Part 15 (2/2)

1855

These treatises, bearing on their title-pages the nans of a new era in English theology They sho effectually we have escaped froious phenoe, and the counter-irritants applied by John Henry New breath of nature to those who have witnessed the fevers of ”Evangelical” conversion or the consu back, from the position now attained, it sees in our hands, have been betrayed into either of these opposite extravagances: for anything n to his breadth and universality than the Genevan dogma, or more at variance with his free spirituality than the sacramental system, it is impossible to conceive But it is the peculiar fate of sacred writings, that the last thing elicited froreatness of their authority puts the reader's faculties into a false attitude; creates an eagerness,--an inflexible intensity,--that defeats its own end; and, in particular, gives undue ascendency to the upper satisfaction Hence the tendency of Scriptural interpretation to proceed by action and reaction; an easy ethical Ar succeeded by a severe Calvinis way before the advance of sacerdotal and Church ideas When the opposite errors have spent themselves, the requisite repose of ht that lies upon the page: here and there an eye will be found, neither strained with pre-occupying visions, not scared by sceptic shadows, but clear for the apprehension of reality, as God has shaped it for our perception At length we have reached this crisis of pro St Paul on all sorts of modern questions, listen to him on his own; and draw from him, not a fancied verdict on the sixteenth century, but a faithful picture of the first

And for this historical purpose, the writings of the great Gentile Apostle are of paramount value, and justly occupy the inquirer's first researches The most considerable of them are of unimpeachable authenticity They are the very earliest Christian writings we possess They are the productions of a man more clearly known to us than any of the firstin disclosures of personal feelings, of biographical incident, of changing ht, of outward and inward conflict They are addressed to young communities, scattered over a vast area, and co elements; and exhibit the whole fers, the noble inspirations, the grievous factions, of the Apostolic age The Gospels and the Book of Acts _treat_ no doubt of a prior period, but _proceed_ from a posterior, of whose state ofthe ministry of Christ, it is of prielists that we should be informed; and on these points the Pauline Epistles are the indispensable groundwork of all our knowledge or conjecture In them we catch the Christian doctrine and tradition at an earlier stage than any other canonical book represents throughout Although the narratives of the New Testament doubtless abound in material drawn faithfully from a more primitive time, they are certainly not free froe Hoerful an instru or checking the historical records, may be readily conceived by every reader of Paley's ”Horae Paulinae” In fine, if it be a just principle, in historical criticisin from a date that yields contemporary documents, and work thence into the subjacent and superjacent strata of events,--the elucidation of Christian antiquity must take its commenceeneral similarity of subject, the first of the three works mentioned at the head of this article admits of no couide-book to the Apostle's world of place and time, than a personal introduction to hihly acco with an historical theroup with conscientious skill a vast store of archaeological and topographical detail; to weigh chronological difficulties with patient care; to translate with philological precision, and due aily produced a truly interesting and instructive book: _so_ instructive, indeed, that by far the greater part of its information would, probably, have been quite new to St Paul himself His life seems to us to be injudiciously overlaid hat is wholly foreign to it, and for the sake of picturesque effect to be set upon a stage quite invisible to hiiate Institution,” accustoraphy; was not familiar with Thucydides or Grote; was indifferent to the Amphictyonic Council; and, in the vicinity of Salamis and Marathon, probably read the past no ehill or Marston Moor The world of each man must be measured from his own spiritual centre, and will take in much less in one direction, much more in another, than is spread beneath his eye He cannot be reached by geographical approaches You may determine the elements of hisobt, and yet miss him after all

It is an illusory process to paint the ancient world as it would look to an hellenic gentleman then, or a university scholar now; and then think how St Paul would feel in passing through it to convert it The indirect influence of this kind of conception seems to us apparent both in Mr Conybeare's translation and Mr Howson's narrative and descriptions The outward scene and conditions of the Apostle's career are elaborately displayed; but more with the ; and the English version, scrupulous and delicate as it is, has, to our taste, a general flavor quite different froled in the classifications and syy, the authors are detained outside the real genius and feeling of the Apostle

Of a far higher order are the other torks,--produced, we infer from their numerous correspondences of both form and substance, not without concert between the authors Indeed, the same explanation of the merits of Lachmann's text (printed without translation by Mr

