Libenter igitur gloriabor in infirmitatibus meis, ut inhabitet
in me virtus Christi.
Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power
of Christ may dwell in me.
All the Saints, from the beginning of history
to the end, resemble each other in this, that their
excellence is supernatural, their deeds heroic, their 15
merits extraordinary and prevailing. They all
are choice patterns of the theological virtues;
they all are blessed with a rare and special union
with their Maker and Lord; they all lead lives of
penance; and when they leave this world, they 20
are spared that torment, which the multitude of
holy souls are allotted, between earth and heaven,
death and eternal glory. But, with all these
various tokens of their belonging to one and the
same celestial family, they may still be divided,
in their external aspect, into two classes.
There are those, on the one hand, who are so 5
absorbed in the Divine life, that they seem, even
while they are in the flesh, to have no part in
earth or in human nature; but to think, speak,
and act under views, affections, and motives
simply supernatural. If they love others, it is 10
simply because they love God, and because man
is the object either of His compassion, or of His
praise. If they rejoice, it is in what is unseen; if
they feel interest, it is in what is unearthly; if
they speak, it is almost with the voice of Angels; 15
if they eat or drink, it is almost of Angels' food
alone--for it is recorded in their histories, that
for weeks they have fed on nothing else but that
Heavenly Bread which is the proper sustenance
of the soul. Such we may suppose to have been 20
St. John; such St. Mary Magdalen; such the
hermits of the desert; such many of the holy
Virgins whose lives belong to the science of
mystical theology.
On the other hand, there are those, and of the 25
highest order of sanctity too, as far as our eyes
can see, in whom the supernatural combines with
nature, instead of superseding it,--invigorating
it, elevating it, ennobling it; and who are not
the less men, because they are saints. They do 30
not put away their natural endowments, but use
them to the glory of the Giver; they do not act
beside them, but through them; they do not
eclipse them by the brightness of Divine grace,
but only transfigure them. They are versed in
human knowledge; they are busy in human 5
society; they understand the human heart; they
can throw themselves into the minds of other
men; and all this in consequence of natural gifts
and secular education. While they themselves
stand secure in the blessedness of purity and 10
peace, they can follow in imagination the ten
thousand aberrations of pride, passion, and
remorse. The world is to them a book, to which
they are drawn for its own sake, which they read
fluently, which interests them 15
naturally,--though, by the reason of the grace which dwells
within them, they study it and hold converse
with it for the glory of God and the salvation
of souls. Thus they have the thoughts, feelings,
frames of mind, attractions, sympathies, 20
antipathies of other men, so far as these are not
sinful, only they have these properties of human
nature purified, sanctified, and exalted; and they
are only made more eloquent, more poetical, more
profound, more intellectual, by reason of their 25
being more holy. In this latter class I may
perhaps without presumption place many of the early
Fathers, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen,
St. Athanasius, and above all, the great Saint of
this day, St. Paul the Apostle. 30
I think it a happy circumstance that, in this
Church, placed, as it is, under the patronage of
the great names of St. Peter and St. Paul, the
special feast days of these two Apostles (for such
we may account the 29th of June as regards St.
Peter, and to-day as regards St. Paul) should, in 5
the first year of our assembling here, each have
fallen on a Sunday. And now that we have
arrived, through God's protecting Providence, at
the latter of these two days, the Conversion of
St. Paul, I do not like to forego the opportunity, 10
with whatever misgivings as to my ability, of
offering to you, my brethren, at least a few
remarks upon the wonderful work of God's creative
grace mercifully presented to our inspection in
the person of this great Apostle. Most unworthy 15
of him, I know, is the best that I can say; and even
that best I cannot duly exhibit in the space of
time allowed me on an occasion such as this;
but what is said out of devotion to him, and for
the Divine glory, will, I trust, have its use, 20
defective though it be, and be a plea for his favorable
notice of those who say it, and be graciously
accepted by his and our Lord and Master.
