The form in which this idea is expressed by Paul is profoundly influenced by Greek thought. That the Divine power moulds the affairs and actions of men as the potter moulds the lifeless clay is the Hebrew way of expressing the idea. The Greek philosophers and poets-those of them who were the greatest and most characteristic Greeks-recognised that the will of God acts through the actions of living and thinking men, as a law which they unwittingly obey and work into actuality, though they think they are acting for their own purposes and ends. Hence Homer already regards the whole tangled and confused web of the conflicts around Troy, as the gradual realisation of the predetermined will of Zeus. The last words of the opening paragraph of the Iliad are Διὸς ἐτελείετο βουλή, i.e., the will of the Supreme God was worked out to its consummation, or in more modern and abstract philosophical language, the soul of the story was the will of God. The will is pre-existent: it becomes evident to man only as it is worked into history.

Now, since the Divine will is always true to itself, and neither varies nor changes, but is a uniform law of growth, it follows that, if once we catch even a glimpse of it at any moment in history, that momentary glance is true for all time; and hence we may learn to read the real character of this present time, and we may forecast dimly the possibilities that lie before us in the future, by looking back into the past.

What, then, in Paul's estimation, had been this purpose of God, which had been working always in the world, not understood by men at the moment, but now clearly revealed to those who had been illuminated by the radiant truth of the message that had come ?

In the pagan world, amid which Paul was born, the feeling had gradually grown strong and taken possession of the popular mind, that the world was steadily degenerating into ruin and decay, and that no relief from the universal uncertainty, strife and cruelty could (ever be attained by ordinary human means. The old order could not be improved into a better system: the path of revolution only made greater confusion.

Such appeared, then, the issue to which civilisation had led in its chief centre, Greece and Rome. It had resulted only in misery, crime, bloodshed and deterioration. On that all were agreed. It seemed to turn its back on the Divine life, to move further and further away from God, and to prefer the madness and recklessness of man to the Divine peace. Except in the appearance of some God on earth, there was no help possible.

All men were praying and offering vows for "Salvation." In city after city, and village after village, of the Graeco-Roman world, especially in Asia Minor, the explorer of that world is impressed by the number of dedications and offerings, beseeching for "Salvation" (σωτηρία). This was what Jesus brought, and Paul preached. Those pagans prayed for they knew not what. They asked for salvation; but they did not know in what salvation lay, or what was its nature. What they ignorantly sought for, Paul declared unto them.

Paul was never hampered by the difficulty, the greatest with which the modern missionary has to contend, of learning how to understand the pagan mind and how to touch the pagan heart. He had grown up in familiarity with the pagan mind. He knew from childhood its way of looking at life, what it dreamed of and longed for. He knew how to make his ideas intelligible to the pagans around him. A Tarsian, he knew the thoughts of the Greek East. A Roman, he had caught something of the Roman spirit. Amid Greeks and Romans he moved as one at home in a familiar world; and he played on their hearts as a musician on his instrument. He set before them the Soteria, the Salvation, for which they were praying; and they found the Salvation which he declared more satisfying, more ideal, more perfect, than they had been able ever to imagine.

While most of the poets, the half-prophets of the pagan world, declared that salvation was impossible, because human means had failed, Virgil, the herald of the New Empire, found it in the triumph of the New Age. The New Rome would regenerate the world, because it was the creation of the Divine power present on the earth. Gradually, this idea, first expressed in the fourth Eclogue, crystallised into the doctrine of the divinity of the Emperor; and even in this vulgarised and petrified and lifeless form it was still a power.²

Paul felt deeply this spirit of his age-the conviction that things had gone wrong; that the world had failed and was growing worse; that only through divine aid could progress be made and sin shaken off. He called the evil of the world "sin:", the pagan nations called it by other names. There was this profound difference between him and them, that he regarded the fault and the cause of evil as due to man: the pagans regarded it as due to fate, or to God, or to chance, and recognised no fault in themselves. In the early chapters of Romans, where Paul states his view most fully and clearly, he assumes straight away that the end of man and the aim of man's life is to be righteous, and the reason why he has failed lies in himself.

