The Epic of Paul

by William Cleaver Wilkinson

Then, Paul and Stephen by themselves apart
Resting, the younger to the elder said:
"Much, O mine uncle, have I pondered, since,
The deep things that I heard from thee, that night,
Already now so many months ago,
By thy side riding, thou by Lysias sent
(Safeguarded by his Romans from the Jews!)
To wear out thy duress at Cæsarea.
Thou wert then as now escaped from Shimei's snare!
We spake, thou wilt remember, of those psalms
Which breathe, or seem to breathe, such breath of hate.
I had recited one aloud to thee—
To myself rather, bold, for thee to hear—
Vent to the feeling fierce that in my breast
Boiled into tempest against Shimei.
Thou chidedst me with a most sweet rebuke
That drew the tumor all, out of my heart;
Thou taughtst me then that the good Spirit of God,
Who breathed the inspiration into men
To utter such dire words, seeming of hate,
Hated not any as I to hate had dared.
I understood thee that God only so
Revealed in forms of vivid human speech
The implacable resentment—but I pause,
Pause startled at the word I use; I would,
Could I, find other than such words as these,
'Resentment,' 'indignation,' 'hatred,' 'wrath,'
To speak my thought of holy God aflame
With infinite displacency at sin—
Once more! Another word I fain would shun!
For by some tether that I cannot break,
Bound, I revolve in the same circle still."

As if his speech were half soliloquy,
The youth let lapse his musing into mute,
Which not with word or sign would Paul invade.
Almost with admiration, with such joy
Of hope for Stephen, Paul remarked in him
The noble gains of knowledge he had made—
Wisdom say rather out of knowledge won—
In those two years at Cæsarea spent;
Years for the youth so rich in fruitful chance
Of converse with his elders, and of thought
Which in that quick young mind, for brooding apt
No less than apt for action, brought to full
Sweet ripeness all that he from other learned,
And touched it with a quality his own.
Paul could not but in measure feel himself
Given back to him reflected in the words
That he just now had heard from Stephen's lips;
Yet he therein felt too a surge of youth
And youth's unrest and eagerness and strife
And dauntless heart to assay the impossible
Which were all Stephen's. And he held his peace.

Presently Stephen took up voice again:
"Almost I thus resolve myself one doubt,
One question, that I thought to bring to thee.
God is not altogether such, I know,
As we are; yet are we too somewhat such
As He, for in God's image were we made.
And we perforce must know God, if at all,
Then by ourselves as patterned after Him.
So I suppose our best similitude
For what God feels—but 'feeling,' also that!—
How fast do these anthropomorphic walls
Enclose us still in all our thought of God!—
'Feeling' is but a parable flung forth
By us, bridge-builders on the hither side,
To tremble out a little way toward God,
Then flutter helpless down in the abyss,
The impassable abyss, of difference
Between created and Creator, us
And Him, the finite and the Infinite!
Forgive me, but I lose my way in words!"
And again Stephen broke his utterance off,
Faltering; like one who fording a full stream
Now in midcurrent finds his foothold fail,
And cannot in such deepened waters walk.

This time Paul reached the struggling youth a hand
With: "Thou hast not ill achieved in thine essay
To utter what is nigh unutterable.
But, Stephen, better bridge than any form
Of fancy, figure or similitude,
To human sense or reason possible
And capable of frame in human speech,
For spanning the great gulf immeasurable,
Unfathomable, nay, inconceivable,
(Gulf, otherwise than so, impassable,
Yet so, securely closed forevermore!)
The awful gulf of being and of thought,
Much more, of moral difference, since our fall,
That parts our kind from holy God Most High—
Yea, better bridge than any word of ours
Aspiring upward from beneath to God,
Is that Eternal Word of God Himself
To us, down-reaching hither from above,
Who, being God with God, was Man with man,
And Who, returning thither whence He came,
Carried our nature with Him into heaven,
And to the Ever-living joined us one.

"But rightly thou wert saying, my Stephen, that we
Best can approach to put in speech of man
The ineffable regard of God toward sin,
If we impute to Him a spurning such
As we feel when we hate or loathe or scorn,
And wish to wreak in punishment our wrath.
But we must purge ourselves of self-regard,
Or we are sinful in abhorring sin;
And we attaint God with gross attribute
Imputed from what we through fall became.
An horrible profaneness, sure, it were,
The image first of God in us to foul,
And then that foulness back on God asperse,
Making Him hate with wicked human hate!"

