with the older apostles he appears to have made an arrangement by which it was agreed that he should go to theuncircumcision, while they went to the circumcision (Gal 2'"") ; and this ackuowlcdg- nicnt by the Church doubtless deepened his sense of obligation, though it was only the recognition of an anterior conviction of his own and of a call from a higher quarter, in the same way as ordina- tion by an ecclesiastical authority to a particular charge may rekindle the sense of duty, though the call to lay the whole life on the altar haa coMie from a higher source.
In this consciousness of a mission to his age, and of a special mission to the Gentile world, we must recognize one of the driving forces of St. Paul's life. He frequently speaks of the task as a stewardship : ' and it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful ' (1 Co 4'). This was what kept alive in him the spirit of missionary enterpri.se, it being his constant ambition to ])ene- trate into new provinces and not to build on another man's foundation (Ro IS™) ; this was what made him able to face novel audiences, to stand before courts or kings, and to encounter raging mobs ; this was what made all afllictions ' light,' though among these were perils of rivers, jjcrils of robbers, perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, perils in the sea, besides labour and travail, hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness (2 Co II-'--''); this was what made bim equal to the most ditiicult achievement of all in a man of his temperament — to rejoice that the gospel was jjreached by his enemies, for strife and contention, to those who might not otherwise have heard it at all (I'li 1'*).
This loyalty to his calling evoked, however, tenderer things from the deep recesses of his nature. There is a passage in the beginning of 2 Cor. where he blesses ' the Father of all mercies and God of all comforts' for the comfort he has himself received, because this will enable him to comfort those who are in any sorrow ; and he goes on to express his willingness to endure any afflictions as long as these give him a deeper sj'm- pathy with the suli'ering children of men. All experiences were to him subordinate to the over- mastering purpose of his life, and he could welcome anything whatever out of which new efficiency could be extracted. In short, he loved his work, doing it not only from a sense of duty, but because he loved his Saviour and loved his fellow-men ; and so he could speak of himself not only as a 'steward' but as a 'nurse' and a ' father' (1 Th 2', 1 Co 4").
(d) The Christian. — All this must have had an influence on character. Every power was exerci.sed to the full, and his own development went on amidst manifold relations with his fellow-creatures. Holiness has been sought behind the walls of the cloister through maceratiims and prayer ; hut it comes unsought to tlio.se who go out of themselves, to seek and to save the lost chililren of Adam. This is a secret which has been recaptured in our own time, when many of the holiest men and women are those who are going about continually doing good, finding the romance of existence in the reclamation and the welfare of others. Though such efVorts involve sacrifice and self-denial, there is a rich reward in the gratitude of those benefited ; and selfishness, the worst of all evils, is eradicated from the soul.
Such universal benevolence is, it must be con- fessed, not infrequently accompanied by shallow- ness, the spirit of Martha being so much indulged that there is no time for cultivating the attitude of Mary. From this danger, however, St. Paul was secured by his intense preoccupation with the truth of the gospel, of w hieh he was not only the custodian and propagandist, but the apologist,
defending it against all comers. One part of his vocation, to which ho gives frequent exjiressiou, was to be a revealer of truth which had been liidden in the Divine mind from eternity, and not made known to even the greatest prophets of the OT, because it was reserved for the epocli of the Son of God. Tliis i.s what St. Paul calls the ' mystery ' — the word being used not in the sense of something hidden or obscured, but something once hidden but now revealed — and, as he contem- plates it in its novelty and greatness, he bursts out into the exclamation, ' 0 the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God ! how unsearchable are his judgements, and his ways past tracing out !' (Ro 11^). Thus with the restless activity of the evangelist he combined the habits of the seer and sage.
The sage's labour has its dangers too, the thinker being apt to be lost in tlie clouds of his own specu- lation. But from this peril St. Paul was saved by his intense desire to see moral results in those for whom he was labouring. Nearly every Epistle of his is composed half of theological and half of ethical matter. And the one is closely connected with the other. However mystical he becomes, when showing how the Christian has died with Christ, risen with Him, and sat down with Him in the heavenly places, each of these has its moral equivalent in the daily life of the Christian, and the smallest of duties is enforced by the sublimest of principles. This union of ideal and actual is the heart of St. Paul's thinking — ' If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk ' (Gal 5").