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and teaching of Jesus as known to him are before his mind and are directing his course. He acknowledges himself to be a disciple or pupil of his Master and a teacher of His ways. Whatever other elements, therefore, there may be in Paul's teaching, and however the theological interpretations and implications of the epistles may seem to go beyond the direct and personal narrative of the Synoptics, there is no doubt that both in their hidden spiritual depths and in their practical life the precepts of the apostle are in essential agreement with those of the Sermon on the Mount, and have a common purpose the presenting of every man perfect before God.

That the writings of Paul, long regarded as chiefly theological and metaphysical in their character, should turn out on examination to be essentially and fundamentally ethical will the less surprise us if we regard not only the nature of the Christian religion as revealed in the person and work and teaching of its Founder, but also the peculiar vocation of the apostle and the psychological atmosphere in which he was called to discharge it. Paul was a missionary, the first and incomparably the greatest in all the long heroic succession, and it is not surprising in the case of a missionary that the real stress of his effort should be laid in the sphere of practical life, and should be applied to the formation of moral character. Further, the peculiar nature of Paul's work answered to a deep need of the age. The message of Christianity was a welcome response to the sigh of dissatisfaction and despair arising from the hearts of men which the worn-out creeds and philosophies of the times could not meet. But the claims of Christ went directly in the face of the accepted morals of the age. And on that very account the continued existence and success of the new Faith made the treatment of and emphasis upon

the moral life indispensable. Either the practices of heathenism must crush the religion of Christ, or Christianity must combat the prevailing modes of conduct with a higher and nobler view of life. Thus, for the apostle Paul, the moral life constituted the inevitable corollary and indispensable consequence of the new religious conditions into which he sought to introduce his fellow-men by the declaration of the glad message of life in Christ. What for us to-day, at least, is in theory but a commonplace that religion must express itself in life, and that morality is the test and measure of belief, was practically a novel idea in the Greco-Roman world of Paul's time. It was the apostle's deliberately chosen task to show that religion must not isolate itself from life, but become its mainspring and formative factor, working itself out through every department of personal and social activity, consecrating every faculty of man as well as every detail of daily conduct. It was his constant effort, an effort to which every epistle bears witness, by a variety of precept and a wealth of illustration drawn from the institutions and activities of his times, to enforce the truth that faith does not consist in intellectual opinion or outward ceremony, but in the actual service and living devotion of the whole man to God. In thus contending for the ethical embodiment of Christianity he was faithful not only to the character of the Old Testament religion in which he was reared, and more especially to the teaching of Jesus to which he owed the inspiration of his life and mission, but also to the circumstances of the historical situation and the peculiar needs of those to whom he sought to minister.

Convinced as we are of the soundness of the views just expressed regarding the real character of the apostle's work, and in view of the patent fact that a

very large part of the Pauline writings is devoted to the ethical side of life, and that it was his undoubted aim not merely to establish the faith and expound the kingdom of God, but quite as much to shape the character of his newly-created converts and guide their conduct in regard to the practical questions arising out of their new standing as Christians, no apology is needed for dealing, as we propose to do, with the ethics of St. Paul. Notwithstanding the great and ever-increasing mass of Pauline exegesis, this field has received less attention than other departments of Paul's work. And it has seemed to us that a separate view of the ethical as distinguished from the doctrinal teaching of the apostle will be of some service to the Church and to students of the New Testament. Also, in an age in which the study of ethics, both philosophical and Christian, is coming to the front, it is surely desirable that the utterances of the first and greatest exponent of the Christian life with regard to its ideals, virtues and duties, should be systematized and co-related.

We have not deemed it necessary to enter upon any elaborate discussion of the nature of ethics, or to examine the various imports and meanings which the term has received from the time of the Greeks to our own times. On that aspect of the subject the following brief remarks may suffice.

It was Aristotle who first gave to this science its name and systematic form. Ethics, according to its Greek signification, is the science of customs or morals. It enquires into the worth of human modes of behaviour, and its object is to guide man in the proper conduct of life. It was in this sense the term was used by Aristotle, and the function of ethics was, according to him, to show how human life must be fashioned to realize

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its end and purpose. "What," asked Aristotle, "is the highest good of life, in what virtues does it consist, and what are the duties which must be performed in order to realize that ultimate end?" Philosophical ethics, therefore, might be defined as the science of the laws of human action. All practical sciences, of which ethics is one, are based upon a distinct theory of life. If we ask then, what is Christian ethics, we assume the Christian view of life; and the definition must be in harmony with faith in the revelation of God in Christ. The question of Christian ethics, therefore, comes to be, how ought we, as Christians, to regulate our lives? What are the nature, meaning and laws of the moral life as dominated by faith in Christ? With the question, What must we believe? there inevitably arises this other question, What ought we to do? Ethics is based on dogmatics. The one is the complement of the other. It is important that we should know the meaning and content of Christian faith; but it is not less important that we should know how to order our Christian life. Doctrine shows us in what manner the kingdom of God becomes to us an assured possession as the gift of God's love; ethics shows how this assured faith of salvation manifests itself in love to God and our neighbours, and must be worked out in all the relationships of life.1 These are the questions which bulk largely in the epistles of Paul. Our subject, therefore, is the exposition of the apostle's view of man's practical life and conduct as conditioned and inspired by his faith in Christ.

It is no part of our task to enter upon a critical examination of the authenticity of the Pauline epistles. In the case of at least four this has scarcely ever been 1See Haering, Ethics of the Christian Life, p. 4.

seriously questioned. The position of the earlier critics of the Tübingen school, who denied the authenticity of all the epistles except Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians and Romans, is now largely discredited, and the tendency is to accept an increasing number of the thirteen which bear Paul's name. Uncertainty is still entertained in many quarters with regard to the Pauline authorship of Colossians and Ephesians; while the authenticity of the Pastoral Epistles is frequently regarded as doubtful. Recent writers like Wernle and Weinel would deny them a place among the writings of the apostle; but it is interesting to note that no less an authority than Theodor Zahn in the latest edition of his Einleitung in das Neue Testament, a work which has just appeared in English translation, contends vigorously for the Pauline authorship of all the thirteen epistles-the Pastoral among the rest. Without discussing critical matters we may assume for our purpose the genuineness of these epistles, and that they represent, even those of them which may be of doubtful authenticity, at least the mind and teaching of the apostle. In addition to the epistles we have in the Book of Acts a record of Paul's life and work and a number of reports of his discourses. The long cherished opinion that the author of this work was Luke, the physician, a close companion of the apostle during a portion of his missionary labours, has found recently in Prof. Harnack in Germany and in Sir Wm. Ramsay in our own country a brilliant and powerful advocacy.

The Pauline Epistles may be arranged chronologically in four groups, each of which has a well-marked individuality: (1) Paul's earlier or missionary epistles, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, written at Corinth about the

year 52 A.D. These contain doctrinal and practical

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