Paul, too, like the poets of the New Empire and the New Rome, saw the salvation of mankind revealed in the manifestation of Divine nature incarnate in human form. This was the purpose and will of God from the beginning of the world. To bring about this "in the fulness of the time," when the world had become convinced that it was the only way, had been the plan of God throughout the evolution of human history. Towards this all the past had been tending. This was the law which lay underneath the apparently lawless and hopeless welter of bloodshed and misery that constituted the history of preceding time.

The triumph of the Divine purpose, the object which the Divine will was working out, was the Cross of Christ. This Cross recalled to the mind of Paul, the Greek and the Roman, that stump with cross-beam on which the tropaeum and spoils of battle were hung after the victory had been gained. The decree of fate, the unfulfilled and forfeited bond, in which the curse and destruction of man's efforts was expressed, was nailed to the Cross, as the Roman conqueror fastened to the cross-beam and the upright beam the spoils of his defeated enemy (Colossians ii. 14). The victory of the Crucifixion was the declaration of the will of God, the explanation of all past history and the new beginning of all coming history. The erection of the trophy culminates finally in the long train of the triumphal procession, in which the subordinate powers and the captive enemy were led up to the Capitol and offered to the supreme God (Colossians ii. 15).

This doctrine of Paul is as clearly and emphatically expressed in the Pastoral Epistles as in any of his writings. The purpose of God was working from the beginning, and therefore His kindness and grace towards men were always active, but had become patent and intelligible to men only through the Death of Jesus:" The grace which was given 'in Christ Jesus before times eternal, but which has now been manifested " (2 Timothy ill. 9):" Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, the testimony to be borne in its own times, whereunto I was appointed a teacher among the Gentiles " (I Timothy ii. 6):" The hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before times eternal, but in His own seasons manifested " (Titus i. 2 f.). This Promise of God, given and published long before, had never been rightly understood, until its true meaning was declared through the Crucifixion.

This Pauline view is fundamental in all, the Pastoral Epistles; but it is not stated there as a truth needing to be emphasised by the writer. It is rather brought in incidentally, as a familiar principle. It is appealed to as something well known to Timothy and Titus, and accepted by them as an axiom from which inferences may be drawn and by which further principles may be tested and proved. That is "the mystery of godliness" (1 Timothy iii. 15), now made plain, formerly obscure.

But it is argued by many modern scholars that the very word "godliness " is not Pauline; it is strange to his vocabulary in the older Epistles; and, since it is common in the Pastorals, it stamps these as the work of some other writer. But this word "godliness" (εὐσέβεια) is one of the most characteristic words of pagan religious thought. Could Paul, who knew the heart of paganism so well, and who through that intimate knowledge was marked out as the one man that was qualified beyond all others to explain the Gospel to them-how could he be ignorant of that word ? and knowing it how could he fail to speak of it to those who eagerly desired to realise it ? In the opinion of the present writer it would be a strange and inexplicable thing, if Paul in placing his Gospel before the pagans of the Graeco-Roman world, had never used a word which lay so close to their hearts. They thought that men should and must be "godly" (εὐσεβεῖς Pii), that "godliness" was a quality essential in a good man. Paul explained to them in what "godliness" (εὐσέβεια) consisted, and how it was to be attained-just as he did with "Salvation."

Why then is it not found. in the earlier Epistles? I doubt not that it was used by Paul often in oral address to the Asian and Galatian and European churches; but in the letters it was not in keeping with the special message which at the moment had to be emphasised to them. The full answer to this question would require an exposition of the topics and treatment of every letter. The Pastorals, here as in so many other cases, intervene to complete the picture of Paul, and to show him as in every respect the Apostle to the Gentiles, who showed them that Faith was the force which produced for them both salvation and godliness.

