CHAPTER XIV.

PAUL.

It was asked of old time, "Is Saul also among the prophets?" it may be asked now, is Paul also among the poets? Wonderful as this is, it is no less certain. A poet of the first order Paul was, if force of thought, strength of feeling, power of imagination (without an atom of fancy), heaving ardor of eloquence, and energy of language, go to constitute a poet.

The degree in which Paul possesses the logical faculty, the extreme vigor and keenness of his understanding, have blinded many to the power of his genius, just as, on the contrary, with many writers, the luxuriance and splendor of their imagination have vailed from common critical view the subtilty and strength of their insight. In the one case, the eye of the cherub is so piercing, that we never look up to the wings; in the other, the wings are so vast and overshadowing, that they conceal from us the eye. The want of fancy, besides, which we have indicated, and the severe restraint in which he usually holds his imagination, till his intellectual processes are complete, have aided the general impression that Paul, though acute always, and often eloquent, is never poetical. Whereas, in fact, his logic is but the buckler on his arm, behind which you see the ardent eyes and the glittering breastplate of a poet-hero, worthy of mingling with the highest chivalry of ancient song, with Isaiah and Ezekiel, with Habakkuk and with Joel. It was a poet's eye, although glaring and bloodshot, that witnessed the first martyrdom-a poet's eye that was smote into blindness on the way to Damascus-that looked from Mars Hill, over that

transcendent landscape and motley audience—and that, caught up to Paradise, saw the visions of God, and, according to some, was ever afterward weakened by the blaze. He nearly fulfilled to the letter the words since figuratively applied to Milton, who

"Passed the bounds of flaming space,

Where angels tremble as they gaze,
Who saw, and blasted by the excess of light,

Closed his eyes in endless night."

In Paul, first, we find art arrested and pressed into the service of Christianity-a conscious and cultured intellect devoting itself to plead the cause of heaven-the genius of the East, united with the acuteness and consecutive thought which distinguish the European mind. The utterances of the old prophets, of Jesus too, and of John, are artless as the words of a child. Even the loftiest and longest raptures of Isaiah are as destitute of junctura as the Proverbs of Solomon; the difference only is, that while Solomon walks calmly from stepping-stone to stepping-stone, Isaiah leaps from rock to rock, and peak to peak. The words of Jesus, when mild, come forth disconnected as a stream of smiles when terrible, are successive, but separate, flashes of forked lightning. Paul alone, of Scripture writers, aims at composition in his system, his description, and his style. His system is a dark but rounded orb; in description, he essays to group objects together; and the style of the chief part of his principal Epistles is an intertangled chain. We might conceive that meeting on the Damascene way to typify the contrast between intuition and analysis-the divine Intuitionist looking down from above-the baffled but mighty analyst falling like a dead man at his feet, to rise, however, and to unite in himself a large portion of both powers, to blend the learning and logic of Gamaliel the schoolmaster, with the light streaming from the face of Jesus, the child.

Here we see how exquisitely wise was the selection of Paul, at that point of the history of the new religion, to become its

ambassador to the West. The first enthusiasm of its youth was fading, and the power of the first impulse from on high had necessarily, in some measure, spent itself. The miraculous glory surrounding its head was destined gradually to decay. That it might, nevertheless, continue to live and spread-that it might pass in its power into the midst of those cultivated countries, where it was sure at every step to be challenged, it must assume an elaborate shape, and find a learned advocate. A Paul was needed; and a Paul was found, nay, enlisted into the service, not by any subaltern officer, but by the Great Captain himself. There is no evidence that he was deeply read in Grecian lore-had he been so, we should have had thirty instead of three quotations from the Pagan poets; nor that he was ever trained to the study of the Grecian dialects; but his intellect, naturally acute to subtilty, was subjected to the somewhat severely intellectual processes which then abounded in the Jewish schools; and he was thus qualified to reason and wind a way for Christianity, where the force of miracle, or the instant lightning of intuitive feeling, were not at hand to cut and cleave it. The religion of Jesus passed through the East like a ray through an unrefracting medium; when it came westward, it found an atmosphere to be penetrated, and a Pauline power to penetrate it by bending, yet remaining pure as a sunbeam.