Now, since I have begun by contrasting St.
Paul with St. John, and by implying that St. 25
John lived a life more simply supernatural than
St. Paul, I may seem to you, my brethren, to be
speaking to St. Paul's disparagement; and you
may therefore ask me whether it is possible for
any Saint on earth to have a more intimate 30
communion with the Divine Majesty than was granted
to St. Paul. You may remind me of his own
words, "I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in
me; and, that I now live in the flesh, I live in the
faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and
delivered Himself for me." And you may refer to 5
his most astonishing ecstasies and visions; as
when he was rapt even to the third heaven, and
heard sacred words, which it "is not granted to
man to utter." You may say, he "no way came
short" of St. John in his awful initiation into the 10
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Certainly
you may say so; nor am I imagining anything
contrary to you. We indeed cannot compare
Saints; but I agree with you, that St. Paul was
visited by favors, equal, in our apprehensions, to 15
those which were granted to St. John. But then,
on the other hand, neither was St. John behind
St. Paul in these tokens of Divine love. In truth,
these tokens are some of those very things which,
in a greater or less degree, belong to all Saints 20
whatever, as I said when I began; whereas my
question just now is, not what are those points in
which St. Paul agrees with all other Saints, but
what is his distinguished mark, how we recognize
him from others, what there is special in him; 25
and I think his characteristic is this,--that, as I
have said, in him the fullness of Divine gifts does
not tend to destroy what is human in him, but to
spiritualize and perfect it. According to his own
words, used on another subject, but laying down, 30
as it were, the principle on which his own character
was formed,--"We would not be
_un_-clothed," he says, but "clothed _upon_, that what
is mortal may be swallowed up by life." In him,
his human nature, his human affections, his
human gifts, were possessed and glorified by a new 5
and heavenly life; they remained; he speaks of
them in the text, and in his humility he calls
them his infirmity. He was not stripped of
nature, but clothed with grace and the power of
Christ, and therefore he _glories_ in his infirmity. 10
This is the subject on which I wish to enlarge.
A heathen poet has said, Homo sum, humani
nihil a me alienum puto. "I am a man; nothing
human is without interest to me," and the
sentiment has been widely and deservedly praised. 15
Now this, in a fullness of meaning which a heathen
could not understand, is, I conceive, the
characteristic of this great Apostle. He is ever
speaking, to use his own words, "human things," and
"as a man," and "according to man," and 20
"foolishly;" that is, human nature, the
common nature of the whole race of Adam, spoke in
him, acted in him, with an energetical presence,
with a sort of bodily fullness, always under the
sovereign command of Divine grace, but losing 25
none of its real freedom and power because of
its subordination. And the consequence is, that,
having the nature of man so strong within him,
he is able to enter into human nature, and to
sympathize with it, with a gift peculiarly his own. 30
Now the most startling instance of this is this,
--that, though his life prior to his conversion
seems to have been so conscientious and so pure,
nevertheless he does not hesitate to associate
himself with the outcast heathen, and to speak
as if he were one of them. St. Philip Neri, before 5
he communicated, used to say, "Lord, I protest
before Thee that I am good for nothing but to
do evil." At confession he used to say, "I have
never done one good action." He often said, "I
am past hope." To a penitent he said, "Be sure 10
of this, I am a man like my neighbors, and
nothing more." Well, I mean, that somewhat in this
way, St. Paul felt all his neighbors, all the whole
race of Adam, to be existing in himself. He
knew himself to be possessed of a nature, he was 15
conscious of possessing a nature, which was
capable of running into all the multiplicity of
emotions, of devices, of purposes, and of sins,
into which it had actually run in the wide world
and in the multitude of men; and in that sense 20
he bore the sins of all men, and associated
himself with them, and spoke of them and himself
as one. He, I say, a strict Pharisee (as he
describes himself), blameless according to legal
justice, conversing with all good conscience 25
before God, serving God from his forefathers with a
pure conscience, he nevertheless elsewhere speaks
of himself as a profligate heathen outcast before
the grace of God called him. He not only counts
himself, as his birth made him, in the number of 30
"children of wrath," but he classes himself with
the heathen as "conversing in the desires of the
flesh," "and fulfilling the will of the flesh." And
in another Epistle, he speaks of himself, at the
time he writes, as if "carnal, sold under sin;"
he speaks of "sin dwelling in him," and of his 5
"serving with the flesh the law of sin;" this, I
say, when he was an Apostle confirmed in grace.
