The Epistles of Paul

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 26, 1858

The Epistles of Paul.

WE have alluded to Paul as the principal letter-writer in the New Testament. When the change which passed over him with the shock of a spiritual earthquake, had subsided into resolute attachment to the new religion, what ardor and heroism were soon to be united in him—with a rare combination of intellect and heart, of enthusiasm and perseverance! Still with him there was no social abrogation of humanity; while he lived for the world he lived in the world. He shrank from the scourge, and declared himself a citizen of Rome, and the shuddering expectation of a Roman dungeon, suggested the warmth and comfort of a cloak. The culture of the schools was in him, "baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire." Words are often unable to convey his thoughts; they reel and stagger beneath the weight and power of his conceptions. And whether we turn to his alarmed appeal to the people of Lycaonia, where he was taken for the God of eloquence, to his oration before the critics and judges of Areopagus, or to his pleading at the bar of Felix and Agrippa—or whether we survey his letter to the church of Rome, in its fulness, profundity, and compacted system—or his epistle to Corinth, so varied and magnificent in argument, so earnest and persuasive in remonstrance and vindication—or the missive sent to Galatia, so vivid and startling in its surprise, indignation or sorrow—or that to Ephesus, so opulent in thought, and exalted in sentiment, as if to compensate for the costly books of magic which had been given to the flames—or that to Philippi, so warm and exuberant in its congratulations to the first European city where the gospel had been proclaimed—or that to Colosse, exposing the insidious assaults of a specious philosophy which corrupted the purity and marred the simplicity of the gospel—or his twin communications to Thessalonica, calm, affectionate and consolatory—or those to Timothy and Titus, replete with the sage and cordial advices of parental kindness, and long and varied experience—or, the epistolary tractate addressed to the Hebrews, with its powerful demonstration of superior glory, and the unchanging permanence and spirituality of the New Dispensation—to which ever of these compositions we turn, we are struck with the same lofty genius and fervent eloquence, the same elevated and self-denying temperance, the same throbbing of a noble and yearning heart, the same masses of thought, luminous and many-tinted, like the cloud which glows under the reflected splendors of the setting sun, the vigorous mental grasp which, amid numerous digressions, is ever tracing truth up to first principles—all these are the results of a master mind, into which nature and grace had poured in royal profusion their rarest and richest endowments.

In the epistles, what specimens have we not of almost every form of composition—description, narrative, argument, oratory—bold invective and sudden apostrophe—antithesis and climax—the brief words of anger—the sad regrets of disappointed hope—the soft breathings of affection—the vehement outbursts of self-vindication—the long and effective argument, often ending in an anthem—logic swelling in lyrics—the terse deliverance of ethical maxims, and the cordial greeting and kind remembrance of former friends. No wonder that Longinus adds Saul of Tarsus to a list of names, "which were the crown of all eloquence and Grecian genius." There are some passages in the Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians which have the vehement and thrilling penetration of Demosthenes, and other sections in the same books, which, in elevation, imagery and music, have no parallel, even in the platonian dialogue.