persecutor and hie victims that would allow of hie learning the gospel. On the contrary, at this time he cherished the strongest prejudices and the fiercest hatred against Christianity. IL His INTENSE ZEAL FOR TllE JEWISH RELIGION. He could appeal to the Galatians themselves as having once heard "of his conversation in time past in Judaism," and how he" was making progress in Judaism above many of his contemporaries in his own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of his fathers." 1. His zeal was manifest in his earnest study of Judaism, He studied it under Gamaliel, with the best advantages of instruction, and he excelled many of the yonng Pharisees of bis own acre in the ardour and in the results of his studies. He could not have made pro!:IT~S without study. 2. It was still more manifest in his eztraordinary devotion t;: tM traditions of his fathers. This was the natural token of an enthusiastic Pharisaism. "He was a Pharisee, and the son of a Pharisee" (Acts xxiii. 6). (1) The traditions in question were not the Mosaic Law, but the interpretations of that Law, which found their true place afterwards in the Mishna. They were, in a word, " the traditions of the elders," which our Lord so severely condemned. They were traditions, strong in the letter, weak in the spirit, strict in trifles, lax in weighty matters. They made void the Law on some of the plainest questions of duty. So is it with Roman Catholics in the matter of their traditions, which a.re either opposed to Scripture or unnecessary additions to it. (2) It is not unnatural to find unconverted men very zealous for ancestral traditions ; more concerned, in fa.et, that they should be found to come from the Fathers than from God. Zeal of this sort is often strong in proportion to its ignorance of the truth. The zeal of his countrymen the apostle readily concedes, but charges it with being "a zeal not according to knowledge" (Rom. x. 2). It is in such an atmosphere that the persecutor is bred. (3) Zeal is not religion. Good intentions will never make anything really good with God. Zeal can never make the false tme, nor justify any in persecuting the truth. Christians ought to imitate the zeal of false teachers, and to manifest its pureness by jealousy for God's honour, by abundance of labours, and by ardent love to Christ. III. A BELIEVER OUGHT NOT TO BE ASHAMED TO CONFESS ms SINS. The apostle. makes an almost remorseful confession of his crimes against the Church of God. Once and again the dark recollection of :his mad violence against the saints comes up in the midst of his grateful remembrances of God's forgiving mercy. But all that wild persecution only too clearly proved how little he was indebted to apostle or saint for the gospel he gave to the Galatians. Vers. 15, 16.-After his conversion he took no counsel with men as to his doctrinll or career. The apostle is most emphatic in asserting his independence of man. Mark- I. His HIGH DESTINATION FROM BIRTH. "Who separated me from my mother's womb." Here is an instance of prevenient grace. From his very birth, and therefore before he could have any impulses or ideas of his own, God destined him to apostleship, no matter how wayward or inconsistent may have been the career of his youth. Looking back now upon his full history, we can see the marks of that momentous "separation." We see the working of prevenient, formative, restraining, preparatory grace. We see it: 1. In the splendid intellect with which he was endowed. God did verily prepare this large brain to be touched in his own time with heavenly fire. 2. In his education. He was a pure Jew, not half Greek, half Jew, but thoroughly versed in all the traditions of the Jews, and so trained in rabbinical traditions that he could afterwards thoroughly understand and confront the Judaist spirit everywhere, while he was led through inward struggles and fightings out of the darkness of Judaism into the full light of the gospel. 3. In his thoroughness of character. He could be nothing by halves; as a sinner, he was the very chief of sinner~ Conversion made no change in his temperament and in the force of his character. II. His 0ALL TO GRA0& AND APOSTLESHIP. " And called me by his grace." In evident allusion to the scene on the way to Damascus. The call of the Redeemer was in the same moment a call to conversion and to apostleship (Rom. i. 5). That call was not on the ground of his Pharisaic strictness and Castings and prayers, much less on the ground of his mad violence as a persecutor. l$ had its ori~io. wholly in grl\ce. It WI\& of grace, not of works. QALATIANS. 50 THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS, [on. I. l-24.
III. THE' REVELATION OF Gon's Sox IN THE APOSTLE. " It pleased God to reveal his Son in me." 1. Revelation is here opposed to the method of patient and prolonged study, 2. The gospel is a revelation of the Son in his person, lire, death resurrection and asccn8ion, It revea.ls him to poor sinners as " Wisdom, Hightciousn;ss Sr.nctifica: tion, a.nd Redemption." 3, It is a revelation in individual lives, "In 'rne." God revealed his Son to Paul and in Paul as "the Hope of glory," showed him what is "the riches of the glory of this mystery." It was a wonderful thing that the apostle should have all his fixed ideas unh)nge~ in a. mome_nt, all his deeply rooted prejudices destroyed, and the most comprehensive vwws of a smgula.rly glorious system established in his soul, n?t by a process_ of ~radual inquir;y: or slow ?onvic~ion, but inst~nto.neously by tho revelation of the Son m b1m. It was this revelat10n wluch enabled !um ever afterwards to hold forth the Son as the one transcendently glorious and loving Hedeemer. IV. THE DESIG:s- OF THIS REVELATION. "'l'hat I might preach him a.mono- the Gentiles." 1. It was not for his own individual salvation, but that he mi"ht b; able to make known to others what bad been so graciously conveyed to himself, b 2. It was the Son who was to be preached to the Geri tiles, not the Law, or circumcision, or holy days; not the righteousness of works, but "the righteousness of faith.'' '!'his. was the true scope of his apostleship. \'. THE MOVING CA.USE ALIKE OF CALL AND REVELATIOY-THE GOOD PLEASURE OF Gon. "It pleased God." We see in his career, first and last, the sole agency of God; and therefore there could be no dependence upon man or self for either call or ~~~~ •