The Life of St. Paul | Page 4

him unuttered. Of course Jesus would have uttered them
differently and far better. Paul's thoughts have everywhere the coloring
of his own mental peculiarities. But the substance of them is what
Christ's must have been if he had himself given them expression.
8. There was one great subject especially which Christ had to leave
unexplained--his own death. He could not explain it before it had taken
place. This became the leading topic of Paul's thinking--to show why it
was needed and what were its blessed results. But, indeed, there was no
aspect of the appearance of Christ into which his restlessly inquiring
mind did not penetrate. His thirteen Epistles, when arranged in
chronological order, show that his mind was constantly getting deeper
and deeper into the subject. The progress of his thinking was
determined partly by the natural progress of his own advance in the
knowledge of Christ, for he always wrote straight out of his own
experience; and partly by the various forms of error which he had at
successive periods to encounter, and which became a providential
means of stimulating and developing his apprehension of the truth, just
as ever since in the Christian Church the rise of error has been the
means of calling forth the clearest statements of doctrine. The ruling
impulse, however, of his thinking, as of his life, was ever Christ, and it
was his lifelong devotion to this exhaustless theme that made him the
Thinker of Christianity.
9. The Missionary of the Gentiles.--Christianity obtained in Paul,
thirdly, the missionary of the Gentiles. It is rare to find the highest
speculative power united with great practical activity; but these were
united in him. He was not only the Church's greatest thinker, but the
very foremost worker she has ever possessed. We have been
considering the speculative task which was awaiting him when he
joined the Christian community; but there was a no less stupendous
practical task awaiting him too. This was the evangelization of the
Gentile world.
10. One of the great objects of the appearance of Christ was to break
down the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile and make the
blessings of salvation the property of all men, without distinction of

race or language. But he was not himself permitted to carry this change
into practical realization. It was one of the strange limitations of his
earthly life that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
It can easily be imagined how congenial a task it would have been to
his intensely human heart to carry the gospel beyond the limits of
Palestine and make it known to nation after nation; and--if it be not too
bold to say so--this would certainly have been his chosen career, had he
been spared. But he was cut off in the midst of his days and had to
leave this task to his followers.
11. Before the appearance of Paul on the scene, the execution of this
task had been begun. Jewish prejudice had been partially broken down,
the universal character of Christianity had been in some measure
realized, and Peter had admitted the first Gentiles into the Church by
baptism. But none of the original apostles was equal to the emergency.
None of them was large-minded enough to grasp the idea of the perfect
equality of Jew and Gentile and apply it without flinching in all its
practical consequences; and none of them had the combination of gifts
necessary to attempt the conversion of the Gentile world on a large
scale. They were Galilean fishermen, fit enough to teach and preach
within the bounds of their native Palestine. But beyond Palestine lay
the great world of Greece and Rome--the world of vast populations, of
power and culture, of pleasure and business. It needed a man of
unlimited versatility, of education, of immense human sympathy and
breadth, to go out there with the gospel message--a man who could not
only be a Jew to the Jews, but a Greek to the Greeks, a Roman to the
Romans, a barbarian to the barbarians--a man who could encounter not
only rabbis in their synagogues, but proud magistrates in their courts
and philosophers in the haunts of learning--a man who could face travel
by land and by sea, who could exhibit presence of mind in every
variety of circumstances, and would be cowed by no difficulties. No
man of this size belonged to the original apostolic circle; but
Christianity needed such an one, and he was found in Paul.
12. Originally attached more strictly than any of the other apostles to
the peculiarities and prejudices of Jewish exclusiveness, he cut his way
out of the jungle of these prepossessions, accepted the equality of all

men in Christ, and applied this principle relentlessly in