Reading: Methods, Chapter 7: Paul's Preaching

Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?
By Roland Allen

Chapter 7: The Substance of St. Paul's Preaching

Of St. Paul's preaching we have in the Acts three examples, the sermon at Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13. 16-41), the speech at Lystra (Acts 14. 15-17), and the speech at Athens (Acts 17. 22-31). We have also five incidental references to its substance: a description given by the soothsaying girl at Philippi (Acts 16. 17), a summary of his teaching in the synagogue at Thessalonica (Acts 17. 2, 3), a note of the points which struck the Athenians in the Agora as strange (Acts 17. I8), an assertion with reference to its tone and character made by the Town Clerk at Ephesus (Acts 19. 37), and a reiteration of its fundamental elements by St. Paul himself in his last address to the Ephesian eiders (Acts 20. 21). Besides these, we have an account of his preaching at Corinth given by St. Paul himself in his first Epistle to that Church (1 Cor. 2.2). These accounts are naturally divided into two classes: the preaching in the synagogue, and the preaching to the Gentiles.

The account is given by St. Luke of the preaching in the synagogue at Thessalonica exactly agrees with, and naturally recalls, the sermon in the synagogue at Antioch, of which the main outline is set before us at some length, and it is unquestioned that that sermon so set forth is, and is intended to be, a type of all St. Paul's teaching in the many synagogues to which he went.

The sermon is divided into three parts by dramatic appeals to the attention of his hearers. In the first, St. Paul builds upon the past history of the Jewish race and shows that his Gospel is rooted there, that in his message there is no casting away of the things familiar, no denial of the truth of the old revelation made to the Fathers; but rather that the whole history of Israel is the divinely ordered preparation for the new revelation in the Messiah. In the second, he sets forth the facts of the coming and rejection of Jesus and His consequent crucifixion. Here it is startling with what simple and unhesitating directness St. Paul faces at once this great difficulty, the difficulty which has at all times everywhere been the most serious hindrance in the way of the acceptance of the Gospel -- the rejection of the missionary's message by his own people. He does not shrink from it, he does not apologize for it, he does not attempt to conceal its weight. He sets it forth definitely, clearly, boldly; he makes it part of his argument for the truth of his message. It is the fulfillment of prophecy. Then he produces his conclusive proof, the Resurrection, witnessed by the apostles, foretold by the prophets, the fulfillment of the promise. In the third part, he proclaims his message of pardon for all who will receive it, and utters a solemn warning of the consequences that will follow its rejection.

We may see here five elements and four characteristics of St. Paul's preaching in the synagogue. The five elements are these:

(1) An appeal to the past, an attempt to win sympathy by a statement of truth common to him and to his hearers. This statement of common belief creates naturally a bond of union. It ensures that the speaker starts with the agreement and approval of his hearers. It also prepares the ground for the new seed. The new truth is shown to grow out of, and to be in harmony with, truth already known and accepted. It does not appear as a strange and startling assertion of something at variance with all that has before guided and enlightened life.

(2) There is a statement of facts, an assertion of things that can be understood, apprehended, accepted, disputed, or proved. There is a presentation of the concrete, tangible, homely story, of something easily grasped, the story of life and death. It is indeed the story of divine life and a divine death, but it moves on the plane of earth, with which all alike are familiar, the injustice of rulers, the fluctuating passions of crowds, the marvelous recovery, the Divine act of the Resurrection.

(3) There is the answer to the inevitable objection, to the instinctive protest, that all the wisest and most thoughtful and most judicial minds among the speaker's own people have decided against the claims here made. There is a careful presentment of the proof, the evidence of trustworthy men, the agreement of the new truth with the old which has already been acknowledged.

(4) There is the appeal to the spiritual needs of men, to the craving for pardon, and the comforting assurance that in the new teaching may be found peace and confidence.

(5) Finally, there is the grave warning. The rejection of God's message involves serious danger. The way of salvation may be refused, and is commonly refused, but not without peril.

