The Epistles of Paul and the Gospel Biographies
Where will you find biographies so life-like as those of the gospels? Where, reasoning so full of fire, and counsels so full of point, as in the epistles of Paul? Where, such exalted meditations, expressed in terms so simple and so felicitous, as in the letters of St. John? Where, such practical wisdom as in James; such glowing eloquence as in Peter; such burning visions and imaginings as in the Apocalypse. No man could have written Paul’s epistles who had not lived Paul’s life, and done his work; for Paul did not leap up to the platform where he stands—he rose to it step by step; and his apostolic work, with its crowding difficulties, its privations, its persecutions, and its constantly-recurring indignities, constituted those steps.—Sel.