THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE
EDITED BY THE REV.
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
Editor of "The Expositor"
THE
ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
BY THE REV
G. T. STOKES, D.D.
PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN
AND VICAR OF ALL SAINTS', BLACKROCK
VOLUME II
NEW YORK
A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON
51 EAST TENTH STREET
1892
PREFACE.
The following volume terminates my survey and exposition
of the Acts of the Holy Apostles. I have
fully explained in the body of this work the reasons which
led me to discuss the latter portion of that book more
briefly than its earlier chapters. I did this of set purpose.
The latter chapters of Acts are occupied to a great
extent with the work of St. Paul during a comparatively
brief period, while the first twenty chapters cover a space
of well-nigh thirty years. The riot in Jerusalem and a
few speeches at Cæsarea occupy the larger portion of
the later narrative, and deal very largely with circumstances
in St. Paul's life, his conversion and mission to
the Gentiles, of which the earlier portion of this volume
treats at large. Upon these topics I had nothing fresh to
say, and was therefore necessarily obliged to refer my
readers to pages previously written. I do not think, however,
that I have omitted any topic or passage suitable
to the purposes of the Expositor's Bible. Some may
desiderate longer notices of German theories concerning
the origin and character of the Acts. But, then, an
expositor's Bible is not intended to deal at length with
critical theories. Critical commentaries and works like
Dr. Salmon's Introduction to the New Testament take
such subjects into consideration and discuss them fully,
omitting all mere exposition. My duty is exposition,
and the supply or indication of material suitable for
expository purposes. If I had gone into the endless
theories supplied by German ingenuity to explain what
seems to us the simplest and plainest matters of fact
demanding no explanation whatsoever, I am afraid
there would have been little space left for exposition,
and my readers would have been excessively few.
Those who are interested in such discussions, which are
simply endless, and will last as long as man's fancy
and imagination continue to flourish, will find ample
satisfaction in the eighteenth chapter of Dr. Salmon's
Introduction. Perhaps I had better notice one point
urged by him, as an illustration of the critical methods
of English common sense. German critics have tried
to make out that the Acts were written in the second
century in order to establish a parallel between St.
Peter and St. Paul when men wished to reconcile and
unite in one common body the Pauline and Petrine
parties. This is the view set forth at length by Zeller
in his work on the Acts, vol. ii., p. 278, translated and
published in the series printed some years ago under
the auspices of the Theological Translation Fund.
Dr. Salmon's reply seems to me conclusive, as contained
in the following passage, l.c., p. 336: "What I think
proves conclusively that the making a parallel between
Peter and Paul was not an idea present to the author's
mind, is the absence of the natural climax of such a
parallel—the story of the martyrdom of both the
Apostles. Very early tradition makes both Peter and
Paul close their lives by martyrdom at Rome—the
place where Rationalist critics generally believe the
Acts to have been written. The stories told in tolerably
ancient times in that Church which venerated with
equal honour the memory of either apostle, represented
both as joined in harmonious resistance to the
impostures of Simon Magus. And though I believe
these stories to be more modern than the latest period
to which any one has ventured to assign the Acts,
yet what an opportunity did that part of the story
which is certainly ancient—that both Apostles came to
Rome and died there for the faith (Clem. Rom., 5)—offer
to any one desirous of blotting out the memory
of all differences between the preaching of Peter and
Paul, and of setting both on equal pedestals of honour!
Just as the names of Ridley and Latimer have been
united in the memory of the Church of England, and
no count has been taken of their previous doctrinal
differences, in the recollection of their first testimony
for their common faith, so have the names of Peter and
Paul been constantly bound together by the fact that
the martyrdom of both has been commemorated on
the same day. And if the object of the author of the
Acts had been what has been supposed, it is scarcely
credible that he could have missed so obvious an
opportunity of bringing his book to its most worthy
conclusion, by telling how the two servants of Christ—all
previous differences, if there had been any, reconciled
and forgotten—joined in witnessing a good
confession before the tyrant emperor, and encouraged
each other to steadfastness in endurance to the end."
But though I have not dealt in any formal way with
the critical theories urged concerning the Acts, I have
taken every opportunity of pointing out the evidence
for its early date and genuine character furnished by
that particular line of historical exposition and illustration
which I have adopted. It will be at once seen
how much indebted I am in this department to the
researches of modern scholars and travellers, especially
to those of Professor Ramsay, whose long residence and
extended travels in Asia Minor have given him special
advantages over all other critics. I have made a diligent
use of all his writings, so far as they had appeared up
to the time of writing, and only regret that I was not
able to use his paper on St. Paul's second journey,
which appeared in the Expositor for October, after this
work had been composed and printed. That article
seems to me another admirable illustration of the
critical methods used by our own home scholars
as contrasted with those current abroad. Professor
Ramsay does not set to work to spin criticisms out of
his own imagination and elaborate theories out of his
own inner consciousness even as a spider weaves its
web; but he takes the Acts of the Apostles, compares
it with the facts of Asia Minor, its scenery, roads,
mountains, ruins, and then points out how exactly the
text answers to the facts, showing that the author of
it wrote at the time alleged and must have been an
eyewitness of the Apostles' doings. While again by
a similar comparison in the case of the apocryphal acts
of St. Paul and Thecla he demonstrates how easily a
forger fell into grievous mistakes. I do not think a
better illustration can be found of the difference between
sound historical criticism and criticism based on mere
imagination than this article by Professor Ramsay.
In conclusion I ought to explain that I systematically
quote the Fathers whenever I can out of the translations
published by Messrs. T. & T. Clark, or in the
Oxford Library of the Fathers. It would have been
very easy for me to give this book a very learned look
by adding the references in Greek or Latin, but I do
not think I should have thus conduced much to its
practical utility. The Fathers are now a collection of
works much spoken of, but very little read, and the
references in the original added to theological works
are much more overlooked than consulted. It would
conduce much to a sound knowledge of primitive
antiquity were the works translated of all the Christian
writers who flourished down to the triumph of
Christianity. Authors who fill their pages with quotations
in Latin and Greek which they do not translate
forget one simple fact, that ten or twenty years in a
country parish immersed in its endless details make
the Latin and Greek of even good scholars somewhat
rusty. And if so, what must be the case with those
who are not good scholars, or not scholars at all,
whether bad or good? I am often surprised noting
how much more exacting from their readers modern
scholars are in this direction than our forefathers of
two hundred years ago. Let any one, for instance,
take up the works composed in English by Hammond
or Thorndike discussing the subject of Episcopacy, and
it will be found that in every case when they use a
Latin, Greek, or Hebrew quotation while they give the
original they always add the translation. Finally I have
to acknowledge, what every page will show, the great
assistance I have derived from the Lives of St. Paul
written by Archdeacon Farrar, Mr. Lewin, and Messrs.
Conybeare & Howson, and to express a hope that this
volume together with the previous one will be found
helpful by some as they strive to form a better and truer
conception of the manner in which the Church of the
living God was founded and built up amongst men.
GEORGE T. STOKES.
All Saints' Vicarage, Blackrock,
Nov. 4th, 1892.
CONTENTS.
| CHAPTER I. |
| THE TRAINING OF SAUL THE RABBI. |
| Acts vii. 58; xxii. 3. |
| | PAGE |
St. Paul's Appearance on the Christian Stage and its Results—The Tübingen Theory—His Parentage—Birthplace—Testimony of St. Epiphanius—Early Friends—Education—Trade—Gamaliel and his Influence—Evidence of Talmud—Pharisaic Schools—Their Casuistry and Exegesis—Parallel between Hagar and Sarah | 1‑21 |
| CHAPTER II. |
| THE CONVERSION OF THE PERSECUTOR. |
| Acts viii. 3; ix. 1-6. |
Saul of Tarsus and St. Stephen—Saul and the Sanhedrin—Conduct of Saul when Unconverted—Continuity of Judaism and Christianity—Saul and Blasphemy of Christ—Sense of Sin compatible with Sense of Forgiveness—Hooker on the Litany—Jeremy Taylor on Humility—Saul's Mission to Damascus—Domestic Tribunal permitted to the Jews by the Romans—Used against the Men of the Way—Meaning of this expression—Influence of it—Saul's Journey—Scene of Conversion—Lord Lyttelton's Observations upon St. Paul's Conversion—Supernatural Accompaniments appropriate to—Apostle's own Narrative—Reflections of the Venerable Bede | 22‑47 |
| CHAPTER III. |
| THE NEW CONVERT AND HIS HUMAN TEACHER. |
| Acts ix. 10, 11. |
Saul and the Vision—Which probably produced Ophthalmia—Portrait of St. Paul—Ananias of Damascus—Straight Street—St. Chrysostom on the Spiritual Greatness of Ananias—Seventeenth-century Travellers in Palestine—Conversation between Jesus Christ and Ananias—Its Theology—Meaning of word Saint—Protest against Antinomianism—St. Paul and title Vas Electionis—And Doctrine of Election—Balance of Doctrine—The New Convert and Prayer | 48‑67 |
| CHAPTER IV. |
| SAUL AND SINAI. |
| Acts ix. 19, 20. |
Visit of Ananias to House of Judas—Christ the True Visitor—Keble's Hymn for Easter Monday—Restoration of Saul's Sight—His Baptism—Language of Ananias—Importance of this fact—Saul's Work in Damascus—Narrative in Acts and in Galatians—Difficulties—Reconciliation—Saul in Arabia—Ancient Explanations of—Discipline of—Value of Seasons of Retirement—Waste of Vital Spiritual Tissues in Activity—Abuse of this Principle in Monasticism—Celtic Monasticism—Saul, the Vas Electionis, trained like Jesus Christ | 68‑91 |
| CHAPTER V. |
| THE FIRST GENTILE CONVERT. |
| Acts x. 1-6. |
The Turning-points of Primitive Church History—Conversion of Saul and of Cornelius—Saul's earliest Ministry at Jerusalem—His Escape to Tarsus—St. Peter and Church in Joppa—Temporary Peace after Saul's Conversion—Caligula's attempt to erect his Statue in Jerusalem—St. Peter and Simon the Tanner—Time of Conversion of Cornelius was Providential—Place, Cæsarea-by-the-Sea, Providential—Cornelius, a Roman Centurion—The Legions and Palestine—Modern Authorities confirm the Acts—New Testament and Favourable Estimate of Soldiers—Catholic Nature of Christianity—Value of Discipline—Lessons Taught by Example of Cornelius | 92‑114 |
| CHAPTER VI. |
| THE PETRINE VISION AT JOPPA. |
| Acts x. 9-15. |
St. Peter led to Joppa Unconsciously—His Period of Repose—Joppa and Missions to the Gentile World—Jonah—Peter and the Hour of Prayer—Value of Forms—Canonical Hours—Tertullian's Testimony—Nature of Peter's Vision—Conditioned by his Natural State—Exactly suited to Destroy his Prejudices—John Calvin's View—St. Peter at Cæsarea—His Sermon—Not Latitudinarian, as some Think—But Truly Catholic—Peter presupposes some Knowledge of Gospel Facts—Evidence of Resurrection—Necessarily Limited—Unless Course of Human Affairs was to be Upset—And God's Usual Laws set Aside—Outpouring of Holy Ghost on Gentiles—Baptism of Cornelius | 115‑141 |
| CHAPTER VII. |
| THE HARVEST OF THE GENTILES. |
| Acts xi. 26. |
Reception of News of Gentile Conversion at Jerusalem—Debate and Strife with St. Peter—The Early Church Knew Nothing of the Privilegium Petri—Fable of Pope Marcellinus—Origin of Antiochene Church—Foundation of Antioch—Scenery and History—Orators and Water Supply—Arrival of Barnabas and of Saul—Invention of the Name Christians—Remarks of Archbishop Trench—The Prophet Agabus and the Outgoings of Charity | 142‑163 |
| CHAPTER VIII. |
| THE DEFEAT OF PRIDE. |
| Acts xii. 1-3, 23, 24. |
Contact of Sacred and Secular History in this Chapter—Story of Herod Agrippa—Illustration of Principle of Heredity—First Martyrdom among Apostles—Character of James, Son of Zebedee—His Spiritual Eminence—His Death a Real Answer to Prayer—St. Peter's Deliverance—Granted to a Pleading Church—Angelic Interference—And the Proprieties of Christianity—Clement of Alexandria and the Pædagogue—Herod's Ostentation and Miserable Death—Testimony of Josephus | 164‑187 |
| CHAPTER IX. |
| ST. PAUL'S ORDINATION AND FIRST MISSIONARY TOUR |
| Acts xiii. 2-4, 14; xiv. 1, 26. |
Thirteenth Chapter may be called the Watershed of the Acts—Calvin and St. Paul's Ordination—Title Apostle Henceforth Applied to Him—Ember Seasons, Reason of—First Formal Mission to the Gentile World—Outline of Apostolic Tour—Saul and Sergius Paulus—Discoveries of General Cesnola—St. Paul's Sermon at the Pisidian Antioch—Jewish Jealousy and Opposition—Iconium—Lystra and Greek Legends—Discovery of Site of Lystra—Roman Police in Asia Minor—Dialects of Asia Minor—Museum of the Evangelical School at Smyrna—St. Paul and Church Organisation | 188‑218 |
| CHAPTER X. |
| THE FIRST CHRISTIAN COUNCIL. |
| Acts xv. 1, 2, 6, 19. |
History of the great General Councils—Originates at that of Jerusalem—Date and Subject-matter—The Controversy about Circumcision—Social Questions springing from it—St. Paul's Position—His Apparent Inconsistencies—Lessons of Apostolic Council—Early Church Scene of Controversies—No Infallible Guide—Composition of Council—Lay Element in Church Synods—Hooker and the Church of England—Witness of Prayer Book—Experience of Irish Church—Proceedings of the Council—Triumph of Gentile Freedom | 219‑244 |
| CHAPTER XI. |
| APOSTOLIC QUARRELS AND THE SECOND TOUR. |
| Acts xv. 36, 39; xvi. 6, 8, 9. |
Introduction of Christianity to Greece—St. Peter and his Asserted Roman Episcopate of Twenty-five Years—Quarrel between St. Paul and St. Barnabas—Between St. Paul and St. Peter—Patristic Explanations—St. Augustine and St. Jerome—St. Paul's Opposition to Nepotism—Barnabas and Mark—Blessings of Sternness—The Wrath of Man praises God—Outline of St. Paul's Second Tour—Ramsay's Historical Geography of Asia Minor—Timothy's Ordination—The Gospel among the Celts—Jeremy Taylor and the Via Intelligentiæ—The Vision at Troas | 245‑270 |
| CHAPTER XII. |
| ST. PAUL IN MACEDONIA. |
| Acts xvi. 29, 31; xvii. 1, 2, 10. |
Ancient Roads and Rome—The Gospel at Philippi—History of that Town—Constitution of Roman Colonies—Lydia and Jewish Oratory—Francis de Sales and Small Congregations—Politics and Christianity—The Apostle before the Duumviri—The Jailer and the Earthquake—"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and Thou shalt be Saved"—The Philippian Church and Persecution—St. Paul at Thessalonica and Berœa—The Politarchs | 271‑300 |
| CHAPTER XIII. |
| ST. PAUL IN GREECE. |
| Acts xvii. 16-18; xviii. 1. |
St. Paul and St. Athanasius, a Parallel—Escape to Athens down the Thermaic Gulf—Visit of Pausanias to that City—Ideal Character of Athenian Paganism—Areopagus and St. Paul—The Unknown God—The Greek Poets—Jesus and the Resurrection—The Primitive Athenian Church and its Theology—Aristides and his Apology—Dionysius the Areopagite and his reputed Philosophy—Origin of Corinthian Church—The Saintly Tentmakers—The Firstfruits of Achaia—Gallio and the Jews—Philosophy and Christ | 301‑330 |
| CHAPTER XIV. |
| THE EPHESIAN CHURCH AND ITS FOUNDATION. |
| Acts xviii. 19-21, 24-26; xix. 1. |
History of Ephesus—Cenchreæ and its Church—Aquila and his Vow—Christianity and External Actions—Judaism and Christianity confounded by Romans—St. Paul's Journey to Ephesus and Jerusalem—Visit to Galatia—Ephesus and John's Disciples—Slow Progress of Gospel in Apostolic Age—Apollos and Meyer's Theory about Baptism—The Baptismal Formula—The School of Tyrannus—Ephesian Magic and its Professors—Story of St. Chrysostom—The Sons of Sceva | 331‑356 |
| CHAPTER XV. |
| THE EPHESIAN RIOT AND A PRUDENT TOWN CLERK. |
| Acts xix. 23-28. |
Duration of St. Paul's Ministry at Ephesus—Date of 1st Corinthians—Diana of Ephesus and her Persian Worship—Weakness of Argument e silentio—Demetrius and the Craftsmen—Artemisian Festivals and Christian Sufferings—Testimony of Achilles Tatius—Martyrdom of Polycarp—Celtic Conventions—Mr. Wood's Discoveries at Ephesus—Gaius Vibius Salutarius—Extant Specimen of Ephesian Silverwork—Speech of Demetrius—The Asiarchs and the Recorder—Apostolic Controversy and its Methods | 357‑384 |
| CHAPTER XVI. |
| ST. PAUL AND THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. |
| Acts xx. 1, 7, 17-19, 28. |
St. Paul's Position in A.D. 57—Personal Character of St. Luke's Narrative—Defects of German Criticism—Apostle's Second Visit to Macedonia—"Round about unto Illyricum"—Visitation of Corinth—Passover at Philippi—Holy Communion at Troas—The Lord's Day in the Primitive Church—Argument from Silence, Dangers of—Justin Martyr on Sunday—Eucharistic Amen—Evening Celebrations—The Agape—Fasting Communion—St. Paul's Sermon and Eutychus—Miletus and Charge to Ephesian Elders—Its Apologetic Tone—St. Paul's view of Sermons—Decay of Modern Preaching—Apostolic Power of Prevision—The Ministry and Personal Religion—The Holy Ghost and Ordination—Origin of Episcopacy—Dr. Hatch's Theories unhistorical—Irenæus on Bishops—Derived from Apostles—Communicatio Idiomatum—St. Paul's Farewell | 385‑421 |
| CHAPTER XVII. |
| A PRISONER IN BONDS. |
| Acts xxi. 2, 3, 17, 33, 39, 40; xxii. 22, 30; xxiv. 1; xxvi. 1. |
St. Paul's Voyage from Miletus to Jerusalem—Christianity at Tyre—"The Seed growing silently"—The Church at Cæsarea and its Teachers—St. Paul's Interview with St. James—The Nazarite Vow—St. Paul's Arrest and Appearance before the Sanhedrin—His Defence before Felix—Felix and Drusilla—Lessons of St. Paul's Vicissitudes—Agabus and Prophesying—St. James and Compromise—St. Paul and the High Priest—His Quickness and Tact—Tertullian on Flight in Persecution—Quietism and Quakerism—St. Paul and the Herodian Family—Argument of his Address before Agrippa and Bernice—His Appeal to Cæsar | 422‑449 |
| CHAPTER XVIII. |
| "IN PERILS ON THE SEA." |
| Acts xxvii. 1-3; xxviii. 16. |
St. Paul as a Traveller and a Prisoner—Length of his Imprisonment—Blessed Results of his Captivity—"The Prisoner of the Lord"—Teaching of the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity—His Captivity Benefited—(a) His Personal Religion—(b) The Church at Cæsarea—(c) The Church at Rome—(d) The Universal Church—Composition of St. Luke's Gospel—Technical Use of word Gospel—Testimony of Aristides and Irenæus—Epistles of the Captivity—Story of the Voyage to Rome—Roman Provincial Organisation—Writings of Mr. James Smith of Jordanhills—Church at Sidon—The Storm—Malta and Puteoli—Christianity at Pompeii—Christian Inscription there Discovered—St. Paul's Approach to Rome—Intense Humanity of the Apostle—Interview with the local Jewish Sanhedrin—Christianity at Rome—Investigations of Harnack and Schürer | 450‑471 |
CHAPTER I.
THE TRAINING OF SAUL THE RABBI.
"A young man named Saul."—Acts vii. 58.
"I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city,
at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed according to the strict manner of the
law of our fathers, being zealous for God, even as ye all are this day."—Acts
xxii. 3.
The appearance of St. Paul upon the stage of
Christian history marks a period of new development
and of more enlarged activity. The most casual
reader of the Acts of the Apostles must see that a
personality of vast power, force, individuality, has now
entered the bounds of the Church, and that henceforth
St. Paul, his teaching, methods, and actions, will
throw all others into the shade. Modern German critics
have seized upon this undoubted fact and made it the
foundation on which they have built elaborate theories
concerning St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles.
Some of them have made St. Paul the inventor of a
new form of Christianity, more elaborate, artificial, and
dogmatic than the simple religion of nature which, as
they think, Jesus Christ taught. Others have seen in
St. Paul the great rival and antagonist of St. Peter, and
have seen in the Acts a deliberate attempt to reconcile
the opposing factions of Peter and Paul by representing
St. Paul's career as modelled upon that of Peter's.See this portion of Baur's theory refuted in Dr. Salmon's Introduction
to the New Testament, ch. xviii., p. 335, 4th ed., where the
writer admits a certain parallelism between the history of SS. Peter
and Paul in the Acts, but denies that it was an invented parallelism.
He remarks on the next page, "What I think proves decisively that
the making a parallel between St. Peter and St. Paul was not an idea
present to the author's mind is the absence of the natural climax of
such a parallel—the story of the martyrdom of both the Apostles....
If the object of the author of the Acts had been what has been supposed,
it is scarcely credible that he could have missed so obvious an opportunity
of bringing his book to its most worthy conclusion, by telling
how the two servants of Christ—all previous differences, if there had
been any, reconciled and forgotten—joined in witnessing a good confession
before the tyrant emperor, and encouraged each other in steadfastness
in endurance to the end."
These theories are, we believe, utterly groundless; but
they show at the same time what an important event
in early Church history St. Paul's conversion was, and
how necessary a thorough comprehension of his life
and training if we wish to understand the genesis of
our holy religion.
Who and whence, then, was this enthusiastic man
who is first introduced to our notice in connexion with
St. Stephen's martyrdom? What can we glean from
Scripture and from secular history concerning his earlier
career? I am not going to attempt to do what Conybeare
and Howson thirty years ago, or Archdeacon Farrar in
later times, have executed with a wealth of learning and
a profuseness of imagination which I could not pretend
to possess. Even did I possess them it would be
impossible, for want of space, to write such a biography
of St. Paul as these authors have given to the public.
Let us, however, strive to gather up such details of
St. Paul's early life and training as the New Testament,
illustrated by history, sets before us. Perhaps
we shall find that more is told us than strikes the
ordinary superficial reader. His parentage is known
to us from St. Paul's own statement. His father and
mother were Jews of the Dispersion, as the Jews
scattered abroad amongst the Gentiles were usually
called; they were residents at Tarsus in Cilicia, and
by profession belonged to the Pharisees who then
formed the more spiritual and earnest religious section
of the Jewish people. We learn this from three passages.
In his defence before the Council, recorded in
Acts xxiii. 6, he tells us that he was "a Pharisee, a son
of Pharisees." There was no division in religious
feeling between the parents. His home life and his
earliest years knew nothing of religious jars and strife.
Husband and wife were joined not only in the external
bonds of marriage, but in the profounder union still of
spiritual sentiment and hope, a memory which may
have inspired a deeper meaning begotten of personal
experience in the warning delivered to the Corinthians,
"Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers." Of the
history of his parents and ancestors we know practically
nothing more for certain, but we can glean a little from
other notices. St. Paul tells us that he belonged to a
special division among the Jews, of which we have
spoken a good deal in the former volume when dealing
with St. Stephen. The Jews at this period were
divided into Hebrews and Hellenists: that is, Hebrews
who by preference and in their ordinary practice spoke
the Hebrew tongue, and Hellenists who spoke Greek
and adopted Greek civilisation and customs. St. Paul
tells us in Philippians iii. 5 that he was "of the stock
of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of
Hebrews," a statement which he substantially repeats
in 2 Corinthians xi. 22. Now it was almost an impossibility
for a Jew of the Dispersion to belong to the
Hebrews. His lot was cast in a foreign land, his
business mixed him up with the surrounding pagans,
so that the use of the Greek language was an absolute
necessity; while the universal practice of his fellow-countrymen
in conforming themselves to Greek customs,
Greek philosophy, and Greek civilisation rendered the
position of one who would stand out for the old Jewish
national ideas and habits a very trying and a very peculiar
one. Here, however, comes in an ancient tradition,
recorded by St. Jerome, which throws some light upon the
difficulty. Scripture tells us that St. Paul was born at
Tarsus. Our Lord, in His conversation with Ananias
in Acts ix. 11, calls him "Saul of Tarsus," while again
the Apostle himself in the twenty-second chapter describes
himself as "a Jew born in Tarsus". But then
the question arises, how came his parents to Tarsus,
and how, being in Tarsus, could they be described as
Hebrews while all around and about them their
countrymen were universally Hellenists? St. Jerome
here steps in to help us. He relates, in his Catalogue
of Illustrious Writers, that "Paul the Apostle, previously
called Saul, being outside the number of the Twelve,
was of the tribe of Benjamin and of the city of the
Jewish Gischala; on the capture of which by the
Romans he migrated with them to Tarsus." Now
this statement of Jerome, written four hundred years
after the event, is clearly inaccurate in many respects,
and plainly contradicts the Apostle's own words that
he was born in Tarsus.
But yet the story probably embodies a tradition substantially
true, that St. Paul's parents were originally
from Galilee. Galilee was intensely Hebrew. It was
provincial, and the provinces are always far less affected
by advance in thought or in religion than the towns,
which are the chosen homes of innovation and of
progress. Hellenism might flourish in Jerusalem, but
in Galilee it would not be tolerated; and the tough,
sturdy Galileans alone would have moral and religious
grit enough to maintain the old Hebrew customs and
language, even amid the abounding inducements to an
opposite course which a great commercial centre like
Tarsus held out. Assuredly our own experience
affords many parallels illustrating the religious history
of St. Paul's family. The Evangelical revival, the
development of Ritual in the Church of England, made
their mark first of all in the towns, and did not affect
the distant country districts till long after. The Presbyterianism
of the Highlands is almost a different
religion from the more enlightened and more cultured
worship of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Low Church
and Orange developments of Ulster bring us back to
the times of the last century, and seem passing strange
to the citizens of London, Manchester, or Dublin, who
first make their acquaintance in districts where obsolete
ideas and cries still retain a power quite forgotten in
the vast tide of life and thought which sways the great
cities. And yet these rural backwaters, as we may call
them, retain their influence, and show strong evidence
of life even in the great cities; and so it is that even
in London and Edinburgh and Glasgow and Dublin
congregations continue to exist in their remoter districts
and back streets where the prejudices and ideas of the
country find full sway and exercise. The Presbyterianism
of the Highlands and the Orangeism of Ulster
will be sought in vain in fashionable churches, but in
smaller assemblies they will be found exercising a
sway and developing a life which will often astonish a
superficial observer.
So it was doubtless in Tarsus. The Hebrews of
Galilee would delight to separate themselves. They
would look down upon the Hellenism of their fellow-countrymen
as a sad falling away from ancient orthodoxy,
but their declension would only add a keener
zest to the zeal with which the descendants of the
Hebrews of Gischala, even in the third and fourth
generations, as it may have been, would retain the
ancient customs and language of their Galilean forefathers.The tradition mentioned by St. Jerome is not the only one which
deals with the early life of St. Paul. Another very learned writer of
the same, or perhaps we should rather say of a still earlier, period was
St. Epiphanius, the historian of Heresies and bishop of Constantia, or
Salamis, in Cyprus. He wrote a great work describing the various
heresies which had sprung up in the Church, containing much valuable
information which his research and early date enabled him to incorporate
in his pages. He describes, amongst others, the Ebionites, telling
us of their hostility to St. Paul and of the charges they brought against
him. The Ebionites denied that he was a Jew at all. The words of
Epiphanius are "They say that he was a Greek, and sprung from the
Gentiles, and then afterwards became a proselyte," in opposition to
which he quotes the Apostle's own words in Phil. iii. 5 and in 2 Cor.
xi. 22. Epiphanius then proceeds to explain how St. Paul might have
been born in Tarsus and yet have been a Jew by nation, because
that, under Antiochus Epiphanes and at other times, vast numbers of
the Jews had been dispersed as captives among the Gentiles. See
Epiphanius, in Corpus Hæreseologicum, Ed. Oehler, vol. ii., p. 283.
Berlin, 1859. This is a good instance how the Jewish hostility, which
pursued St. Paul through life, had not quite died out three centuries
later. Epiphanius was born about A.D. 310. He wrote his work on
Early Heresies about A.D. 375, calling it Panarion, or, as he himself
explains in his introductory epistle, the Medicine Chest, full of remedies
against the bite of the Old Serpent. Epiphanius must have had a great
store of early literature at his command which has now completely
perished. See a long and critical account of him and his writings,
written by Dr. R. A. Lipsius, in the Dict. Christ. Biog., vol. ii.
St. Paul and his parents might seem to an outsider
mere Hellenists, but their Galilean origin and training
enabled them to retain the intenser Judaism which
qualified the Apostle to describe himself as not only of
the stock of Israel, but as a Hebrew of the Hebrews.
St. Paul's more immediate family connexions have
also some light thrown upon them in the New Testament.
We learn, for instance, from Acts xxiii. 16, that
he had a married sister, who probably lived at Jerusalem,
and may have been even a convert to Christianity; for
we are told that her son, having heard of the Jewish
plot to murder the Apostle, at once reported it to St.
Paul himself, who thereupon put his nephew into communication
with the chief captain in whose custody he
lay. While again, in Romans xvi. 7, 11, he sends
salutations to Andronicus, Junias, and Herodion, his
kinsmen, who were residents in Rome; and in verse
21 of the same chapter joins Lucius and Jason and
Sosipater, his kinsmen, with himself in the Christian
wishes for the welfare of the Roman Church, with
which he closes the Epistle. It is said, indeed, that
this may mean simply that these men were Jews, and
that St. Paul regarded all Jews as his kinsmen. But
this notion is excluded by the form of the twenty-first
verse, where he first sends greetings from
Timothy, whom St. Paul dearly loved, and who was
a circumcised Jew, not a proselyte merely, but a
true Jew, on his mother's side, at least; and then
the Apostle proceeds to name the persons whom he
designates his kinsmen. St. Paul evidently belonged
to a family of some position in the Jewish world, whose
ramifications were dispersed into very distant quarters
of the empire. Every scrap of information which we
can gain concerning the early life and associations of
such a man is very precious; we may therefore point
out that we can even get a glimpse of the friends and
acquaintances of his earliest days. Barnabas the Levite
was of Cyprus, an island only seventy miles distant
from Tarsus. In all probability Barnabas may have
resorted to the Jewish schools of Tarsus, or may have
had some other connexions with the Jewish colony of
that city. Some such early friendship may have been
the link which bound Paul to Barnabas and enabled
the latter to stand sponsor for the newly converted
Saul when the Jerusalem Church was yet naturally
suspicious of him. "And when he was come to Jerusalem,
he assayed to join himself to the disciples: and
they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a
disciple. But Barnabas took him, and brought him to
the apostles" (Acts ix. 26, 27). This ancient friendship
enabled Barnabas to pursue the Apostle with those
offices of consolation which his nascent faith demanded.
He knew Saul's boyhood haunts, and therefore it is we
read in Acts xi. 25 that "Barnabas went forth to
Tarsus to seek for Saul" when a multitude of the
Gentiles began to pour into the Church of Antioch.
Barnabas knew his old friend's vigorous, enthusiastic
character, his genius, his power of adaptation, and
therefore he brought him back to Antioch, where for a
whole year they were joined in one holy brotherhood
of devout and successful labour for their Master. The
friendships and love of boyhood and of youth received
a new consecration and were impressed with a loftier
ideal from the example of Saul and of Barnabas.
Then again there are other friends of his youth to
whom he refers. Timothy's family lived at Lystra,
and Lystra was directly connected with Tarsus by a
great road which ran straight from Tarsus to Ephesus,
offering means for that frequent communication in
which the Jews ever delighted. St. Paul's earliest
memories carried him back to the devout atmosphere
of the pious Jewish family at Lystra, which he had
long known, where Lois the grandmother and Eunice
the mother had laid the foundations of that spiritual
life which under St. Paul's own later teaching flourished
so wondrously in the life of Timothy.See 2 Tim. i. 5, and iii. 14, 15. It is evident that St. Paul's
language implies an acquaintance with Timothy's family of very long
standing.
