HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER
Paragraphs 115-127.
115-119. HIS WRITINGS. 115, 116. Principal Literary
Period. 117. Form of his Writings. 118. His
Style. 119. Inspiration.
120-127. HIS CHARACTER. 121. Combination of
Natural and Spiritual.
122-127. Characteristics. 122. Physique; 123. Enterprise;
124. Influence over Men; 128. Unselfishness;
126. Sense of having a Mission; 127. Personal
Devotion to Christ.
115. Principal Literary Period.--It has been mentioned that the third
missionary journey closed with a flying visit to the churches of
Greece. This visit lasted several months; but in the Acts it is passed
over in two or three verses. Probably it was little marked with those
exciting incidents which naturally tempt the biographer into detail.
Yet we know from other sources that it was nearly the most important
part of Paul's life; for during this half-year he wrote the greatest of
all his Epistles, that to the Romans, and two others only less
important--that to the Galatians and the Second to the Corinthians.
116. We have thus alighted on the portion of his life most signalized
by literary work. Overpowering as is the impression of the
remarkableness of this man produced by following him, as we have been
doing, as he hurries from province to province, from continent to
continent, over land and sea, in pursuit of the object to which he was
devoted, this impression is immensely deepened when we remember that he
was at the same time the greatest thinker of his age, if not of any
age, and, in the midst of his outward labors, was producing writings
which have ever since been among the mightiest intellectual forces of
the world, and are still growing in their influence.
In this respect he rises sheer above all other evangelists and
missionaries. Some of them may have approached him in certain
respects--Xavier or Livingstone in the world-conquering instinct, St.
Bernard or Whitefield in earnestness and activity. But few of these
men added a single new idea to the world's stock of beliefs, whereas
Paul, while at least equaling them in their own special line, gave to
mankind a new world of thought. If his Epistles could perish, the loss
to literature would be the greatest possible with only one
exception--that of the Gospels which record the life, the sayings and
the death of our Lord. They have quickened the mind of the Church as
no other writings have done, and scattered in the soil of the world
hundreds of seeds the fruits of which are now the general possession of
mankind. Out of them have been brought the watchwords of progress in
every reformation which the Church has experienced. When Luther awoke
Europe from the slumber of centuries, it was a word of Paul which he
uttered with his mighty voice: and when, one hundred years ago, our own
country was revived from almost universal spiritual death, she was
called by the voices of men who had rediscovered the truth for
themselves in the pages of Paul.
117. Form of his Writings.--Yet in penning his Epistles Paul may
himself have had little idea of the part they were to play in the
future. They were drawn out of him simply by the exigencies of his
work. In the truest sense of the word they were letters, written to
meet particular occasions, not formal writings, carefully designed and
executed with a view to fame or to futurity. Letters of the right kind
are, before everything else, products of the heart; and it was the
eager heart of Paul, yearning for the weal of his spiritual children or
alarmed by the dangers to which they were exposed, that produced all
his writings. They were part of his day's work. Just as he flew over
sea and land to revisit his converts, or sent Timothy or Titus to carry
them his counsels and bring news of how they fared, so, when these
means were not available, he would send a letter with the same design.
118. His Style.--This may seem to detract from the value of these
writings. We may be inclined to wish that, instead of having the
course of his thinking determined by the exigencies of so many special
occasions and his attention distracted by so many minute particulars,
he had been able to concentrate the force of his mind on one perfect
book and expound his views on the high subjects which occupied his
thoughts in a systematic form. It cannot be maintained that Paul's
Epistles are models of style. They were written far too hurriedly for
this; and the last thing he thought of was to polish his periods.
Often, indeed, his ideas, by the mere virtue of their fineness and
beauty, run into forms of exquisite language, or there is in them such
a sustained throb of emotion that they shape themselves spontaneously
into sentences of noble eloquence. But oftener his language is rugged
and formless; no doubt it was the first which came to hand for
expressing what he had to say. He begins sentences and omits to finish
them; he goes off into digressions and forgets to pick up the line of
thought he has dropped; he throws out his ideas in lumps instead of
fusing them into mutual coherence.
