d his views into the clearest expression, it encumbered them with
references to feelings and beliefs which are now dead to the interest
of mankind. But, in spite of these drawbacks, the Gospel of Paul
remains a possession of incalculable value to the human race. Its
searching investigation of the failure and the wants of human nature,
its wonderful unfolding of the wisdom of God in the education of the
pre-Christian world, and its exhibition of the depth and universality
of the divine love are among the profoundest elements of revelation.

67. But it is in its conception of Christ that Paul's gospel wears its
imperishable crown. The Evangelists sketched in a hundred traits of
simple and affecting beauty the fashion of the earthly life of the man
Christ Jesus, and in these the model of human conduct will always have
to be sought; but to Paul was reserved the task of making known, in its
heights and depths, the work which the Son of God accomplished as the
Saviour of the race. He scarcely ever refers to the incidents of
Christ's earthly life, although here and there he betrays that he knew
them well. To him Christ was ever the glorious Being, shining with the
splendor of heaven, who appeared to him on the way to Damascus, and the
Saviour who caught him up into the heavenly peace and joy of a new
life. When the Church of Christ thinks of her Head as the deliverer of
the soul from sin and death, as a spiritualizing presence ever with her
and at work in every believer, and as the Lord over all things who will
come again without sin unto salvation, it is in forms of thought given
her by the Holy Ghost through the instrumentality of this apostle.

CHAPTER V

THE WORK AWAITING THE WORKER

Paragraphs 68-78.

68-70. Eight years of Comparative Inactivity at Tarsus.
Gentiles admitted to Christian Church.
71, 72. Paul discovered by Barnabas and brought to
Antioch. His Work there.
73-78. THE KNOWN WORLD OF THAT PERIOD.
75. The Greeks; 76. The Romans; 77. The Jews;
78. Barbarians and Slaves.

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