Those are the elements. The characteristics are these: (I) Conciliatoriness and sympathy with the condition of his hearers, readiness to recognize all that is good in them and in their doctrine, sympathy with their difficulties, and care to make the way for them as plain and simple as possible. (2) Courage in the open acknowledgment of difficulties which cannot be avoided, and in the direct assertion of unpalatable truth. There is no attempt to keep the door open by partial statements, no concealment of the real issue, and all that it involves, no timid fear of giving offense, no suggestion of possible compromise, no attempt to make things really difficult appear easy. (3) Respect. There is a careful presentation of suitable evidence, there is an appeal to the highest faculties in man. St. Paul speaks to men as naturally religious persons and appeals to them as living souls conscious of spiritual powers and spiritual needs. (4) There is unhesitating confidence in the truth of his message, and in its power to meet and satisfy the spiritual needs of men.

These four characteristics of St. Paul's preaching we shall find everywhere. The elements are not always the same. In particular, there is one element which is very prominent in the preaching to the heathen which has no place here. There is no demand for a break with the old religion. The Jew might become a Christian without abandoning any of the forms of Judaism. A Gentile could not become a Christian without a definite repudiation of his early faith and a definite renunciation of its practice. The break for the Jew was internal only. He ceased to seek his own righteousness in the careful observation of the Law, but outwardly he might still keep the Law. For a Gentile to continue as a Christian to observe the outward forms of his old religion was, to St. Paul, impossible. It is also noticeable that there is not here the same insistence upon the imminence of judgment which holds an important place in the preaching to the heathen. The other elements we shall, I think, find more or less prominent in that preaching. With the two exceptions to which I have just alluded, there seems to be a closer agreement between the preaching in the synagogue and the preaching outside than is sometimes allowed.

Of the preaching, to the heathen, we have two examples given us at some length, the speech at Lystra and the speech at Athens. If these were typical examples of St. Paul's preaching to heathen, they would certainly make us think that there was a great gulf between his preaching in the synagogue and his preaching outside. The sermon in the synagogue at Antioch is, comparatively speaking, complete. It contains a real account of the Person and work of the Saviour; the speeches at Lystra and Athens are only preliminary to any teaching about Christ. But as I think we shall see, these are not really typical examples; they are speeches made under exceptional circumstances at dramatic moments in St. Paul's career. They are to be compared with 'the Speech on the Stairs' to the crowd in the Temple rather than with the sermon in the synagogue. The speech on the stairs is not a typical example of St. Paul's preaching of the Gospel to Jews, neither are these typical examples of St. Paul's preaching of the Gospel to Gentiles.

The speech at Lystra is an extremely simple address, designed to check an excited crowd which proposed to do sacrifice to the apostles under the belief that they were gods. It begins with an explanation of the position of the apostles as messengers of God. It contains a simple statement of the nature of God the Creator, and of His personal care for His children, and of the folly of idolatry, with an exhortation to turn from it. Then an answer is given to the natural objection that, if this were true, God would not have left His children so long in ignorance; and proofs are given, drawn from the familiar course of nature, the succession of the seasons, the rain, the harvest.

For all its profundity of tone and philosophic garb, the speech at Athens is singularly like that at Lystra in its actual teaching. Here too St. Paul begins with the declaration of the nature of God as Lord of Heaven and earth. Here too he brings out in sharp contrast the contradiction between idolatry and the nature of God; only, in speaking to highly educated men, he tries to draw their sympathy by using quotations from their own literature in support of his argument. Here too he answers the natural objection to his teaching that it is new and that in the past God had left men in ignorance of it. Here too he insists upon the need for repentance. But here he adds, what he has elsewhere especially noted as an important element in his preaching, judgment at hand, with its proof that the Judge has been appointed, and His appointment ratified in the sight of all men by the fact of the Resurrection.

