is dissolved we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

A calm confidence characterizes the outlook of the apostle. Beyond the temporal and the seen there lurks for him no unknown terror, there yawns no dark abyss. Behind the veil God is, and he who lives with Him now will dwell with Him hereafter. His earthly experience stands in vital relation to his eternal hope. If we are Christ's the future is ours as well as the present. Nothing can separate us from His love.

The stars come nightly to the sky

The tidal wave into the sea,

Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
Can keep my own away from me.

Paul had no fear, and he seeks to impart to his friends his own splendid courage. Even when he is in imprisonment at Rome and is looking forward to the lictor's axe, we are impressed with the note of triumphant joy which thrills through the epistles of that time, and particularly in the letter to the Philippians. He is willing to serve his Master both in life and in death. For him "to live is Christ and to die is gain." It is indeed remarkable, as has been pointed out, that in spite of his excessive hardships and unremitting labours, amid which it were only human if he should at times become a prey to loneliness and depression, there is no evidence of that morbid yearning for death, which became a feature of not a few of the martyrs of the early church. His whole desire is to serve his brethren, and he is ready to go or stay as the Lord may will. He knows that when his course is finished and the battle of life is over, there is laid up for him a crown of righteousness. But in the meantime, with the heroism of a true soldier of Christ, he

will not desert his post or abate his efforts till God's call

comes.

Paul himself is, indeed, the grandest exemplar of his own ethic. His teaching is the outcome of his life. It is his attitude to God that determines his relation to man. Fidelity to the least inspired by love to the highest that was the burden of his ethical message as it was the note of his moral life.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ETHICAL ULTIMATE OF ST. PAUL

In these studies which we now bring to a close, we have aimed at presenting the apostle not so much as the great theologian who leads our minds into the profound mysteries of God's revelation, but rather as the practical teacher of morals, to whom no incident of experience is secular and no duty insignificant, because all things belong to God and all life is dominated by the spirit of Christ. For Paul the final test of Christianity is its applicability to life. A mere doctrine of atonement or a theory of justification, beautiful, logical and symmetrical as it might be in verbal statement, is but a beating of the air if it cannot be translated into conduct. Life is everywhere the measure of doctrine and love the index of belief; and to this ultimate touchstone Paul did not hesitate to bring every truth he declared.

But the originality and the uniqueness of Paul's ethical teaching are to be sought not so much in the range of its practical application, as in its unfolding of an ideal which is at once the Power and the Pattern of the new life. That ideal is Christ in Whom the perfect life is seen and through Whom the power for its realization is communicated. This latter feature is central to Paul, and is, indeed, the supreme purpose and aim in his interpretation

of Christianity. "The Gospel is not merely a revelation of the divine nature, rich, satisfying, many-sided, and corresponding profoundly to the complex needs of humanity. It is a principle of life, of energy, of movement; it heightens vitality; it makes for efficiency in work and for greatness of character."1 "The Gospel," says Paul to the Romans, "is the power of God unto salvation"; and again to the Corinthians, "the kingdom of God is not in word but in power."3 The most distinctive and pregnant idea underlying Paul's teaching is the idea of a self-communication of God to man; and for him Christianity culminates in the doctrine of the indwelling of God in humanity, the might of the spirit working in human hearts, and strengthening them to receive, to act, and to endure. Paul tells the Ephesians that "they need something more effectual than knowledge, more sustaining than the temper of tranquil dependence on God, more stimulating even than fellowship in a holy community. They need, and the Gospel of Christ offers them, the gift of the indwelling Presence of the Deity. What, therefore, the apostle seeks for them in his prayer is a capacity not so much to act as to receive, strength to open the door without reserve to One who comes not primarily to instruct or to console, but to make for Himself a habitation in the inmost recesses of man's personality; to dwell there in the fulness of divine force, as a transforming and enabling principle of life." 4

It is noteworthy that the word "power" continually recurs in the apostle's writings as a keynote of his teaching. The gift of power is represented as the end of all God's dealings with man and as the highest manifestation of human personality. Paul felt himself to be

1Ottley, Christian Ideas and Ideals, p. 381.

2 Rom. i. 16.

31 Cor. iv. 20.
Z

Ottley, p. 382.

a living monument of redemptive might, and his most characteristic message both to churches and individuals was, "quit you like men, be strong,"1 "Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might,"2 "Be strong in the grace that is in Jesus Christ." 3

Now in the new life as Paul experienced and explained it, this element of power is at once source and stream. Power is present where the water first takes its lonely rise from the living rock to far down where the river flows in volume by the busy haunts of man. Power is the spring of character, and in character power is manifested. The hidden life of God passes into the Christian's personality, becomes indeed so thoroughly an integral part of the man that his moral character, instead of being merely an adjunct of faith or an external acquirement (as it is in so many systems of morals) becomes the spontaneous outflow, the automatic expression of the new germ of life within the soul. Once Christ is in the heart of a man, strong decisive moral action proceeds by the working of a natural principle and is the direct and irresistible expression of the inner spirit of life. It is through the dynamic of the living Christ that the divine life in the Christian first begins; and it is by the same divine energy interfused through the whole personality and dominating at every moment the entire man that the Christian is made forceful and vigorous, and is enabled to meet and deal effectively with the ever new conditions of life which confront him in the world.

But this quality of power is not only the root but also the fruit of the new life. Power is the distinguishing feature of the Christian personality. The prevailing impression which the character of Jesus made upon His

11 Cor. xvi. 13.

2 Eph. vi. 10.

32 Tim. ii. 1.