The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-11-28

press God to the Greek consciousness-that
is, his God. He wishes to tell men what
righteousness is, but he has no word which
will represent righteousness-tha is, his
conception of righteousness He wishes to
tell men how divine character can be OBJ
tanned and there rs no language by which
that idea can be expressed. The language
does not exist because the. idea does not
exist. He takes old words and puts new
meaning in them Scholars have gone back
to the Septuagini to see how the Greek
word was used there. They have gone to the
in there. But that does not help them to
understand Paul's use. We are to learn
Pauls meaning by studying Pauls use, by
comparing word with word and phrase with
phrase and passage with passage that we
may .grope our way to the tremendous life
which broke the language in fragments
which he employed to utter life.
SEER, PROPHET, ORATOR.
But this is not all. Paul was a seer and
a prophet, using the Greek language to ex-
press ideas which the Greek mind never had
entertained. But he was more than that
He was poet and dramatist and an ora
tor. The orator always thinks of his audi
ence when he speaks or when he writes. He
is not interested in the simple exposition of
truth, but he is interested in what is to get
this particular truth at this particular time
into the minds of the particular men and
women before him. They are before him in
sight, or before him in imagination. Wheth-
err therefore, he is a writer or speaker
if he has the oratorical temperament his
object is to put his intellectual life into the
life OF other men and women, that was
emphatically PauPs character. He was an
orator. Men have gone to his writings and
they have taken what Paul said was said of
him by his enemies as true description of
him. His bodily presence is weak and his
speech contemplate. Why do they not go
to the life itself? Look at this man in some
of the critical ,epochs of his life. He is set
nv mo- in he hpa ton hole
killed. seized, rescued from the mob by the
soldiers, and there, with his garments all
diSheveled and all covered with dust asks
May 1 speak to the mob raises his hand
and the mob bushes and listens. Mr.. Beech
er himself in England. never won greater
triumph of oratory than Paul had on the
two of his friends and rushes into theater
with them. The people do not know what
they are about. Paul can hardly be dis
suaded from rushing into the theater to
rescue his friends, because he feels sure of
his power to calm that audience with his
words. He breaches before Felix and Felix
trembles, who never was known to tremble
before or after-hard insensitive, callous
Roman that he was.
in oratorical forms, and men discuss him as
though he were an iceberg floating down
from the Arctic zone. He puts himself into
the attitude of men. He tells US So He is
concerned to understand the man he is talk
ing with. TO the Greek, he became a
Greek; to the Jew, he became Jew; he be-
man he did not aim to understand; 10 man
in whose place he did not try to put him
self that he might put life into him
''Now. this man with ideas that crack
language with life too great for the
language Of his time, this man enthralled
by his dalectic education and breaking
through it. this man using logical forms but
not logical processes. logical in his speech
but not in his mental structure, this man
full of passionate devotion to truth but
only because truth ministers to life this
man. Hebrew of Hebrews. but using only
the Hebrew method to impart Christian life
to the Greek world and through Greece TO
the heart of Europe this man is over full
and his words pour out of him as water
pours out of a bottle when you hold Il up-
side down. Sometimes he imagines an OBJ
lection and does not answer; sometimes he
quotes an objection and dismisses 1t with a
PshaW' sometimes he answers IT; some
times YOU cannot tell whether he Is a critic
or an advocate of a doctrine, and some
himself which he Is. Nor is this all He
does not always see the truth clearly before
he begins TO utter ii. He feels his way to
the truth IN his writings. He was born
isee In his writings you can sometimes see
him struggling to free himself from the
Pharisaic bands that bind him. and finally
emerging and CARRYING his audience with
him by the very struggle.
NOT A CONSISTENT MAN
''FinaIly. this man, prophet not philos-
opher. poet not logician. orator not scholas-
tic has written no treatise. only letters,
and a letter III never the sole product of the
man who writes IT. AS Tennyson says.
Sender and sent. go to make up this,
their offspring of this union. To know
Paulfs writings YOU must not know Paul
only, but the men lie writes to- He writes