IV. MISCELLANEOUS (continued 2)

What a hard thing it was for him to give them up! He pleaded for them, while they were persecuting his Lord and himself. He reminded his{20} Lord that he himself had also been that Lord's persecutor, and why not try them a little longer? "Lord," he said, "they know that I cast into prison, and beat in every synagogue, them that believed in Thee. And, when the blood of{25} Stephen, Thy witness, was shed, I stood by and consented, and kept the garments of them that killed him." You see, his old frame of mind, the feelings and notions under which he persecuted his Lord, were ever distinctly before him, and he{30} realized them as if they were still his own. "I bear them witness," he says, "that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge." O blind! blind! he seems to say; O that there should be so much of good in them, so much zeal, so much of religious purpose, so much of{5} steadfastness, such resolve like Josias, Mathathias, or Machabæus, to keep the whole law, and honor Moses and the Prophets, but all spoiled, all undone, by one fatal sin! And what is he prompted to do? Moses, on one occasion, desired to suffer{10} instead of his rebellious people: "Either forgive them this trespass," he said, "or if Thou do not, strike me out of the book." And now, when the New Law was in course of promulgation, and the chosen race was committing the same sin, its{15} great Apostle desired the same: "I wished myself," he says, speaking of the agony he had passed through, "I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh." And then,{20} when all was in vain, when they remained obdurate, and the high decree of God took effect, still he would not, out of very affection for them, he would not allow after all that they were reprobate. He comforted himself with the thought of{25} how many were the exceptions to so dismal a sentence. "Hath God cast away His people?" he asks; "God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin." "All are not Israelites that are of Israel." And{30} he dwells upon his confident anticipation of their recovery in time to come. "They are enemies," he says, writing to the Romans, "for your sakes;" that is, you have gained by their loss; "but they are most dear for the sake of the fathers; for the gifts and the calling of God are without{5} repentance." "Blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in; and so all Israel should be saved."

My Brethren, I have now explained to a certain extent what I meant when I spoke of St.{10} Paul's characteristic gift, as being a special apprehension of human nature as a fact, and an intimate familiarity with it as an object of continual contemplation and affection. He made it his own to the very full, instead of annihilating{15} it; he sympathized with it, while he mortified it by penance, while he sanctified it by the grace given him. Though he had never been a heathen, though he was no longer a Jew, yet he was a heathen in capability, as I may say, and a Jew{20} in the history of the past. His vivid imagination enabled him to throw himself into the state of heathenism, with all those tendencies which lay dormant in his human nature carried out, and its infirmities developed into sin. His wakeful{25} memory enabled him to recall those past feelings and ideas of a Jew, which in the case of others a miraculous conversion might have obliterated; and thus, while he was a Saint inferior to none, he was emphatically still a man, and to{30} his own apprehension still a sinner.

And this being so, do you not see, my brethren, how well fitted he was for the office of an Ecumenical Doctor, and an Apostle, not of the Jews only, but of the Gentiles? The Almighty sometimes works by miracle, but commonly He{5} prepares His instruments by methods of this world; and, as He draws souls to Him, "by the cords of Adam," so does He select them for His use according to their natural powers. St. John, who lay upon His breast, whose book was the sacred heart{10} of Jesus, and whose special philosophy was the "scientia sanctorum," he was not chosen to be the Doctor of the Nations. St. Peter, taught in the mysteries of the Creed, the Arbiter of doctrine and the Ruler of the faithful, he too was passed{15} over in this work. To him specially was it given to preach to the world, who knew the world; he subdued the heart, who understood the heart. It was his sympathy that was his means of influence; it was his affectionateness which was his title and{20} instrument of empire. "I became to the Jews a Jew," he says, "that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the Law, as if I were under the Law, that I might gain them that were under the Law. To those that were without the Law,{25} as if I were without the Law, that I might gain them that were without the Law. To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I became all things to all men, that I might save all."{30}

And now, my brethren, my time is out, before I have well begun my subject. For how can I be said yet to have entered upon the great Apostle, when I have not yet touched upon his Christian affections, and his bearing towards the children of God? As yet I have chiefly spoken{5} of his sympathy with human nature unassisted and unregenerate; not of that yearning of his heart, as it showed itself in action under the grace of the Redeemer. But perhaps it is most suitable on the feast of his Conversion, to stop{10} at that point at which the day leaves him; and perhaps too it will be permitted to me on a future occasion to attempt, if it be not presumption, to speak of him again.

Meanwhile, may this glorious Apostle, this{15} sweetest of inspired writers, this most touching and winning of teachers, may he do me some good turn, who have ever felt a special devotion towards him! May this great Saint, this man of large mind, of various sympathies, of affectionate{20} heart, have a kind thought for every one of us here according to our respective needs! He has carried his human thoughts and feelings with him to his throne above; and, though he sees the Infinite and Eternal Essence, he still{25} remembers well that troublous, restless ocean below, of hopes and fears, of impulses and aspirations, of efforts and failures, which is now what it was when he was here. Let us beg him to intercede for us with the Majesty on high, that we too may{30} have some portion of that tenderness, compassion, mutual affection, love of brotherhood, abhorrence of strife and division, in which he excelled. Let us beg him especially, as we are bound, to bless the most reverend Prelate, under whose jurisdiction we here live, and whose feast day this is;{5} that the great name of Paul may be to him a tower of strength and fount of consolation now,

and in death, and in the day of account.