2. How can St. Paul, who insists continually that he is one of the apostles, call them, without self-complacency, God's holy apostles? The answer to this is that 'holiness' means 'consecration.' Any one is 'holy' or a 'saint' (the {132} same word) who is consecrated to God in any special way. Such consecration lays upon him an obligation to moral goodness, which is what we mean by holiness, but it precedes the fulfilment of the obligation. All Christians are holy (or 'saints') because they are Christians, all apostles because they are apostles. As for St. Paul's personal estimate of himself as an individual, we have it just below. In view of his past sins, when he was 'kicking against the pricks,' and, albeit in ignorance, persecuting the Church, he calls himself 'less than the least of all the holy.' 3. St. Paul conceives his function to be to 'make men see,' or 'bring into the light' a long hidden secret of God now in part disclosed to the apostles, and to be by them disclosed to the world--in part, for its contents are still 'unsearchable' in their depth and in the 'manifoldness' of divine wisdom which they imply. But what is disclosed is no afterthought of God. It is an eternal purpose; and it is all of a piece with the original idea of creation: it is a 'secret ... hidden in God who created all things.' Redemption in fact interprets to angels and men what God's purpose in creation originally was. To minister to this disclosure is enough for any {133} man. It makes all St. Paul's tribulations only such as it is worth while to bear; and the Gentiles, in their turn, should find their glory in his tribulations as an evidence of how much he thought it worth while to suffer in what is their cause no less truly than his. [Sidenote: St. Paul's second prayer]