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FOREWORD
FOREWORD
When asked to write a foreword to Dr. Stalker's "Life of St. Paul," I thought of two things: first the impression which I had received from a sermon that I heard Dr. Stalker preach a good many years ago in his own pulpit in Glasgow, Scotland, and secondly, the honor conferred in this privilege of writing a foreword to one of Dr. Stalker's books. I felt sure before even glancing at the pages that I should be pleased and profited by their perusal. The first thing that I did was to glance over the
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CHAPTER I HIS PLACE IN HISTORY
CHAPTER I HIS PLACE IN HISTORY
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 republis
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CHAPTER II HIS UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR HIS WORK
CHAPTER II HIS UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR HIS WORK
13. God's Plan.—Persons whose conversion takes place after they are grown up are wont to look back upon the period of their life which has preceded this event with sorrow and shame and to wish that an obliterating hand might blot the record of it out of existence. St. Paul felt this sentiment strongly: to the end of his days he was haunted by the specters of his lost years, and was wont to say that he was the least of all the apostles, who was not worthy to be called an apostle, because he had p
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CHAPTER III HIS CONVERSION
CHAPTER III HIS CONVERSION
37. Severity of the Persecution.—It was the persecutor's hope utterly to exterminate Christianity. But little did he understand its genius. It thrives on persecution. Prosperity has often been fatal to it, persecution never. "They that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word." Hitherto the Church had been confined within the walls of Jerusalem; but now all over Judaea and Samaria, and in distant Phoenicia and Syria, the beacon of the gospel began in many a town and village to tw
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CHAPTER IV HIS GOSPEL
CHAPTER IV HIS GOSPEL
51. Sojourn in Arabia.—When a man has been suddenly converted, as Paul was, he is generally driven by a strong impulse to make known what has happened to him. Such testimony is very impressive; for it is that of a soul which is receiving its first glimpses of the realities of the unseen world, and there is a vividness about the report it gives of them which produces an irresistible sense of reality. Whether Paul yielded at once to this impulse or not we cannot say with certainty. The language of
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CHAPTER V THE WORK AWAITING THE WORKER
CHAPTER V THE WORK AWAITING THE WORKER
68. Years of Inactivity.—Paul was now in possession of his gospel and was aware that it was to be the mission of his life to preach it to the Gentiles; but he had still to wait a long time before his peculiar career commenced. We hear scarcely anything of him for seven or eight years; and yet we can only guess what may have been the reasons of Providence for imposing on His servant so long a time of waiting. 69. There may have been personal reasons for it connected with Paul's own spiritual hist
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THE FIRST JOURNEY
THE FIRST JOURNEY
79. Paul's Companions.—From the beginning it had been the wont of the preachers of Christianity not to go alone on their expeditions, but two by two. Paul improved on this practise by going generally with two companions, one of them being a younger man, who perhaps took charge of the traveling arrangements. On his first journey his comrades were Barnabas and John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas. 80. We have already seen that Barnabas may be called the discoverer of Paul; and, when they set out on t
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THE SECOND JOURNEY
THE SECOND JOURNEY
89. In his first journey Paul may be said to have been only trying his wings; for his course, adventurous though it was, only swept in a limited circle round his native province. In his second journey he performed a far more distant and perilous flight. Indeed, this journey was not only the greatest he achieved but perhaps the most momentous recorded in the annals of the human race. In its issues it far outrivaled the expedition of Alexander the Great, when he carried the arms and civilization o
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THE THIRD JOURNEY
THE THIRD JOURNEY
109. It must have been a thrilling story Paul had to tell at Jerusalem and Antioch when he returned from his second journey; but he had no disposition to rest on his laurels, and it was hot long before he set out on his third journey. 110. In Asia.—It might have been expected that, having in his second journey planted the gospel in Greece, he would in his third have made Home his principal aim. But, if the map be referred to, it will be observed that, in the midst, between the regions of Asia Mi
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CHAPTER VII HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER
CHAPTER VII HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER
115. Principal Literary Period.—It has been mentioned that the third missionary journey closed with a flying visit to the churches of Greece. This visit lasted several months; but in the Acts it is passed over in two or three verses. Probably it was little marked with those exciting incidents which naturally tempt the biographer into detail. Yet we know from other sources that it was nearly the most important part of Paul's life; for during this half-year he wrote the greatest of all his Epistle
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CHAPTER VIII PICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH
CHAPTER VIII PICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH
128. History Without and Within.—A holiday visitor to a foreign city walks through the streets, guidebook in hand, looking at monuments, churches, public buildings and the outsides of the houses, and in this way is supposed to be made acquainted with the town; but, on reflection, he will find that he has scarcely learned anything about it, because he has not been inside the houses. He does not know how the people live—not even what kind of furniture they have or what kind of food they eat—not to
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CHAPTER IX HIS GREAT CONTROVERSY
CHAPTER IX HIS GREAT CONTROVERSY
145. The version of the apostle's life supplied in his own letters is largely occupied with a controversy which cost him much pain and took up much of his time for many years, but of which Luke says little. At the date when Luke wrote, it was a dead controversy, and it belonged to a different plane from that along which his story moves. But at the time when it was raging, it tried Paul far more than tiresome journeys or angry seas. It was at its hottest about the close of his third journey, and
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CHAPTER X THE END
CHAPTER X THE END
163. Return to Jerusalem.—After completing his brief visit to Greece at the close of his third missionary journey, Paul returned to Jerusalem. He must by this time have been nearly sixty years of age; and for twenty years he had been engaged in almost superhuman labors. He had been traveling and preaching incessantly, and carrying on his heart a crushing weight of cares. His body had been worn with disease and mangled with punishments and abuse; and his hair must have been whitened, and his face
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HINTS TO TEACHERS AND QUESTIONS FOR PUPILS
HINTS TO TEACHERS AND QUESTIONS FOR PUPILS
Teacher's Apparatus.—English theology has no juster cause for pride than the books it has produced on the Life of Paul. Perhaps there is no other subject in which it has so outdistanced all rivals. Conybeare and Howson's Life and Epistles of St. Paul will probably always keep the foremost place; in many respects it is nearly perfect; and a teacher who has mastered it will be sufficiently equipped for his work and require no other help. The works of Lewin and Farrar are written on the same lines;
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
Paragraph 2. Subject of class essay—Paul and the other Apostles: Points of Connection and Contrast. 5. Subject of class essay—Relation of Christianity to Learning and Intellectual Gifts: its Use of them and its Independence of them. 9. Quote passages of Scripture in which Paul's destination to be the missionary of the Gentiles is expressed....
