The Congregationalist

PAUL'S DISINTERESTEDNESS.

The disinterested spirit of Paul did not appear only in his readiness to renounce every pecuniary claim. He was prepared and stood always ready to make a sacrifice of his ease, his health, his strength, his reputation, his life, in prosecution of his high calling, and for the advancement of those among whom he labored; nor could their ingratitude and insensibility to his services cool the ardor of his generous determination to do them good: " I will very gladly spend and be spent for you: though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved."

Nor was this disinterested benevolence confined to those who were Christians. If the maxim be just, " out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," then his unpremeditated reply to King Agrippa is a convincing proof of this. Struck with his fervent appeal to him, and with the character of his whole appearance and defence, the king could not refrain from exclaiming, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."
" I would to God that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost and altogether such as I am, except these bands." O how gladly would Paul have continued to wear " these bonds ;" how gladly would he have withdrawn his "appeal to Cæsar,"and consented to " go up to Jerusalem, and there be judged,"provided he could have but half his pious wish! My brethren, if that sentiment, instead of lying in this despised book, had occurred in a Greek tragedy or a Roman story, or had it proceeded from the mouth of a Socrates or a Cicero, instead of that of an Apostle, it would have been quoted an hundred times in the writings of the age as an effusion of the sublimest and purest benevolence. But, alas! our wits have taste and feeling on every point but one.—McCrie's Sermons on the character of Paul.