The wide impersonal purport of Paul's words,
Not meant, he knew, in hidden hint to him,
Still, Stephen with his wise docile spirit took
Home to himself, and fell some moments mute,
Considering; then afresh his mind exposed:
"I feel, O kinsman most revered, how bold,
How froward, how perverse, it were in me,
First to lay hold on holy words of God
To use them, as I used that psalm that night,
Profanely for a vehicle of hate;
And then, convicted of my fault therein,
Turn round and blame the very words I used,
Or seem to blame them, as unmeet from God.
Yet I experience an obscure distress—
Is it of mind or heart? I scarce know which—
A sense of contradiction unresolved,
When, in the spirit of all-loving love,
Such as sometimes I seem to catch from thee,
I read or ponder those terrific psalms."

"Thou art tempted then perhaps," gently said Paul,
Yet with some gentle irony implied,
"To doff the pupil's lowly attitude
In which thou hadst learned so much; as if indeed
Thou hadst learned enough to be a teacher now,
And even a teacher to thy Teacher, God?
Beware, my son, of these delusive thoughts;
Love also has its specious counterfeits—
Whence that deep word of the apostle John,
So frequent on his lips, his touchstone word—
More needed, as, to seeming, needed not—
To make us sure, when we suppose we love,
Whether we love in truth: 'Herein we know
That we God's children love, when we love God,
And His commandments do.' For this is love
Indeed of God, to do His holy will!
A childlike humble spirit, the spirit of love,
Contented to believe and to obey!
The wiser that she seeks not to be wise,
She wins her wisdom by obedience.

"Does thy love puff thee up to challenge God
Whether He be consistent with Himself?
Suspect 'all-loving love' which moves to that!
Love puffs not up—right love, love which is awe
(As ever love inbreathed from Jesus is)—
To any pride of wisdom questioning God.
Some specious counterfeit it is of love,
Not love herself—who grows by meekness wise
To meekness more, and more obedient faith—
Not love, nay, Stephen, but other spirit than love
(Self-pity, self-indulgence, self-regard,
Some spirit fixing for the center self),
That sits in judgment on the ways of God
To find Him sometimes wise or sometimes not.
God was as wise when He inspired those psalms
As when in Christ he bade us ever love,
Love even our enemies and do them good.
Submit thyself to God, my Stephen, and be
Humble; for God resists the proud, but gives
Grace to the humble still and grace for grace—
Grace given already, ground for added grace.
Grow then in grace thus, and be meekly wise.
I have spoken divining what thy meaning was,
Perhaps amiss"—and Paul refrained from more.

But Stephen answered: "If such was my thought,
At least I did not know it to be such,
As thou hast thus divined it now for me.
Thither perhaps it tended—but that goal,
Shown in this light from thee, though far, I shun;
I would not be more wise than God, for God.
But is there then no contrariety
At all, no spirit discrepant, between
The frightful fulminations of those psalms
And the forgiving love of our Lord Christ?"
"None, Stephen," said Paul, "for none did Jesus know,
Who knew those psalms and never protest made
Against them, never softened their austere,
Their angry, aspect, never glozed their sense,
Never one least slant syllable let slip,
Hint as that He would not have spoken so,
Never with pregnant silence passed them by.
Nay, of those psalms one of the fiercest, He—
And this, then when His baptism into death,
His offering of Himself for sin, was nigh,
Those Feet already in the crimson flood!—
Most meek and lowly suffering Lamb of God,
Took to Himself to make it serve His need
In uttering the just horror of His soul
At such hate wreaked on Him without a cause.
'Pour out Thine indignation on them, Lord,
And let the fierceness of Thy wrath smite them!
To their iniquity iniquity
Add Thou'—such curse invokes this dreadful psalm—
'Let them be blotted from the book of life'!
From close beside these burning sentences,
These drops of Sodom-and-Gomorrah rain,
Out of the self-same psalm with them, our Lord,
Now nigh to suffer (saying to His own
He as in holy of holies with them shrined,
More heavenly things than ever even Himself
Till then had spoken) drew those words—sad words,
Stern words!—'They hated Me without a cause.'
Love shrank not, nay, in Him, from holy hate!

"His spirit and the spirit of those psalms
Ever with one another dwelt at peace;
More than at peace, with one another one
Were they, the selfsame spirit both; as needs
Was, since the Spirit of all psalms was He.
Even thus, I have not to the full expressed
The will, with power, that in Christ Jesus wrought
To fulmine indignation against sin.
The psalms, those fiercest and most branding, fail
To match the fury of the Lamb of God
Poured out in words of woe on wickedness,
His own words, burning to the lowest hell—
Enraged eruption from the heart of love!
Most dreadful of things dreadful that! A fire,
My Stephen, which, as loth to kindle, so,
Once kindled, then will burn the deepest down!
Woe the most hopeless of surcease or change—
Mercy herself to malediction moved,
Love forced to speak in final words of hate!"