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
On the external features of the period embraced in this chapter compare the corresponding pages of Hausrath; on the internal features see Principal Rainy's lecture on Paul in The Evangelical Succession Lectures , vol. i. 14. On the chronology of Paul's life see the notes at the end of Conybeare and Howson, and Farrar, ii. 623. The principal dates may be given at this stage from Conybeare and Howson, for reference throughout: With these may be compared some of Ramsay's dates—the conversion, 33; F
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
On Paul's mental processes before and at the time of his conversion see Principal Rainy's lecture, already quoted. The conversion of Paul is one of the strong apologetic positions of Christianity. See this worked out in Lyttelton's Conversion of St. Paul . But it might be worked out afresh on more modern lines. 40. Principal Rainy, in the lecture above referred to, says that he sees no evidence of such a conflict as this in Paul's mind; but what, then, is the meaning of "It is hard for thee to k
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
On the subject of this chapter see the works on Pauline Theology by Pfleiderer, Bruce, Du Bose, Titius and Stevens, also the relevant portions of any of the Handbooks of New Testament Theology—Weiss, Reuss, Schmid, van Oosterzee, Beyschlag, Holtzmann, and Stevens. Weiss' exposition is among the most solid and trustworthy. He divides Paulinism into four sections:— I. THE EARLIEST GOSPEL OF PAUL DURING THE HEATHEN MISSION (gathered from Thessalonians). One chapter—the Gospel as the Way of Delivera
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
On this subject see the first two chapters of Conybeare and Howson; New Testament Times of Hausrath or Schürer; Fairweather, From the Exile to the Advent , Moss, From Malachi to Matthew . 72. Subject of class essay: The Origin and Significance of the name "Christian." 72. By what other names were the Christians called in New Testament times, among themselves or among their enemies? 78. What did the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews severally contribute to Christianity?...
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
The aim of this Handbook, as of The Life of Jesus Christ in the same series, being to show at a single glance the general course of the life and the principal objects it touched, a good many details have been omitted. This is especially the case in this chapter and in chapter x. The omissions cause those great features to stand out more prominently which details are apt to obscure. In this chapter an endeavor has been made to show in this way what were the different regions into which the apostl
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
In the chronological table, p. 138, the dates of the Epistles have already been given and the points of the history indicated where they come in. It is a pity the Epistles are not arranged in chronological order in our Bibles. Their characteristics may be mentioned: Ramsay places Galatians before 1 and 2 Corinthians ; compare p. 139 above. 116. Compare Shaw, The Pauline Epistles . 118. On Paul's style see Farrar's Excursus at the close of vol. i. The comparison of it to that of Thucydides is mor
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
On this subject compare Neander's Planting of Christianity , Book ii., ch. 7, and Schaff's Church History ; also Bannerman's Church of Christ . This chapter is only a piecing together of the information scattered through 1 Corinthians. It would be well to get pupils to seek out the passages of the Epistle which correspond to the different paragraphs. A picture of a Pauline church of a later date might be compiled in the same way from the Pastoral Epistles. 136. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit wa
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
The criticism which seeks to disintegrate the New Testament writings and set the apostles against one another is founded on a revival of the claim of the Judaizers that their propaganda had the sanction of Peter and the other original apostles. In a Handbook like this it is impossible to discuss at any length the Tübingen Theory. But some of its points are silently met in the text; and the whole theory is answered by an attempt to give a view of the course of the controversy which covers all the
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
Viewpoints for lessons on details omitted or only lightly referred to in the text: 171. See notes on ch. iv., p. 141. The authenticity of Ephesians and Colossians can only be denied by ignoring the impression of majesty and profundity which they have made on the greatest minds. (See the Introductions in Meyer and Alford.) What other mind of those ages except Paul's could have erected a structure so magnificent on the very foundations of the Epistle to the Romans? or in what other mind was there
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