Stanley, and with the adapted authorized version by Mr Jowett) is made to serve for both So clearly and compendiously is this explanation drawn, that, in the next edition of Lachht usefully be annexed to the great critic's rather tangled and aard preface Of the superior fidelity of this recension, we think no habitual reader of the Greek Scriptures can reasonably doubt; and the recognition of its authority fulfils a prior condition of all scientific theology The text being chosen on grounds purely critical, the notes are written in a spirit purely exegetical; they ai out, by every happy change of light and turn of reflective sy How very far this faithful historic purpose in itself raises the interpreter above the crowd of erudite and co divines, can scarcely be understood till it has foreneration, and fixed itself as a distinct intellectual type It is not, however, an affair of her exercises of veracity, comes into operation only as the last result of mental tact and affluence With the most honest intentions towards St Paul, a critic without psychological insight and dialectic pliancy, without power oftheht,--a critic without entrance into the passionate depths of human nature,--a critic pre-occupied by Catholic or Protestant assuine the questions and interests of the first age,--_cannot_ surrender hie The disciple and the master are, in such case, at cross-purposes with one another; the questions put are not the questions answered; the interlocutors do not really meet, but wind in a maze about each other's _loci_, not to end till the unconscious interpreter has set his fantasies within the shadow of inspiration No such blind chase is possible to our authors They have achieved the conditions of fidelity; and bring to a task, in which the truthful and sagacious spirit of Locke had already fixed the standard high, the a, and more practised habit of historic combination In the distribution of their work, the difference of natural genius between the two authors has perhaps been consulted, and is, at all events, distinctly expressed Mr Stanley's aptitude for reproducing the ie of the past, his apprehensive sympathy with the concrete and individual elee themselves with the composite forms of Corinthian society, and the most personal, various, and objective of the Apostle's letters

For the more speculative Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans, there was need of Mr Jowett's philosophical depth and subtilty The strictness hich he restrains these seductive gifts to the proper business of the interpreter, is not less admirable than their occasional happy application Instead of being en to his habit, they are chiefly engaged in detecting and wiping out false niceties of distinction drawn by later theology, and throwing back each doctrinal stateree of indeterminateness It is not in the notes,--which are wholly occupied in recovering St Paul's own thought,--but in the interposed disquisitions, which avowedly deal with the theology of to-day, that a certain breadth and balance of state the forht, and fine appreciation of human experience, make us feel the double presence of metaphysical power and historical tact

The author, accordingly, appears to us, not only to have seized the great Apostle's attitude of lish critic, but also to have separated the essence froed its divine eleanism of our immediate life Mr

Stanley appears to haveto the purely historical view, and clerically flutters, without clear occasion, on the outskirts of ”edification”;--the critic in his notes, the preacher in his paraphrase; conceding in acthuredients in the Apostles and their doctrines, as if it were he, and not _God_, that would have them there This tendency to blur the lines which he himself draws between the temporary and the permanent in the Scriptures hich he deals, is the only fault we can find with Mr Stanley; whose associate, clinging less to the past, in effect preserves more for the present To learn the external scene of the Apostle's career, ould refer our readers to Messrs Conybeare and Howson; to appreciate his s, and the problems it presented, especially on the ethnic side, they ht into the Apostle himself, and outlook on the world as it seemed to him, they must resort to Mr Jowett

The Pauline Epistles are interesting, apart from all assumption of inspired authority, because the elereatest known revolution both in the history of the world and in the spiritual consciousness of individual man Judaisions; Christianity, the most human and comprehensive Within a few years, the latter was evolved out of the for all its intensity and durability, without resort to any of its limitations This marvellous expansion of the national into the universal was not achieved without a process and a conflict Divine though the as, it had to be wrought upon h men, whose character, interests, convictions, habits, and institutions furnished the data conditioning the problem, and whose remodelled affections and will supplied the instruments for its solution The laws of human nature, therefore, and the action of hureat revolution; and it cannot be detained out of the hands of the historian by any exclusive rights of the divine

When we endeavor to trace the successive steps of faith froress appear to have left but scanty vestige We know the beginning, in the doctrine of the Hebrew Messiah; we know the end, in the recognition of a Saviour of the world

