variety in nature and in grace. We can learn to live and to let live. Any effort by any type of Christianity to force its view on the others is resented. This does not mean that one view is as good as another. But it does mean that, the human mind being as it is, we must be content for some men to see things differently. It has been a hard fight to keep the Bible open and free. It is hard also to keep the mind open to the truth. It is still harder to keep the conscience in good working order. But, given the open Bible, the open mind, and the honest conscience, then the result must be left to God and to the individual. Each has the right to preach and to propagate his view of God and Christ. History, heredity, environment, the personal equation, the experience of grace, and the guidance of the Spirit of God determine the outcome. Meanwhile we can learn to love each other heartily in spite of our differences, even because of them. What a dull world it would be if we were all precisely alike!

CHAPTER VII

PAUL AND PATRIOTISM

I

Patriotism and piety are apparently placed in opposition in some countries by the issues of the present world-war. One of the first fulminations was the declaration of a large group of the foremost scholars and theologians of Germany justifying the conduct of the Fatherland in Belgium and in France. British scholars and theologians were quick to reply in a spirit of holy horror at the apparent blindness of the German group to the moral and spiritual issues of the war. The republic of letters was torn asunder, and the kingdom of God seemed rent in twain. Protestants have risen against Protestants, Roman Catholics against Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics against Greek Catholics, Mohammedans against Mohammedans, Jews against Jews. Kings have dragged their peoples into Neutral nations have been driven into the war in self-defense. In each case citizenship rises above religion, or at any rate the Christian citizen is compelled to be loyal to the position of his own country or be guilty of treason. The issue raised is one of tremendous import, and is intensely vital now in the United States, as our own country has entered upon

war.

war with Germany. We have millions of men of German birth or descent who must decide what they are to do. There is but one thing to do: to be loyal to the land of adoption. So real Americans all feel. So the great mass of the German-Americans feel, and will act. They are now Americans, not GermanAmericans.

The case of Paul is worth our study in the present situation. He was caught in the maelstrom of world politics; for Rome, like the United States, was the melting-pot of the nations, though not in quite the same sense. Racial and national characteristics persisted with considerable tenacity in the various provinces of the Roman Empire, which in Asia Minor paid little attention to the old boundaries. The old names for the peoples held on, so that Galatia, for instance, meant either the great Roman province or the old Celtic people in North Galatia. Paul was at once a Jew, a Tarsian, a Greek, a Roman, and soon a Christian. He was true to the best things in these elements, however contradictory they seemed at times. The terms and the concepts designated by them overlapped in various ways, and were not mutually exclusive.

II

Paul appears first as a brilliant young Jewish rabbi, a graduate of the school of Gamaliel in Jerusalem, pleased at the stoning of Stephen by the Sanhedrin, and soon the leader in the first general persecution of the Christians by the Jews. Racial and religious motives are undoubtedly mixed in him, as he presses the

persecution with zeal and success, dragging men and women from their homes to prison and to death with shameless ruthlessness, for no other crime than that of believing in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. Paul's very breath came to be threat and slaughter, his taste for blood, as always, growing by what it fed on. His conversion stopped his career as a persecutor; but he was always a Jew, was proud of his people and his tribe, gloried in their wonderful history, and cherished their noblest hopes and aspirations (cf. Acts 22:3; 26:3-7; 2 Cor. 11:22; Gal. 1:13f.; Rom. 9:1-5; Phil. 3:4-6). To be sure, relatively in comparison with Christ all this pride of race seemed mere refuse (Phil. 3:7ff.). With Paul, Christ is supreme, and rules even in the sphere of race and politics. Paul had been "exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers" (Gal. 1:14), and never ceased to love the Jews, even when they persecuted him bitterly. As a Pharisee he shared their political conception of the Messianic kingdom as a great Jewish empire which was to drive Rome out of Palestine and dominate the earth, a Pan-Jewish propaganda. Paul remained a Pharisee in many things, particularly in the belief in the bodily resurrection (Acts 23:6), though, as a Christian, he perceived the spiritual nature of the kingdom of God in Christ. This he conceived to be the true Israel, the spiritual Israel, the children of faith, both Jews and Gentiles, gathered from every land on earth (Rom. 3:6, 28; 9:6ff.). Paul held that he was interpreting the true Judaism to the Jews in the cos mopolitan view of the promise to Abraham and the destiny of his people. He rises to the very height of

patriotism in these words: "For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh; who are Israelites; whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever" (Rom. 9:3-5).

It is not easy to define patriotism, for it is more than mere love of the land of one's birth or of his citizenship. It is that, but it broadens out into the love of one's people wherever found, as Japanese love Japanese; Chinese, Chinese; Germans, Germans; Jews, Jews. The Jews had at this time lost their independence, though many of them still lived in Palestine under Roman rule. But many millions more dwelt in the Diaspora. Some of these fell much under the spell of the Græco-Roman civilization, and gave up many of their Jewish customs and views. But Paul was not Hellenized, though a Hellenistic Jew with Aramæan traditions. We see in Paul the struggle of the cultured Jew, loyal to his faith and people, to adapt himself to the world conditions in which he found himself, and to be a loyal Roman citizen.

But Paul was "born in Tarsus of Cilicia," "a citizen of no mean city" (Acts 21:39; 22:3). He had a modern man's pride in the city of his birth and residence. In his "Cities of St. Paul," Ramsay gives ample reasons that justify Paul's praise of Tarsus:

It was one of the great cities of the Roman world, a Greek city where the Orient met the West, the seat of a great university, the home of philosophy, the meeting place of many cults,