Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/218

 200 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. that love which, casteth out fear, and are given new- power through the heart's devotion to Christ. " For the love of Christ constraineth us ; . . . and he died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again." ^ The love which in and through Christ we bear to God is poured out on earth in love of man, as Christ exemplified and commanded. This is the love to which Paul gives lyric utterance.^ The New Testament voices in great notes the emotions of the Christian soul, which were to reecho in Christian writ- ings from Augustine through the Middle Ages. Finally, the New Testament writers were by nature more Hebraic than Hellenic ; their Hellenic education was meagre. Absorbed in the contents of their writ- ings, they had no care for style or vanity of authorship. As a result, the writings are void of self-consciousness, and, from a classical standpoint, are formless. Here again they offer a total contrast to Greek and Roman literature, which had striven always for excellence of form. But the first three gospels betray no thought save for the subject-matter; the Fourth Gospel feels the infinite import of its contents, yet is not stylisti- cally self-conscious. In the epistles, Paul writes as he might speak, with little attention to form. He often thinks of himself, but, apparently, never of his style. He shows no literary self -consciousness. Unless a man in writing Greek observed the rules of rhetoric, his writing, viewed from the standpoint of classical tradi- tion, would be formless and barbarous. This applies to the first Christian writings. The Gospels, the 1 2 Cor. V. 14. 2 1 Cor. xiii.