of His sacrifice--ourselves the sacrifice we offer. 'And
here,' we cry, 'we offer and present unto Thee ourselves.' We men, St.
Augustine does not scruple to say, are the body of Christ, which is
offered in that sacrifice[13]. And a quite new light is shed on
intercessory prayer, in the eucharist and in the rest of life, when we
view it as St. Paul would have us view it, as a presenting in sacrifice
before God those for whom we pray, according to the true idea of them
which the sanctification of the Spirit would make possible and actual.
And a quite new light is shed upon all work for others, when we regard
it as the preparing of such a sacrifice for the Holy Spirit to
consecrate.

From a different point of view St. Paul's {180} conception of his
mission as the priest of the Gentile world, might well suggest
reflections to the Church of England. If a Christian nation in the
providence of God is to overrun the world and possess the nations not
yet Christian, it goes with a mission entrusted to it by God. Its
mission may be expressed, according to St. Paul's idea, as that of
evangelizing the world, but also as that of preparing the heathen
nations to be offered to God. It is the return of all humanity to
Himself that God desires, and we are to be the ministers of this
perfected offering. It strikes us with profound humiliation to realize
how 'far fetched' St. Paul's idea would appear to-day to the mass of
our nation, which, more than any other, is called by circumstances to
an apostolate of the world.

3. St. Paul speaks, here and in many places elsewhere, of his grounds
for 'glorying,' or rather 'boasting[14],' in what Christ has wrought
through him, and of his 'being ambitious' to preach only where no one
had been before him[15]. And in reading such passages the question
{181} sometimes arises in Christian minds--was there, after all, a
strain of egotism unsubdued in St. Paul's character? Now no doubt,
unlike other apostles whose writings remain in the New Testament, St.
Paul had that sort of passionately personal and individual nature which
easily passes into spiritual egotism. This at least is discernible in
his epistles. It is also true that the necessity which lay so long
upon him of vindicating his own apostolic authority, makes it necessary
for him at times to talk about himself and his experiences and his
personal methods in a way that to some minds suggests egotism; and
there is no obligation upon