M. Paul

“ Besides all this, he had great weariness and painfulness in his ministerial labours, and these are things that will come into account shortly, and people will be reckoned with for all the care and pains of their ministers concerning them. Paul was a stranger to wealth and plenty, power and pleasure, preferment and ease; he was in watchings often, and exposed to hunger and thirst; in fastings often, it may be out of necessity ”

“ “But he was there, they were all there that morning when I came down to breakfast, and saw that Paul was frightened—the man who loved me frightened and all his paraphernalia fallen, so that I knew it was impossible, because personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.” ”

“ Like the Christian Scientists, he felt the need of vigorous affirmation: ‘I am Paul Rivers. I am a grown-up man. I am an official in a lumber Company. I am forty-five. I have a beard. I am important and sedate.’
Thus he fortified himself; and thus, like the persuasive Mrs. Tompkyns on the lawn, he imagined that he was deceiving both himself—and those who were on the watch!
93 CHAPTER VIII
And a little child shall lead them. ”

“ Society is kind to one who is not ambitious for social distinction,—one who has something to say that is worth hearing, who represents a principle, or some new thing the discussion of which may possibly furnish an agreeable diversion,—very much after the manner of the Athenians in Paul’s time ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ There are words too, uttered by yet more sacred lips, which it needs no little spiritual experience and insight to avoid misunderstanding, and applying to uses which the whole tenour of the Saviour's life and teaching would sternly condemn. Paul, a man vividly sympathetic and tender, easily touched by suffering, easily drawn by love, intense, passionate, and impetuous, suffers himself ever and anon to express in one short, startling sentence some vivid impression which for the moment occupied his whole soul. ”

“ Paul has seen with the spirit's eye what we have seen since in history,—that he is to be the living link by which the electric fire of life should pass first from religious Asia to quicken this dead, brutish Europe. ”

“ That was the electrifying, vivifying effect of the apparition of such an one as Paul—“a man who had indeed done nothing worthy of bonds or of death”—a man in whose entire disinterestedness and in whose transparent honor the image and superscription of his Master was written so that no one could mistake it. “In every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness” is the noblest work of God our Creator—the most precious result of human endeavor. ”

“ Paul was born of a noble Hebrew family of Tarsus, and was a man of high culture. He had, to use a modern expression, simplified himself, renounced his position in a time when few could resist the passion for luxury, and taken up a trade for his living; with the scanty profit from his work as a tent-maker, alone and on foot he made measureless journeys through the Empire, everywhere preaching the redemption of man. ”

“ This is followed by the story of Paul and Thecla, the greater part of which is preserved.
The next scene is at Myra, where Thecla left him. [3] Here lived the dropsical Hermocrates. Having heard of the power of the God whom Paul preached, he fell down at the feet of Paul together with his wife and children, beseeching his help. The apostle promised to help him in the name of Jesus Christ. At this the dropsical man fell down, his body opened and much water came forth. Those that stood by, believed the sufferer to be dead; but the apostle lifted him up and gave him bread to eat. ”

“ The False Paul, that is, was within an ace of running away with all his elaborate armour, and leaving the True Paul dancing on the floor, a child among children, a spirit of impulse, enthusiasm and imagination, laughing with the sheer happiness of his perpetual youth. ”

“ He can therefore put into his appeals all the force which naturally belongs to one who has sacrificed himself for his principles. 'I, Paul,' he writes, 'the prisoner of Jesus Christ, on behalf of you Gentiles.' He speaks of himself as 'an ambassador in a chain' bound, as he was no doubt, to the soldier which kept him. ”

“ Paul was one of those daring wits whom profane men most admire; and as the young tailor’s style was one which had respect for neither Olympus nor the mortals, he became a laureate, like William the Baker, but not, like him, poet-laureate to the King. ”

“ Paul is not permanently attached to the furnace in the corner, but came to fill the place of one who had met with an accident. As a matter of fact, Paul is everybody’s man; he is here, there, and everywhere. ”

“ Paul as a gentleman, what a figure he would have made of the great Apostle of the Gentiles—occupied with himself, not carried away, raised, inspired with his subject—insinuating his doctrines into his audience, not launching them from him with the tongues of the Holy Spirit, and with looks of fiery scorching zeal! ”

“ Paul, “all things to all men,” for he comes in touch with so many different interests, acts as oil to so many different wheels. It calls heavily on anybody’s tact to carry out the work without friction. The duties are many and important, for he is the head of the [125] establishment and controls it. ”

“ Paul's the Dean proved himself a great preacher, exercising also in private life a powerful influence on all who came in contact with him, alike from the splendour of his intellect and the large-hearted purity of his character. ”

“ Paul had already proved that he was a man who would 'follow the gleam,' even when it called him to a complete breach with his past. And the further development of his thought was made much easier by the fact that he was no systematic philosopher, but a great missionary who was willing to be all things to all men, while his own faith was unified by his strength of purpose, and by the steady glow of the light within. ”

“ Crowning the nobler life that is to be—
Blessings theirs but because thou wouldst not shrink
From whatsoever hardship, peril, harm,
Loss, toil, self-sacrifice to martyrdom.
[703] So thou mightst scatter far and wide for us
The deathless seeds of that which we enjoy
In harvest of all good, civility
Of morals and of manners, science, art,
Fair order, freedom, progress, light and life,
And, overvaulting all, the hope of heaven!
While Paul his circuits was accomplishing,
Paul's enemies (and ours) were not remiss,
Whether in Rome or in Jerusalem. ”