Let us pass on,
however, to a period of later development. St. Paul's
earliest teaching at first was doubtless that of the home.
As with Timothy so with the Apostle; his earliest
religious teacher was doubtless his mother, who from
his infancy imbued him with the great rudimentary
truths which lie at the basis of both the Jewish and
the Christian faith. His father too took his share.
He was a Pharisee, and would be anxious to fulfil
every jot and tittle of the law and every minute rule
which the Jewish doctors had deduced by an attention
and a subtlety concentrated for ages upon the text of
the Old Testament. And one great doctor had laid
down, "When a boy begins to speak, his father ought
to talk with him in the sacred language, and to teach
him the law"; a rule which would exactly fall in with
his father's natural inclination.Schœttgen's Hor. Hebr., vol. i., p. 89; Lewin's St. Paul, vol. i.,
p. 7.
He was a Hebrew of
the Hebrews, though dwelling among Hellenists. He
prided himself on speaking the Hebrew language alone,
and he therefore would take the greatest pains that the
future Apostle's earliest teachings should be in that same
sacred tongue, giving him from boyhood that command
over Hebrew and its dialects which he afterwards turned
to the best of uses.
At five years old Jewish children of parents like
St. Paul's advanced to the direct study of the law
under the guidance of some doctor, whose school they
daily attended, as another rabbi had expressly enacted,
"At five years old a boy should apply himself to the
study of Holy Scripture." Between five and thirteen
Saul was certainly educated at Tarsus, during which
period his whole attention was concentrated upon
sacred learning and upon mechanical or industrial
training. It was at this period of his life that St. Paul
must have learned the trade of tentmaking, which
during the last thirty years of his life stood him in such
good stead, rendering him independent of all external
aid so far as his bodily wants were concerned. A
question has often been raised as to the social position
of St. Paul's family; and people, bringing their Western
ideas with them, have thought that the manual trade
which he was taught betokened their humble rank.
But this is quite a mistake. St. Paul's family must
have occupied at least a fairly comfortable position,
when they were able to send a member of their house
to Jerusalem to be taught in the most celebrated rabbinical
school of the time. But it was the law of that
school—and a very useful law it was too—that every
Jew, and especially every teacher, should possess a trade
by which he might be supported did necessity call for
it. It was a common proverb among the Jews at that
time that "He who taught not his son a trade taught
him to be a thief." "It is incumbent on the father to
circumcise his son, to redeem him, to teach him the
law, and to teach him some occupation, for, as Rabbi
Judah saith, whosoever teacheth not his son to do
some work is as if he taught him robbery." "Rabbin
Gamaliel saith, He that hath a trade in his hand, to
what is he like? He is like to a vineyard that is
fenced." Such was the authoritative teaching of the
schools, and Jewish practice was in accordance therewith.
Some of the most celebrated rabbis of that
time were masters of a mechanical art or trade. The
Vice-president of the Sanhedrin was a merchant for
four years, and then devoted himself to the study
of the law. One rabbi was a shoemaker; Rabbi
Juda, the great Cabbalist, was a tailor; Rabbi Jose
was brought up as a tanner; another rabbi as a
baker, and yet another as a carpenter.Josephus, Antiqq., XVIII., ix., 1, says of certain Jews of Babylon,
"Now there were two men, Asineus and Anileus, brethren to one
another. They were destitute of a father, and their mother put them
to learn the art of weaving curtains, it not being esteemed a disgrace
among them for men to be weavers of cloth." Then we find in the
New Testament Simon of Joppa was a tanner, Aquila a tentmaker,
the apostles fishermen, and our Lord a carpenter. See a long note on
this subject by Mr. Lewin in his Life of St. Paul, vol. i., p. 8. Massutius,
a Jesuit commentator on St. Paul's life, lib. i., cap. iii., notices
that Charlemagne, according to his biographer Eginhard, would have
his sons and daughters taught some mechanical trade.
And so as a
preparation for the office and life work to which his
father had destined him, St. Paul during his earlier
years was taught one of the common trades of Tarsus,
which consisted in making tents either out of the hair
or the skin of the Angora goats which browsed over the
hills of central Asia Minor. It was a trade that was
common among Jews. Aquila and his wife Priscilla
were tentmakers, and therefore St. Paul united himself
to them and wrought at his trade in their company at
Corinth (Acts xviii. 3). It has often been asserted that
at this period of his life St. Paul must have studied
Greek philosophy and literature, and men have pointed
to his quotations from the Greek poets Aratus,
Epimenides, and Menander to prove the attention
which the Apostle must have bestowed upon them.See Acts xvii. 28; Titus i. 12; 1 Cor. xv. 33.
Tarsus was certainly one of the great universities of
that age, ranking in the first place along with Athens
and Alexandria. So great was its fame that the Roman
emperors even were wont to go to Tarsus to look
for tutors to instruct their sons. But Tarsus was at
the very same time one of the most morally degraded
spots within the bounds of the Roman world,
and it is not at all likely that a strict Hebrew, a
stern Pharisee, would have allowed his son to encounter
the moral taint involved in freely mixing with
such a degraded people and in the free study of a
literature permeated through and through with sensuality
and idolatry. St. Paul doubtless at this early
period of his life gained that colloquial knowledge of
Greek which was every day becoming more and more
necessary for the ordinary purposes of secular life all
over the Roman Empire, even in the most backward
parts of Palestine.See an article on "Greek the Language of Galilee in the time of
Christ," by the Rev. Dr. Abbott, Professor of Hebrew in the University
of Dublin, in his Essays chiefly on the Original Texts of the Old and
New Testaments. London, 1891.
But it is not likely that his
parents would have sanctioned his attendance at the
lectures on philosophy and poetry delivered at the
University of Tarsus, where he would have been initiated
into all the abominations of paganism in a style most
attractive to human nature.
At thirteen years of age, or thereabouts, young Saul,
having now learned all the sacred knowledge which
the local rabbis could teach, went up to Jerusalem
just as our Lord did, to assume the full obligations
of a Jew and to pursue his higher studies at the
great Rabbinical University of Jerusalem. To put it
in modern language, Saul went up to Jerusalem to
be confirmed and admitted to the full privileges and
complete obligations of the Levitical Law, and he also
went up to enter college. St. Paul himself describes the
period of life on which he now entered as that in which
he was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. We have
already touched in a prior volume upon the subject of
Gamaliel's history and his relation to Christianity, but
here it is necessary to say something of him as a
teacher, in which capacity he laid the foundations of
modes of thought and reasoning, the influence of which
moulded St. Paul's whole soul and can be traced all
through St. Paul's Epistles.
Gamaliel is an undoubtedly historical personage.
The introduction of him in the Acts of the Apostles is
simply another instance of that marvellous historical
accuracy which every fresh investigation and discovery
show to be a distinguishing feature of this book. The
Jewish Talmud was not committed to writing for more
than four centuries after Gamaliel's time,Basnage, in his History of the Jews, translated by Thomas Taylor,
Book III., ch. vi., p. 168 (London, 1708), states, "It is agreed by the
generality of Jewish and Christian doctors that the Talmud was completed
in the 505th year of the Christian Æra." Cf. Serarius, De
Rabbinis, Lib. I., c. ix., p. 251; Bartolocci, Bibl. Rabbin., t. i., p. 488,
t. iii., p. 359; Morinus, Exerc. Bibl., Lib. II., ex. 6, c. ii. and iii., p. 294.
Schaff's Encyclopædia of Historical Theology, vol. iii., pp. 2292-96, has
a good article on the Talmud, giving a long list of authorities to which
reference may be made by any one interested in this subject.
and yet it
presents Gamaliel to us in exactly the same light as
the inspired record does, telling us that "with the death
of Gamaliel I. the reverence for the Divine law ceased,
and the observance of purity and abstinence departed."
Gamaliel came of a family distinguished in Jewish
history both before and after his own time. He was
of the royal House of David, and possessed in this way
great historical claims upon the respect of the nation.
His grandfather Hillel and his father Simeon were
celebrated teachers and expounders of the law. His
grandfather had founded indeed one of the leading
schools of interpretation then favoured by the rabbis.
His father Simeon is said by some to have been the
aged man who took up the infant Christ in his arms
and blessed God for His revealed salvation in the
words of the Nunc Dimittis; while, as for Gamaliel
himself, his teaching was marked by wisdom, prudence,
liberality, and spiritual depth so far as such qualities
could exist in a professor of rabbinical learning.
Gamaliel was a friend and contemporary of Philo, and
this fact alone must have imported an element of
liberality into his teaching. Philo was a widely read
scholar who strove to unite the philosophy of Greece
to the religion of Palestine, and Philo's ideas must have
permeated more or less into some at least of the schools
of Jerusalem, so that, though St. Paul may not have
come in contact with Greek literature in Tarsus, he
may very probably have learned much about it in a
Judaised, purified, spiritualised shape in Jerusalem.
But the influence exercised on St. Paul by Gamaliel
and through him by Philo, or men of his school, can
be traced in other respects.Philo is the subject of a very long and learned article by Dr.
Edersheim in Smith's Dict. Christ. Biog., vol. iv., with which may be
compared a shorter article in Schaff's Encyclopædia of Hist. Theol.,
vol. ii.
The teaching of Gamaliel was as spiritual, I have
said, as rabbinical teaching could have been; but this
is not saying very much from the Christian point of
view. The schools at Jerusalem in the time of Gamaliel
were wholly engaged in studies of the most wearisome,
narrow, petty, technical kind. Dr. Farrar has
illustrated this subject with a great wealth of learning
and examples in the fourth chapter of his Life of
St. Paul. The Talmud alone shows this, throwing
a fearful light upon the denunciations of our Lord as
regards the Pharisees, for it devotes a whole treatise
to washings of the hands, and another to the proper
method of killing fowls. The Pharisaic section of the
Jews held, indeed, that there were two hundred and
forty-eight commandments and three hundred and
sixty-five prohibitions involved in the Jewish Law, all
of them equally binding, and all of them so searching
that if only one solitary Jew could be found who for
one day kept them all and transgressed in no one
direction, then the captivity of God's people would cease
and the Messiah would appear.These facts throw much light upon our Lord's words in Matt. xv.
1-9 and xxii. 34-40.
I am obliged to pass over this point somewhat
rapidly, and yet it is a most important one if we desire
to know what kind of training the Apostle received; for,
no matter how God's grace may descend and the Divine
Spirit may change the main directions of a man's life, he
never quite recovers himself from the effects of his early
teaching. Dr. Farrar has bestowed much time and
labour on this point. The following brief extract from
his eloquent words will give a vivid idea of the endless
puerilities, the infinite questions of pettiest, most
minute, and most subtle bearing with which the time
of St. Paul and his fellow-students must have been
taken up, and which must have made him bitterly feel
in the depths of his inmost being that, though the law
may have been originally intended as a source of life, it
had been certainly changed as regards his own particular
case, and had become unto him an occasion of death.
"Moreover, was there not mingled with all this
nominal adoration of the Law a deeply seated hypocrisy,
so deep that it was in a great measure unconscious?
Even before the days of Christ the rabbis
had learnt the art of straining out gnats and swallowing
camels. They had long learnt to nullify what they
professed to defend. The ingenuity of Hillel was
quite capable of getting rid of any Mosaic regulation
which had been found practically burdensome. Pharisees
and Sadducees alike had managed to set aside
in their own favour, by the devices of the mixtures,
all that was disagreeable to themselves in the
Sabbath scrupulosity.The rabbinical device of mixtures is fully explained in Buxtorf's
Lexicon, col. 1657, Ed. Basil (1639), or in Kitto's Biblical Encyclopædia,
under the article "Sabbath." The Talmud had a special treatise called
Tractatus Mixtorum, which taught how, for instance, dwellings might
be mixed or mingled so as to avoid technical breaches of the Sabbatical
law. Planks were laid across intervening residences, so that houses at
a very great distance might be brought into touch and connexion, and
thus regarded as one common dwelling for a number of people who
wished for a common feast on the Sabbath. This was called Mixtio
conclavium. It was simply one of those wretched devices to which
casuistry always leads; something like the rules for banquets on fast
days, which we find in Lacroix, Manners of the Middle Ages, p. 170,
where a most sumptuous Episcopal banquet is described. It was given
on a fast day, therefore no flesh is included; but its place was amply
supplied by rare fish and other dainties: see G. T. Stokes, Ireland and
Anglo-Norman Church, p. 143.
The fundamental institution
of the Sabbatic year had been stultified by the mere
legal fiction of the Prosbol.Prosbol is simply a transliteration into Hebrew of two Greek words,
πρὸς βουλήν. The Jewish Law enacted a cancelling of all debts in the
Sabbatic year on the part of Jews towards their brethren. This
enactment was found to hinder commerce about the time of Hillel—i.e.,
75 years B.C. The rich would not lend to the poor on account of the
Sabbatical year. So the doctors devised the Prosbol, which was a
declaration to the effect that the Sabbatical year was not to affect the
debt. There was a legal fiction invented which made void the law.
The creditor said to the debtor, "In accordance with the Sabbatical
year I remit thee the debt," and then the debtor replied, "Nevertheless
I wish to pay it," and then the creditor was free from the obligation of
Deut. xv.
Teachers who were on
the high road to a casuistry which could construct
rules out of every superfluous particle, had found it
easy to win credit for ingenuity by elaborating prescriptions
to which Moses would have listened in mute
astonishment. If there be one thing more definitely
laid down in the Law than another, it is the uncleanness
of creeping things; yet the Talmud assures us that
'no one is appointed a member of the Sanhedrin who
does not possess sufficient ingenuity to prove from
the written Law that a creeping thing is ceremonially
clean'; and that there was an unimpeachable disciple
at Jabne who could adduce one hundred and fifty
arguments in favour of the ceremonial cleanness of
creeping things. Sophistry like this was at work even
in the days when the young student of Tarsus sat at
the feet of Gamaliel; and can we imagine any period of
his life when he would not have been wearied by a
system at once so meaningless, so stringent, and so
insincere?"
These words are true, thoroughly true, in their extremest
sense. Casuistry is at all times a dangerous
weapon with which to play, a dangerous science upon
which to concentrate one's attention. The mind is so
pleased with the fascination of the precipice that one
is perpetually tempted to see how near an approach
can be made without a catastrophe, and then the catastrophe
happens when it is least expected. But when
the casuist's attention is concentrated upon one volume
like the law of Moses, interpreted in the thousand
methods and combinations open to the luxuriant
imagination of the East, then indeed the danger is
infinitely increased, and we cease to wonder at the
vivid, burning, scorching denunciations of the Lord as
He proclaimed the sin of those who enacted that
"Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing;
but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple,
he is a debtor." St. Paul's whole time must have been
taken up in the school of Gamaliel with an endless study
of such casuistical trifles; and yet that period of his
life left marks which we can clearly trace throughout his
writings. The method, for instance, in which St. Paul
quotes the Old Testament is thoroughly rabbinical.
It was derived from the rules prevalent in the Jewish
schools, and therefore, though it may seem to us at
times forced and unnatural, must have appeared to St.
Paul and to the men of his time absolutely conclusive.
When reading the Scriptures we Westerns forget the
great difference between Orientals and the nations of
Western Europe. Aristotle and his logic and his logical
methods, with major and minor premises and conclusions
following therefrom, absolutely dominate our thoughts.
The Easterns knew nothing of Aristotle, and his methods
availed nothing to their minds. They argued in quite
a different style, and used a logic which he would
have simply scorned. Analogy, allegory, illustration,
form the staple elements of Eastern logic, and in their
use St. Paul was elaborately trained in Gamaliel's
classes, and of their use his writings furnish abundant
examples; the most notable of which will be found in
his allegorical interpretation of the events of the wilderness
journey of Israel in 1 Corinthians x. 1-4, where
the pillar of cloud, and the passage of the Red Sea, and
the manna, and the smitten rock become the emblems
and types of the Christian Sacraments; and again, in
St. Paul's mystical explanation of Galatians iv. 21-31,
where Hagar and Sarah are represented as typical of
the two covenants, the old covenant leading to spiritual
bondage and the new introducing to gospel freedom.The parallel between Hagar and Sarah is drawn out at full length
after the rabbinical method in Basnage's History of the Jews (Taylor's
translation), book iii., ch. 22; in Lightfoot's Galatians, pp. 178, 179,
189-99, and Farrar's St. Paul, ch. iii. Philo in his writings uses the
very same illustration. Perhaps it may be well to add the concluding
words of Bishop Lightfoot when discussing on p. 197 of his Galatians,
the similar use made by St. Paul and by Philo of this illustration of
Hagar: "At the same time we need not fear to allow that St. Paul's
method of teaching here is coloured by his early education in the
rabbinical schools. It were as unreasonable to stake the Apostle's
inspiration on the turn of a metaphor or the character of an illustration
or the form of an argument, as on purity of diction. No one now
thinks of maintaining that the language of the inspired writers reaches
the classical standard of correctness and elegance, though at one time it
was held almost a heresy to deny this. 'A treasure contained in earthen
vessels,' 'strength made perfect in weakness,' 'rudeness in speech, yet
not in knowledge,' such is the far nobler conception of inspired teaching,
which we may gather from the Apostle's own language. And this
language we should do well to bear in mind. But, on the other hand
it were mere dogmatism to set up the intellectual standard of our own
age or country as an infallible rule. The power of allegory has been
differently felt in different ages, as it is differently felt at any one time
by diverse nations. Analogy, allegory, metaphor—by what boundaries
are these separated the one from the other? What is true or false, correct
or incorrect, as an analogy or an allegory? What argumentative force
must be assigned to either? We should at least be prepared with an
answer to these questions before we venture to sit in judgment on any
individual case."
These, indeed, are the most notable examples of St.
Paul's method of exegesis derived from the school of
Gamaliel, but there are numberless others scattered all
through his writings. If we view them through Western
spectacles, we shall be disappointed and miss their
force; but if we view them sympathetically, if we
remember that the Jews quoted and studied the Old
Testament to find illustrations of their own ideas rather
than proofs in our sense of the word, studied them as
an enthusiastic Shakespeare or Tennyson or Wordsworth
student pores over his favourite author to find
parallels which others, who are less bewitched, find
very slight and very dubious indeed,The latest instance of this method which I have noticed is Illustrations
of Tennyson, by J. C. Collins, reviewed by the Dean of Armagh
in the January number of the Bookman, where a number of such
parallelisms are quoted which seem to me rather dubious.
then we shall
come to see how it is that St. Paul quotes an illustration
of his doctrine of justification by faith from Habakkuk
ii. 4—"The soul of the proud man is not upright, but
the just man shall live by his steadfastness"; a passage
which originally applied to the Chaldeans and the Jews,
predicting that the former should enjoy no stable prosperity,
but that the Jews, ideally represented as the
just or upright man, should live securely because of
their fidelity;Bishop Lightfoot, on Galatians iii. 11, says of this verse, "In its
original context the passage has reference to the temporal calamities
inflicted by the Chaldean invasion. Here a spiritual meaning and
general application are given to words referring primarily to special
external incidents." See also Farrar on St. Paul's method of scriptural
quotation, in his Life of St. Paul, ch. iii.
and can find an allusion to the resurrection
of Christ in "the sure mercies of David," which
God had promised to give His people in the third verse
of the fifty-fifth of Isaiah.See St. Paul's address to the Jews of the Pisidian Antioch in Acts
xiii. 34. Other specimens of the same rabbinical method used by St.
Paul will be found in Rom. iii., iv., and ix. 33; 1 Cor. ix. Eph. iv. 8.
Rabbinical learning, Hebrew discipline, Greek experience
and life, these conspired together with natural
impulse and character to frame and form and mould a
man who must make his mark upon the world at large
in whatever direction he chooses for his walk in life.
It will now be our duty to show what were the earliest
results of this very varied education.The great leaders in the divine struggle for righteousness, in every
great onward movement on behalf of truth have always been men of
this varied training. Moses, David, Elijah, Ezra, Saul of Tarsus, were
great leaders of thought and action and they were all men whose
education had been developed in very various schools. They were not
men of books merely, nor men of action alone. They gained the
flexibility of mind, the genuine liberality of thought which led them out
of the old rucks by experiences gained from very opposite directions.
The mere man of books may be very narrow; the practical man,
whose knowledge is limited to every day affairs and whose horizon is
bounded by to-morrow, is often an unthinking bigot. A man trained
like Moses, or David, or Saul is the true leader of men for his mind is
trained to receive truths from every quarter.
CHAPTER II.
THE CONVERSION OF THE PERSECUTOR.
"But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house, and
haling men and women committed them to prison."—Acts viii. 3.
"But Saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the
disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, and asked of him
letters to Damascus unto the synagogues, that if he found any that
were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound
to Jerusalem. And as he journeyed, it came to pass that he drew nigh
unto Damascus: and suddenly there shone round about him a light out
of heaven: and he fell upon the earth, and heard a voice saying unto
him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? And he said, Who art
thou, Lord? And He said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: but
rise, and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do."—Acts
ix. 1-6.
We have in the last chapter traced the course of
St. Paul's life as we know it from his own
reminiscences, from hints in Holy Scripture, and from
Jewish history and customs. The Jewish nation is
exactly like all the nations of the East, in one respect at
least. They are all intensely conservative, and though
time has necessarily introduced some modifications, yet
the course of education, and the force of prejudice, and
the power of custom have in the main remained unchanged
down to the present time. We now proceed to
view St. Paul, not as we imagine his course of life and
education to have been, but as we follow him in the
exhibition of his active powers, in the full play and
swing of that intellectual energy, of those religious aims
and objects for which he had been so long training.
St. Paul at his first appearance upon the stage of
Christian history, upon the occasion of St. Stephen's
martyrdom, had arrived at the full stature of manhood
both in body and in mind. He was then the young
man Saul; an expression which enables us to fix
with some approach to accuracy the time of his birth.
St. Paul's contemporary Philo in one of his works
divides man's life into seven periods, the fourth of which
is young manhood, which he assigns to the years between
twenty-one and twenty-eight. Roughly speaking, and
without attempting any fine-drawn distinctions for which
we have not sufficient material, we may say that at the
martyrdom of St. Stephen St. Paul was about thirty
years of age, or some ten years or thereabouts junior to
our Lord as His years would have been numbered according
to those of the sons of men. One circumstance,
indeed, would seem to indicate that St. Paul must have
been then over and above the exact line of thirty. It is
urged, and that upon the ground of St. Paul's own language,
that he was a member of the Sanhedrin. In the
twenty-sixth chapter, defending himself before King
Agrippa, St. Paul described his own course of action prior
to his conversion as one of bitterest hostility to the
Christian cause: "I both shut up many of the saints in
prisons, having received authority from the chief priests,
and when they were put to death, I gave my vote against
them"; an expression which clearly indicates that he was
a member of a body and possessed a vote in an assembly
which determined questions of life and death, and that
could have been nothing else than the Sanhedrin, into
which no one was admitted before he had completed
thirty years. St. Paul, then, when he is first introduced
to our notice, comes before us as a full-grown man and a
well-trained, carefully educated, thoroughly disciplined
rabbinical scholar, whose prejudices were naturally
excited against the new Galilean sect, and who had
given public expression to his feelings by taking
decided steps in opposition to its progress. The sacred
narrative now sets before us (i) the Conduct of St.
Paul in his unconverted state, (ii) his Mission, (iii) his
Journey, and (iv) his Conversion. Let us take the
many details and circumstances connected with this
passage under these four divisions.
I. The Conduct of Saul. Here we have a picture of
St. Paul in his unconverted state: "Saul, yet breathing
threatening and slaughter against the disciples
of the Lord." This description is amply borne out
by St. Paul himself, in which he even enlarges and
gives us additional touches of the intensity of his
antichristian hate. His ignorant zeal at this period
seems to have printed itself deep upon memory's
record. There are no less than at least seven different
notices in the Acts or scattered through the Epistles,
due to his own tongue or pen, and dealing directly with
his conduct as a persecutor. No matter how he
rejoiced in the fulness and blessedness of Christ's
pardon, no matter how he experienced the power and
working of God's Holy Spirit, St. Paul never could
forget the intense hatred with which he had originally
followed the disciples of the Master. Let us note them,
for they all bear out, expand, and explain the statement
of the passage we are now considering.
In his address to the Jews of Jerusalem as recorded
in Acts xxii. he appeals to his former conduct as an evidence
of his sincerity. In verses 4 and 5 he says, "I
persecuted this Way unto the death, binding and delivering
into prisons both men and women. As also the
high priest doth bear me witness, and all the estate of
the elders: from whom also I received letters unto the
brethren,What an interesting anticipation of Christian times do we find in this
passage. "The estate of the elders" is the Presbytery in the original
Greek, and the words "the brethren" by which St. Paul refers to his
unconverted fellow-countrymen are an anticipation of the expression he
always uses for the Christian believers. Even in these little details
Christianity is but an expansion of Judaism, as, in another direction,
the Catacombs of Rome and the ornamentation used therein were all
derived from the customs of the Jewish colony in Rome long before
the time of Christ. See a treatise by Schurer, called Die Gemeindeverfassung
der Juden in Rom in der Kaiserzeit, p. 13 (Leipzig, 1879),
where that learned writer points out the continuity between Judaism
in Rome and early Christianity.
and journeyed to Damascus, to bring them
also which were there unto Jerusalem in bonds, for to
be punished." In the same discourse he recurs a second
time to this topic; for, telling his audience of the vision
granted to him in the temple, he says, verse 19, "And I
said, Lord, they themselves know that I imprisoned and
beat in every synagogue them that believed on Thee:
and when the blood of Stephen Thy witness was shed,
I also was standing by, and consenting, and keeping
the garments of them that slew him." St. Paul
dwells upon the same topic in the twenty-sixth chapter,
when addressing King Agrippa in verses 9-11, a passage
already quoted in part: "I verily thought with
myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the
name of Jesus of Nazareth. And this I also did in
Jerusalem: and I both shut up many of the saints
in prisons, having received authority from the chief
priests, and when they were put to death, I gave my
vote against them. And punishing them oftentimes in
all the synagogues, I strove to make them blaspheme;
and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted
them even unto foreign cities." It is the same in
his Epistles. In four different places does he refer to
his conduct as a persecutor—in 1 Cor. xv. 9; Gal. i. 13;
Phil. iii. 6; and 1 Tim. i. 13; while again in the chapter
now under consideration, the ninth of Acts, we find
that the Jews of the synagogue in Damascus, who
were listening to St. Paul's earliest outburst of Christian
zeal, asked, "Is not this he that in Jerusalem
made havock of them which called on this name? and
he had come hither for this intent, that he might bring
them bound before the chief priests"; using the very
same word "making havock" as St. Paul himself uses
in the first of Galatians, which in Greek is very strong,
expressing a course of action accompanied with fire
and blood and murder such as occurs when a city is
taken by storm.
Now these passages have been thus set forth at
length because they add many details to the bare
statement of Acts ix., giving us a glimpse into those
four or five dark and bloody years, the thought of
which henceforth weighed so heavily upon the Apostle's
mind and memory. Just let us notice these additional
touches. He shut up in prison many of the saints, both
men and women, and that in Jerusalem before he
went to Damascus at all. He scourged the disciples
in every synagogue, meaning doubtless that he superintended
the punishment, as it was the duty of the
Chazan, the minister or attendant of the synagogue,
to scourge the condemned, and thus strove to make them
blaspheme Christ. He voted for the execution of the
disciples when he acted as a member of the Sanhedrin.
And lastly he followed the disciples and persecuted
them in foreign cities. We gain in this way a much
fuller idea of the young enthusiast's persecuting zeal
than usually is formed from the words "Saul yet
breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples
of the Lord," which seem to set forth Saul
as roused to wild and savage excitement by St.
Stephen's death, and then continuing that course in
the city of Jerusalem for a very brief period. Whereas,
on the contrary, St. Paul's fuller statements, when combined,
represent him as pursuing a course of steady,
systematic, and cruel repression, which St. Paul largely
helped to inaugurate, but which continued to exist as
long as the Jews had the power to inflict corporal
punishments and death on the members of their own
nation. He visited all the synagogues in Jerusalem
and throughout Palestine, scourging and imprisoning.
He strove—and this is, again, another lifelike touch,—to
compel the disciples to blaspheme the name of
Christ in the same manner as the Romans were subsequently
wont to test Christians by calling upon them
to cry anathema to the name of their Master.St. Paul, indeed, in his persecuting days may have been the inventor
of the test, which seems to have consisted in a declaration that Jesus was
not the Christ, but an impostor. We find a reference to the Jewish
custom of blaspheming the name of Jesus in the Epistle of James (ii.
6, 7): "Do not the rich oppress you, and themselves drag you before
the judgment-seats? Do not they blaspheme the honourable name by
the which ye are called?" with which may be compared St. Paul's
words in 1 Cor. xii. 3: "No man speaking in the Spirit of God saith,
Jesus is anathema." The same custom continued in the second
century, as we learn from frequent notices in Justin Martyr's Dialogue
with Trypho the Jew, as in the following quotations: ch. xvi., "cursing
in your synagogues those that believe on Christ"; in ch. xlvii. he enumerates
amongst those who shall not be saved "those who have anathematised
and do anathematise this very Christ in the synagogues"; and
in ch. cxxxvii. he exhorts the Jews, "Assent, therefore, and pour no
ridicule on the Son of God; obey not the Pharisaic teachers, and scoff
not at the King of Israel, as the rulers of your synagogues teach you
to do after your prayers." The Romans, as I have said, early borrowed
the custom from the Jews. They strove to compel the Christians to
blaspheme, as we see from Pliny's well-known epistle to Trajan in his
Epistles, book x., 97, where he describes certain persons brought before
him as "invoking the gods, worshipping the emperor's statue, and
reviling the name of Christ, whereas there is no forcing those who
are really Christians into any of these compliances."
He
even extended his activity beyond the bounds of the
Holy Land, and that in various directions. The visit
to Damascus may not by any means have been his
first journey to a foreign town with thoughts bent on
the work of persecution. He expressly says to Agrippa,
"I persecuted them even unto foreign cities." He may
have visited Tarsus, or Lystra, or the cities of Cyprus
or Alexandria itself, urged on by the consuming fire
of his blind, restless zeal, before he entered upon the
journey to Damascus, destined to be the last undertaken
in opposition to Jesus Christ. When we thus
strive to realise the facts of the case, we shall see that
the scenes of blood and torture and death, the ruined
homes, the tears, the heartbreaking separations which
the young man Saul had caused in his blind zeal for
the law, and which are briefly summed up in the words
"he made havock of the Church," were quite sufficient
to account for that profound impression of his own
unworthiness and of God's great mercy towards him
which he ever cherished to his dying day.St. Paul, in 1 Tim. i. 15, says, "Faithful is the saying, and worthy
of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners;
of whom I am chief." This verse is of ancient and of very modern
interest too. It shows that to the last St. Paul retained the keenest
sense of his early wickedness. It is of present interest because it helps
to correct a modern error. There are people who object to use the
Litany and the Lord's Prayer because of the prayers for forgiveness of
sins and the occurrence of such expressions as "Have mercy upon us,
miserable sinners." Their argument is, that believers have been washed
from all their sins, and therefore should not describe themselves as
miserable sinners. St. Paul, however, saw no inconsistency between
God's free forgiving love and his own humility in designating himself
the chief of sinners. God may have cast all our sins behind His back;
but, viewing the matter from the human side, it is well, nay, it is absolutely
necessary, if spiritual pride is to be hindered in its rapid growth,
for us to cherish a remembrance of the sins and backslidings of other
days. The greatest saints, the richest spiritual teachers have ever felt
the necessity of it. St. Augustine in his Confessions mingles perpetual
reminiscences of his own wickedness with his assured sense of God's
mercy. Hooker deals in his own profound style with such objection
to the Litany in the Fifth Book of his Ecclesiastical Polity, ch. xlvii.,
where he writes, replying to the objection that the expressions of the
Litany implying fear of God do not become God's saints: "The knowledge
of our own unworthiness is not without belief in the merits of
Christ. With that true fear which the one causeth there is coupled
true boldness, and encouragement drawn from the other. The very
silence which our own unworthiness putteth us unto doth itself make
request for us, and that in the consequence of His grace. Looking inward
we are stricken dumb, looking upward we speak and prevail. O happy
mixture, wherein things contrary do so qualify and correct the danger
of the other's excess, that neither boldness can make us presume as
long as we are kept under with the sense of our own wretchedness;
nor while we trust in the mercy of God through Jesus Christ, fear be
able to tyrannise over us! As therefore our fear excludeth not that
boldness which becometh saints; so if their familiarity with God
(referring to his opponents) do not savour of this fear, it draweth too
near that irreverent confidence wherewith true humility can never stand."
