When we Romans and Greeks use the word “spirit,” we mostly think of a shadowy unreal appearance of the dead. We should not call Jupiter, or Zeus, a “spirit.” But I perceived that, with Paul, “spirit” was more real—and, if I may so say, more eternally solid—than “body.” It was the real “person.” The word “person” in Greek, as also in Latin, means a “mask” or “character.” There is, with us, no one word to express “real person.” Common people think the body real, but the spirit unreal. Paul used the name “spiritual body” to describe a “real person,” raised from the dead in Christ. Well, then, it seemed to me that the power of Christ on Paul might be described, not only as an “appearing” but also as the grasp of a “real person,” “taking hold of” Paul’s spirit with a spiritual hand so as to strengthen and direct him. What else was it that made him so strong? The strength of Epictetus in bearing trials and sufferings had long excited my admiration. But now the strength of Paul seemed greater. Epictetus bore—or at least professed to bear—only his own burdens. As for those of others, he said, “These are nothing to me.” Paul was like a gentle nurse or tender mother with the weaklings among his converts. “Who,” he asked, “is made to stumble, and I burn not? Who is weak, and I am not weak?” And yet, in his weakness, he was a very Hercules or Atlas, strong enough to bear “the care of all the churches”! This “weak” man was always fighting, always craving to fight, and always conquering—up to the time of his impending departure, when he exclaimed that he had “fought the good fight”! And through what an extent of the civilised world! “From Jerusalem to Illyricum”—so he wrote to the Romans! In that same letter he announced his intention of carrying the eagles of the New Empire into Rome itself, and of passing onward from Rome to the invasion of Spain! No wonder that he felt able to say, “I take pleasure in weaknesses, in outrages, in straits and necessities, in persecutions and hardships, in Christ’s behalf; for in the moment when I am weak, in that moment I am strong.” “I am strong”! Yes. Rolling up the volume as I retired to rest that night, I was constrained to agree with that, at all events. “About some things,” said I, “or perhaps about many things in your letters I am doubtful; but assuredly you are strong. I myself am also certain that you are honest. But that you are strong—and that, too, with a strength that comes from faith in the resurrection of your Master—this not even an atheist or Epicurean could deny.” CHAPTER XV EPICTETUS’S GOSPEL