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he proclaims the liberty with which Christ has set us free. As against the Ascetics of Rome, who imagined themselves compelled by religious scruples to abstain from meat and wine, he champions the "strong" brethren.' The success of his missionary work was threatened by two great enemies, the gross vices and the fanatical tendencies of his heathen converts. The vicious life, so often continued after conversion, seemed to demand that certain allowances should be made for the natural weaknesses of men. On the other hand, the foolish zeal and ascetic practices of others, which sought to reduce the Christian life to sloth and self-pleasing, tended to loosen all discipline and control. With the uncompromising firmness which belongs only to the greatest, Paul meets each case as it presents itself. He excommunicates the immoral member of the Corinthian Church. He recognizes no inferior form of Christianity. He proclaims the inviolability of the Christian ideal. Circumcision is nothing, uncircumcision is nothing, but a new creature. The sacrifice that is well-pleasing to God is not any outward form of worship or external rite, but the devotion of body and soul to His service.

2. A second characteristic of Paul's ideal is its inwardness. The standard of righteousness is the law of the spirit within the heart. The Christian character is attained, not by any servile act of obedience to an external authority, but by the free, glad and boundless fulfilment of love. A new and living power within renews and transforms the whole man, so that what he formerly strove to do by painful effort he now accomplishes spontaneously and from the heart. "Love takes the barrier at a leap." Instead of the ineffectual labor

1See Wernle, Beginnings, vol. i. p. 216.

iousness of "works," there grow up in his heart the fruits of the spirit. The old legality of the Jew is transformed into the living morality of the Christian. Man is no more governed by "thou shalt," but by "I will." From the heart of Christ's "new man" morality grows and expands naturally, like the flower from the bud, the fruit from the seed.

It was from his own experience that Paul discovered the inwardness of the ideal. He found that that morality in its truest sense "can only blossom in the fiery heat of religious enthusiasm." Try as he would, he found that as a Pharisee he could not perform the works of the law, although all that it bade him do was righteous, holy and good. For moral compulsion does not suffice. The mere categorical imperative, absolute though it be, is cold, impassive and hard. It only condemns more hopelessly than ever. A new element is needed, a power of inward renewal and transformation. Duty and desire must become one. Faith must supplant outward requirement, and the ideal be transmuted from an abstract law into the free and glowing life of love.

As a natural consequence of the inwardness of the ideal, morality in Paul's view cannot any longer consist in the performance of a number of isolated precepts, nor can the ideal be presented in the form of outward commandments. It is a principle, a spirit which must direct and control from within the whole life. A man is not moral by literally performing this or that duty, but only as he gets behind all duties, and is true to the inner law of the heart. All the commandments are but integral parts of one ideal. It is not enough, as Jesus taught, not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery. These laws are but the outward expressions of an inward principle of purity. "Commandments are but special

instances." 1 Morality is not a mechanical conformity to an external code, but the personal decision which each man once for all makes for himself. What Paul therefore aimed at was not a system of laws, but a new moral sense, which everyone must apply to his own conduct. He was compelled, indeed, in practice to descend to the minutest details, and he has given us in his epistles a wealth of single precepts. But we must remember the class of converts to whom he was writing, and the circumstances amid which they were placed. They were for the most part Gentiles, but recently emerged from Heathenism, and they were still in the midst of a hostile world, exposed to the temptations and perils of corrupt pagan cities. It was impossible merely to tell such people to be faithful to the Gospel. The law had been, after all, a necessary stage in the religious evolution of the Hebrew, "his schoolmaster to bring him to Christ," and Paul, quick to grasp the significance of this divine leading in history, saw the necessity of legislating in the details of morality if his converts were to attain in the end to the true inwardness of Christian obligation. But whatever the subject he is discussing, the point to be noted is the skill and exquisite art with which he deduces all his isolated precepts from one great fundamental principle. Thus in Romans xii. we find a whole series of ethical injunctions, but they are all grouped under one all-embracing appeal of reasonable service in conformity with the perfect will of God. And in the next chapter, alluding to Jesus' teaching with regard to the commandments, he sums up the whole in one immortal phrase, "Love is the fulfilling of the law."

3. A third characteristic calls for mention, viz. the 1 See Weinel.

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symmetry and proportion of the Pauline ideal.1 apostle is no faddist. He does not harp upon one form of excellence to the exclusion of all others; or denounce one particular sin while making light of others. He had a wonderfully sane mind and well-balanced judgment, and if he dwells more upon one virtue at one time, or on occasion emphasizes some particular vice, it is only because the circumstances of those whom he addresses demand this special treatment. Aristotle taught that virtue lay in the mean between two extremes. And it is true that the exaggeration of a virtue may easily become a vice. There is a "pride which apes humility," and a lowliness which is only the miserable counterfeit of the first beatitude. Kindness may become weak amiability, and thrift may pass over into penuriousness. Few men present a well-rounded character, "mind and soul according well." Most of us have our idiosyncrasies and partialities, and even the best men are apt to accentuate some particular type of goodness to the neglect, if not the disparagement of other forms of excellence for which they have little affinity. None of His disciples attains to the beautiful proportion and many-sided perfection of the Great Master's life. Jesus united the tenderness of womanhood with the strength of manhood. He combined justice and mercy, meekness and courage, self-sacrifice and authority. It might easily be shown that Paul's vehement temperament was never completely subdued by his ideal. He may not always have done justice to his opponents in controversy, and he may have been at times over-masterful and impatient of interference. But when

all is said, as even writers like Renan, Wernle, Weinel,

1 This characteristic has been excellently worked out by Mr. Jackson in Expositor, vol. xi., to whom we are indebted for some thoughts which follow.

Bousset and Wrede, who have been most diligent in pointing out his deficiencies, have been also ready to acknowledge there was in Paul's character and attitude to his correspondents, as exhibited in his epistles, a fine combination of heroic energy, ardent vehemence and glowing passion on the one side, and of wonderful tenderness, delicacy of feeling, and appreciative sympathy on the other. It takes a great man to be gentle, and only a truly forceful nature can be pitiful. This strong man is not ashamed of tears, and, if he had the Stoic's fortitude, he had nothing of his unruffled apathy. Of him more than most men are Schiller's words true: Religion of the cross! Thou alone dost interweave the twin strands of humility and strength.'

The balance and proportion of the ideal which Paul presented may be the better appreciated if we glance at one or two particulars.

(1) It has been justly pointed out by Mr. Lecky and others that whereas antiquity extolled the masculine virtues and disparaged the gentler, it is the distinctive glory of Christianity that it has put a special honour on meekness, humility, forgiveness. Not only in the teaching of Jesus but in that of Paul as well, what have been called the amiable virtues are pre-eminent. "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, generosity, trustfulness, gentleness, self-control." But we must not assume that because our Lord and His apostles accentuated the gentler type of morality, they ignored the more active and musculine virtues. Justice is not incompatible with love, nor is meekness opposed to courage. "No man," says Diderot, "is great without passion." But he ought to have added that not

1 See a fine discourse on "Ses Larmes" in Monod's Cing Discours on St. Paul.

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