Bishop Jeremy Taylor understood the bearing of St. Paul's view on
personal religion. In his Holy Living, in the chapter on Humility,
he teaches those who seek that grace thus: "Every day call to mind
some one of thy foulest sins, or the most shameful of thy disgraces, or
the indiscreetest of thy actions, or anything that did then most trouble
thee, and apply it to the present swelling of thy spirit and opinion, and
it may help to allay it."
II. The Mission of Saul. Again, we notice in this
passage that Saul, having shown his activity in other
directions, now turned his attention to Damascus.
There were political circumstances which may have
hitherto hindered him from exercising the same supervision
over the synagogue of Damascus which he had
already extended to other foreign cities. The political
history and circumstances of Damascus at this period
are indeed rather obscure. The city seems to have
been somewhat of a bone of contention between Herod
Antipas, Aretas the king of Petra, and the Romans.
About the time of St. Paul's conversion, which may
be fixed at A.D. 37 or 38, there was a period of great
disturbance in Palestine and Southern Syria. Pontius
Pilate was deposed from his office and sent to Rome
for judgment. Vitellius, the president of the whole
Province of Syria, came into Palestine, changing the
high priests, conciliating the Jews, and intervening in
the war which raged between Herod Antipas and
Aretas, his father-in-law. In the course of this last
struggle Damascus seems to have changed its masters,
and, while a Roman city till the year 37, it henceforth
became an Arabian city, the property of King Aretas,
till the reign of Nero, when it again returned beneath
the Roman sway. Some one or other, or perhaps all
these political circumstances combined may have hitherto
prevented the Sanhedrin from taking active measures
against the disciples at Damascus. But now things
became settled. Caiaphas was deposed from the office
of high priest upon the departure of Pontius Pilate.
He had been a great friend and ally of Pilate; Vitellius
therefore deprived Caiaphas of his sacred office, appointing
in his stead Jonathan, son of Annas, the high priest.
This Jonathan did not, however, long continue to occupy
the position, as he was deposed by the same Roman
magistrate, Vitellius, at the feast of Pentecost in the
very same year, his brother Theophilus being appointed
high priest in his room; so completely was the whole
Levitical hierarchy, the entire Jewish establishment,
ruled by the political officers of the Roman state.
This Theophilus continued to hold the office for five or
six years, and it must have been to Theophilus that
Saul applied for letters unto Damascus authorising him
to arrest the adherents of the new religion.The references for all these changes are given in Lewin's Fasti,
and in his Life of St. Paul, with which Josephus, Antiqq., XVIII., iv.,
should be compared.
And now a question here arises, How is it that the
high priest could exercise such powers and arrest his
co-religionists in a foreign town? The answer to this
sheds a flood of light upon the state of the Jews of
the Dispersion, as they were called. I have already
said a little on this point, but it demands fuller discussion.See vol. i., pp. 174-6, 271.
The high priest at Jerusalem was regarded as
a kind of head of the whole nation. He was viewed
by the Romans as the Prince of the Jews,The decree of Julius Cæsar, upon which the Jewish privileges were
built, expressly calls the high priest the ethnarch (ἐθνάρχης), or ruler,
of the Jews. See Josephus, Antiqq., XIV., x., 3.
with whom
they could formally treat, and by whom they could
manage a nation which, differing from all others in its
manners and customs, was scattered all over the world,
and often gave much trouble. Julius Cæsar laid down
the lines on which Jewish privileges and Roman policy
were based, and that half a century before the Christian
era. Julius Cæsar had been greatly assisted in
his Alexandrian war by the Jewish high priest
Hyrcanus, so he issued an edict in the year 47 B.C.,
which, after reciting the services of Hyrcanus, proceeds
thus, "I command that Hyrcanus and his children do
retain all the rights of the high priest, whether established
by law or accorded by courtesy; and if hereafter
any question arise touching the Jewish polity, I
desire that the determination thereof be referred to
him"; an edict which, confirmed as it was again and
again, not only by Julius Cæsar, but by several subsequent
emperors, gave the high priest the fullest
jurisdiction over the Jews, wherever they dwelt, in
things pertaining to their own religion.This point is worked out at great length and with a multitude of
references in Lewin's Life of St. Paul, ch. iv., vol. i., pp. 44-7.
Josephus, in his Antiquities, book xiv., ch. x., gives the words of Cæsar's
decree. In ch. viii. of the same book he describes the warlike assistance
lent by the Jews to Julius Cæsar in his Egyptian campaign.
It was therefore
in strictest accord with Roman law and custom
that, when Saul wished to arrest members of the synagogue
at Damascus, he should make application to the
high priest Theophilus for a warrant enabling him to
effect his purpose.
The description, too, given of the disciples in this
passage is very noteworthy and a striking evidence of
the truthfulness of the narrative. The disciples were
the men of "the Way." Saul desired to bring any of
"the Way" found at Damascus to be judged at Jerusalem,
because the Sanhedrin alone possessed the right
to pass capital sentences in matters of religion. The
synagogues at Damascus or anywhere else could flog
culprits, and a Jew could get no redress for any
such ill-treatment even if he sought it, which would
have not been at all likely; but if the final sentence
of death were to be passed, the Jerusalem Sanhedrin
was the only tribunal competent to entertain such
questions.I know it is a common opinion that the Jews had no power of
capital punishment and that the Romans permitted the infliction merely
of scourgings and such minor penalties. Lightfoot, in his Horæ Hebraicæ
on Matt. xxvi. 3; John xviii. 31; Acts ix. 2, controverts this view in
long and learned notes. The Jews certainly stated to Pilate, according
to John xviii. 31, "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death."
But then, on the other hand, the Sanhedrin put St. Stephen to death, and
St. Paul tells us that when the saints were put to death he voted against
them; showing that the Sanhedrin did put many of the disciples to
death. Lightfoot thinks that the Jews merely wished to throw the odium
of our Lord's execution upon the Romans, and therefore pleaded their
own inability to condemn Him for a capital offence, because of the particular
chamber where the Sanhedrin then sat, where it was unlawful
to judge a capital crime. The Pharisees, too, joined in the attempt to
bring about our Lord's death, and their traditions made them averse
to the shedding of Jewish blood by the Sanhedrin. The Sadducees
were, however, the dominant party in the year 37, and they had
no such scruples. They were always of a cruel and bloodthirsty
disposition and stern in their punishments, as Josephus tells us in his
Antiqq., XX., ix., 1. This was of course the natural result of their
material philosophy which regarded man as devoid of any immortal
principle. Lightfoot gives instances too (Matt. xxvi. 3) of a priest's
daughter burned to death and of a man stoned at Lydda even after the
destruction of the city, showing that the Sanhedrin still contrived to
exercise capital jurisdiction. The time when Saul set out for Damascus
was very favourable from political reasons for any new or unusual
assumptions of authority on the part of the Sanhedrin. Vitellius the
Prefect was very anxious to be deferential in every way to the Jewish
authorities. He had just restored the custody of the high priest's robes
to the Sanhedrin and the priests. This may have encouraged them to
adopt the fiercest and sternest measures against the new sectaries. As
for the minor punishment of flogging, the synagogues in Holland have
been known to exercise it so lately as the seventeenth century.
And the persons he desired to hale before
this awful tribunal were the men of the Way. This
was the name by which, in its earliest and purest day,
the Church called itself. In the nineteenth chapter and
ninth verse we read of St. Paul's labours at Ephesus
and the opposition he endured: "But when some
were hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the
Way before the multitude"; while again, in his defence
before Felix (xxiv. 14), we read, "But this I confess
unto thee, that after the Way which they call a sect,
so serve I the God of our fathers." The Revised
translation of the New Testament has well brought
out the force of the original in a manner that was
utterly missed in the Authorised Version, and has
emphasized for us a great truth concerning the early
Christians. There was a certain holy intolerance even
about the very name they imposed upon the earliest
Church. It was the Way, the only Way, the Way of
Life. The earliest Christians had a lively recollection
of what the Apostles had heard from the mouth of the
Master Himself, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the
Life; no one cometh unto the Father but by Me"; and
so, realising the identity of Christ and His people,
realising the continued presence of Christ in His Church,
they designated that Church by a term which expressed
their belief that in it alone was the road to peace, the
sole path of access to God. This name "the Way"
expressed their sense of the importance of the truth.
Their's was no easy-going religion which thought that
it made not the slightest matter what form of belief a
man professed. They were awfully in earnest, because
they knew of only one way to God, and that was the
religion and Church of Jesus Christ. Therefore it was
that they were willing to suffer all things rather than
that they should lose this Way, or that others should
miss it through their default. The marvellous, the
intense missionary efforts of the primitive Church find
their explanation in this expression, the Way. God
had revealed the Way and had called themselves into
it, and their great duty in life was to make others
know the greatness of this salvation; or, as St. Paul
puts it, "Necessity is laid upon me; woe is unto me if
I preach not the gospel."The Acts of the Apostles in this respect throws an interesting
light upon the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, published a few years
ago by Bishop Bryennius, and helps us to fix its early date. That
important relic of early Christianity never speaks of the followers of
the new religion as Christians. It opens by describing the two ways,
the way of Life, which is Christianity, and the way of Death. It must
therefore have been composed when the memory of the Church's earliest
designation, "the Way," was still fresh. By the time of Aristides
(A.D. 125) and of Pliny the title "Christians" was the common one
both inside and outside the Church.
The exclusive claims of Christianity are thus early
set forth; and it was these same exclusive claims which
caused Christianity to be so hated and persecuted by
the pagans.This sense of the awful importance of Christianity as the Way
made the Christians enthusiastic and determined in their efforts to
spread their religion. In the earliest apology or defence of Christianity,
that of Aristides, which I have fully described in the previous volume
of this Commentary, we find this fact openly avowed and gloried in as
in the following passage: "As for their servants or handmaids, or their
children, if they have any, they persuade them to become Christians for
the love they have towards them; and when they have become so, they
call them without distinction brethren." A system so broad as to view
all religions as equally important would never have innate force enough
to lead a man to become a missionary, and most certainly never would
have produced a martyr. Christianity really understood is a very broad
religion; its essential dogmas are very few; but there is a kind of breadth
in religion now fashionable which the early Christians never understood
or they would not have acted as they did. Who would have throw
away his life amid the cruellest tortures if it was all the same whether
men worshipped Jupiter or Jesus Christ?
The Roman Empire would not have so
bitterly resented the preaching of Christ, if His followers
would have accepted the position with which other
religions were contented. The Roman Empire was
not intolerant of new ideas in matters of religion.
Previous to the coming of our Lord the pagans had
welcomed the strange, mystic rites and teaching of
Egypt. They accepted from Persia the curious system
and worship of Mithras within the first century after
Christ's crucifixion. And tradition tells that at least
two of the emperors were willing to admit the image
of Christ into the Pantheon, which they had consecrated
to the memory of the great and good.Tertullian, about the year 200, tells us (Apologet., ch. v. and xxi.)
that the Emperor Tiberius, under whom our Lord suffered, was so
moved by Pilate's report of the miracles and resurrection of Christ as
to propose a bill to the Senate that Christ should be received among
the gods of Rome; while, as for Emperor Alexander Severus, A.D. 222
to 235, he went even further. In Christ he recognised a Divine Being
equal with the other gods; and in his domestic chapel he placed the bust
of Christ along with the images of those men whom he regarded as
beings of a superior order—of Apollonius of Tyana, and Orpheus, and
such like. Heliogabalus, A.D. 219, is credited with a desire to have
blended Christianity with the worship of the Sun: see Neander, Church
History, vol. i., pp. 128, 173, Bohn's edition.
But the Christians
would have nothing to say or do with such partial
honours for their Master. Religion for them was
Christ alone or else it was nothing, and that because
He alone was the Way. As there was but one God
for them, so there was but one Mediator, Christ Jesus.
III. Saul's Journey. "As he journeyed, it came to
pass that he drew nigh unto Damascus." This is the
simple record left us in Holy Writ of this momentous
event. A comparison of the sacred record with any of
the numerous lives of St. Paul which have been published
will show us how very different their points of view.
The mere human narratives dwell upon the external
features of the scene, enlarge upon the light which
modern discoveries have thrown upon the lines of road
which connected Jerusalem with Southern Syria, become
enthusiastic over the beauty of Damascus as seen by
the traveller from Jerusalem, over the eternal green of
the groves and gardens which are still, as of old, made
glad by the waters of Abana and of Pharpar; while the
sacred narrative passes over all external details and
marches straight to the great central fact of the persecutor's
conversion. And we find no fault with this.
It is well that the human narratives should enlarge as
they do upon the outward features and circumstances
of the journey, because they thus help us to realise the
Acts as a veritable history that was lived and acted.
We are too apt to idealise the Bible, to think of it as
dealing with an unreal world, and to regard the men
and women thereof as beings of another type from ourselves.
Books like Farrar's and Lewin's and Conybeare
and Howson's Lives of St. Paul correct this tendency,
and make the Acts of the Apostles infinitely more
interesting by rendering St. Paul's career human and
lifelike and clothing it with the charm of local detail.
It is thus that we can guess at the very road by which
the enthusiastic Saul travelled. The caravans from
Egypt to Damascus are intensely conservative in their
routes. In fact, even in our own revolutionary West
trade and commerce preserve in large measure the same
routes to-day as they used two thousand years ago. The
great railways of England, and much more the great main
roads, preserve in a large degree the same directions
which the ancient Roman roads observed. In Ireland,
with which I am still better acquainted, I know that the
great roads starting from Dublin preserve in the main
the same lines as in the days of St. Patrick.See Petrie's "Tara" in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy,
t. xviii., and Ireland and the Celtic Church, by G. T. Stokes, pp. 80, 81,
for illustrations of this point.
And so
it is, but only to a much greater degree, in Palestine
and throughout the East. The road from Jerusalem
to Jericho preserved in St. Jerome's time, four centuries
later, the same direction and the same character as in
our Lord's day, so that it was then called the Bloody
Road, from the frequent robberies; and thus it is still,
for the pilgrims who now go to visit the Jordan are
furnished with a guard of Turkish soldiers to protect
them from the Arab bandits. And to-day, as in the
first century, the caravans from Egypt and Jerusalem
to Damascus follow either of two roads: one which
proceeds through Gaza and Ramleh, along the coast,
and then, turning eastward about the borders of
Samaria and Galilee, crosses the Jordan and proceeds
through the desert to Damascus—that is the Egyptian
road;See Geikie's The Holy Land and the Bible, p. 38.
while the other, which serves for travellers
from Jerusalem, runs due north from that city and
joins the other road at the entrance to Galilee. This
latter was probably the road which St. Paul took. The
distance which he had to traverse is not very great.
One hundred and thirty-six miles separate Jerusalem
from Damascus, a journey which is performed in five
or six days by such a company as Saul had with
him. We get a hint, too, of the manner in which
he travelled. He rode probably on a horse or a
mule, like modern travellers on the same road, as we
gather from Acts ix. 4 compared with xxii. 7, passages
which represent Saul and his companions as falling
to the earth when the supernatural light flashed upon
their astonished vision.
The exact spot where Saul was arrested in his
mad career is a matter of some debate; some fix it
close to the city of Damascus, half a mile or so
from the south gate on the high road to Jerusalem.
Dr. Porter, whose long residence at Damascus made
him an authority on the locality, places the scene of
the conversion at the village of Caucabe, ten miles away,
where the traveller from Jerusalem gets his first glimpse
of the towers and groves of Damascus. We are not
anxious to determine this point. The great spiritual
truth which is the centre and core of the whole matter
remains, and that central truth is this, that it was when
he drew near to Damascus and the crowning act of
violence seemed at hand, then the Lord put forth His
power—as He so often still does just when men are
about to commit some dire offence—arrested the persecutor,
and then, amid the darkness of that abounding
light, there rose upon the vision of the astonished Saul
at Caucabe, "the place of the star," that true Star of
Bethlehem which never ceased its clear shining for him
till he came unto the perfect day.The question of the site of the conversion is discussed at length in
Lewin's St. Paul, vol. i., ch. v., p. 49.
IV. Lastly we have the actual conversion of the
Apostle and the circumstances of it. We have mention
made in this connexion of the light, the voice, and
the conversation. These leading circumstances are
described in exactly the same way in the three great
accounts in the ninth, in the twenty-second, and in the
twenty-sixth chapters. There are minute differences
between them, but only such differences as are natural
between the verbal descriptions given at different times
by a truthful and vigorous speaker, who, conscious of
honest purpose, did not stop to weigh his every word.
All three accounts tell of the light; they all agree on that.
St. Paul in his speeches at Jerusalem unhesitatingly
declares that the light which he beheld was a supernatural
one, above the brightness, the fierce, intolerable
brightness of a Syrian sun at midday; and boldly
asserts that the attendants and escort who were with
him saw the light. Those who disbelieve in the supernatural
reject, of course, this assertion, and resolve the
light into a fainting fit brought upon Saul by the burning
heat, or into a passing sirocco blast from the Arabian
desert. But the sincere and humble believer may
fairly ask, Could a fainting fit or a breath of hot wind
change a man who had stood out against Stephen's
eloquence and Stephen's death and the witnessed
sufferings and patience displayed by the multitudes of
men and women whom he had pursued unto the death?
But it is not our purpose to discuss these questions in
any controversial spirit. Time and space would fail to
treat of them aright, specially as they have been fully
discussed already in works like Lord Lyttelton on
the conversion of St. Paul, wholly devoted to such
aspects of these events.Lord Lyttelton's Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul is a
work now almost unknown to ordinary students of the Bible. It was
written in the reign of George II. by the Lord Lyttelton of that day
famous as a historian and a poet. Dr. Johnson said of it that it is "a
treatise to which infidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious
answer." It will be found reprinted in a cheap and handy shape by
the Religious Tract Society, with a valuable preface by the well-known
Henry Rogers. Lord Lyttelton touches upon the subject of the light
seen by St. Paul on p. 164, and then adds, "That God should work
miracles for the establishment of a most holy religion which, from the
insuperable difficulties that stood in the way of it, could not have established
itself without such an assistance, is no way repugnant to human
reason; but that without any miracles such things (as the light above
the brightness of the sun and St. Paul's blindness) should have happened
as no adequate natural causes can be assigned for is what human reason
cannot believe."
But, looking at them from a
believer's point of view, we can see good reasons
why the supernatural light should have been granted.
Next to the life and death and resurrection of our
Lord, the conversion of St. Paul was the most important
event the world ever saw. Our Lord made
to the fiery persecutor a special revelation of Himself
in the mode of His existence in the unseen world,
in the reality, truth, and fulness of His humanity,
such as He never made to any other human being.
The special character of the revelation shows the
importance that Christ attached to the person and the
personal character of him who was the object of that
revelation. Just, then, as we maintain that there was
a fitness when there was an Incarnation of God that
miracles should attend it; so, too, when the greatest
instrument and agent in propagating a knowledge of
that Incarnation was to be converted, it was natural
that a supernatural agency should have been employed.
And then when the devout mind surveys the records of
Scripture how similar we see St. Paul's conversion to
have been to other great conversions. Moses is converted
from mere worldly thoughts and pastoral labours
on which his soul is bent, and sent back to tasks which
he had abandoned for forty years, to the great work of
freeing the people of God and leading them to the Land
of Promise; and then a vision is granted, where light,
a supernatural light, the light of the burning bush, is
manifested. Isaiah and Daniel had visions granted to
them when a great work was to be done and a great
witness had to be borne, and supernatural light and
glory played a great part in their cases.See Exod. iii., Isa. vi., and Dan. x.
When the
Lord was born in Bethlehem, and the revelation of
the Incarnate God had to be made to humble faith and
lowly piety, then the glory of the Lord, a light from out
God's secret temple, shone forth to lead the worshippers
to Bethlehem. And so, too, in St. Paul's case; a world's
spiritual welfare was at stake, a crisis in the world's
spiritual history, a great turning-point in the Divine plan
of salvation had arrived, and it was most fitting that the
veil which shrouds the unseen from mortal gaze should
be drawn back for a moment, and that not Saul alone
but his attendants should stand astonished at the glory
of the light above the brightness of the sun which
accompanied Christ's manifestation.Here it may be well to point out that people should not fancy that
their own spiritual experience must necessarily be like St. Paul's.
Some persons have troubled themselves because they could not say that
they had passed exactly through the same religious feelings and struggles
as St. Paul's. But as no two leaves are alike and as no two careers are
exactly parallel, so no two spiritual experiences are exactly the same.
The true course for any individual to adopt is not to strive and see
whether God's dealings with himself and the response which his own
spirit has made to the Divine Voice have been exactly like those of
others. His true course is rather to strive and ascertain whether he is
now really following, obeying, and loving God. He may leave all
inquiry as to the methods by which God has guided his soul into the
paths of peace to be hereafter resolved in the clear light of eternity.
Some God awakens, as He did St. Paul, by an awful catastrophe; others
grow up before Him from infancy like Samuel and Timothy; others
God gradually changes from sin and worldliness to peace and righteousness,
like Jacob of old time.
Then, again, we have the voice that was heard. Difficulties
have been also raised in this direction. In the
ninth chapter St. Luke states that the attendant escort
"heard a voice"; in the twenty-second chapter St. Paul
states "they that were with me beheld indeed the light,
but they heard not the voice of Him that spake to me."
This inconsistency is, however, a mere surface one.
Just as it was in the case of our Lord Himself reported
in John xii. 28, 29, where the multitude heard a voice
but understood not its meaning, some saying that it
thundered, others that an angel had spoken, while
Christ alone understood and interpreted it; so it was
in St. Paul's case; the escort heard a noise, but the
Apostle alone understood the sounds, and for him alone
they formed articulate words, by him alone was heard
the voice of Him that spake. And the cause of this is
explained by St. Paul himself in chapter xxvi., verse 14,
where he tells King Agrippa that the voice spake to
him in the Hebrew tongue, the ancient Hebrew that is,
which St. Paul as a learned rabbinical scholar could
understand, but which conveyed no meaning to the members
of the temple-police, the servants, and constables
of the Sanhedrin who accompanied him.The Rev. Dr. Abbott, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, in a
learned work, Biblical Essays, lately published, pp. 142 and 146, points
out that the lower classes of the Jewish population did not understand
the ancient Hebrew, a knowledge of which was in his opinion confined
to a few scholars. Cf. also p. 168, where he writes, "It deserves to be
noticed that for the vast majority of the Palestinians the Greek Bible
was the only one accessible. The knowledge of the ancient Hebrew
was confined to a few scholars, in addition to which the Hebrew books
were extremely expensive."
Many other
questions have here been raised and difficulties without
end propounded, because we are dealing with a region of
man's nature and of God's domain, wherewith we have
but little acquaintance and to which the laws of ordinary
philosophy do not apply. Was the voice which Paul
heard, was the vision of Christ granted to him, subjective
or objective? is, for instance, one of such idle
queries. We know, indeed, that these terms subjective
and objective have a meaning for ordinary life. Subjective
in such a connexion means that which has its
origin, its rise, its existence wholly within man's soul;
objective that which comes from without and has its
origin outside man's nature. Objective, doubtless, St.
Paul's revelation was in this sense. His revelation
must have come from outside, or else how do we account
for the conversion of the persecuting Sanhedrist, and
that in a moment? He had withstood every other
influence, and now he yields himself in a moment the
lifelong willing captive of Christ when no human voice
or argument or presence is near. But then, if asked
how did he see Christ when he was blinded with the
heavenly glory? how did he speak to Christ when even
the escort stood speechless? we confess then that we are
landed in a region of which we are totally ignorant and
are merely striving to intrude into the things unseen.
But who is there that will now assert that the human
eye is the only organ by which man can see? that
the human tongue is the only organ by which the spirit
can converse? The investigations of modern psychology
have taught men to be somewhat more modest
than they were a generation or two ago, when man in
his conceit thought that he had gained the very utmost
limits of science and of knowledge. These investigations
have led men to realise that there are vast tracts
of an unknown country, man's spiritual and mental
nature, yet to be explored, and even then there must
always remain regions where no human student can
ever venture and whence no traveller can ever return
to tell the tale. But all these regions are subject to
God's absolute sway, and vain will be our efforts to
determine the methods of his actions in a sphere of
which we are well-nigh completely ignorant. For the
Christian it will be sufficient to accept on the testimony
of St. Paul, confirmed by Ananias, his earliest Christian
teacher, that Jesus Christ was seen by him,There is nothing about St. Paul's seeing the Lord in the narrative
of the conversion in Acts ix. 4-7; but St. Paul asserts that he saw Christ,
in his speech before Agrippa, when he represents our Lord as saying
(xxvi. 16): "For to this end have I appeared unto thee to appoint
thee a minister," etc. And again in 1 Cor. xv. 8, "And last of all,
as unto one born out of due time, He appeared to me also"; with
which should be compared the words of Ananias (ix. 17): "The Lord
who appeared unto thee in the way which thou camest"; and those of
Barnabas (ix. 27): "But Barnabas declared unto them how Saul had
seen the Lord in the way." The reader would do well to consult
Lewin's St. Paul, vol. i., ch. iv., p. 50, for a learned note concerning
the apparent inconsistencies in the various narratives of the
conversion.
and that
a voice was heard for the first time in the silence of
his soul which never ceased to speak until the things
of time and sense were exchanged for the full fruition
of Christ's glorious presence.
And then, lastly, we have the conversation held with
the trembling penitent. St. Luke's account of it in the
ninth chapter is much briefer than St. Paul's own fuller
statement in the twenty-sixth chapter, and much of it
will most naturally come under our notice at a subsequent
period. Here, however, we note the expressive
fact that the very name by which the future apostle was
addressed by the Lord was Hebrew: "Saul, Saul, why
persecutest thou Me." It is a point that our English
translation cannot bring out, no matter how accurate.
In the narrative hitherto the name used has been the
Greek form, and he has been regularly called Σαῦλος.
But now the Lord appeals to the very foundations of
his religious life, and throws him back upon the thought
and manifestation of God as revealed of old time to
His greatest leader and champion under the old
covenant, to Moses in the bush; and so Christ uses
not his Greek name but the Hebrew, Σαούλ, Σαούλ.
Then we have St. Paul's query, "Who art Thou,
Lord?" coupled with our Lord's reply, "I am Jesus
whom thou persecutest," or, as St. Paul himself puts it
in Acts xxii. 8, "I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou
persecutest." Ancient expositors have well noted the
import of this language. Saul asks who is speaking to
him, and the answer is not, The Eternal Word who is
from everlasting, the Son of the Infinite One who ruleth
in the heavens. Saul would have acknowledged at
once that his efforts were not aimed at Him. But the
speaker cuts right across the line of Saul's prejudices
and feelings, for He says, "I am Jesus of Nazareth,"
whom you hate so intensely and against whom all
your efforts are aimed, emphasizing those points
against which his Pharisaic prejudices must have
most of all revolted. As an ancient English commentator
who lived more than a thousand years ago,
treating of this passage, remarks with profound spiritual
insight, Saul is called in these words to view the depths
of Christ's humiliation that he may lay aside the scales
of his own spiritual pride.See Cornelius à Lapide on Acts ix. 5, quoting from Bede; and St.
Chrysostom in Cramer's Catena, p. 152, as quoted in Conybeare and
Howson's St. Paul, vol. i., ch. iii., p. 111 (London, 1877).
And then finally we have
Christ identifying Himself with His people, and echoing
for us from heaven the language and teaching He had
used upon earth. "I am Jesus of Nazareth whom
thou persecutest" are words embodying exactly the
same teaching as the solemn language in the parable of
the Judgment scene contained in Matthew xxv. 31-46:
"Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these My brethren,
ye did it unto Me." Christ and His people are evermore
one; their trials are His trials, their sorrows
are His sorrows, their strength is His strength.
What marvellous power to sustain the soul, to confirm
the weakness, to support and quicken the fainting
courage of Christ's people, we find in this expression,
"I am Jesus whom thou persecutest"! They enable
us to understand the undaunted spirit which henceforth
animated the new convert, and declare the secret spring
of those triumphant expressions, "In all these things
we are more than conquerors," "Thanks be to God
which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ." If Christ in the supra-sensuous world and
we in the world of time are eternally one, what matter
the changes and chances of earth, the persecutions
and trials of time? They may inflict upon us a little
temporary inconvenience, but they are all shared by
One whose love makes them His own and whose
grace amply sustains us beneath their burden. Christ's
people faint not therefore, for they are looking not at
the things seen, which are temporal, but at the things
unseen, which are eternal.
CHAPTER III.
THE NEW CONVERT AND HIS HUMAN TEACHER.
"Now there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias; and
the Lord said unto him in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Behold, I
am here, Lord. And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go to the
street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for
one named Saul, a man of Tarsus: for behold, he prayeth."—Acts ix.
10, 11.
Saul of Tarsus was converted outside the city, but
the work was only begun there. Christ would put
honour upon the work of human ministry, and therefore
He directs the stricken sinner to continue his
journey and enter into Damascus, where he should be
instructed in his future course of action, though Christ
Himself might have told him all that was needful. It
was much the same on the occasion of the so-called
conversion of Cornelius, the pious centurion.Conversion is scarcely a fit word to apply to the Lord's dealings
with Cornelius. He had evidently been converted long before the
angelic message and Peter's preaching, else whence his prayers and
devotion? The Lord simply made by St. Peter a fuller revelation of
His will to a soul longing to know more of God.
The
Lord made a revelation to the centurion, but it was
only a revelation directing him to send for Peter who
should instruct him in the way of salvation. God
instituted a human ministry that man might gain light
and knowledge by the means and assistance of his
brother-man, and therefore in both cases the Lord
points the anxious inquirer to men like themselves,
who could speak to them in Christ's stead and
guide them into fuller knowledge. Why could not
Christ have revealed the whole story of His life, the
full meaning of His doctrine, without human aid or
intervention, save that He wished, even in the very
case of the messenger whose call and apostleship were
neither by man nor through man, to honour the human
agency which He had ordained for the dissemination
and establishment of the gospel. If immediate revelation
and the conscious presence of God and the direct work
of the Spirit could ever have absolved penitent sinners
from using a human ministry and seeking direction and
help from mortals like themselves, surely it was in
the cases of Saul of Tarsus and Cornelius of Cæsarea;
and yet in both cases a very important portion of the
revelation made consisted in a simple intimation where
human assistance could be found.We should carefully observe, however, that there is a marked
difference between the cases of Cornelius and Saul. An angel appeared
to Cornelius, Christ Himself to Saul. St. Peter is sent to Cornelius to
instruct him in the revelation made by Christ. That revelation was
made by Christ Himself to Saul in the vision by the way, during the
three days of his blindness, and probably during his stay in Arabia.
Ananias was sent to Saul merely to baptize him, and predict his future.
"Enter into the city and there it shall be told thee what thou shalt do,"
is our Lord's direction to Saul. St. Paul's knowledge of Christ was
neither by man nor through man. His knowledge even about the institution
of the sacraments was by immediate revelation: see 1 Cor. xi. 23.
Saul after the vision rose up from the earth and
was led by the hand into Damascus. He was there
three days without sight, wherein he neither did eat
nor drink. This period of his life and this terrible
experience is regarded by many as the time to which
may be traced the weakness of eyesight and the delicate
vision under which he ever afterwards suffered. The
question has often been raised, What was St. Paul's
thorn, or rather stake, in the flesh? Various opinions
have been hazarded, but that which seems to me most
likely to be true identifies the thorn or stake with severe
ophthalmia. Six substantial reasons are brought forward
by Archdeacon Farrar in defence of this view.
