The life and work of St. Paul

THE SECOND VISIT TO COKIrfTH. 421
his own repeated allusions and the prominence which he gives to this subject
in the Epistles to the Corinthians. It must have been one of his trials to
be perpetually pleading for pecuniary contributions, among little bodies of
converts of whom the majority were not only plunged in poverty, but who
had already made the most conspicuous sacrifices on behalf of their Christian
faith. It was clear to him that this fact would be unscrupulously used as a
handle against him. However careful and businesslike his arrangements
might be however strongly he might insist on having no personal share in
tho distribution, or even the treasurership of these funds persons would not
bo wanting to whisper the base insinuation that Paul found his own account
in them by means of accomplices, and that even the laborious diligence with
which he worked day and night at his trade, .and failed even thus to ward off
the pains of want, was only the cloak for a deep-laid scheme of avarice and
eelf -aggrandisement. It was still worse when these charges came from the
emissaries of the very Church for the sake of whose poor he was facing this
disagreeable work of begging. 1 But never was there any man in this world
however innocent, however saintly who has escaped malice and slander;
iudeed, the virulence of this malice and the persistency of this slander are
often proportionate to the courage wherewith he confronts the baseness of
the world. St. Paul did not profess to be indifferent to these stings of hatred
and calumny; he made no secret of the agony which they caused him. He was,
on the contrary, acutely sensible of their gross injustice, and of the hindrance
which they caused to the great work of his life ; and the irony and passion
with which, on fitting occasions, he rebuts them is a measure of the suffering
which they caused. But, as a rule, he left them unnoticed, and forgave those
by whom they wore perpetrated:
" Assailed by slander and the tongue of strife
1 ! ia only answer was a blameless life ;
Ami he that forged and he that flung the dart,
Had each a brother's interest in his heart."
For he was not the man to neglect a duty because it was disagreeable, or
because his motives in undertaking it might be misinterpreted. And the
motives by which he was actuated ia this matter were peculiarly sacred. In
the first place, the leading Apostles at Jerusalem had bound Mm by a special
promise to take care of their poor, almost as a part of the hard-wrung compact
by which their Church had consented to waive, in tho case of Gentile converts,
the full acceptance of legal obligations. In the second place, the need really
existed, and was even urgent; and it was entirely in consonance with St.
Paul's own feelings to give them practical proof of that brotherly love which
he regarded as the loftiest of Christian virtues. Then, further, in his early
days, his ignorant zeal had inflicted on the Church of Jerusalem a deadly
injury, and he would fain show the sincerity and agony of his repentance by
To thia day the Chaluka and Kadima at Jerusalem are the source of endless heartburnings
and jealousies, and cause no particle of gratitude, but are accepted by the Jews
as a testimonial to the high desert of living in the Holy City,