Nowhere perhaps will there be found so exact a parallel to the style of
Paul as in the Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. In the
Protector's brain there lay the best and truest thoughts about England
and her complicated affairs which existed at the time in that island;
but, when he tried to express them in speech or letter, there issued
from his mind the most extraordinary mixture of exclamations,
questions, arguments soon losing themselves in the sands of words,
unwieldy parentheses, and morsels of beautiful pathos or subduing
eloquence. Yet, as you read these amazing utterances, you come by
degrees to feel that you are getting to see the very heart and soul of
the Puritan Era, and that you would rather be beside this man than any
other representative of the period. You see the events and ideas of
the time in the very process of birth.
Perhaps, indeed, a certain formlessness is a natural accompaniment of
the very highest originality. The perfect expression and orderly
arrangement of ideas is a later process; but, when great thoughts are
for the first time coming forth, there is a kind of primordial
roughness about them, as if the earth out of which they are arising
were still clinging to them: the polishing of the gold comes late and
has to be preceded by the heaving of the ore out of the bowels of
nature. Paul in his writings is hurling forth the original ore of
truth. We owe to him hundreds of ideas which were never uttered before.
After the original man has got his idea out, the most commonplace
scribe may be able to express it for others better than he, though he
could never have originated it. So throughout the writings of Paul
there are materials which others may combine into systems of theology
and ethics, and it is the duty of the Church to do so. But his
Epistles permit us to see revelation in the very process of birth. As
we read them closely, we seem to be witnessing the creation of a world
of truth, as the angels wondered to see the firmament evolving itself
out of chaos and the multitudinous earth spreading itself forth in the
light. Minute as are the details he has often to deal with, the whole
of his vast view of the truth is recalled in his treatment of every one
of them, as the whole sky is mirrored in a single drop of dew. What
could be a more impressive proof of the fecundity of his mind than the
fact that, amid the innumerable distractions of a second visit to his
Greek converts, he should have written in half a year three such books
as Romans, Galatians and Second Corinthians?
119. His Inspiration.--It was God by His Spirit who communicated this
revelation of truth to Paul. Its own greatness and divineness supply
the best proof that it could have had no other origin. But none the
less did it break in upon Paul with the joy and pain of original
thought; it came to him through his experience; it drenched and dyed
every fiber of his mind and heart; and the expression which it found in
his writings was in accordance with his peculiar genius and
circumstances.
120. The Man Revealed in his Letters.--It would be easy to suggest
compensations in the form of Paul's writings for the literary qualities
they lack. But one of these so outweighs all others that it is
sufficient by itself to justify in this case the ways of God. In no
other literary form could we, to the same extent, in the writings have
got the man. Letters are the most personal form of literature. A man
may write a treatise or a history or even a poem and hide his
personality behind it; but letters are valueless unless the writer
shows himself. Paul is constantly visible in his letters. You can
feel his heart throbbing in every chapter he ever wrote. He has
painted his own portrait--not only that of the outward man, but of his
innermost feelings--as no one else could have painted it. It is not
from Luke, admirable as is the picture drawn in the Acts of the
Apostles, that we learn what the true Paul was, but from Paul himself.
The truths he reveals are all seen embodied in the man. As there are
some preachers who are greater than their sermons, and the principal
gain of their hearers, in listening to them, is obtained in the
inspiring glimpses they obtain of a great and sanctified personality,
so the best thing in the writings of Paul is Paul himself, or rather
the grace of God in him.
121. His character presented a wonderful combination of the natural
and the spiritual. From nature he had received a strongly marked
individuality; but the change which Christianity produces was no less
obvious in him. In no saved man's character is it possible to separate
nicely what is due to nature from what is due to grace; for nature and
grace blend sweetly in the redeemed life. In Paul the union of the two
was singularly complete; yet it was always clear that there were two
elements in him of diverse origin; and this is, indeed, the key to a
successful estimate of his character.
122. Physique.--To begin with what was most simply natural--his
physique was an important condition of his career. As want of ear may
make a musical career impossible or a failure of eyesight stop the
progress of a painter, so the missionary life is impossible without a
certain degree of physical stamina. To any one reading by itself the
catalogue of Paul's sufferings and observing the elasticity with which
he rallied from the severest of them and resumed his labors, it would
naturally occur that he must have been a person of Herculean mold. On
the contrary, he appears to have been little of stature, and his bodily
presence was weak. This weakness seems to have been sometimes
aggravated by disfiguring disease; and he felt keenly the
disappointment which he knew his bodily presence would excite among
strangers; for every preacher who loves his work would like to preach
the gospel with all the graces which conciliate the favor of hearers to
an orator. God, however, used his very weakness, beyond his hopes, to
draw out the tenderness of his converts; and so, when he was weak, then
he was strong, and he was able to glory even in his infirmities.
