Paul

“ Of life lived wholly without God, and vain,
Paul sighed in spirit and thought: 'The world, the world!
How vast and dreadful, overshadowing all!
How strong and dreadful, dominating all!
Kingdom and usurpation in the earth!
What power shall overthrow thee, so enthroned
As thou art at the center of all things
In Rome, and wielding, thou unshaken there,
Thence wielding all the shaken universe
Implement in thy hand to wreak thy will? ”

“ 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 ”

“ Paul are exquisitely beautiful where the rough and broken turreted rocks stand up against the sky above the steep, verdant slopes. They are inexpressibly rich and mellow in color; soft dark browns mingled with dull greens—the very tints to make an artist worship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Paul's mind is full of the idea of predestination. He delights to contemplate the eternal purpose of God as lying behind what seems to us the painfully slow method by which divine results are actually won. What age-long processes have been necessary both among the Jews and among the Gentiles before this young church, this divine society of man with God has become possible! What slow working through 'times of ignorance,' what infinite delay in the divine forbearance—as we should now say, what age-long processes of developement! ”

“ 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 has unfolded the dimensions of the revelation of God given in the catholic church. The interests of the whole of mankind and of the whole universe which it is to subserve—that is its breadth: the eternal and slowly realized intention of God of which it is the expression—that is its length: the spiritual elevation up to which it takes men—that is its height: the gulf of sin and misery from which it rescues them—that is its depth. And now he is about to press upon the Asiatic Christians the moral obligations which this great catholic brotherhood involves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For He abideth faithful—so Paul says,
And Paul has proved it over and over again.
At any rate, the promise Jesus made
To Paul once, when his need was very sore,
Will be as good to us in this our stead;
His grace will be sufficient for us still.
The dread is heavier than the pain will be."
And it was so; for after the first wrench,
Which well-nigh solved the jointings of their limbs,
The spirit rose the sovereign of the flesh
And bore those helpless victims of the rack
Triumphant as in painless ecstasy. ”

“ O Paul, thou offeredst to the powers unseen
Above us," Publius said soon after, while
The equal feast they shared; "as if one God
Alone thou worshippedst, All-giver named
By thee: but we have gods and goddesses
Diverse in name and office, unto whom
We offer gift and sacrifice diverse
According as may seem diversely meet. ”

“ Paul in his chains was beating out his heart
[655] In throbbing letters of such strain as this:
If any consolation, then, in Christ
There be, if any comfort sweet of love,
If in the Spirit any fellowship,
If any moving of compassion even,
Make my joy full, belovéd, that ye be
Like-minded each with other, the same love
Within you all, one spirit, one accord;
Far be contention, and vainglory far,
But all in lowly-mindedness esteem
Each one his fellow better than himself.
Look not each man toward his own things alone,
But each man also toward the other's look. ”

“ There is Paul, with the mystery which was hidden from ages and from generations, which was uncovered by him for some half score years, and which then was buried with him in his grave! Not in our day will he relive, with his incessant effort to find a moral side for miracle, with his incessant effort to make the intellect follow and secure all the workings of the religious perception. Of those who care for religion, the multitude of us want the materialism of the Apocalypse; the few want a vague religiosity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Burst from Paul's eyes and fell a sunlit shower,
While all the rest beholding wept with Paul—
"Form, for her sake, our well-belovéd, dear,
Must we then leave thee in the dust of earth?
But not as thus we leave thee wilt thou rise!
[585] Thou in corruption wilt lie waiting here,
But thou shalt rise, to incorruption changed;
Thou wilt sleep darkling underneath the clod,
But thence in glory shalt thou waking burst;
In weakness buried, thou shalt rise in power.
Mary the image of the earthy bore,
She shall the image of the heavenly bear:
Comfort yourselves, belovéd, with such hope." ”

“ But Paul belongs with Jesus, on the same side of the gulf. In his ethic there is no formalism, no triviality, no casuistry—there is naught but "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control." What has become of all the rest? Was it removed by the genius of Paul? It is strange that two such men of genius should have arisen independently and at the same time. Or was the terrible plus of Pharisaic formalism and triviality burned away from Paul when the light shone around him on the way to Damascus and he fell at the feet of the great Teacher? ”

“ Now, here's Paul, the nicest, most sensitive critter on God's green earth. You ought to be ashamed of yourself the way you pan him. Why, you talk to him like a washerwoman. I'm surprised you can act so doggone common, Zilla! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The First Epistle to the Corinthians is a magnificent refutation of such a caricature. That Epistle represents Paul as a pastor of souls, unsurpassed in his insight into the practical problems of his converts, unsurpassed in the tact with which he applied great principles to special circumstances. But the same characteristics appear everywhere in Paul. Everywhere Paul is the true friend, the true patriot, and the true man; everywhere he exhibits that careful attention to detail, that careful recognition of special relationships, which is lacking in genuinely mystical piety. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These remarks are particularly forcible in connection with the career of Paul. Endowed with brilliant talents, learned, living at the time and place, he must have been able to form a reliable opinion. And yet, while all the motives that commonly actuate men loudmouthed consistency, fame, wealth, pride, pleasure, the rooted force of inveterate prejudices all were beckoning to him from the temples and palaces of the Pharisaic establishment, he spurned the glowing visions of his ambition and dashed to earth the bright dreams of his youth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The pontificate of Paul III. forms a turning-point in the history of the papacy. The situation at his accession was grave and complex: the steady growth of Protestantism, the preponderant power of the emperor and his prolonged wars with France, the advances of the Turks, the uncertain mind of the Church itself—all conspired to produce a problem involved and delicate. Paul was shrewd, calculating, tenacious; but on the other hand over-cautious, and inclined rather to temporize than to strike at the critical moment. His instincts and ambitions were those of a secular prince of the Renaissance ”

“ And this, be it remembered, was not merely Paul the laborious apostle, or Paul the raptured saint, but Paul the living, acting, walking Christian—the one who addresses us in these words, "Brethren, be ye followers together of me." Nor should we ever be satisfied with anything less than this. True, we fail sadly; but let us always keep the true object before us. Like the school-boy at his copy, he can only expect to succeed by keeping his eye fixed upon his head-line. ”

“ Paul beheld the council and said: Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day. The high priest Ananias commanded them that stood by, to smite him on the mought. Then said Paul to him: God shall smite thee thou painted wall. Sittest thou and judgest me after the law: and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law? And they that stood by said: Revilest thou god's high priest? Then said Paul: I wist not brethren, that he was the high priest. For it is written thou shalt not speak evil to the ruler of thy people. ”

“ Paul, the greatest of the apostles, ‘who laboured more than they all,’ and ‘was in sufferings’ more abundant than the rest; who spent a long life in daily services and deaths for the sake of Christ, is not fitted for, and advanced to a rank of blessedness superior to that of the crucified thief, who became a Christian but a few moments at the end of a life of impiety and plunder? ”

“ Paul in such a way as to picture one who was above the tenderness wherefrom sad hearts are blessed—the great theologian, the mighty logician, the lone, strong, sublime man whose self-mastery lifted him above sympathy with common men. ”

“ Paul—that ‘in which we live and move and have our being,’ made itself intelligible to her ordinary consciousness, her workaday self, and led her to the fulfilment of a task which seemed impossible to men. ”