The Life and Work of St. Paul (Illustrated)

Of the twelve men whom Jesus chose to be His companions and heralds during the brief years of His earthly ministry, two alone can be said to have stamped upon the infant Church the impress of their own individuality. These two were John and Simon. Our Lord Himself, by the titles which He gave them, indicated the distinctions of their character, and the pre-eminence of their gifts. John was called a Son of Thunder; Simon was to be known to all ages as Kephas, or Peter, the Apostle of the Foundation stone. To Peter was granted the honour of authoritatively admitting the first uncircumcised Gentile on equal terms, into the brotherhood of Christ, and he has ever been regarded as the main pillar of the early Church. John, on the other hand, is the Apostle of Love, the favourite Apostle of the Mystic, the chosen Evangelist of those whose inward adoration rises above the level of outward forms. Peter at the first to recognise the Eternal Christ. John as the chosen friend of the living Jesus, are the two of that first order of Apostles whose names appear to human eyes to shine with the brightest lustre upon those twelve precious stones which are the foundations of the New Jerusalem. Yet there was another, to whom was entrusted a wider, a more fruitful, a more laborious mission; who was to found more numerous churches, to endure intenser sufferings, to attract to the fold of Christ a vaster multitude of followers. On the broad shoulders of St. Peter rested, at first, the support and defence of the new Society; yet his endurance was not tested so terribly as that of him on whom fell daily the "care of all the churches." St. John was the last survivor of the Apostles, and he barely escaped sharing with his brother the glory of being one of the earliest martyrs; yet even his life of long exile and heavy tribulations was a far less awful trial than that of him who counted it but a light and momentary affliction to "die daily," to be "in deaths oft." A third type of the Apostolate was necessary. Besides the Apostle of Catholicity and the Apostle of Love, the Church of Christ needed also "the Apostle of Progress." In truth it is hardly possible to exaggerate the extent, the permanence the vast importance, of those services which were rendered to Christianity by Paul of Tarsus...