The life and work of St. Paul

GENUINENESS OF THE PASTOBAL EPISTLES. 745
Love's Labour't Lost and Hamlet? Would any one who read the more prosaic parts of the
Paradise Regained recognise the poet of the first or sixth books of the Paradise Lostf
IB the style of Burke in the Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful the same as his style in
the Essay on the French Revolution f It would be quite superfluous to multiply
instances. If it be asserted that the Pastoral Epistles are valueless, or unworthy of
their author, we at once join issue with the objectors, and, Independently of our own
judgment, we say that, in that case, they would not have deceived the critical intuition
of centuries of thinkers, of whom many were consummate masters of literary expression.
If, on the other hand, it be merely contended that the style lacks the verve and passion
of the earlier Epistles, we reply that this is exactly what we should expect. Granted that
" it is not the object of this, as of preceding Epistles, to develop fully some essentially
Pauline idea which has still to vindicate itself, and on which the Christian consciousness and
life are to be formed, but rather to apply the contents of Christian doctrine to practical lifo
in its varying circumstances," we reply that nothing could be more natural. Granted
that, unlike all the other Epistles, they have no true organic development ; that they
do not proceed from one root-idea which penetrates the whole contents, and binds all
the inner parts in an inner unity, because the deeper relations pervade the outward disconnectedness
; that no one creative thought determines their contents and structure ;
that they exhibit no genuine dialectic movement in which the thought possesses
sufficient inherent force to originate all the stages of its J
development ; granted, I say
and it is a needlessly large concession that this depth of conception, this methodical
development, this dialectic progress, are wanting in these three letters, we entirely
refuse to admit that this want of structural growth belies their Pauline origin. It is
little short of absurd to suppose that every one of St. Paul's letters however brief,
however casual, however private must have been marked by the same features as the
Epistles to the Romans or the Galatians. I venture to say that every objection of this
kind falls at once to the ground before the simple observation of the fact that these were
not grand and solemn compositions dealing with the great problems which were rending
the peace of the assembled Churches before which they would be read, but ordinary
private letters, addressed by an elder and a superior to friends whom he had probably
known from early boyhood, and who were absolutely familiar with the great main
features of his teaching and belief. Add the three circumstances that one of them waa
written during the cruel imprisonment in which his life was drawing to its close ; that
they were probably written by his own hand, and not with the accustomed aid of an
2 amanuensis ; and that they were certainly written in old age, and we shall at once see
how much there is which explains the general peculiarities of their style, especially in
its want of cohesion and compression. There are in these Epistles inimitable indications
that we are reading the words of an old man. There is neither senility nor garrulity,
but tliore is the dignity and experience which marks thejttcwrtda senectua. 3 The digressiveness
becomes more diffuse, the generalities more frequent, the repetitions more
observable. 4 Formulae are reiterated with an emphasis which belongs less to the
necessities of the present than to the reminiscences of the past. Divergences into
personal matters, when he is writing to Timothy, who had so long been his bosom companion,
become more numerous and normal. 5 And yet it is impossible not to feel that a
1
Baur, Paul. ii. 107.
The Epistle to the Galatians and the concluding doxology of the Epistle to the Romans wera
also autographic ; and Dean Alford than whom few men have ever been more closely acquainted
with the style of the Apostle in all its peculiarities has pointed out a series of resemblances between
these writings and the Pastoral Epistles (Greek Test. iii. 86).
* Even when he wrote the Epistle to Philemon he calls himself Paul the Aged, and he had gone
through much since then. Supposing him to have been converted at the age of thirty, he would now
have been nearly sixty, and could hardly have seemed otherwise than aged, considering the illnesses
and trials which had shattered a weak and nervous frame.
* ITim. i.15; ii. 4 6 ; UL 16, &c. 2 ; Tim. I. 9; ii. 11 18 ; Tit. i M; U. 11; iii. 8c. .
* 1 Tim. L 11, aa.; 2 Tim. i. 11, seqq.; lft>