We know the intermediate fact,--that Judaisive away the keys of its enclosure just when it was passing frodoeneral fact lies a world of mysterious detail,--nay, alan the open breach between Messiah and the La, and to what extent, did the parties divide? as their relative nitude at different times and in different places? and by what process was the difference terminated, and the two extremes--Marcion on the one hand and the Ebionites on the other--removed outside as heretics? The Christianity of the third century is so little like the doctrine of Matthew's Gospel as to perplex our sense of identity No one can bring the two into direct co how much must have happened to shape the earlier into the form of the later Could we trace the flow and estie, the most wonderful of the world's experiences would be resolved The continuity, however, of visible causation is often broken; there are everywhere h a large part of the second century But a generation earlier we meet with materials of the richest value in the Epistles of St Paul; and by their aid the general direction ht and events e would seem as violent and inconceivable as a convulsion that should erm of the Gospel's universality is to be found in the personal characteristics of its Author,--in the whole spirit of his life, and the direct tendency of his teachings He who found in the love of God and love of ood and evil, not by the act, but by the affection whence they come; who placed his ideal for man in likeness to the perfection of God,--had already proclai all local limits Nay, if he opposed the ”true worshi+p” to the services at Gerizim and Jerusalem, and could wish the Te with the human soul and suppressed the inner shrine ”not made with hands,” he must even have placed himself in an attitude of open alienation towards the ritual of his people At the same time, his words seem to have left not unfrequently an opposite impression

He comes, ”not to destroy the Law and the prophets, but to fulfil”

them; ”not a jot or a tittle is to fail” Hisannounced as novelties grounding themselves on his personal authority, are drawn out of the old Hebrew Scriptures; and even the life beyond death he finds lurking in patriarchal idio bush His intensest poleoes on within the limits of the system which they represent and yet corrupt; and his bitterest reproach against them is that there is no reverence for it in their hearts, since they hugely violate and trivially obey it Far fro up faith as a rival principle excluding it, he extends _precept_ to the last heights of religion, _enjoins_ the divinest affections, as if _there also_ obedience was possible, and duty and volition had their place It was not in a nature holy and harmonious as his,--type of heavenly peace rather than of earthly conflict,--that the schism would be exhibited between Will and Love; where both are at their height, there is no rent between them Nor was there need, in that meek, reverential soul, to break with the past, in order to find a sanctity for the present, and leave an inspiration for the future Soht be dropped, and fall behind; but God had ever lived, and left the trace of his perfectness upon the elder times as on the newest h in the Law, if only its fruitful seeds armed into life, to furnish forth the Gospel And so Christ presents himself as the disciple of Moses, and in the Sermon on the Mount does but open out the tables of Sinai It was not, therefore, without honest ground that his i unfaithful to the religion of his native land And yet the instinct of the priests and rabbis told them truly that he and they could not co-exist, that his doctrine reduced their work to naught, and that, whencesoever he ht draw it, there was no doubt whither he ether ”false” which they brought to show his inner hostility to the altar ceremonial; and perhaps his enemies, with apprehension sharpened by fear, more correctly interpreted his tendency in this direction than his followers, entangled in the cloud of a Judaic love It was quite natural that the real antithesis between the Law and the Gospel should thus be first felt by his antagonists, whilst as yet it slept undeveloped in the minds of his followers and in the habitual expression of his own thought; and that its earliest proclamation should be _their_ act, _their_ defiance, the cross on Calvary!

This terrible challenge, fiercely protesting that the Laould hold no parley with the Gospel, the Apostles, however, refused to accept

They still denied their Lord's apostasy or their own; they had always been, and with his encouragement, the best of Jews: nor did they contee The crucifixion was a Jewishon its representative; a lorious rescue, in the resurrection of the crucified Thethus undone, the day of Hebrew opportunity was resumed; the ministry of Jesus was not closed; he yet lived and preached to theer, indeed, in person till their better mind should re-assert itself, but by ”faithful witnesses”;--no longer too in tentative disguise, but now identified as Messiah by his exaltation above this world Whatever conflicts ofthe crucifixion, the operation of the resurrection and the Spirit was at first sidoht in by no other than their Master, already waiting for the crisis in a higher world till God's hour should come There is no evidence to show that, on the transference of their Lord's life froreater comprehensiveness or spirituality of faith: their convictions wereall included in one great thedom and the end of the world Nay, of so little consequence, in coeneral_ picture of expectation, was even the appearance in it of the person of Jesus as its central figure, that Apollos,converts, without having ever heard of any later prophet than John the Baptist; and these people are already recognized as ”disciples,” and then informed, as needful co near, the person is appointed[58] Here had evidently been, for some quarter of a century, two independent streams of Messianic faith, one fro their own separate way, till thus partially confluent at Ephesus And what is the relation between them? One of them baptizes into an impersonal and anonymous hope, the other into the same hope with the name attached