These speeches are chiefly important as illustrations of St. Paul's characteristic method of approach to men and of his wonderful adaptability to changing circumstances. Every one of the characteristics of the sermon at Antioch is here, the sympathy and conciliatory address, the courage, the respect, the confidence; but of the elements very few. There is no setting forth of the Gospel. Professor Ramsay indeed says: 'There is nothing in the reported words of St. Paul that is overtly Christian, and nothing (with the possible exception of "the man whom he hath ordained") that several Greek philosophers might not have said.' I cannot quite accept that estimate. There is more, I think, in the last verse of the speech at Athens than Professor Ramsay allows; but Mr. Rackham seems to be using equally exaggerated language when in his Commentary on the Acts he describes this speech as 'St Paul's Gospel for the Greeks'. These speeches were rather examples of the way in which St. Paul made his first approach to people who were either ignorant of, or in practice denied, the fundamental truths which lie behind the Gospel, than a setting forth of his Gospel. It is important to notice how carefully St. Luke calls attention to the meager results of the preaching in Athens. It is almost certain that the emphasis which St. Paul puts upon 'the Cross' in his preaching at Corinth marks, and is meant to mark, a difference between his preaching at Athens and his preaching at Corinth. These speeches then are certainly not representative of St. Paul's preaching to the heathen. The few slight references in the Acts to the general tenor of his preaching elsewhere make this abundantly clear. The soothsaying girl at Philippi called attention to two points in St. Paul's message, the Most High God, and the Way of Salvation. Now if the first of these is fully represented in the speeches at Athens and Lystra, the second is scarcely referred to in either. Again in St. Paul's own summary of his teaching at Ephesus the two elements of the first importance are said to have been, 'Repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ', and here again if the first finds a place in the speeches at Athens and Lystra, the second finds none. Or, again, the charge made against St. Paul at Thessalonica was that he was preaching the Kingdom of Christ, 'that there is another King, one Jesus') But of this there is not a hint in the speeches.

In the light of these facts, it is, I think, impossible to maintain that the speeches at Lystra and Athens represent St. Paul's Gospel. It also seems unfair to base upon them a theory that St. Paul approached his Gentile hearers with great caution and economy, leading them gradually on from heathenism by a semi-pagan philosophy to Christianity. It is perfectly just to argue from them that the Christian missionary should strive to possess a sound knowledge of the religion of those to whom he speaks, and should approach them with a sympathetic understanding of their intellectual position; but that is a totally different thing. It is one thing to preach Christ with a sympathetic knowledge of the belief of those to whom we preach and to base our appeal on the common truth which we hold together with our hearers; it is another thing to spend our time philosophizing when we might be preaching Christ. If St. Paul philosophized at Athens he did not philosophize as a general rule, and he has told us quite plainly what he thought was more important. Philosophical disquisitions have no doubt their place; but for mission preaching the supreme subject is 'the Cross', 'Repentance, and Faith'.

It may be justly argued from these speeches that St. Paul did not, and that the Christian missionary today should not, make bitter and virulent attacks upon the objects of his hearers' veneration. It is true that St. Paul denounced idolatry in strong terms, speaking of 'these vain things' and 'this ignorance', but in doing this he was only taking a position sanctioned by the highest intellects of his day and recognized by all as a common attitude amongst thoughtful men. Similarly today a missionary in China might denounce in strong terms the folly of Taoist superstitions, and in doing so he would receive the approval of all right-minded Chinese because that is the proper attitude for an enlightened teacher to take up; it is the attitude of the Sacred Edict. But that is not the same thing as to rail upon the religion of those whom he addresses. St. Paul did not do that either at Lystra or at Athens, and the Town Clerk at Ephesus is witness that he did not blaspheme the goddess of that city. This is quite in harmony with the characteristic attitude of St. Paul to his hearers which I have before noted. Christians in later days, accustomed to more bitter methods of controversy, could not understand this. To St. Chrysostom it seemed incredible that St. Paul should have refrained from the fierce denunciation of the false goddess. He explained the matter by saying that the Town Clerk was not stating a known fact but simply using a form of speech which he thought calculated to quiet an excited crowd. In later ages, this same habit of mind still lingered on, and it is only now dying out. Now, it is happily rare to hear a missionary revile the religion of other people, or hold up the objects of their veneration to scorn and ridicule, and it is to be hoped that it may soon cease altogether.

