o his
will is buffeted from side to side by the 'violence of the waves.' The
obscurity of his language, arising from its broken construction,
corresponds to the struggle of his feelings. As the Revised Version has
it, 'If to live in the flesh--if this is the fruit of my work, then what
I shall choose, I wot not.' By which fragmentary sentence, rightly
representing as it does the roughness of the Greek, we understand him to
mean that if living on in this life is the condition of his gaining
fruit from his toil, then he has to check the rising wish, and is
hindered from decisive preference either way. Both motives act upon him,
one drawing him deathward, the other holding him firmly here. He is in a
dilemma, pinned in, as it were, between the two opposing pressures. On
the one hand he has the desire (not 'a desire,' as the English Bible has
it, as if it were but one among many) turned towards departing to be
with Christ; but on the other, he knows that his remaining here is for
the present all but indispensable for the immature faith of the churches
which he has founded. So he stands in doubt for a moment, and the
picture of his hesitation may well be studied by us.

Such a reason for wishing to die in conflict with such a reason for
wishing to live, is as noble as it is rare, and, thank God, as imitable
as it is noble.

Notice the aspect which death wore to his faith. He speaks of it as
'departing,' a metaphor which does not, like many of the flattering
appellations which men give that last enemy, reveal a quaking dread
which cannot bear to look him in his ashen, pale face. Paul calls him
gentle names, because he fears him not at all. To him all the
dreadfulness, the mystery, the pain and the solitude have melted away,
and death has become a mere change of place. The word literally means
_to unloose_, and is employed to express pulling up the tent-pegs of a
shifting encampment, or drawing up the anchor of a ship. In either case
the image is simply that of removal. It is but striking the earthly
house of this tent; it is but one more day's march, of which we have had
many already, though this is over Jordan. It is but the last day's
journey, and to-morrow there will be no packing up in the morning and
resuming our weary tramp, but we shall be at home, and go no more out.
So has the awful thing at the end dwindled, and the brighter and greater
the land behind it shines, the smaller does it appear.

The Apostle thinks li