And when these two states of arded as the sa only in co to hinder their instant coalescence This fact defines in the clearest way the position of the early Church; the ordinary Jew believed that Messiah would _so in ”the last days”; Apollos, that he would co_; the Christians, that already _the person_ was indicated, and would prove to be Jesus of Nazareth All three co-existed within the Hebrew pale, and the two last fall under the coory of ”disciples”

It was impossible, however, that the contemplation of a Messiah risen and reserved in heaven should affect all the believers in a precisely similar manner His personal attendants it would take up just where the crucifixion had let theive new force to their previous inificance to his words and example, new reluctance to venture where he had not led The whole effect would be conservative, and tend to fix theor, within the limits of the Master's lot and life Quite otheras it with the new disciples, who had no such restraining an with Christ above, and were tied down by no concrete biographical ies, no scruples of tender retrospect They were free to ask the Messiah 'in heavenly places,' and letting his disguise first fall off in his escape from local relations? The scene from which he looked doas it the mere upper chamber of Judaea, or did it overarch the human world? Who could clairees to test 'the children of the kingdom'; or would he, as Son of David, even come emblazoned with his own?” The , assessor to the Lord of _all_, seemed to dwarf and shame all provincial restrictions, and sanction the distaste for binding forms and ceremonial exclusiveness The withdrawal of Christ to a holier sphere accorded ith all that was s and in hiht back on this aspect of his life, and give a nificant emphasis to the tradition of his deepest words In the mind of many a disciple this tendency would be favored by a weariness towards the outer worshi+p of the temple, and a secret aspiration after purer and n_ Jew obliged to confess such a feeling to hi as a Hebrew; for language is the channel of the soul, and according as the organism is open, the sap will flow Accustoht without priest or sacrifice, and adequately found in poetry, and prophecy, and prayer, the hellenist acquired a tone of sentiment on which the material pomps and puerilities of Mount Moriah painfully jarred Nor could he enclose himself contentedly, like the Palestine Jeithin the sacred boundary that admitted the most worthless son of Abraha in heathen cities, dealing with heathen oodness of heathen neighbors, hisfell into contradiction with his inherited exclusiveness, and inwardly demanded some other providential classification of ly, it was the hellenist Stephen who first saw, in the heavenly Christ, a principle of universal religion and a procla Moses and the Law and the holy place, and setting up Jesus to supersede them, he boldly reflects on the stone Temple, rooted to one spot, as at variance with His nature who said, ”Heaven is my throne, and earth my footstool,”