And in like manner he speaks of concupiscence as
if it were sin; all because he vividly apprehended,
in that nature of his which grace had sanctified, 10
what it was in its tendencies and results when
deprived of grace.
And thus I account for St. Paul's liking for
heathen writers, or what we now call the classics,
which is very remarkable. He, the Apostle of the 15
Gentiles, was learned in Greek letters, as Moses,
the lawgiver of the Jews, his counterpart, was
learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians; and he
did not give up that learning when he had
"learned Christ." I do not think I am 20
exaggerating in saying so, since he goes out of his way three
times to quote passages from them; once,
speaking to the heathen Athenians; another time, to
his converts at Corinth; and a third time, in a
private Apostolic exhortation to his disciple St. 25
Titus. And it is the more remarkable, that one
of the writers whom he quotes seems to be a
writer of comedies, which had no claim to be read
for any high morality which they contain. Now
how shall we account for this? Did St. Paul 30
delight in what was licentious? God forbid; but
he had the feeling of a guardian-angel who sees
every sin of the rebellious being committed to
him, who gazes at him and weeps. With this
difference, that he had a sympathy with sinners,
which an Angel (be it reverently said) cannot 5
have. He was a true lover of souls. He loved
poor human nature with a passionate love, and
the literature of the Greeks was only its
expression; and he hung over it tenderly and
mournfully, wishing for its regeneration and salvation. 10
This is how I account for his familiar
knowledge of the heathen poets. Some of the ancient
Fathers consider that the Greeks were under a
special dispensation of Providence, preparatory
to the Gospel, though not directly from heaven 15
as the Jewish was. Now St. Paul seems, if I may
say it, to partake of this feeling; distinctly as he
teaches that the heathen are in darkness, and in
sin, and under the power of the Evil One, he will
not allow that they are beyond the eye of Divine 20
Mercy. On the contrary, he speaks of God as
"determining their times and the limits of their
habitation," that is, going along with the
revolutions of history and the migrations of races, "in
order that they should seek Him, if haply they 25
may feel after Him and find Him," since, he
continues, "He is not far from every one of us."
Again, when the Lycaonians would have
worshiped him, he at once places himself on their
level and reckons himself among them, and at 30
the same time speaks of God's love of them,
heathens though they were. "Ye men," he cries,
"why do ye these things? We also are mortals,
men like unto you;" and he adds that God in
times past, though suffering all nations to walk
in their own ways, "nevertheless left not Himself 5
without testimony, doing good from heaven,
giving rains and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts
with food and gladness." You see, he says, "_our_
hearts," not "your," as if he were one of those
Gentiles; and he dwells in a kindly human way 10
over the food, and the gladness which food causes,
which the poor heathen were granted. Hence it
is that he is the Apostle who especially insists on
our all coming from one father, Adam; for he
had pleasure in thinking that all men were 15
brethren. "God hath made," he says, "all
mankind of one;" "as in Adam all die, so in Christ
all shall be made alive." I will cite but one
more passage from the great Apostle on the same
subject, one in which he tenderly contemplates 20
the captivity, and the anguish, and the longing,
and the deliverance of poor human nature. "The
expectation of the creature," he says, that is, of
human nature, "waiteth for the manifestation
of the sons of God. For the creature was made 25
subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of
Him that made it subject, in hope; because it
shall be delivered from the servitude of
corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children
of God. For we know that every creature 30
groaneth and travaileth in pain until now."
