The life and work of St. Paul

266 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
if that could Lave helped me, have plucked out your eyes and given them
tome." 1
Nothing is more natural than that the traversing of vast distances over the
burning plains and freezing mountain passes of Asia Minor the constant
changes of climate, the severe bodily fatigue, the storms of fine and blinding
dust, the bites and stings of insects, the coarseness and scantnoss of daily
fare should have brought on a return of his malady to one whose health was
so shattered as that of Paul. And doubtless it was the anguish and despair
arising from the contemplation of his own heartrending condition, which
added to his teaching that intensity, that victorious earnestness, which made
it BO all-prevailing with the warm-hearted Gauls. 8
If they were ready to
receive him as Christ Jesus, it was because Christ Jesus was the Alpha and
the Omega, the beginning and the end of all his teaching to them. And
hence, in his appeal to thoir sense of shame, he uses one of his own inimitably
picturesque words to say, " Senseless Galatians, what evil eye bewitched
you ? 3 befoi-e whose eyes, to avert them from such evil glances, I painted as it
were visibly and large the picture of Jesus Christ crucified."*
But the zealous readiness of the Galatians, their impulsive affection, the
demonstrative delight with which they accepted the now teaching, was not
solely due to the pity which mingled with the admiration inspired by the new
teacher. It may liave been due, in some small measure, to the affinities
presented by the new religion to the loftiest and noblest parts of their old
beliefs ; and at any rate, being naturally of a religious turn of mind, 5
they may
have been in the first instance attracted by the hearing of a doctrine which
promised atonement in consequence of a shedding of blood. But far more
than this, the quick conversion of the Galatians was due to the mighty out-
1 No one disputes that this in itself may be a metaphorical expression for any severe
sacrifice, as in Cat. Isxxii. :
"
Quinti si tibi vis oculos debere Catullum,
Aut aliuil si quid carius est oculls."
But how incomparably more vivid and striking, and how much more germane to th
occasion, does the expression become if it was an attack of ophthalmia from which Paul
was ! suffering I
3 No doubt the Galatians with whom he had to deal were not the Gallic peasants who
were despised and ignorant ("paene servorum loco habentur," Caes. B. G. vi. 13); but
the Gallo-grseci, the more cultivated and Hellenised Galli of the towns. (Long in Diet.
Gcogr. s.v.)
3 Gal. iii. 1. Omit rjj aA>)0t