(1) When writing to the Galatians St. Paul implies that
his infirmity might well have made him an object of
loathing to them; and this is specially the case with
ophthalmia in the East (see Gal. iv. 14). (2) This
supposition again gives a deeper meaning to the
Apostle's words to these same Galatians that they
would at the beginning of their Christian career have
plucked out their eyes to place them at his service
(Gal. iv. 15). (3) The term "a stake in the flesh"
is quite appropriate to the disease, which imparts to the
eyes the appearance of having been wounded by a
sharp splinter. (4) Ophthalmia of that kind might
have caused epilepsy. (5) It would explain the words
"See with how large letters I have written unto you
with mine own hand," as a natural reference to the
difficulties the Apostle experienced in writing, and
would account for his constant use of amanuenses or
secretaries in writing his Epistles, as noted, for instance,
in Romans xvi. 22 and implied in 1 Corinthians xvi. 21.
(6) Ophthalmia would account for St. Paul's ignorance
of the person of the high priest (Acts xxiii. 5).See Tertullian's De Pudicitia, § 13, and compare Bishop Lightfoot's
Galatians, p. 183 note.
This
question has, however, been a moot point since the
days of the second century, when Irenæus of Lyons
discussed it in his great work against Heresies,
book v., ch. iii., and Tertullian suggested that St.
Paul's stake in the flesh was simply an exaggerated
head-ache or ear-ache.See Dr. Farrar's long Excursus X., vol. i., p. 652, in his Life of
St. Paul, for a discussion of this question. There is a portrait of
St. Paul in Lewin's St. Paul, ii., 210, which shows him as blear-eyed.
It is engraved from a Roman diptych of the fourth century. Lightfoot
takes quite another view of the thorn in his Galatians, pp. 183-8.
Let us now, however, turn to the more certain
facts brought before us in the words of the sacred
narrative. St. Paul was led by the hand into Damascus
just as afterwards, on account, doubtless, of the
same bodily infirmity dating from this crisis, he "was
sent forth to go as far as to the sea," and then
"was conducted as far as Athens" (cf. Acts xvii.
10, 14, 15). From this time forth the kindly assistance
of friends and companions became absolutely necessary
to the Apostle if his footsteps were to be guided
aright, and hence it is that he felt solitude such as he
endured at Athens a very trying time because he had no
sense of security whenever he ventured to walk abroad.
He became, in fact, a blind man striving to thread
his way through the crowded footpaths of life. The
high priest's commissary must then have drawn near
to Damascus under very different circumstances from
those which fancy pictured for him a few days before.
We know not by what gate he entered the city. We
only know that he made his way to the house of Judas,
where he remained for three days and three nights,
with his whole soul so wrapt up in the wonders
revealed to him that he had no thoughts for bodily
wants and no sense of their demands.
The sacred narrative has been amply vindicated so
far as its topographical accuracy is concerned. Saul,
as he was led by the hand, instructed his escort to go
to the house of Judas, a leading man we may be sure
among the Jews of Damascus. He dwelt in Straight
Street, and that street remains to-day, as in St. Paul's
time, a thoroughfare running in a direct line from the
eastern to the western gate of the city. Like all Oriental
cities which have fallen under Turkish dominion,
Damascus no longer presents the stately, well-preserved,
and flourishing aspect which it had in Roman times;
and, in keeping with the rest of the city, Straight
Street has lost a great deal of the magnificent proportions
which it once possessed. Straight Street in St.
Paul's day extended from the eastern to the western
gate, completely intersecting the city. It then was a
noble thoroughfare one hundred feet broad, divided by
Corinthian colonnades into three avenues, the central
one for foot passengers, the side passages for chariots
and horses going in opposite directions. It was to
a house in this principal street in the city, the habitation
of an opulent and distinguished Jew, that the
escort brought the blind emissary of the Sanhedrin,
and here they left him to await the development of
God's purposes."In the Roman age, and up to the period of the (Mahometan)
Conquest, a noble street extended in a straight line from Bab-el-Jabyah
(the West gate) to Bab Shurky (the East gate), thus completely intersecting
the city. It was divided by Corinthian colonnades into three
avenues, of which the central was for foot passengers, and of the others
one was used for chariots and horsemen proceeding eastward, and the
second for those going in the opposite direction. I have been enabled
to trace the remains of the colonnades at various places over nearly
one-third of the length of this street. Wherever excavations are made
in the line fragments of columns are found in situ, at the depth, in
some places, of ten feet and more below the present surface, so great has
been the accumulation of rubbish during the course of ages. There can
scarcely be a doubt that this is 'the street called Straight' referred to
in the history of the Apostle Paul. Its extreme length is about an
English mile, and its breadth must have exceeded 100 feet."—Porter's
Damascus, p. 47.
I. Let us now consider the persons which cluster
round the new convert, and specially the agent whom
Christ used in the reception of Saul into the Church,
and see what Scripture or tradition tells about them.
One man stands prominent; his name was Ananias, a
common one enough among the Jews, as the Acts of
the Apostles has already shown us, for when we have
surveyed the first beginnings of sin and moral failure in
the Jerusalem Church we have found that an Ananias
with Sapphira his wife was connected therewith.Josephus, in his Antiquities, xx., 23, tells us of an Ananias, a Jewish
merchant, who was instrumental in the conversion of Helena, Queen of
Adiabene. The name Ananias signifies "Pleasing to God." Ananias
was also the name of the messenger who is said to have conveyed the
pretended letter of Abgar, King of Edessa, to Christ. See The Apocryphal
Acts of the Apostles, by R. A. Lipsius (Leipsic, 1891), p. 274.
This Ananias of Damascus deserves special attention,
for his case reveals to us a good deal of primitive
Church history and is connected with many ancient
traditions. Let us first strive to gain all the information
we can about him from the direct statements
of Scripture and the necessary or legitimate deductions
from the same. Ananias was a Christian Jew of
Damascus. He must have held a leading position in
the local Christian Assembly in that city, within five
years of the Ascension, for not only did our Lord select
him as His agent or medium of communication when
dealing with the new convert, but Ananias was well
acquainted, by information derived from many persons,
with the course of conduct pursued at Jerusalem by
Saul, and knew of the commission lately intrusted to
him by the high priest. Ananias was probably the
head or chief teacher of the local Christian or Nazarene
synagogue. At the same time he was also in all probability
one of the original company of Jerusalem
Christians who had been scattered abroad by the first
great persecution. We are told in Acts xi. 19 that
"they that were scattered abroad upon the tribulation
that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phœnicia,
and Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the word to none
save only to Jews." Ananias was probably one of these
fugitives from Jerusalem who came to Damascus, and
there sought refuge from the rage of the destroyer.
St. Paul himself tells us of the character which Ananias
sustained at Damascus: "He was a devout man according
to the law, well reported of by all the Jews that
dwell there" (ch. xxii. 12). It is the character given of
Zacharias, and Elisabeth, and of Simeon. Ananias was,
like all the earliest disciples, a rigid observer of the
minutest particulars of Jewish ordinances, though he
and they alike rested upon Christ alone as their
hope of salvation. Further than this, the Scriptures
tell us nothing save that we can easily see from the
words of the various narratives of the conversion that
Ananias was a man of that clear faith, that deep
spiritual life which enjoyed perpetual converse with the
Unseen. He was not perturbed nor dismayed when
Christ revealed Himself. He conversed calmly with
the heavenly Visitor, raised his objections, received
their solution, and then departed in humble obedience
to fulfil the mission committed to him. There is a
marvellous strength and power for the man of any age
who lives, as Ananias did, with a clear vision of the
eternal world constantly visible to the spiritual eye.
Life or death, things present or things to come, the
world temporal or the world spiritual, all are one to
him who lives in the light of God's countenance
and walks beneath the shadow of His wing; for he
feels and knows that underneath are the everlasting
Arms, and he therefore discharges his tasks with an
assured calmness, a quiet dignity, a heavenly strength
of which the tempest-tossed and feverish children of
time know nothing. Beyond these facts and these
traits of character, which we can read between the lines
of Holy Scripture, we are told nothing of Ananias.St. Chrysostom, in his Homilies on the Acts, notes the spiritual
eminence of this hidden and unknown disciple. In his nineteenth
Homily he observes that when St. Philip, one of the seven, was sent to
baptize the eunuch, Christ did not appear but merely sent an angel to
the evangelist; but Christ Himself appeared to Ananias, and opened out
His whole will to him about the future of St. Paul. His conversation
with our Lord was, too, that of one accustomed to Divine visitations
and communion with Heaven. See Massutius on the Life of St. Paul,
p. 107. Massutius was a Jesuit commentator, whose writings are often
rich in spiritual suggestiveness. He published his Vita S. Pauli Apostoli
in 1633. In the first and ninth chapters of the second book he has
many acute and learned remarks upon Ananias and his history. The
calming effect upon life's fever of spiritual religion and close converse
with God is a point often dwelt upon in Scripture. The Old Testament
prophets knew this secret of a peaceful life right well. Isaiah often
sings of it, as in ch. xii. 2, "Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust,
and not be afraid"; in ch. xxvi. 3, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect
peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee"; in ch. xxviii. 16, "He
that believeth shall not make haste"; in ch. xl. 31, "They that
wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up
with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall
walk, and not faint." Habakkuk proclaims it in ch. iii. 17: "For
though the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines;
the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the
flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the
stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my
salvation." A strain which St. Paul takes up in his Epistle to the
Philippians when he bids them (ch. iv. 6), "In nothing be anxious; but
in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your
requests be made known unto God"; to which he adds the promise, not
that their requests shall be answered, for that would often be very unfortunate,
but the much more consoling one, "And the peace of God,
which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your
thoughts in Christ Jesus." How much calmer and sweeter life would
be did Christ's people thus realise their privileges as God's ancient
servants did! Ninety per cent. of life's worries and anxieties would
thus pass away for ever. Alas! how pagan nominal Christians are in
this respect!
But tradition has not been so reticent. The ancient
Church delighted to gather up every notice and every
story concerning the early soldiers of the Cross, and
Ananias of Damascus was not forgotten. The Martyrologies
both of the Greek and Latin Churches give
us long accounts of him. They tell that he was born
in Damascus, and make him one of the seventy
disciples, which is not at all improbable. Then they
describe him at one time as bishop, at another time
as a simple presbyter, of the Church at Damascus.
They relate his abundant labours at Damascus and in
the neighbouring cities, terminating with his martyrdom
under a Roman prefect called Lucian.See, for both the Greek and Latin stories about Ananias, Acta
Sanctorum, Ed. Bolland., 25 Jan., ii., 613.
But these
details, though they may lend colour to the picture,
add nothing of spiritual significance to the information
vouchsafed in Scripture.
Judas, into whose house Saul was received, is
another person brought before us, upon whom a certain
eternity of fame has been bestowed by his temporary
connexion with the Apostle. He must have
been a man of position and wealth among the Jews
of Damascus to receive the official representative and
deputy of the high priest. It is possible that he may
have been numbered among those early trophies of
St. Paul's zeal which he won in the earliest days of
his first love, when he "confounded the Jews, proving
that Jesus is Christ." Judas has been by some identified
with that Judas who was sent with St. Paul, Silas,
and Barnabas as deputies to console the Church at
Antioch and restore it to peace when distracted with
debates about circumcision (ch. xv. 22).Judas of Acts xv. 22 is surnamed Barsabbas, as is also Joseph
Justus of Acts i. 23. Lightfoot, Hor. Heb., on Acts i., conjectures that
Judas of Acts xv. may have been the apostle of that name and that
Joseph Justus was his brother.
And now, to conclude this portion of our subject, we
may add that the traditional houses, or at least the sites
of the houses, of Ananias and Judas, together with the
fountain where St. Paul was baptized, were shown in
Damascus till the seventeenth century, as Quaresmius,
a traveller of that time, tells us that he visited the
Straight Street, which is the bazaar, and saw the house
of Judas, a large and commodious building, with traces
of having been once a church and then a mosque; that
he visited the place of baptism, which is not far off,
adding withal a ground plan of the house of Ananias.
Dean Stanley, however, declares that the traditional
house of Judas is not in the street called Straight at all.
Let us turn aside from these details, the mere fringes of
the story, to the spiritual heart and core thereof.The seventeenth-century travellers in Palestine, Syria, and the
East often give us much valuable information. See, on the subject of
Damascus, Quaresmius, Elucidatio Terræ Sanctæ, t. ii., lib. 7, Peregrinatio
6, cap. 3, with which may be compared Radzivilus, Peregrinatio,
p. 33, A.D. 1614. See also Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul, ch. iii.
II. The conversation between Christ and Ananias
next claims our attention. Here we may note that it
was the Lord Jesus Christ Himself who appeared to
Ananias, and when appearing makes the most tremendous
claims for Himself and allows them when made
by Ananias. We are so accustomed to the words of
the narrative that we do not recognise their bold
assumptions and what they imply. The Lord calls
Ananias, as He called Samuel of old, and then receives
the same answer as Samuel gave, "Behold I am here,
Lord." Ananias speaks to Jesus Christ of the disciples,
and describes them as "Thy saints, who call upon Thy
name." He knew that prayer to Jesus Christ was
practised by them and constituted their special note
or mark. Our Lord describes St. Paul "as a chosen
vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles
and kings, and the children of Israel, for I will show him
how many things he must suffer for My name's sake."
While again, when Ananias came into the house of
Judas, he is so completely dominated by the idea of
Jesus Christ, His presence, His power, His mission,
that his words are, "The Lord Jesus hath sent me that
thou mayest receive thy sight, and be filled with the
Holy Ghost." In these passages we have a view of
primitive Christianity and its doctrine as taught by
Christ Himself, by His earliest disciples, and as
viewed and recorded by the second generation of
Christians, and it is all the same from whatever point
it is looked at. The earliest form of Christianity was
Christ and nothing else. The personality of Christ
dominated every other idea. There was no explaining
away the historical facts of His life, there was no watering
down His supernatural actions and claims; the Lord
Jesus—and His ordinary human name was used—the
Lord Jesus, whom the Jews had known as the carpenter's
son, and had rejected as the prophet of Nazareth, and
had crucified as the pretended king of Israel, He was
for Ananias of Damascus the supernatural Being who
now ruled the universe, and struck down the persecutor
of His people, and sent His messengers and apostles
that they might with Divine power heal the wounded
and comfort the broken-hearted. Ananias felt no difficulty
in identifying Jesus the despised, the crucified,
with the Lord of glory who had appeared to him, upon
whose name he called and with whom he communed.
Jesus Christ was not for him a dream or a ghost, or a
passing appearance, or a distinguished teacher, or a
mighty prophet, whose spirit lived with the souls of the
good and blessed of every age at rest in paradise. The
Jesus of Ananias was no inhabitant or child of earth,
no matter how pure and exalted. The Jesus of Nazareth
was the Being of beings, who had a just right to call
God's people "His saints," and to describe the great
work of His messengers and ministers to be that of
"bearing His name before the Gentiles," because the
Christianity of Ananias and of the earliest Church was
no poor, weak, diluted system of mere natural religion
regarding Jesus Christ as a Divine prophet, but as
nothing more. It theorised not, indeed, about the Incarnation
and the modes of the Divine existence. It was
too much wrapped up in adoring the Divine manifestations
to trouble itself about such questions, which came
to the front when love waxed cold and men had time
to analyse and debate. For Ananias and for men like
him it was sufficient to know that Jesus Christ was God
manifest in the flesh. For them and for the earliest
Church that one fact embodied the whole of Christianity.
Jesus Christ, the same when living in Galilee, suffering
in Jerusalem, ascending from Olivet, reigning on the
right hand of the Majesty on high, or manifesting
Himself to His people, was the beginning and end of
all religion.
This is a very important point to insist upon in the
present age, when men have endeavoured to represent
the religion of the primitive Church in quite a different
light, and to teach that St. Paul was the inventor of
that dogmatic system which insists upon the supreme
importance and the essential deity of the Person of
Jesus Christ. St. Luke's narrative in this passage
seems to me quite decisive against such a theory, and
shows us how Christianity struck an independent mind
like that of Ananias, and how it was taught at a
distant Christian Church like Damascus within five
or at most seven years after the Ascension of Jesus
Christ.Massutius, loc. cit., has a long chapter (book ii., ch. i.) on the date
of St. Paul's conversion. See Findlay's Epistles of St. Paul, pp. 5, 6,
for a concise statement of the arguments concerning it. Lewin's Fasti
Sacri, pp. lxvi. and 253, contains long dissertations upon this point, a
simple reference to which must suffice.
Then, again, we have in the vision granted to Ananias
and the revelation made to him a description of Christ's
disciples. The description is a twofold one, coming on
the one hand from Christ, and on the other from
Ananias, and yet they both agree. Ananias describes
the religion of Christ when he says, "Lord, I have
heard from many of this man, how much evil he did
to Thy saints at Jerusalem"; and then he proceeds to
identify His "saints" with those that called on Christ's
name at Damascus. We have already noted prayer to
Christ as a distinguishing feature of His peopleSee vol. i., pp. 338-41.
; but
here we find, for the first time in the New Testament,
the term "saints" applied to the ordinary followers of
Christ, though in a short time it seems to have become
the usual designation for the adherents of the crucified
Redeemer, as we shall see by a reference to Rom. i. 7;
1 Cor. i. 2; Eph. i. 1, and to numerous other passages
scattered throughout the Epistles. Our Lord Himself
sanctions the use of this title, and applies it Himself in
a different shape in the fuller account of the divine
words given us by St. Paul in his speech before King
Agrippa (ch. xxvi. 18). Christ tells St. Paul of his
destined work "to turn the Gentiles from darkness
to light, that they may receive an inheritance among
them which are sanctified by faith that is in Me." The
followers of Christ were recognised as saints in the
true sense of the word saint—that is, as separated,
dedicated, consecrated persons, who had been made to
drink into one Divine Spirit, had been made partakers
of a new life, had been admitted to a kingdom of light
and a fellowship of love, and who, by virtue of these
blessings, had been cut off from the power of Satan
and the kingdom of darkness. And all this had been
and ever is to be effected "by faith that is in Christ."
Christ's saints or separated people are sanctified by
faith in Christ. Not that the bare exercise of a faculty
or feeling called faith will exercise a sanctifying influence
upon human nature,—this would be simply to
make man his own sanctifier, and to usurp for his own
poor weak wretched self the work and power which
belong to the Holy Ghost alone,—but when Christ is
realised as including all the parts of God's final revelation,
when no partial or limited view is taken of Christ's
work as if it were limited to the Incarnation alone, or
the Atonement alone, or the Resurrection alone, but
when the diverse and various parts and laws of
His revelation are recognised as divinely taught, and
therefore as tremendously important for the soul's
health. When the Holy Ghost and His mission, and
good works and their absolute necessity, and Christ's
sacraments and His other appointed means of grace are
duly honoured and reverently received, then indeed, and
then alone, faith is truly exercised in Christ, and men
are not merely separated by an external consecration,
such as the Jews received at circumcision, and which
qualified even that hard-hearted and stubborn people
to be called a nation of saints; but when Christ is thus
truly and fully received by faith into the hearts and
affections of His people, they walk worthy of the high
vocation called upon them. Many a mistaken exposition
has been offered of St. Paul's Epistles, and many
an effort has been made to explain away the plainest
statements, because men will apply a false meaning to
the word saints which Ananias here uses. If we first
determine that the word saint could only have been
applied to a truly converted man, clothed in the robe of
Christ's imputed righteousness, elected from eternity to
everlasting salvation, and who could never finally fall
away, and then find the term so defined applied, for
instance, to the Corinthian Church as a whole, we shall
come to some strange results. If truly converted men,
true saints of Christ, could be guilty of sins such as
were not named amongst the heathen, or could be
drunk at the Lord's Table, or could cherish all that long
and dreary catalogue of spiritual crimes enumerated
in the Corinthian Epistles, then indeed the words true
conversion have completely changed their meaning,
and Christianity, instead of being the principle and
fountain of a regenerate life, becomes a cloak under
which all kinds of maliciousness and evil-doing may
have free course and be glorified.
Our Lord protests beforehand unto St. Paul against
such a perversion of the gospel of free grace with
which His great Apostle had all his life to struggle.
Antinomianism is as old as St. Paul's doctrine—so
very much misunderstood—of justification. Our Lord
raises His voice against it in His earliest commission
to St. Paul when He sends him to the Gentiles "to
turn them from darkness to light," that is, from moral
and spiritual darkness to moral and spiritual light, and
"from the power of Satan unto God." And the New
Testament often enough tells us what is meant by
"the power of Satan." It was not any mere system
of false beliefs alone, but it was a wicked, impure
belief joined and leading to a wicked and impure
practice; and St. Paul's work was to turn the Gentiles
from a wicked faith, combined with a still more wicked
practice, to a life sanctified and purified and renewed
after the image of a living Christ.I am referring in this passage to what we may designate the
Antinomian method of expounding First Corinthians still current in
many circles. They first determine that the word saint is always used
by St. Paul to express a truly converted man, one, therefore, in their
idea who has no need to ask pardon for sin and who never can finally
fall away. They then find this term "saints" applied to the Corinthian
Church, which must therefore have been composed of truly converted
men alone, else, they think, St. Paul would not have called them
saints. But then a difficulty arises, How about the gross sins prevalent
in that Church? Their peculiar system of theology, however, rapidly
solves this perplexing point. All the sins of believers, past, present
or to come, have been forgiven long before they were born, therefore
these gross immoralities at Corinth were mere believer's slips, as I have
heard them called. A believer guilty of them should be sorry for them
as causing scanda to the world, but as far as final salvation is concerned
he has nothing to do with them save to assure himself of their pardon
wrought out by our Lord on the cross. Abundant instances of this
method of exposition will be found in the works of Dr. Williams, the
Nonconformist of the time of William III., founder of the well-known
library in Grafton Street, London. He had a great controversy with
the Antinomians of the day, who represented themselves as the true
champions of the doctrines of grace. They were simply teaching the
ancient Gnostic heresy that the soul can be in communion with God
while the body is all the time wallowing in the depths of sin. Precisely
the same views are now commonly taught and called as in Williams's
day, two hundred years ago, "the Gospel." If, however, we recognise
the New Testament use of the word saints as meaning "dedicated to
God, consecrated to His service," the meaning of the First Corinthians
and of the words of Ananias is quite clear and plain, and no such
immoral results follow as the Antinomian exegesis implies, but rather
the saintly character of baptized Christians becomes the foundation of
the most practical exhortations to holiness of life.
III. Finally, we notice in this conversation, and that
only very briefly, the title given by our Lord to St. Paul,
which became the favourite designation of the Apostle of
the Gentiles, especially among the Western doctors of the
ancient Church. "Go thy way," says Christ to Ananias,
"for he is a chosen vessel unto Me," or, as the Revisers
put it in the margin, translating still more literally from
the original, "for he is a vessel of election." "Vas
Electionis" is the usual title for St. Paul in St. Jerome's
letters, as also in St. Chrysostom's homilies, and it
expresses a side of his character which is prominent
throughout his writings. Saul's early life was so
alienated from Christ, his career had been so completely
hostile to the gospel, his conversion had been so entirely
God's work and God's work alone, that he ever felt
and ever insisted more than the other New Testament
writers on God's electing love. If we compare the
writings of St. John with those of St. Paul, we shall see
how naturally and completely they reflect in their tone
the history of their lives. St. John's life was one long
continuous steady growth in Divine knowledge. There
were no great gaps or breaks in that life, and so we
find that his writings do not ignore God's electing love
and preventing grace as the source of everything good
in man. "We love Him because He first loved us"
are words which show that St. John's gospel was at
bottom the same as St. Paul's. But St. John's favourite
topic is the Incarnation and its importance, and its
results in purity of heart and in a sweet consciousness
of the Divine Spirit. St. Paul's life, on the other
hand, was no continuous upgrowth from youth's earliest
day to life's latest eventide. There was a great gap, a
tremendous yawning chasm separating the one portion
from the other, and Paul never could forget that it was
God's choice alone which turned the persecuting Rabbi
into the Christian Apostle. His Epistles to the
Romans, Ephesians, and Galatians amply testify to
the effects of this doctrine upon his whole soul, and
show that the expositors of the early Church displayed
a true instinct and gauged his character aright when
they designated him by this title, "Vas Electionis."
And yet the Apostle proved his Divine inspiration, for
he held and taught this truth in no one-sided manner.
He combined the doctrine of electing love with that of
intense human free will and awful personal responsibility.
He made no effort intellectually to reconcile the two
opposite sides of truth, but, wiser than many who followed
him, he accepted both and found in them both, matter
for practical guidance. God's eternal and electing love
made him humble; man's free will and responsibility
made him awfully in earnest. Two passages, drawn
from different Epistles, sufficiently explain St. Paul's
view. Gal. i. 15, 16—"When it was the good pleasure
of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb,
and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in
me"—are words which show how entirely St. Paul
viewed himself as a "Vas Electionis." 1 Cor. ix. 27—"I
buffet my body, and bring it into bondage, lest by
any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself
should be rejected"—are words showing how real and
profound was his fear of final defeat and ruin, how
convinced he was that no display of Divine grace or
love assured him of his own final perseverance. It is
well that people should notice this difference between
the tone and spiritual experience of a Paul and of a
John. At times sincere Christians have been troubled
because their spiritual experience and feelings have
been very different from St. Paul's. They have limited
to a large extent their own reading of Scripture to his
writings, and have not noticed the clear distinction
which Scripture makes between the tone and ideas of
St. Paul and St. Peter, St. James and St. John; and why?
Just to meet this very tendency, and to show us that
spiritual experiences, feelings, temptations, must vary
with the varying circumstances of each individual.
No saintly life can be taken as a universal model
or standard; and, above all, the conversion of a
persecutor and blasphemer like St. Paul is not to be
taken as the normal type of God's dealings with men,
who grow up, like St. John or like Timothy, in the
paths of Divine love from their earliest childhood.It should be carefully noted that the great end of St. Paul's election
is set forth by our Lord when speaking to Ananias as "to bear My
name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel."
From the very outset of Paul's Christian career his work as the Apostle
of the Gentiles is thus clearly revealed through Ananias. I say through
Ananias, and not to him; for I suppose that Ananias could not himself
have realised the real force and meaning of the Divine words.
There is one common feature, however, which can
be traced in all religious lives, whether sternly and even
violently ordered like Saul's, or gently guided like
St. John's. They all agree in presenting one feature
when the fresh breath of the Spirit blows upon them
and the deeper sense of life's importance first dawns
upon the vision, and that is, they are all marked by
prayer. Of every sincere seeker the Divine watcher,
ever on the outlook for the signs of spiritual life, repeats
"Behold, he prayeth." Saul, we may be sure, had
never forgotten his duty in the matter of the prescribed
round of Jewish devotions; but now for the first time
he rose above the level of mere mechanical saying of
prayer to spiritual communion with God in Christ;
now for the first time he prayed a Christian prayer,
through Christ and to Christ; now for the first time
perhaps he learned one secret of the spiritual life, which
is this, that prayer is something wider and nobler than
mere asking. Prayer is communion of the spirit with
God reconciled in Christ Jesus. That communion is
often deepest and most comforting when enjoyed in
simple silence. Saul, the converted persecutor, could
know but little yet of what to ask from Christ. But
in the revelations made in those hours of darkness
and penitence and silence, there were vouchsafed to
him renewed proofs of the truths already gained, and
of the awful trials which those truths, realised and acted
out, would demand from him, "I will show him what
things he must suffer for My sake."
CHAPTER IV.
SAUL AND SINAI.
"Saul was certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus.
And straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, that He is the
Son of God."—Acts ix. 19, 20.
We have bestowed a great deal of attention upon
the incidents at Damascus, because the conversion
of Saul of Tarsus is more closely connected
with the truth and authenticity of Christianity than any
other event save those immediately connected with the
life and ministry of our Lord Himself. We shall,
however, in this chapter, endeavour to discuss the
remaining circumstances of it which the Acts of the
Apostles brings under our notice.
I. We are told in verse 17 of the visit of Ananias to
Saul. "Ananias departed, and entered into the house;
and laying his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord,
even Jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way which
thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mayest receive
thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost." This
conversation with Ananias is largely expanded by
St. Paul himself in the account which he gives us in
Acts xxii., while in his speech to Agrippa in the twenty-sixth
chapter he entirely omits all mention of Ananias,
and seems to introduce our Lord as the only person
who spoke to him, and yet there is no real inconsistency.
St. Paul, in fact, in the latter address is intent on setting
vividly before Agrippa the sum total of the revelations
made by Christ. He ignores, therefore, every secondary
agent. Ananias was Christ's messenger. His words
were merely those which Christ put into his mouth.
St. Paul goes, therefore, to the root of the matter, and
attributes everything, whether uttered by our Lord or
by Ananias, to the former alone, who was, indeed, the
great Inspirer of every expression, the true Director of
every minutest portion of this important transaction.
The ninth chapter, on the other hand, breaks the story
up into its component parts, and shows us the various
actors in the scene. We see the Lord Jesus consciously
presiding over all, revealing Himself now to this person
and again to that person. We get a glimpse for a moment
behind the veil which Divine Providence throws around
His doings and the doings of the children of men. We
see Christ revealing Himself now to Saul and then to
Ananias, informing the latter of the revelations made to
the former; just as He subsequently revealed Himself
almost simultaneously to Cornelius at Cæsarea and to
Simon Peter at Joppa, preparing the one for the other.
The Lord thus hints at an explanation of those simultaneous
cravings, aspirations, and spiritual desires
which we often find unaccountably arising amid far
distant lands and in widely separated hearts. The
feelings may seem but vague aspirations and their
coincidence a mere chance one, but the typical cases
of Saul and Ananias, or of Cornelius and St. Peter,
teach the believer to see in them the direct action and
government of the Lord Jesus Christ, turning the
hearts of the fathers to the children and of the disobedient
to the wisdom of the just. Surely we have
an instance of such simultaneous operations of the
Divine Spirit, and that on the largest scale, in the
cravings of the world after a Saviour at the age and
time when our Lord came! Virgil was then preaching
in tones so Christian concerning the coming Saviour
whom the world was expecting, that the great Italian
poet Dante exempts him from hell on account of his dim
but real faith. The Wise Men were then seeking Christ
from a far country; Caiaphas was prophesying concerning
a man who was to die for God's people. Mankind,
all the world over, was unconsciously longing with
a divinely inspired desire for that very salvation which
God was then revealing; just as upon the narrower
stage of Damascus or Cæsarea Jesus Christ inspired
Saul and Cornelius with a Divine want and prepared
Ananias and Peter to satisfy it. John Keble in his
poem for Easter Monday has well seized and illustrated
this point, so full of comfort and edification, turning
it into a practical direction for the life of the human
spirit:—
"Even so the course of prayer who knows?
It springs in silence where it will,
Springs out of sight, and flows
At first a lonely rill.
"Unheard by all but angel ears,
The good Cornelius knelt alone,
Nor dreamed his prayers and tears
Could help a world undone.
"The while upon his terraced roof,
The loved apostle to the Lord,
In silent thought aloof,
For heavenly vision soared.
"The saint beside the ocean prayed,
The soldier in his chosen bower,
Where all his eye surveyed
Seemed sacred in that hour.
"To each unknown his brother's prayer,
Yet brethren true in dearest love
Were they—and now they share
Fraternal joys above."
Ananias, guided by Divine Providence, enters into
Saul's presence, states his mission, lays his hands upon
him and restores him to sight. Ananias is careful,
however, to disclaim all merit so far as he is himself
concerned in the matter of this miracle. His language
is exactly the same in tone as that of the apostles
Peter and John when they had healed the impotent
man: "Why marvel ye at this man? or why fasten
ye your eyes on us, as though by our own power or
godliness we had made him to walk?... By faith in
His name hath His name made this man strong," were
their words to the people. "In the name of Jesus
Christ of Nazareth, walk," was their command to the
man himself. And so in the case of Ananias, he attributes
the healing power to Jesus Christ alone. "The
Lord Jesus, who appeared unto thee, ... hath sent me,
that thou mayest receive thy sight." The theology and
faith of the Church at Damascus were exactly the same
as those of the Apostles and Church at Jerusalem.
