From Tarsus Paul carried off, if not a scholarly Greek training, at least his trade of tent-making (Ac 188. Tarsus was a centre for the mannu- facture of cilicium, the coarse goats’ hair fabric of the district, famed for its durability, of which shoes, mats, and coverings of all kinds were made ; and the boy Saul was taught this local handi- craft. An industry every wire in demand, this craft supplied him in his wandering be aiemeace with a means of livelihood, laborious and irksome enough, but adequate for his scanty needs (1 Th 2°, ἢ ΤῺ 3519. 1 Co 9518 ete.). ‘These hands,’ as Paul held them up, rough and black with stitching at the hard canvas, told their tale of stern in- dependence and self-denial (Ac 20°“).
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_ Of Roman law Paul had the knowledge qualify- ing him to exercise his valued rights as a citizen of the Empire. This discipline contributed to his large Christian apprehension of ‘law’ as a universal Divine institute, which has its nearest analogue in the Roman jus gentiwm. His prominent doctrine of Adoption (υἱοθεσία) is based upon Greco-Roman, not Jewish practice. His conception of the Church borrowed something from the Roman State as well as from the Israelite Theocracy (see Eph 2”, Col 219, Ph 17 3”), Not merely for his own protection (Ac 1057 225) and as a passport to his message did the apostle pronounce the words ‘Civis Romanus sum’ and ‘Cwsarem appello,’ but with genuine loyalty and with a true sense for the grandeur and enduring power of the rule of Rome. ‘We cannot fail to be struck with the hold which Roman ideas had on the mind of St. Paul. . . . He had conceived the great idea of Christianity as the religion of the Roman world; and he thought of the various districts and countries in which he preached as parts of the grand unity’ (Ramsay, Ch. in the Rom. Emp.* Pp. 147, 148, St. Paul the Trav. pp. 125-127, 135; also Sanday-Headlam, Romans, p. xiv). He had the Roman genius of the statesman and organizer. He planted his churches, by preference, in Roman colonies (Pisidian Antioch, Philippi, Corinth, ete.). To Rome St. Paul addressed his most studied and a a Β Epistle) toward this metropolis of the world the advance of his mission from Jeru- salem westwards, for many years previously, had been directed (Ro 185 15, Ac 192 234), Only when at last he had made his defence and delivered his message before the Imperial Court could the ‘teacher of the Gentiles in faith an truth’ consider that his ‘ preaching was fulfilled’ and his course finished (1 Ti 2’, 2 Ti 4"). To the Jewish student and the Greek cosmopolitan in Paul there was added the Roman gentleman. His courteous dignity of bearing enabled him worthily to stand before magistrates and kings (Ac 9" 26, etc.). He commanded the respect of governors like Sergius Paulus and Porcius Festus, and the deference and goodwill of Julius the centurion in whose charge he voyaged to Rome. There, too, an ‘ambassador in chains,’ he gained a wide influence, and his presence eatly stimulated the Christian cause (ph 6”, Ph 1% 4%, Ao 28% 3), Though his prison, Rome was his best vantage- ground and his adoptive home. It was here that the apostle arrived, as appears from the Epistles of the First Captivity, at his loftiest conceptions of the nature and destiny of the Universal Church. 2. St. Paul's Idiosyncrasy.—The ‘striking origin- ality’ of Paul’s character is ‘due to the fruitful combination in it of two spiritual forces, which are seldom found united in this degree in one personality — dialectical power and religious in- spiration, or (to borrow Paul’s own language) the activity of the νοῦς and that of the πνεῦμα᾽ (A. Sabatier). Add to these attributes the apostle’s heart of fire, the glow of passion and imagination which fused his mystical intuitions and logical apprehensions into one, his fine sensibility, his resolute will, his manly sincerity and courage and woman-like tenderness, his vivacity, subtlety, and humour, his rich humanity and keen faculty of moral observation, his adroitness and ready tact, his genius for organization and inborn power of com- mand, and the vigorous and creative, though not facile, gift of expression that supplied the fitting dress, as original as the thought behind it, with which his doctrine clothed itself,—all these quali- ties and powers went to the making of Jesus Christ’s apostle to the nations, the master-builder of the universal Church and of Christian theology. St. Paul’s physical frame appears by no means te
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have matched the greatness of his soul. Witha frankness that charms while it pains the reader, he quotes the taunt of his Corinthian opponents, ‘ His bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account’; he reproaches those who ‘counted of’ him ‘as though walking according to flesh,’ and ‘had an eye for matters of (bodily) presence,’ judging the lowly apostle by his unimposing exterior (2 Co 10'"*). The barbarians of Lystra took Barnabas for Zeus, but Paul for Hermes, comparing the dignified port of the one with the lively speech of the other traveller. The disad- vantages of his bodily presence were aggravated by the effect of his occupation as a Acamey mes tentmaker, and of the severe mishandling he had suffered from time to time on the part of his persecutors (Gal 67, 2 Co 11"), Yet these physical disabilities and humiliations became, through ‘the power of Christ overshadowing’ him, a new source of spiritual strength (2 Co 11 12% 1°), It was a constant feeling of Paul’s, only heightened by recent illness, to which he gave expression in 2Co 47-5°: ‘We have this treasure in frail earthen vessels. . . . In this tabernacle we groan, being burdened ’ (cf. Gal 4’2-46)7). The Acta Pauli et Thecle, as Ramsay has shown (Ch. in Rom. Emp.° xvi.), ‘goes back ultimately to a document of the Ist cent.’; and it thus describes (§ 3) Paul’s appearance as he first approaches Iconiuin: ‘ bald- headed, bowlegged, strongly built, a man small in size, with meeting eyebrows, with a rather large nose, full of grace, for at times he looked like a man and at times he had the face of an angel.’ ‘This plain and unflattering account seems to embody a very early tradition’ (op. cit. pp. 31, 32). The lifelike and unconventional figure of the Roman ivory diptych, ‘supposed to date not later than the 4th cent.’ (Lewin’s Life and Epp. of St. Paul, Frontispiece, and vol. ii. p. 211), partly confirms the above description.