an Apostle. It is remarkable that St. Paul does not glory in what he had done, but in what he had borne; he does not speak of his successes, of his converts, of the heresies he had subdued; but he speaks of the manifold trials which he had undergone for Christ. He had "filled up that which was behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for His body's sake which is the Church." This marks all his conduct and sufferings as being in the spirit of the Cross, that it was for the sake of others.

Fourthly, He boasted of his sympathy.

"Who is weak and

I am not weak? who is offended and I burn not?" If there was a stumbling-block cast in any one's way, St. Paul burned. with indignation against the brother who had cast it, and with infinite tenderness and compassion for the brother who had been offended. This largeness of sympathy was a peculiar characteristic of St. Paul, this power of entering into the feelings of every heart as fully as if he himself had lived the life of that heart. To the Jew he became as a Jew and endeavoured to extract from the Jewish ceremonies the truth that lay beneath them all and even when he went to Athens, he did not declaim against the idolatry of the citizens, but took his text from an inscription on one of their own altars, and preached the gospel to them from that.

All these St. Paul uses as evidences of his apostolic ministry. The use of it to us is great, for it is high moral evidence of the truth of Christianity, and moral evidence is more cogent than any other. Our expositions lately may have seemed to some to have become almost entirely eulogiums on the Apostle Paul, and yet though they may have been so to a certain extent, it is impossible to have avoided it; for who can read these epistles and not feel his own heart kindled within him at the majesty, the boldness, and the love exhibited to us, in the narrative of what he did? It gives quite a thrill of delight to find that this earth has ever produced such a man as St. Paul,

so loving and so tender, so exquisite in delicacy, so bold in denouncing sin, and so zealous for the truth and the glory of his Master, Christ.

There was no fanaticism in St. Paul's life; he was calm, sound and wise. In St. Paul, whenever we find a question dealt with, it is answered so fully, treated so logically, that his adversary has no room left for further cavilling; if it is a question of casuistry, it is examined with the policy and wisdom of a statesman and the love of an apostle. His superhuman devotion was directed by a sound, clear brain, with his whole heart and brain he lived in Christianity. He had not always been so, once he had been an unbeliever; and thought verily that by persecuting the Christians he did God a service; but as also to St. Thomas, the external as well as internal evidence had been given to him—and there was left him no alternative, but to cast all the powers of his sublime nature at the foot of the Cross of Christ and if he believed, with an intellect so piercing, so clear, and so brilliant, he must indeed be a vain man who will venture any longer to doubt.

LECTURE LVIII.

2 CORINTHIANS, xii. 1-4.- -May 8, 1853.

HE Apostle Paul, in the preceding chapter, had adduced

evidence of the greatness of his sufferings in his witness to the truths he had received from Christ. The extent of his labours was proved by his sufferings, and both were, in a manner, an indirect proof of his apostleship. In the passage we consider to-day-a passage of acknowledged difficulty-he advances a direct proof of his apostolic mission. Let us however, before proceeding, understand the general structure of the passage. The point in question all along has been St. Paul's authority. The Corinthians doubted it, and in proof of it, he alleges, in these verses, certain spiritual communications of a preternatural kind which had been made to him. To these he adds, in the 12th verse, certain peculiar trials; all of which together made up his notion of apostolic experience. A man divinely gifted, and divinely tried-that was an Apostle. But it is remarkable that he reckons his trials as a greater proof of apostleship than his marvellous experiences (ver. 9).

There is, however, a difficulty to meet at the outset. It would seem that St. Paul, in reference to these revelations, is not speaking of himself, but of another man (ver. 1-5); more especially in the 5th v.: "Of such an one will I glory: yet of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities." Nevertheless, the fact of St. Paul's identity with the person he speaks of is beyond a doubt. All difficulty is set at rest by the 6th and 7th vv. where he allows that the man so favoured is himself, "lest I should be exalted above measure."

It remains, then, to ask how St. Paul came to speak of himself under the personality of another. For this I suggest two reasons: 1. Natural diffidence. For the more refined and courteous a man is, the more he will avoid, in conversation, a direct mention of himself; and, in like manner, as civilization advances, the disinclination to write even of self in the first person is shown by the use of the terms "the author" and "we," men almost unconsciously acting in that spirit of delicacy which forbids too open an obtrusion of oneself upon the public.

That this delicacy was felt by St. Paul is evident from what he says in the fourth chapter of the First Epistle, in the 6th v., and from the whole of that chapter, where he speaks of "labourers," "ministers," and of the Apostles generally, though all the while the particular person meant is himself. From this twelfth chapter and from the eleventh, it is evident all along that he has been forced to speak of self only by a kind of compulsion. Fact after fact of his own experiences is, as it were, wrung out, as if he had not intended to tell it. For there is something painful to a modest mind in the direct use of the personal pronoun "I," over which an humble spirit like the Apostle's throws a veil.

2. The second reason I suggest for this suppression of the first person is, that St. Paul chose to recognize this higher experience as not yet entirely his true self. He speaks of a divided experience, of two selves, two Pauls: one Paul in the third heaven, enjoying the beatific vision: another yet on earth, struggling, tempted, tried, and buffeted by Satan. The former he chose rather to regard as the Paul that was to be. He dwelt on the latter as the actual Paul coming down to the prose of life to find his real self, lest he should be tempted to forget or mistake himself in the midst of the heavenly revelations.

Such a double nature is in us all. In all there is an Adam and a Christ-an ideal and a real. Numberless instances will

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man.

occur to us in the daily experience of life; the fact is shown, for example, in the strange discrepancy so often seen between the writings of the poet or the sermons of the preacher, and their actual lives. And yet in this there is no necessary hypocrisy, for the one represents the man's aspiration, the other his attainment. In that very sentence however, there may be a danger; for is it not dangerous to be satisfied with mere aspirations and fine sayings? The Apostle felt it was; and therefore, he chose to take the lowest-the actual self-and call that Paul, treating the highest as, for the time, another Hence in the 5th verse he says: "Of such an one will I glory: yet of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities." Were the crawling caterpillar to feel within himself the wings that are to be, and be haunted with instinctive forebodings of the time when he shall hover about flowers and meadows, and expatiate in heavenly air,-yet the wisdom of that caterpillar would be to remember his present business on the leaf, to feed on green herbs, and weave his web lest, losing himself in dreams, he should never become a winged insect at all. In the same manner, it is our wisdom, lest we become all earthy, to remember that our visions shall be realized, but also it is our wisdom, lest we become mere dreamers, or spiritually "puffed up," to remember that the aspiring man within us is not yet our true self, but as it were, another man— -the "Christ within us, the hope of glory."

Our subject to-day, then, is "spiritual ecstasy."

I. The time when this vision took place-" Fourteen years

ago." The date is vague, "about fourteen years ago," and is

irreconcilable with any exact point in our confused chronology of the life of St. Paul. Some have supposed that this vision was identical with that recorded (Acts ix.) at his conversion on his road to Damascus; but that this is evidently a different one is apparent :