So the gospel of Paul resolved itself into this, that God, having decreed from the beginning that men should love Him as Father and one another as brethren, had sent His Son into the world to enable them to do this, by dying for them, and by imparting to them His Spirit. The Son dictated no code of laws to obey. All that He asked was faith in Himself as the Son of God, dying for men, and victorious over sin and death. This seemed simple, but its simplicity did not deceive me into imagining that I believed it. “That is all that is needed,” said I, as I closed the volume of the epistles; “but it is more than I possess, or can possess. Paul’s gospel is not a message but a person. It is, as he says somewhere, ‘Christ, dwelling in the heart through faith.’ I feel no such indwelling. In the gospel of Epictetus I am neither able nor willing to believe. I might perhaps be willing, but I am not able, to believe in the gospel of Paul.” CHAPTER XVII EPICTETUS CONFESSES FAILURE From such thoughts about my own desires and inabilities it was a relief to turn to some definite matter of fact. I had been spending several hours in attempting to find out what Paul’s gospel was. But what was Christ’s gospel, so far as it could be gathered from the epistles? This I had made no attempt to discover. “Epictetus,” I reflected, “though he does not profess to teach a gospel of Socrates or Diogenes, yet frequently quotes from them. Might I not expect to find at least a few words of Christ—whether uttered before or after the resurrection—quoted here and there in some at least of these numerous letters?” Hitherto I had met with none. But now, on rapidly unrolling the volume and searching onwards from the end of the epistle to the Romans, I came to a quotation that had escaped me. It was in the first of the Corinthian letters, following immediately after some details (not of great interest) about women’s head-covering. I had just time to note that the passage contained the words “the Lord Jesus said,” and “on the night on which he was delivered over,” when my servant announced that Glaucus wished to see me, and I put the book aside.