sterile fact, a fact on which it is possible to dwell too long, although
Puritanism, thinking this impossible, has remained intensely absorbed in
the contemplation of it, and indeed has never properly got beyond
it,--the sense of sin. Sin is not a monster to be mused on, but an
impotence to be got rid of. All thinking about it, beyond what is
indispensable for the firm effort to get rid of it, is waste of energy
and waste of time. We then enter that element of morbid and subjective
brooding, in which so many have perished. This sense of sin, however, it
is also possible to have not strongly enough to beget the firm effort to
get rid of it, and the Greeks, with all their great gifts, had this
sense not strongly enough; its strength in the Hebrew people is one of
this people's mainsprings. And no Hebrew prophet or psalmist felt what
sin was more powerfully than Paul. 'Mine iniquities have taken hold upon
me so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of
mine head; therefore my heart faileth me.'[36] _They are more than the
hairs of mine head._ The motions of what Paul calls 'the law in our
members' are indeed a hydrabrood; when we are working against one fault,
a dozen others crop up without our expecting it; and this it is which
drives the man who deals seriously with himself to difficulty, nay to
despair. Paul did not need James to tell him that whoever offends on one
point is, so far at least as his own conscience and inward satisfaction
are concerned, guilty of all;[37] he knew it himself, and the unrest
this knowledge gave him was his very starting-point. He knew, too, that
nothing outward, no satisfaction of all the requirements men may make of
us, no privileges of any sort, can give peace of conscience;--of
conscience, 'whose praise is not of men but of God.'[38] He knew, also,
that the law of the moral order stretches beyond us and our private
conscience, is independent of our sense of having kept it, and stands
absolute and what in itself it is; even, therefore, though I may know
nothing against myself, yet this is not enough, I may still not be
just.[39] Finally, Paul knew that merely to know all this and say it,
is of no use, advances us nothing; 'the kingdom of God is not in word
but in power.'[40]
[Footnote 36: _Ps._ xl, 12.]
[Footnote 37: _James_, ii, 10.]
[Footnote 38: _Rom._, ii, 29.]
[Footnote 39: I _Cor._, iv, 4.]
[Footnote 40: _Ibid._, 20.]
We have several times said that the Hebrew race apprehended God,--the
universal order by which all things fulfil the law of their
being,--chiefly as the moral order in human nature, and that it was
their greatness that they apprehended him as this so distinctly and
powerfully. But it is also characteristic of them, and perhaps it is
what mainly distinguishes their spirit from the spirit of mediæval
Christianity, that they constantly thought, too, of God as the source of
life and breath and all things, and of what they called 'fulness of
life' in all things. This way of thinking was common to them with the
Greeks; although, whereas the Greeks threw more delicacy and imagination
into it, the Hebrews threw more energy and vital warmth. But to the
Hebrew, as to the Greek, the gift of life, and health, and the world,
was divine, as well as the gift of morals. 'God's righteousness,'
indeed, 'standeth like the strong mountains, his judgments are like the
great deep; he is a righteous judge, strong and patient, who is provoked
every day.'[41] This is the Hebrew's first and deepest conception of
God,--as the source of the moral order. But God is also, to the Hebrew,
'our rock, which is higher than we,' the power by which we have been
'upholden ever since we were born,' that has 'fashioned us and laid his
hand upon us' and envelops us on every side, that has 'made us fearfully
and wonderfully,' and whose 'mercy is over all his works.'[42] He is
the power that 'saves both man and beast, gives them drink of his
pleasures as out of the river,' and with whom is 'the well of
life.'[43] In his speech at Athens, Paul shows how full he, too, was of
this feeling; and in the famous passage in the first chapter of the
Epistle to the Romans, where he asserts the existence of the natural
moral law, the source he assigns to this law is not merely God in
conscience, the righteous judge, but God in the world and the workings
of the world, the eternal and divine power from which all life and
wholesome energy proceed.[44]
[Footnote 41: _Ps._ xxxvi, 6; vii, 11.]
[Footnote 42: _Ps._ lxi, 2; lxii, 6; cxxxix, 5, 14; cxlv, 9.]
[Footnote 43: _Ps._ xxxvi, 6, 8, 9.]
[Footnote 44: _Rom._, i, 19-21.]
