REV. H . .!. K . MAKSTON, M.A., ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 93 



discover of his psychological gifts that he is a credible witness 

 hi certain wonderful experiences in himself and others, and so 

 to demonstrate the truth of some points of his teaching, is the 

 second object of my lecture. 



I cannot carry through this investigation without traversing 

 sonic of the conclusions of what I may call the " Impressionist 

 Interpreters" of St. Paul. Not without a touch of arrogance, 

 they assert that until the present century St. Paul was not 

 understood. They then proceed to reduce the apostle, who has 

 according to them eluded the grasp of commentators from 

 Jerome to Lightfoot, to the dimensions of a wandering Jew with 

 an epileptic tendency and a mystical piety; a person strangely 

 inadequate to have become the framer of the religious life of 

 fifty generations. It is easy to see why these impressionists 

 strive thus to reduce St. Paul. By that process they are able to 

 reduce the supernatural to very meagre proportions. But by 

 the same process they reduce the apostle to a figure strangely 

 different from the noble personality with whom St. Luke has 

 made us all familiar, and who may easily be discerned behind 

 and within the epistles which he bequeathed to the Church. 

 The materials on which they have to work are small and un- 

 satisfactory, for the details of St. Paul's life are almost wanting 

 until the time of his conversion. After that date he is the 

 author of such fragmentary information as we do possess. I, 

 therefore, prefer to take the apostle at his own valuation. I see 

 him as he was : ecumenical and humane ; large hearted, lofty in 

 mind ; blending with admirable sanity and poise elements in 

 religion often thought to be incompatible. I discern in him the 

 genuine author of the psalm of love, the man who was all 

 things to all men, strong in weakness, in humility, at once 

 teacher of nations and chief of sinners, the vessel of election 

 and less than the least of all saints. This is the St. Paul of 

 whose psychology I purpose to treat. 



The writings of the apostle furnish a fruitful field for this 

 inquiry. In the first epistle to the Thessalonians occurs the 

 famous tripartite description of human nature as spirit, soul and 

 body which attaches the teaching of St. Paul to the modern 

 school of psychologists who insist so strenuously on the physical 

 element in the science. In the seventh chapter of the Komans 

 occurs the passage which, as an analysis of human experiences, 

 stands alone in literature for depth and subtlety. But it is in 

 the second epistle to the Corinthians that the psychological 

 genius of St. Paul reaches the zenith. In this opinion I have 

 the happiness to be supported by the learned Warden of Keble 



