HOW TO GET STRONG
All over Asia Minor; in the neighboring islands; hurrying to Macedonia; then to Athens; now rousing men with truths such as they had never heard before, to stop all else, till they had saved their souls; founding churches; encouraging the elders; binding together a young church founded in his time by a greater than he, which has grown so mightily in all the centuries since that it wields greater power to-day than any other agency ever known; or than all others put together. Summoned before Seneca's brother, Gallio, Proconsul of Corinth; carried off on an Alexandrian corn-ship to Italy, only to be wrecked on the way at Malta; chained to a soldier for two long years in a Roman prison; yet writing letters as brave and inspiring as ever came from human hand since men first learned the art of putting words together. Beheaded at last by the greatest brute that ever sat on a throne; who could fiddle while the foremost city in the world was burning.
And what sort of a body had this king of a man; who from that foul, gloomy dungeon, waiting for death, sure but doubly terrible, from his not knowing when it would come; could yet write that he had learned, in whatsoever state he was, therewith to be content; that he knew both how to be abased and how to abound!
Surely he cannot be made to tell how a good body helped him to do that giant-work. Why, he says himself that his "bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemptible!"
No, he does not say that.
What he said was that "They say that his bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible." But, because he was not a big man; and the Corinthians liked bulk; is no sign that he was weak.
How could a weak man have gone all those years of intense, activity; "now minded himself to go afoot from Troas to Assos"; having, no doubt, to do most of his going in that way? No weak man could have "five times received forty stripes save one; been thrice beaten with rods; once stoned; thrice suffered shipwreck; been a night and a day in the deep; in journeyings often; in perils of waters; in perils of robbers; in perils by his own countrymen; in perils by the heathen; in perils in the city; in perils in the wilderness; in perils in the sea; in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness; in watchings often; in hunger; and thirst; in fastings often; in cold and nakedness."
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