This element in which we live and move and have our being, which
stretches around and beyond the strictly moral element in us, around and
beyond the finite sphere of what is originated, measured, and controlled
by our own understanding and will,--this infinite element is very
present to Paul's thoughts, and makes a profound impression on them. By
this element we are receptive and influenced, not originative and
influencing; now, we all of us receive far more than we originate. Our
pleasure from a spring day we do not make; our pleasure, even, from an
approving conscience we do not make. And yet we feel that both the one
pleasure and the other can, and often do, work with us in a wonderful
way for our good. So we get the thought of an impulsion outside
ourselves which is at once awful and beneficent. 'No man,' as the Hebrew
psalm says, 'hath quickened his own soul.'[45] 'I know,' says Jeremiah,
'that the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to
direct his steps.'[46] Most true and natural is this feeling; and the
greater men are, the more natural is this feeling to them. Great men
like Sylla and Napoleon have loved to attribute their success to their
fortune, their star; religious great men have loved to say that their
sufficiency was of God.[47] But through every great spirit runs a train
of feeling of this sort; and the power and depth which there undoubtedly
is in Calvinism, comes from Calvinism's being overwhelmed by it. Paul is
not, like Calvinism, overwhelmed by it; but it is always before his mind
and strongly agitates his thoughts. The voluntary, rational, and human
world, of righteousness, moral choice, effort, filled the first place in
his spirit. But the necessary, mystical, and divine world, of influence,
sympathy, emotion, filled the second; and he could pass naturally from
the one world to the other. The presence in Paul of this twofold feeling
acted irresistibly upon his doctrine. What he calls 'the power that
worketh in us,'[48] and that produces results transcending all our
expectations and calculations, he instinctively sought to combine with
our personal agencies of reason and conscience.
[Footnote 45: _Ps._ xxii, 29.]
[Footnote 46: _Jer._, x, 23.]
[Footnote 47: II _Cor._, iii, 5.]
[Footnote 48: _Eph._, iii, 20.]
Of such a mysterious power and its operation some clear notion may be
got by anybody who has ever had any overpowering attachment, or has
been, according to the common expression, in love. Every one knows how
being in love changes for the time a man's spiritual atmosphere, and
makes animation and buoyancy where before there was flatness and
dulness. One may even say that this is the reason why being in love is
so popular with the whole human race,--because it relieves in so
irresistible and delightful a manner the tedium or depression of
common-place human life. And not only does it change the atmosphere of
our spirits, making air, light, and movement where before was stagnation
and gloom, but it also sensibly and powerfully increases our faculties
of action. It is matter of the commonest remark how a timid man who is
in love will show courage, or an indolent man will show diligence. Nay,
a timid man who would be only the more paralysed in a moment of danger
by being told that it is his bounden duty as a man to show firmness, and
that he must be ruined and disgraced for ever if he does not, will show
firmness quite easily from being in love. An indolent man who shrinks
back from vigorous effort only the more because he is told and knows
that it is a man's business to show energy, and that it is shameful in
him if he does not, will show energy quite easily from being in love.
This, I say, we learn from the analogy of the most everyday
experience;--that a powerful attachment will give a man spirits and
confidence which he could by no means call up or command of himself; and
that in this mood he can do wonders which would not be possible to him
without it.
We have seen how Paul felt himself to be for the sake of righteousness
_apprehended_, to use his own expression, by Christ. 'I seek,' he says,
'to apprehend that for which also I am apprehended by Christ.'[49] This
for which he is thus apprehended is,--still to use his own words,--_the
righteousness of God_; not an incomplete and maimed righteousness, not a
partial and unsatisfying establishment of the law of the spirit,
dominant to-day, deposed to-morrow, effective at one or two points,
failing in a hundred; no, but an entire conformity at all points with
the divine moral order, the will of God, and, in consequence, a sense of
harmony with this order, of acceptance with God.
[Footnote 49: _Philipp._, iii, 12.]
In some points Paul had always served this order with a clear
conscience. He did not steal, he did not commit adultery. But he was at
the same time, he says himself, 'a blasphemer and a persecutor and an
insulter,'[50] and the contemplation of Jesus Christ made him see this,
impressed it forcibly upon his mind. Here was his greatness, and the
worth of his way of appropriating Christ. We have seen how Calvinism,
too,--Calvinism which has built itself upon St. Paul,--is a blasphemer,
when it speaks of good works done by those who do not hold the Calvinist
doctrine. There would need no great sensitiveness of conscience, one
would think, to show that Calvinism has often been, also, a persecutor,
and an insulter. Calvinism, as well as Paul, professes to study Jesus
Christ. But the difference between Paul's study of Christ and
Calvinism's is this: that Paul by studying Christ got to know himself
clearly, and to transform his narrow conception of righteousness; while
Calvinism studies both Christ and Paul after him to no such good
purpose.
