The Spiritual Development of St. Paul

I intend to make an attempt to write thejjmer biography of Paul the Apostle. I shall try to trace the course of his spiritual history from the day of his conversion to Christianity until the day when he declared himself “ready to be offered.” It is a task not of great length, but of great magnitude. It does not need a multitude of pages like the record of his outward biography. It requires no maps nor charts, no study of contemporary men and manners, no consultation of references foreign to his own actual writings. To write a man’s inward biography demands before all things the undergoing of a kindred experience and the living of a common life. But if in this respect the task is comparatively easy, it is in another aspect supremely arduous. The difficulty of writing St. Paul’s in ward biography is not the difficulty of statement, but of discovery. The historian of his outward life has the facts already made to his hand, but he who would record the history of his spiritual experience must begin by interpreting the facts. The outward historian has the narrative of the Acts before him, and he has simply, with intelligence and observation, to follow the course of the stream. But the historian of the inner life has before him only a series of letters, written at different times and dictated to different readers; and before he can even enter on his labours, he requires to arrange and to examine the order of those spiritual sentiments whose historical unfolding is to be the subject of his narrative. There is a preliminary difficulty which meets us at the very door. I have spoken of arranging and examining the order of Paul’s spiritual experience. I shall be asked at the outset what right I have to assume the existence of such an order. Was not this man inspired, and does not inspiration imply the denial of any such development? In the case of an ordinary man, it is legitimate to consult his correspondence’with a view to determine the gradual unfolding of his mental life. It is legitimate in such cases to refer a certain utterance to a certain period, and to explain a particular view by its congruity with a particular stage of progress. But is such a process admissible in the case of one who, by supposition, was struck by the light of heaven — who was lifted by a Divine inspiration from out the com mon level on which moved his country and his age, and translated by a seemingly instantaneous act into a height of heavenly illumination? That is the question which meets us on the threshold, and for the present bars the threshold. It is by reason of this question that the inward biography of St. Paul has remained to this day one of the most untrodden fields in history. Volumes have been written on his outward life, pages have been expended on his missionary journeys, sermons have been multiplied on the lessons of his perils and his trials, — but the history of the man himself, the record of his inward experience, the study of his spiritual development from day to day, has as yet occupied little attention. We have a series of letters, professedly written by his hand, extending in chronological order from the First Epistle to the Thessalonians to the Second Epistle to Timothy, but it has rarely occurred to us to imagine that the chronological order of these letters marks a mental order too. It has rarely occurred to us to inquire why the Epistle to the Thessalonians should have had an earlier date than the Epistle to the Romans, or why the Epistle to the Romans should have occupied a previous place to the letter inscribed to the Ephesians. It has commonly been taken for granted that the teaching in these respective documents exhibits no other mark of progress than that of an earlier and a later note of time. And the reason of this is not hard

to find. Is has been assumed that Paul, being an inspired man, ought not to be a creature of flesh and blood; that, being a recipient of the Divine life, he should be freed from the conditions of human development,

He may write to Thessalonica in the year 52, and to Timothy in the year 68, but we are not allowed to believe that these sixteen years covered a growth ef experience. It is deemed irreverent to suppose that a man might put his hand upon any of St. Paul’s letters and determine its age by the degree of its maturity. Such a permission would be the confession of a progress from the imperfect to the perfect, and the admission of such a progress is held to be incompatible with the claim to be an inspired soul. The question is — Is it so? Is the idea of inspiration incompatible with the idea of progress? If we were dealing with any other religion than Christianity, I would without hesitation answer Yes! The peculiarity of all other religions consists, to my mind, in this — that they regard the inspiration of a human soul as something which lifts that soul outside of its humanity, something which raises it beyond the conditions of progress and places it in an atmosphere from which it can never be moved. But the Christian idea of inspiration is distinguished from the heathen or Gentile idea precisely by the negation of this belief. Christianity in its very key-note strikes upon a new conception; it declares that the inspiration of a human soul is no longer to be regarded as an abolition of its human growth or a transcending of its human development. The life of the Christian Founder is introduced into the world as a divinely inspired life, but the Divine inspiration is allowed to unfold through the stages of the infant, the child, the youth, and the man. It is represented as a growth in wisdom and in knowledge and in Divine favour. Each stage is full up to the measure of its capacity, but the capacity is in no case transcended before the time. The childhood is perfect, but it is the perfection of a child — a perfection which consists in a will subject to authority and a mind inquiring in the temple oitruth. The youth is perfect, but it is the perfection of obedience in the path of youth — of consenting to abide in obscurity until the fulness of the time be come, and submitting to support its way by the result of daily toil. The dawn of manhood is per feet, but it is the perfection peculiar to the dawn — the perfection which can stand upon the mount of temptation and choose between the alternatives of right and wrong.

Such is the leading idea of Christian inspiration — the growth of the Divine through the capacities of the human. Appearing at the very outset in the life of the Christian Founder, it is designed to be repeated in the lives of all His followers. For it must not be forgotten that Christianity in its original manifestation is not the reception of a system of doctrines, but the assimilation to a particular type of life. It is the leading thought of the New Testament, and it is the specially prominent thought in the writings of St. Paul, that the life of the Christian Founder is repeated in the lives of His followers, that the stages of each Christian’s experience are designed to be a reproduction of those stages by which the Son of man passed from Bethlehem to Calvary. Paul has himself declared l that

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