The World of Religion

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23181, 29 October 1938, Page 6 (Supplement)

The World of Religion

By PHILEMON

lONG centuries have .passed since St. Paul trod the high- • ways of the Roman Empire and contested its provinces for Christ. The inarching legions, the equipages of the nobles, the trading caravans, the speedy couriers of the Emperor gave him and his companions scarcely a passing glance. But ho has outlived them all. How has this miracle come to pass? What spell has ho cast over tlio human mind that after nearly two in i Hon i inns more books should ho written about him than about any other, save his Lord? What reality does his view of life and religion express that, though we can only with extreme difficulty transport ourselves into his far world, his words grasp our modern problems of the soul and in important respects have the value of a contemporary utterance? There are two small and inexpensive books which held the general reader to answer these questions. In the Home University Library a volume on St. Paul by Professor A. D. Nock of Harvard has recently been published, which gives an admirable survey of the apostle's life and times, and concludes with a suggestive chapter on his stylo and thought. And with this "The* Master Builder," by James Mathers, issued from the press of the Student Christian Movement some few years ago, is well worthy of a place as a valuable discussion of St. Paul's mind and experience from the modern point of view. Wide Popular Appeal There is also a third volume entitled "A Man in Christ—the Vital Elements in St. Paul's Religion," written by James S. Stewart, the brilliant minister of the North Morningsido Church, Edinburgh, which is remarkable for the reach of its scholarship the range of its spiritual exposition, tiie contagious warmth of its style, and not less for its wide popular appeal. Together these volumes re-tell the moving and romantic story of a soul's escape from the shadows of legalism, through the thing that happened on the Damascus Road, into a life of incomparable power and passionate ardour —the life of a man wlio could say: "To mo to live is Christ.' The appearance of St. Paul, on any view of him, is one of the significant things in history. He was the son of a Roman citizen, the child of a devout and strictly Jewish home, educated in a city famed for its scholarship, in his young manhood a pupil of Gamaliel, the most liberal rabbi of his day. In youth he watched the great tides of ancient life and 'commerce surge upon the highways of his native province, and they bore his thought and heart's desire to far lands and unfamiliar peoples. Few of the natural advantages that give men place and power were his. If we may accept tradition he had no commanding bodily presence and from his own epistles we know that critics belittled his gift of speech. Some incurable inala<\v, distressful to behold and utterly prostrating, often afflicted him.

Inner Fires But in spite of every disability the inner fires of the man overloapt every barrier. Something irresistible burned behind those gleaming eyes, something higher than eloquence rang out in the synagogue and the marketplace: a prophet stood therg—yes, and more than a prophet. He was the man for a great and waiting hour, and lie it was whom Christ "apprehended," laid hands upon, separated to an apostle ship the like of which mankind lias never seen, and sent forth in answer to the unconscious cry of a lost world hungering for it knew not what. No student of the apostlo will advance far except he separate between Paul and Paulinism, between the man who had the experience of which the Now Testament tells and the theo'logical systems that have been elaborated out of his thought. "Sometimes a man's worst enemy is himself," says Mr. Stewart, "but Paul's worst cnoim down the centuries has not been Pan', hut Paulinism." The Paul of the manual, of the divinity class and the examination room, it may be generally taken, is not the Paul that actually was. His secret does not give itself up to any merely intellectual approach We do not, of course, suggest that there is nothing for the theologian in St. Paul. Far from it. His was n mind of the first order: He had pondered long and profoundly upon the meaning of Christ, for himself, for the world, for all worlds, and for eternity. But his thought was never mere speculation. In his loftiest ascents the ladder is planted firmly on the solid ground of an indisputable personal experience, of which he constantly speaks with a kind of wondering awe.

Untramelled Spirit Had he been a systematiser, as Bishop Core once said, "he would have .saved the controversial and critical world a great deal of trouble, but he would not have been St. Paul." But a systematic theologian he never was. "No system in the world could satisfy that untramelled spirit, that mind of surpassing boldness, that heart of flame .... Systems, dogmatisms.

Paulinisms. have no more unity than shifting sands; but Paul's gospel, spoken and written, stands on solid rock —and that Rock is Christ." The writer of these words touches the secret of it all. "I determined "not to know anything among you savo .Tosus Christ and Him crucified," said the apostle to the Corinthians. "What things were gain to me, these 1 hav<> counted loss," he wrote to the Phi lippin ns. Social position, standing in the schools, family pride, hopes of preferment, influential friends —ho summed them all up in one almost contemptuous epithet—"l count tlieni but refuse!" A strong word for wlia" thousands then and now seek as the chief good of life. Yet the word "refuse" fell from his pen and it was never recalled.

. He became poor, a man of broken health, the bitter hatred of his conn trymen pursued liini as a renegade from the faith, lie was a laughingstock to the philosopher, an offence to the exclusive, a "fool for ChristV sake;V but it was all a meagre price to pay for the blessing that came into his life on that great dav when a voice came sounding through the midnight of his soul—-"Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light."

Peace With God There he found pardon for his proud, contentious past and received his justification and neacc with God. too, he made the momentous discovery of a living Christ with whom persona! fellowship was not loss possible than in the days of His flesh on earth. And as time drew out its far-reaching implications he came to speak of a vital life-union between himself and his Lord, an inter-personal life of rare beauty and transforming power. He was "in Christ" and Christ was "in him." His life was "hid with Christ in God."

In one undying saying ho got it all expressed—"To me to live is Christ and to die _ is—more Christ." The humblest believer among us can see. though from afar, the unspeakable secret of the apostle's Christ-centred, Christ-enriched, Christ-indwelt life, and reach out toward it for himself.