Los Angeles herald., 1908-03-23
OPPORTUNITY rs
SUBJECT OF SERMON
DR.. j. L. JONES DISCUSSES ST.
PAUL'S LIFE
Eloquent Discourse Is Delivered at
First Unitarian Church Upon "one
of Most Striking PERSONAL.
ties of Bible"

Opportunity was the subject of DR..
Jenkin Lloyd Jones, from which he
delivered an eloquent sermon yester-
day morning at the First Unitarian
church. He said:
AFTER all eliminations and doubts,
notwithstanding all the uncertainties,
the meagerneSs of the records, the un-
certain authorship, the fragmentary
and belated biographical records In the
Book of Acts, Paul. the man, stands
out as one of the most striking per-
sonalities in the Bible, and one of the
great pivotal history making men of
the world.
Some of the epistles assigned to
him are clearly the products of other
and later hands, and the more authen-
tic letters to the Thessalonians, the
Corinthians and the Romans have suf-
fered the usual vicissitudes at the
hands of a careless world. Coypists
and compilers, commentators with
dogmatic intent, and ignorant and su-
perstitious ages, doubtless have done
them violence. The Book of Acts that,
contains the only biographical mat
ter concerning Paul that is left us,
outside of the photographed hints
in the letters, was compiled by some
unknown hand some thirty or more
years after his death.
Notwithstanding all this, construct
i've criticism is able to make out the
story of most wonderful man, a Jew
of the Jews, whose life was shot
through and through with the conceits,
conceptions and convictions of tradi-
tional Jewry, but also man of unique
insight, acute penetration and ex-
haustless enthusiasm. He was always
sick man; according to his own esti-
nation, man of mean presence and
of halting speech, and still, when Paul
died, perhaps prisoner in Rome, he
had permanently changed the drift of
history.
But this little Jew had a great soul,
an active mind and a conscience that
was invincible when aroused, so that
when the moment of reflection or the
dazzling vision came, he was a big
enough man to retract: he had a large
enough soul to revise his judgment
and profound enough to undergo con-
version.
paul is not always right. In the
first letter to the Corinthians we see
him in the tolls of the fallacies and
fancies of his time. He is scandalized
when a woman appears in the assem-
blies with her head uncovered; he
admonishes her to keep silence in the
church. And these opinions are en-
absolutely obsolete. But he Is ever
trustworthy in the presence of central
things and his emphasis on love and
morality is profound.
"The first characteristic of Paul's
message was a splencfd kind OF uni
versalism. Whatever his gospel was
(and we may dispute about that there
is no disputing the fact that he be-
lieved it was for everybody.
Next to the gospel of brotherhood
in Paul's message was the promise of
the new order of things. He was the
advocate of an ideal which was a
perpetual, vital, aggressive protest
against the actualities. Whatever
Pauls theory of Christ was and how
ever he came by it, and however diff
cult it may be for us to state it In
terms of thought, in the language of
philosophy. it is perfectly clear that
to him Christ was the perfect ideal,
the guide and the inspirer of those
who would lead holy lives.
Friends, do we belong to the house,
hold of Paul? Can we understand the
Pauline inspiration? No, not a bit of
it, unless we can enter into the Pauline
tasks. Let us turn our faces to the
future and rejoice in the 'adversaries
that are in the way for in them will
we find our inspiration, Like Paul we
must learn that by the cross and not
the crown will we conquer"