writings of the apostle.1 In Tarsus he learned to speak and to read Greek. His quotations are taken, not from the Hebrew Bible, but from the Greek Septuagint. "Speech," it has been truly said, "is not merely a formal thing: it is the unconscious vehicle, and to some extent the creator of ideas." One cannot learn a foreign language without imbibing something of the thought of which the language is the expression. It has been the custom to minimize Paul's acquaintance with the Greek tongue, and to disparage his literary powers. It has been said that his writing is uncouth if vigorous, and that it bears little trace of classical culture. But the tendency of more recent scholars is largely to modify, if not to reverse this opinion. One of the most recent, and certainly not the least learned, authorities, Theodor Zahn, in his gigantic work, just translated into English, says: "Paul writes Greek, not like one who has laboriously acquired a foreign language in his riper years, but like one who has known it from his childhood." "13 With wonderful skill he gives expression to every emotion of his rich and complex nature. Now in accents of touching pathos, now in tones of biting irony, and now with an irresistible rush of eloquence, he knows how to hold in thrall his hearers or readers. He can invest the meanest theme-the affair of a collection, or an unsavoury matter of discipline-with distinction; and whether he seeks to teach or prove, or controvert, the most unsympathetic readers to-day, like his opponents of his own time, are forced to acknowledge his dialectic. power. If he sometimes repeats certain words, and reiterates turns of expression within a narrow compass, 2 Wrede, Paulus. 1 1 Cp. Howson, Metaphors of Paul. 3 Einleitung in das Neue Testament, vol. i. p. 36 ff. it is due to his intensity rather than to his poverty of language. What strikes us, taking his epistles as a whole, is the wealth of his vocabulary, rather than the paucity of his diction. To quote Zahn once more, "in comparison with the letters of Paul as literary productions, the Fourth Gospel is monotonous, and the Epistle of St. James poor." One cannot but form the impression from his letters and speeches that Paul was a highly cultured man, who was perfectly at home in all the forms of cultivated Greek society. There is no evidence that his familiarity with the poetic literature of Greece was due to casual hearsay, and was not the result of his own reading. It has been said that the few quotations which he makes from Greek poetry were brief and commonplace, of a popular proverbial character, implying no special classical knowledge. But there is nothing to show that these citations were current proverbs. Even if they were well-known sayings, his employment of them in the circumstances displayed both intimate knowledge and no little skill in adaptation. In writing to the Corinthians,1 he quotes from the Thais, a lost play of Menander. In reproving the loose conduct of the Cretans,2 he supports his reproach by an allusion to one of their own poets, a poet of Crete. And in addressing an audience in Athens, composed doubtless of Stoics and Epicureans, could anything be more apposite or dexterous than the clinching of his argument with a reference which would appeal to his Stoic hearers, as the quotation is to be found in more than one writer belonging to that particular school? "As certain of your own poets have said." 3 3 Acts xvii. 28. Both Aratus and Cleanthes use the expression. Both lived for a period in Athens, and both were ornaments of the Stoic philosophy. See Zahn, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, vol. i. Notae, p. 51. That Paul lived in a world saturated with Greek ideas is beyond doubt, and that he remained untouched by the prevailing thought of his time is hardly credible. But how far he was directly indebted to the prevalent philosophy of the Stoics is a question not so easily answered. It will be impossible here to present anything like a full account of Stoicism as a system of philosophy, but it is necessary to touch on some aspects of it which offer points of contact with the ethical teaching of Paul. To the Stoic philosopher this world was not a chaos but a well-ordered unity, at the centre of which was the σπеρμаTIKOS λoyos-the generative reason, which was the seed or vital principle whence all things came and in virtue of which they lived. The whole universe was one polity-πολιτειά του κόσμου-held together by the spirit that was its origin and life.1 Everything in the world, small and great, partook of the divine essence; but the soul of man, in so far as it shared the very nature of God, stood nearer to Him and was the special manifestation of His life. All men were of one blood, of one family-all and each, as Seneca says, were sacred to each and all.2 "Man," says Epictetus, "is a fragment of divinity." The Stoic united universality with individuality-the universal essence and the individual soulthe God without and the God within. "Jupiter," says a Stoic writer, "is in all you see and all that lives within you."3 "Providence," says Epictetus, "is over all: nothing happens that is not appointed." To man God has given the best of all gifts-the faculty of reason. We may employ it to guide our lives. The external world 1 See Glover, Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire, p. 38. 2 See Ed. Caird, Evolution of Theology in Greek Philosophy, vol. ii.; also Zeller, Eclectics, pp. 235-245. 3 Lucan quoted by Glover. with its forces, we cannot alter or control; but we can make it serve us by living in harmony with it. Confine yourself to what is within your power," says Epictetus. "To live harmoniously," says Zeno, "is the end of man's being "a statement which Cleanthes developed by adding the words-" with nature." 1 To act in conformity with self, our fellow-men, and above all with God-is at once supreme wisdom and supreme happiness-the aim and ideal of life. But Stoicism was not merely a great philosophy, it was a sublime system of ethics, and in the hands of its latest exponents it was a religion, a gospel of blessedness and life. It would be easy to cull from the writings of the Roman moralist sayings regarding providence, the Holy Spirit, communion with God, worship and selfexamination, as well as precepts as to self-control, patience, submission, trust, pity, generosity, scarcely surpassed by the language of the New Testament. "The first lesson of Philosophy" says Epictetus, "is that there is a God and that he provides for the whole scheme of things and it is not possible to screen from Him our acts or even our unspoken thought." God is near you, with you, within you-a Holy Spirit resides within us, Spectator of our evil and our good, and our Guardian." "Man is a Son of God, and it is his part to be His interpreter, His soldier, to obey His signal and to await His call."2 We do not choose our parts in life: our simple duty is confined to playing them well. The slave may be as free as the consul: and freedom is the chief of blessings: it dwarfs all others: beside it all others are insignificant, with it all others are needless, without it no others are possible." 3 Seneca tells us not only how 2 Epictetus. Epictetus, Manual and Fragments. 1 See Glover. God is to be worshipped, but from the right attitude to God he deduces the true relation to man. "1 "We are Nature has made us of one members of a great body. blood and has planted in us mutual love. It is not therefore enough not to injure your brother, you ought to help him as well-must we not lend a hand to the shipwrecked, point the way to the wanderer, share our bread with the hungry. Let that verse be in your head and on your lips. 'Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.' "Nothing is meaner," says Epictetus, "than love of pleasure, love of gain and insolence: nothing nobler than high-mindedness and gentleness and philanthropy and doing good." When asked how a man could grieve his enemy he answered, "by preparing himself to act in the noblest way "-a reply which reminds us of Paul's words, "in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." History has shown that Stoicism was a philosophy congenial to the Roman character. Vigorous, clear, if superficial, it appealed to the practical mind, and, as has been well said by Mr. Lecky, "it inspired nearly all the great characters of the early Roman Empire and nerved almost every attempt to maintain the dignity and freedom of the human soul." 2 But while these quotations reveal the brighter side of Stoicism (and we have purposely dwelt upon this aspect to show its affinity with the teaching of Christianity) it must not be forgotten that there is a darker side. With all this talk of divine providence it was little more than an impersonal destiny which the Stoics recognized as governing the universe. This harmony with nature was simply a sense of proud self-sufficiency. 1Seneca, Ep. 95. 2 History of European Morals, vol. i. chap. 2. "The |