When Paul arose, Christianity was in a state of disarray. The manna was fallen from heaven, and lay white on the ground, but was not gathered nor condensed. Had it been designed for a partial or temporary purpose, this had been comparatively of little importance. But, as it was meant to tarry till the master should come, it was necessary that it should assume a shape so symmetrical, and a consistence so great, that no sun of civilization or keen inquiry could melt it. For this purpose, Paul was stopped, and struck down, and blinded, and raised up, and cured, and taken like his master into the wilderness (of Arabia), and brought back, and commissioned, and preserved, and sent to Athens and to Rome, and inspired with those dark yet wondrous Epistles of his-parts of which seem

之*

to preserve certain great half-utterable truths in frost, till the final spring shall come.

Some even of Paul's friends have regretted the analytical cast which the intuitional religion of the “Carpenter” took from his hands, and have said, "not Paul, but Jesus." There are several reasons why we can not concur with them in this. First, The intuitional element was not lost, it was only exhibited in another form: the manna was that which had fallen from heaven; it was only formed into cakes by a master hand. Secondly, Intuitional impression can never circulate widely nor long, unless it thus be condensed; bullion is sluggish-money goes; heaps of manna sometimes stank-the small cakes refreshed and revived the eaters. Even Christ's words required Paul's emphasis and accentuation. Thirdly, All genuine intuition and inspiration seek, and at last find, an artistic or systematic expression. Nature herself struggles after unity, and after completeness of beauty. Every flower seems arrested on its way to higher elegance and more ethereal hues. Every tree seems stretching out its branches in quest of some yet rounder termination. So with thought of all varieties of excellence and of truth. The severely logical desires a vesture of beauty. The beautifully imaginative desires a clothing of clay. Not always is either appetency granted. But no religion, at least, can have a permanent place and power in the world, unless it appeal alike to the ideal and the artistic, display the eternal spirit, and assume the earthly shape. To Christianity, Jesus supplied the one, and Paul the other. Fourthly, Such a descent, as it may be called, from Jesus the child, to Paul the logician, was necessary, both as an interpretation of that part of Christianity which was destined to endure, and as a substitute for that part of it doomed to weaken and wane. Christianity, the spiritual power, was to remain; but Christianity, the miraculous force, was to decline. Paul's system was to contain the essence of the one, and to conserve so much as was conservable of the relict influence of the other. Fifthly, As in part remarked before, it was of importance to Christianity that it should triumph

over a man of culture. Simple fishermen it had in plenty; but it needed to show how it could subdue an intellectual and educated man; how it should, in the process, reconcile the warring elements in his nature, and bring to him what no study could ever bring-peace amid his majestic powers. In other words, the intellectual progress of the age and the new religion must be reconciled, and they were reconciled accordingly; not merely in a compact and complete theory, but in a living man—and that man was Paul. This, too, is the great problem of the present time. To have our mental progress reconciled with Christianity, not only by such an elaborate system as Coleridge died in building, but also by a living synthesis-a breathing bridgethe new Chalmers of the new time, forming in himself the herald of the mightier one, whose sandals even he shall be unworthy to unloose: this is what the wiser of Christians, and the more devout of philosophers, are at present longing and panting to see.

Of such a man, who shall lay the ground-plan? We can not describe him into existence. Yet we may state certain qualities which the Paul of the present must possess, as the Paul of a former day did. He must be a converted man. That is, he must have seen, in a blaze of blinding light, the vanity and evil, the folly and madness, of the worldly or selfish, and the grandeur and truth of the disinterested and Christian life. He must, in a glare of illumination, have beheld himself, with all his faculties and accomplishments, as but a garlanded victim, to be sacrificed for man and to God. This Paul learned on the way to Damascus, and he acted ever afterward on the lesson. He must be, again, a man who has gifts and accomplishments to sacrifice. He must be able to meet age on its own terms, and to talk to it in its own dialect. He must speak from between a double peak, from the height of a commanding intellect, and from that of a lofty mission. He must render it impossible for any one to look down upon him. The king himself may be, as we have called him, a divine and eternal child; but the embassador and herald must