If we cannot accept the speeches at Athens and Lystra as typical of St. Paul's address to heathen people, still, we are not left wholly to the guidance of the few scattered statements concerning his main doctrines which I have quoted above. We have as a witness the epistles to the Thessalonians. The first epistle was written about a year after St. Paul's first preaching in the city, where, according to Professor Ramsay's calculation he had labored for only five months. Thus his stay had not been long enough for him to do more than teach the fundamental truths which seemed to him of the first importance; all the circumstances of his visit were still fresh in his memory and he was recalling to the minds of his readers what he had taught them by word of mouth. Now in that epistle, we get an extraordinarily clear and coherent scheme of simple mission preaching not only implied but definitely expressed. Briefly, that teaching contains the following elements:

(1) There are one living and true God ( 1.9); (2) Idolatry is sinful and must be forsaken (1.9); (3) The wrath of God is ready to be revealed against the heathen for their impurity (4. 6), and against the Jews for their rejection of Christ and their opposition to the Gospel (2. 15, 16); (4) The judgment will come suddenly and unexpectedly (5.2, 3); (5) Jesus the Son of God (1. 10), given over to death (5. 10), raised from the dead (4. 14): is the Saviour from the wrath of God (1. 10); (6) The Kingdom of Jesus is now set up and all men are invited to enter it (2. 12); (7) Those who believe and turn to God are now expecting the coming of the Saviour who will return from heaven to receive them (1. 10; 4. 15-17); (8) Meanwhile their life must be pure (4. 1-8), useful (4. 11, 12), and watchful (5. 4-8); (9) To that end God has given them His Holy Spirit (4. 8; 5. 19).'

This Gospel accords perfectly with the account which St. Paul gives of his preaching in his last address to the Ephesian elders, and it contains all the elements which are to be found in all the sermons and in all the notices of St. Paul's preaching in the Acts, except only the answers to the objections against the Gospel, and the proofs of its truth which would be manifestly out of place in writing to Christians. The nature of God, one, living, personal, loving; the facts of the life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the death, the resurrection: their meaning and their power to supply the spiritual needs of men; the folly of idolatry; the way of salvation: repentance and faith; the doctrine of the kingdom; the nearness of judgment: all are there, not one is omitted, and they form one connected whole of extraordinary power.

We can easily understand how such a Gospel would appeal to the minds of St. Paul's hearers. To those who, among the conflicting claims and confusing teachings of polytheism, were seeking for some unity in the world of nature and of thought, St. Paul brought a doctrine, at once simple and profound, of one personal God living and true, the Creator of all. To men who sought for some intelligent account of the world, its nature, and its end, St. Paul revealed a moral purpose in the light of which all the perplexities, uncertainties, and apparent contradictions, resolved themselves into divine harmony. To men of high moral instincts, appalled and dismayed at the impurity of society around them, St. Paul offered the assurance of moral judgment. To men oppressed by the sense of sin, he brought the assurance of pardon and release. To the downtrodden, the sad, the hopeless, he opened the door into a kingdom of light and liberty. To those who were terrified by the fear of malignant spirits, he revealed a Spirit benignant, watchful, and ever-present, all-powerful, and able at a word to banish the power of darkness. To men dissatisfied with the worship of idols, he taught the pure service of one true God. To people whose imaginations were overwhelmed by the terrors and darkness of the grave, he gave the assurance of a future beyond the grave in the bliss and peace of the Risen Lord. To the weak who needed support, to sinners bound with the chain of vice, to people unable to cope with the depressed morality of their heathen surroundings, he brought the promise of an indwelling Spirit of power. To the lonely, he offered the friendly warmth and society of a company all eagerly looking forward to a bright day when Grace would come and this world with all its perplexities and troubles pass away. It is no wonder then that this Gospel of St. Paul appealed to men, fired their imaginations, filled them with hope, and strengthened them with the power to face persecution.

Yet to embrace this new religion was not easy. There was, as we have seen, in St. Paul's preaching a conciliatory, sympathetic attitude towards the heathen. There was no violent attack, no crude and brutal assault upon their beliefs, still less was there any scornful or flippant mocking of their errors. But, on the other hand, there was no weak condoning of the offense of idolatry, no eager anxiety to make the best of a false religion, no hazy suggestion that every religion if only it is rightly understood, is a worship of the true God and teaching which leads to Him. St. Paul gave his hearers a perfectly clear, definite understanding of what was required of them. To enjoy the hope set before them they must be prepared for a complete break with the past. There was no easy road to Christ's glory, no making the best of both worlds, no hope of salvation but in Christ, and no entrance into the Church except with the certainty of suffering persecution.

