Not onlj', however, is Christ thus transcendent in the universe : He is also immanent in believers and in the Church. This is the teaching of all the Epistles from first to last, but it is most prominent in the later ones ; and this emphasis and reiteration fall in with tlie thought which has been shown to be characteristic of the later Epistles. Even in the earliest Epistles, in which freedom from the law is vindicated as the negative pole
of Christian experience, possession by the Spirit appears as the ])0sitive pole, and in Galatians all the features of Christian experience are described as ' the fruit of the Spirit' j.')--'). That the Spirit is the Third Person of the Godhead is proved by the Apostolic Benediction, which forms the closing verse of 2 Corinthians. Now it seems to be a rule of Scripture, that whatever is done by one Person of the Godhead may be spoken of as done by the others ; and, accordingly, not only is the Spirit said to dwell in believers, but the Father is also said to be in them, and they are said to be in the Father. It is, however, about the Son of God that such statements are most frequently made ; and the phrase ' in Christ ' or ' Christ in you ' is the most common expression for this Divine indwell- ing, which is the guarantee of Christian progress and perfection. In Eph 1 and 2 the phrase ' in Christ' occurs more than a score of times ; and it is significant of the warmth generated by this idea in the mind of St. Paul that he has invented a whole series of metaphors to set it forth, the union between Christ and believers being com- pared to that between a temple and the stones of which it is composed, to that between trunk and branches in a tree, to that of head and members in the human body, and to that of husband and wife. The whole of Deissmann's St. Paul is illuminated by the thorough exposition of this idea and by the proof of how it ruled the Apostle's consciousness in every direction.
Union with Christ is usually represented as connecting us with the living Christ in the same way as faith does with the Christ who died ; the one is related to sanctiflcation in the same way as the other is to justification ; and with this agrees the saying of St. Paul himself (Ro 5'°) : ' If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.' But the conception for which ' in Christ ' is the symbol is much more comprehensive than this would suggest. The connexion with Christ was formed in a past eternity in the mind of God, and it will continue to all eternity ; because ' neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord' (Ro 8**'-). It is not only vital, bringing into the sonl the virtue resident in Him who is now seated at the right hand of power, but legal also, making our debt His and His merit ours. In short, Christ to St. Paul's mind fills the entire universe, from horizon to horizon ; and faith saves because it is the receptivity of the soul which appropriates all the virtue of every kind derivable from this transcendent Being.
4. Personality. — St. Paul was, in the fullest sense of the word, a personality. There is about him the same modernness as about St. Augustine in his Confessions. While many figures of the past are unintelligible and incomprehensible, he is as human as if he had walked in upon us out of the street. This may be partly due to the details of his life being so well known and his words read so frequently in our hearing ; but it is traceable still more directly to the largeness of his humanity and the realism of his thinking. There are, no doubt, however, things about him, due to his circum- stances and training, which affect us less favour- ably ; and, on the other hand, the expansion of our own experience may train us gradually to a completer com|)rehension of him. Scholars like Ramsay and Deissmann have written with enthu- siasm of the new power of appreciation derived from witnessing with their own eyes the scenes of his labours ; and anyone privileged to live through
a revival of religion would ever afterwards have a new comprehension of every page in the Book of Acts, while the experience ot an evangelist or a pastor, in hungering and thirsting for the sal- vation of those under his charge, or in watching over the development of young converts, with a sensitive consciousness of the perils to wliich tlicse are exposed, would supply the best of all (jualilica- tions for feeling the innermost throb of the Epistles.
(«) The man. — Without question Nature had ex- pended on the making of St. Paul a line bit of the material with which she works in her secret laboratory, and had cast his personality in one of her largest moulds. He was specially strong in intellectual endowment. This can be appreciated by reading anj- exposition of his thinking such as is supplied in works on NT theology, for there the topics are not only numerous but full of weight and substance; and, besides, tlicy are so closely articulated as to form an orderly and connected system of ideas. The question whether St. Paul was the author of a dogmatic system has, indeed, been disputed, some holding that it is in the sphere of religion rather than dogma that he lives and moves ; but, at all events, he was one of those who need to know the why and the wherefore of wliatever they are experiencing or doing, and whose views and convictions all piece themselves together into a connected view of the world. He has been one of the most influential teachers of mankind, multitudes in every century adopting from him their way of conceiving all the greatest objects of human concern.