gs of Paul is Paul himself, or rather
the grace of God in him.

121. His character presented a wonderful combination of the natural
and the spiritual. From nature he had received a strongly marked
individuality; but the change which Christianity produces was no less
obvious in him. In no saved man's character is it possible to separate
nicely what is due to nature from what is due to grace; for nature and
grace blend sweetly in the redeemed life. In Paul the union of the two
was singularly complete; yet it was always clear that there were two
elements in him of diverse origin; and this is, indeed, the key to a
successful estimate of his character.

122. Physique.--To begin with what was most simply natural--his
physique was an important condition of his career. As want of ear may
make a musical career impossible or a failure of eyesight stop the
progress of a painter, so the missionary life is impossible without a
certain degree of physical stamina. To any one reading by itself the
catalogue of Paul's sufferings and observing the elasticity with which
he rallied from the severest of them and resumed his labors, it would
naturally occur that he must have been a person of Herculean mold. On
the contrary, he appears to have been little of stature, and his bodily
presence was weak. This weakness seems to have been sometimes
aggravated by disfiguring disease; and he felt keenly the
disappointment which he knew his bodily presence would excite among
strangers; for every preacher who loves his work would like to preach
the gospel with all the graces which conciliate the favor of hearers to
an orator. God, however, used his very weakness, beyond his hopes, to
draw out the tenderness of his converts; and so, when he was weak, then
he was strong, and he was able to glory even in his infirmities.

There is a theory, which has obtained extensive currency, that the
disease he suffered from was violent ophthalmia, causing disagreeable
redness of the eyelids. But its grounds are very slender. He seems,
on the contrary, to have had a remarkable power of fascinating and
cowing an enemy with the keenness of his glance, as in the story of
Elymas the sorcerer, which reminds us of the tradition about Luther,
that his eyes sometimes so glowed and sparkled that bystanders could
scarcely look on them.

There is no foundation whatever for an idea of some recent biographers
of Paul that his bodily constitution was excessively