The life and work of St. Paul

118 THE LIFE JL3TD WORK OF ST. PAUL.
Christian career, the developed purpose of preaching an independent Gospel.
Assailed, as he subsequently was, on all sides, but thwarted most of all by the
espionage of false brethren, and the calumnies of those who desired to throw
doubt on his inspired authority, it was indeed a providential circumstance that
the events which followed his conversion were such as to separate him as far
as possible from the appearance of discipleship to human instructors. As a
as a Christian he called no man
Pharisee he had sat at the feet of Gamaliel ;
his master. He asserts, with reiterated earnestness, that his teaching as well
as his authority, " his Gospel " no less than his Apostleship, had been received
immediately from God. Indeed, the main object of that intensely interesting
and characteristic narrative which occupies the two first chapters of the Epistle
to the Galatians is to establish the declaration which he felt it necessary to
make so strongly, that " the Gospel preached by him was not a human gospel,
and that he did not even receive it from any human being, nor was he taught
it, but through revelation of Jesus Christ." l Had he not been able to assure
his converts of this had he not been able to appeal to visions and revelations
of the Lord he might have furnished another instance of one whose opinions
have been crashed and silenced by the empty authority of names. It was from
no personal feeling of emulation a feeling of which a soul so passionately in
earnest as his is profoundly incapable but it was from the duty of ensuring
attention to the truths he preached that he felt it to be so necessary to con-
vince the churches which he had founded how deep would be their folly if
they allowed themselves to be seduced from the liberty of his Gospel by the retrograde
mission of the evangelists of bondage. It was indispensable for the
dissemination of the truth that he should be listened to as an Apostle "neither
of man, nor by any man, but by Jesus Christ, and God, who raised him from
the dead." Had his Apostleship emanated from (avb) the Twelve, or been
conferred en him by the consecrating act of (Sia) any one of them, 8 then they
might be supposed to have a certain superior commission, a certain coercive
power. If, as far as ho was concerned, they had no such power, it was because
ho had received his commission directly from his Lord. And to this independence
of knowledge he often refers. He tells the Thessalonians, " by the
Word of the Lord," s that those who were still alive at the Second Advent
should not be beforehand with should gain no advantage or priority over
4 those that slept. He tells the Ephesians that it was by revelation that God
" made known to him the mystery which in other generations was not made
known to the sons of men namely, that the Gentiles are co-heirs and comembers
and co-part ukers 6 of the promise in Christ Jesus, through the Gospel
of which he became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God, which
was given him according to the mighty working of His power." He tells the
Colossians 6 that he became a minister of the Church " in accordance with the
stewardship of God given to him for them, that he might fully preach the
1 Gal. i. 11, 12.
2 Gal. 1. 1, owe air' ai^pwrwr ov& SC a
8 1 Thess. iv. 15, i 4
Myy Kvpimi.
Eph. 6.
iii._3
* '
ovyeAj)pov6.'iO xail ovtro-wjua KOI fiftlroxa> CoL i. 25,