The life and work of St. Paul

THE LAST JOTTBNEY TO JEBUSALEM. 525
undoubtedly a calumny if taken strictly namely, that he had taught the Jews
apostasy from Moses (as though his whole Gospel was this mere negation !)
but also to prove that there was no truth in the reports about him, but that he
also was a regular observer of the Law.
That it was an expensive business was nothing. Paul, poor as he had now
become, could not, of course, pay unless he had the money wherewith to pay
it and if there were ;
any difficulty on this score, its removal rested with those
who made the proposal. But was the charge against him false in spirit as
well as in letter ? Was it true that he valued, and at any rate, with anything
approaching to scrupulosity still observed the Law ? Would there not be in
such conduct on his part something which might be dangerously misrepresented
as an abandonment of principle p If those Judaisers on whom he did not
spare to heap such titles as " false apostles," " false brethren," " deceitful
workers," "dogs," "emissaries of Satan," "the concision," 1 had shaken the
allegiance of his converts by charging him with inconsistency before, would
they not have far more ground to do so now ? It is true that at the close of
his second journey he had spontaneously taken on himself the vow of the
Nazarite. But since that time circumstances had widely altered. At that
time the animosity of those false brethren was in abeyance ; they had not
dogged his footsteps with slander ; they had not beguiled
his converts into
legalism ; they had not sent their adherents to undo his teaching and persuade
his own churches to defy his authority. And if all these circumstances were
changed, he too was changed
since then. His faith had never been the
stereotype of a shibboleth, or the benumbing repetition of a phrase. His life,
like the life of every good and wise man, was a continual education. His views
during the years in which he lired exclusively among Gentile churches
and in great cities had been rendered clearer and more decided. Not to speak
of the lucid principles which he had sketched in the Epistles to the Corinthians,
he had written the Epistle to the Galatians, and had developed the arguments
there enunciated in the Epistle to the Romans. It had been the very object of
those Epistles to establish the nullity of the Law for all purposes of justification.
The man who had written that the teaching of the Judaisers was a quite
different gospel to his, and that any one who preached it was accursed ' who
had openly charged Peter with tergiversation for living Judaically after having
lived in Gentile fashion 3 who had laid it down as his very thesis that " from
works of Law no flesh shall be justified "* who had said that to build again
what he destroyed was to prove himself a positive transgressor 6 who had
talked of the Law as "a curse" from which Christ redeemed us, and declared
that the Law could never bring righteousness 9 who had even characterised
that Law as a slavery to " weak and beggarly elements " comparable to the
rituals of Cybele worship and Moon worship, and spoken of circumcision as
being in itself no better than a contemptible mutilation 7 who had talked
2 Cor. xi. 13 ; Gal. il. 4 ; Plul. iii. 2 ; 2 Cor. il. 13.
Id. ii. 14 ; supra, p. 250. /& ii 16.
. iii. 2Q; Gl. U. IS.
* Gal. i. 6-9.
*
Id. ii. 18.
T phJL Ui. 2] CM). T. 1