e to
these months of sequestered thought. His retirement may have lasted a
year or more; for between his conversion and his final departure from
Damascus, to which he returned from Arabia, three years intervened; and
one of them at least was spent in this way.

53. We have no detailed record of what the outlines of his gospel were
till a period long subsequent to this; but, as these, when first they
are traceable, are a mere cast of the features of his conversion, and,
as his mind was working so long and powerfully on the interpretation of
that event at this period, there can be no doubt that the gospel
sketched in the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians was
substantially the same as he preached from the first; and we are safe
in inferring from these writings our account of his Arabian meditations.

54. Failure of Man's Righteousness.--The starting-point of Paul's
thinking was still, as it had been from his childhood, the conviction,
inherited from pious generations, that the true end and felicity of man
lay in the enjoyment of the favor of God. This was to be attained
through righteousness; only the righteous could God be at peace with
and favor with His love. To attain righteousness must, therefore, be
the chief end of man.

55. But man had failed to attain righteousness and had thereby come
short of the favor of God, and exposed himself to the divine wrath.
Paul proves this by taking a vast survey of the history of mankind in
pre-Christian times in its two great sections--the Gentile and the
Jewish.

56. The Gentiles failed. It might, indeed, be supposed that they had
not the preliminary conditions for entering on the pursuit of
righteousness at all, because they did not enjoy the advantage of a
special revelation. But Paul holds that even the heathen know enough
of God to be aware of the obligation to follow after righteousness.
There is a natural revelation of God in His works and in the human
conscience sufficient to enlighten men as to this duty. But the
heathen, instead of making use of this light, wantonly extinguished it.
They were not willing to retain God in their knowledge and to fetter
themselves with the restraints which a pure knowledge of Him imposed.
They corrupted the idea of God in order to feel at ease in an immoral
life. The revenge of nature came upon them in the darkening and
confusion of their intellects. They fell into such insensate folly as
to change the glorious