In contrasting Epictetus with Paul to the disadvantage of the former, I was far from imagining that the latter had unloosed the knot of the origin of sin. But at all events he recognised the existence of the knot. Epictetus ignored it, or failed to recognise it. He spoke in the same breath of God’s ordaining “vice and virtue, winter and summer,” as though God’s appointing that some men shall be bad caused him no more difficulty than His appointing that some days shall be cold.
Paul, on the other hand, treated death as though it were a curse in the intention of Satan, but a blessing (or step towards blessing) through the controlling will of God. He also spoke of a spiritual body rising out of the dead earthly body, as flower and fruit rise out of the decaying seed. I did not at first feel sure what he meant by this. Flower and fruit resemble seed in that they can be touched. Did Paul mean that the spiritual body resembled the earthly body in being tangible, besides being more beautiful? I thought not. It seemed to me possible that a person in the flesh, dying, might become a person in the spirit, living for ever. A man’s actions and sufferings, sown in the transient flesh, might after death become part of the flower of the imperishable spirit, the real man, the spiritual body. That, I thought, was what Paul meant. This belief I found also stimulative to well-doing, according to the saying of Paul himself, “I press on, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.” Moreover I remembered the “angel of Satan” appointed for Paul to keep him from pride, and how he prayed against it, and received a[144] revelation “My grace is sufficient for thee.” If prayer and strength were brought about for Paul by an “adversary” of prayer, might not righteousness be brought about for the human race by the “adversary” of righteousness? I did not myself at that time believe in the existence of such an “adversary”; but Paul’s belief seemed to me not unreasonable.
This turned me to other passages in the epistles concerning “Satan,” or the “angels of Satan,” or “principalities and powers.” And I contrasted them with what Epictetus had said, “All things are full of Gods and daemons,” meaning good daemons. Once more, the words of Epictetus seemed the nobler. But were they true? What did they amount to in fact? Nothing except “wisdom of word,” calling the four elements “friends”! Thus in the end—though very slowly and reluctantly—I was brought, first, to understand, and then to favour, Paul’s opinion, namely, that so far as we can see the truth in the “enigma” of the “mirror” of this world, there is being waged a battle of good against evil, order against disorder, light against darkness, life against death.
What Isaiah said concerning the stars and God’s “leading them forth” gave me some help, just when I was thinking about the “conflict between light and darkness.” For how, I thought, does God bring forth the stars except through the hand of His angel of darkness? Yet we, men, mostly speak of “darkness” as an enemy. And so, in a sense, it often is. Yet it is revealed in the aspect of a servant of God when besides bringing us the blessing of rest and sleep it leads forth the hosts of glories that (except for darkness) would never have been perceived. So, darkness brings God’s greatness to light. Paul certainly predicted that the same truth would hereafter be recognised about death and about the apparent disorder of Nature, and her “groanings and travailings”; and it seemed to me that he extended the same doctrine even to sin.
The result was that I found myself content to accept—in a manner, and provisionally—what Paul said about “Satan” and about “principalities” and at the same time what he said to the effect that all things are from God and through God and to God, and, “For them that believe, all things work together for[145] good.” In my judgment, it was better—yes, and more reasonable, in Paul’s sense of the word “reason”—to feel that I was in the Universe fighting a real fight against evil but looking up to God as my Helper, than to feel that there was no evil or enemy for me anywhere except in myself, and no friend either. So in the end I said, “Better to have been under the curse of death with Paul, if the curse may lead to a supreme blessing of life eternal in the presence of the Father, than to pass out of life with Epictetus, without any experience of curse at all, as so much earth, air, fire and water, into the nominal friendship of Gods and daemons!”
In allowing myself thus to be led away by my new Jewish teacher I was not influenced by his letters alone, but by legends and traditions—to some of which he referred—in the Hebrew histories, visions, and prophecies. Some of these taught, predicted, prefigured, or suggested that, while man and the brute forces of man and nature blindly imagine that they are moving the wheel of the universe, God alone is really moving it, and is using them to move it, towards His own decreed and foreordained purpose.
To the most beautiful of all such visions I was drawn by these words of Paul, “Know ye not what the scripture saith of Elijah?” Here a marginal note in my MS. referred me to the whole story, how Elijah, having slain with the sword the adversaries of God, was himself forced to flee from the sword of King Ahab, to Mount Horeb or Sinai, where the Law had once been given to Israel amid lightnings and thunders. And here the prophet was taught that God is not in the principalities of Nature, not in the tempest or fire or earthquake, but in “the still small voice.” This agreed with a passage in Isaiah concerning the Deliverer, “He shall not cry aloud.” In comparison with these and other similar poems and prophecies, the best things that the Greeks have written began to appear to me like mere “wisdom of word.”
As regards the time when Paul’s “good news” or “gospel” of “the righteous judgment” of God was to be fulfilled, I gathered that the judgments of God had been revealed to the[146] apostle as having been working from the beginning of the world—seen, as it were, through openings in a veil—in the deluge, in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, in the punishment of the Egyptians for persecuting Israel, in the punishments of Israel during and after the Exodus, and especially in their captivity and the destruction of their temple. But he seemed to believe that he had received also some special revelation about a judgment to fall upon the Jews, or upon all mankind, as soon as the gospel had been proclaimed to the world, but not before.
His language, however, varied. To the Philippians he spoke as though he were in doubt whether to desire to depart and to be with Christ, or to “remain in the flesh” for the sake of his converts. This shewed that he contemplated the possibility of his dying before the Lord’s coming. And this was made still clearer in some of his sayings to Timothy, such as “I have fought the good fight,” if taken with their contexts. But to the Thessalonians he wrote somewhat differently. It appeared that certain of them were grievously disappointed because some of their brethren had died before the Lord’s coming. Paul wrote to console them, saying that they, too—that is the dead brethren—would be raised up. “We that are alive,” he said, “shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep”—as though he anticipated that, on the day of the Coming, the greater number of the brethren, and he among them, would be still “alive.”
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