In some points Paul had always served this order with a clear conscience. He did not steal, he did not commit adultery. But he was at the same time, he says himself, 'a blasphemer and a persecutor and an insulter,'[50] and the contemplation of Jesus Christ made him see this, impressed it forcibly upon his mind. Here was his greatness, and the worth of his way of appropriating Christ. We have seen how Calvinism, too,--Calvinism which has built itself upon St. Paul,--is a blasphemer, when it speaks of good works done by those who do not hold the Calvinist doctrine. There would need no great sensitiveness of conscience, one would think, to show that Calvinism has often been, also, a persecutor, and an insulter. Calvinism, as well as Paul, professes to study Jesus Christ. But the difference between Paul's study of Christ and Calvinism's is this: that Paul by studying Christ got to know himself clearly, and to transform his narrow conception of righteousness; while Calvinism studies both Christ and Paul after him to no such good purpose. [Footnote 50: I _Tim._, i, 13.] These, however, are but the veriest rudiments of the history of Paul's gain from Jesus Christ, as the particular impression mentioned is but the veriest fragment of the total impression produced by the contemplation of Christ upon him. The sum and substance of that total impression may best be conveyed by two words,--_without sin_. We must here revert to what we have already said of the importance, for sound criticism of a man's ideas, of the order in which his ideas come. For us, who approach Christianity through a scholastic theology, it is Christ's divinity which establishes his being without sin. For Paul, who approached Christianity through his personal experience, it was Jesus Christ's being without sin which establishes his divinity. The large and complete conception of righteousness to which he himself had slowly and late, and only by Jesus Christ's help, awakened, in Jesus he seemed to see existing absolutely and naturally. The devotion to this conception which made it meat and drink to carry it into effect, a devotion of which he himself was strongly and deeply conscious, he saw in Jesus still stronger, by far, and deeper than in himself. But for attaining the righteousness of God, for reaching an absolute conformity with the moral order and with God's will, he saw no such impotence existing in Jesus Christ's case as in his own. For Jesus, the uncertain conflict between the law in our members and the law of the spirit did not appear to exist. Those eternal vicissitudes of victory and defeat, which drove Paul to despair, in Jesus were absent. Smoothly and inevitably he followed the real and eternal order, in preference to the momentary and apparent order. Obstacles outside him there were plenty, but obstacles within him there were none. He was led by the spirit of God; he was dead to sin, he lived to God; and in this life to God he persevered even to