And what a confirmation of Saul's own faith must this
miracle have been! It was then no passing vision, no
fancy of a heated imagination which he had experienced;
but he had the actual proof in his own person of their
objective reality, a demonstration that the power of
Jesus of Nazareth ordered all things, both in heaven
and earth, healing the bodily as it could illuminate the
spiritual eye.
II. Ananias restored Saul's sight. According to the
ninth of Acts his mission was limited to this one
point; but, according to St. Paul's own account in the
twenty-second chapter, he made a much longer communication
to the future Apostle: "The God of our
fathers hath appointed thee to know His will, and to
see the Righteous One, and to hear a voice from His
mouth. For thou shalt be a witness for Him unto all
men of what thou hast seen and heard. And now
why tarriest thou? Arise, and be baptized, and wash
away thy sins, calling on His name." Ananias predicted
to Saul his future mission, his apostleship to all
nations, and the fact that the Apostle of the Gentiles
would find the root and sustenance of his work in the
force of personal conviction with which his miraculous
conversion had endowed him. Personal knowledge,
individual acquaintance with the things of the eternal
world was then, as it is still, the first condition of
successful work for Jesus Christ. There may be intellectual
power, intense energy, transcendent eloquence,
consummate ability; but in the spiritual order these
things avail nothing till there be joined thereto that
sense of heavenly force and reality which a personal
knowledge of the things unseen imparts. Then heart
answers to heart, and the great depths of man's nature
respond and open themselves to the voice and teaching
of one who speaks as St. Paul did of what "he had
seen and heard."
There are two points in this address of Ananias as
reported by St. Paul himself to which we would direct
special attention. Ananias baptized Saul, and used
very decided language on the subject, language from
which some would now shrink. These two points
embody important teaching. Ananias baptized Saul
though Christ had personally called him. This shows
the importance which the Holy Scriptures attach to
baptism, and shows us something too of the nature of
Holy Scripture itself. St. Luke wrote the Acts as a
kind of continuation of his Gospel, to give an account
to Theophilus of the rise and progress of Christianity
down to his own time. St. Luke in doing so tells us
of the institution of the Eucharist, but he does not
say one word in his Gospel about the appointment of
baptism. He does not record the baptismal commission,
for which we must turn to St. Matthew xxviii. 19,
or to St. Mark xvi. 16. Yet St. Luke is careful to
report the baptism of the three thousand on the Day
of Pentecost, of the Samaritans, of the eunuch, and
now of St. Paul, as afterwards of Cornelius, of Lydia,
of the Philippian jailor, and of the Ephesian followers
of John the Baptist. He records the universality of
Christian baptism, and thus proves its obligation; but
he does not give us a hint of the origin of this sacrament,
nor does he trace it back to any word or command
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He evidently took all these
things as quite well known and understood, and merely
describes the observance of a sacrament which needed
no explanation on his part. The writings of St. Luke
were intended to instruct Theophilus in the facts
concerning our Lord's life and the labours of certain
leading individuals among His earliest followers; but
they make no pretence, nor do the other Gospels make
any pretence, of being an exhaustive history of our
Lord's ministry or of the practice of the earliest Church;
and their silence does not necessarily prove that
much was not known and practised in the early Church
about which they have no occasion to speak.Archbishop Whately used to make an important distinction between
things anti-Scriptural and things un-Scriptural. Things anti-Scriptural
cannot be tolerated by the Church, because they contradict the Word of
God. Things un-Scriptural, that is, things about which Scripture is
silent and for which no direct warrant can be produced, may be right
or wrong, useful or vicious. Sunday schools, for instance, are in this
sense unscriptural. The Scriptures are silent about them, and if direct
warrant with chapter and verse be required for them, none such can
be produced. Hooker, in his Third Book, ch. v.-viii., has a powerful
argument upon this subject as against the ultra-reformers or Puritans
of his day, who would have tied the Church within much tighter bonds
than ever Judaism submitted to.
The
words of Ananias and the obedience of Saul show
us the importance which the Holy Spirit attached to
this sacrament of baptism. Here was a man to whom
Christ Himself had personally appeared, whom Christ
had personally called, and to whom He had made long-continued
revelations of His will. Yet He instructed
him by the mouth of Ananias to receive the sacrament
of baptism. Surely if any man was ever exempted
from submission to what some would esteem the outward
ordinance, it was this penitent and privileged
convert! But no: to him the words of God's messenger
are the same as to the humblest sinner, "Arise,
and be baptized, and wash away thy sins." I have
known of truly good men who showed their want of
spiritual humility, or perhaps I should rather say of
spiritual thought and reflection, in this direction. I
have known of persons aroused from religious torpor
and death by powerful though one-sided teaching.
God has blessed such teaching to the awakening in
them of the first elements of spiritual life, and then
they have stopped short. They were called, as Saul
was, in an unbaptized state. They had never previously
received the sacrament of regeneration according
to Christ's appointment, and when Christ aroused
them they thought this primal blessing quite sufficient,
and judged it unnecessary to obey the full
commands of Christ and be united by baptism to His
Body the Church. They judged, in fact, that the blessing
of conversion absolved them from the sacrament
of responsibility; but such was not the view of the
primitive Church. The blessing of conversion as in
St. Paul's case, the visible and audible descent of the
Holy Ghost as in the case of Cornelius, hindered not
the importance nor dispensed with the necessity of the
sacrament of baptism, which was the door of admission
to the Divine society and to a higher level in the Divine
life than any hitherto attained. Persons who act as
those misguided individuals of whom we have spoken
stop short at the first principles of the doctrine of
Christ, and they attain to none of its heights, they sound
none of its depths, because they bend not their wills,
and learn not the sweetness and the power involved
in spiritual humiliation and in lowly self-denying
obedience taught by the Master Himself when He said,
"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven."I have known cases where baptism was rejected avowedly on these
grounds. This is of course a natural result of the pushing individualism
in religion to an extreme, and is often found among what we may call
extreme Protestants. It naturally results from two errors. First of all,
from a rejection of the article of the Apostles' Creed, "I believe in the
Holy Catholic Church." Such men reject the doctrine of a Church as
a great fundamental article of the Creed, one of the necessary articles of
the Christian faith, and therefore they reject baptism which is the door
of entrance into the Divine society. And, secondly, they reject the true
definition and idea of a sacrament. They view baptism, for instance,
as the expression merely of a faith already received, and as nothing more.
If, then, they express this faith sufficiently by their life and actions,
baptism seems to them an empty and vain ceremony. But surely this
was not St. Paul's view, either when he received baptism at the hands
of Ananias, or when he wrote in the sixth of Romans "We were buried
therefore with Him through baptism into death."
The language, again, of Ananias about baptism sounds
strange in some ears, and yet the experience of missionaries
is a sufficient explanation of it. What is that
language? "Arise, and be baptized, and wash away
thy sins." These words sound startling to one accustomed
to identify the washing away of sin with the
exercise of faith, and yet there they stand, and no
method of exegesis will avail to make them say anything
else than this, that baptism was for Saul the
washing away of sin, so that if he did not accept
baptism his sins would not have been washed away.
The experience, however, of those who labour in the
mission field explains the whole difficulty. Baptism
is the act of open confession and acknowledgment of
Christ. St. Paul himself teaches the absolute importance
of this confession: "With the heart man believeth
unto righteousness; with the mouth confession is made
unto salvation."Romans x. 10.
Pagan converts are even still abundantly
found who are willing to accept the pure morality
and the sublime teaching of Christianity, who are
willing to believe and see in Jesus Christ the supreme
revelation of God made to the human race, but who
are not willing to incur loss and persecution and trial
for His sake by the reception of Christian baptism and
a public confession of their faith. They may believe
with the heart in the revelation of righteousness and
may lead moral lives in consequence, but they are
not willing to make public confession leading them
into a state of salvation. They are, in fact, in the
position of Saul of Tarsus as he prayed in the house
of Judas, but they will go no farther. They will not
act as he did, they will not take the decisive step,
they will not arise and be baptized and wash away
their sins, calling on the name of Jesus Christ. And
if Saul of Tarsus had been like them and had acted
as they do, he might have received the vision and
have been convinced of the truth of Jesus Christ and
of His mission, but yet his moral cowardice would
have spoilt the whole, and Saul would have remained
in his sins, unpardoned, unaccepted, reprobate from
Christ, because he remained unbaptized. Christianity,
in fact, is a covenant, and forgiveness of sins is one of
the blessings attached to this covenant. Until men
perform its conditions and actually enter into the
covenant the blessings of the covenant are not granted.
Baptism is the door of entry into the covenant of grace,
and till men humbly enter within the door they do
not exercise true faith. They may believe intellectually
in the truth and reality of Christianity, but, till they
take the decisive step and obey Christ's law, they do
not possess that true faith of the heart which alone
enables them, like Saul of Tarsus, to obey Christ and
therefore enter into peace.
III. The next step taken by the Apostle is equally
plainly stated: "Straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed
Jesus, that He is the Son of God." But, though
the words of the Acts are plain enough, it is not so
easy to reconcile them with St. Paul's own account,
as given in the Epistle to the Galatians (i. 15, 16, 17),
where he states, "When it was the good pleasure of
God to reveal His Son in me, immediately I conferred
not with flesh and blood, but I went away into Arabia,
and again I returned to Damascus." In the ninth
chapter of the Acts we find the statement made that
immediately after his baptism he preached Christ in
the synagogues of Damascus, while in his own biographical
narrative he tells us that immediately after his
baptism he went away into Arabia. Is there any way
in which we can reconcile them? We think so, and
that a very simple one. Let us first reflect upon the
story as told in the Acts. St. Luke is giving a rapid
history, a survey of St. Paul's life of public activity.
He is not telling the story of his inner spiritual experiences,
his conflicts, temptations, trials, revelations, as
St. Paul himself set them forth. He knew not of
them, in fact. St. Luke knew merely the exterior
public life of which man had cognisance. He knew
nothing, or but little, of the interior life of the Apostle,
known only to himself and to God. St. Luke therefore
tells us of his early work at Damascus. St. Paul
himself tells us of that early work, but also shows us
how he was prepared for that work by his retirement
into Arabia. Both agree in the main point, however,
and place the scene of his earliest Christian efforts in
the very spot, Damascus, which he had in his human
prevision destined for himself as the field of his
bitterest antagonism to the faith of the Crucified.
This is an important point. St. Luke wrote his historical
narrative twenty-five years or thereabouts after
St. Paul's conversion. He may have often visited
Damascus. Tradition makes Antioch, a town of the
same district, his birthplace. St. Luke must have
had abundant opportunities of consulting witnesses
who could tell the story of those eventful days, and
could describe St. Paul's earliest testimony to his new
convictions. But these men only knew St. Paul as he
appeared in public. They may have known very little
of the inner history of his life as he reveals it in his
Epistle to the Galatians when vindicating his apostolic
authority and mission.St. Luke's informants, twenty-five years after the events, would
naturally only remember the leading points, the most striking events of
St. Paul's early Christian career. Few people realise how hard it is to
recall the events of twenty-five years ago in anything like consecutive
order. We preserve upon the whole a lively and a true impression;
but till we go and consult documents, diaries, journals, etc., it is almost
impossible to state the succession of events in accurate order. I
was trying the other day to recall the events of my own public life
twenty-five years ago anent the controversy which raged about the disestablishment
of the Irish Church, into which I plunged with the
vehemence of early manhood, and I failed to distinguish events which
must have been separated by months and even by years. How much
more easily must others have failed accurately to follow details of
St. Paul's life known only to himself!
Let us now see whether we cannot harmonise
St. Paul's autobiographical narrative in the Epistle
with the Evangelist's narrative in the Acts; always
remembering, however, that an imperfect knowledge
is never more completely felt than in such cases.
When we try to harmonise an account written from
the subjective side by one individual with an objective
and exterior narrative written by some one else, we
are like a man looking at a globe and trying to take
it all in at one glance. One side must be hidden from
him; and so in this case, many circumstances are
necessarily concealed from us which would solve difficulties
that now completely puzzle us. But let us to
our task, in which we have derived much assistance
from the commentary of Bishop Lightfoot upon Galatians.
St. Paul, we are told in ch. ix. 19, received
meat after the visit of Ananias and was strengthened.
St. Paul was never one of those high-wrought fanatics
who despise food and the care of the body. There
was nothing of the Gnostic or the Manichean about
him, leading him to despise and neglect the body
which the Lord has given to be the soul's instrument.
He recognised under all circumstances that if the
human spirit is to do its work, and if God's glory is
to be promoted, the human body must be sustained in
force and vigour. When he was on board ship and
in imminent peril of shipwreck and death, and men
thought they should be at their prayers, thinking of the
next world alone, he took bread and blessed and set
the crew and passengers alike the healthy example of
eating a hearty meal, and thus keeping his body in due
preparation for whatever deliverances the Lord might
work for them; and so, too, at Damascus, his spiritual
joy and hallowed peace and deep gratitude for his
restoration to sight did not prevent him paying due
attention to the wants of his body. "He took food, and
was strengthened." And now comes the first note of
time. "Then was Saul certain days with the disciples
which were at Damascus. And straightway (εὐθέως)
he preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the
Son of God." The very same expression is used by
St. Paul in Galatians, where, after speaking of his conversion,
he says, "Immediately (εὐθέως) I conferred not
with flesh and blood, but went away into Arabia, and
again returned unto Damascus." Now my explanation,
and not mine alone, but that of Bishop Lightfoot, is
this. After the new convert had rested for a short
time at Damascus, he retired into the Sinaitic desert,
where he remained for several months, perhaps for
a whole year. During this period he disappeared
from the sight and knowledge of men as if the earth
had opened its mouth and swallowed him. Then he
returned to Damascus and preached with such power
that the Jews formed a plot against his life, enlisting
the help of the governor on their side, so that even the
gates were watched that he might be arrested. He
escaped their hands, however, through the assistance
of his converts, and went up to Jerusalem.Mr. Lewin, in his St. Paul, vol. i., p. 72, argues that the governor
or ethnarch, as he is called by St. Paul in 2 Cor. xi. 32, was the
Jewish chief magistrate of Damascus, appointed to that post by Aretas,
King of Petra, who then held Damascus. The Jews were allowed by
the Romans to have chief magistrates of their own wherever they lived
in large colonies. At Alexandria, for instance, where they occupied a
large portion of the city, the Jews were ruled by an Alabarch. Mr.
Lewin shows in the same place a picture of the exact spot in the walls
where St. Paul is by tradition said to have escaped.
But here another difficulty arises. The Acts tells us
that "when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to
join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of
him, and believed not that he was a disciple," whereupon
Barnabas, fulfilling his office of mediation, explanation,
and consolation, took him and introduced him
to the Apostles; while on the other hand in the first
chapter of Galatians St. Paul himself speaks of his first
visit to the Jerusalem Church thus: "Then after three
years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and
tarried with him fifteen days. But other of the Apostles
saw I none, save James the Lord's brother." Now the
difficulty consists in this. First, how could the disciples
at Jerusalem have been suspicious of St. Paul, if at least
a year and a half had elapsed since his conversion? for
the Jewish method of counting time would not require
three whole years to have elapsed since that event.
Secondly, how could Barnabas have brought him to the
Apostles as the Acts states, if St. Paul himself says he
saw none of them save Peter and James? As to the
first difficulty, we acknowledge at once that it seems at
first sight a very considerable one, and yet a little reflection
will show that there are many explanations of it.
If St. Paul kept quiet, as we believe he did, after his
conversion and baptism, and departed into the solitudes of
Arabia, and then upon his return to Damascus, perhaps
after a year's retirement, began his aggressive work,
there may not have been time for the Church at large
to get knowledge of the facts. Communication, again,
may have been interrupted because of the contest
between Herod and Aretas, in which Damascus played
no small part. Communication may not have been
possible between the two Churches.All thought about Saul and his doings may just then have been
swallowed up in the national excitement about Caligula and his attempt
to set up his statue in the Temple. The trouble connected with the
Nazarene sect would seem to every true Jew but a small matter compared
with the outrage to Jehovah threatened by the mad emperor.
See more about this in the next chapter.
Then, again, the
persecution raised by Saul himself seems to have practically
extirpated the Jerusalem Church for a time.
"They were all scattered abroad except the Apostles,"
is the account given of the Christian community at
Jerusalem. The terror of that persecution may have
lasted many a long month. Numbers of the original
members may never have ventured back again to the
Holy City. The Jerusalem Church may have been a
new formation largely composed of new converts who
never had heard of a wondrous circumstance which had
happened a year or two before to the high priest's
delegate, which the Sanhedrin would doubtless desire
to keep secret.It is expressly said in Acts ix. 26 that when Saul came to Jerusalem
he tried to join himself to the disciples. They, knowing only of
his record as a persecutor, were afraid of him. Then Barnabas took him
and brought him to the apostles.
These and many other considerations offer themselves
when we strive to throw ourselves back into the circumstances
of the time and help to a solution of the first
difficulty which we have indicated. Human life is such
a complex thing that the strangest combinations may
easily find place therein. In this particular case we
are so ignorant of the facts, so many hypotheses offer
themselves to account for the seeming inconsistencies,
that we hesitate not to identify the visit to Jerusalem
mentioned in the Acts with that recorded by St. Paul
in the Epistle to the Galatians. The second difficulty
to which we have alluded is this, How could Barnabas
have brought him to the Apostles, if St. Paul himself
states that he saw none of the Apostles save Peter
and James the Lord's brother? We must remember,
however, that St. Luke and St. Paul wrote with
two distinct objects. St. Paul, in the Galatians,
wished to show the independence of his revelations
as regards the Apostles of the circumcision, the
Twelve technically so called. Of these Apostles he
saw not one, save St. Peter. St. Luke is giving a
broad external account of the new convert's earliest
religious history, and he tells us that on his first visit
to the Holy City his conversion was acknowledged and
guaranteed by the apostles,—not the Twelve merely,
but the apostles, that is, the senior members of the
Christian community, embracing not merely the original
company chosen by Christ, but all the senior members
of the Church, like Barnabas, James, and others who
may have formed a supreme council to guide the affairs
of the infant society. The word apostle, in fact, is
used very variously in the New Testament; sometimes
in a limited sense as confined to the Twelve, sometimes
in a wider and more general sense, embracing men like
Barnabas, as in Acts xiv. 4, 14; St. James, the Lord's
brother, as in 1 Cor. xv. 7; Andronicus and Junias, as
in Rom. xvi. 7, and many others. It is quite possible,
then, that Barnabas may have brought Saul to the
Apostolic council, and told there the tale of his conversion
though not one of the original Twelve was present
save St. Peter.See Bishop Lightfoot's dissertation upon St. Paul's first visit to
Jerusalem, and the use of the term apostle in the New Testament in
his Commentary on Galatians, pp. 91-101. Cf. Volume I. of this
Commentary, p. 348.
We have now endeavoured to explain some of the
difficulties which a comparison of St. Paul's own autobiographical
narrative with the Acts discloses. Let us
look again at the retirement into Arabia. This retirement
seems to us full of instruction and pregnant with
meaning for the hidden as well as the practical life of
the soul. St. Paul as soon as he was baptized retired
into Arabia; and why, it may be asked, did he retire
thither? Some of the ancient expositors, as St.
Chrysostom and St. Jerome, both of whom wrote
about the same period, A.D. 400, thought that St. Paul
retired into Arabia in order that he might preach to
the Arabians. St. Chrysostom, for instance, comments
thus: "See how fervent was his soul, he was eager
to occupy lands yet untilled. He forthwith attacked a
barbarous and savage people, choosing a life of conflict
and of much toil." And the explanations of Hilary,
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, and Œcumenius, all
of them ancient and acute expositors, are of exactly the
same character. Now this would have been a reversal
of the Divine order in one important aspect. The
power of the keys, the office of opening the kingdom
of heaven to the Gentiles had been committed to St.
Peter by Jesus Christ. He had not as yet baptized
Cornelius, and thus formally opened the door of faith
to the Gentiles. If St. Paul had preached to the
Arabians, he would have usurped St. Peter's place and
function. We believe, on the other hand, that God led
the converted persecutor into the deserts of Arabia
for very different purposes. Let us note a few of
them.
The Lord led Saul there for the purpose of quiet and
retirement. The great commentators and expositors of
the early Church, as we have already noted, used to
call St. Paul by the special title of "Vas Electionis,"
the chosen vessel par excellence, chosen because surpassing
in his gifts and graces and achievements
all the other Apostles. Now it was with the "Vas
Electionis" in the New Testament as with many of
his types in the Old Testament. When God would
prepare Moses for his life's work in shepherding,
ruling, and guiding His people through the deserts of
Arabia, He first called him for many a long day into
retirement to the Mount of Horeb and the solitudes
of the Sinaitic desert. When God would strengthen
and console the spirit depressed, wounded and severely
smitten, of his servant Elijah, He brought him to the
same mysterious spot, and there restored his moral
and spiritual tone, and equipped him with new strength
for his warfare by the visions of the Almighty lovingly
vouchsafed to him. The Founder or Former of the
Jewish Dispensation and the Reformer of the same
Dispensation were prepared and sustained for their
work amid the solitudes of the Arabian deserts; and
what more fitting place in which the "Vas Electionis,"
the chosen vessel of the New Dispensation, should be
trained? What more suitable locality where the Lord
Jesus should make those fuller and completer revelations
of Christian doctrine and mystery which his soul
needed, than there where lightning-blasted cliff and
towering mountains all alike spoke of God and of His
dealings with mankind in the mysterious ages of a
long-departed past? The Lord thus taught St. Paul,
and through him teaches the Church of every age, the
need of seasons of retirement and communion with God
preparatory to and in close connexion with any great
work or scene of external activity, such as St. Paul
was now entering upon. It is a lesson much needed
by this age of ours when men are tempted to think
so much of practical work which appears at once in
evidence, making its presence felt in tangible results,
and so very little of devotional work and spiritual
retirement which cannot be estimated by any earthly
standard or tabulated according to our modern methods.
Men are now inclined to think laborare est orare, and
that active external work faithfully and vigorously
rendered can take the place and supply the want of
prayer and thought, of quiet study and devout meditation.
Against such a tendency the Lord's dealings
with St. Paul, yea more, the Divine dealings with and
leadings of the eternal Son Himself, form a loud and
speaking protest. The world was perishing and men
were going down to the grave in darkness and Satan
and sin were triumphing, and yet Jesus was led up of
the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days, and Saul
was brought out into the deserts of Arabia from amid
the teeming crowds of Damascus that he might learn
those secrets of the Divine life which are best communicated
to those who wait upon God in patient prayer
and holy retirement. This is a lesson very necessary
for this hot and fitful and feverish age of ours, when
men are in such a hurry to have everything set right
and every abuse destroyed all at once. Their haste
is not after the Divine model, and their work cannot
expect the stability and solidity we find in God's. The
nineteenth-century extreme is reproved by St. Paul's
retirement into Arabia.We may apply this typical fact in primitive Church history in a
very modern direction. It would be very well if candidates for the
sacred ministry always imitated St. Paul's departure into Arabia. I
have known a great many promising careers spoiled because young
deacons would select a heavy, laborious town or city charge for the
opening work of their ministry. They know nothing of life or the
world. They know nothing of preaching or pastoral work. They
have, too, all their mistakes to make, and they select the most public
place for their perpetration. But this is not the worst. They form
habits of busy idleness and of mental dissipation which never leave
them. The first two or three years of a young clergyman's life generally
determine his whole career. His life never recovers the effect of
the initial movement. I think the great outcry, in the Church of
England at least, against sermons largely owing to the decay of study
resulting from premature activity on the part of the junior clergy. Premature
development in any direction is ever followed by premature
decay, and when a young priest or deacon is engaged every day and
every night in the week from an early service at 8 a.m. till night-school
is finished at 10 p.m. in external work, how can he prepare for teaching
an educated congregation on Sundays? And surely there ought to be
some little consideration for thinking men and educated women as well
as for others.
Man is, however, such a
creature that if he avoids one extreme he generally
tumbles into another. And so it is in this matter.
Men have been ready to push this matter of retirement
into an extreme, and have considered that they were
following St. Paul's example in retiring into the Arabian
and similar deserts and remaining there. But they
have made a great mistake. St. Paul retired into
Arabia for a while, and then "returned again unto
Damascus." They have retired into the deserts and
have remained there engaged in the one selfish task
of saving their own souls, as they thought, by the
exercises of prayer and meditation, apart from that
life of active good works for the sake of others which
constitutes another department of Christianity equally
vital to the health of the soul.
The history of Eastern monasticism is marked from
its earliest days by an eager desire to follow St. Paul
in his retirement into Arabia, and an equal disinclination
to return with him unto Damascus. And this
characteristic, this intense devotion to a life of solitude
strangely enough passed over to our own
Western islands, and is a dominant feature of the
monasticism which prevailed in Great Britain and
Ireland in the days of Celtic Christianity. The Syrian
and Egyptian monks passed over to Lerins and
Southern Gaul, whence their disciples came to England
and Ireland, where they established themselves, bringing
with them all their Eastern love of solitary deserts.
This taste they perpetuated, as may be seen especially
on the western coast of Ireland, where the ruins of
extensive monastic settlements still exist, testifying to
this craving. The last islands, for instance, which a
traveller sees as he steams away from Cork to America,
are called the Skelligs. They are ten miles west of the
Kerry coast, and yet there on these rocks where a boat
cannot land sometimes for months together the early
monks of the fifth and six centuries established themselves
as in a desert in the ocean. The topography of
Ireland is full of evidences and witnesses of this desire
to imitate the Apostle of the Gentiles in his Arabian
retirement. There are dozens of town lands—subdivisions
of the parishes—which are called deserts or
diserts,See Joyce's Irish Names of Places, vol. i., p. 325.
because they constituted solitudes set apart
for hermit life after the example of St. Paul in Arabia
and John the Baptist in the deserts of Judæa. While,
again, when we turn northwards along the western
seaboard of Ireland, we shall find numerous islands
like the Skelligs, Ardoilen or the High Island, off the
coast of Connemara, and Innismurry off the Sligo
coast, where hermit cells in the regular Egyptian and
Syrian fashion were built, and still exist as they did
a thousand years ago, testifying to the longing of the
human mind for such complete solitude and close communion
with God as Saul enjoyed when he departed
from Damascus.I have touched upon the subject of the connexion between Syria
and Egypt and Oriental monasticism on the one hand, and Gaul,
England, and Ireland on the other, during the period which elapsed
between A.D. 400 and 900, in Ireland and the Celtic Church, chs. ix.
and xi. I have discussed it at greater length and with fuller details in
two papers upon the Knowledge of Greek in Gaul and Ireland, read
before the Royal Irish Academy in February 1892, now published in
the Proceedings of that body; and also in two papers, one upon the
Island Monasteries of Great Britain and Ireland and the other on
St. Fechin of Fore, published, the former in the Journal of the Royal
Society of Antiquaries of Ireland for 1891, and the latter in the same
Journal for April 1st, 1892.
The monks of ancient times may
have run into one extreme: well would it be for us
if we could avoid the other, and learn to cultivate
self-communion, meditation, self-examination, and that
realisation of the eternal world which God grants to
those who wait upon Him apart from the bustle and
din and dust of earth, which clog the spiritual senses
and dim the heavenly vision.
We can see many other reasons why Paul was led
into Arabia. He was led there, for instance, that he
might make a thorough scrutiny of his motives.
Silence, separation, solitude, have a wondrous tendency
to make a man honest with himself and humbly honest
before his God. Saul might have been a hypocrite or
a formalist elsewhere, where human eyes and jealous
glances were bent upon him, but scarcely when there
alone with Jehovah in the desert. Again, Saul was led
there that his soul might be ennobled and enlarged by
the power of magnificent scenery, of high and hallowed
associations. Mountain and cliff and flood, specially
those which have been magnified and made honourable
by grand memories such as must have crowded
upon Saul's mind, have a marvellous effect, enlarging,
widening, developing, upon a soul like Saul's, long
cribbed, cabined, and confined within the rigorous
bonds of Pharisaic religionism. Saul, too, was led up
into those mysterious regions away from the busy life
and work, the pressing calls of Damascus, that he
might speak a word in season to us all, and especially
to those young in the Christian life, who think in the
first burst of their zeal and faith as if they had
nothing to do but go in and possess the whole land.
Saul did not set out at once to evangelise the masses
of Damascus, or to waste the first weak beginnings
of his spiritual life in striving to benefit or awaken
others. He was first led away into the deserts of
Arabia, in order that there he might learn of the deep
things of God and of the weak things of his own nature,
and then, when God had developed his spiritual strength,
He led him back to Damascus that he might testify out
of the fulness of a heart which knew the secrets of the
Most High. The teaching of Saul's example speaks
loudly to us all. It was the same with Saul as with a
greater than he. The Eternal Son Himself was trained
amid years and years of darkness and secrecy, and
even after His baptism the day of His manifestation
unto Israel was delayed yet a little. Jesus Christ was
no novice when He came preaching. And Saul of
Tarsus was no novice in the Christian life when he
appeared as the Christian advocate in the synagogue
of Damascus. Well would it have been for many a
soul had this Divine example been more closely copied.
Again and again have the young and ignorant and
inexperienced been encouraged to stand up as public
teachers immediately after they have been seriously
impressed. They have yielded to the unwise solicitation.
The vanity of the human heart has seconded the
foolish advice given to them, and they have tried to
declare the deep things of God when as yet they have
need of learning the very first principles of the doctrine
of Christ. Is it any wonder that such persons oftentimes
make shipwreck of faith and a sound conscience?
Truth is very large and wide and spacious, and requires
much time and thought if it is to be assimilated; and
even when truth is grasped in all its mighty fulness,
then there are spiritual enemies within and without
and spiritual pitfalls to be avoided which can be known
only by experience. Woe is then to that man who is
not assisted by grace and guided by Divine experience,
and who knows not God and the powers of the world to
come, and the devious paths of his own heart, as these
things can only be known and learned as Saul of Tarsus
knew and learned them in the deserts of Arabia. There
was marvellous wisdom contained in the brief apostolic
law enacted for candidates for holy orders in words
gathered from St. Paul's own personal history, "Not a
novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the
condemnation of the devil."
CHAPTER V.
THE FIRST GENTILE CONVERT.
"Now there was a certain man in Cæsarea, Cornelius by name, a centurion
of the band called the Italian band, a devout man, and one that
feared God with all his house, who gave much alms to the people, and
prayed to God alway. He saw in a vision openly, as it were about the
ninth hour of the day, an angel of God coming in unto him, and saying
to him, Cornelius. And he, fastening his eyes upon him, and being
affrighted, said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers
and thine alms are gone up for a memorial before God. And now send
men to Joppa, and fetch one Simon, who is surnamed Peter: he lodgeth
with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the sea side."—Acts x. 1-6.
We have now arrived at another crisis in the
history of the early Church of Christ. The
Day of Pentecost, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus,
the call of Cornelius, and the foundation of the
Gentile Church of Antioch are, if we are to pick and
choose amid the events related by St. Luke, the turning-points
of the earliest ecclesiastical history. The conversion
of St. Paul is placed by St. Luke before the
conversion of Cornelius, and is closely connected with
it. Let us then inquire by what events St. Luke
unites the two. German commentators of the modern
school, who are nothing unless they are original, have
not been willing to allow that St. Luke's narrative is
continuous. They have assigned various dates to the
conversion of Cornelius. Some have made it precede
the conversion of St. Paul, others have fixed it to the
time of Paul's sojourn in Arabia, and so on, without
any other solid reasons than what their own fancies
suggest. I prefer, however, to think that St. Luke's
narrative follows the great broad outlines of the Christian
story, and sets forth the events of the time in a
divinely ordered sequence. At any rate I prefer to
follow the course of events as the narrative suggests
them, till I see some good reason to think otherwise.
I do not think that the mere fact that the sacred writer
states events in a certain order is a sufficient reason
to think that the true order must have been quite
a different one. Taking them in this light they yield
themselves very naturally to the work of an expositor.
Let us reflect then upon that sequence as here set
forth for us.
Saul of Tarsus went up to Jerusalem to confer with
St. Peter, who had been hitherto the leading spirit
of the apostolic conclave. He laboured in Jerusalem
among the Hellenistic synagogues for some fifteen
days. A conspiracy was then formed against his life.