[Footnote 50: I _Tim._, i, 13.]
These, however, are but the veriest rudiments of the history of Paul's
gain from Jesus Christ, as the particular impression mentioned is but
the veriest fragment of the total impression produced by the
contemplation of Christ upon him. The sum and substance of that total
impression may best be conveyed by two words,--_without sin_.
We must here revert to what we have already said of the importance, for
sound criticism of a man's ideas, of the order in which his ideas come.
For us, who approach Christianity through a scholastic theology, it is
Christ's divinity which establishes his being without sin. For Paul, who
approached Christianity through his personal experience, it was Jesus
Christ's being without sin which establishes his divinity. The large and
complete conception of righteousness to which he himself had slowly and
late, and only by Jesus Christ's help, awakened, in Jesus he seemed to
see existing absolutely and naturally. The devotion to this conception
which made it meat and drink to carry it into effect, a devotion of
which he himself was strongly and deeply conscious, he saw in Jesus
still stronger, by far, and deeper than in himself. But for attaining
the righteousness of God, for reaching an absolute conformity with the
moral order and with God's will, he saw no such impotence existing in
Jesus Christ's case as in his own. For Jesus, the uncertain conflict
between the law in our members and the law of the spirit did not appear
to exist. Those eternal vicissitudes of victory and defeat, which drove
Paul to despair, in Jesus were absent. Smoothly and inevitably he
followed the real and eternal order, in preference to the momentary and
apparent order. Obstacles outside him there were plenty, but obstacles
within him there were none. He was led by the spirit of God; he was dead
to sin, he lived to God; and in this life to God he persevered even to
the cruel bodily death of the cross. As many as are led by the spirit of
God, says Paul, are the sons of God.[51] If this is so with even us,
who live to God so feebly and who render such an imperfect obedience,
how much more is he who lives to God entirely and who renders an
unalterable obedience, the unique and only Son of God?
[Footnote 51: _Rom._, viii, 14.]
This is undoubtedly the main line of movement which Paul's ideas
respecting Jesus Christ follow. He had been trained, however, in the
scholastic theology of Judaism, just as we are trained in the scholastic
theology of Christianity; would that we were as little embarrassed with
our training as he was with his! The Jewish theological doctrine
respecting the eternal word or wisdom of God, which was with God from
the beginning before the oldest of his works, and through which the
world was created, this doctrine, which appears in the Book of Proverbs
and again in the Book of Wisdom,[52] Paul applied to Jesus Christ, and
in the Epistle to the Colossians there is a remarkable passage[53] with
clear signs of his thus applying it. But then this metaphysical and
theological basis to the historic being of Jesus is something added by
Paul from outside to his own essential ideas concerning him, something
which fitted them and was naturally taken on to them; it is secondary,
it is not an original part of his system, much less the ground of it. It
fills a very different place in his system from the place which it fills
in the system of the author of the Fourth Gospel, who takes his
starting-point from it. Paul's starting-point, it cannot be too often
repeated, is the idea of righteousness; and his concern with Jesus is as
the clue to righteousness, not as the clue to transcendental ontology.
Speculations in this region had no overpowering attraction for Paul,
notwithstanding the traces of an acquaintance with them which we find in
his writings, and notwithstanding the great activity of his intellect.
This activity threw itself with an unerring instinct into a sphere
where, with whatever travail and through whatever impediments to clear
expression, directly practical religious results might yet be won, and
not into any sphere of abstract speculation.
[Footnote 52: _Prov._, viii, 22-31; and _Wisd._, vii, 25-27.]
[Footnote 53: _Col._, i, 15-17.]
Much more visible and important than his identification of Jesus with
the divine hypostasis known as the Logos, is Paul's identification of
him with the Messiah. Ever present is his recognition of him as the
Messiah to whom all the law and prophets pointed, of whom the heart of
the Jewish race was full, and on whom the Jewish instructors of Paul's
youth had dwelt abundantly. The Jewish language and ideas respecting the
end of the world and the Messiah's kingdom, his day, his presence, his
appearing, his glory, Paul applied to Jesus, and constantly used. Of the
force and reality which these ideas and expressions had for him there
can be no question; as to his use of them, only two remarks are needed.
