THE EPISTLES OF THE APOSTLE PAUL.

WHOEVER will be at the trouble of collecting together the scattered materials of the life and character of Paul, as they are to be found in the Acts of the Apostles, and in his own divinely inspired Epistles, and then of steadily following out the thread of his history and labours, will rise from the task with a conviction that he was the most able, as he was also the most extraordinary, minister of the New Testament, raised up by the great Head of the Church. A most determined and implacable enemy to the cross of Christ, the ebullitions of whose wrath swept away in one common destruction "men and women "a bigoted and unrelenting persecutor, breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, and making havoc of the church," he was brought over from the ranks of the enemy, and became, not only an able preacher of the faith he had once destroyed, but its most steady and successful defender. The conversion of Paul to the faith of Christ was not the occasion of destroying any of those striking features in his character which distinguished him while engaged in the work of destruction. It only brought them under the influence of principles which rendered them instruments of the most extensive and lasting good.

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Possessing a determination of purpose which no obstacles could thwart―a burning charity which no opposition could quench-and an ardent zeal which no suffering could subdue, and uniting these moral qualities to an intellect of no ordinary kind, improved by accessions of almost every species of learning which was then cultivated, and consecrating the whole to the undivided service of his Lord, he became the most able expositor and the most successful defender of the Christian faith, in that or in any other age of the church.

Saul of Tarsus was not a man of a light, fickle, and uncultivated mind. His natural powers were vast; his character was most decided; and his education, as we learn from his historian and from his writings, was at once both liberal and profound. He was born and brought up in a city enjoying every privilege of which Rome itself could boast, and which was a successful rival of both Rome and Athens in arts and science. Though a Jew, it is evident that his education was not confined to matters that concerned his own people and country alone. He had read the best Greek writers, as his style, allusions, and quotations, sufficiently prove; and in matters which concern his own religion, he was instructed by Gamaliel, one of the most celebrated doctors the synagogue had ever produced. He was evidently master of the three great languages which were spoken among the only people who deserved the name of nations the Hebrew and its prevailing dialect, Chaldæo-Syriac, the Greek, and the Latin ;-languages that, notwithstanding all the cultivation through which the earth has passed, maintain their rank over all the languages of the universe.

*

Harwood thus characterises Paul :-"All the writings of St. Paul speak him a man of a most exalted genius, and the strongest abilities. His composition is peculiarly nervous and animated. He possessed a fervid conception, a glowing but chastened fancy, a quick apprehension, and a most immensely ample and liberal heart. Inheriting from nature distinguished powers, he carried the culture and improvement of them to the most exalted height to which human learning could push them: an excellent scholar, an acute reasoner, a great orator, a most instructive and spirited writer. Longinus classes the apostle among the most celebrated orators of Greece. His speeches in the Acts of the Apostlest are worthy the Roman senate. They breathe a most generous fire and fervour, are animated with a divine spirit of liberty and truth, abound with instances of as fine address as any of the most celebrated orations of Demosthenes or Cicero can boast; and his answers, when at the bar, to the questions proposed to him by the court, have a politeness and a greatness, which nothing in antiquity hardly ever equalled. His writings show him eminently acquainted with Greek learning and Hebrew literature. He greatly excelled in the profound and accurate knowledge of the Old Testament, which he is perpetually citing and explaining with great skill and judgment, and pertinently accommodating to the subject he is dis

*Longinus, p. 260, Pearce, 8vo.

† Michaëlis remarks, that it is evident, from the speeches of Paul, preserved in the Acts, that he must have had a purer language at his command than he generally adopted in his writings. And the reason for which the apostle, as he conceives, did not compose in better Greek was to avoid giving offence to the Jews, by deviating from a language that was already consecrated to the purposes of religion. "Introduction," vol. i., pp. 155.

cussing. Born at Tarsus, the most illustrious seat of the Muses in those days, initiated in that city into the learning and philosophy of the Greeks, conversing in early life* with their most elegant and celebrated writers (whom we find him quoting,) and afterwards finishing his course of education at the feet of Gamaliel, the learned Jewish rabbi, he came forth into public and active life with a mind stored with the most ample and various treasures of science and knowledge that can adorn and dignify the human soul. A negligent greatness, if I may so express it, appears in his writings. Full of the dignity of his subject, a torrent of sacred eloquence bursts forth, and bears down everything before it, with irresistible rapidity. He stays not to arrange and harmonise his words and his periods, but rushes on as his vast ideas transport him, borne away with the sublimity of his theme, and, like Pindar, when seized with poetic inspiration, with strong pinions soars above the clouds, and far, far below, at an immense distance, leaves all mortal things. Hence his frequent and prolix digressions, though at the same time his comprehensive mind never loses sight of his subject, but he returns from these excursions, resumes and pursues it with an ardour and strength of reasoning that astonishes and convinces. introduces any subject which he is afraid will prejudice and disgust his countrymen, the Jews, with a humility and modesty that secures your attention, and with an insinuating form of address to which you can deny nothing. Upon occasion, also, we find him employing the most keen and cutting

He

*This is disputed by Dr. Macknight, "Translation of the Epistles," vol. iv., p. 432.

raillery in satirising the faults and foibles of those to whom he writes."*

The Epistles of Paul form no inconsiderable part of the New Testament, either in bulk or in importance. The number of his apostolic letters amounts to fourteen, and in these every doctrine of the Christian system is discussed, amplified, illustrated, and defended, with the utmost success. The importance of these writings will be immediately manifest when it is considered that they are commentaries on the gospels. The apostle has not, as a recent writer has disingenuously insinuated, introduced and taught doctrines not previously revealed by our Saviour, and preserved in the gospels; but, watching over the infant churches which had been established, and observing the rise and spread of error and abuse, he was induced, under the influence of divine inspiration, to exhibit in a variety of lights, and to illustrate by a number of methods, the several parts of that important system of doctrine which had already been laid down by his Lord and Master, for the purpose of preserving in the purity of the faith those who had made a profession of it, and of checking and putting down those mistaken or malignant men who exerted themselves in sullying the purity of the Christian scheme. "The post, then, which the Epistles occupy in the sacred depository of revelation, is not that of communications of new doctrine. They fill their station as additional records, as inspired corroborations, as argumentative concentrations, as instructive expositions, of truths already revealed, of commandments already promulgated. In some few instances a new

* Harwood " 'Introduction," vol. i., pp. 198, etc. See also Macknight's "Translation of the Epistles, Prel. Essay," III.