TIM'] PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 



95 



but he was neither alienated from it by its faults nor soured by 

 its follies. He left it neither in disgust nor in anger, but 

 moved with a divine pity and a divine hopefulness; he was 

 conscious that it was originally good, and that even in its decay 

 and ignominy it was potentially a thing of glory and exquisite 

 efficiency. 



It would have been well for the Church if divines and 

 expositors had always caught from St. Paul the infection of 

 so gracious a regard for their fellows. The epistle is a counter- 

 poise to the letter to the Romans, and from a blending of the 

 two we obtain the true theology of St. Paul. I am sure that 

 our belief in the credibility of St. Paul as a witness to the 

 divine elements in his Gospel must be, and rightly be, qualified 

 by our belief in his sanity as a man. I believe that the epistle 

 to the Corinthians which I have just summarised proves that 

 sanity in the most complete and satisfactory manner. But that 

 epistle also contains passages of surpassing interest to the 

 Christian as such, passages which are one thing to us if we 

 believe St. Paul to have been sane and sympathetic, and quite 

 another thing if we believe that he was an epileptic Jew 

 obsessed by the current illusions of the Jews of his day. I 

 have shown cause for rejecting this latter view. Of the great 

 Christian verities which loom large in this epistle, four present 

 commanding claims to our notice. The limits of this lecture 

 preclude me from entering into each of the four ; but I may 

 name them as I pass, and then devote what space remains to 

 the examination of two. 



These four subjects are : (1) the reality of grace, or the con- 

 flict with Naturalism ; (2) the reality of reconciliation, or the 

 conflict with Pantheism ; (3) the supremacy of spirit, or the 

 conflict with Materialism ; (4) the reality of vision and revela- 

 tion, or the conflict with Rationalism. Each of these four topics 

 comes up in the course of the second epistle to the Corin- 

 thians. Each is handled by St. Paul with that masterly skill 

 to which I have devoted the first portion of this lecture. The 

 four together may be said to comprise the fundamental elements 

 of Christianity in all ages, and to be things that matter. If 

 on these points St. Paul can be discredited, Christianity has 

 suffered a blow from which it can hardly recover. If on these 

 points Christians can maintain the credibility and capacity of 

 St. Paul, the Naturalist, the Pantheist, the Materialist, and the 

 Rationalist must quit the arena sadder and, let us hope, wiser 

 men. I select two of these subjects for closer and fuller 

 examination. The first of the two is the reality of the vision of 



