II. CONSECRATION AND PRESERVATION 15 1 Thessalonians v. 23, 24 III. APPROBATION AND BLESSING 27 2 Thessalonians i. 11, 12 IV. LOVE AND PEACE 39 2 Thessalonians iii. 5, R.V.; 2 Thessalonians iii. 16 V. KNOWLEDGE AND OBEDIENCE 55 Colossians i. 9-12 VI. CONFLICT AND COMFORT 73 Colossians ii. 1, 2 VII. WISDOM AND REVELATION 89 Ephesians i. 15-19 VIII. STRENGTH AND INDWELLING 109 Ephesians iii. 14-19 IX. LOVE AND DISCERNMENT 125 Philippians i. 9-11 APPENDIX 139 INDEX 143 One of the most valuable elements in the Epistles of St. Paul is their revelation of the writer's spiritual life. While they are necessarily doctrinal and theological, dealing with the fundamental realities of the Christian religion, they are also intensely personal, and express very much of the Apostle's own experience. They depict in a marked degree the sources and characteristics of the spiritual life. This is especially seen when the various prayers, thanksgivings, doxologies, and personal testimonies are considered. I. GRACE AND HOLINESS. I. GRACE AND HOLINESS. "Now God Himself and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you. And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: To the end He may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints."--1 THESS. iii. 11-13. There are few more precious subjects for meditation and imitation than the prayers and intercessions of the great Apostle. He was a man of action because he was first and foremost a man of prayer. To him both aspects of the well-known motto were true: "To pray is to labour," and "To labour is to pray." There is no argument for or justification of prayer; nor even an explanation. It is assumed to be the natural and inevitable expression of spiritual life. Most of the Apostle's prayers of which we have a record are concerned with other people rather than with himself, and they thus reveal to us indirectly but very really what St. Paul felt to be the predominant needs of the spiritual life.