F

and His Friends

CHAPTER I

Paul's Genius for Friendship

OR 1900 years the Christian world has looked up to Paul as a unique and inspired personality. Men have studied, admired, marvelled, at his manysidedness. They have analyzed his varied gifts,-mental, moral, and spiritual. They have tried to estimate his influence as a world force. They have endeavored to conceive what Christianity would be like today had he never lived or never been converted; and they have staggered at the appalling conception. Uncounted volumes have been put forth in every civilized language dealing with special aspects of his career. Men have studied him as persecutor and preacher, as pastor and orator; they have studied him as author and theologian, as missionary and martyr. It would be difficult to discover anything new to say on any of these phases of his career. It would be well-nigh impossible to say anything on them better than has already been done. But not yet, even with all that has been said and written for 1900 years, has the world, in my judgment, sufficiently recognized Paul's genius for friendship.

While nearly all writers have touched upon this phase of his character, yet none, as far as I know,

has devoted an entire volume to its discussion; nor in what they have said on the topic have they lifted it to the summit to which its inherent worth and significance entitle it. They have treated his genius for friendship as only one among the manifold phases of his character. It is such, and also is something more besides. A careful study of Paul's friendships and a just estimate of their rightful significance to him personally, and their place in his career during his life and after his death, sets before us the totality of the man, and his statesmanship as an organizer of churches and as one of the founders of Christianity, as perhaps nothing else can.

Probably the average Bible student thinks of Paul in almost any other light than as the great type of human friend. In short, the world is wont to depreciate the humanity of the great Apostle. He is set on a pedestal apart from the every day feelings and emotions. If not regarded as originally devoid of such, yet it seems to be felt that the overmastering sway of his great mission in life dwarfed, or at least suppressed, the activity of his feelings as a man among his fellow men. He is often regarded as entirely "other worldly." It is thought by many, and not infrequently boldly stated, that he lightly esteemed the domestic relations, if, in fact, he did not put a stigma upon marriage itself. None would challenge his supreme love for Christ. Perhaps none would deny that he loved men for the sake of their souls; but it is apparently believed by many that he loved them for the sake of their souls only,

The

that he did not love them for their own sakes. general view would appear to be that his interest in men as men went no farther than his desire to snatch them as brands from the burning. Of course there are many significant exceptions to this estimate of the Apostle; but I hazard the opinion that this is the average lay conception of his outlook upon men and life.

Nothing could do Paul a greater injustice. No man ever loved his fellows more passionately for their own sakes. He loved men as men. No man in all Scripture had so many personal friends as St. Paul. None in all Scripture gave expression to such intense affection for his friends. None had friends

among such varied nationalities, nor from such extremes of social gradations. None called forth such answering love, nor evoked such unselfish heroism and sacrifice.

The contemplation of this aspect of his life humanizes our view of his imperial character; puts him on a plane of sympathy and feeling with our common humanity; and, at the same time, exalts our conception of his genius. Such a study will magnify our appreciation of Paul in four particulars.

I

It Will Reveal to Us the Intensity of His Domestic Affections

That Paul was never married is the almost universal assumption. The reason is generally believed to be his coldness toward the marriage state and domes

tic relationships. In my opinion nothing could be farther from the truth. I believe he was in many ways one of the most lonely-hearted men that ever lived. Whether he ever distinctly analyzed the feeling or not, I believe his yearning for home and fireside was great beyond words. I believe few men ever lived who were capable of lavishing a tenderer affection upon wife and children and home. I regard his abstinence from marriage as one of his supreme sacrifices for the cross of Christ, one of the things included in his general statement where he uses this language concerning his devotion to Christ -"for whom I have suffered the loss of all things."

Or I

That Paul thoroughly considered the question of his own marriage is evidenced to me by his question-"Have not we the right to lead about a wife that is a believer, even as the rest of the Apostles. and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? only and Barnabas, have we not a right to forbear working?" From these questions several conclusions may safely be drawn: that the other Apostles were married, and their wives accompanied them on their missionary journeys; and that at times they rested from their labors, probably for domestic reasons of some kind; that Paul did not impeach the right of others to marry and rest at times at home; that he claimed the same privileges for himself; that he seriously considered taking the step, but finally voluntarily exercised the higher right of laying aside all thought of home and domestic affection for the sake of completer devotion to his great com

mission. He thus became one of that class to whom Christ referred when he said, speaking about some refraining from marrying-"Not all can receive this saying, but they to whom it is given." Paul was one "to whom it was given.'

There would appear to be two specific reasons why Paul made the great sacrifice of foregoing domestic ties. One was the belief which he seems to have held, at least in the earlier years of his ministry, that Christ would speedily return to earth, and that the whole world ought to be evangelized before that great event; and, therefore, nothing, even though it be as sacred as family relations, should be permitted to interfere in the least with a man's giving every ounce of his strength, every thought of his mind, and every throb of his heart to the proclamation of the Gospel to those who had never heard it. The other reason for his abstinence from marriage, though I deem it less decisive than the above, was the continual hardships and persecutions to which missionaries were subjected and his certainty that marriage would entail these same upon wives and children; and, therefore, it was better for both men and women to remain single.

We may now consider how Paul's friendships reveal to us the intensity of his domestic affections and the gnawing emptiness which lack of home and wife and children made in his great yearning heart. We are made aware of all this by the terms of domestic relationships and endearments which he lavished upon his friends. The mother of Rufus he