Father Paul

“ Paul was very ancient when he wrote, and has continued in some parts of the world ever since. Like so many other things in natural religion and in Judaism, it received a new and intensified meaning when it was adopted among the usages of the Christian Church.
“Without wrath and disputing:” that is, in the spirit of Christian peace and trust. Ill-will and misgiving [99] respecting one another are incompatible with united prayer to our common Father. The atmosphere of controversy is not congenial to devotion. ”

“ So it is exactly also in the teaching of Paul. God stands, according to Paul, in a vital relation to all men. He is the author of the being of all; He cares for all; He has planted His law in the hearts of all. He stands thus in a relation toward all which is analogous to that of father to child. The Book of Acts is quite in accord with the Epistles when it makes Paul say of all men, "For we are also His offspring." But in Paul just as in Jesus the lofty term "Father" is reserved for a more intimate relationship. Paul accepts all the truth of natural religion ”

“ We see the marvelous changes wrought in the lives and characters of the converts. We note that the triumphs of faith were won through a belief in the Divine Son of God and the power of the Holy Ghost. The struggles and difficulties of these early Christians in coming out of heathenism are depicted in a masterly way. Paul, in his endeavor to guide aright the churches, of which he had been the spiritual father, shows what he believes and teaches about God, the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ, sin, redemption, and the future state of the soul. ”

“ After the resurrection he was the object of praise, and soon prayers were offered in his name and to him. Already to the apostle Paul he dominates the world and is above all created things, visible and invisible, so that he has the religious value of God. It is not God as abstract, infinite and eternal, as the far-away creator of the universe, or even as the ruler of the world, which Paul worships, but it is God revealed in Jesus Christ, the Father of Jesus Christ, the grace and mercy in Jesus Christ which deliver from evil. Metaphysics and speculative theories were valueless for Paul ”

“ Paul slides himself "an apostle, not of men, neither by men, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father." They took not the office upon them of their own accord nor were they called to it by the votes and suffrages of the people. It was a new religion they were to propagate in the world; therefore Jesus Christ, the author of it, chose a set of men whom he called Apostles, to preach it among all nations. ”

“ Their avowed purpose is to counteract the inroads of heresy, and the remedy applied is ecclesiastical authority and discipline. Far more of Paul's inspired gospel of Son ship and liberty, far more of his conception of the redemption in Christ as a triumph over the spiritual world-rulers of this darkness, is found in 1st Peter and Hebrews than here. Nothing appears of Paul's broad horizon, his spirit of missionary conquest, his devotion to the unity of Jew and Gentile in their common access to the Father in one Spirit. ”

“ When the uproar had ceased, Paul sent for the disciples and encouraged them. Then, after bidding them good-by, he started for Macedonia.
PAUL WRITES TO THE CHRISTIANS AT ROME
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart to tell God's good news about Jesus Christ our Lord, to all God's loved ones who are in Rome and have been called to be his people: Love to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. ”

“ Not before the pious father did the enraptured look hold itself much in abeyance, which Albano, standing as if under the gate of eternity, cast into the heavens, gleaming like worlds one behind another; he was still and tender, and in his heart dwelt all hearts. O love one heart purely and warmly, then thou lovest all hearts after it, and the heart in its heaven sees like the journeying sun, from the dew-drop even to the ocean, nothing but mirrors which it warms and fills. ”

“ My heart swam in love and trembled in rapture at my words: 'Beloved, the earth is to-day so beautiful! that indeed makes man more tender: heaven rests with a caress and kiss of love on the earth, as a father on a mother and her children,—the flowers and beating hearts fall into the embrace and nestle around the mother. ”

“ Alas! if every soul be its own father and creator, why shall it not be its own destroying angel too? Is this a man still near me? Wretched being! That petty life of thine is but the sigh of nature, or the echo of that sigh. Your wavering cloudy forms are but reflections of rays cast by a concave mirror upon the clouds of dust which shroud your world—dust which is dead men’s ashes. Look ye down into the chasm athwart the face of which the ash-clouds float and fly. A mist of worlds rises up from the Ocean of Death; the future is a gathering cloud, the present a falling vapour. ”

“ The mirror-wall of the glaciers stood, like his father, unmelted before the warm rays of heaven, and only glistened and remained cold and hard,—from the broad expanse of the lake the sunny hills seemed on every hand to rise as from their bath, and the little ships of men seemed to lie fast stranded in the distance,—and, floating far and wide around him, the great spirits of the past went by, and under their invisible tread only the woods bowed themselves, the flower-beds scarcely at all. ”

“ Your sun, it may be, is setting at this hour, and amid flowers and brilliance, and with tears ye sink upon your knees, and, lifting up your hands in rapturous joy, ye cry each one aloud up to the open heavens, ‘Oh Father, infinite, eternal, hear! Thou knowest me in all my littleness, even as Thou knowest all things, and Thou seest my wounds and sorrows, and Thou wilt receive me after death and soothe and heal them all.’ Alas! unhappy souls! For after death these wounds will not be healed. ”

“ With orphaned heart—a heart which has lost the Great Father—he mourns beside the immeasurable corpse of Nature, a corpse no longer animated or held together by the Great Spirit of the Universe—a corpse which grows in its grave; and by this corpse he mourns until he himself crumbles and falls away from it into nothingness. The wide earth lies before such an one like the great Egyptian sphinx of stone, half-buried in the desert sand; the immeasurable universe has become for him but the cold iron-mask upon an eternity which is without form and void. ”

