"A secret of Paul's success was his sense of having a mission and his freedom alike from the bondage of bigotry and the bondage of liberty."
A writer recently gave me this thought about Paul: "What makes St. Paul so interesting is his conception of the dimensions of life."
Back to Christ? Yes, the whole world needs it, but the way to get back to Christ is through the Apostolic interpretation of Christ in words and life. This is the only way, and Dr. Stalker's book is a great help in this direction.
THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL
CHAPTER I
HIS PLACE IN HISTORY
Paragraphs 1-12.
1, 2. The Man Needed by the Time.
3, 4. A Type of Christian Character.
5-8. The Thinker of Christianity.
9-12. The Missionary of the Gentiles.
1. The Man for the Time.—There are some men whose lives it is impossible to study without receiving the impression that they were expressly sent into the world to do a work required by the juncture of history on which they fell. The story of the Reformation, for example, cannot be read by a devout mind without wonder at the providence by which such great men as Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Knox were simultaneously raised up in different parts of Europe to break the yoke of the papacy and republish the gospel of grace. When the Evangelical Revival, after blessing England, was about to break into Scotland and end the dreary reign of Moderatism, there was raised up in Thomas Chalmers a mind of such capacity as completely to absorb the new movement into itself, and of such sympathy and influence as to diffuse it to every corner of his native land.
2. This impression is produced by no life more than by that of the Apostle Paul. He was given to Christianity when it was in its most rudimentary beginnings. It was not, indeed, feeble, nor can any mortal man be spoken of as indispensable to it; for it contained within itself the vigor of a divine and immortal existence, which could not but have unfolded itself in the course of time. But, if we recognize that God makes use of means which commend themselves even to our eyes as suited to the ends He has in view, then we must say that the Christian movement at the moment when Paul appeared upon the stage was in the utmost need of a man of extraordinary endowments, who, becoming possessed with its genius, should incorporate it with the general history of the world; and in Paul it found the man it needed.