The life and work of St. Paul

502 THE LE ANB WORK OS" ST. PAUL.
this, as to all his letters, he adds those noble practical exhortations, which are
thus made to rest, not on their own force and beauty, bnt on the securer basis
of the principles which he lays down in the doctrinal portion. No one felt
more deeply than St. Paul that it requires great principles to secure our
faithfulness to little duties, and that every duty, however apparently
insignificant, acquires a real grandeur when it is regarded in the light of those
principles from which its fulfilment springs. Since, then, the mercy and pity
of God, as being the source of His free grace, have been dwelt upon throughout
"
fche Epistle, St. Paul begins the practical part of it I exhort you therefore,
brethren, by the "
compassions of God for these, and not the difficult
doctrines of election and reprobation, are prominent in his mind " to present
your bodies, not like the dead offerings of Heathenism or Judaism, but " a
living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God your reasonable service, and not to
be conformed to this world, but to be transformed * in the renewing of your
mind, that ye may discriminate what is the will of God, good and acceptable to
Him, and perfect."
This general exhortation is then carried into details, unsystematically
indeed, and even unsyntactically, but with an evident rush and glow of
feeling which gives to the language a perfection transcending that of conscious
art.* The prevalent thought is the duty of love : to the brethren, love without
dissimulation; to the Church, love without struggling self-assertion;
to the civil power, love without fear ; to the world, love without despising its
rights or 8
mingling with its immoralities. First, by the grace given to him,
he urges them " not to be high-minded above what they ought to be minded,
but to mind to be soberminded, 4 each in porportion to their God-apportioned
receptivity of faith "
and he illustrates and enforces this ;
duty of modest
simplicity in the fulfilment of their mutual ministries, 6
by touching once more
on the apologue of the body and the members, 6 which he has already applied
in his Letter to the Corinthians. The moral of the metaphor is that " Diversity
without unity is disorder; unity without diversity is death." 7 Then with
a free interchange of participles, infinitives, and imperatives, and with a mixture
of general and special exhortations, he urges them to love, kindliness, zeal,
hope, patience, prayer, generosity, forgiveness, sympathy, mutual esteem, self-
1 Ver. 2,