The life and work of St. Paul

466 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST; PAUL.
distinctions between nobleness and shame. Therefore, their hearts became sur-
charged with every element of vileness ; with impurity in its most abysmal degradations,
with hatred alike in its meanest and its most virulent developments, with
insolence culminating in the deliberate search for fresh forms of evil, 1 with cruelty
and falsity in their most repulsive features. And the last worst crime of all beyond
which crime itself could go no further was the awfully defiant attitude of moral evil,
2
which led them while they were fully aware of God's sentence of death, pronounced
on willing guilt not only to incur it themselves, but, with a devilish
delight in human depravity and human ruin, to take a positive pleasure in those who
practise the same. Sin, as has been truly said, reaches its climax in wicked maxims
and wicked principles. It is no longer Vice the result of moral weakness, or the
outcome of an evil education, but Vice deliberately accepted with all its consequences,
Vice assuming the airs of self-justification, Vice in act becoming Vice in
elaborate theory the unblushing shamelessness of Sodom in horrible aggravation of
its polluting sin.*
Thus did Paul brand the insolent brow of Pagan life. It is well for the
world it is above all well for the world in those ages of transition and decay
when there is ever an undercurrent or tendency towards Pagan ideals to
know what Paganism was, and ever tended to become. It is well for the
world that it should have been made to see, once for all, what features lurked
under the smiling mask, what a heart of agony, rank with hatred, charred
4
with self-indulgence, lay throbbing under the purple robe. And in St. Paul's
description not one accusation is too terrible, not one colour is too dark. He
does but make known to us what heathen writers unblushingly reveal in those
passages in which, like waves of a troubled sea, they foam out their own mire
and dirt. 6
It is false to say that Christianity has added to the gloom of the
world. It is false that it has weakened its literature, or cramped its art. It
has been wilfully perverted ; it has been ignorantly misunderstood. Rightly
interpreted it does not sanction a single doctrine, or utter a single precept,
which is meant to extinguish one happy impulse, or dim one innocent delight.
refused . . . God gave them to a refuse mind" (Vaughan, ad loc.). St. Paul was
deeply impressed (24, 26, 28) with the ethic retributive law of the punishment of sin
with sin. It was recognised both by Jews and Gentiles (Pirke Abhtith, iv. 2; Sen. Ep. 16).
1
i. 30, e^euperas xajcSiv (2 Mace. vii. 31). Pliny (H. N. xv. 5) applies this very expression
to the Greeks. Some of these words occur in speaking of corruptions within the
Church (2 Tim. iii. 2); "of so little avail is nominal Christianity" (Vaughan); evperip
ayaScoi/ (Prov. xvi. 20).
2
i. 32, TO SiKou'cu/xa, "the just decree;" WOIOVITIV, "single acts;" irpatr