tions whose arrogance was proportionate to their
learning and their power, a very different man was selected. Saul of
Tarsus had almost every needed qualification seen from a human point of
view. Standing, as he must, between the stiff bigotry of Judaism and the
subtleties of Greek philosophy, he was fortunately familiar with both.
He was a man of rare courtesy, and yet of matchless courage. Whether
addressing a Jewish governor or the assembled philosophers and
counsellors of Athens, he evinced an unfailing tact. He knew how to
conciliate even a common mob of heathen idolators and when to defy a
high priest, or plead the immunities of his Roman citizenship before a
Roman proconsul.

In tracing the methods of the early Church in dealing with heathenism,
we begin, therefore, with Paul; for although he was differentiated from
all modern parallels by the fact that he was inspired and endowed with
miraculous power, yet that does not invalidate the force of those
general principles of action which he illustrated. He was the first and
greatest of all missionaries, and through all time it will be safe and
profitable to study his characteristics and his methods. He showed the
value of thorough training in his own faith, and of a full understanding
of all the errors he was to contend with. He could reason with Jews out
of their own Scriptures, or substantiate his position with Greeks by
citing their own poets. He was certainly uncompromising in maintaining
the sovereignty of the one God, Jehovah, but he was not afraid to admit
that in their blind way the heathen were also groping after the same
supreme Father of all. The unknown God at Athens he accepted as an
adumbration of Him whom he proclaimed, and every candid reader must
admit that in quoting the words of Aratus, which represent Zeus as the
supreme creator whose offspring we are, he conveys the impression of a
real resemblance, if not a partial and obscured identity.

The essential principle here is that Paul frankly acknowledged whatever
glimpses of truth he found in heathen systems, and made free use of them
in presenting the fuller and clearer knowledge revealed in the Gospel.
No man ever presented a more terrible arraignment of heathenism than
that which he makes in the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans,
and yet, with marvellous discrimination he proceeds, in the second
chapter, to show how much of truth God has imparted to the
understandings and the conscienc