The Lord, ever watchful over His chosen servant,
warned him to depart from Jerusalem, indicating to
him as he prayed in the Temple the scope and sphere
of his future work, saying, "Depart: for I will send
thee forth far hence unto the Gentiles" (see Acts
xxii. 21). The Christians of Jerusalem, having learned
the designs of his enemies, conveyed Saul to Cæsarea,
the chief Roman port of Palestine, whence they despatched
him to Cilicia, his native province, where
he laboured in obscurity and quietness for some time.
St. Peter may have been one of the rescue party
who saved Saul from the hands of his enemies escorting
him to Cæsarea, and this circumstance may have
led him to the western district of the country. At
any rate we find him soon after labouring in Western
Palestine at some distance from Jerusalem. Philip
the Evangelist had been over the same ground a short
time previously, and St. Peter may have been sent
forth by the mother Church to supervise his work
and confer that formal imposition of hands which from
the beginning has formed the completion of baptism,
and seems to have been reserved to the Apostles or
their immediate delegates. Peter's visit to Western
Palestine, to Lydda and Sharon and Joppa, may have
been just like the visit he had paid some time previously,
in company with St. John, to the city of
Samaria, when he came for the first time in contact
with Simon Magus. St. Luke gives us here a note
of time helping us to fix approximately the date of
the formal admission of Cornelius and the Gentiles
into the Church. He mentions that the Churches then
enjoyed peace and quietness all through Palestine,
enabling St. Peter to go upon his work of preaching
and supervision. It may perhaps strike some persons
that this temporary peace must have been attained
through the conversion of Saul, the most active persecutor.
But that event had happened more than two
years before, in the spring of 37 A.D., and, far from
diminishing, would probably have rather intensified
the hostility of the Jewish hierarchy. It was now the
autumn of the year 39, and a bitter spirit still lingered
at Jerusalem, as Saul himself and the whole Church
had just proved. External authorities, Jewish and
Roman history, here step in to illustrate and confirm
the sacred narrative.
The Emperor Caius Caligula, who ascended the
throne of the empire about the time of Stephen's
martyrdom, was a strange character. He was wholly
self-willed, madly impious, utterly careless of human
life, as indeed unregenerate mankind ever is. Christianity
alone has taught the precious value of the
individual human soul the awful importance of human
life as the probation time for eternity, and has thereby
ameliorated the harshness of human laws, the sternness
of human rulers, ready to inflict capital punishment
on any pretence whatsoever. Caligula determined to
establish the worship of himself throughout the world.
He had no opposition to dread from the pagans,
who were ready to adopt any creed or any cult,
no matter how degrading, which their rulers prescribed.
Caligula knew, however, that the Jews were
more obstinate, because they alone were conscious
that they possessed a Divine revelation. He issued
orders, therefore, to Petronius, the Roman governor
of Syria, Palestine, and the East, to erect his statue in
Jerusalem and to compel the Jews to offer sacrifice
thereto. Josephus tells us of the opposition which the
Jews offered to Caligula; how they abandoned their
agricultural operations and assembled in thousands at
different points, desiring Petronius to slay them at once,
as they could never live if the Divine laws were so
violated. The whole energies of the nation were for
months concentrated on this one object, the repeal of
the impious decree of Caligula, which they at last
attained through their own determination and by the
intervention of Herod Agrippa, who was then at Rome.See the whole story told at length in Josephus, Antiquities, Book
XVIII., ch. viii., 8, and in his Wars, Book II., ch. x. This story, which
is little known to Bible students, is most interesting. It fully explains
the repose from persecution which the Church enjoyed at the time of
the conversion of Cornelius and helps us to fix its date. In the year
39 Petronius, the prefect of Syria, received orders from the Emperor
Caligula to set up his statue as a god in the Temple. He advanced to
fulfil the Emperor's command with two legions and a number of
auxiliary troops, and came as far as Ptolemais, a maritime town of Galilee,
which is mentioned in Acts xxi. 7 as a place where St. Paul visited a
Church, of which we hear nothing else. The Jewish nation met the
prefect there in tens of thousands, entreating him to desist or else
to put them to immediate death. He halted his army and appointed
a further conference at Tiberias, where the people met him and continued
their entreaties for fifty days, though it was seed-time and a
famine might result from their neglect of the spring operations.
Petronius suspended his operations for the time, and wrote back to the
Emperor an account of the Jewish opposition. Herod Agrippa too,
who was then at Rome and in high favour with the Emperor, lent his
assistance, and obtained a temporary respite for the Jews by a timely
and expensive banquet which he prepared for him. Towards the close
of A.D. 40 Caligula, however, determined to set out and personally
compel the obedience of the Jews. But his assassination in January 41
relieved their apprehensions, and freed the world from Caligula's mad
freaks. During that period of anxiety, lasting fully a year and a half,
the Jews had neither time nor thought for the new sect, which was
opposed as strongly as themselves to the Emperor's impious projects
and whose members doubtless flung themselves as heartily into the
opposition. The Jews at Alexandria suffered at the same time a
terrible persecution, of which Philo and Josephus tell: see Mommsen's
Provinces of the Roman Empire, vol. ii., pp. 190-96 (Dickson's Translation).
This is one of those incidental touches which prove the
wonderful accuracy of this book of the Acts. Dr. Lightfoot has
remarked (Essays on Supernatural Religion) that no book of the Bible
has so many points of contact with current history and politics as the
Acts, and can therefore be more easily tested. This special case is an
interesting illustration of the learned bishop's view.
It was during this awful period of uncertainty and
opposition that the infant Church enjoyed a brief period
of repose and quiet growth, because the whole nation
from the high priest to the lowest beggar had something
else to think of than how to persecute a new
sect that was as yet rigorously scrupulous in observing
the law of Moses. During this period of repose from
persecution St. Peter made his tour of inspection
"throughout all parts," Samaria, Galilee, Judæa, terminating
with Lydda, where he healed, or at least
prayed for the healing of, Æneas,Perhaps it is well to note that this is not the classical word Æneas,
which in Greek would be represented by Αἰνείασ, but a different name
with a short e, and is written in Greek Αἰνέας. The latter is found in
Thucydides and Xenophon: see Meyer in loco.
and with Joppa,
where his prayer was followed by the restoration of
Tabitha or Dorcas, who has given a designation now
widely applied to the assistance which devout women
can give to their poorer sisters in Christ.
We thus see how God by the secret guidance of His
Spirit, shaping his course by ways and roads known
only to Himself, led St. Peter to the house of Simon
the tanner, where he abode many days waiting in
patience to know God's mind and will which were
soon to be opened out to him. We have now traced
the line of events which connect the conversion of
Saul of Tarsus with that of Cornelius the centurion
of Cæsarea. Let us apply ourselves to the circumstances
surrounding the latter event, which is of such
vital importance to us Gentile Christians as having
been the formal Divine proclamation to the Church and
to the world that the mystery which had been hid for
ages was now made manifest, and that the Gentiles were
spiritually on an equality with the Jews. The Church
was now about to burst the bonds which had restrained
it for five years at least. We stand by the birth of
European Christendom and of modern civilisation. It
is well, then, that we should learn and inwardly digest
every, even the slightest, detail concerning such a transcendent
and notable crisis. Let us take them briefly
one by one as the sacred narrative reports them.
I. I note, then, in the first place that the time of this
conversion was wisely and providentially chosen. The
time was just about eight years after the Ascension and
the foundation of the Church. Time enough therefore
had elapsed for Christianity to take root among the
Jews. This was most important. The gospel was
first planted among the Jews, took form and life and
shape, gained its initial impulse and direction among
God's ancient people in order that the constitution, the
discipline, and the worship of the Church might be
framed on the ancient Jewish model and might be built
up by men whose minds were cast in a conservative
mould. Not that we have the old law with its wearisome
and burdensome ritual perpetuated in the Christian
Church. That law was a yoke too heavy for man
to bear. But, then, the highest and best elements of
the old Jewish system have been perpetuated in the
Church. There was in Judaism by God's own appointment
a public ministry, a threefold public ministry too,
exercised by the high priest, the priests, and the
Levites. There is in Christianity a threefold ministry
exercised by bishops, presbyters or elders, and deacons.I do not intend to raise any disputed question as to Church polity
and government in this book, and so I may point out, without compromising
my own views in the least, that even a Presbyterian may agree
in this statement, as he may hold that his own teaching elder or minister
corresponds to the primitive bishop, his ruling elders to the presbyters,
and his own deacons to the ancient deacons. Presbyterianism claims
thus a threefold ministry as well as Episcopacy.
There were in Judaism public and consecrated sanctuaries,
fixed liturgies, public reading of God's Word,
a service of choral worship, hymns of joy and thanksgiving,
the sacraments of Holy Communion and
baptism in a rudimentary shape; all these were transferred
from the old system that was passing away into
the new system that was taking its place. Had the
Gentiles been admitted much earlier all this might not
have so easily happened. Men do not easily change
their habits. Habits, indeed, are chains which rivet
themselves year by year with ever-increasing power
round our natures; and the Jewish converts brought
their habits of thought and worship into the Church of
Christ, establishing there those institutions of prayer
and worship, of sacramental communion and preaching
which we still enjoy. But we must observe, on the
other hand, that, had the Gentiles been admitted a little
later, the Church might have assumed too Jewish and
Levitical an aspect. This pause of eight years, during
which Jews alone formed the Church, is another
instance of those delays of the LordWhat a fine subject for historical study the delays of the Lord
would prove. The delay of the Incarnation till the world was ready
is a supreme instance of them. The delay of the triumph of Christianity,
of the break up of the Roman Empire, of the Reformation so
often attempted but never effected till the invention of printing and the
revival of learning,—these and numerous other illustrations fling light
upon the darkness which still surrounds the Divine methods and dispensations
amid which we live.
which, whether
they happen in public or in private life, are always
found in the long run to be wise, blessed, and providential
things, though for a time they may seem dark
and mysterious, according to that ancient strain of
the Psalmist, "Wait on the Lord, ... and He shall
strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, upon the Lord."This and several other thoughts in this chapter will be found
worked out in a sermon of Bishop Jebb, a well-known preacher of the
last generation who is now almost forgotten. Yet he published several
volumes of sermons and other theological works, which had no small
influence in laying the foundations of the Oxford movement. His
sermons are full of matter, though not composed in a modern style.
This cannot be wondered at when we find from his well-known correspondence
with Alexander Knox that a single sermon sometimes was
the work of several months, if not even years. The leisurely character
of even busy lives in the opening years of this century is strikingly illustrated
by the correspondence between these learned men. Bishop Jebb
preached a sermon in 1804 on the well-known Vincentian rule of faith,
"Quod semper, quod ubique, etc." This sermon he elaborated till 1815,
and then published it. It played no small part in religious controversies
between 1815 and 1840, as a reference to the Christian Observer, the
Christian Examiner, and other religious periodicals of that time will
show.
II. Again, the place where the Church burst its
Jewish shell and emerged into full gospel freedom is
noteworthy. It was at Cæsarea. It is a great pity that
people do not make more use of maps in their study of
Holy Scripture. Sunday evenings are often a dull
time in Christian households, and the bare mechanical
reading of Scripture and of good books often only
makes them duller. How much livelier, interesting, and
instructive they would be were an attempt made to
trace the journeys of the apostles with a map, or to
study the scenes where they laboured—Jerusalem,
Cæsarea, Damascus, Ephesus, Athens, and Rome—with
some of the helps which modern scholarship and commercial
enterprise now place within easy reach. I can
speak thus with the force of personal experience, for
my own keen interest in this book which I am expounding
dates from the Sunday evenings of boyhood
thus spent, though without many of the aids which now
lie within the reach of all. This is essentially the
modern method of study, especially in matters historical.
A modern investigator and explorer of Bible
sites and lands has well expressed this truth when
he said, "Topography is the foundation of history.
If we are ever to understand history, we must understand
the places where that history was transacted."See Ramsay's Historical Geography of Asia Minor, pp. 51, 52.
The celebrated historians the late Mr. Freeman
and Mr. Green worked a revolution in English historical
methods by teaching people that an indefatigable
use of maps and a careful study of the physical
features of any country are absolutely needful for a
true conception of its history. In this respect at least
secular history and sacred history are alike. Without
a careful study of the map we cannot understand God's
dealings with the Church of Christ, as is manifest from
the case of Cæsarea at which we have arrived. The
narratives of the Gospels and of the Acts will be confused,
unintelligible, unless we understand that there
were two Cæsareas in Palestine, one never mentioned
in the Gospels, the other never mentioned in the Acts.
Cæsarea Philippi was a celebrated city of North-eastern
Palestine. It was when our Lord was within its
borders that St. Peter made his celebrated confession,
"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,"
told of in St. Matthew xvi. 13-16. This is the only
Cæsarea of which we hear in the Gospels. It was
an inland town, built by the Herods in joint honour
of themselves and of their patrons the Emperors of
Rome, and bore all the traces of its origin. It was
decorated with a splendid pagan temple, was a thoroughly
pagan town, and was therefore abhorred by
every true Jew. There was another Cæsarea, the great
Roman port of Palestine and the capital, where the
Roman governors resided. It was situated in the
borders of Phœnicia, in a north-westerly direction
from Jerusalem, with which it was connected by a fine
military road.The most detailed account of Cæsarea-on-the-Sea, its ruins and
present state, will be found in the Memoirs of the Survey of Western
Palestine, vol. ii., pp. 13-29. It is accompanied with plans and maps,
which show that ancient Roman Cæsarea was ten times the size of the
mediæval city which the Crusaders occupied. Geikie's The Holy Land
and the Bible, ch. iv., gives a very interesting account of the ancient
and modern state of Cæsarea.
This Cæsarea had been originally built
by Herod the Great. He spent twelve years at this
undertaking, and succeeded in making it a splendid
monument of the magnificence of his conceptions. The
seaboard of Palestine is totally devoid to this day of
safe harbours. Herod constructed a harbour at vast
expense. Let us hear the story of its foundation in
the very words of the Jewish historian. Josephus tells
us that Herod, observing "that Joppa and Dora are
not fit for havens on account of the impetuous south
winds which beat upon them, which, rolling the sands
which come from the sea against the shores, do not
admit of ships lying in their station; but the merchants
are generally there forced to ride at their anchors in the
sea itself. So Herod endeavoured to rectify this inconvenience,
and laid out such a compass toward the land
as might be sufficient for a haven, wherein the great
ships might lie in safety; and this he effected by letting
down vast stones of above fifty feet in length, not less
than eighteen in breadth and nine in depth, into twenty
fathoms deep."See Josephus, Antiquities, XV. ix. 6; Wars of Jews, I. xxi. Mr.
Lewin, in his Life of St. Paul, vol. ii., ch. iv., spends several pages in
an elaborate discussion of the buildings and plan of Cæsarea, to which
it must here suffice to refer.
The Romans, when they took possession
of Palestine, adopted and developed Herod's plans,
and established Cæsarea on the coast as the permanent
residence of the procurator of Palestine. And it was
a wise policy. The Romans, like the English, had a
genius for government. They fixed their provincial
capitals upon or near the sea-coast that their communications
might be ever kept open. Thus in our own
case Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Capetown, Quebec, and
Dublin are all seaport towns. And so in ancient times
Antioch, Alexandria, Tarsus, Ephesus, Marseilles,
Corinth, London, were all seaports and provincial Roman
capitals as Cæsarea was in Palestine. And it was a very
wise policy. The Jews were a fierce, bold, determined
people when they revolted. If the seat of Roman rule
had been fixed at Jerusalem, a rebellion might completely
cut off all effective relief from the besieged
garrison, which would never happen at Cæsarea so long
as the command of the sea was vested in the vast
navies which the Roman State possessed. Cæsarea
was to a large extent a Gentile city, though within
some seventy miles of Jerusalem. It had a considerable
Jewish population with their attendant synagogues,
but the most prominent features were pagan temples,
one of them serving for a lighthouse and beacon for
the ships which crowded its harbour, together with a
theatre and an amphitheatre, where scenes were daily
enacted from which every sincere Jew must have shrunk
with horror. Such was the place—a most fitting place,
Gentile, pagan, idolatrous to the very core and centre—where
God chose to reveal Himself as Father of the
Gentiles as well as of the Jews, and showed Christ's
gospel as a light to lighten the Gentiles as well as
the glory of His people Israel.
III. Then, again, the person chosen as the channel
of this revelation is a striking character. He was
"Cornelius by name, a centurion of the band called
the Italian band."Cornelius was a centurion of the Italian band. This is another of
the accidental coincidences which attest the genuineness of the Acts. The
Roman army was divided into two broad divisions, the legions and the
auxiliary forces. Now the legions were never permanently quartered in
Palestine till the great war which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem,
which began in A.D. 66 and ended in A.D. 70. A legion was then for
the first time stationed with a fixed camp upon the site of the Holy
City: see Mommsen's Roman Provinces, ii. 218. The auxiliary forces
were a kind of militia raised upon the spot. Palestine was made a
province of the second rank in A.D. 6, and from that time to the year
66 was garrisoned, like all second-rank provinces, exclusively by
auxiliary troops, the headquarters of which were at Cæsarea. These
auxiliaries, recruited amongst the Samaritans and Syrian Greeks,
numbered one ala and five cohorts, about three thousand men: see
Mommsen, loc. cit., p. 186. It would not have been prudent, however,
to have a garrison in Palestine exclusively composed of troops locally
recruited, even though restricted to Samaritans and Syrians, just as no
prudent English government would garrison Ireland with a militia
drawn from Ulster Orangemen alone. The Roman Government therefore
mingled with the garrison of Cæsarea an auxiliary cohort composed
of Italians. There were thirty-two Italian auxiliary cohorts which were
thus used as a salutary precaution against treachery on the part of the
local militia. See, on this interesting point, Marquardt, L' Organisation
Militaire chez les Romains, p. 189 (French Edition), where this learned
German writer often quotes the Acts of the Apostles to illustrate the
military arrangements in Palestine during the first sixty years of the first
century. Such was the military organisation of Palestine from A.D. 6 to
66. After that period Palestine was ruled in the sternest military
manner, and treated like a border province subject to martial law with
legionaries scattered all over it. Now if the Acts were written in the
beginning of the second century, a writer would almost certainly have
missed the correct description of the troops stationed at Cæsarea as
St. Luke gives it in this passage. See also the article "Exercitus" in
the new edition of Smith's Dictionary of Roman and Greek Antiquities;
Mommsen, on the Roman Legions, in Ephemeris Epigraphica, vol. v.
and Pfitzner, Geschichte der Römischen Kaiserlegionen.
Here, then, we note first of all that
Cornelius was a Roman soldier. Let us pause and
reflect upon this. In no respect does the New Testament
display more clearly its Divine origin than in the
manner in which it rises superior to mere provincialism.
There are no narrow national prejudices about it like
those which nowadays lead Englishmen to despise
other nations, or those which in ancient times led a
thorough-going Jew to look down with sovereign contempt
on the Gentile world as mere dogs and outcasts.
The New Testament taught that all men were equal
and were brothers in blood, and thus laid the foundations
of those modern conceptions which have well-nigh
swept slavery from the face of civilised Christendom.
The New Testament and its teaching is the
parent of that modern liberalism which now rules
every circle, no matter what its political designation.
In no respect does this universal catholic feeling of
the New Testament display itself more clearly than
in the pictures it presents to us of Roman military
men. They are uniformly most favourable. Without
one single exception the pictures drawn for us of every
centurion and soldier mentioned in the books of the
New Testament are bright with some element of good
shining out conspicuously by way of favourable contrast,
when brought side by side with the Jewish people,
upon whom more abundant and more blessed privileges
had been in vain lavished. Let us just note a few
instances which will illustrate our view. The soldiers
sought John's baptism and humbly received John's
penitential advice and direction when priests and scribes
rejected the Lord's messenger (Luke iii. 14). A soldier
and a centurion received Christ's commendation for the
exercise of a faith surpassing in its range and spiritual
perception any faith which the Master had found within
the bounds and limits of Israel according to the flesh.
"Verily I have not found so great faith, no, not in
Israel," were Christ's almost wondering words as He
heard the confession of His God-like nature, His Divine
power involved in the centurion's prayer of humility,
"I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my
roof: but only say the word, and my servant shall be
healed" (cf. Matt. viii. 5-13). So was it again with the
centurion to whom the details of our Lord's execution
were committed. He too is painted in a favourable
light. He had an open mind, willing to receive evidence.
He received that evidence under the most unfavourable
conditions. His mind was convinced of our Lord's
mission and character, not by His triumphs, but by His
apparent defeat. As the victim of Jewish malice and
prejudice yielded up the ghost and committed His pure,
unspotted soul to the hands of His heavenly Father,
then it was that, struck by the supernatural spirit of love
and gentleness and forgiveness—those great forces of
Christianity which never at any other time or in any
other age have had their full and fair play—the centurion
yielded the assent of his affections and of his intellect
to the Divine mission of the suffering Saviour, and
cried, "Truly this man was the Son of God" (Matt.
xxvii. 54). So it was again with Julius the centurion,
who courteously entreated St. Paul on his voyage as
a prisoner to Rome (Acts xxvii. 3); and so again it
was with Cornelius the centurion, of the band called
the Italian band.
Now how comes this to pass? What a striking
evidence of the workings and presence of the Divine
Spirit in the writers of our sacred books we may find
in this fact! The Roman soldiers were of course the
symbols to a patriotic Jew of a hated foreign sway, of
an idolatrous jurisdiction and rule. A Jew uninfluenced
by supernatural grace and unguided by Divine inspiration
would never have drawn such pictures of Roman
centurions as the New Testament has handed down
to us. The pictures, indeed, drawn by the opposition
press of any country is not generally a favourable
one when dealing with the persons and officials of
the dominant party. But the apostles—Jews though
they were of narrow, provincial, prejudiced Galilee—had
drunk deep of the spirit of the new religion.
They recognised that Jesus Christ, the King of the
kingdom of heaven, cared nothing about what form of
government men lived under. They knew that Christ
ignored all differences of climate, age, sex, nationality,
or employment. They felt that the only distinctions
recognised in Christ's kingdom were spiritual distinctions,
and therefore they recognised the soul of goodness
wherever found. They welcomed the honest and
true heart, no matter beneath what skin it beat, and
found therefore in many of these Roman soldiers some
of the ablest, the most devoted, and the most effective
servants and teachers of the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Verily the universal and catholic principles of the
new religion which found their first formal proclamation
in the age of Cornelius met with an ample vindication
and a full reward in the trophies won and the
converts gained from such an unpromising source as
the ranks of the Roman army. This seems to me one
reason for the favourable notices of the Roman soldiers
in the New Testament. The Divine Spirit wished to
impress upon mankind that birth, position, or employment
have no influence upon a man's state in God's
sight, and to prove by a number of typical examples
that spiritual conditions and excellence alone avail to
find favour with the Almighty.
Another reason, however, may be found for this fact.
The Scriptures never make light of discipline or training.
"Train up a child in the way he should go" is
a Divine precept. St. Paul, in his Pastoral Epistles,
lays down as one great qualification for a bishop that
he should have this power of exercising discipline and
rule at home as well as abroad: "For if he knoweth
not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care
of the Church of God?" (1 Tim. iii. 5). By discipline,
the discipline of Egypt and the wilderness, did God
prepare His people for Canaan. By the discipline of
captivity and dispersion, by the discipline of Greek
philosophy spreading novel intellectual ideas, by the
discipline of Roman dominion executing mighty public
works, carrying roads and intercommunication to the
remotest and most barbarous nations, did God prepare
the world for the revelation of His Son. By the
discipline of life, by joy and sorrow, by strife and
suffering, by parting and by loss, does God still prepare
His faithful ones for the beatific vision of eternal
beauty, for the rest and joy of everlasting peace.
And discipline worked out its usual results on these
military men, even though it was only an imperfect and
pagan discipline which these Roman soldiers received.
Let us note carefully how this was. The world of
unregenerate man at the time of our Lord's appearance
had become utterly selfish. Discipline of every kind
had been flung off. Self-restraint was practically
unknown, and the devil and his works flourished in
every circle, bringing forth the fruits of wickedness,
uncleanness, and impurity in every direction. The
army was the only place or region where in those
times any kind of discipline or self-restraint was practised.
For no army can permit—even if it be an
army of atheists—profligacy and drunkenness to rage,
flaunting themselves beneath the very eye of the sun.
And as the spiritual result we find that this small
measure of pagan discipline acted as a preparation for
Christianity, and became under the Divine guidance
the means of fitting men like Cornelius of Cæsarea
for the reception of the gospel message of purity and
peace."The Roman camps were also the best training-schools for the
old-fashioned virtues of faithfulness, straightforwardness, and hardihood;
and in them were to be found the best types of the old Roman character,
which, as moralists complained, were to be found elsewhere no more.
If the funds of a country town had fallen into disorder, or uprightness
was needed for a special post, the curator chosen by the Government
was often an old soldier, who had long been tried and trusted; and
early Christian history throws, incidentally, a favourable light upon the
moral qualities of the Roman officer. These qualities were mainly
formed by thoroughness of work and discipline."—W. W. Capes, The
Early Empire, p. 210.
But we observe that Cornelius the centurion had
one special feature which made him peculiarly fitted to
be God's instrument for opening the Christian faith to
the Gentile world. The choice of Cornelius is marked
by all that skill and prudence, that careful adaptation
of means to ends which the Divine workmanship,
whether in nature or in grace, ever displays. There
were many Roman centurions stationed at Cæsarea,
yet none was chosen save Cornelius, and that because
he was "a devout man who feared God with all his
house, praying to God always, and giving much alms
to the people." He feared Jehovah, he fasted, prayed,
observed Jewish hours of devotion. His habits were
much more those of a devout Jew than of a pagan
soldier. He was popular with the Jewish people
therefore, like another centurion of whom it was said
by the Jewish officials themselves "he loveth our
nation and hath built us a synagogue." The selection
of Cornelius as the leader and firstfruits of the Gentiles
unto God was eminently prudent and wise. God when
He is working out His plans chooses His instruments
carefully and skilfully. He leaves nothing to chance.
He does nothing imperfectly. Work done by God will
repay the keenest scrutiny, the closest study, for it is
the model of what every man's work in life ought as
far as possible to be—earnest, wise, complete, perfect.
IV. Again, looking at the whole passage we perceive
therein illustrations of two important laws of the
Divine life. We recognise in the case of Cornelius
the working of that great principle of the kingdom of
God often enunciated by the great Master: "To him
that hath shall be given, and he shall have more
abundantly," "If any man will do His will, he shall
know of the doctrine"; or, to put it in other language,
that God always bestows more grace upon the man
who diligently uses and improves the grace which he
already possesses; a principle which indeed we see
constantly exemplified in things pertaining to this
world as well as in matters belonging to the spiritual
life. Thus it was with Cornelius. He was what was
called among the Jews a proselyte of the gate. These
proselytes were very numerous. They were a kind
of fringe hanging upon the outskirts of the Jewish
people. They were admirers of Jewish ideas, doctrines,
and practices, but they were not incorporated with the
Jewish nation nor bound by all their laws and ceremonial
restraints. The Levitical Law was not imposed
upon them because they were not circumcised. They
were merely bound to worship the true God and observe
certain moral precepts said to have been delivered to
Noah.See the article on "Proselytes" in Schaft's Encyclopædia of Theology.
Such was Cornelius whom the providence of
God had led from Italy to Cæsarea for this very
purpose, to fulfil His purposes of mercy towards the
Gentile world. His residence there had taught him
the truth and beauty of the pure worship of Jehovah
rendered by the Jews. He had learned too, not only
that God is, but that He is a rewarder of them that
diligently seek Him. Cornelius had set himself, therefore,
to the diligent discharge of all the duties of religion
so far as he knew them. He was earnest and diligent
in prayer, for he recognised himself as dependent upon
an invisible God. He was liberal in alms, for he desired
to show forth his gratitude, for mercies daily received.
And acting thus he met with the divinely appointed
reward. Cornelius is favoured with a fuller revelation
and a clearer guidance by the angel's mouth, who tells
him to send and summon Peter from Joppa for this
very purpose. What an eminently practical lesson we
may learn from God's dealings with this earliest Gentile
convert! We learn from the Divine dealings with
Cornelius that whosoever diligently improves the lower
spiritual advantages which he possesses shall soon be
admitted to higher and fuller blessings.
It may well have been that God led him through successive
stages and rewarded him under each. In distant
Italy, when residing amid the abounding superstitions
of that country, conscience was the only preacher, but
there the sermons of that monitor were heard with
reverence and obeyed with diligence. Then God
ordered the course of his life so that public duty
summoned him to a distant land. Cornelius may have
at the time counted his lot a hard one when despatched
to Palestine as a centurion, for it was a province where,
from the nature of the warfare there prevalent, there
were abundant opportunities of death by assassination
at the hands of the Zealots, and but few opportunities
of distinction such as might be gained in border warfare
with foreign enemies. But the Lord was shaping
his career, as He shapes all our careers, with reference
to our highest spiritual purposes. He led Cornelius,
therefore, to a land and to a town where the pure
worship of Jehovah was practised and the elevated
morality of Judaism prevailed. Here, then, were new
opportunities placed within the centurion's reach. And
again the same spiritual diligence is displayed, and
again the same law of spiritual development and enlarging
blessing finds a place. Cornelius is devout and
liberal and God-fearing, and therefore a heavenly
visitor directs his way to still fuller light and grander
revelations, and Cornelius the centurion of the Italian
band leads the Gentile hosts into the fulness of blessing,
the true land flowing with milk and honey, found only
in the dispensation of Jesus Christ and within the
borders of the Church of God. This was God's course
of dealing with the Roman centurion, and it is the course
which the same loving dealings still pursues with human
souls truly desirous of Divine guidance. The Lord
imparts one degree of light and knowledge and grace,
but withholds higher degrees till full use has been
made of the lower. He speaks to us at first in a
whisper; but if we reverently hearken, there is a
gradual deepening of the voice, till it is as audible in
the crowd as it is in the solitude, and we are continually
visited with the messages of the Eternal King.
Now cannot these ideas be easily applied to our own
individual cases? A young man, for instance, may be
troubled with doubts and questions concerning certain
portions of the Christian faith. Some persons make
such doubts an excuse for plunging into scenes of riot
and dissipation, quenching the light which God has
given them and making certain their own spiritual
destruction. The case of Cornelius points out the true
course which should in such a case be adopted.
Men may be troubled with doubts concerning certain
doctrines of revelation. But they have no doubt as to
the dictates of conscience and the light which natural
religion sheds upon the paths of morals and of life.
Let them then use the light they have. Let them
diligently practise the will of God as it has been
revealed. Let them be earnest in prayer, pure and
reverent in life, honest and upright in business, and
then in God's own time the doubts will vanish, the
darkness will clear away, and the ancient promises will
be fulfilled, "Light is sown for the righteous," "The
path of the just shineth more and more unto the perfect
day," "In the way of righteousness is life, and in the
pathway thereof there is no death."
But the example of Cornelius is of still wider
application. The position of Cornelius was not a
favourable one for the development of the religious
life, and yet he rose superior to all its difficulties, and
became thus an eminent example to all believers. Men
may complain that they have but few spiritual advantages,
and that their station in life is thickly strewn
with difficulties, hindering the practices and duties of
religion. To such persons we would say, compare
yourselves with Cornelius and the difficulties external
and internal he had to overcome. Servants, for instance,
may labour under great apparent disadvantages. Perhaps,
if living in an irreligious family, they have few
opportunities for prayer, public or private. Men of
business are compelled to spend days and nights in
the management of their affairs. Persons of commanding
intellect or of high station have their own
disadvantages, their own peculiar temptations, growing
out of their very prosperity. The case of Cornelius
shows that each class can rise superior to their peculiar
difficulties and grow in the hidden life of the soul, if
they but imitate his example as he grew from grace
to grace, improving his scanty store till it grew into a
fuller and ampler one, till it expanded into all the glory
of Christian privilege, when Cornelius, like Peter, was
enabled to rejoice in the knowledge and love of a risen
and glorified Redeemer.I owe a great many of the devout thoughts dealing with the latter
portion of this subject to a volume of sermons preached by the celebrated
Golden Lecturer, the eloquent Henry Melville, styled Voices of the
Christian Year. Melville is now as a preacher quite forgotten, and yet
he deserves to be gratefully remembered, for he was the first of the old
Evangelical school to break through the traditional repetition of commonplaces
which formed the main part of the preaching of the leading
popular orators of fifty years ago. From a preacher's point of view his
sermons will still repay study. His sermons, for instance, on the less
known characters of Scripture, will teach a young divine how to extract
edification and instruction out of most unpromising materials, and to
apply the essential principles of the Bible to the changed circumstances
of modern life. And assuredly this is the real object of a pastor's
preaching in a Christian congregation, not the mere repetition of the
first elements of Christianity, but an application of its great principles,
first proclaimed in the language of the East, to the actions and lives of
the men of the West. Preaching of that kind need never be dull and
uninteresting.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PETRINE VISION AT JOPPA.
