that he should have trained his son to the manufacture of one of the principal commodities with which his ships were freighted?

We dwell not on this point because the mere accident of birth attaches to him the slightest preeminence above his colleagues from the fishing-boats on the Galilean lake. But he lived at an age when the lines of social distinction were sharply drawn, and had not begun to be blended or crossed by the gospel of human brotherhood; and whatever advantage of social position he possessed must have opened for him avenues of influence, which were closed against the original apostles, and must have won for him larger freedom of access, and a more willing audience with the persons of exalted station, and even royal dignity, before whom he was not infrequently permitted to plead the cause of Christ and Christianity. Then, too, the higher his previous position, the larger was his sacrifice in joining the company of unlettered rustics and fishermen, and bearing with them the reproach of the despised Nazarene. And the farther he was removed from the condition of those who had little to lose by becoming Christians, the more improbable is his conversion on any theory of naturalism-the stronger the certainty that he indeed had a vision of the Saviour on the way to Damascus, and was miraculously called to the apostleship.

We might speak, also, of the influence of nature in St. Paul's education. He was, indeed, so profoundly occupied with the great themes of Christianity, that he alluded to the phenomena of the outward universe in but a few instances, yet in these with deep and vivid feeling. Still, there pervades every manifestation of his spirit a fervor, a glow, a torrent-like rush of thought and feeling, an overcharged intensity of emotion, which indicates not only quick and strong native susceptibilities, but a soul stimulated from without by familiar conversance with the grand and beautiful in nature; -in fine, a style of character which it is impossible for us to associate with tame, even quiet, scenery. Tarsus was situated on a plain of unsurpassed fertility and richly variegated beauty. In the rear of the city rose the lofty, bald, snowcrowned cliffs of Mount Taurus, piled against the northern

and western sky, summit against summit, crag upon crag, rolling up their mist-wreaths to meet the ascending sun, and arresting midway his declining path. From these cliffs, translucent as glass, made deathly cold even under the summer solstice by their melting snows, tumbled rather than flowed the river Cydnus, over perpetual rapids, and frequent waterfalls of unsurpassed beauty and of grandeur hardly equalled on the Eastern Continent, till only as it approached it became tractable to the oar, and navigable thence to the great sea. And in full sight of the city lay spread the vast Mediterranean, the ocean of the ancient world, whitened with the sails of a multitudinous commerce, alternately serene as a land-locked lake, and lashed by frequent storms into commotion wild and grand as that with which the Atlantic breaks upon its shores. Thus, by the divine ministry of mountain, sea, and river, no less than by the intercourse of the thronged city, and in the world-renowned schools of Stoic and of Jew, was God training the great apostle for his world-wide and world-enduring

mission.

But what was this mission, which demanded for this man alone such vast endowments, and such prolonged and diversified culture and experience, while it was enough for his associates in the sacred college that, in every other aspect simple and illiterate men, they should be wise only in the lore of inspiration? We doubt whether the magnitude of the work assigned to St. Paul has been duly considered and appreciated. In an important sense, (though immeasurably inferior to that in which we apply the title to the God-born Saviour,) he was the Founder of Christianity. Christ planted the seeds of his religion in the decaying trunk of Judaism, as those of the mistletoe are lodged in the ancient oak. It was as a reformed sect of Jews that the earliest Christians not only were regarded, but regarded themselves. The original apostles were still punctilious Hebrews, and held Christianity as a supplementary code to that of Moses. They were at first scandalized and horror-stricken at the thought of abjuring the ceremonial law. When they reluctantly began to gather in Gentile converts, they stretched the yoke of Judaism before the gate of the church, and sought to compel their proselytes