XXX. THE OFFICE OF TIMOTHY IN EPHESUS AND ASIA.

In 2 Timothy iv. 5 Timothy is said to be a diakonos. Here Paul, after sketching an outline of Timothy's duties" Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching . . . be sober in all things, suffer hardship, do the work of an evangelist "-adds as a climax the brief summary of these instructions, "fulfil thy diakonia," i.e. perform the whole duty of thy office and charge.

Very similar is the thought in 1 Timothy iv. 6, " If thou put the brethren in mind of these things, thou shalt be a good diakonos of Christ Jesus." This also is a summary of the instructions given in the preceding paragraphs. In so far as Timothy performed all his duties, he was a good diakonos.

Accordingly, if Paul applied any special term to Timothy's range of duty and authority. in Asia, he would call him a diakonos. What is the significance of this term ? The answer is not easy, but no one hesitates or can hesitate at least about one thing: here diakonos has not as yet become a strictly technical term, indicating a specific office in a hierarchy.

Paul calls himself "a diakonos of the Gospel" in Ephesians iii. 7 and Colossians i. 23; in Colossians i. 25 and in I Timothy i. I2 he names his sphere of duty diakonia. The use of the two cognate words regarding himself is exactly parallel to the use of them regarding Timothy;³ and it seems beyond doubt that Paul considered his coadjutor Timothy as engaged at Ephesus in the same species and kind of duties as he himself performed in any place where he chanced to reside and to find " an open door." Hence the description of Timothy in I Thessalonians iii. 2 as " our brother and diakonos of God in the Gospel " is quite in keeping with Paul's language elsewhere (though the reading there is uncertain, as the variant " fellow-worker with God" (συνεργός) has good authority to support it). Similarly Tychicus is " the faithful diakonos in the Lord " (Ephesians vi. 2 and Colossians iv. 7). There can, therefore, be no doubt that the whole class of duties performed by Paul himself and by those whom he trained to be his coadjutors was summed up by him as diakonia.

One can hardly doubt that this use of the word diakonos is older than the employment of the same term to denote a definite office in a congregation. Yet, alongside of this more primitive use, we find the term employed in a more sharply defined fashion; there are various passages in Paul's letters where diakonos is really a title and technical term for an office in the congregation, e.g., 1 Timothy iii. 8 and 12, Romans xvi. 1, Philippians i. 1. I cannot feel any hesitation in separating these passages from those quoted above. In the one class the diakonoi seem to be resident and settled officers of the congregation, lower in grade than episkopoi. In the other class Paul and his coadjutors, who represent him in his absence, are diakonoi ; and to this class must be added Colossians i. 7 (Epaphras) and i. 25 (Paul) and iv. 17 (Archippus).⁴

That the word diakonos in ordinary usage implies service, humbler rank and submission to orders, is quite certain.· This was the term which Paul chose as suitable to mark his place and duties among his congregations, and to describe the charge which he gave to his coadjutors over one or more of those congregations.. The thought in his mind was the teaching of Jesus, e.g., "the greatest among you shall be your diakonos " (Matthew xxiii. 11); " whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in-the kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew xviii. 4). The same thought lies in the Pope's title, servus servorum Dei.

No one can fail to observe the marked analogy between the passage above quoted, Colossians iv. 17, and the character and spirit of the letters to Timothy. What was needed in the way of message and instruction for the congregation at Colossæ was stated in the letter to them and in "the Epistle from Laodiceia" (i.e. Ephesians). But beyond this there was something required in the way of special message to the diakonos who had charge of the congregation of Colossæ. This Paul conveys in one brief sentence, " Say to Archippus, Take heed to the diakonia which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it." In this short message is implied all that is contained in the Pastoral Epistles and much more. Paul had in mind the kind of message that is suitable for a person charged with the responsibilities of Archippus: such a message might fill a large volume, or it might be compressed into a single short letter (like that addressed to Titus), or into a longer letter (like First Timothy), or it might be expressed in a. brief reminder (like that sent to Archippus).

One cannot, therefore, for a. moment doubt that if Paul had sent a. letter direct to Archippus, it would have been in the style of the " Pastorals," something differing in style and kind from Colossians and Ephesians. The very fact that an extra message is sent implies that those two Epistles did not contain what was needed for Archippus.