These are specimens of the tender affection
which the great heart of the Apostle had for all
his kind, the sons of Adam: but if he felt so much
for all races spread over the earth, what did he
feel for his own nation! O what a special 5
mixture, bitter and sweet, of generous pride (if I may
so speak), but of piercing, overwhelming anguish,
did the thought of the race of Israel inflict upon
him! the highest of nations and the lowest, his
own dear people, whose glories were before his 10
imagination and in his affection from his
childhood, who had the birthright and the promise,
yet who, instead of making use of them, had
madly thrown them away! Alas, alas, and he
himself had once been a partner in their madness, 15
and was only saved from his infatuation by the
miraculous power of God! O dearest ones, O
glorious race, O miserably fallen! so great and so
abject! This is his tone in speaking of the Jews,
at once a Jeremias and a David; David in his 20
patriotic care for them, and Jeremias in his
plaintive and resigned denunciations.
Consider his words: "I speak the truth in
Christ," he says; "I lie not, my conscience
bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost; that I have 25
great sadness and continual sorrow in my heart."
In spite of visions and ecstasies, in spite of his
wonderful election, in spite of his manifold gifts,
in spite of the cares of his Apostolate and "the
solicitude for all the churches"--you would 30
think he had had enough otherwise both to grieve
him and to gladden him--but no, this special
contemplation remains ever before his mind and in
his heart. I mean, the state of his own poor
people, who were in mad enmity against the
promised Saviour, who had for centuries after 5
centuries looked forward for the Hope of Israel,
prepared the way for it, heralded it, suffered for
it, cherished and protected it, yet, when it came,
rejected it, and lost the fruit of their long patience.
"Who are Israelites," he says, mournfully 10
lingering over their past glories, "who are Israelites, to
whom belongeth the adoption of children, and
the glory, and the testament, and the giving of
wealth, and the service of God, and the promises:
whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ 15
according to the flesh, who is over all things, God
blessed forever. Amen."
What a hard thing it was for him to give them
up! He pleaded for them, while they were
persecuting his Lord and himself. He reminded his 20
Lord that he himself had also been that Lord's
persecutor, and why not try them a little longer?
"Lord," he said, "they know that I cast into
prison, and beat in every synagogue, them that
believed in Thee. And, when the blood of 25
Stephen, Thy witness, was shed, I stood by and
consented, and kept the garments of them that
killed him." You see, his old frame of mind, the
feelings and notions under which he persecuted
his Lord, were ever distinctly before him, and he 30
realized them as if they were still his own. "I
bear them witness," he says, "that they have a
zeal of God, but not according to knowledge."
O blind! blind! he seems to say; O that there
should be so much of good in them, so much zeal,
so much of religious purpose, so much of 5
steadfastness, such resolve like Josias, Mathathias, or
Machabæus, to keep the whole law, and honor
Moses and the Prophets, but all spoiled, all
undone, by one fatal sin! And what is he prompted
to do? Moses, on one occasion, desired to suffer 10
instead of his rebellious people: "Either forgive
them this trespass," he said, "or if Thou do not,
strike me out of the book." And now, when the
New Law was in course of promulgation, and the
chosen race was committing the same sin, its 15
great Apostle desired the same: "I wished
myself," he says, speaking of the agony he had
passed through, "I wished myself to be an
anathema from Christ, for my brethren, who are
my kinsmen according to the flesh." And then, 20
when all was in vain, when they remained
obdurate, and the high decree of God took effect, still
he would not, out of very affection for them, he
would not allow after all that they were
reprobate. He comforted himself with the thought of 25
how many were the exceptions to so dismal a
sentence. "Hath God cast away His people?"
he asks; "God forbid. For I also am an Israelite,
of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin."
"All are not Israelites that are of Israel." And 30
he dwells upon his confident anticipation of their
recovery in time to come. "They are enemies,"
he says, writing to the Romans, "for your sakes;"
that is, you have gained by their loss; "but they
are most dear for the sake of the fathers; for the
gifts and the calling of God are without 5
repentance." "Blindness in part has happened to
Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should
come in; and so all Israel should be saved."
