enemy whom he had defeated and bound; and in the unwearied energy and self-devotion, no less than the peculiar intensity of national feeling, which mark his whole life and writings, we discern the qualities which the Jewish people alone, of all the nations then existing on the earth, could have furnished. But there were other elements which his conversion developed into life besides the mere enthusiasm of the Jew, shared equally with him by Peter. I would not lay stress on the Grecian culture which he might have received in the schools of Tarsus, or the philosophical tone which we know to have characterized the lectures of Gamaliel, though doubtless these had their share in the formation of his subsequent character. But whatever had been in former ages that remarkable union of qualities which had from the earliest times constituted the chosen people into a link between the East and the West, that was now in the highest degree exemplified in the character of Paul. Never before or since have the Jew and Gentile so completely met in one single person by an absolute though unconscious fusion of the two together-not founding a new system, but breathing a new spirit into that which already existed, and which only needed some such divine impulse to call it into that fullness of life which had been stunted only, not destroyed. He knew nothing, it may be, of those philosophers and historians with whom we are so familiar, nor can we expect to find in him the peculiar graces of Athenian genius; yet it is in the dialectical skill of Aristotle, the impassioned appeals of Demosthenes, the complicated sentences of Thucydides, far more than in the language of Moses or Solomon or Isaiah, that the form and structure of his arguments finds its natural parallel. He had never studied, it may be, or, if he had, would hardly have discerned, those finer feelings of humanity of which the germs existed in Greece and Rome; but how remarkably are they exemplified in his own character! What is that probing of the innermost recesses of the human heart and conscience--so unlike the theocratic visions of the older prophets

but the apostolical reflexion of the practical, individual, psychological spirit of the Western philosophers? What is that capacity for throwing himself into the position and feeling of others— that becoming "all things to all men" which his enemies called worldly prudence-that intense sympathy in the strength of which he "had a thousand friends, and loved each as his own soul, and seemed to live a thousand lives in them, and died a thousand deaths when he must quit them"-which "suffered when the weaker brother suffered "-which would not allow him. to eat meat "whilst the world standeth, lest he make his brother to offend," what was all this but the effect of God's blessing on that boundless versatility of nature which had formed the especial mark of the Grecian mind for good and evil in all ages? What was it but the significant maxim of the Roman poet-“ Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto"-transfigured for the first time in the heavenly radiance of truth and holiness?

It will not be supposed that in this brief view of the outward aspect of Paul's character I have attempted to give a complete analysis of it. I have purposely confined myself to those natural and moral gifts which, as they were practically called into existence by and for the work which he was to perform, can only through and in that work be fully understood. There is perhaps no feature of the apostolical age which is more difficult for us to comprehend than the immense importance attached by Paul to so obvious a truth as the admission of the Gentiles into the Christian Church, still more the furious opposition by which its first announcement was met. Yet so it was. Other questions occupied the attention of the first dawn and of the final close of the apostolical age; but the one question above all others which absorbed its mid-day prime—which is the key to almost all the Epistles-which is the one subject of almost the whole history of the Acts-was not the foundation, not the completion, of the Christian Church, but its universal diffusion-the destruction,

1 "I am a man, and consider nothing human as foreign to me."

not of paganism, not of gnosticism, but of Judaism. He, therefore, who stood at this juncture as the champion of this new truth at once drew the whole attention of the Christian world to himself: every other apostle recedes from our view; east and west, north and south, from Jerusalem to Rome, from Macedonia. to Melita, we hear of nothing, we see nothing, but Paul and his opponents.

