. The unchanging Christ. XV. Strengtb in Mealtnead. ** For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart fromm«. And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: forMy strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore,will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ mayrest upon me.—a Cor. zii. 8, 9. 5|HIS very remarkable page in theautobiography of the Apostle showsus that he, too, belonged to thegreat army of martyrs who, withhearts bleeding and pierced throughand through with a dart, yet did their work forGod. It is of little consequence what his
. The unchanging Christ. XV. Strengtb in Mealtnead. ** For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart fromm«. And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: forMy strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore,will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ mayrest upon me.—a Cor. zii. 8, 9. 5|HIS very remarkable page in theautobiography of the Apostle showsus that he, too, belonged to thegreat army of martyrs who, withhearts bleeding and pierced throughand through with a dart, yet did their work forGod. It is of little consequence what his thorn inthe flesh may have been. The original wordsuggests very much heavier sorrow than themetaphor of ** a thorn might imply. It reallyseems to mean, not a tiny bit of thorn that mightlie half concealed in the finger tip, but one of thosehideous stakes on which the cruel punishment ofimpalement used to be iniiicted. And Paulsthought is, not that he has a little, trivial trouble. i6o STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS. to bear, but that he is, as it were, forced quiveringupon that tremendous torture. Unquestionably, what he means is some bodilyailment or other. The hypothesis that the thornin the flesh was the sting of the animal natureinciting him to evil is altogether untenable, be-cause such a thorn could never have been leftwhen the prayer for its removal was earnestlypresented; nor could it ever have been, whenleft, an occasion for glorying. Manifestly it wasno weakness removable by his own effort, noincapacity for service which in any mannerapproximated to being a fault, but purely andsimply some infliction from God*s hand (thoughlikewise capable of being regarded as a ** messen-ger of Satan), which hindered him in his work,and took down any proud flesh and danger ofspiritual exaltation in consequence of the largenessof his religious privileges. Our text sets before us three most instructivewindings, as it were, of the stream of thoughts thatpassed through the Apostle
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