h intellectual power. But this
makes his tears all the more impressive. When a weak, effeminate man
weeps, he only makes himself ridiculous; but it is a different
spectacle when a man like St. Paul is seen weeping; because we know
that the strong nature could not have been bent except by a storm of
feeling.

His affection for his converts is something extraordinary. Some have
believed that there is evidence to prove that in youth his heart had
suffered a terrible bereavement. It is supposed that he had been
married, but lost his wife early. He never sought to replace the loss,
and he never spoke of it. But the affection of his great heart, long
pent up, rushed forth into the channel of his work. His converts were
to him in place of wife and children. His passion for them is like a
strong natural affection. His epistles to them are, in many places, as
like as they can be to love-letters. Listen to the terms in which he
addresses them: "Ye are in our heart to die and live with you"; "I
will very gladly spend and be spent for you, though, the more
abundantly I love you, the less I be loved"; "Therefore, my brethren,
dearly beloved and longed for, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly
beloved."

To his fellow-labourers in the Gospel especially, his heart went out
in unbounded affection. The long lists of greetings at the close of
his epistles, in which the characters and services of individuals are
referred to with such overflowing generosity and yet with such fine
discrimination, are unconscious monuments to the largeness of his
heart. He could hardly mention a fellow-worker without breaking forth
into a glowing panegyric: "Whether any do inquire of Titus, he is my
partner and fellow-helper concerning you; or our brethren be inquired
of, they are the messengers of the churches and the glory of Christ."

There is no more conclusive proof of the depth and sincerity of St.
Paul's heart than the affection which he inspired in others; for it is
only the loving who are loved. None perhaps are more discriminating in
this respect than young men. A hard or pedantic nature cannot win
them. But St. Paul was constantly surrounded with troops of young men,
who, attracted by his personality, were willing to follow him through
fire and water or to go on his messages wherever he might send them.
And that he could win mature minds in the same way is proved by the
great scene at Miletus, already referred to, where the elders of
Ephesus,