Of his mental temperament and character Paul is himself the best painter. His speeches and letters convey to us, as we read them, the truest impressions of those qualities which helped to make him the great apostle. We perceive the warmth and ardor of his nature, his deepl}' affectionate disposition, the tender- ness of his sense of honor, the courtesj' and personal dignity of his bearing, his perfect fea'rlessness, his he- roic endurance ; we perceive the rare combination of subtlety, tenacity, and versatility in liis intellect ; we perceive also a practical wisdom which we should have associated with a cooler temperament, and a tolerance which is seldom united with such impetuous convic- tions. When he first comes before our view in the historj', we see a man of intense energy, firm decision, iron resolution, and uncompromising zeal; and these qualities, tempered by purer religious feeling, guided b}' higher knowledge, and modified by experience, continue to characterize him so long as he appears upon the stage of life. His natural mental endow- ments were of the highest order. He had great breadth of view, great clearness of apprehension, a capacity of firmh' grasping ])rinciples, the power of arranging his thoughts in their jn'opor logical order, and the abilitj- to utter them in forcilde and fitting words. The dialectician predominates in his writ- ings ; but he could also play the orator after no mean fashion ; and there are passages in his epistles which could have come only from the pen of one who had in him the faculties of the poet. In his moral develop- ment everything is great and noble. To honesty of purpose and sinceritj' of speech, he added humility and self-distrust, generous regard fortlie welfare of others, a tender sympathy with those he loved, and a philan- thropy that eml)raced the race ; while the absence of everything mean, mercenary, or selfish, and a noble devotedncss, at whatever cost, to the interests of a great cause, combine to shed around a character, in other respects so beautiful, traits of sublimity and grandeur. M'e feel tliat here is a man at once to be admired and loved — a teacher at wJiose feet one mi'rht
sit with unhesitating docility — a friend on whose bosom one might lean with confidence and affection. The vigorous intellect and the large heart which belonged to him by nature would have brouglit liim distinction under any circumstances ; but his highest claim to honor is derived from his having, under the constrain- ing power of the love of Christ, consecrated himself, body, soul, and spirit, to the service of God in promot- ing the best interests of men. In this respect he stands foremost among the Church's heroes and the benefactors of the race. The principle which harmo- nized all these endowments and directed them to a practical end was, beyond dispute, a knowledge of Je- sus Christ in the Divine Spirit. Personal allegiance to Clirist as to a living Master, with a growing insight into the relation of Christ to each man and to the world, carried the apostle forward on a straight course through every vicissitude of personal fortunes and amid the various habits of thought which he had to encoun- ter. The conviction that he had been intrusted with a Gospel concerning a Lord and Deliverer of men was what sustained and purified his love for his own peo- ple, while it created in him such a love for mankind that he only knew himself as the servant of others for Christ's sake.
A remarkable attempt has recently been made by Prof. Jowett, in his Commentary on some of the Epis- tles, to qualify what he considers to be the blind and undiscriminating admiration of Paul, by representing him as having been, with all his excellences, a man "whose appearance and discourse made an impression of feebleness," "out of harmony with life and nature," a confused thinker, uttering himself " in broken words and hesitating forms of speech, with no beaut}' or comeliness of style," and so undecided in his Christian belief that he was preaching, in the fourteenth j^ear after his conversion, a Gospel concerning Christ which he himself, in four years more, confessed to have been carnal. In these paradoxical views, however. Prof. Jowett stands almost alone ; the result of the freest, as of the most reverent, of the numerous recent studies of St. Paul and his works (among wliich Prof. Jowett's own Commentary is one of the most interesting) hav- ing been only to add an independent tribute to the an- cient admiration of Christendom. Those who judge Paul as they would judge any other remarkal)le man confess him unanimously to have been " one of the greatest spirits of all time;" while those who believe him to have been appointed by the Lord of mankind, and inspired by the H0I3' Ghost, to do a work in the world of almost unequalled importance, are lost in won- der as they study the gifts with which he was endowed for that work, and the sustained devotion with which he gave himself to it. On the intellectual and moral char- acter of Paul, see Niemeyer, Ckarakter, \, 206 sq. ; Hug, Einleit. ii,2S3 sq. ; Hartmann. in Scherer's Schrififorsch. i, 1 sq. ; Journ.f. Pred. xxviii, 298 sq.; Palmer, Pau- lus u. Gamaliel, ein Beitrag zur dltesten Christengcsch. (Giess. 1806); Olshausen, Bihl. Comment. Ill, i, 11 sq.