There is today a tendency to avoid this stern doctrine. We are tempted to rather exaggerate the truth and virtue of heathen religions and to minimize the gulf which separates the man who is 'in Christ' from the man who is not. We hesitate to speak, we scarcely dare to think, of idolatry as sin. We have lost the sense that the Judge is at the door and that the wrath of God against all ungodliness is ready to be revealed. We no longer look upon the acceptance of our message as 'deliverance from the wrath to come'. We tend to think that the duty of the Church is rather to Christianize the world than to gather out of the world the elect of God into the fellowship of His Son. We hear men speak vaguely of the salvation of the race rather than of the salvation of the saints.

This attitude of mind is most clearly and amply expressed by Mr. Bernard Lucas in The Empire of Christ, and it leads him to the conclusion that we ought to receive the Hindu 'without demanding that exclusion from his social environment which baptism and the renunciation of caste involve'. If we begin by insisting that the leavening of the heathen world with Christian ideas is the true aim of the Christian Church, and then argue that the truly appalling character of the complete break with the heathen past -- which is involved in the open acceptance of Christianity, and the confession of Christ, and admission into His body -- is a stumbling-block in the way of the the general acceptance of Christian ideas by pagan nations, we speedily arrive at the conclusion that everything which accentuates the difficulty, or attracts attention to the gravity of the change involved in passing from the one dominion to the other, should be abandoned. If our hope is to see gradual transformation of native religious thought and practice, and the gradual evolution of a higher type, we naturally deprecate sudden and startling rupture. The work of the Christian missionary is not to call men from the heathen temple into the Church of God but to trim the dimly glowing lamp of God in the heathen temple, and to pour into it a few drops of the oil of Christian doctrine till it shines with a new radiance.

Where this tendency manifests itself, it is due to the fact that we have lost the true conception of the nature and work of faith as preached by St. Paul. As he taught, the one essential condition of life was faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. But faith in Jesus Christ involved, in itself, a breach with the past. Faith was not a mere intellectual assent to a new theory of religion which could be held whilst the life remained what it was before. It was not a mere acknowledgment of a new moral law, of a duty of following the example of a new Teacher which could be obeyed without breaking away from the old law. It was not mere recognition of the beauty of the life and teaching of the Lord which might make a man love His character from a distance. It was an act by which a man came into personal contact with the Divine source of life. It was an act by which he opened his soul to the influence of a Spirit. It admitted to a vital union. It was the condition of the new birth. It resulted in a new creation. The moment a man had faith, life for him consisted of union with Christ. Consequently, it meant the acceptance of a new source of life. It meant dependence upon Christ for the supply and maintenance of life. It meant the abandonment of the old conception of life, nay, of the very life itself as he before knew it. It meant the casting away of all the former things.

But this total and entire conversion of the inner man, this absolute doing away of the old and acceptance of the new life, being in its nature a real breach and not a formal one, necessarily involved a corresponding outward breach with the old form of life. Of this breach, baptism was the sacrament. In baptism, the change was effected and realized in fact. Baptism was not a mere formal external act, a symbol of a spiritual fact which was already complete without it. A spiritual conversion which was not also a conversion of life was no conversion at all, but a delusion. Spiritual facts being more real than outward facts must dominate the outward life, or else we are reduced to drawing a sharp line of demarcation between the spiritual and the material worlds and treating them as independent spheres, and that St. Paul always refused to do. With the heart man believes, with the mouth he confesses; but a mouth that does not confess disproves the existence of a heart that believes. The soul cannot be God's and the life not God's at the same time. The soul cannot be recreated and life remains unchanged. The spiritual breach is proved and realized and completed in the outward breach. Where there is no outward change it is safe to deny an inward change. Faith without baptism and all that baptism involved was consequently no part of St. Paul's teaching.

