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from a state of hostility to God; the work, it may be, of an evangelist, or an itinerant preacher, as distinct from a pastor. This work, intrinsically considered, cannot be overrated; but as related to the subsequent work of Christian training, it may be. He was not in the highest sense a wise pastor, though a singularly successful one, who sought a change in his field of labor, because nearly the whole body of his congregation had been hopefully regenerated by God's blessing upon his ministry. That pastor's work was then but begun, nobly begun indeed, still, only begun. The glory of the Christian ministry consists in that which distinguishes the Pastoral Office. It is the successful culture of regenerate souls. It is the accumulation in the church of Christian energy not merely, not chiefly, by the growth of numbers, but by the growth of character, by the enlargement of Christian mind, by its advanced intelligence, by its enlightened conscience, by its consolidated strength, by its expanded heart, by its wise and steady habits of action, by its perfected and confirmed possession of all that is lovely and of good report.

This view is supported by a remarkable feature in the policy (if so feeble a word may be thus used), which God has thus far adopted in the history of redemption. It is, that the work of this world's recovery has not been carried on by an equal diffusion of the light of truth through the earth. It has been by concentration, rather, of Divine favor upon choice localities. God has acted through the agency of a peculiar people. He has employed favorite nations. He has sought out countries, and discovered new lands, which He has chosen as His special resting places. There His honor has dwelt. There His presence has disclosed itself in His most stately goings. There have the riches of His grace been expended in Divine profusion. There have the altars burned with the most prompt and often repeated evidences of His blessing. And from these favored localities has gone forth the light in scattered rays, shooting obliquely here and there into the night that has shrouded the surrounding world. The principle of God's wisdom in all this, is that which we have been considering, and which indicates the illustrious office of the Christian pastor. It is, that in the choice of instruments in this world's redemption, God honors chiefly, not numbers, — else, Babylon should have been chosen rather than Judea; not wealth, — else, Tyre with its merchant princes had been preferred to Galilee and its fishermen; not noble birth, - elşe, patrician Rome had

taken precedence of Nazareth; not genius and learning, else, Greece or Egypt had been the birthplace of Christ, rather than Palestine; and the apostles should have commenced their labors in Athens or Alexandria, instead of going first to the lost sheep of Israel, and beginning at Jerusalem. It is, that God honors in the choice of his instruments, those whom in His sovereign pleasure He has made the recipients of His own grace. Them He trains for His work. He disciplines them by long and varied culture. He pours out the full treasure of His love upon them. He purifies them unto Himself "a peculiar people, zealous of good works."

In close alliance with this feature in the Divine plan, is the institution of the Pastoral Office. The tenor of its commission is: Labor for the training of Christian churches. Study the state of Christian minds. Learn the idiosyncracies of Christian experience. Strive to enlarge the growth of Christian hearts by a wise culture. Feed the lambs of the fold. Make your name dear in Christian families. Magnify your office by vindicating, in your example, its permanence. Labor, by your life's work, to build up monuments that shall live when you shall have entered into rest. Such labors shall bring your work into alliance with the costly, the stable, the far-reaching plans of Jehovah. Such a purpose spans the globe in its wise forecast. It has a prophetic eye, and looks into the remotest future. In the successes of the Gospel, in all lands and through all times, it discerns the consummation of its own honor, and the proof that it is ordained of God.'

ARTICLE V.

DID PAUL MODEL HIS LANGUAGE AFTER THAT OF DEMOSTHENES?

Translated from the German of Dr. Friedrich Köster of Stade.1

THE late De Wette has pronounced it improbable that the Apostle Paul acquired any appreciable benefit from the old Hellenic learning and literature. In like manner, Winer affirms it to be "now pretty generally conceded, that no Greek culture can be ascribed to Paul, any more than to the Jews generally, who dwelt in Egypt and Palestine," although this language is qualified by the remark, that "he has, to be sure, a greater degree of skill in Greek style and composition than the other apostles (e. g. Peter and Matthew), which he probably obtained in Asia Minor, where his intercourse with native Greeks, many of whom were learned and distinguished men, was so extensive and intimate." We believe, however, that we must advance a step further, and admit the probability of his having not merely read, but become familiar with, several of the old Greek writers, and more particularly that he has modelled the language of his Epistles, to a considerable extent, upon the Orations of Demosthenes.

On account of the importance of this point to a correct judgment of the intellectual culture of the Apostle, and of the light it throws upon his character as an author, we shall endeavor to exhibit with more precision, the reasons which appear to us to speak in its favor.

