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According to the glorious gospel. These are the words of a true enthusiasm. St. Paul gloried in the gospel. We may read it, however, as in the Revised Version, "According to the gospel of the glory of God." Either way the glory of it fills the heart of the apostle with intense rapture. No good work is done without enthusiasm. The great Italian artists - men like Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, and Michael Angelo - associated heaven with earth in their work, and did it, not for mere pay, but for great ideal results. So also great apostles and reformers, like Paul, Wickliffe, and Luther, were enthusiasts. But all healthy enthusiasm is inspired by reality and truth. Some men have made shipwreck of religion because they lost the compass of the Word of God; and others, dependent on feeling alone, have wandered, being led by the ignis-fatuus of imagination alone.

I. PAUL SEES IN HIMSELF WHAT THE GOSPEL CAN DO. "Take me," he says; "I was before a persecutor, and injurious." What could account for such a change as is embodied in the man who from Saul became Paul? No theory of moral dynamics can stand, that suggests he lifted himself into so great a change. Neither could the Hebrew Church of that age, which was coldly ritual, sterile, and barren. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Christ Jesus might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting." No man can be so ardent about a cure as he who has tried a physician; no man admires the great artist so much as he who has tested his own feeble powers. And now "what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son," had done, and done in Paul: he is a proof of the gospel before he becomes a preacher of it.

II. PAUL GIVES A NEW SIGNIFICANCE TO THE WORD "GLORY." On his lips glory takes a new meaning. He had seen the glories of the Caesars, who raised their thrones on hecatombs of human lives, and filled their courts with unbounded luxuries and lusts. Surrounded by soldiers and courtesans, their glory was in their shame. He had seen the glories of the architects, sculptors, and artists, at Athens, Corinth, and Rome. But the glory of which he spoke was in a life that gave itself - that came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and that on the cross died for the sins of the whole world. It was the glory of goodness, the glory of compassion, the glory of self-sacrifice.

III. PAUL REJOICES TO TELL THE GOOD NEWS OF THIS GLORY. It is the glorious gospel, or the glorious "good news" for all men - Greek and Jew, barbarian and Scythian, bond and free. How simple a thing it seems - "good news!" and yet it is speech that moves the world! Homer is remembered, when the military heroes of Greece are forgotten. Syncs live longer than thrones. This good news was of a Christ who had died, and risen, and was working then in the hearts of men. Paul lived long enough to plant Churches, and to show that the cross could turn men "from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." He could show them not only the root, but the tree; not only the seed, but the flower. It was good news in relation to man himself - to his present history and his everlasting destiny. The gospel had made life desirable, and checked the false euthanasia of Roman suicide; and it had spread a great sky of immortality above men's heads, so that to live was Christ, and to die was gain. - W.M.S.

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KJV: According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

WEB: according to the Good News of the glory of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.