The life and work of St. Paul

494 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL.
though in reality they intersect each other. And the reason of this is that
both are enclosed in the circumference of a sphere by far more vast thai,
sphere of the Divine, of which for us the centre is everywhere, and the
circumference, not indeed "nowhere," but immeasurably beyond our ken. 1
This is one comfort. And again, just as St. Paul refuses to find the sub-
stantial essence of morality anywhere but in the inmost disposition, so he does
away with the individual ego by raising it to the universal ego to that
humanity which is present, and is identified with itself, in every separate
individual. 2 It is unquestionable that he categorically asserts, and that
without limitations, the redemption of the universe and of the race. 3 In that
and in
: thought, the thought of God's infinite love, lies the gleam of light
in the saddest destinies or the most perplexed enigmas of the individual.
The logical conclusions of an exaggerated dogmatism are rectified by the
unchangeable certainties of moral conviction, and the inspired hopes of a
child-like love.
" Ah, truly," says Beuss, 4 " if the last word of the Christian revelation
is contained in the image of the potter and the clay, it is a bitter derision
of all the deep needs and legitimate desires of a soul aspiring towards its
God. This would be at once a satire of reason upon herself, and the suicide
of revelation." But it is neither the last word, nor the only word; nor
has it any immediate observable bearing on the concrete development of
our lives. It is not the only word, because in nine-tenths of Scripture it
is as wholly excluded from the sphere of revelation as though it had been
never revealed at all; and it is not the last word, because throughout the
whole of Scripture, and nowhere more than in the writings of the very
Apostle who has faced this problem with the most heroic inflexibility, we
see bright glimpses of something beyond. How little we were intended to
draw logical conclusions from the metaphor, is shown by the fact that we
are living souls, not dead clay ; and St. Paul elsewhere recognised a power,
both within and without our beings, by which, as by an omnipotent alchemy,
mean vessels can become precious, and vessels of earthenware be transmuted
into vessels of
6
gold. Vessels fitted for destruction may be borne with
much long-suffering. Apparent loss is made the immediate instrument of
wider gain. Partial rejection is to pave the way for universal acceptance.
God wills the salvation of all. 6 Where sin abounds, there grace superabounds/
God giveth freely to all, and freely calleth all, and His gifts
and calling are without repentance. Israel is rejected, Israel in part is
hardened, yet "all Israel shall be saved." 8 "God shut up all into
1 The Rabbis, to avoid even the most distant semblance of irreverent anthropomorphism,
often spoke of God as "
Ha-Mak6m, "the place ; and it is one of their grand
sayings that " the Universe is not the place of God, but God is the Place of the
Universe."
2
Baur, Three Centuries, p. 32.
See Roin. viii. 1924 ; xi. 32; 1 Tim. ii. 36 (Acts iii. 21 ; Rev. xxi. 4 ; xxii. 3).
* ThloL Chr&t. ii. 115.
2Tim. ii. 21. 1 Tim. ii. 4; Tit. ii. 11; 2Pet. iii. 9,
7 Bom. v. 20, 21. Bom. zi. 26.