PICTURES OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.* FEW men indeed are more
competent than Sir William Ramsay to give us Pictures of the Apostolic Church. He is always a delightful and picturesque writer, but in the present " Pictures " it is something of a disappointment to find him keeping so near to the words of the New Testament. The book might almost be described as a commentary upon • (1) Pictures of the Apostolic Church : its Life and Teaching. By Sir William Ramsay. D.C.L., LL.D., D.D. London Dodder and Stoughton. [68.1— (2) d Study of the Conversion of St. Paul. By Reginald Fletcher, D.D. LonILoa. U. Boll and Sons. [Ss. ed. net.]
the book of Acts, the biographical portions of St. Paul's Epistles and the Epistle of St. James. Sir William Ramsay is, of course, a conservative among Biblical critics. He not only holds to the Lucan authorship of Acts, to which Professor Harnack has converted so many even of the more advanced critics, but he seems to take it for granted that the James who wrote the Epistle which bears his name is that same James whom Luke introduces to us as the brother of the Lord. Moreover, he maintains, with more assurance than seems to be quite justified, that the miraculous element in Acts cannot be eliminated without regarding the rest of Luke's history as untrue. " The history stands as a whole, and must be judged accordingly, and reason, history, and evidence seem," to our author, " to prove that it is true." After this general statement it is surprising to find individual occurrences, which would appear at first sight to be miraculous, interpreted in a modern. spirit. Take the following words : " To say that Jesus went up into heaven is a merely symbolic expression; it has not a local significance ; it is an emblematic statement of the truth." The phenomena of the day of Pentecost are treated in like manner. As to the raising of Tabitha by Peter, our author, while he has assured himself of the bona fides of the witness who told the story to Luke, avoids expressing a definite opinion as to its scientific truth.
Sir William Ramsay's attitude towards faith is as in- spiring as it is striking. Faith, he tells us again and again, is the one thing needful—the one thing without which there is no true Christianity. By faith he means not intel- lectual conviction, but faith as Paul conceived it, and as it seems to him it is conceived throughout the New Testament, "as an intense and burning enthusiasm inspired through overpowering belief in, and realisation of, the nature of Jesus—an enthusiasm which drives on the man in whose soul it reigns to live the life of Jesus." About this essential emotion our author believes St. Paul and St. James to be in agreement, though the latter feared lest Paul should be misunderstood to depreciate good works. The writer to the Hebrews sets forward a like doctrine, and though the ordinary man may fail to see the agreement between St. James and St. Paul, it is impossible to deny that in Hebrews Pauline influence is paramount. Part and parcel of this "faith " which illuminated the early Church is, we read, "one's duty to oneself." Paul teaches, he says, that you should "be always full of the joy of true religion ; make your life a continuous, uninterrupted prayer ; be grateful in every part of life, for God especially desires to see in you a spirit of thankfulness." This enthusiasm came upon Paul at his conversion and upon the original Apostles on the day of Pente- cost. It is the motive force—which can be traced everywhere in the story of the early Church—which led Paul to conceive the intellectual conquest of the world, and which fired men of less genius to sacrifice everything, even life itself, to an ideal.
Dr. Reginald Fletcher's new book on The Conversion of St. Paul lies before us at this moment. While it is less fervent in tone than the one we have been reviewing, a great part being taken up with a learned and interesting, study of Phariseeism, it comes to much the same conclusion in regard to the " faith " which St. Paul taught. Everywhere in St. Paul's writings he traces " the idea of a possession of a man's mind by an agency not himself, not necessarily irresistible by himself, which if he quench it not lifts him out of the common mental attitude of the natural man," not only in regard to his acts, "but in regard to his point of view." The "characteristio principle of life in the spirit," he continues, "is a certain mental exaltation; it is to see and hear what the unquickened per- ception does not perceive, to think what the unilluminated intellect does not think, to will and endure what the nn- sanctified moral faculties do not and cannot. Life in the spirit is opposed to the normal life, as in the Pharisee system the pure is opposed to the common and unclean."
Previous page
