ssential to his success.

It would appear that he lacked the rotund voice and copious diction of
the orator; for his critics were able to allege that, whilst his
written style was powerful, his spoken style was contemptible.
Painters have represented him as a kind of demi-god, with the stature
of an athlete and the grace of an Apollo. But he seems to have been
diminutive in stature; and there appears to be evidence to prove that
there was that in his appearance which, at first sight, rather
repelled than attracted an audience. He felt these defects keenly, and
could not but wish sometimes that they were removed. But his habitual
and settled feeling about them was, that he ought to look upon them as
sources of strength rather than as weaknesses, because they made him
rely the more on the strength of Christ. This was an unfailing
resource, on which he felt that he could draw without limit. And so he
gloried in his infirmities, that the power of Christ might rest upon
him.[48]

It might be said that it was only the enthusiasm of Paul which made
him attribute to Christ that which really belonged to himself. But his
own point of view is the just one. It was Christ who made him; and, if
we are to understand a ministry like his, we must try to measure the
influence of Christ upon him, or, in other words, investigate the
elements of his Christianity.

* * * * *

1. Paul could claim that even in his pre-Christian days he had lived
in all good conscience towards both God and man. Yet this profession
of uprightness does not prevent him from confessing elsewhere that
deep down in his consciousness there had been a mortal struggle
between the principles of good and evil, in which the good was far
from always winning the victory: "We all," he acknowledges, "had our
conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the
desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children
of wrath even as others." In the seventh chapter of Romans he has
drawn a picture of this struggle, and it is to the very life.
Theologians have, indeed, disputed among themselves as to the stage of
experience there referred to--whether it is the state of an
unconverted or of a converted man. But the human heart has no
difficulty in interpreting it. The more thoroughly anyone is a man,
the more easily will he understand it; and especially the more upright
and conscientious anyone is, the more certainl