My Brethren, I have now explained to a
certain extent what I meant when I spoke of St. 10
Paul's characteristic gift, as being a special
apprehension of human nature as a fact, and an
intimate familiarity with it as an object of
continual contemplation and affection. He made it
his own to the very full, instead of annihilating 15
it; he sympathized with it, while he mortified it
by penance, while he sanctified it by the grace
given him. Though he had never been a heathen,
though he was no longer a Jew, yet he was a
heathen in capability, as I may say, and a Jew 20
in the history of the past. His vivid imagination
enabled him to throw himself into the state of
heathenism, with all those tendencies which lay
dormant in his human nature carried out, and
its infirmities developed into sin. His wakeful 25
memory enabled him to recall those past
feelings and ideas of a Jew, which in the case of
others a miraculous conversion might have
obliterated; and thus, while he was a Saint inferior
to none, he was emphatically still a man, and to 30
his own apprehension still a sinner.
And this being so, do you not see, my brethren,
how well fitted he was for the office of an
Ecumenical Doctor, and an Apostle, not of the Jews
only, but of the Gentiles? The Almighty
sometimes works by miracle, but commonly He 5
prepares His instruments by methods of this world;
and, as He draws souls to Him, "by the cords of
Adam," so does He select them for His use
according to their natural powers. St. John, who lay
upon His breast, whose book was the sacred heart 10
of Jesus, and whose special philosophy was the
"scientia sanctorum," _he_ was not chosen to be
the Doctor of the Nations. St. Peter, taught in
the mysteries of the Creed, the Arbiter of doctrine
and the Ruler of the faithful, he too was passed 15
over in this work. To him specially was it given
to preach to the world, who knew the world; he
subdued the heart, who understood the heart. It
was his sympathy that was his means of influence;
it was his affectionateness which was his title and 20
instrument of empire. "I became to the Jews a
Jew," he says, "that I might gain the Jews; to
them that are under the Law, as if I were under
the Law, that I might gain them that were under
the Law. To those that were without the Law, 25
as if I were without the Law, that I might gain
them that were without the Law. To the weak
I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I
became all things to all men, that I might save
all." 30
And now, my brethren, my time is out, before
I have well begun my subject. For how can I
be said yet to have entered upon the great
Apostle, when I have not yet touched upon his
Christian affections, and his bearing towards the
children of God? As yet I have chiefly spoken 5
of his sympathy with human nature unassisted
and unregenerate; not of that yearning of his
heart, as it showed itself in action under the
grace of the Redeemer. But perhaps it is most
suitable on the feast of his Conversion, to stop 10
at that point at which the day leaves him; and
perhaps too it will be permitted to me on a future
occasion to attempt, if it be not presumption, to
speak of him again.
Meanwhile, may this glorious Apostle, this 15
sweetest of inspired writers, this most touching
and winning of teachers, may he do me some
good turn, who have ever felt a special devotion
towards him! May this great Saint, this man of
large mind, of various sympathies, of affectionate 20
heart, have a kind thought for every one of us
here according to our respective needs! He has
carried his human thoughts and feelings with
him to his throne above; and, though he sees
the Infinite and Eternal Essence, he still 25
remembers well that troublous, restless ocean below, of
hopes and fears, of impulses and aspirations, of
efforts and failures, which is now what it was
when he was here. Let us beg him to intercede
for us with the Majesty on high, that we too may 30
have some portion of that tenderness, compassion,
mutual affection, love of brotherhood, abhorrence
of strife and division, in which he excelled. Let
us beg him especially, as we are bound, to bless
the most reverend Prelate, under whose
jurisdiction we here live, and whose feast day this is; 5
that the great name of Paul may be to him a
tower of strength and fount of consolation now,
and in death, and in the day of account.