to stoop under it, at first as the essential, and afterwards as the most hopeful, condition of enjoying the privileges of Christian citizenship. And there was divine wisdom in this arrangement. It was well that the heavenly exotic should gain richness and strength, should reach forth boughs of ample shade and sufficing fruitfulness, before it should be severed. from the parent trunk, and trusted without support to the winds and storms of a hostile world. But the hour had arrived when the more vigorous vitality of the younger plant could no longer find adequate nourishment in its parasitic condition; and Paul was the appointed agent for the needed and predetermined separation. In his mind, and under his administration, Christianity was first regarded and treated as independent and sovereign. Under him grew up the organi zation, by which it was thenceforth to assume its unshared place, to discharge its undivided office, and to overshadow and supplant the growths of uncounted ages. This bold and delicate mission demanded not alone devotion and zeal, not alone intimate conversance with the mind of Christ. He to whom it was intrusted needed a profound acquaintance with Judaism as it then was, its traditions, its philosophy, so that the separation might be effected, on the one hand, without leaving the least radicle or fibre of the transplanted scion in the ancient stock, and on the other, without marring the venerable, though effete majesty of the tree which God had planted for the healing of the nations, and whose "branches he had made strong for himself." For this work, also, there was requisite a thorough knowledge of those other religions and philosophies which were to vanish before the growth of Christianity, but each of which, by the germs of truth which it embodied, might offer special vantage-ground for the tilth of the spiritual husbandman. It was needful, too, that the chief agent in this divine enterprise should have become familiar with the customs, prejudices, needs, and susceptibilities of the so many and diverse nations, that were to be sheltered and fed by the same "tree of life." We can conceive that all this might have been wrought by a series of miracles; but in the Christian economy we find no superfluous miracles. Whatever it is competent for man to do is committed to his agency,

while the hand and voice from heaven become visible and audible only as they are needed to impart verities undiscoverable by human wisdom, and to set the seal of omnipotence where else there could be only doubt or darkness.

Of St. Paul's character, the most prominent traits might be comprised under the generic name of integrity. By this we mean much more than honesty and veracity. He was always bound by the law of his own convictions. He suffered his whole interior life to transpire with perfect freedom in every form of outward manifestation and utterance. He seemed incapable of indirection or concealment. We do not call this frankness in him; for frankness is an ambiguous term. We often apply it to a shallow nature, which has no recesses where it could retreat from view, to an excess of social feeling, which imparts itself from a mere communicative instinct, to vanity, which exhibits itself for its own glory. But when a profound, self-controlling, modest spirit utters and acts itself with entire openness and transparency, at the perpetual risk of misinterpretation, obloquy, and abuse, it can only be from rigid uprightness of purpose, from an everactive conscience, from the pervading sense of accountableness to the ever-present Witness and Judge. St. Paul was honest as a persecutor of the infant church, and threw his whole energy and fervor of spirit into the vindication of waning Judaism. He gave instant heed to the heavenly vision that arrested him on his sanguinary career, and became at once a bold and earnest preacher of the faith that he had sought to destroy. In all his subsequent defences, he never cloaked nor palliated the cardinal error of his early life, but expressed its full magnitude and enormity as a drawback to his claims and merits as an apostle. While, in his Epistles, he never speaks of himself obtrusively, he does so always without disguise or reservation, expounding fully the grounds on which he can demand regard, submission, and deference, urging his personal rights on the score of service and obligation, and at the same time referring, with equal explicitness, to his own defects and infirmities. With similar plainness and directness he deals with the characters of his converts, calling moral actions by their right names, reproving what is blame

worthy, without reticency or equivocation, and often hazarding his popularity by telling the literal truth.

His affections were warm and ardent. St. John has always been regarded as the paradigm of the loving elements of the religious character; but in this respect, St. Paul has always impressed us even more deeply. Had he had a less vigorous and cogent mind, he would have been termed "all heart," and his heart is fully commensurate with his mind. Even in the process of abstract reasoning, he cannot repress his emotional nature; but often breaks forth into a rapturous doxology, as if his very logic were forged in the hot glow of worship and thanksgiving. And how tender are his expressions of sympathy for his benighted fellow-countrymen, how earnest his good wishes for his persecutors, how more than paternal his fond solicitudes for the subjects of his spiritual pastorate! With an impulsive, impetuous nature, and with perpetual trial of his equanimity, he has not left on record an ungentle word; and his unexplained dissension with Barnabas is the only indication that he had "like passions with other men." He is not intent merely on the primal duty of preaching the gospel; but we can trace almost numberless instances of careful and considerate kindness to individuals and communities.

His catholic, tolerant spirit, as regards error, is worthy of emphatic note. Though uncompromising in his adherence to the truth, he is no iconoclast. He takes his starting-point from what is common to him with those whom he would draw over to a higher ground. Is he discoursing to an audience of Jews? He seizes on the concessions of the Pharisees, and claims their sympathy as maintaining the resurrection of the dead, which they cannot demonstrate, while he can. Are his hearers idolatrous Athenians? There is among their shrines one with an inscription that gives him his text, and under cover of expounding its enigmatical legend, he preaches Christ. Instead of harshly condemning involuntary blindness, he extends the divine amnesty over the times of ignorance. He expresses his complacency in the rightly intended efforts of all who had labored to diffuse a knowledge of the gospel, though among them were those who had regarded him