Furthermore, this easy doctrine of evangelization has been made easier for us by the fact that we have lost, in these days, two of the most prominent elements of St. Paul's Gospel: the doctrine of judgment at hand, and the doctrine of the wrath of God. St. Paul did not preach that in times past men had lived under the stern dominion of law and that with the Gospel had come a day of toleration; he preached that in times past God had been longsuffering and that now He called upon all men everywhere to repent because the day of judgment was at hand. He did not preach that the mission of the Gospel was to reveal the true beauty of heathen religions; but that it was to open a door of salvation to those who would flee from the wrath to come. He did not deny the salvation of good heathen, but he did not preach that men could be as certainly saved by being good heathen as by being good Christians. He proclaimed that the man who was 'in Christ' was 'in the way of salvation' 'saved', and the man who was not in Christ was 'perishing'. He did not argue that it was desirable to embroider or conceal the doctrine of the Cross which was a stumbling-block to Jews and Gentiles alike, but that the first duty of him who would find salvation in Christ was to embrace the Cross in baptism and, dying to his heathen past, rise into a new life with Christ. He did not minimize the breach between Christianity and heathenism: he declared that the one was the kingdom of evil, the other the Kingdom of God, and that his work was to turn men 'from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God'.

Personally, I feel inclined to believe that in both these respects our modern doctrine is not more true than the doctrine of the ancients, whilst it is far less effective. I believe that in concentrating our thought upon the continuity and uniformity of the world processes we have lost sight of the equally true facts of change, catastrophe, judgment. If there is no judgment 'human life is the only process that we know that comes to no vivid conclusion; moral discipline is the only seed that has no harvest'. There is in St. Paul's definite soul-stirring assertion of the wrath of God and the reality of judgment at hand, a truth more profound than any that underlies our somewhat enfeebled ideas of universal benevolence and the determined progress of the race. There is something more true in his denunciation of idolatry as sin than in our denial that it is possible for a man to worship an idol, or in our suggestion that all idolatry is only a road to spiritual worship of the one true God. There is something stronger and better in his unhesitating insistence on the necessity of those who come to Christ breaking with their past than in Mr. Bernard Lucas's doctrine that in the Christianizing of the world all men will be brought to Christ. One day I think we shall return to these stern doctrines, realizing in them, a truth more profound than we now know; and then we shall preach them with conviction, and being convinced ourselves we shall convince others. 'Knowing the terror of the Lord' we shall persuade men, to the great advancement of the Kingdom of God. Meanwhile, if only we could avoid explaining away those passages of Holy Scripture which speak of the Second Coming and the Judgment, which we confessedly cannot explain, I believe we should often find that our converts would understand them better than we do and would help us to understand them.

St. Paul expected his hearers to be moved. He so believed in his preaching that he knew that it was 'the power of God unto salvation'. This expectation is a very real part of the presentation of the Gospel. It is a form of faith. Mere preaching which is not accompanied by the expectation of faith, is not true preaching of the Gospel, because faith is a part of the Gospel. Simply to scatter the seed, with a sort of vague hope that some of it may come up somewhere, is not preaching the Gospel. It is indeed a misrepresentation of the Gospel. To preach the Gospel requires that the preacher should believe that he is sent to those whom he is addressing at the moment because God has among them those whom He is at the moment calling: it requires that the speaker should expect a response. The air of expectation pervades all the accounts of St. Paul's preaching. Everywhere we are made to recognize, not only that St. Paul expected to make converts, but that others expected it also. This accounts for the opposition which his preaching created. People were afraid of his preaching, and fear is a form of expectation: it is a form of faith. St. Paul himself was inspired by the faith of hope: he inspired others with the faith of fear. Everywhere he was surrounded by an atmosphere of faith.

Further, he always contrived to bring his hearers to a point. There was none of the indeterminate, inconclusive talking, which we are apt to describe as 'sowing the seed'. Our idea of 'sowing the seed' seems to be rather like scattering wheat out of a balloon. We read, in our reports, of missionaries on evangelistic tours visiting village after village, talking to little crowds of hearers, telling them the good news; but very little seems to be expected to come of it. Occasionally, of course, grains of wheat scattered out of a balloon will fall upon plowed and fertile land and will spring up and bear fruit; but it is a casual method of sowing. St. Paul did not scatter seeds, he planted. He so dealt with his hearers that he brought them speedily and directly to a point of decision, and then he demanded of them that they should make a choice and act on their choice. In this way, he kept the moral issue clearly before them and made them realize that his preaching was not merely a novel and interesting doctrine, but a life.

