The life and work of St. Paul

ST. PAUL'S "STAKE IN THE FLESH." 713
mitting as lie does to the Corinthians that it is better once for all to marry than to be
consumed by the slow inward fires of concupiscence, 1 he yet says to the unmarried, "it
is good for them to abide even as I," and that "he would that all men were even as he
himself." 8 There would be hypocrisy, and something worse than hypocrisy, in such
language if the "stake in the ilesh," which was still unremoved when he wrote the
Second Epistle, were that which this long succession of commentators have supposed
it to be. 3
3. It may, then, be regarded as certain that the stake in the flesh was some physical
malady ; for the fancy first mentioned by Chrysostom and adopted by the Greek fathers,
as well as by Hilary and Augustine, that it means the opposition and persecution with
which St. Paul met at the hands of Judaista, and perhaps especially of one leader among
them who was "a thorn in his side," 4 is too entirely at variance with the conditions of
the question to deserve further notice. But when, in our anxiety to understand and
sympathise as far as possible with the Apostle's personality, we still ask what was thia
malady, we are left in uncertainty. To omit the more futile conjectures, neither attacks of
headache nor earache mentioned traditionally by Tertullian and Jerome, nor the stone
which is the conjecture of Aquinas, present those features of external repulsiveness to
which the Apostle evidently alludes as the concomitants of his trial. The only conjectures
which have much intrinsic probability are those which suppose him to have
Buffered from epilepsy or from ophthalmia.
4. There is something to be said in favour of the view that it was Epilepsy. It is
painful ; it is recurrent ; it opposes an immense difficulty to all exertion ; it may at any
tune cause a temporary suspension of work ; it is intensely humiliating to the person
who suffers from it ; it exercises a repellent effect on those who witness its distressing
manifestations. Moreover, it was regarded in ancient days as supernatural in its character,
was surrounded with superstitious fancies, and was directly connected by the Jews
5
with demoniacal possession. Further, St. Paul himself connects his infirmity with his
trances and visions, and the soul of man is so constituted that any direct intercourse
with the unseen world even, in a lower order, any deep absorption in religious thought,
or paroxysms of religious feeling does tend to a violent disturbance of the nervous
organism. 6 It would be specially certain to act in this way in the case of one whoso
temperament was so emotional as was that of St. Paul. It is not impossible that the
prostration which followed his conversion may have been induced by the shock which
his system received from his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus ; and that
the recurrence of this shock, involving a chronic liability to its attacks, accompanied
that second trance in the Temple, which determined his future career as the Apostle of.
the Gentiles. Hi a third ecstasy happened fourteen years 7 before he wrote the Second
1 1 Cor. *
vii. 9, Kpeurow ya^o-at ) wvpovotfat.
1 Cor. vii. 7, 8.
It is difficult to believe tliat 2 Cor. vii. 2 ; xl. 8 ; and 1 Thess. ii. 3 are intended to refute
charges which had been even brought against Paul himself. They may be intended to contrast hi/
own conduct with that of other teachers, and indeed the first two passages do not necessarily refer
to unchastity at all. The axuSapa-ia. of 1 Thess. ii. 3 is explained, even by Chrysostom, of vile and
juggling arts and ; Olshausen, Ltiuemann, Alfprd, Ellicott, and others all suppose it to refer primarily
to at