One is, that in him these Jewish ideas,--as any one will feel who calls
to mind a genuine display of them like that in the Apocalypse,--are
spiritualised; and as he advances in his course they are spiritualised
increasingly. The other remark is, that important as these ideas are in
Paul, of them, too, the importance is only secondary, compared with that
of the great central matter of his thoughts: _the righteousness of God,
the non-fulfilment of it by man, the fulfilment of it by Christ_.
Once more we are led to a result favourable to the scientific value of
Paul's teaching. That Jesus Christ was the divine Logos, the second
person of the Trinity, science can neither deny nor affirm. That he was
the Jewish Messiah, who will some day appear in the sky with the sound
of trumpets, to put an end to the actual kingdoms of the world and to
establish his own kingdom, science can neither deny nor affirm. The very
terms of which these propositions are composed are such as science is
unable to handle. But that the Jesus of the Bible follows the universal
moral order and the will of God, without being let and hindered as we
are by the motions of private passion and by self-will, this is evident
to whoever can read the Bible with open eyes. It is just what any
criticism of the Gospel-history, which sees that history as it really
is, tells us; it is the scientific result of that history. And this is
the result which pre-eminently occupies Paul. Of Christ's life and
death, the all-importance for us, according to Paul, is that by means of
them, 'denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly,
righteously, and godly;' should be enabled to 'bear fruit to God' in
'love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness,
self-control.'[54] Of Christ's life and death the scope was 'to redeem
us from all iniquity, and make us purely zealous for good works.'[55]
Paul says by way of preface, that we are to live thus in the actual
world which now is, 'with the expectation of the appearing of the glory
of God and Christ.'[56] By nature and habit, and with his full belief
that the end of the world was nigh at hand, Paul used these words to
mean a Messianic coming and kingdom. Later Christianity has transferred
them, as it has transferred so much else of Paul's, to a life beyond the
grave, but it has by no means spiritualised them. Paul, as his spiritual
growth advanced, spiritualised them more and more; he came to think, in
using them, more and more of a gradual inward transformation of the
world by a conformity like Christ's to the will of God, than of a
Messianic advent. Yet even then they are always second with him, and not
first; the essence of saving grace is always to make us righteous, to
bring us into conformity with the divine law, to enable us to 'bear
fruit to God.'
[Footnote 54: _Tit._, ii, 12; _Rom._, vii, 4; _Gal._, v, 22, 23.]
[Footnote 55: _Tit._, ii, 14.]
[Footnote 56: _Ibid._, 13.]
'Jesus Christ gave himself for us that he might redeem us from
iniquity.' First of all, he rendered an unbroken obedience to the law of
the spirit; he served the spirit of God; he came, not to do his own
will, but the will of God. Now, the law of the spirit makes men one; it
is only by the law in our members that we are many. Secondly, therefore,
Jesus Christ had an unfailing sense of what we have called, using an
expressive modern term, the _solidarity_ of men: that it was not God's
will that one of his human creatures should perish. Thirdly, Jesus
Christ persevered in this uninterrupted obedience to the law of the
spirit, in this unfailing sense of human solidarity, even to the death;
though everything befell him which might break the one or tire out the
other. Lastly, he had in himself, in all he said and did, that ineffable
force of attraction which doubled the virtue of everything said or done
by him.
If ever there was a case in which the wonder-working power of
attachment, in a man for whom the moral sympathies and the desire of
righteousness were all-powerful, might employ itself and work its
wonders, it was here. Paul felt this power penetrate him; and he felt,
also, how by perfectly identifying himself through it with Jesus, and in
no other way, could he ever get the confidence and the force to do as
Jesus did. He thus found a point in which the mighty world outside man,
and the weak world inside him, seemed to combine for his salvation. The
struggling stream of duty, which had not volume enough to bear him to
his goal, was suddenly reinforced by the immense tidal wave of sympathy
and emotion.
To this new and potent influence Paul gave the name of _faith_. More
fully he calls it: 'Faith that worketh _through love_.'[57] The word
_faith_ points, no doubt, to 'coming by hearing,' and has possibly a
reminiscence, for Paul, of his not having with his own waking eyes, like
the original disciples, seen Jesus, and of his special mission being to
Gentiles who had not seen Jesus either. But the essential meaning of the
word is 'power of holding on to the unseen,' 'fidelity.' Other
attachments demand fidelity in absence to an object which, at some time
or other, nevertheless, has been seen; this attachment demands fidelity
to an object which both is absent and has never been seen by us. It is
therefore rightly called not constancy, but faith; a power,
pre-eminently, of _holding fast to an unseen power of goodness_.
