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Education
His afterlife was inspired by the one principle of self-sacrifice, the
ministry of love. “I am debtor,” he said, “both to the Greeks, and to the
barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.” “The love of Christ
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constraineth us.”
Romans 1:14
;
2 Corinthians 5:14
.
The greatest of human teachers, Paul accepted the lowliest as well
as the highest duties. He recognized the necessity of labor for the hand
as well as for the mind, and he wrought at a handicraft for his own
support. His trade of tent making he pursued while daily preaching
the gospel in the great centers of civilization. “These hands,” he
said, at parting with the elders of Ephesus, “have ministered unto my
necessities, and to them that were with me.”
Acts 20:34
.
While he possessed high intellectual endowments, the life of Paul
revealed the power of a rarer wisdom. Principles of deepest import,
principles concerning which the greatest minds of this time were
ignorant, are unfolded in his teachings and exemplified in his life. He
had that greatest of all wisdom, which gives quickness of insight and
sympathy of heart, which brings man in touch with men, and enables
him to arouse their better nature and inspire them to a higher life.
Listen to his words before the heathen Lystrians, as he points them
to God revealed in nature, the Source of all good, who “gave us rain
from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and
gladness.”
Acts 14:17
.
See him in the dungeon at Philippi, where, despite his pain-racked
body, his song of praise breaks the silence of midnight. After the
earthquake has opened the prison doors, his voice is again heard, in
words of cheer to the heathen jailer, “Do thyself no harm: for we are all
here” (
Acts 16:28
)—every man in his place, restrained by the presence
of one fellow prisoner. And the jailer, convicted of the reality of that
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faith which sustains Paul, inquires the way of salvation, and with his
whole household unites with the persecuted band of Christ’s disciples.
See Paul at Athens before the council of the Areopagus, as he
meets science with science, logic with logic, and philosophy with
philosophy. Mark how, with the tact born of divine love, he points to
Jehovah as “the Unknown God,” whom his hearers have ignorantly
worshiped; and in words quoted from a poet of their own he pictures
Him as a Father whose children they are. Hear him, in that age of
caste, when the rights of man as man were wholly unrecognized, as
he sets forth the great truth of human brotherhood, declaring that God