“ Therefore I strolled about with him myself half the forenoon; and in our walk, hastily conferred on him a private baptism; having named him Jean Paul before the priest did so. At midday, we sent the beef away as it had come; the Sun of happiness having desiccated all our gastric juices. We now began to look about us for pomp; I for scientific decorations of my hair, my godson for his christening-shirt, and his mother for her dress-cap. ”

“ So lasting are the associations of the boy in the life of the man.
17. Paul's Home.—Paul had a certain pride in the place of his birth, as he showed by boasting on one occasion that he was a citizen of no mean city. He had a heart formed by nature to feel the warmest glow of patriotism. Yet it was not for Cilicia and Tarsus that this fire burned. He was an alien in the land of his birth. His father was one of those numerous Jews who were scattered in that age over the cities of the Gentile world, engaged in trade and commerce. ”

“ Paul is less a patron saint of the loggers than an autochthonous Munchausen, whose fame has been extended almost entirely by word of mouth among lumbermen resting from their work and vying with one another to see who could tell the most stupendous yarn about Paul's prowess and achievements. ”

“ They had lived day by day with Hamilton Burton until his death, and none of them had, in the shoulder-touch of life, ever suspected those deeper things of which now for the first time they heard. They were hearing it all from lips which were to them as the lips of a prophet. But the preacher was not through.
"And there was Paul. You all knew him and loved him. A nature was given him at birth almost too delicate for a world of hard affairs, but fragrant with a tenderness of love for his fellow-men. He was attuned to harmony and his heart was that of a troubadour. ”

“ This familiarity to which this Roman tribune or colonel admitted Paul's nephew is here upon record to his honour. Let no man think he disparages himself by his humility or charity. He went with him aside privately, that none might hear his business, and asked him, "What is it that thou hast to tell me? Tell me wherein I can be serviceable to Paul." It is probable that the chief captain was the more obliging in this case because he was sensible he had run himself into a premunire in binding Paul, against his privilege as a Roman citizen, which he was willing now to atone for. ”

“ While many philosophers and the centurion were assembled with the emperor, Paul came about the ninth hour, and in the presence of all he said, "Caesar behold, here is Paul, the soldier of God; I am not dead, but I live in my God. But upon thee, thou miserable one, [104] many evils and great punishments [105] will come, because thou hast unjustly shed the blood of the righteous, not many days hence." And after having spoken thus, Paul departed from him. [106] When Nero had heard (this) , he commanded that the prisoners be released, Patroclus as well as Barsabas with his friends. ”

“ Saves thee, thou trustest, through new life bestowed,
Which makes thee other than thou wast before,
And therefore frees thee from the fatal yoke
And bondage of the karma thou hadst won
With labor when thou wast the former man:
The words are easy, but the sense is hard."
"Hard?" Paul said; "nay, outright impossible
To any soul of man that still abides
His old first natural self unchanged to new.
Submit thyself unto the righteousness
Of God, and thou the mystery shalt know
With knowledge deeper than the mind's most deep
Divinings of the things she cannot speak." ”

“ In the year 1773, when Paul was about fourteen years of age, his father died, leaving a widow with six daughters to the care of him and his brothers. [Pg 127] Although he had no learning except what he had received from the hand of friendship, yet by that means he advanced to a considerable degree of knowledge in arithmetic and navigation. ”

“ For the exchange, unbargained-for, with Paul.
Paul has much travelled everywhere abroad
[100] And freely commerced with all kinds of men.
He has the skill of many magic arts,
The virtue knows of many a mighty drug;
He can compound thee opiate drinks to drown
Thy thought and senses in oblivion.
He could compose thee in so deep a sleep,
Fair like an infant's, that not all the blare
Of all Rome's trumpets loud together blown
Could rouse thee ever from that fixéd sleep.
A dangerous wicked man to wield such power! ”

“ John Paul answered slowly, “but the big one is something which I can't quite get. I find about you some sort of comic all-womanness, and I can feel a richness and a sort of tremendous allure which is a bit upsetting. The working of your mind is like a gentle intellectual massage—what the Japs call lumi-lumi—and when you move you possess a flowing grace which is almost a caress. ”

“ Paul speaks not only of servants, but of bond-men; and he actually enjoins it on every man to abide in the same calling, or condition, wherein he is called. And he specifies particularly that if any one is called being a servant, he is to rest contented with the assurance that he is the Lord’s free man. ”

“ There is one in the world whose name is Paul, he preaches and announces Christ, and we believe that many have entered into the kingdom through the virtue and sweetness of his speeches. Behold all the just men are behind me coming to meet thee, Paul, and I first come for this cause to meet them who did the will of my Son and my Lord Jesus Christ, I first advance to meet them and do not send them away to be as wanderers until they meet in peace. ”

“ We might as well imagine that the sun could become cold and dark, as that the warm, tender heart of the apostle could become stoical. A very cursory glance at that life, so full of love and tenderness, is enough to tell us that there could have been nothing of the Stoic about the apostle. A single moment's recollection will bring to our memories words that he spoke or wrote, which could only have come from a nature that was sensitive, tender, and emotional. St. Paul was one who loved strongly and felt deeply. He was easily lifted up with joy, and cut to the quick by pain and suffering. ”