The life and work of St. Paul

85. PAUL'S "STAKE IH THE FLESH. 711
" Become as I am, for I too have become as you, brethren, I beseech you. In no
respect did ye wrong me. Yea, ye know that because of infirmity of the flesh I preached
to you the first time, and your temptation in my flesh a ye despised not nor loathed, but
as an angel of God ye received me, as Christ Jesus. What, then, was your self-congratulation
? For I bear you witness that, if possible, ye dug out your eyes 2 and gave them
"
me. So, have I become your enemy by telling you the truth ?
iii. The most prominent alhuiona to the same bodily affliction are Gal. vi. 17 :
"
Henceforth let no man trouble me, for I carry in my body the brands of Jesus " s
;
2 Cor. iv. 10: "Always bearing about in the body the putting to death of the Lord
"
Jesus and ; perhaps indirectly, Col. i. 24
" 4
: Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you,
and I supplement in Christ's stead the deficiences of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh
for His body which is the Church." When, too, we remember that the word for "stake"
is only a more contemptuous form of the word for "cross," 5 there may be a further
allusion to this special trial in the words, "I have been crucified with Christ." 6
Now, from the first of these passages we see that St. Paul, so far from boasting of
exceptional revelations, will only mention them because they are connected with infirmities
so painful as to render it ridiculous as well as sinful for him to boast at all, unless
he might boast that his very weakness was but a more signal proof of that strength of
Christ which had enabled him to do and to suffer more than the very chiefest Apostles.
We gather that his trial was something agonising, or it would not be called a stake
In the flesh ;7 mysterious in its nature, or it would not be described as an angel of Satan ;
intermittent, as is implied in the word "buffet," and as is also apparent from various
special paroxysms to which St. Paul alludes ; and a direct consequence of, or at any rate
intimately connected with, his most exalted moments of revelation and ecstasy.
y. From the second passage, we have the additional particulars, that it was in con-
sequence of some sharp attack of his malady that he had been detained in Galatia ; that
this malady was of such a nature as to form an actual trial to the Galatians, and
naturally dispose them to look on him with contempt, if not with positive loathing ;
that they had so completely triumphed over this feeling as to receive him with almost
divine respect, and that they had so congratulated themselves on his visit as to have been
ready, had it been possible, to dig out their very eyee and give them to their suffering
teacher.
* The other references confirm these conclusions. In one of them we learn that
St. Paul looked on his physical infirmities as sacred stigmata by which Jesus had marked
him out as His 3
slave, that he might be secured from molestation ; and in the others
that he regarded Ms living death as a sort of continuation of his Lord's crucifixion, and a
supplement to those sufferings for the sake of His Church, in which Christ allowed His
servants to participate by taking up their cross and following after Him for the service
of mankind.'
Now these passages at once exclude nine-tenths of the conjectures which have been so
freely hazarded, and which could not have been hazarded at all by those who had care-
fully considered the conditions of the question. Many of these conjectures would not
have even deserved a passing mention if they had not, on the one haad, possessed a
certain archaeological interest as belonging to the history of exegesis, and on the other
1 The true reading is rov irtipoafiMv v^Siv ev rij cropxt
6 Gal. U. 20, Xpicrnp arvve