I remember at this time trying to prevent my growing admiration for Paul’s work from blinding me to his defects. Such phrases as “let him be anathema,” and “dogs,” and “whose belly is their glory,” and “I would that those who are thus desolating you would even emasculate themselves”—these and others I marked with red in my volume. I knew Epictetus would have condemned them. But I soon perceived that these fiery flashes of wrath were reserved for those whom Paul regarded as proud and greedy ensnarers and oppressors of helpless souls; proud of knowledge that was no knowledge; greedy of money and influence to which they had no right; shutting their eyes against the light, and dragging back poor pilgrims just as they were on the point of entering into the City of Truth. Towards others, even if they might have appeared as rivals, he seemed to me to feel no rivalry, merging all such feeling in allegiance to Christ. Some, he said to the Philippians, preached Christ “thinking to add affliction” to his bonds, out of jealousy and spite. “What then?” he says, “Whatever may be the motive, Christ is preached, and I rejoice. Yea, and I will rejoice.” In the same spirit he wrote to the church of Corinth concerning those among them who said, “I am of Apollos,” “I am of Cephas,” “I am of Paul”—condemning all partisanship, although he gently reminds them of his singular relation to them, “Even though ye have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet ye have not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus through the Gospel I begot you.”
Another detail interested me. Paul (I found) differed greatly from Epictetus in physical constitution, Epictetus used to teach us that a Cynic had no business to be “infirm” of body. At all events, he said, no such person can do the work of a Cynic Missionary. When he extolled “the sceptre of Diogenes,” he used to tell a story of the way in which that philosopher, lying by the roadside, sick of a fever, called on the wayfarers to admire him. It was the road to Olympia, and people were on the way to the games: “Villains!” he shouted to them, “Stay! Are you going all that way to Olympia to see athletes fight or perish, and will you not stay to behold a contest between a man and a fever?” But this contest, I think, ended in Diogenes’s death. As a rule, both he and Socrates had been perfectly and robustly healthy: and Epictetus seemed somewhat to despise those who were otherwise.
Paul, on the other hand, frequently spoke of his “weakness,” meaning physical infirmity or sickness. It was “owing to weakness,” he told the Galatians, that he preached the gospel for the first time among them; and he called it a “temptation (or, trial) in the flesh.” This I took to mean that he had been delayed in Galatia by some sickness, and had founded the Church there while in that condition. So to the Corinthians he said, “In weakness and in fear and in trembling did I come addressing myself to you.” But that letter went on to say, “And my word and my preaching were not in the persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and power”—so that “power” went hand in hand with “weakness.” Once at least I found Paul praying to be delivered from “weakness.” “I will not boast about myself”—so he writes to the Corinthians—“except in my weaknesses.” And then he went on to explain the “boasting” as being quite different from that of Diogenes. For the Cynic cried, in effect, “Come and see how strong I am!” But Paul meant that he would “boast” because, when he felt weakest, then his Master came to his aid and made him strong. This he expressed in a way that perplexed me at first: “There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me, that I might not be lifted up above measure. About this, I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me. And He said unto me, My grace sufficeth for thee, for in weakness is Power made perfect.”
For some time I could not understand this phrase, “an angel of Satan.” But afterwards I found Paul writing to his Thessalonian converts that, when he wished to come to help them, “Satan hindered him,” so that Satan appeared to be a hinderer of the gospel. Then it seemed to me that among the Jews and Christians certain diseases might be regarded as demons, or the work of demons—just as, in Rome, “Fever” is worshipped as divine and has temples. This fact I had heard Epictetus mention; and he also condemned those who pray to be delivered from fever. The right course was, he said, “to have the fever rightly.” Paul seemed to say, “first pray to be delivered from fever, if it seems to hinder you from doing the work of the Lord. Then, if it be revealed to you as the will of the Lord that you should bear the fever, be sure that He will make your bodily weakness spiritually strong. Thus the temptation from Satan, the Hinderer and Adversary, shall be turned into a strengthening trial from God, your Helper and Friend.”
Summing up the marvellous changes that seemed to have come about for Paul in consequence of Christ’s “appearing” to him, I was more than ever disposed to believe that it was of a divine origin and a great deal more than a mere “appearing.” I thought it must have been an “appearing” to the inner eye, the spirit, as well as to the outer eye.
When we Romans and Greeks use the word “spirit,” we mostly think of a shadowy unreal appearance of the dead. We should not call Jupiter, or Zeus, a “spirit.” But I perceived that, with Paul, “spirit” was more real—and, if I may so say, more eternally solid—than “body.” It was the real “person.” The word “person” in Greek, as also in Latin, means a “mask” or “character.” There is, with us, no one word to express “real person.” Common people think the body real, but the spirit unreal. Paul used the name “spiritual body” to describe a “real person,” raised from the dead in Christ. Well, then, it seemed to me that the power of Christ on Paul might be described, not only as an “appearing” but also as the grasp of a “real person,” “taking hold of” Paul’s spirit with a spiritual hand so as to strengthen and direct him. What else was it that made him so strong?
The strength of Epictetus in bearing trials and sufferings had long excited my admiration. But now the strength of Paul seemed greater. Epictetus bore—or at least professed to bear—only his own burdens. As for those of others, he said, “These are nothing to me.” Paul was like a gentle nurse or tender mother with the weaklings among his converts. “Who,” he asked, “is made to stumble, and I burn not? Who is weak, and I am not weak?” And yet, in his weakness, he was a very Hercules or Atlas, strong enough to bear “the care of all the churches”! This “weak” man was always fighting, always craving to fight, and always conquering—up to the time of his impending departure, when he exclaimed that he had “fought the good fight”! And through what an extent of the civilised world! “From Jerusalem to Illyricum”—so he wrote to the Romans! In that same letter he announced his intention of carrying the eagles of the New Empire into Rome itself, and of passing onward from Rome to the invasion of Spain! No wonder that he felt able to say, “I take pleasure in weaknesses, in outrages, in straits and necessities, in persecutions and hardships, in Christ’s behalf; for in the moment when I am weak, in that moment I am strong.”
“I am strong”! Yes. Rolling up the volume as I retired to rest that night, I was constrained to agree with that, at all events. “About some things,” said I, “or perhaps about many things in your letters I am doubtful; but assuredly you are strong. I myself am also certain that you are honest. But that you are strong—and that, too, with a strength that comes from faith in the resurrection of your Master—this not even an atheist or Epicurean could deny.”