The possibility of rejection was ever-present. St. Paul did not establish himself in a place and go on preaching for years to men who refused to act on his teaching. When once he had brought them to a point where a decision was clear, he demanded that they should make their choice. If they rejected him, he rejected them. The 'shaking of the lap', the 'shaking of the dust from the feet', the refusal to teach those who refused to act on the teaching, was a vital part of the Pauline presentation of the Gospel. He did not simply 'go away', he openly rejected those who showed themselves unworthy of his teaching. It was part of the Gospel that men might 'judge themselves unworthy of eternal life'. It is a question that needs serious consideration whether the Gospel can be truly presented if this element is left out. Can there be true teaching which does not involve the refusal to go on teaching? The teaching of the Gospel is not a mere intellectual instruction: it is a moral process and involves a moral response. If then we go on teaching where that moral response is refused, we cease to preach the Gospel; we make the teaching a mere education of the intellect. This is why so much of our teaching of the Gospel in schools and zenanas is ineffective. We teach, but we do not teach morally. We do not demand a moral response. We are afraid to take responsibility which morally rests upon us of shaking the lap. We should refuse to give intellectual teaching to a pupil if he refused to give us his attention: we might equally refuse to give religious teaching to a pupil who refused to give us religious attention.

It is a question that needs serious consideration whether we ought to plant ourselves in a town or village and continue for years teaching people who deliberately refuse to give us a moral hearing. We persevere in this in spite of the fact that near at hand are men who are eager and willing to give us that moral hearing. We are afraid to take responsibility which morally rests upon us of shaking the lap. We have forgotten that the same Lord who gave us the command to go, gave us the command to shake off the dust from our feet. We have lost the art of shaking the lap, we have learned the art of steeling our hearts and shutting up the bowels of our compassion against those who cry to us for the Gospel.

There is one other aspect of St. Paul's preaching which is often taken for granted, but is certainly not true -- that the Gospel of St. Paul was purely individualistic. To the heathen crowd St. Paul addressed himself as to a mass of souls from amongst which he was to gather the elect children of God. But he did not approach them as an isolated prophet: he came as an Apostle of the Church of God, and he did not simply seek to gather out individual souls from amongst the heathen, he gathered them into the society of which he was a member. He did not teach them that they would find salvation by themselves alone, but that they would find it in the perfecting of the Body of Christ. Souls were not invited to enter into an isolated solitary religious life of communion with Christ: they were invited to enter the society in which the Spirit manifested Himself and in which they would share in the communication of His life. It was inconceivable that a Christian taught by St. Paul could think of himself as obtaining a personal salvation by himself. He became one of the brethren. He shared in the common sacraments. The Church was not an invisible body formed of unknown 'believers'. Men were admitted by their baptism into a very visible society, liable to be attacked by very visible foes. The Apostle who preached to them was a member of it, and he preached as a member of it, and as a member of it he invited them to enter it, to share its privileges and its burdens, its glory and its shame. Entrance into it was guarded by a very definite and unmistakable sacrament. Thus Christianity was from the very beginning both individualistic and socialistic.

St. Paul's preaching ever appealed to and demanded the exercise of the two highest and deepest convictions of men, their sense of individual responsibility and their sense of social communion with their fellows. Repentance and faith are the keynotes of his preaching. He strove always to bring men to make that act of spiritual surrender by which they renounce the past and turn to Christ. In repentance they confess their past wrongdoing; in faith they find forgiveness as members of Christ's Body. In repentance they recognize their weakness; in faith they find strength by the administration of the Spirit of Christ. In repentance they confess the way in which they have walked is a way of death; in faith they find in the Kingdom of Christ the way of life. In repentance they break with a sinful world; in faith they enter the Church.