The life and work of St. Paul

THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILlPPIANB. 599
from God Himself, since, thus, they were privileged not only to believe in
Christ, but to suffer for Him, as sharers in a contest like that in which they
aaw Paul engaged when he was among them, and in which they knew by
rumour that he was at that moment engaged. 1
And this brings him to one main object of his letter, which was to urge on
them this earnest entreaty :
" If, then, there be any appeal to you in Christ, if any persuasiveness in love, if
;my participation in the Spirit, if any one be heart and compassionateness, 2 complete
my joy by thinking tbe same thing, having the same love, heart-united, thinking
one thing. Nothing for partisanship, nor for empty personal vanity ; but in lowliness
of mind, 3 each of you thinking others his own superiors, not severally keeping
your eye on your own interests, but, also severally, on the interests of others. 4
" Be of tbe same mind in yourselves as Christ Jesus was in Himself, who exist-
ing in tbe form ((/uopy) of God, deemed not equality with God a thing for eager
seizure, 5 but emptied Himself, taking tbe form of a slave, revealing Himself in
human semblance, and being found in shape (o-x^art) as a man,6 humbled Himself,
showing Himself obedient even to
Cross."
death, aye, and that death tbe death of tbe
Those words were the very climax ;
in striving to urge on the Philippians
the example of humility and unselfishness as the only possible bases of unity,
he sets before them the Divine lowliness which had descended step by step
into the very abyss of degradation. He tells them of Christ's eternal possession
of the attributes of God; His self-abnegation of any claim to that
equality; His voluntary exinanition of His glory; His assumption of the
essential attributes of a slave ;
His becoming a man in all external semblance ;
His display of obedience to His Father, even to death, and not only death, but
which might well thrill the heart of those who possessed the right of
Roman citizenship, and were therefore exempt from the possibility of so
frightful a degradation death by crucifixion. Such were the elements of
i i. 27-30.
* ii. 1, fl rtt inrXayxva icoi oucnpfioi. This reading of , A, B, C, D, E, F, G, K, has
usually been treated as a mere barbarism. So it is grammatically ; but the greatest
writers, and those who most stir the
deeply heart, constantly make grammar give way
to tbe rhetoric of emotion ; and if St. Paul in bis eager rush of words really aaid it, tbe
amanuensis did quite right to take it down. Possibly, too, the word had come
tm-Aayxva
to be used colloquially like a collective singular (cf. spoglia, depouille, Bible, &c.). How
entirely it bad lost its first sense we may see from the daring ci/Sva-aotfe . .