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This hypothesis as to the cause and occasion of St. Paul’s infirmity, receives from another part of Scripture, where allusion is made to it, a somewhat remarkable confirmation. In the 12th chapter of Second Corinthians, it cannot, I think, after what I have just stated, but be regarded as very singular that the “thorn in the flesh” is mentioned in immediate connection with “visions and revelations of the Lord.” The ordinary idea, indeed, has been that this connection is merely incidental; but a little consideration, I think, will show that this cannot be the case. In the 7th verse he says, “And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh,” etc. Now, I contend that unless there was some such intimate relation between the thorn in the flesh and the revelations in question, as that of the one being immediately occasioned by the other, the humbling effect here attributed to the bodily infirmity could not have been produced on the apostle’s mind, because the cause assigned would have been unsuitable and inadequate to such an effect. It is true that every affliction, bodily or otherwise, has a tendency to produce a feeling of humiliation, but it does so only in so far as it cuts away the ground on which we are disposed to build up matter of pride or boasting. If a man is proud of his strength or personal beauty, it would humble him to lose a limb, or to have his features disfigured by loathsome disease. But these afflictions would not produce the same effect if they befell another person who valued himself exclusively upon his learning and mental endowments. The pride of learning and of intellect would, in such a case, remain as strong as ever. Accordingly we find that deformed persons, so far from being distinguished by the grace of humility, are very frequently rather remarkable for the opposite characteristics of vanity and self-conceit; so natural is it for the mind to take refuge from what tends to produce a sense of degradation, in something that the humbling stroke does not directly smite. It does not, therefore, distinctly appear, in any explanation of St. Paul’s affliction which would refer it to disease of an ordinary kind, how it should have had the effect which he attributes to it,–that of preventing him from being unduly exalted by the abundance of the revelations made to him. But when it is pointed out that his affliction was the immediate consequence of his close intercourse with Deity, the relation of the two things assumes an entirely different aspect, and a sufficient cause of humiliation appears. For, if at any time the apostle was disposed to glorify himself on his superiority to his fellow-men, and on being the peculiar favorite and friend of God, his real insignificance, and the infinite distance that lay between him and the Divine Being, must have been sent home with irresistible power to his mind, by the recollection that the mere sight of that terrible majesty had struck him to the ground, and had left an ever-during brand of pain and disfigurement on his person. I shall just add, that in Second Corinthians xii. 7, the words, {te hyperbole ton apokalypseon} may with quite as much propriety be construed with {edothe moi skolops te sarki}, as with {hina me huperairomai}; the meaning being thus given,–“and that I might not be exalted, a thorn in the flesh [caused] by the exceeding greatness (for this rather than ‘abundance’ seems to me the proper translation of {hyperbole}) of the revelations, was given me.”

If the account I have thus given of the connection between St. Paul’s “thorn in the flesh,” and the visions or revelations with which he was favored, be the correct one, we are now furnished with the means of explaining a somewhat obscure expression in the 14th verse of the fourth chapter of Galatians, to which I promised to return: “And my trial which was in my flesh, ye despised not, nor rejected.” If we are compelled to abide by the belief, that St. Paul’s “trial” was merely some bodily affliction of the ordinary kind, we can understand the meaning of his saying that the Galatians did not “despise” it (although, by the way, it seems rather a microscopic basis on which to found a laudation of a body of Christian men and women, to say that they were so good as not to despise him on account of a natural bodily infirmity), but it is impossible, on this assumption, to attach any consistent sense to the word “rejected.” It has, therefore, been taken as simply synonymous with “despise,” an interpretation which is objectionable, both because it is at variance with the well-ascertained meaning of the Greek word {exeptusate} (spit out, not spit at), and also because it involves the imputation of needless tautology to St. Paul’s language, from which, almost more than from any other fault of style, the whole of his writings prove him to be singularly free. But if my explanation of the nature of the apostle’s trial be the true one, every word of the sentence has a clear and intelligible meaning. St. Paul came among the Galatians proclaiming to them the glad truth, that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead. How did he know it? Because he himself had seen him alive after his passion, “when he came near to Damascus.” Was he quite sure that the vision was not a dream, or a delusion? He pointed to his eyes in proof that it was a great certainty, a terrible as well as joyous reality. And this evidence the Galatians “despised not, nor rejected.”