Sermon XI.
St. Paul, The Divine Orator.
(For The Patronal Festival.)
2 Cor. xii. 9.
"Gladly, therefore,
will I glory in my infirmities,
that the power of Christ may dwell in me."
The Church and the world are agreed in the estimate formed of St. Paul as a preacher. By a common judgment, the name of this great apostle has been inscribed at the head of the illustrious list of teachers of doctrine. His renown increases as time goes on, and in our own day his personal character, life, and writings have been made the subject of an extraordinary amount of discussion, and have elicited newer and higher eulogiums.
There is this difference, however, in the judgments formed by the Church and the world of the prince of Christian preachers. The world's panegyric is illogical, being made in direct contradiction to its principles and the lessons which it has ever inculcated as necessary to an orator's success. The Church alone, by the aid of the supernatural principles of faith, is able to explain the true secret of the wonderful power he wielded in life, and the miraculous influence of his words upon the nations of the earth during the many centuries which have elapsed since he ceased to speak face to face with men.
What, indeed, are these words of his, "I will glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me," but foolishness to human wisdom, or, at best, an enigma without solution! But it is precisely these infirmities of which he boasts that gave him the power he possessed, and laid the foundation of all his glory. "When I am weak," he says again, "then am I powerful." Nonsense to human reason, but divine wisdom to faith.
If, therefore, I would praise St. Paul, as is befitting on this day, I must praise hid infirmities—weaknesses which the world calls misfortunes, and deficiencies upon which none but saints ever rest their hopes of success.
To judge after the manner of man, we would ordinarily expect to find in one who is an orator of great power certain personal qualifications which, in the very nature of things, would serve to impress and win his audience. We would seek for great polish in the style, and consummate art in the preparation and delivery of his discourses. For one who aims at swaying not only a chance multitude who, for the moment, comes within the sound of his voice, but at conquering their souls, and winning them to the point of making most heroic sacrifices; who not only preaches to his hearers, but commands them with the air of one having authority, we would look for the favorable, popular verdict shown in honors and dignities showered upon him, in credit and influence, and his having reached that summit where men vie with one another in giving him place, and when even his enemies fear to gainsay or persecute him.
Such, indeed, are the orators whom the world crowns with its laurels. But in all these St. Paul was lacking; and yet, by the world's own confession, he has surpassed them all. To meditate upon this mystery of Divine Providence, which makes use of the weak things of this world to confound the strong, and the foolish to confound the wise, cannot fail to enlighten and edify us.
We who, like the world in general, have known the great Apostle chiefly from the sublime picture which his unparalleled success presents, have doubtless imagined him to be a person of tall and majestic stature, of pleasing address and magisterial deportment; being, as we say, a man of fine presence, whose appearance was alone sufficient to bring forth plaudits from his auditory, and enforce at once a respectful and submissive hearing. Such are, indeed, the ideal portraits of him with which we please ourselves, and such have the masters in art represented him. But from various allusions he makes in his writings to himself, it is certain that he was frail in body, of a diffident and submissive bearing, and altogether wanting in that air of decision and self-assertion which naturally overawes the multitude.
When he, with his companion apostle, St. Barnabas, healed the cripple at Lystra, the people imagined them to be gods; but in calling St. Barnabas, rather than St. Paul, Jupiter, it is evident that other apostle far surpassed St. Paul in the dignity and majesty of his person. He can write boldly, he says, but "in presence is lowly"; [Footnote 70] and, again, he affirms the truth of what people said of him, that "his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible;" and the frequent contrasts he draws between his personal infirmities and his spiritual power and graces, leave the fact beyond doubt that he was by no means a man of dignified aspect or commanding mien.