The life and work of St. Paul

498 THE LIFE ANI WORK OP ST. PAUL.
objection to the proclamation of a new or a forgotten truth which is so false,
so faithless, and so futile, as the plea that it is " dangerous." But one duty
is incumbent on all who teach what they believe to be the truths of God. It
is that they should state them with all possible candour, courtesy, forbearance,
eonsiderateness. The controversial method of St. Paul furnishes the most
striking contrast to that of religions controversy in almost every age. It is
as different as anything can be from the reckless invective of a Jerome or of a
Luther. It bears no relation at all to the unscrnpulousness of a worldly
ecclesiasticism. It is removed by the very utmost extreme of distance from
the malice of a party criticism, and the Pharisaism of a loveless creed.
Thus, though he knows that what he has to enforce will be most unpalatable
to the Jews, and though he knows how virulently they hate him, how
continuously they have thwarted his teaching and persecuted his life, he begins
with an expression of love to them so tender and so intense, that theologians
little accustomed to an illimitable unselfishness felt it incumbent upon them
to explain it away.
" I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the
Holy Spirit, that I have great grief and incessant anguish in
"
my heart ; and then,
in the intensity of his emotion, he omits to state the cause of his grief, because it is
sufficiently explained by what follows and what has gone before. It is grief at the
thought that Israel should be hardening their hearts against the "
Gospel. For I
could have wished my own self to be anathema from Christ 1 on behalf of my
brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, seeing that they are Israelites, whose
is the 2
adoption, and the Shechinah,3 and the covenants, and the legislation, and the
ritual, and the promises, whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ, according to
the flesh, who is over all God blessed for ever. Amen." 4 On his solemn appeal
to the fact of his readiness even to abandon all hopes of salvation if thereby he could
save his brethren, I think it only necessary to say that the very form in which it ie
1
D?fl, Deut. ; Zech. xiv. 11 ; Gal. I. 8, 9 ; 1 Cor. xil. 3 ; xrl 22. Strong natures
"
If not, blot
have ever been capable of braving even the utmost loss for a great end.
me, I pray tb.ee, out of tbe book which Thou hast written " "
(Ex. xxxii, 32). Que mon
nom soit fle'tri," said Danton, "pourvu que la France soit "
libre." Let the name of
George Whitefield perish if God be glorified."
a 2 Oor. vi. 18.
8 Ex. xvi. 10 1 Sam. ; iv. 22, &c. (LXX.)
4 Rom. ix. 15. On the punctuation of this last verse a great controversy has arisen.
Many editors since the days of Erasmus (and among them Lachmann, Tischendorf,
Riickert, Meyer, Fritzsche) put the stop at " flesh ;" others at " all" (Locke, Baumgarten,
Crusius) ; and regard the concluding words as a doxology to God for the grandest
of the privileges of Israel. In favour of this punctuation is the fact that Paul, even in
bis grandest Christological passages, yet nowhere
"
calls Christ, God "
over all, nor ever
appUea to Him th word vXoyr)T