"Now on the morrow, as they were on their journey, and drew nigh
unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray, about the sixth
hour: and he became hungry, and desired to eat: but while they made
ready, he fell into a trance; and he beholdeth the heaven opened, and
a certain vessel descending, as it were a great sheet, let down by four
corners upon the earth: wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts
and creeping things of the earth and fowls of the heaven. And there
came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill and eat. But Peter said, Not so,
Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common and unclean.
And a voice came unto him again the second time, What God hath
cleansed, make not thou common."—Acts x. 9-15.
There are two central figures in the conversion
of Cornelius. The one is the centurion himself,
the other is St. Peter, the selected and predestined
agent in that great work. We have studied Cornelius
in the last chapter, and have seen the typical character
of all his circumstances. His time, his residence, his
training, had all been providential, indicating to us the
careful superintendence, the watchful oversight, which
God bestows upon the history of individuals as well as
of the Church at large. Let us now turn to the other
figure, St. Peter, and see if the Lord's providence may
not be traced with equal clearness in the circumstances
of his case also. We have found Cornelius at Cæsarea,
the great Roman port and garrison of Palestine, a very
fitting and natural place for a Roman centurion to be
located. We find Peter at this very same time at
Joppa, a spot that was consecrated by many a memory
and specially associated with a mission to the Gentiles
in the times of the Elder Dispensation. Here we trace
the hand of the Lord providentially ruling the footsteps
of Peter though he knew it not, and leading him, as
Philip was led a short time before, to the spot where
his intended work lay. The sickness and death of
Tabitha or Dorcas led St. Peter to Joppa. The fame
of his miracle upon that devout woman led to the conversion
of many souls, and this naturally induced Peter
to make a longer stay in Joppa at the house of Simon
the tanner. How natural and unpremeditated, how
very ordinary and unplanned to the natural eye seem
the movements of St. Peter! So they would have
seemed to us had we been living at Joppa, and yet now
we can see with the light which the sacred narrative
throws upon the story that the Lord was guiding St.
Peter to the place where his work was cut out when
the appointed time should come. Surely the history
of Peter and his actions have abundant comfort and
sustaining hope for ourselves! Our lives may be very
ordinary and commonplace; the events may succeed one
another in the most matter-of-fact style; there may
seem in them nothing at all worthy the attention of a
Divine Ruler; and yet those ordinary lives are just as
much planned and guided by supernatural wisdom as
the careers of men concerning whom all the world is
talking. Only let us take care to follow St. Peter's
example. He yielded himself completely to the Divine
guidance, trusted himself entirely to Divine love and
wisdom, and then found in such trust not only life and
safety, but what is far better, perfect peace and sweetest
calm.
There is something very restful in the picture drawn
for us of St. Peter at this crisis. There is none
of that feverish hurry and restlessness which make
some good men and their methods very trying to others.
The notices of him have all an air of repose and
Christian dignity. "As Peter went throughout all parts,
he came down also to the saints which dwelt at
Lydda"; "Peter put them all forth and prayed";
"Peter abode many days in Joppa"; "Peter went up
upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour." St.
Peter, indeed, did not live in an age of telegrams and
postcards and express trains, which all contribute more
or less to that feverish activity and restlessness so
characteristic of this age. But even if he had lived in
such a time, I am sure his faith in God would have
saved him from that fussiness, that life of perpetual
hurry, yet never bringing forth any abiding fruit,
which we behold in so many moderns. This results
a good deal, I believe, from the development—I was
almost going to say the tyranny, the unwitting tyranny
of modern journalism, which compels men to live so
much in public and reports their every utterance.
There are men never tired of running from one committee
to another, and never weary of seeing their
names in the morning papers. They count that they
have been busily and usefully employed if their names
are perpetually appearing in newspaper reports as
speaking, or at any rate being present at innumerable
meetings, leaving themselves no time for that quiet
meditation whereby St. Peter gained closest communion
with heaven. It is no wonder such men's fussiness
should be fruitless, because their natures are poor,
shallow, uncultivated, where the seed springs up rapidly
but brings forth no fruit to perfection, because it has no
deepness of earth. It is no wonder that St. Peter should
have spoken with power at Cæsarea and been successful
in opening the door of faith to the Gentiles, because he
prepared himself for doing the Divine work by the
discipline of meditation and thought and spiritual
converse with his Risen Lord. And here we may
remark, before we pass from this point, that the conversion
of the first Gentile and the full and complete
exercise of the power of the keys committed to St.
Peter run on lines very parallel to those pertaining to
the Day of Pentecost and the conversion of the earliest
Jews in one respect at least. The Day of Pentecost
was preceded by a period of ten days' waiting and
spiritual repose. The conversion of Cornelius and the
revelation of God's purposes to St. Peter were preceded
by a season of meditation and prayer, when an apostle
could find time amid all his pressing cares to seek the
housetop for midday prayer and to abide many days in
the house of one Simon a tanner. A period of pause,
repose, and quietness preceded a new onward movement
of development and of action.
I. Now, as in the case of Cornelius, so in the case of
St. Peter, we note the place where the chief actor in the
scene abode. It was at Joppa, and Joppa was associated
with many memories for the Jews. It has been from
ancient times the port of Jerusalem, and is even now
rising into somewhat of its former commercial greatness,
specially owing to the late development of the orange
trade, for the production of which fruit Jaffa or Joppa has
become famous. Three thousand years ago Joppa was
a favourite resort of the Phœnician fleets, which brought
the cedars of Lebanon to King Solomon for the building
of the temple (2 Chron. ii. 16). At a later period,
when God would send Jonah on a mission to Gentile
Nineveh, and when Jonah desired to thwart God's
merciful designs towards the outer world, the prophet
fled to Joppa and there took ship in his vain effort
to escape from the presence of the Lord. And now
again Joppa becomes the refuge of another prophet,
who feels the same natural hesitation about admitting
the Gentiles to God's mercy, but who, unlike Jonah,
yields immediate assent to the heavenly message, and
finds peace and blessing in the paths of loving obedience.
The very house where St. Peter abode is still
pointed out.The house of Simon the tanner is depicted in Lewin's St. Paul,
vol. i., pp. 87, 88. There is a good description of it, as also of Joppa
at large, in Geikie's The Holy Land and the Bible, vol. i., p. 18, from
which we take the following: "On the south side of the town, at the
edge of the sea, close to the lighthouse, one is reminded of the visit of
St. Peter to Joppa by the claim of a paltry mosque to occupy the house
of Simon the tanner. The present building is comparatively modern,
and cannot be the actual structure in which the Apostle lodged. It is,
however, regarded by the Mohammedans as sacred, one of the rooms
being used as a place of prayer in commemoration, we are told, of
the Lord Jesus having once asked God, while here, for a meal; on
which a table forthwith came down from heaven. Strange variation
of the story of St. Peter's vision! The waves beat against the low
wall of the courtyard, so that, like the actual house of Simon, it is
close on the sea-shore. Tanning, moreover, in accordance with the
unchanging character of the East, is still extensively carried on in this
part of the town."
It is situated in the south-western part
of the town, and commands a view over the bay of
Joppa and the waters of that Mediterranean Sea which
was soon to be the channel of communication whereby
the gospel message should be borne to the nations of
the distant West. We remark, too, that it was with
Simon the tanner of Joppa that St. Peter was staying.
When a great change is impending various little
circumstances occur all showing the tendencies of
the age. By themselves and taken one by one they
do not express much. At the time when they
happen men do not regard them or understand their
meaning, but afterwards, and reading them in the light
of accomplished facts, men behold their significance.
Thus it was with Simon Peter and his visit to Simon
the tanner of Joppa. Tanners as a class were despised
and comparatively outcast among the Jews. Tanning
was counted an unclean trade because of the necessary
contact with dead bodies which it involved. A tanyard
must, according to Jewish law, be separated by
fifty yards at least from human dwellings. If a man
married a woman without informing her of his trade
as a tanner, she was granted a divorce. The whole
trade of tanners was under a ban, and yet it was to a
tanner's house that the Apostle made his way, and
there he lodged for many days, showing that the mind
even of St. Peter was steadily rising above narrow
Jewish prejudices into that higher and nobler atmosphere
where he learned in fullest degree that no man
and no lawful trade is to be counted common or
unclean.
II. We note, again, the time when the vision was
granted to St. Peter and the mind of the Lord was more
fully disclosed to him. Joppa is separated from Cæsarea
by a distance of thirty miles. The leading coast towns
were then connected by an excellent road, along which
horses and vehicles passed with ease. The centurion
Cornelius, when he received the angelic direction, forthwith
despatched two of his household servants and
a devout soldier to summon St. Peter to his presence.
They doubtless travelled on horseback, leading spare
beasts for the accommodation of the Apostle. Less
than twenty-four hours after their departure from
Cæsarea they drew nigh to Joppa, and then it was that
God revealed His purposes to His beloved servant.
The very hour can be fixed. Cornelius saw the angel
at the ninth hour, when, as he himself tells us, "he was
keeping the hour of prayer" (x. 30). Peter saw the
vision at the sixth hour, when he went up on the house
top to pray, according to the example of the Psalmist
when he sang, "In the evening and morning and at
noon-day will I pray, and that instantly."This is the rendering of Psalm lv. 18 according to the version in the
Book of Common Prayer.
St. Peter
evidently was a careful observer of all the forms amid
which his youthful training had been conducted. He
did not seek in the name of spiritual religion to discard
these old forms. He recognised the danger of any such
course. Forms may often tend to formalism on account
of the weakness of human nature. But they also help
to preserve and guard the spirit of ancient institutions
in times of sloth and decay, till the Spirit from on high
again breathes upon the dry bones and imparts fresh
life. St. Peter used the forms of Jewish externalism,
imparting to them some of his own intense earnestness,
and the Lord set His seal of approval upon his action
by revealing the purposes of His mercy and love to
the Gentile world at the noontide hour of prayer. The
wisest masters of the spiritual life have ever followed
St. Peter's teaching. We may take, for instance, Dr.
Goulburn in his valuable treatise on Personal Religion.
In the sixth chapter of the fourth part of that work he
has some wise thoughts on living by rule in the Christian
life, where he points out the use of rules and their
abuse, strongly urging upon those who desire to grow in
grace the formation of rules by which the practices
of religion and the soul's inner life may be directed
and shielded. There is, for instance, no law of Christ
which ties men down to morning and evening prayer.
Yet does not our own daily experience teach that, if this
unwritten rule of the Christian life be relaxed under the
pretence of higher spirituality, and men pray only when
they feel specially inclined to communion with the
unseen, the whole practice of private as well as of
public prayer ceases, and the soul lives in an atheistic
atmosphere without any recognition or thought of
God.A deceased friend of mine, a well-known member of the Society of
Friends, once remarked to me about this very point that his Society, to
which he belonged to his dying day, while aiming at the highest
spirituality, in its neglect of all rules, and suitable therefore for persons
of specially exalted tone, had rendered itself unfitted for the training of
children. Children cannot be trained without rules, and a society which
trusts to educate them in things religious without fixed and definite
training must be a hopeless failure. The original principles of
"Friends" preclude them from teaching children forms of private
prayer, from using fixed Bible reading and regular religious instruction,
as well as from stated family worship. Efforts have been made in
later times to remedy this effect, but they are merely confessions of the
failure of the principles inculcated by George Fox and Robert Barclay
and acknowledgments that the Church from which they dissented was
right.
This danger has been recognised from the
earliest times. Tertullian was a man of narrow views,
but of the most intense piety. He was a devout student
of the New Testament, and a careful observer of the
example of our Lord and His Apostles. The early
Christians adopted from the Jews the custom of prayer
at the various hours of the day, and turned it into a
practical rule of Christian discipline, acknowledging at
the same time that there was no Scriptural obligation
in the rule, but that it was a mere wise advice for the
development of the spiritual life. This was the origin of
what is technically called the Canonical Hours, Matins
with Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, Nones, Evensong, and
Compline, which can be traced back in germ to the age
next after the Apostles, and were originally grounded
upon the example of the Apostles themselves, and
specially upon that of St. Peter's practice at Joppa.
Let us hear Tertullian on this matter. He wrote a
treatise on prayer, in which he presses upon the men
of his time the duty of earnestness and intensity in that
holy exercise, and when doing so touches upon this very
point: "As respecting the time of prayer the observance
of certain hours will not be unprofitable—those common
hours I mean which mark the intervals of the day—the
third, sixth, ninth—which we find in Scripture to have
been made more solemn than the rest. The first infusion
of the Holy Spirit into the congregated disciples
took place at the third hour. Peter saw his vision on the
housetop at the sixth hour. Peter and John went into
the Temple at the ninth hour when he restored the
paralytic to his health." Tertullian then adds the following
wise observations, showing that he quite grasped the
essential distinction between the slavery of the law and
the freedom of the gospel in the matter of external observances:
"Albeit these practices stand simply without
any Divine precept for their observance; still it may be
granted a good thing to establish some definite rule
which may both add stringency to the admonition to
pray and may as it were by a law tear us out of our
ordinary business unto such a duty. So that we pray
not less than thrice in the day, debtors as we are to
Three—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—besides of course
our regular prayers on the entrance of light and of
night." The ecclesiastical practice of the Hours may
be turned into a mere formal repetition of certain
prescribed tasks; but, like all other ordinances which
trace themselves back to primitive Christianity, the
Hours are based on a true conception and a noble ideal
of the prevailing and abounding place which prayer
should occupy in the soul's life, according to the
Saviour's own teaching when He spake a parable to
His disciples to this end that men ought always to pray
and not to faint.Tertullian's treatise on Prayer will be found in Clark's translation
of his works, vol. i., pp. 178-204.
III. We now arrive at the vision which Peter saw
upon the housetop. The Apostle, having ascended
upon the housetop commanding a view over the blue
waters of the Mediterranean lying shimmering and
sweltering beneath the rays of the noonday sun, became
hungry, as was natural enough, because the usual time
of the midday meal was drawing nigh. But there was
a deeper reason for the Apostle's felt need of refreshment,
and a more immediate providence was watching
over his natural powers and their action than ever before
had been revealed. The natural hunger was divinely
inspired in order that just at that instant when the representatives
and delegates of the Gentile world were
drawing nigh to his abode he might be prepared to accord
them a fitting reception. To the mere man of sense or
to the mere carnal mind the hunger of St. Peter may
seem a simple natural operation, but to the devout
believer in Christianity, who views it as the great and
perfect revelation of God to man, who knows that His
covenants are in all things well-ordered and sure, and
that in His works in grace as well as in His works in
nature the Lord leaves nothing to mere chance, but
perfectly orders them all down to the minutest detail,
to such an one this human hunger of St. Peter's appears
as divinely planned in order that a spiritual satisfaction
and completeness may be imparted to his soul unconsciously
craving after a fuller knowledge of the Divine
will. St. Peter's hunger is, in fact, but a manifestation
in the human sphere of that superhuman foresight
which was directing the whole transaction from behind
this visible scene; teaching us, in fact, the lesson so
often repeated in Holy Scripture that nothing, not even
our feelings, our infirmities, our passions, our appetites,
are too minute for the Divine love and care, and
encouraging us thereby to act more freely upon the
apostolic injunction, "In everything by prayer and
supplication let your requests be made known unto God."
If St. Peter's hunger were taken up and incorporated
with the Divine plan of salvation, we may be sure that
our own wants and trials do not escape the omniscient
eye of Him who plans all our lives, appointing the end
from the very beginning. St. Peter was hungry, and as
food was preparing he fell into a trance, and then the
vision answering in its form to the hunger which he
felt was granted. Vain questions may here be raised, as
we noted before in the case of St. Paul, concerning the
trance of the Apostle and the communications he held
with the unseen world. They are vain questions for us
to raise or to attempt to answer, because they belong to
an unexplored land full, as many modern experiments
show, of strange mysterious facts peculiar to it. This
alone we can say, some communication must have been
made to St. Peter which he regarded as a Divine
revelation. The conversion and reception by St. Peter
of the Gentile centurion are facts, the prejudices of St.
Peter against such a reception are also undoubted facts.
Hitherto he shared the opinion common to all the
Twelve that such a reception was contrary to the
Divine law and purposes. He must have received upon
the housetop some kind of a heavenly communication
which he regarded as equivalent in authority to that
ancient rule by which he esteemed the promises and
mercy of God limited to the seed of Abraham. But as
for any endeavour to understand or explain the mode
of God's action on this occasion, it will be just as vain
as attempts to pierce the mysteries of God's action in
creation, the incarnation, or, to come lower still, in the
processes by which life has been communicated to this
world and is now sustained and continued thereon.
We are in very deed living and moving amid mysteries,
and if we refuse to learn or meditate till the mysteries
we meet with, the very first step we take, be cleared, we
must cease to think and be content to pass life like the
beasts that perish. We know not, indeed, the exact
manner in which God communicated with St. Peter, or
for that matter with any one else to whom He made
revelation of His will. We know nothing of the
manner in which He spoke to Moses out of the bush,
or to Samuel in the night season, or to Isaiah in the
Temple. As with these His servants of the Elder Dispensation,
so it was with St. Peter on the housetop.
We know, however, how St. Luke received his information
as to the nature of the vision and all the other
facts of the case. St. Luke and St. Peter must have
had many an opportunity for conversation in the thrilling,
all-important events amid which he had lived. St.
Luke too accompanied St. Paul on that journey to
Jerusalem described in the twenty-first chapter, and
was introduced to the Christian Sanhedrin or Council
over which St. James the Just presided. But even if
St. Luke had never seen St. Peter, he had abundant
opportunities of learning all about the vision. St.
Peter proclaimed it to the world from the very time it
happened, and was obliged to proclaim it as his defence
against the party zealous for the law of Moses. St.
Peter referred to what God had just shown him as
soon as he came into the centurion's presence. He
described the vision at full length as soon as he came
to Jerusalem and met the assembled Church, where its
power and meaning were so clearly recognised that the
mouths of all St. Peter's adversaries were at once
stopped. And again at the Council of Jerusalem held,
as described in the fifteenth chapter, St. Peter refers to
the circumstances of this whole story as well known to
the whole Church in that city. St. Luke then would
have no difficulty, writing some twenty years later, in
ascertaining the facts of this story, and naturally enough,
when writing to a Gentile convert and having in mind
the needs and feelings of the Gentiles, he inserted the
narrative of the vision as being the foundation-stone on
which the growing and enlarging edifice of Gentile
Christianity had been originally established. The
vision too was admirably suited to serve its purpose.
It based itself, as I have said, on Peter's natural feelings
and circumstances, just as spiritual things ever base
themselves upon and respond to the natural shadows of
this lower life, just as the Holy Communion, for instance,
bases itself upon the natural craving for food and
drink, but rises and soars far away above and beyond
the material sphere to the true food of the soul, the
Divine banquet wherewith God's secret and loved ones
are eternally fed. Peter was hungry, and a sheet was
seen let down from heaven containing all kinds of
animals, clean and unclean, together with creeping
things and fowls of heaven. He was commanded to
rise and slay and appease his hunger. He states the
objection, quite natural in the mouth of a conscientious
Jew, that nothing common or unclean had ever been
eaten by him. Then the heavenly voice uttered words
which struck for him the death-knell of the old haughty
Jewish exclusiveness, inaugurating the grand spirit of
Christian liberalism and of human equality—"What God
hath cleansed, make thou not common." The vision
was thrice repeated to make the matter sure, and then
the heavens were shut up again, and Peter was left to
interpret the Divine teaching for himself. Peter, in the
light of the circumstances which a few moments later
took place, easily read the interpretation of the vision.
The distinction between animals and foods was for the
Jew but an emblem and type, a mere object lesson of the
distinction between the Jews and other nations. The
Gentiles ate every kind of animal and creeping thing;
the favourite food of the Roman soldiers with whom
the Palestinian Jews came most in contact being pork.
The differences which the Divine law compelled the Jew
to make in the matter of food were simply the type of
the difference and separation which God's love and
grace had made between His covenant people and those
outside that covenant. And just then, to clinch the
matter and interpret the vision by the light of divinely
ordered facts, the Spirit announced to the Apostle, as
"he was much perplexed in himself what the vision
might mean," that three men were seeking him, and that
he was to go with them doubting nothing, "for I have
sent them."Calvin, in his commentary on Acts x. 12, has some excellent
remarks on the scope and meaning of this vision. "I think that hereby
is shown to Peter that the distinction which God hitherto made had
now been removed. For as He had made a difference between
animals; so by the choice of one nation for Himself, God showed that
other nations were common and unclean. Now the distinction between
animals being removed, He consequently shows that there is no longer
any difference between men, and that the Jew does not differ from the
Greek. Hence Peter is warned not to shrink from contact with the
Gentiles as if they were unclean. There is no doubt but that God
wished to encourage Peter to come boldly to Cornelius. Therefore, in
order that he might be perfectly satisfied, God shows him as in a
picture that the distinctions made by the law between clean and
unclean had been abolished; whence he may conclude that the partition
which had hitherto divided Jews from Gentiles was now overthrown.
Now Paul teaches that this mystery had been hid from the ages that the
Gentiles should be partakers with God's people and grafted into one
body. Therefore Peter never would have dared to open the gate of the
Kingdom of Heaven, unless God Himself had shown him that the wall
had been removed and that entrance was free to all." He then goes
on to consider the objection that St. Peter must have known of the call
of the Gentiles from the words of Christ's commission to go and make
disciples of all nations, and therefore this vision was unnecessary.
"I answer that there was so much difficulty in the novelty of the whole
state of affairs that the apostles could not at once grasp the position.
They knew indeed in theory the prophecies and the precept of Christ
about preaching to the Gentiles, but when they came to practice, struck
by the awful novelty, they hesitated. Wherefore it is not wonderful
that the Lord should confirm St. Peter's mind by a new sign." Calvin
clearly recognised that the inspiration enjoyed by St. Peter did not
remove his natural slowness of perception. The apostles were like the
bulk of ordinary men, very slow to grasp the full meaning of a novel
position or principle.
The hour had at last come for the manifestation
of God's everlasting purposes, when the
sacred society should assume its universal privileges
and stand forth resplendent in its true character as
God's Holy Catholic Church,—of which the Temple
had been a temporary symbol and pledge,—a house of
prayer for all nations, the joy of the whole earth, the
city of the Great King, until the consummation of all
things.
IV. The sacred historian next presents St. Peter at
Cæsarea. The Apostle rose up obedient to the Divine
communication, admitted the men who sought him,
lodged them for the night, departed back the next day
along the same road which they had followed, and arrived
at Cæsarea on the fourth day from the original appearance
to Cornelius; so that if the angel had been seen
by the centurion on Saturday or the Sabbath the vision
would have been seen at Joppa on the Lord's Day,
and then on Tuesday St. Peter must have arrived at
Cæsarea. St. Peter did not travel alone. He doubtless
communicated the vision he had seen to the Church
at Joppa at the evening hour of devotion, and determined
to associate with himself six prominent members
of that body in the fulfilment of his novel enterprise
that they might be witnesses of God's actions and
assistants to himself in the work of baptism and of
teaching. As soon as the missionary party arrived
at the house of Cornelius, they found a large party
assembled to meet them, as Cornelius had called together
his kinsmen and acquaintances to hear the
message from heaven. Cornelius received St. Peter
with an expression of such profound reverence, prostrating
himself on the earth, that St. Peter reproved
him: "But Peter raised him up, saying, Stand up:
I myself also am a man." Cornelius, with his mind
formed in a pagan mould and permeated with pagan
associations and ideas, regarded Peter as a superhuman
being, and worthy therefore of the reverence usually
rendered to the Roman Emperor as the living embodiment
of deity upon earth. He fell down and adored
St. Peter, even as St. John adored the angel who
revealed to him the mysteries of the unseen world
(Rev. xxii. 8), till reminded by St. Peter that he
was a mere human being like the centurion himself,
full of human prejudices and narrow ideas which
would have prevented him accepting the invitation
of Cornelius if God Himself had not intervened. Cornelius
then describes the circumstances of his vision
and the angelic directions which he had received, ending
by requesting St. Peter to announce the revelation of
which he was the guardian. The Apostle then proceeds
to deliver an address, of which we have recorded a mere
synopsis alone; the original address must have been
much longer. St. Peter begins the first sermon delivered
to Gentiles by an assertion of the catholic nature of
the Church, a truth which he only just now learned:
"Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of
persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him, and
worketh righteousness, is acceptable to Him": a passage
which has been much misunderstood. People
have thought that St. Peter proclaims by these words
that it was no matter what religion a man professed,
provided only he led a moral life and worked righteousness.
His doctrine is of quite another type. He had
already proclaimed to the Jews the exclusive claims of
Christ as the door and gate of eternal life. In the
fourth chapter and twelfth verse he had told the Council
at Jerusalem that "in none other than Jesus Christ of
Nazareth is there salvation: for neither is there any
other name under heaven, that is given among men
wherein we must be saved." St. Peter had seen and
heard nothing since which could have changed his views
or made him think conscious faith in Jesus Christ utterly
unimportant, as this method of interpretation, to which
I refer, would teach. St. Peter's meaning is quite clear
when we consider the circumstances amid which he
stood. He had hitherto thought that the privilege of
accepting the salvation offered was limited to the
Jews. Now he had learned from Heaven itself that the
offer of God's grace and mercy was free to all, and
that wherever man was responding to the dictates of
conscience and yielding assent to the guidance of the
inner light with which every man was blessed, there
God's supreme revelation was to be proclaimed and for
them the doors of God's Church were to be opened
wide.
St. Peter then proceeds, in his address, to recapitulate
the leading facts of the gospel story. He begins
with John's baptism, glances at Christ's miracles, His
crucifixion, resurrection, and mission of the apostles,
concluding by announcing His future return to be the
Judge of quick and dead. St. Peter must, of course,
have entered into greater details than we possess in our
narrative; but it is not always noticed that he was
addressing people not quite ignorant of the story which
he had to tell. St. Peter begins by expressly stating,
"The word which God sent unto the children of Israel,
preaching good tidings of peace by Jesus Christ (He is
Lord of all)—that saying ye yourselves know." Cornelius
and his friends were devout and eager students of
Jewish religious movements, and they had heard in
Cæsarea vague reports of the words and doings of the
great prophet who had caused such commotion a few
years before. But then they were outside the bounds
of Israel, whose religious authorities had rejected this
prophet. The religion of Israel had illuminated their
own pagan darkness, and they therefore looked up to the
decision of the high priests and of the Sanhedrin with
profound veneration, and dared not to challenge it.
They had never previously come in personal contact
with any of the new prophet's followers, and if they
had, these followers would not have communicated to
them anything of their message. They simply knew
that a wondrous teacher had appeared, but that his
teaching was universally repudiated by the men whose
views they respected, and therefore they remained
content with their old convictions. The information,
however, which they had gained formed a solid
foundation, upon which St. Peter proceeded to raise
the superstructure of Christian doctrine, impressing
the points which the Jews denied—the resurrection of
Christ and His future return to judge the world.
In this connexion St. Peter touches upon a point
which has often exercised men's minds. In speaking
of the resurrection of Christ he says, "Him God
raised up the third day, and gave Him to be made
manifest, not to all the people, but unto witnesses that
were chosen before of God, even to us, who did
eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead."
From the time of Celsus, who lived in the second century,
people have asked, Why did not the risen Saviour
manifest Himself to the chief priests and Pharisees?
Why did He show Himself merely to His friends?
It is evident that from the very beginning this point
was emphasised by the Christians themselves, as
St. Peter expressly insists upon it on this occasion.
Now several answers have been given to this objection.
Bishop Butler in his Analogy deals with it. He
points out that it is only in accordance with the laws
of God's dealings in ordinary life. God never gives
overwhelming evidence. He merely gives sufficient
evidence of the truth or wisdom of any course, and till
men improve the evidence which He gives He withholds
further evidence. Christ gave the Jews sufficient
evidences of the truth of His work and mission in the
miracles which He wrought and the gracious words
which distilled like Divine dew from His lips. They
refused the evidence which He gave, and it would not
have been in accordance with the principles of Divine
action that He should then give them more convincing
evidence. Then, again, the learned Butler argues that
it would have been useless, so far as we are concerned,
to have manifested Christ to the Jewish nation at large,
unless He was also revealed and demonstrated to be
the risen Saviour to the Romans, and not to them
merely, but also to each successive generation of men
as they arose. For surely if men can argue that the
apostles and the five hundred brethren who saw Christ
were deceived, or were the subjects of a temporary
illusion, it might be as justly argued that the high
priests and the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem were in their
turn deceived or the subjects of a hallucination which
their longing desire for a Messiah had produced. In
modern times, again, Dr. Milligan in an able and acute
work on the Resurrection has argued that it was impossible,
from the nature of the resurrection body and
the character of the resurrection state, for Christ to be
thus manifested to the Jewish nation. He belonged
to a different plane. He lived now on a higher level.
He could not now be submitted to a coarse contact
with gross carnal men. He was obliged therefore to
depend upon the testimony of His chosen witnesses,
fortified and confirmed by the evidence of miracles, of
prophecy, and of the Holy Ghost speaking in them and
working with them. All these arguments are most true
and sound, and yet they fail to come home to many
minds. They leave something to be desired. They
fail in showing the wisdom of the actual course that
was adopted. They leave men thinking in their secret
hearts, would it not after all have been the best and
most satisfactory course if the risen Lord had been
manifested to all the people and not merely to witnesses
chosen before of God? I think there is an argument
which has not been sufficiently worked out, and which
directly meets and answers this objection. The risen
Saviour was not manifested to all the people because
such a course would have wrecked the great cause
which He had at heart, and defeated the great end of
His Incarnation, which was to establish a Church on
the earth where righteousness and joy and peace in the
Holy Ghost would find place and abound. Let us take
it in this way. Let us inquire what would have been
the immediate consequence had Christ been revealed
to all the people gathered in their millions for the
celebration of the Passover. They would either have
rejected Him afresh or they would have accepted Him.
If they rejected Him, they would be only intensifying
their responsibility and their guilt. If they accepted Him
as their long-expected Messiah, then would have come
the catastrophe. In their state of strained expectation
and national excitement they would have swept away
every barrier, they would have rushed to arms and
burst into open rebellion against the Romans, initiating
a war which would have only ended with the annihilation
of the Jewish race or with the destruction of the
Roman Empire. The immediate result of the manifestation
of the risen Saviour to the chief priests and the
people would have been a destruction of human life of
such a widespread and awful character as the world
had never seen. This we know from history would have
been infallibly the case. Again and again during the
first and second centuries the Jews burst forth into
similar rebellions, urged on by some fanatic who pretended
to be the long-expected deliverer, and tens of
thousands, aye, even hundreds of thousands of human
lives Jewish and Gentile were repeatedly sacrificed on
the altar of this vain carnal expectation.
We are expressly informed too that our Lord had
experience in His own person of this very danger.
St. John tells us that Christ Himself had on one
occasion to escape from the Jews when they were
designing to take Him by force and make Him a King;
while again the first chapter of this Book of Acts and
the query which the apostles propounded upon the
very eve of the Ascension show that even they
with all the teaching which they had received from
our Lord concerning the purely spiritual and interior
nature of His kingdom still shared in the national
delusions, and were cherishing dreams of a carnal
empire and of human triumphs. We conclude, then,
on purely historical grounds, and judging from the
experience of the past, that the course which God
actually adopted was profoundly wise and eminently
calculated to avoid the social dangers which surrounded
the path of the Divine developments. I think that if
we strive to realise the results which would have
followed the manifestation of Christ in the manner
which objectors suggest, we shall see that the whole
spiritual object, the great end of Christ's Incarnation,
would have been thus defeated. That great end was
to establish a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and
humility; and that was the purpose attained by the
mode of action which was in fact adopted. From
the Day of Pentecost onward the Church grew and
flourished, developing and putting in practice, however
imperfectly, the laws of the Sermon on the Mount.
