I. p. 480). "Not a
single verse in First Timothy can be
pointed out which clearly bears the
stamp of Pauline authorship." The
plain man, however, less conversant

OF SAINT PAUL 95
as he is with the curiosities and
contemporary shibboleths of criticism,
but more famihar at first-hand with
Damascus-road experiences of his own,
and those problems of the religious
life of the individual and the church
with which these epistles deal, will
for a long time to come, hke the
countless multitude of his spiritual
forbears of well-nigh two thousand
years past, recognize in every one of
the thirteen the tent-maker who wrote
these words :
6 acnrcurpos rfj ep.fj \tipl IIcuiXou
5 imv <rr|(jietov ev irdo"t| £irurro\jj
oiirus Ypd<|)CD
T| X^P1' T°3 KVpCotl f||lU>V lT|(roS XptCTTOU
|MT& irdvruv iipav
THE SALUTATION OF ME PAUL
WITH MINE OWN HAND
WHICH IS THE TOKEN IN
EVERY EPISTLE
SO I WRITE
THE GRACE OF OUR LORD
JESUS CHRIST
BE WITH YOU ALL