There is a theory, which has obtained extensive currency, that the
disease he suffered from was violent ophthalmia, causing disagreeable
redness of the eyelids. But its grounds are very slender. He seems,
on the contrary, to have had a remarkable power of fascinating and
cowing an enemy with the keenness of his glance, as in the story of
Elymas the sorcerer, which reminds us of the tradition about Luther,
that his eyes sometimes so glowed and sparkled that bystanders could
scarcely look on them.
There is no foundation whatever for an idea of some recent biographers
of Paul that his bodily constitution was excessively fragile and
chronically afflicted with shattering nervous disease. No one could
have gone through his labors or suffered the stoning, the scourgings
and other tortures he endured without having an exceptionally tough and
sound constitution. It is true that he was sometimes worn out with
illness and torn down with the acts of violence to which he was
exposed; but the rapidity of his recovery on such occasions proves what
a large fund of bodily force he had to draw upon. And who can doubt
that, when his face was melted with tender love in beseeching men to be
reconciled to God or lighted up with enthusiasm in the delivery of his
message, it must have possessed a noble beauty far above mere
regularity of feature?
123. Enterprise.--There was a good deal that was natural in another
element of his character on which much depended--his spirit of
enterprise. There are many men who like to grow where they are born;
to have to change into new circumstances and make acquaintance with new
people is intolerable to them. But there are others who have a kind of
vagabondism in the blood; they are the persons intended by nature for
emigrants and pioneers; and, if they take to the work of the ministry,
they make the best missionaries.
In modern times no missionary has had this consecrated spirit of
adventure in the same degree as that great Scotchman, David
Livingstone. When he first went to Africa, he found the missionaries
clustered in the south of the continent, just within the fringe of
heathenism; they had their houses and gardens, their families, their
small congregations of natives; and they were content. But he moved at
once away beyond the rest into the heart of heathenism, and dreams of
more distant regions never ceased to haunt him, till at length he began
his extraordinary tramps over thousands of miles where no missionary
had ever been before; and, when death overtook him, he was still
pressing forward.
Paul's was a nature of the same stamp, full of courage and adventure.
The unknown in the distance, instead of dismaying, drew him on. He
could not bear to build on other men's foundations, but was constantly
hastening to virgin soil, leaving churches behind for others to build
up. He believed that, if he lit the lamp of the gospel here and there
over vast areas, the light would spread in his absence by its own
virtue. He liked to count the leagues he had left behind him, but his
watchword was ever Forward. In his dreams he saw men beckoning him to
new countries; he had always a long unfulfilled program in his mind;
and, as death approached, he was still thinking of journeys into the
remotest corners of the known world.
124. Influence Over Men.--Another element of his character near akin
to the one just mentioned was his influence over men. There are those
to whom it is painful to have to accost a stranger even on pressing
business; and most men are only quite at home in their own set--among
men of the same class or profession as themselves. But the life he had
chosen brought Paul into contact with men of every kind, and he had
constantly to be introducing to strangers the business with which he
was charged. He might be addressing a king or a consul the one hour
and a roomful of slaves or common soldiers the next. One day he had to
speak in the synagogue of the Jews, another among a crowd of Athenian
philosophers, another to the inhabitants of some provincial town far
from the seats of culture. But he could adapt himself to every man and
every audience. To the Jews he spoke as a rabbi out of the Old
Testament Scriptures; to the Greeks he quoted the words of their own
poets; and to the barbarians he talked of the God who giveth rain from
heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.
When a weak or insincere man attempts to be all things to all men, he
ends by being nothing to anybody. But, living on this principle, Paul
found entrance for the gospel everywhere, and at the same time won for
himself the esteem and love of those to whom he stooped. If he was
bitterly hated by enemies, there was never a man more intensely loved
by his friends. They received him as an angel of God, or even as Jesus
Christ himself, and were ready to pluck out their eyes and give them to
him. One church was jealous of another getting too much of him. When
he was not able to pay a visit at the time he had promised, they were
furious, as if he had done them a wrong. When he was parting from
them, they wept sore and fell on his neck and kissed him. Numbers of
young men were continually about him, ready to go on his errands. It
was the largeness of his manhood which was the secret of this
fascination; for to a big nature all resort, feeling that in its
neighborhood it is well with them.
