St. Paul's piercing practical religious sense, joined to his strong intellectual power, enabled him to discern and follow the range of the commandment, both as to man's actions and as to his heart and thoughts, with extraordinary force and closeness. His religion had, as we shall see, a preponderantly mystic side, and nothing is so natural to the mystic as in rich single words, such as faith, light, love, to sum up and take for granted, without specially enumerating them all good moral principles and habits; yet nothing is more remarkable in Paul than the frequent, nay, incessant lists, in the most particular detail, of moral habits to be pursued or avoided. Lists of this sort might in a less sincere and profound writer be formal and wearisome; but to no attentive reader of St. Paul will they be wearisome, for in making them he touched the solid ground which was the basis of his religion,--the solid ground of his hearty desire for righteousness and of his thorough conception of it,--and only on such a ground was so strong a superstructure possible. The more one studies these lists, the more does their significance come out. To illustrate this, let any one go through for himself the enumeration, too long to be quoted here, in the four last verses of the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, of 'things which are not convenient;' or let him merely consider with attention this catalogue, towards the end of the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians, of fruits of the spirit: 'love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control.'[27] The man who wrote with this searching minuteness knew accurately what he meant by sin and righteousness, and did not use these words at random. His diligent comprehensiveness in his plan of duties is only less admirable than his diligent sincerity. The sterner virtues and the gentler, his conscience will not let him rest till he has embraced them all. In his deep resolve 'to make out by actual trial what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God,'[28] he goes back upon himself again and again, he marks a duty at every point of our nature, and at points the most opposite, for fear he should by possibility be leaving behind him some weakness still indulged, some subtle promptings to evil not yet brought into captivity. [Footnote 27: Verses 22, 23.] [Footnote 28: _Rom._, xii, 2.]