THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.
St. Paul the Apostle—the “vessel of election" (Acts 9, 15), i.e., the divinely elected instrument, the "Doctor of the gentiles"—was suddenly changed from a persecutor of the Church into a zealous preacher of the Gospel by a stupendous miracle (Acts 9). Christ, Our Lord, Who had ascended into Heaven, came down to earth again and appeared to him. Christianity took to itself all that was good in the three great civilisations of the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans; And St. Paul united in himself all three—born in Asia Minor, a Roman citizen, of Jewish-parentage, and educated in Jerusalem "at the feet of Gamaliel" (Acts 22, 3)— Gamaliel who was one of the seven greatest Jewish Doctors of all time. Christianity, through the aid of divine Grace, gives the perfection of every natural endowment; and this perfection was realised in the Apostle to an extraordinary degree. In the New Testament we have fourteen of St. Paul's Epistles.* They are inexhaustible sources of the most profound and sublime doctrine; and side by side with this the wonderful personality of St. Paul reveals itself so clearly that you soon come to know him and to love him, and to think of him as a friend.
