The life and work of St. Paul

THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 339
reaches of morality beyond any which their greatest writers had attained,
what strange renovation of the whole spirit and meaning of life, lay hidden
1 for them in those simple words ! The brief Epistle brought home to them
the glad truth that they could use, for their daily wear, that glory of thought
which had only been attained by the fewest and greatest spirits of their
nation at their rarest moments of inspiration ; and therewith that grandeur of
life which, in its perfect innocence towards God and man, was even to these
unknown.
It is a remarkable fact that in this Epistle St. Paul alludes no less than
four times to the coming of Christ, 2 and uses, to describe it, the word parousia
" presence " which also occurs in this sense in the second Epistle, 3 but
in only one other passage of all his other
4
Epistles. Whether, after the
erroneous conclusions which the Thessaloiiians drew from this letter, and the
injurious effects which this incessant prominence of eschatology produced in
their characters, he subsequently made it a less salient feature of his own
teaching, we cannot tell. Certain, however, it is that the misinterpretation of
his first letter, and the reprehensible excitement and restlessness which that
misinterpretation produced, 6 necessitated the writing of a second very shortly
after he had received tidings of these results. 6
It is equally certain that, from
this time forward, the visible personal return of Christ and the nearness of
the end, which are the predominant topics in the First Epistle to the Thessa-
lonians, sink into a far more subordinate topic of reference ; and that,
although St. Paul's language in the letter was misunderstood, yet the mis-
understanding was not a wilful but a perfectly natural one ; and that in his
later letters he anticipates his own death, rather than the second Advent, as
his mode of meeting Christ. The divine and steady light of history first
made clear to the Church that our Lord's prophetic warnings as to His
return applied primarily to the close of the Jewish dispensation, and the
winding up of all the past, and the inauguration of the last great aeon of
God's dealings with mankind.
1 Baur (Paul, ii.), Kein(Tiib. Zeitschr. 1839), Van der Vaier (Lie beiden Briefen aan
de Thessal.), De Wette (Einleit.), Volkmar, Zeller, &c., and the Tubingen school
generally, except Hilgenfeld (Die Thessalonicherbnefe), reject both Epistles to the Thessalonians
as ungenuine, and Baur calls the First Epistle a " mattes Nachwerk." I have
carefully studied their arguments, but they seem to me so slight as to be scarcely
deserving of serious refutation. The difficulties which would be created by rejecting
these Epistles are ten times as formidable as any which they suggest. If an unbiassed
scholar, familiar with the subject, cannot fed the heart of St. Paul throbbing through
every sentence of these Epistles, it is hardly likely that argument will convince him.
External evidence (Iron. Haer. v. 6, 1 ; Clem. Alex. Paedag. L, p. 109, ed. Potter ; Tert.
De Resurrect. Carnis, cap. 24), though sufficiently strong, is scarcely even
required, ^ot
only Bunsen, Ewald, &c., but even Hilgenfeld (I.e.), Holtzmann (Thessalon. in Schenkel,
Bibel-lexikon), Pfleiderer (Paulinism, 29), Hausrath, Weisse, Schmidt, &., accept the first.
2
ii. 19 ; iii. 13 ; iv. 15 ; v. 23. 2 Thess. ii. 1, 8.
* 1 Cor. xv. 23
6 We find in St. Paul's own words abundant proof that his teaching was distorted
and slandered, and St. Peter gives us direct positive assurance that such was the case
(2 Pet. iii. 16). . _
4 Tradition should have some weight, and rpos er