125. Unselfishness.--This popularity was partly, however, due to
another quality which shone conspicuously in his character--the spirit
of unselfishness. This is the rarest quality in human nature, and it
is the most powerful of all in its influence on others, where it exists
in purity and strength. Most men are so absorbed in their own
interests and so naturally expect others to be the same that, if they
see any one who appears to have no interests of his own to serve but is
willing to do as much for the sake of others as the generality do for
themselves, they are at first incredulous, suspecting that he is only
hiding his designs beneath the cloak of benevolence; but, if he stand
the test and his unselfishness prove to be genuine, there is no limit
to the homage they are prepared to pay him. As Paul appeared in
country after country and city after city, he was at first a complete
enigma to those whom he approached. They formed all sorts of
conjectures as to his real design. Was it money he was seeking, or
power, or something darker and less pure? His enemies never ceased to
throw out such insinuations. But those who got near him and saw the
man as he was, who knew that he refused money and worked with his hands
day and night to keep himself above the suspicion of mercenary motives,
who heard him pleading with them one by one in their homes and
exhorting them with tears to a holy life, who saw the sustained
personal interest he took in every one of them--these could not resist
the proofs of his disinterestedness or deny him their affection.
There never was a man more unselfish; he had literally no interest of
his own to live for. Without family ties, he poured all the affections
of his big nature, which might have been given to wife and children,
into the channels of his work. He compares his tenderness toward his
converts to that of a nursing-mother to her children; he pleads with
them to remember that he is their father who has begotten them in the
gospel. They are his glory and crown, his hope and joy and crown of
rejoicing. Eager as he was for new conquests, he never lost his hold
upon those he had won. He could assure his churches that he prayed and
gave thanks for them night and day, and he remembered his converts by
name at the throne of grace. How could human nature resist
disinterestedness like this? If Paul was a conqueror of the world, he
conquered it by the power of love.
126. His Mission.--The two most distinctively Christian features of
his character have still to be mentioned. One of these was the sense
of having a divine mission to preach Christ, which he was bound to
fulfill. Most men merely drift through life, and the work they do is
determined by a hundred indifferent circumstances; they might as well
be doing anything else, or they would prefer, if they could afford it,
to be doing nothing at all. But, from the time when he became a
Christian, Paul knew that he had a definite work to do; and the call he
had received to it never ceased to ring like a tocsin in his soul.
"Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel;" this was the impulse which
drove him on. He felt that he had a world of new truths to utter and
that the salvation of mankind depended on their utterance. He knew
himself called to make Christ known to as many of his fellow-creatures
as his utmost exertions could enable him to reach. It was this which
made him so impetuous in his movements, so blind to danger, so
contemptuous of suffering. "None of these things move me, neither
count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with
joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to
testify the gospel of the grace of God." He lived with the account
which he would have to give at the judgment-seat of Christ ever in his
eye, and his heart was revived in every hour of discouragement by the
vision of the crown of life which, if he proved faithful, the Lord; the
righteous Judge, would place upon his head.
127. Devotion to Christ.--The other peculiarly Christian quality which
shaped his career was personal devotion to Christ. This was the
supreme characteristic of the man, and from first to last the
mainspring of his activities. From the moment of his first meeting
with Christ he had but one passion; his love to his Saviour burned with
more and more brightness to the end. He delighted to call himself the
slave of Christ, and had no ambition except to be the propagator of His
ideas and the continuer of His influence.
He took up this idea of being Christ's representative with startling
boldness. He says the heart of Christ is beating in his bosom toward
his converts; he says the mind of Christ is thinking in his brain; he
says that he is continuing the work of Christ and filling up that which
was lacking in His sufferings; he says the wounds of Christ are
reproduced in the scars upon his body; he says he is dying that others
may live, as Christ died for the life of the world. But it was in
reality the deepest humility which lay beneath these bold expressions.
He had the sense that Christ had done everything for him; He had
entered into him, casting out the old Paul and ending the old life, and
had begotten a new man, with new designs, feelings and activities. And
it was his deepest longing that this process should go on and become
complete--that his old self should vanish quite away, and that the new
self, which Christ had created in His own image and still sustained,
should become so predominant that, when the thoughts of his mind were
Christ's thoughts, the words on his lips Christ's words, the deeds he
did Christ's deeds, and the character he wore Christ's character, he
might be able to say, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."