he proves abundantly by the tone of his letters. His personal
religion was, in essence, a pure mysticism; one worships a Christ whom
he has experienced as a living presence in his soul. The mystic who is
also a man of action, and a man of action because he is a mystic, wields
a tremendous power over other men. He is like an invulnerable knight,
fighting in magic armour.

It is an interesting and difficult question whether we should regard the
intense moral dualism of the Epistle to the Romans as a confession that
the writer has had an unusually severe personal battle with temptation.
The moral struggle certainly assumes a more tragic aspect in these
passages than in the experience of many saintly characters. We find
something like it in Augustine, and again in Luther; it may even be
suggested that these great men have stamped upon the Christian tradition
the idea of a harsher 'clash of yes and no' than the normal experience
of the moral life can justify. But it is not certain that the first
person singular in such verses as 'O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from this body of death?' is a personal confession at all. It
may be for human nature generally that he is speaking, when he gives
utterance to that consciousness of sin which was one of the most
distinctive parts of the Christian religion from the first. It does not
seem likely that a man of so lofty and heroic a character was ever
seriously troubled with ignominious temptations. That he yielded to
them, as Nietzsche and others have suggested, is in the highest degree
improbable. Even if the self-reproaches were uttered in his own person,
we have many other instances of saints who have blamed themselves
passionately for what ordinary men would consider slight transgressions.
Of all the Epistles, the Second to the Corinthians is the one which
contains the most intimate self-revelations, and few can read it without
loving as well as honouring its author.

We know nothing of the Apostle's residence at Jerusalem except the name
of his teacher. But it was at this time that he became steeped in the
Pharisaic doctrines which loamed the framework in which his earlier
Christian beliefs were set. It is now recognised that Pharisaism, far
from being the antipodes of Christianity, was rather the quarter where
the Gospel found its best recruits. The Pharisaic school contained the
greater part of whatever faith, loyalty and piety remained among the
Jewish people;