It is only by bearing this steadily in mind that we can rightly conceive the nature of the conflict. He was not like a missionary of later times whose great work is accomplished if he can add to the number of his converts; he was this, but he was much more than this: it was not the actual conversions themselves, but the principle which every conversion involved-not the actual disciples whom he gained, but he himself who dared to make them disciples-that constitutes the enduring interest of that life-long struggle. It was not merely that he reclaimed from paganism the Grecian cities of Asia Minor, but that at every step which he took westward from Palestine he tore up the prejudices of ages. It was not merely that he cast out the false spirit from the damsel at Philippi, but that when he set his foot on the farther shores of the Egean Sea, religion for the first time ceased to be Asiatic and became European. It was not merely that at Athens he converted Dionysius and Damaris, but that there was seen a Jew standing in the court of the Areopagus and appealing to an Athenian audience, as children of the same Father, as worshipers, though unconsciously, of the same God. It was not that at Rome he made some impression more or less permanent on the slaves of the imperial palace, but that a descendant of Abraham recognized in the dense masses of that corrupt metropolis a field for his exertions as sacred as in the courts of the temple of Jerusalem. It was not the Roman governor or the Ephesian mob, but the vast body of Judaizing Christians, which was his real enemy-not the worshipers of Jupiter and Diana, but those who made their boast of Moses and claimed to be the disciples of

Cephas. The conflict with paganism was indeed the occasion of those few invaluable models of missionary preaching which are preserved to us in his speeches; but it is the conflict with Judaism which forms the one continuous subject of that far more elaborate and enduring record of his teaching which is preserved to us in his Epistles. At every step of his progress he is dogged by his implacable adversaries, and at every step, as he turns to resist them, he flings back those words of entreaty, of rebuke, of warning, which have become the treasures of the Christian Church for ever. They deny his authority, they impugn his motives, they raise the watchword of the law and of circumcision, and the result is to be found in the early Epistles to Corinth, to Galatia and to Rome. They harass him in his imprisonment at Rome, they blend their Jewish notions with the wilder theories of Oriental philosophy, and there rises before him, in the Epistles to Ephesus, Colosse and Philippi, the majestic vision of the spiritual temple which is to grow out of the ruins of the old-of that divine Head of the whole race of man before whom all temporary and transient rites, all lower forms of worship and philosophy, fade away, in whom, in the fullness of times, all things were gathered together in one. They rise once more in the Asiatic Churches; all Asia is turned away from him; he stands almost alone under the shadow of impending death. But it is the last effort of a defeated and desperate cause. The victory is already gained, and in the three Epistles to Titus and Timothy we may consent to recognize the last accents of the aged apostle, now conscious that his contest is over; some forebodings, indeed, we catch in them of that dark storm which was about to sweep, within the next few years, over the Christian and Jewish world alike; but their general tone is one of calm repose the mid-day heat is passed away, the shades of evening are beginning to slope, the gleam of a brighter sky is seen beyond, and with the assured conviction that the object of his life was fully accomplished, he might well utter the words,

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

To this estimate of Paul's character and position as the great apostle of the Gentiles may be added a brief account of the most striking events of his life. Paul was born at Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, and his father had obtained the privileges of a Roman citizen. But his family was of the purest Hebrew stock, uncontaminated by the admixture of Gentile blood, and its name still stood on the public genealogies of Benjamin. The education of Paul was completed at Jerusalem, under Gamaliel. He seems to have greatly outstripped his master in zeal and fiery ardor against the Christians. Not content with carrying on his crusade in and near Jerusalem, he obtained letters from the Sanhedrim, giving him authority to drag to Jerusalem from Damascus any converts to the new heresy on whom he could lay hands.

The distance from Jerusalem is at last traversed; Saul and his companions have feasted their eyes on the white buildings of Damascus and their groves of green-the pearl gleaming in its emerald setting. They have advanced far along the shady avenues of the celebrated groves and gardens, screened by the cool branches from the fierce mid-day heat. Suddenly a great light shines from heaven, above the brightness of the sun. A voice speaks to Saul in the Hebrew tongue; only two short sentences are uttered, but they come home to him with such divine power that in a far more profound sense than the words were used of his namesake, the first king of Israel, he is changed into "another man." The persecutor rises from the ground an apostle, and his whole energies are now consecrated to promote the cause which once he destroyed.

After his baptism by Ananias, Paul preached for a short time in Damascus, then retired for a season into Arabia, returned again to Damascus, and being persecuted by the Jews, found it necessary to make his escape from the city by night, being let down in a basket from the wall. Retracing his steps, he goes