From several of these passages, and from similar words in the prophets, I gathered that, had he lived long enough to witness it, Paul would have considered the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus to have been a “day of the Lord” or “day of judgment.” But he was assured that the greatest day of all would not arrive till the sins of mankind had come to a head. Also it appeared to me that Paul did not profess to know when the last “judgment” would come to pass, and that he, like other Christians, at first expected it to come soon, and afterwards changed his mind.
Summing up the results of my study, I found that Paul’s gospel appeared to be good news in a double aspect, first outside us, then inside us. First, it said that man was made by a perfectly good God to be, in the end, perfectly good, but was allowed by the Maker to fall into imperfection, through Satan, as a step towards perfection. This could be seen in the history of God’s judgments from the beginning, but most of all in the fact that the Son of God, having been sent into the world as a son of David, for the salvation of all the nations of the earth, and having been killed by the Jews, had been raised from the dead to save and judge mankind in righteousness. Secondly, it said that there was in every human being a faculty of faith in the goodness and love and righteous judgments of God, and that this faith, when fixed on the Saviour, enabled men to receive His spirit of righteousness and His love, to await His judgments, and to lead a life of righteousness on earth followed by an immortality of blessedness in heaven.
Comparing this with the gospel of Epictetus I could not but feel that Paul’s was far more helpful, but also more difficult to believe. Yet it was not incredible. Epictetus himself recognised in Socrates some traces of a power to frame men to his own will. If Socrates the Athenian, and Diogenes the Sinopian, and others, whom God called “His own sons,” had this power in some degree, in proportion to their possession of a share of the divine Logos, why might not Jesus the Jew be regarded as possessing this power to the fullest extent, having the fulness of the Logos so that he could succeed where Socrates and Diogenes and Epictetus failed?
I write here “Jesus the Jew,” to shew that, at that time, I did not know that Jesus was called the Nazarene, nor had I any notion that he was born otherwise than naturally “of the seed of David.” But I clearly perceived that Paul placed Jesus far above all patriarchs and prophets. Also I think (but am not quite sure) that I already understood Paul to believe that the Son of God was Son from the beginning of the world, before taking flesh as “the seed of David”—but not in any miraculous way. About this point I did not employ my thoughts. The question for me was, Had this Jesus the power attributed to him by Paul’s gospel—to conform men to himself? I was obliged to answer, “Yes, with some men.” For the epistles had long ago compelled me to give up the notion that the Christians were a vicious, immoral, and rebellious sect. It was clear to me that they were above the average in morality. And as for Paul himself, I felt sure that Jesus had exerted this power over him, and, through him, over vast multitudes in various nations.
Now, too, having a clearer conception of Paul’s gospel, I began to understand better something that had perplexed me a good deal on the first reading—I mean Paul’s description to the Galatians of the course he took immediately after his conversion. I had expected that he would have said something to this effect, “You Galatians are revolting from my gospel. But it is the true gospel. I have told you the truth about all Christ’s words and deeds. It is true that I did not know Him—or hear Him, or even see Him—in the flesh. But after I was converted, I took great pains to ascertain as soon as possible, from those who had known Him in the flesh, all that He did and said. I wrote down these traditions at once, and read them again and again till I knew them by heart. These are the traditions I gave you.” This is what I had expected Paul to say. But what I found him actually saying to the Galatians was this: “I make known unto you brethren, as to the gospel preached by me, that it is not on any human footing, nor did I receive it from any human being, nor was I taught it as teaching, but [it came to me] through revelation of Jesus Christ.”
What he meant by “gospel” was—I now perceived—not Christ’s teaching before the resurrection, but His teaching after the resurrection. And this included an unfolding of the will of God as revealed in the scriptures and in all the history of Israel. This appeared in what followed. The Galatians all knew (he said) how bitterly he had persecuted the Christians. For he had been a most bigoted and bitter zealot of strict Judaism. But, said he, “When it pleased God to reveal His Son in me that I might preach His good tidings among the nations, straightway I conferred not with flesh and blood, nor went I up to Jerusalem to those that were apostles before me, but I went away to Arabia.” Afterwards (but not in this context) he spoke of “Mount Sinai in Arabia.” Sinai being the place where Moses received the revelation of the old Law, and where Elijah, too, received the revelation of the “still small voice,” I had assumed (at the time of reading the epistle) that Paul went to Mount Sinai in Arabia that he also might receive his revelation of the new Law of Christ. Perhaps, however, it merely meant that he wished to be alone. If so, I was wrong. But it does not seem to me, even now, wrong to infer that, all through that sojourn in Arabia, Paul was in communion with that same Jesus Christ, who had recently appeared to him, and who had converted him from an enemy into a friend.
The same Galatian letter described Paul as not going up to Jerusalem till “three years” had elapsed. Even then he remained only “fifteen days” in Jerusalem, and saw (as I gathered) only one or two of the apostles, and did not go up again till “after the space of fourteen years.” All these details about time he appeared to add, not out of any jealousy of the older apostles, but to shew that he did not attach importance to the things that Christ had said “in the flesh,” before death, in comparison with the things that He had said after death, “being raised up according to the spirit of holiness.” And who could be surprised at this? The things that Christ said after death, when He had been “defined as Son of God from the resurrection of the dead”—how should not these be more deeply impressed upon the mind of the hearers, and also be most deep and spiritual in themselves, being reserved till the disciples were spiritually prepared to receive them?
So the gospel of Paul resolved itself into this, that God, having decreed from the beginning that men should love Him as Father and one another as brethren, had sent His Son into the world to enable them to do this, by dying for them, and by imparting to them His Spirit. The Son dictated no code of laws to obey. All that He asked was faith in Himself as the Son of God, dying for men, and victorious over sin and death. This seemed simple, but its simplicity did not deceive me into imagining that I believed it. “That is all that is needed,” said I, as I closed the volume of the epistles; “but it is more than I possess, or can possess. Paul’s gospel is not a message but a person. It is, as he says somewhere, ‘Christ, dwelling in the heart through faith.’ I feel no such indwelling. In the gospel of Epictetus I am neither able nor willing to believe. I might perhaps be willing, but I am not able, to believe in the gospel of Paul.”