st attaching to him as the first great Christian
preacher; and there is something wonderfully attractive in his rude,
but vigorous and lovable personality. Besides, a study of the
influences by which he was transmuted from the unstable and
untrustworthy precipitancy of his earlier career into the rocklike
firmness which made him fit to be a foundation-stone on which the
Church was built would have taught us some of the most important
truths which we require to learn; because these influences were,
first, his long and close intimacy with Christ and, secondly, the
outpouring on him, at Pentecost, of the Holy Spirit; and there are no
influences more essential than these to the formation of the
ministerial character.

But I have no hesitation in devoting to St. Paul the remainder of this
course; because, as I indicated in the opening lecture, there is no
other figure in any age which so deserves to be set up as the model of
Christian ministers. In him all the sides of the ministerial
character were developed in almost supernatural maturity and harmony;
and, besides, the materials for a full delineation are available. It
is my intention to speak of St. Paul, first, as a Man; secondly, as a
Christian; thirdly, as an Apostle; and fourthly, as a Thinker.

* * * * *

To-day, then, we begin with St. Paul as a Man. If I had had time to
set before you what St. Peter's life has to teach us, its great lesson
would have been what Christianity can make of a nature without special
gifts and culture, and how the two influences which formed
him--intimacy with Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit--can supply
the place of talents and educational advantages; for it is evident
that, but for Christ, Peter would never have been anything more than
an unknown fisherman. But St. Paul's case teaches rather the opposite
lesson--how Christianity can consecrate and use the gifts of nature,
and how talent and genius find their noblest exercise in the ministry
of Christ. Paul would, in all probability, have made a notable figure
in history, even if he had never become a Christian; and, although he
himself delighted to refer all that he became and did to Christ, it is
evident that the big nature of the man entered also as a factor into
his Christian history.

Once at least St. Paul recognises this point of view himself, when he
says, that God separated him to His service from his mother's womb. In
Jeremiah's mind th