“ Turn thou away from Rosamond's piercing shriek—her fixed look and petrified features—if thou hast already felt this maternal sorrow,—look not upon the mother, who, with senseless love, presses convulsively to her bosom the corpse which she can no longer hurt, but upon the father, whose struggling heart although concealed in the silence of his breast, is sorrounded by the adder grasp of grief, and poisoned by drops from the serpent tooth of sorrow. ”

“ His apostolic zeal it was that kept the Faith alive in Eastern Nova Scotia, in the days when, with the exception of a few French missions, it lived only in the hearts of the poor Micmac Indians. Before his death, however, he had the happiness of seeing the Catholic religion firmly rooted in the land he so loved, by the arrival and establishment there of the loyal Highlanders, who by their energy and perseverance have changed the desert through which Father Vincent made his perilous journeys into a beautiful and fertile country. ”

“ Paul literally loves the Church; how he longs to communicate his own enthusiasm to it; how he would die, almost does die, himself to bring life to them. All his hopes are bound up with theirs—his salvation with their salvation. He seems to 'fail from out his blood, and grow incorporate' into them. We are called to the same office as St. Paul, we have the same power working in us as he had working in him: we too shall have success in so far as we love—as we identify ourselves with those whom God has given us to take care of. ”

“ The Message which Paul bore to Jew and Gentile was the moving force of all his work. The starting point was the memorable day when Jesus Christ appeared to him on his way to Damascus. Paul believed that he received his commission as an apostle directly from Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:1-24) . The four main positions of Paul, set forth so plainly in his Epistle to the Romans, are: (a) All are guilty before God (Jew and Gentile) . (b) All need a Savior. (c) Christ died for all. (d) We are all (through faith) one body in Christ. Paul leaves us in no doubt as to how he regards Jesus Christ. ”

“ But blessed art thou, O Paul, that thy generation, and those thou teachest, are the sons of the Kingdom. And know thou, O Paul, that every man who believes through thee hath a great blessing, and a blessing is reserved for him.” Then he departed from me. And the angel who was with me led me forth, and said unto me: “Lo, unto thee is given this mystery and revelation; as thou pleasest, make it known unto the sons of men.” And I, Paul, returned unto myself, and I knew all that I had seen ”

“ He is glorifying Jesus and urging them to believe in Him. There is not one word about the indignities that have been heaped upon himself. This personal testimony in this city where Paul had been the chief persecutor was wonderful. But as the Jews had demanded the life of Christ, when he was upon earth and testified to His mission, so now they demanded the life of Paul.
Before the Jewish Council (Acts 22:24-23:10) .—Paul, rescued from the clutches of the mob, would have been scourged by the Romans had he not declared himself a Roman. ”

“ He might naturally have appeared to him in anger, to condemn him for the persecution of the Church. Instead he appeared in love, to receive him into fellowship and to make him the greatest of the apostles. That was grace—pure grace, pure undeserved favor. It is always a matter of pure grace when a man is saved by the Lord Jesus, but in the case of Paul, the persecutor, the grace was wonderfully plain. Paul never forgot that grace of Christ; he never hated anything so much as the thought that a man can be saved by his own good works, or his own character, or his own obedience to God's commands. ”

“ Paul would have us cultivate is not this cowardly mis-called wisdom, but rather the spirit of the ideal soldier, of the 'happy warrior.' Nothing, {208} in fact, could be more fascinating than the picture St. Paul here draws of the Christian community. He has a vision of a pure brotherly enthusiastic society, fulfilled with a divine life, and attracting into its warm and comfortable fellowship the isolated, weary, hopeless, and sin-stained from the cold dark world outside.
Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise; redeeming the time, because the days are evil. ”

“ Paul is the most prominent figure of all the great men who have adorned, or advanced the interest of, the Christian Church. Great pulpit orators, renowned theologians, profound philosophers, immortal poets, successful reformers, and enlightened monarchs have never disputed his intellectual ascendency; to all alike he has been a model and a marvel. The grand old missionary stands out in history as a matchless example of Christian living, a sure guide in Christian doctrine. No more favored mortal is ever likely to appear; he is the counterpart of Moses as a divine teacher to all generations. ”

“ For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard. And now why tarriest thou, arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord." Paul subsequently received another divine communication, informing him that the Lord would send him unto the Gentiles (Verses 12-21) . After all this he was not authorized to act as a minister of the gospel, because he had not yet been properly called and ordained. ”

“ Paul writes as the apostle of the Gentiles to the Christians of the greatest of all Gentile cities. He does so with a solemn sense of special responsibility. Profoundly impressed with the grandeur of the Roman name, the position of this promiscuous little body of converts is to him enormously significant. They are the representatives of the faith of Jesus in the capital of the world; they are the first members of a Church to which God seems to give the most magnificent of all opportunities. And the thought is scarcely absent from his mind that this may be the last Epistle he will ever send. ”

“ His whole heart, in Christ, is blent in personal love with hearts belonging to many nations; in spiritual affection he is ready for contact with all hearts. And now he, of all the Apostles, is the teacher who by life and word is to bring this glorious catholicity home for ever to all believing souls, our own included. It is St Paul pre-eminently who has taught man, as man, in Christ, to love man; who has made Hebrew, European, Hindoo, Chinese, Caffre, Esquimaux, actually one in the conscious brotherhood of eternal life. ”

“ And it is in just such a mood that, reading this paragraph of the great Epistle, he will smite upon his breast, and say, "God, be merciful to me the sinner" (Luke xviii. 13) .
{55} So doing he will be meeting the very purpose of the Writer of this passage. St Paul is full of the message of peace, holiness, and the Spirit. He is intent and eager to bring his reader into sight and possession of the fulness of the eternal mercy, revealed and secured in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Sacrifice and Life. But for this very purpose he labours first to expose man to himself ”