Identifying ourselves with Jesus Christ through this attachment we
become as he was. We live with his thoughts and feelings, and we
participate, therefore, in his freedom from the ruinous law in our
members, in his obedience to the saving law of the spirit, in his
conformity to the eternal order, in the joy and peace of his life to
God. 'The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus,' says Paul, 'freed
me from the law of sin and death.'[58] This is what is done for us by
_faith_.
[Footnote 57: _Gal._, v, 6.]
[Footnote 58: _Rom._, viii, 2.]
It is evident that some difficulty arises out of Paul's adding to the
general sense of the word faith,--_a holding fast to an unseen power of
goodness_,--a particular sense of his own,--_identification with
Christ_. It will at once appear that this faith of Paul's is in truth a
specific form of holding fast to an unseen power of goodness; and that
while it can properly be said of Abraham, for instance, that he was
justified by faith, if we take faith in its plain sense of holding fast
to an unseen power of goodness, yet it cannot without difficulty and
recourse to a strained figure be said of him, if we take faith in Paul's
specific sense of identification with Christ. Paul however, undoubtedly,
having conveyed his new specific sense into the word faith, still uses
the word in all cases where, without this specific sense, it was before
applicable and usual; and in this way he often creates ambiguity. Why,
it may be asked, does Paul, instead of employing a special term to
denote his special meaning, still thus employ the general term faith? We
are inclined to think it was from that desire to get for his words and
thoughts not only the real but also the apparent sanction and
consecration of the Hebrew Scriptures, which we have called his tendency
to Judaise. It was written of the founder of Israel, Abraham, that he
_believed_ God and it was counted to him for righteousness. The prophet
Habakkuk had the famous text: 'The just shall live by _faith_.'[59]
Jesus, too, had used and sanctioned the use of the word _faith_ to
signify cleaving to the unseen God's power of goodness as shown in
Christ.[60] Peter and John and the other apostles habitually used the
word in the same sense, with the modification introduced by Christ's
departure. This was enough to make Paul retain for that vital operation,
which was the heart of his whole religious system, the name of faith,
though he had considerably developed and enlarged the name's usual
meaning. Fraught with this new and developed sense, the term does not
always quite well suit the cases to which it was in its old sense, with
perfect propriety, applied; this, however, Paul did not regard. The term
applied with undeniable truth, though not with perfect adequacy, to the
great spiritual operation whereto he affixed it; and it was at the same
time the name given to the crowning grace of the great father of the
Jewish nation, Abraham; it was the prophet Habakkuk's talismanic and
consecrated term, _faith_.
[Footnote 59: _Gen._, xv, 6; _Habakkuk_, ii, 4.]
[Footnote 60: _Mark_, xi, 22.]
In this word _faith_, as used by St. Paul,[61] we reach a point round
which the ceaseless stream of religious exposition and discussion has
for ages circled. Even for those who misconceive Paul's line of ideas
most completely, faith is so evidently the central point in his system
that their thoughts cannot but centre upon it. Puritanism, as is well
known, has talked of little else but faith. And the word is of such a
nature, that, the true clue once lost which Paul has given us to its
meaning, every man may put into it almost anything he likes, all the
fancies of his superstition or of his fanaticism. To say, therefore,
that to have faith in Christ means to be attached to Christ, to embrace
Christ, to be identified with Christ, is not enough; the question is, to
be attached to him _how_, to embrace him _how_?
[Footnote 61: With secondary uses of the word, such as its use with
the article, '_the_ faith,' in expressions like 'the words of the
faith,' to signify the body of tenets and principles received by
believers from the apostle, we need not here concern ourselves. They
present no difficulty.]
A favourite expression of popular theology conveys perfectly the popular
definition of faith: _to rest in the finished work of the Saviour_. In
the scientific language of Protestant theology, to embrace Christ, to
have saving faith, is 'to give our consent heartily to the covenant of
grace, and so to receive the benefit of justification, whereby God
pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous for the righteousness
of Christ imputed to us.' This is mere theurgy, in which, so far as we
have yet gone, we have not found Paul dealing. Wesley, with his genius
for godliness, struggled all his life for some deeper and more edifying
account of that faith, which he felt working wonders in his own soul,
than that it was a hearty consent to the covenant of grace and an
acceptance of the benefit of Christ's imputed righteousness. Yet this
amiable and gracious spirit, but intellectually slight and shallow
compared to Paul, beat his wings in vain. Paul, nevertheless, had solved
the problem for him, if only he could have had eyes to see Paul's
solution.