and points to the earlier tabernacle,hu of history, and a God who goes where we go, and stays where we stay[59] This noble doctrine doubtless expressed a feeling con Jews of liberal culture and fervid piety; and when consecrated by Stephen's martyrdom, it would assume a distinctness unknown before, and beco the Christian hellenists That it was confined to them is evident from the partial effect of the persecution in which Stephen fell _His_ friends,--perhaps we may say his _party_,--hunted from house to house, fled from Jerusalem; but the Jewish Apostles remained where they were,[60] apparently unmenaced and undisturbed The hostility of the city drew therefore a distinction between such Hebrew Christians as the twelve, and the freer ”Grecians” who proclaimed a Spirit above the Te an inner sect of Judaisround unmolested; the latter were treated as apostates, and ”scattered abroad” The essential, but hitherto dormant, antithesis between the Gospel and the Law, had thus burst into expression, and erew ever more distinct; the Hebrew party concentrated in Jerusale intensely national; the hellenistic, spreading itself on the outskirts of Palestine, and erelong fixing its head-quarters at Antioch Within this freer circle, first as persecutor, soon as disciple, appears Saul of Tarsus So congenial are its tendencies and aspirations with his nature and his antecedent position, that his hostile attitude towards itback, as a ner to Palestine, a ”citizen of no ht from the shepherds of Mount Taurus, and sold to the Greek skippers of the Levant, he knew the human side of the Gentile world too well to rest in a narrow Judais mind, content to live within the enclosure of Rabbinical niceties, or able to find, in the materialism of the Temple rites, his ideal of true worshi+p With sympathies essentially cosmopolitan, he could scarcely fail to be disappointed, not to say repelled, by Jerusaleher, fresher communion between earth and heaven, some wider monarchy for God than over a mere clan, would be to hi attitude towards the Christian hellenists was perst them, words were sure to fall upon his ear, and holy looks to meet his eye, that would smite him with a kindred affection Whether the death of Stephen left on his es which he could not banish, and coe into fresh violences could arrest, it is vain to conjecture That it should be so, would be only human; for in the life of passion, triuhbors, and often the last note in the song of exultation dies down into the plaint of compunction Certain it is, that shortly afterwards it ”pleased God to reveal his Son in him”; that, with the suddenness characteristic of impassioned natures, he came to himself, and found his proper work, ”to which he had been set apart from his mother's womb”; and that his new convictions were of the very saly discriminated from the Messianic doctrine of the twelve at Jerusalem The incipient breach between Law and Gospel, latent in the Master, denied by the twelve, bursting forth a the hellenists, finally realized and defined itself in Paul; whose intense ireat for the custody of his will; whose soul had wings to fly, but not feet to plod; who felt hi powers not his own, and could find no peace till, by communion with the heavenly Son of God, he discovered a providential love universal as human life, and a way of reconciliation quick and open as human trust and reverence It is easier to speak of the effects than of the nature of his conversion

His writings exhibit its results, but only vaguely allude to its occurrence, and never in ter the recitals in the Book of Acts, or abating their discrepancies Of these narratives (Acts ix 1-9, xxii 6-12, xxvi 12-18) Mr Jowett re any forced reconcilement” (I 229) On the one hand, ”There is no fact in history more certain or undisputed than that, in some way or other, by an inward vision or revelation of the Lord, or by an outwardto Da a persecutor to become a preacher of the Gospel” (I 227) On the other, ”If we submit the narrative of the Acts to the ordinary rules of evidence, we shall scarcely find ourselves able to determine whether any outward fact was intended by it or not” This, however, is of the less e of the Epistle to the Galatians (Gal i 15, 16) that,--

”Whether the conversion of St Paul was an outward or an inward fact, it was not principally the outward appearance in the heavens, but the inward effect, that the Apostle would have regarded Compare Eph iii

3: 'How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore in feords)'

”It has been often rely in Scripture as evidences of religion, in the same way that they have been used by modern writers Especially does this remark apply to the conversion of St Paul Not a hint is found in his writings, that he regarded 'the heavenly vision' as an objective evidence of Christianity The evidence to hie of heart; what he terms, in the case of his converts, the reception of the Spirit; what he had known, and what he felt; the fact that one instant he was a persecutor, and the second a preacher of the Gospel The last inquiry that he would have thought of ians: 'Hoithout son, he could be assured of the reality of what he had seen and heard' No outward sign could, as such, have convinced the round amazed, unless it were certain that his coht and heard the voice Nor unless they had distinctly been partakers of the supernatural vision could he ever have been satisfied that what they saas anything but a , or that the voice they heard was more than the sound of thunder No evidence of theirs would have been an answer to the language of some of the rationalist divines: 'St Paul was overtaken by a storhborhood of Damascus'

Such difficulties are insuperable; at best we can only raise probabilities in answer to theeneral tone of the narrative in Acts ix But we may remember that the belief in some outward fact was not the essential point in St Paul's faith, and therefore we need not make it the essential point in our own

”It is not upon the testile person, even were it far more distinct than in the present instance, we can venture to peril the truth of the Christian religion Weak defences of comparatively unimportant points, undermine more than they support He who has the Spirit of Christ and his Apostles, has the witness in himself; he who leads the life of Paul, has already set his seal that his words are true Were the other view supported by the n in the clouds been beheld by whole multitudes of Jews and Gentiles, believers and unbelievers,--it is to the internal aspect of the event we should be ious one, and the one which more closely links the Apostle with ourselves”--Vol I p 230

With the essentially inward character of this crisis, the substance of the revelation involved in it strikingly corresponds

”It was spiritual rather than historical; a revelation of Christ in hirowing sense of union with Christ, imparted, not in one revelati