And first, let us call attention to the course of his mental training from youth upwards. Paul was born, it is true, of Jewish parents, who dwelt, however, at Tarsus, a celebrated commercial city in Cilicia, in which Greek learning flourished; and, as his father had acquired the privileges of Roman citizenship, he would seem, to a considerable extent, to have overstepped the bounds of Jewish bigotry and exclusiveness. Judging from the analogy of the dispersed Jews generally, it is even possible that Greek was the vernacular language of the boy Paul, while, as

1 This Article is from the second Number of the Studien und Kritiken for 1854.

the son of an orthodox Jewish family, he was duly instructed at school in the Hebrew and Syro- Chaldaic tongues; and, if we may assume this to be true, he would in all probability have read Greek works in early life. Be this, however, as it may, we have next to view him as the zealous pupil of the Rabbi Gamaliel at Jerusalem, who was miraculously converted on a journey to Damascus, and received a Divine call to labor as a messenger of the Gospel among the Gentiles, and especially among the Greeks. If, then, in obedience to the heavenly mandate, he conceived the great design of liberating Christianity from the bonds of Jewish sectarianism, he thereby, at the same time, imposed upon himself the task of effecting a transition in his own mind from oriental to Greek modes of thought and feeling. Would he not, therefore, be compelled to seek some degree of acquaintance with the latter? And, as he devoted years to the labor of preparing himself for his difficult missionary enterprise (three years in Damascus and Arabia, Gal. 1: 18; fourteen years in Cilicia, Gal. 2: 1; one year in Antioch, Acts 11: 26; and, later still, a considerable period in Cesarea, Acts 24: 27), is it at all credible that, during this lengthened season of preparation, he devoted no attention to the habitudes of thought and expression peculiar to those, to whom he wished to preach? To him, as a public speaker, a knowledge of the every-day language of the Greeks must, indeed, have been of preeminent importance; nor could he have neglected entirely the Greek literature, inasmuch as this people placed so high a value upon its writers, and was, it may be said, intellectually governed by them. At any rate, some familiarity with their works would open up to the Apostle, throughout the whole cultivated world of that time, Rome herself not excepted, a readier access to the hearts and feelings of mankind. Even if it be supposed that the more strictly learned writings of the Greeks did not fall in his way, we cannot imagine this to have been the case with their popular writers, whose subject-matter and diction offered him numerous opportunities of establishing a connection between their statements or phraseology, and his glad mission of salvation in Christ.

In this way, the peculiarities of the language employed by Paul in his Epistles, find a satisfactory explanation. For, while its material groundwork was Judaic, its form was borrowed from the Greek. As a zealous Jew and a disciple of the Pharisees, Paul adhered most closely to the mode of expression, which

characterized the sacred writings of his nation; and that he was also able to deliver a public oration in the Syro- Chaldaic, or mother-tongue of the Palestine of his day, is expressly stated in Acts 21: 40. Hence, for example, he begins and ends all his Epistles with the Hebraic formula of salutation, and avoids the Greek paiga; hence his diction (particularly in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians), whenever he reasons from the Old Testament, or avails himself of the forms of Rabbinical disputation, assumes a marked Hebraic coloring; hence, lastly, he occasionally quotes the Old Testament in conformity with the original Hebrew text, and not the Greek translation. As a general rule, however, he employs the latter as his fountain-head; and that, generally speaking, the Greek was more familiar to him than the Hebrew, is shown in all those passages of his Epistles, where he is less dependent upon the Old Testament, or where he enters upon the mention of present circumstances (as in his closing exhortations), or in which he speaks with more than ordinary fervor. The Greek he uses is for this reason the com. mon popular language of the Hellenists of his day, the so-called xown, in the form of the Macedonian-Alexandrine dialect, which is based upon the Septuagint. But, with how much greater purity, delicacy and freedom, than we meet with in that Trans. lation, does he know how to handle the Greek idiom! This is most clearly shown in his Epistles to the Corinthians. Now it is certainly true, that he acquired this dexterity in the employ ment of the language principally from intercourse with learned and distinguished Greeks; but that he derived it also from some acquaintance with the Hellenic literature is betrayed, as we shall see, by evidence the most unequivocal. And what branches of this literature may those have been, which thus attracted his attention? As an inspired orator in the service of Christ, he would scarcely have concerned himself either with the mythological and philosophical, or in any way with the purely scientific, writings of the Greeks. The philosophy of the Hellenes (e. g. the Stoics and Epicureans, Acts 17: 18), was probably not entirely unfamiliar to the great Apostle, but could have had no preponderating importance in his estimation, inasmuch as he designed to bring unto the wisdom-seeking Greeks nothing except the "foolishness" of "preaching Christ crucified" (1 Cor. 1: 22). He does not, however, reject philosophy in the abstract, but only its perversion, in his deprecatory exhortation that no one should

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