In this case, however, Paul did not send a letter: he trusted that Archippus would catch what was needed from this brief message, and from the commission which the latter had originally received. The brief message was intended to strengthen in Archippus's mind the spirit of former teaching. Archippus needed only to recall the charge which he had received, and to give attention and care to it. The duty and the teaching were in his mind; he had only to keep the instruction fresh and strong there. The teaching then was all-important and complete; there was in a sense nothing to add to it. It is simply the " sound doctrine " and the " faithful saying " of the Pastorals. The minister and teacher must hold fast to this: if he does so, the rest will come to him of itself through the Spirit..

There is, of course, much more involved in the ministry as Paul conceived it. In a sense, there was much to add; but it will add itself, if the " sound doctrine " is clearly understood and firmly grasped.

It stands to reason that the diakonos in charge of one or more congregations would require a special and different message from that which was most appropriate for a congregation or for several congregations. Archippus, like Timothy, would doubtless have been reminded, if Paul had written the letter to him, of the general principles that were likely to be serviceable in the practical work of guiding a congregation. Not exceptional oases, but general rules, would be stated. Legislation is for the average and the mass of men. The exceptions have to be considered and treated singly by the good sense of the "minister" (diakonos) and especially through the constant help and guidance of the Spirit, which Timothy is directed repeatedly to listen to and wait upon. For these exceptional cases Paul, therefore, lays down no rules: they will carry with them their own justification and their own standard. The family is the basis of Christian society: that is the safe principle in practically directing a congregation. Paul makes no allusion to the idea which is so much emphasised in 1 Corinthians vii., that in some cases the highest level of life for certain individuals lies in perfect celibacy and devotion to the Divine life. Those are cases of exceptional individuals, about whom the Corinthians in their letter had put a question to Paul. Such oases must be put aside in the letters to Timothy.

This consideration perhaps explains what seems to the present writer to be the most disappointing feature of the Pastoral Epistles. Although the dangers of the free competition in teaching by unauthorised and often badly qualified teachers (the so-called "false teachers") is in Paul's mind throughout the three Epistles as the greatest danger to his Asian Churches, yet he simply denounces these volunteer teachers, without suggesting a remedy. The only permanent remedy lay in the creation of a system of Christian teaching on a sufficiently high level. Such a system would have kept the higher education in Christian hands, whereas the absence of it had the result described by the late Dr. Bigg in The Church's Task in the Roman Empire, viz., that the education of Christian children lay largely in the hands of pagan teachers. I do not think that Paul would have acquiesced in the incapacity of the Church to solve this great problem, His fertile mind and organising ability might have organised the means to this end, if he had lived longer; but at this time he only points out the actual danger and suggests no means whereby it may be overcome. Probably, he had no such object in view for the moment: he was thinking of nothing else except putting Timothy on his guard, urging him to " take heed to the diakonia " which he had received. Only in Second Timothy ii. 2 is there perhaps an obscure reference to the beginning of a remedy for the evil: "the things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also." This does not refer to paradosis, the transmission to successors, but to the actual choosing of suitable teachers under Timothy.⁵ Probably, however, only "clerical" teaching is implied (see on this subject EXPOSITOR August 1909 p. 185).

1) Translated from Steffen in Zeitschr. neutest. Wias., 1901, ii. p. 124, by Dr. Kennedy in St. Paul's Conception of the Last Things, p. 6.

2) See two papers in the EXPOSITOR, June, July, 1907, by the present writer.

3) Compare 1 Corinthians iii. 5: Paul and Apollos are diakonoi: 2 Corinthians vi. 4: " diakonoi of God"; and 2 Corinthians iii. 6:" God made us sufficient as diakonoi of a new covenant " (Paul and Timothy or Paul alone); 2 Corinthians xv. 23, Ephesians iii. 7.

4) On Colossians iv. 17 see the remarks in a subsequent paragraph.

5) The verb is παρατίθεσθαι not παραδιδόναι.