ity he went, he first sought the Jewish
synagogue, and there he "reasoned with them out of the Scriptures," Acts
13:14; 14:1; 17:2, 10; 18:4; 19:8. It was only when they persisted in
opposing and blaspheming, that he desisted from further effort among
them and turned to the Gentiles. Acts 13:45-47; 18:6; 19:9. Wherever he
went he encountered the bitterest persecution on the part of his own
countrymen, because of the prominence which he gave to the great
evangelical principles above considered--that men have justification not
wholly or in part through the Mosaic law, but simply through faith in
Christ, and that in him the distinction between Jews and Gentiles is
abolished. Even the believing Jews found it hard to apprehend these
truths in their fullness. In the narrowness of their Jewish prejudices
they were anxious to impose on the Gentile converts the yoke of the
Mosaic law. This, Paul steadfastly resisted, and it is to his defence of
Gentile liberty that we owe, in great measure, those masterly
discussions on the ground of justification, and the unity of Jews and
Gentiles in Christ, which are so prominent in his epistles. Yet with his
uncompromising firmness of principle he united remarkable flexibility in
regard to the means of success. To those who would impose circumcision
on the Gentiles he "gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour." Gal.
2:5. But where no great principle was concerned, he was willing to
circumcise Timothy, out of regard to the feelings of the Jews; thus
becoming, in his own words, "all things to all men." 1 Cor. 9:22.

4. The peculiar character of the apostle's style is obvious to every
reader. It is in an eminent degree argumentative. He "reasoned with
them," says Luke, "out of the Scriptures." These words describe
accurately the character of both his epistles and his addresses to the
Jews as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. In addressing a Gentile
audience at Athens, he still "reasoned with them;" but it was now from
the inscription on one of their altars, from certain of their own poets,
and from the manifestations in nature of God's power and Godhead. His
reasoning takes occasionally the form of an argument within an argument.
He pauses by the way to expand some thought, and does not return again
to complete in grammatical form the sentence which he had begun; so that
his style sometimes becomes complex and obscure. The versatility of the
apostle's mind, which made him equally at hom