The life and work of St. Paul

122 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL
tenderness and gratitude towards him 1
that he can call them "my little
children" that he can assume their intense desire to see him, and can
grant that desire as an express favour to them 2
; and that he is even forced
to soothe those jealousies of affection which were caused by his acceptance
of aid from one church which he would not accept from others. But he
is also well aware that he is hated with a perfect virulence of hati-ed, and
(which is much more wounding to such a spirit) that with this hatred there
is a large mixture of unjust contempt. From this contempt even of the
contemptible, from this hatred even of the hateful, he could not but
shrink, though ho knew that it is often the penalty with which the world
rewards service, and the tribute which virtue receives from vice.
It is this which explains the whole style and character of his Epistles. 8
The charges which his enemies made against him have their foundation
in facts about his method and address, which made those charges all the
more dangerous and the more stinging by giving them a certain plausibility.
They were, in fact, yet another instance of those half-truths which are the
worst of lies. Thus adopting the taunts of his adversaries, as ho often
does he says that he is in presence "humble" among them, 4 and "rude in
speech," 6 and he quotes their own reproach that "his bodily presence was
6
weak, and his speech contemptible." one who strove
Being confessedly
for peace and unity, who endeavoured to meet all men half-way, who
was ready to be all things to all men if by any means he might save some,
he has more than once to vindicate his character from those charges of
insincerity, craftiness, dishonesty, guile, man-pleasing and flattery, 7 which
are, perhaps, summed up in the general depreciation which he so indignantly
rebuts that "he walked according to the flesh," 8 or in other words that
his motives were not spiritual, but low and selfish. He has, too, to defend
himself from the insinuation that his self-abasements had been needless
and excessive; 9 that even his apparent self-denials had only been assumed
10
as a cloak for ulterior views and that his intercourse ;
was so marked by
levity of purpose, that there was no trusting to his promises. 11 Now how
came St. Paul to be made the butt for such calumnies as these P Chiefly,
no doubt, because he was, most sorely against his will, the leader of a party,
and because there are in all ages souls which delight in lies men " whose
"
throat is an open sepulchre, and the poison of asps is under their lips ;
but partly, also, because he regarded tact, concession, conciliatoriness, as
Divine weapons which God had permitted him to use against powerful
obstacles ; and partly because it was easy to satirise and misrepresent a
depression of spirits, a humility of demeanour, which were either the direct
results of some bodily affliction, or which the consciousness of this affliction
i Phil,
a
passim.
2 Oor. i. 15, 23.
3 "
See Excursus L : The Style of St. Paul as illustrative of his Character."
* 2 Cor. x.
8
1,2.
2 Cor. x. 2.
4 2 Cor. xi.
'
6, i&uinp evA^yw.
2 Cor. xi. 7.
'
'2 Cor. x. 10.
2 Cor. xiL 16.
1 2 Cor. U. 17, iv. 2; 1 Thess. ii S-5, 2 Cor. i. 17.