3. The intellectual superiority of St. Paul is universally acknowledged; and to those who only know him at a distance this is his outstanding peculiarity. But the close student of his life and character knows, that, great as he was in intellect, he was equally great in heart, perhaps even greater. One of the subtlest students of his life, the late Adolphe Monod, of the French Church, has fixed on this as the key to his character. He calls him the Man of Tears, and shows with great persuasiveness that herein lay the secret of his power.
It is certainly remarkable, when you begin to look into the subject, how often we see St. Paul in the emotional mood, and even in tears. In his famous address to the Ephesian elders he reminded them that he had served the Lord among them with many tears, and again, that he had not ceased to warn everyone night and day with tears. It is not what we should have expected in a man of such intellectual power. But this makes his tears all the more impressive. When a weak, effeminate man weeps, he only makes himself ridiculous; but it is a different spectacle when a man like St. Paul is seen weeping; because we know that the strong nature could not have been bent except by a storm of feeling.
His affection for his converts is something extraordinary. Some have believed that there is evidence to prove that in youth his heart had suffered a terrible bereavement. It is supposed that he had been married, but lost his wife early. He never sought to replace the loss, and he never spoke of it. But the affection of his great heart, long pent up, rushed forth into the channel of his work. His converts were to him in place of wife and children. His passion for them is like a strong natural affection. His epistles to them are, in many places, as like as they can be to love-letters. Listen to the terms in which he addresses them: "Ye are in our heart to die and live with you"; "I will very gladly spend and be spent for you, though, the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved"; "Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved and longed for, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved."
To his fellow-labourers in the Gospel especially, his heart went out in unbounded affection. The long lists of greetings at the close of his epistles, in which the characters and services of individuals are referred to with such overflowing generosity and yet with such fine discrimination, are unconscious monuments to the largeness of his heart. He could hardly mention a fellow-worker without breaking forth into a glowing panegyric: "Whether any do inquire of Titus, he is my partner and fellow-helper concerning you; or our brethren be inquired of, they are the messengers of the churches and the glory of Christ."
There is no more conclusive proof of the depth and sincerity of St. Paul's heart than the affection which he inspired in others; for it is only the loving who are loved. None perhaps are more discriminating in this respect than young men. A hard or pedantic nature cannot win them. But St. Paul was constantly surrounded with troops of young men, who, attracted by his personality, were willing to follow him through fire and water or to go on his messages wherever he might send them. And that he could win mature minds in the same way is proved by the great scene at Miletus, already referred to, where the elders of Ephesus, at parting with him, "all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the word which he said, that they should see his face no more."
The nature of St. Paul's work no doubt immensely developed this side of his character, but, before passing from the subject, it is worth remembering how the circumstances of his birth and upbringing were providentially fitted to broaden his sympathies, even before he became a Christian. He was not simply a Jew, but a Hebrew of the Hebrews; and he felt all the pride of a child of that race to which pertained the adoption and the glory and the covenant, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises. He could always put himself in touch at once with a Jewish audience by going back on associations which were as dear to himself as to them. Yet, although so thoroughly a Jew, he belonged by birth to a larger world. He was not born within the boundaries of Palestine, where his sympathies would have been cramped and his horizon narrowed, but in a Gentile city, famous for its beauty, its learning and its commerce; and he was, besides, a freeborn citizen of Rome. We know from his own lips that he was proud of both distinctions; and he thus acquired a cosmopolitan spirit and learned to think of himself as a man amongst men.
Nor ought we, perhaps, to omit here to recall the fact, that he learned in his youth the handicraft of tent-making. This brought him into close contact with common men, whose language he learned to speak and whose life he learned to know—acquirements which were to be of supreme utility in his subsequent career.
Gentlemen, it is generally agreed that a certain modicum of natural gifts is necessary for those who think of entering the ministry. Here is Luther's list of the qualifications of a minister: you will observe that most of them are gifts of nature: 1. He should be able to teach plainly and in order. 2. He should have a good head. 3. Good power of language. 4. A good voice. 5. A good memory. 6. He should know when to stop. 7. He should be sure of what he means to say. 8. And be ready to stake body and soul, goods and reputation, on its truth. 9. He should study diligently. 10. And suffer himself to be vexed and criticized by everyone.
The first consciousness of the possession of unusual powers is not unfrequently accompanied by an access of vanity and self-conceit. The young soul glories in the sense, probably vastly exaggerated, of its own pre-eminence and anticipates, on an unlimited scale, the triumphs of the future. But there is another way in which this discovery may act. The consciousness of unusual powers may be accompanied with a sense of unusual responsibility, the soul inquiring anxiously about the intention of the Giver of all gifts in conferring them. It was in this way that Jeremiah was affected by the information that special gifts had been conferred on him in the scene to which I have already referred in this lecture. He concluded at once that he had been blessed with exceptional talents in order that he might serve his God and his country with them. And surely in a gifted nature there could be no saner ambition than, if God permitted it, to devote its powers to the ministry of His Son.