But if Christ had revealed Himself to the unconverted
Jews of Jerusalem after the Resurrection, it would
not have had the slightest effect towards making
them Christians after the model which He desired.
Nay, rather such an appearance would merely have
intensified their narrow Judaism and confirmed them
in those sectarian prejudices, that rigid exclusiveness
from which Christ had come to deliver His people.
The spiritual effects of such an appearance would
have been absolutely nothing. The temporal effects of
it would have been awfully disastrous, unless indeed
God had consented to work the most prodigious and
astounding miracles, such as smiting the Roman
armies with destruction and interfering imperiously
with the course of human society.
Then again it is worthy of notice that such a
method of dealing with the Jews would have been
contrary to Christ's methods and laws of action as
displayed during His earthly ministry. He never
worked miracles for the mere purposes of intellectual
conviction. When a sign from heaven was demanded
from Him for this very purpose He refused it. He
ever aimed at spiritual conversion. An exhibition of
the risen Lord to the Jewish nation might have been
followed by a certain amount of intellectual conviction
as to His Divine authority and mission. But, apart
from the power of the Holy Ghost, which had not
been then poured out, this intellectual conviction would
have been turned to disastrous purposes, as we have
now shown, and have proved utterly useless towards
spiritual conversion. The case of the Resurrection is,
in fact, in many respects like the case of the Incarnation.
We think in our human blindness that we would have
managed the manifestations and revelations of God
much better, and we secretly find fault with the Divine
methods, because Christ did not come much earlier
in the world's history and thousands of years had
to elapse before the Divine Messenger appeared. But
then, Scripture assures us that it was in the fulness
of time Christ came, and a profounder investigation
will satisfy us that history and experience bear out the
testimony of Scripture. In the same way human blindness
imagines that it would have managed the Resurrection
far better, and it has a scheme of its own
whereby Christ should have been manifested at once
to the Jews, who would have been at once converted
into Christians of the type of the apostles, and then
Christ should have advanced to the city of Rome,
casting down the idols in His triumphant march, and
changing the Roman Empire into the Kingdom of
God. This is something like the scheme which the
human mind in secret substitutes for the Divine plan,
a scheme which would have involved the most extravagant
interruptions of the world's business, the most extraordinary
interpositions on God's part with the course
of human affairs. For one miracle which the Divine
method has necessitated, the human plan, which lies at
the basis of the objections we are considering, would
have necessitated the working of a thousand miracles
and these of a most stupendous type. These considerations
will help to show what bad judges we
are of the Divine methods of action, and will tend
towards spiritual and mental humility by impressing
upon us the inextricable confusion into which we should
inevitably land the world's affairs had we but the
management of them for a very few hours. Verily
as we contemplate the Resurrection of Christ and
the management of the whole plan of salvation, we
gather glimpses of the supernatural wisdom whereby
the whole was ordered, and learn thus to sing with
a deeper meaning the ancient strain, "Thy way,
O God, is in the sea, and Thy paths in the great
waters, and Thy footsteps are not known. Thou
leddest thy people like sheep, by the hand of Moses
and Aaron."The aim of Christianity was to strike at the essential evil of the
human heart. One darling sin of man is ostentation. It was one special
vice of society in the age of the Incarnation, as students of the history
of that period know right well. Now the real objection to the Divine
method of action about Christ's Resurrection is that it was not ostentatious.
If the human scheme had been adopted, it would simply have
encouraged and sanctioned the ostentation which already dominated the
world. But the Divine rule ever is this, "The kingdom of God cometh
not with observation," and in the very method of its development
Christianity has taught men humility and self-abasement.
The sacred narrative then tells us that "while Peter
yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them
which heard the word." The brethren which came
from Joppa, strict observers of the law of Moses as they
were, beheld the external proofs of God's presence, and
were amazed, "because that on the Gentiles also was
poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost," which is further
explained by the words, "they heard the Gentiles speaking
with tongues and magnifying God." The gift of the
Holy Ghost takes the same and yet a different shape
from that in which it was manifested on the Day of
Pentecost. The gifts of tongues on the Day of Pentecost
was manifested in a variety of languages, because
there was a vast variety of tongues and nationalities
then present at Jerusalem. But it would seem as if on
this occasion the Holy Ghost and His gift of speech
displayed itself in sacred song and holy praise: "They
heard them speak with tongues and magnify God."
Greek was practically the one tongue of all those who
were present. The new converts had been inhabitants
for years of Cæsarea which was now one of the most
thoroughly Greek towns in Palestine, so that the gift of
tongues as displayed on this occasion must have been
of somewhat different character from that exercised on
the Day of Pentecost, when a vast variety of nations
heard the company of the disciples and apostles speaking
in their own languages. There is another difference
too between the original outpouring of the Holy Ghost
and this repetition of the gift. The Holy Ghost on the
first occasion was poured out upon the preachers of
the word to qualify them to preach to the people. The
Holy Ghost on the second occasion was poured out
upon the persons to whom the word was preached to
sanction and confirm the call of the Gentiles. The
gifts of the Holy Spirit are confined to no rank or order.
They are displayed as the common property of all
Christian people, and indicate the freedom and the
plenteousness wherewith God's blessings shall be dispensed
under the new covenant which was taking the
place of the old Levitical Law.
And then comes the last touch which the narrative
puts to the whole story: "Then answered Peter, Can
any man forbid the water, that these should not be
baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well
as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in
the name of Jesus Christ." What a corrective we here
find of those ultra-spiritual views which make shipwreck
of faith! We have known intelligent men speak as
if the apostles laid no stress upon holy baptism, and
valued it not one whit as compared with the interior
gift of the Holy Ghost. We have known intelligent
members of the Society of Friends who could not see
that the apostles taught the necessity for what they
call water baptism. For both these classes of objectors
these words of St. Peter, this incident in the story of
Cornelius have an important lesson. They prove the
absolute necessity in the apostolic estimation of the
rite of Holy Baptism as perpetually practised in the
Church of God. For surely if ever the washing of
water in the name of the Holy Trinity could have been
dispensed with, it was in the case of men upon whom
God had just poured the supernatural gift of the
Holy Ghost; and yet even in their case the divinely
appointed sacrament of entrance into the sacred society
could not be dispensed with. They were baptized with
water in the sacred name, and then, cherishing that
sweet sense of duty fulfilled and obedience rendered
and spiritual peace and joy possessed which God
bestows upon His elect people, they entered into that
fuller knowledge and richer grace, that feast of spiritual
fat things which St. Peter could impart, as he told
them from his own personal knowledge of the life and
teaching of Christ Jesus. It is no wonder that the
history of this critical event should terminate with
these words: "Then prayed they him to tarry certain
days,"Tradition tells very little about Cornelius. There is indeed a long
article devoted to him by the Bollandists, Acta Sanctorum, Feb. t. 1,
p. 280, but there is nothing in it. He is commemorated on Feb. 2nd.
The Greeks make him bishop of Scepsis, the Latins of Cæsarea. St.
Jerome says that in his time the house of Cornelius had been turned
into a church. The story of his life as told in the Martyrologies is
evidently a mere mediæval concoction. At Scepsis the prefect Demetrius
brings him into a temple of Apollo, when at his prayer the idol is
smashed to pieces and the magistrate converted. Such stories are,
however, the stock-in-trade of the legend-mongers of the Middle Ages.
expressing their keen desire to drink more
deeply of the well of life thus lately opened to their
fainting souls.
CHAPTER VII.
THE HARVEST OF THE GENTILES.
"The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch."—Acts xi. 26.
The eleventh chapter of the Acts is clearly divisible
into two portions. There is first the narrative of
St. Peter's reception at Jerusalem after the conversion
of Cornelius, and secondly the story of the origin of
the Antiochene Church, the mother and metropolis of
Gentile Christendom. They are distinct the one from
the other, and yet they are closely connected together,
for they both deal with the same great topic, the admission
of the Gentiles to full and free communion in
the Church of God. Let us then search out the line
of thought which runs like a golden thread through
this whole chapter, sure that in doing so we shall find
light shed upon some modern questions from this
divinely written ecclesiastical history.
I. St. Peter tarried a certain time with Cornelius and
the other new converts at Cæsarea. There was doubtless
much to be taught and much to be set in order.
Baptism was in the early Church administered when
the converts were yet immature in faith and knowledge.
The Church was viewed as a hospital, where
the sick and feeble were to be admitted and cured.
It was not therefore demanded of candidates for admission
that they should be perfectly instructed in
all the articles and mysteries of the Christian faith.
There were indeed some points in which they were not
instructed at all till they had been "buried with Christ
through baptism into death." Then when they had
taken their stand upon the Christian platform, and
were able to view the matter from the true vantage
point, they were admitted into fuller and deeper
mysteries. Peter too must have had his work cut out
for him at Cæsarea in striving to organise the Church.
St. Philip may have here lent his aid, and may have
been constituted the resident head of the local Church.The Church tradition reports, however, that Cornelius was first
bishop of Cæsarea, but without any solid authority for the statement.
See, however, the note in last chapter, p. 141.
After the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch he worked
his way up to Cæsarea, preaching in all the towns and
villages of that populous district. There he seems to
have fixed his residence, as fifteen years or so later we
find him permanently located in that city with his "four
daughters, virgins, which did prophesy" (Acts xxi. 8, 9).
We may be sure that some such Church organisation
was immediately started at Cæsarea. We have already
traced the work of organisation in Jerusalem. The
apostles originally embraced in themselves all ministerial
offices, as in turn these offices were originally all
summed up in Jesus Christ. The apostles had taken
an important step in the establishment of the order of
deacons at Jerusalem, retaining in their own hands the
supreme power to which appeal and reports could be
made. At Damascus it is evident that at the time of
St. Paul's conversion there was an organised Church,
Ananias being the head and chief of it, with whom
communications were officially held; while the notices
about Joppa and the six witnesses of his action whom
St. Peter brought with him to Cæsarea indicate that
an assembly or Church organised after the model of
the Jerusalem Church existed in that town.
Having concluded his work in Cæsarea St. Peter returned
to Jerusalem, and there had to render an account
of his action and was placed upon his defence. "When
Peter was come up to Jerusalem, they that were of the
circumcision contended with him, saying, Thou wentest
in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them."
This simple circumstance throws much light upon the
character of earliest Christianity. It was to a large extent
a Christian democracy. The apostles exercised the
supreme executive power, but the collective Christian
assembly claimed the exercise of their private judgment,
and, above all, knew not anything of the fancied privilege
of St. Peter, as Prince of the Apostles, to lay down on
his own authority the laws for the whole Christian
Commonwealth. Here was St. Peter exercising his
ministry and apostolic power among the earliest Christians.
How were his ministry and authority received?
Were they treated as if the personal authority and
decision of St. Peter settled every question without any
further appeal? This will be best seen if we tell a
story well known in the annals of ecclesiastical history.
The fable of Papal Supremacy began to be asserted about
the year 500, when a series of forgeries were circulated
concerning the bishops of Rome and their decisions
during the ages of persecution. One of these forgeries
dealt with a pope named Marcellinus, who presided over
the See of Rome during the beginning of the great
Diocletian persecution. The story goes on to tell that
Marcellinus fell into idolatry in order to save his life.
A council of three hundred bishops was summoned
at Sinuessa, when the assembled bishops are reported
to have refused to pass sentence on the Pope, the
successor of St. Peter, saying that the Holy See may
be judged by no man. They therefore called upon the
Pope to condemn himself, as he alone was a judge competent
to exercise such a function. This story, according
to Döllinger, was forged about the year 500, and it
clearly exhibits the different view taken of the position
of St. Peter in the Church of Jerusalem and of his
alleged successors in the Church of Rome five centuries
later. In the latter case St. Peter's successor cannot
be judged or condemned by any mortal.See the article on Marcellinus (1) in the Dictionary of Christian
Biography, vol. iii., p. 804, where all the facts are told of this curious
story.
According to
the Acts of the Apostles the members of the stricter
party in the Church of Jerusalem had no hesitation in
challenging the actions and teaching of St. Peter himself,
and it was only when he could prove the immediate
and manifest approval of Heaven that they ceased
their opposition, saying, "Then to the Gentiles also
hath God granted repentance unto life."
We can in this incident see how the Church was
slowly but surely developing itself under the Divine
guidance. The incident when the order of deacons was
instituted was the primary step. There was then first
manifested that combination of authority and freedom
united with open discussion which, originating in the
Christian Church, has been the source of all modern
society, of modern governments, and modern methods
of legislation. Now we see the same ideas applied to
questions of doctrine and discipline, till we come in
a short time to the perfection of this method in the
celebrated Council of Jerusalem which framed the
charter and traced out the main lines of development
upon which the Church of the Gentiles and true gospel
freedom were established.
II. The centre of Christian interest now shifts its
position and fixes itself in the city of Antioch, where a
further step in advance was taken. Our attention is
first of all recalled to the results of St. Stephen's death.
"They therefore that were scattered abroad upon the
tribulation that arose about Stephen travelled as far
as Phœnicia, and Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the
word to none save only to Jews. But there were
some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when
they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Greeks
also, preaching the Lord Jesus." This is clearly a
case of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, and the
question has been raised, Was the action of these
men of Cyprus and Cyrene quite independent of the
action of St. Peter or an immediate result of the same?
Did the men of Cyprus and Cyrene preach the
gospel to the Gentiles of Antioch of their own motion,
or did they wait till tidings of St. Peter's action had
reached them, and then, yielding to the generous
instincts which had been long beating in the hearts of
these Hellenistic Jews, did they proclaim at Antioch the
glad tidings of salvation which the Gentiles of that gay
and brilliant but very wicked city so much needed?
Our answer to these queries is very short and plain.
We think that the preaching of the Hellenists of
Cyprus to the Gentiles of Antioch must have been
the result of St. Peter's action at Cæsarea, else why
did they wait till Antioch was reached to open their
mouths to the pagan world? Surely if the sight of
sin and wickedness and civilised depravity was necessary
to stir them up to efforts for the spiritual welfare
of the Gentile world, Phœnicia and Cyprus abounded
with scenes quite sufficient to unseal their lips. But
the force of national prejudice and of religious exclusiveness
was too strong till they came to Antioch, where
tidings must have reached them of the vision and
action of St. Peter at Cæsarea.
It is easy to see why this information reached the
missionaries at Antioch. Cæsarea was the Roman
capital of Palestine, and was a seaport. Antioch was
the Roman capital of the province of Syria, an immense
extent of territory, which included not merely the
country which we call Syria, but extended to the
Euphrates on the west and to the desert intervening
between Palestine and Egypt on the south. The
prefect of the East resided at Antioch, and he was
one of the three or four greatest officials under the
Roman emperor. Palestine was, in fact, a part of
the province of Syria, and its ruler or president was
dependent upon the governor of Syria. It is therefore
in strictest accordance with the facts of Roman
history when St. Luke tells in his Gospel (ii. 2)
concerning the taxation of Augustus Cæsar, "This
was the first enrolment made when Quirinus was
governor of Syria." Antioch being then the seat of
the central government of the eastern division of the
Roman Empire, and Cæsarea being the headquarters
of an important lieutenant of the Syrian proconsul,
it is no wonder there should have been very constant
intercourse between the two places. The great magazines
of arms for the entire east were located at
Antioch, and there too the money was coined necessary
to pay the troops and to carry on commercial
intercourse. It must have been very easy for an
official like Cornelius, or even for any simple private
soldier or for an ordinary Jew or Christian of Cæsarea,
to communicate with Antioch, and to send word concerning
the proceedings of St. Peter and the blessings
vouchsafed by God to any devout person who might be
there seeking after light and truth.Cæsarea and Antioch were about two hundred miles distant from
each other by sea. A Roman trireme travelling at express speed would
easily have accomplished this distance in two or at most three days.
It is quite natural
therefore that, while the Christians dispersed into
various lands by the persecution at Jerusalem restrained
themselves to the Jews alone throughout their
previous labours, when the men of Cyprus and Cyrene
heard tidings at Antioch of St. Peter and his doings
and revelations at Cæsarea, they at last allowed free
scope to their longings which long ago had found place
in their more liberalised hearts, and testified to the
Gentiles of Antioch concerning the gladsome story of
the gospel. Here again we behold another instance of
the value of culture and travel and enlarged intelligence.
The Hellenists of Cyprus and Cyrene were the first to
realise and act out the principle which God had taught
St. Peter. They saw that God's mercies were not
restrained to the particular case of Cornelius. They
realised that his was a typical instance, and that his
conversion was intended to carry with it and to decide
the possibility of Gentile salvation and the formation of
a Gentile Church all over the world, and they put the
principle in operation at once in one of the places where
it was most needed: "When the men of Cyprus and
Cyrene were come to Antioch, they spake unto the
Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus." The method
of the Divine development was in the primitive ages
very similar to that we often still behold. Some
improvement is required, some new principle has to be
set in motion. If younger men begin the work, or if
souls notorious for their freer thought or less prejudiced
understandings, attempt to introduce the novel principle,
the vast mass of stolid conservative opposition and
attachment to the past is at once quickened into lively
action. But then some Peter or another, some man of
known rectitude and worth, and yet of equally well-known
narrow views and devoted adherence to the past,
takes some hesitating step in advance. He may indeed
strive to limit its application to the special case before
him, and he may earnestly deprecate any wider application
of the principle on which he has acted. But it is
all in vain. He has served the Divine purposes. His
narrowness and respectability and personal weight
have done their work, and have sanctioned the introduction
of the principle which then is applied upon a
much wider scale by men whose minds have been
liberalised and trained to seize a great broad principle
and put it into practical operation.
III. "When they came to Antioch, they spake the
word to the Greek also." And verily the men of Cyprus
and Cyrene chose a fitting spot to open the kingdom
of heaven to the Greek world and to found the mother
Church of Gentile Christendom, for no city in the whole
world was more completely Satan's seat, or more
entirely devoted to those works which St. John
describes as the lusts of the flesh, and the lust of the
eye, and the vain-glory of life. Let us reflect a little
on the history and state of Antioch, and we shall
then see the Divine motive in selecting it as the site
of the first great Gentile Church, and we shall see too
the Divine guidance which led St. Luke in this
typical ecclesiastical history to select the Church
of Antioch for such frequent notice, exceeding, as it
does, all other Churches save Jerusalem in the amount
of attention bestowed upon it in the Acts of the
Apostles.The various Lives of St. Paul and Gibbon in his Decline and Fall
give minute accounts of Antioch, its grandeur and wickedness; K. O.
Müller's Antiquities of Antioch, Göttingen, 1839 is an exhaustive work
on the subject; see also Mommsen's Provinces, Book VIII., ch. x.
Antioch and Alexandria were towns dating from the
same epoch. They came into existence about the year
300 B.C., being the creation of Alexander the Great
himself, or of the generals who divided his empire
between them. The city of Antioch was originally
built by Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the kingdom
of Syria, but was subsequently enlarged, so that in
St. Paul's time it was divided into four independent
districts or towns, each surrounded by its own walls,
and all included within one vast wall some fifty feet
high, which surmounted mountain tops and was carried
at vast expense across valleys and ravines. Antioch
was in the first century counted the third city in the
world, Rome being first, Alexandria second, and
Antioch third. It had marvellous natural advantages.
It was blessed with charming mountain scenery. The
peaks rising up on all sides could be seen from every
part of the city, imparting thus to life in Antioch that
sense not merely of beauty and grandeur, but of the
nearness of such beauty and grandeur combined with
solitude and freedom from the madding crowd which
seem so sweet to a man who passes his life amid the
noise and hurry of a great city. What a change in the
conditions of life in London would be at once brought
about could the scenery surrounding Edinburgh or
Lucerne be transferred to the world's metropolis, and
the toiler in Fleet Street and the Strand be enabled to
look amid his daily labours upon cloud-piercing mountains
or peaks clad in a robe of virgin white! Antioch
was built upon the southern bank of the river Orontes,
along which it extended about five miles. The main
street of the city, otherwise called the Street of Herod
after the celebrated Herod the Great who built it, was
four and a half miles long. This street was unrivalled
among the cities of the world, and was furnished with
an arcade on both sides extending its whole length,
beneath which the inhabitants could walk and transact
business at all times free from the heat and from the rain.
The water supply of Antioch was its special feature.
The great orator Libanius, a native of Antioch, who
lived three hundred years later than St. Paul, while the
city yet stood in all its grandeur and beauty, thus
dwells on this feature of Antioch in a panegyric composed
under the Emperor Constantius: "That wherein
we beat all other is the water supply of our city; if in
other respects any one may compete with us, all give
way so soon as we come to speak of the water, its abundance
and its excellence. In the public baths every
stream has the proportions of a river, in the private
baths several have the like, and the rest not much less.
One measures the abundance of running water by the
number of the dwelling-houses; for as many as are
the dwelling-houses, so many are also the running
waters. Therefore we have no fighting at the public
wells as to who shall come first to draw—an evil under
which so many considerable towns suffer, when there
is a violent crowding round the wells and outcry over
broken jars. With us the public fountains flow for
ornament, since every one has water within his doors.
And this water is so clear that the pail appears empty,
and so pleasant that it invites us to drink."The same orator informs us that the streets of Antioch were lighted
at night with public lamps. In this respect it stood alone among the
cities of antiquity: see Libanius, I., 363, and the notes of Valesius on
Ammianus Marcellinus, xiv., 1, 9.
Such was
the description of a pagan who saw Antioch even as
St. Paul saw it, and testified concerning the natural
gifts with which God had endowed it. But, alas! as
with individuals, so is it with cities. God may lavish
His best blessings, and yet instead of bringing forth
the fruits of righteousness His choicest gifts of nature
may be turned into fruitful seed plots of lust and sin.
Sodom and Gomorrha were planted in a vale that was
well watered and fair and fruitful, even as the Garden
of the Lord; but the inhabitants thereof were wicked,
and sinners before the Lord exceedingly; and so it was
with Antioch. This city so blessed in situation and
in nature's richest and most precious gifts was celebrated
for its wicked pre-eminence amid the awful
corruption which then overspread the cities of the
world. When the Roman satirist Juvenal, writing
about this period of which we treat, would fain account
for the excessive dissolution of morals which then
prevailed at Rome, his explanation of it was that the
manners of Antioch had invaded Rome and corrupted
its ancient purity:
"Jampridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes."Juv., Sat., iii., 62. See Farrar's St. Paul, ch. xvi., for a more minute
account of the wickedness of Antioch than we can give in this place.
He well remarks: "Cities liable to the influx of heterogeneous races
are rarely otherwise than immoral and debased. Even Rome in the
decadence of its Cæsarism could groan to think of the dregs of its
degradation—the quacks and pandars, and musicians and dancing girls—poured
into the Tiber by the Syrian Orontes.... It seems as though
it were a law of human intercourse that, when races are commingled in
large masses, the worst qualities of each appear intensified in the general
iniquity."
Amid the general wickedness of Antioch there was
one element of life and hope and purity. The Jews of
Antioch formed a large society in that city governed by
their own laws and preserving themselves by their
peculiar discipline free from the abounding vices of
Oriental paganism. It was at Antioch as it was at
Alexandria and Damascus. The Jews at Alexandria
had their alabarch to whom they owed special allegiance
and by whom alone they were ruled; the Jews of
Damascus had their ethnarch who exercised peculiar
jurisdiction over them; and so too had the Jews of
Antioch a peculiar ruler of their own, forming thus an
imperium in imperio running counter to our Western
notions which in many respects demand an iron uniformity
very foreign to the Eastern mind, and show
themselves eminently deficient in that flexibility and
diversity which found an abundant play even among
the arrangements of the Roman Empire.We shall have frequent occasions to notice the numerous varieties
of rule, privileges, and local liberties which prevailed under the Roman
Empire. The Romans seem to have scrupulously respected ancient
rights and customs wherever possible, provided only the supreme
sovereignty of Rome was recognised.
This Jewish
quarter of Antioch had for centuries been growing and
extending itself, and its chief synagogue had been glorified
by the reception of some of the choicest temple
spoils which the kings of Syria had at first carried
captive from Jerusalem and then in a fit of repentance
or of prudent policy had bestowed upon the Jewish
colony in their capital city.
Such was the city to which the men of Cyprus and
Cyrene were now carrying the news of the gospel,
intending, doubtless, to tell merely their Jewish fellow-countrymen
and religionists of the Messiah whose love
and power they had themselves experienced. Here,
however, they were met by the startling information
from Cæsarea. They were, however, prepared for it.
They were Hellenistic Jews like St. Stephen. They
had listened to his burning words, and had followed
closely his epoch-making speeches whereby he confounded
the Jews and clearly indicated the opening of
a new era. But then God's dispensations seemed to
have terminated his teaching and put a fatal end to the
hopes which he had raised. Men then misread God's
dealings with His servants, and interpreted His ways
amiss. The death of Stephen seemed perhaps to some
minds a visible condemnation of his views, when in
reality it was the direct channel by which God would
work out a wider propagation of them, as well as the
conversion of the agent destined to diffuse them most
powerfully. Apparent defeat is not always permanent
disaster, whether in things temporal or things spiritual;
nay, rather the temporary check may be the necessary
condition of the final and glorious victory. So it was
in this case, as the men of Cyprus and Cyrene proved,
when the news of St. Peter's revelation and his decisive
action arrived and they realised in action the principles
of Catholic Christianity for which their loved teacher
St. Stephen had died. And their brave action was soon
followed by blessed success, by a rich harvest of souls:
"The hand of the Lord was with them; and a great
number that believed turned to the Lord." Thus were
laid the foundations of the headquarters, the mother
Church of Gentile Christianity.
IV. Now we come to another step in the development.
Tidings of the action taken at Antioch came to Jerusalem.
The news must have travelled much the same
road as that by which, as we have indicated, the story
of St. Peter's action was carried to Antioch. The intercourse
between Jerusalem and Antioch was frequent
enough by land or by sea; and no synagogue and no
Jewish society was more liberal in its gifts towards
the support of the supreme council and hierarchy at
Jerusalem than the Jewish colony and its synagogues
at Damascus. And the old custom of communication
with Jerusalem naturally led the Nazarenes of Antioch
to send word of their proceedings up to the apostles
and supreme council who ruled their parent society in
the same city. We see a clear indication that the
events at Antioch happened subsequently to those at
Cæsarea in the manner in which the news was received
at Jerusalem. There seems to have been no strife, no
discussion, no controversy. The question had been
already raised and decided after St. Peter's return. So
the apostles simply select a fitting messenger to go
forth with the authority of the apostles and to complete
the work which, having been initiated in baptism, merely
now demanded that imposition of hands which, as we
have seen in the case of the Samaritan converts, was
one of the special functions of the apostles and chiefs
of the Church at Jerusalem. And in choosing Barnabas
the apostles made a wise choice. They did not send
one of the original Twelve, because not one of them
was fitted for the peculiar work now demanded. They
were all narrow, provincial, untravelled, devoid of that
wide and generous training which God had given to
Barnabas. It may be too that they felt restrained from
going beyond the bounds of Canaan before the twelve
years had elapsed of which ancient Christian tradition
tells as the limit of their stay in Jerusalem fixed by our
Lord Himself.See Eusebius, Eccles. Hist., v., 18.
He was a Hellenistic Jew, and he
could sympathise with the wider feelings and ideas of
the Hellenists. He was a man of Cyprus, a friend and
perhaps connexion of many, both Jews and Gentiles,
among those whose new-born faith and hope were now
in question. And above all he was a man of kindly
heart and genial temper and loving thought and blessed
charity, fitted to soothe jealousies and allay suspicions,
and make the long alienated and despised Gentiles feel
at home in the Church and family of Jesus Christ.
Barnabas was a person peculiarly fitted to prove a
mediator and uniting link in a society where divergent
elements found a place and asserted themselves. He
was not the man to take a new step or to have decided
the question of the admission of the Gentiles if it had
not been already settled. He must have come therefore
fortified by the authority of the apostles, and then,
knowing right well what they approved, he was just
the man to carry out the details of an arrangement
requiring tact and skill and temper; though he was by
no means suited to decide a great question on its own
merits or to initiate any great movement. In the
Church of God then, as in the Church of God still, there
is a place and a work for the strong man of keen logic
and vigorous intellect and profound thought. And there
is too a place and a work for the man of loving heart
and a charity which evermore delights in compromise.
"Barnabas, when he was come, and had seen the grace
of God, was glad; and he exhorted them all, that with
purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. For
he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and
faith; and much people was added unto the Lord."
Barnabas had another virtue too. He knew his own
weakness. He did not imagine like some men that he
was specially strong where he was eminently weak.
He felt his want of the active vigorous mind of his
friend of boyhood the new convert Saul. He knew
where he was living in comparative obscurity and
silence; so after a little experience of the atmosphere
of Antioch he departed to Tarsus to seek for him and
bring him back where a great work was awaiting his
peculiar turn of mind. There is an ancient historian
of Antioch who has preserved for us many stories
about that city in these apostolic and even in much
earlier ages. His name is John Malalas; he lived
about six hundred years after Christ, but had access to
many ancient documents and writers that are no longer
known to us. He tells us many things about the
primitive Church of Antioch. He has his own version
of the quarrel between St. Paul and St. Peter which
happened in that city; and he fixes even the very spot
where St. Paul first preached, telling us that its name
was Singon Street, which stood near the Pantheon.
This may seem to us a minuteness of detail too great
to be believed. But then we must remember that
John Malalas expressly cites ancient chronologers and
historians as his authorities, and he himself lived while
as yet Antioch retained all the ancient arrangements of
streets and divisions. And surely Saul, as he travelled
from Tarsus responding at once to the call of Barnabas,
must have seen enough to stir his love to Christ
and to souls into heartiest exertion. He came
doubtless by sea and landed at Seleucia, the port of
Antioch, some sixteen miles distant from the city.
As he travelled up to Antioch he would get distant
glimpses of the groves of Daphne, a park ten miles
in circumference, dedicated indeed to the poetic worship
of Apollo, but dedicated also to the vilest purposes of
wickedness intimately associated with that poetic worship.
Poetry, whether ancient or modern, can be very
blessed, ennobling and elevating man's whole nature.
But the same poetry, as in ancient paganism and in
some modern writers, can become a festering plague-spot,
the abounding source to its votaries of moral
corruption and spiritual death.There is a good description of Daphne as St. Paul may have seen
it in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. xxiii. We borrow a few extracts
from it to give a more vivid idea of Antioch in St. Paul's day. "At
the distance of five miles from Antioch the Macedonian kings of Syria
had consecrated to Apollo one of the most elegant places of devotion in
the pagan world. A magnificent temple rose in honour of the God of
light; and his colossal figure almost filled the capacious sanctuary which
was enriched with gold and gems and adorned by the skill of the
Grecian artists. The deity was represented in a bending attitude, with
a golden cup in his hand, pouring out a libation on the earth, as if he
supplicated the venerable mother to give to his arms the cold and
beauteous Daphne; for the spot was ennobled by fiction, and the
fancy of the Syrian poets had transported the amorous tale from the
banks of the Perseus to the town of the Orontes." "The temple and
village were deeply bosomed in a thick grove of laurels and cypresses,
which reached as far as a circumference of ten miles, and proved in the
most sultry summers a cool and impenetrable shade. A thousand
streams of the purest water, issuing from every hill, preserved the
verdure of the earth and the temperature of the air; the senses were
gratified with harmonious sounds and aromatic odours; and the peaceful
grove was consecrated to health and joy, to luxury and love. The
soldier and the philosopher wisely avoided the temptations of this
sensual paradise, where pleasure, assuming the character of religion,
imperceptibly dissolved the firmness of manly virtue." Gibbon's notes
abound with ample proof of the statements he makes. To them we
may refer the reader curious about the details of ancient paganism.
Daphne and its associations would rouse the whole
soul, the healthy moral nature of Saul of Tarsus,
inherited originally from his ancient Jewish training,
and now quickened and deepened by the spiritual
revelations made to him in Christ Jesus. It is no
wonder then that here we read of St. Paul's first long
and continuous period of ministerial work: "It came to
pass that even for a whole year they were gathered
together with the Church, and taught much people."
The results of the new force which Barnabas introduced
into the spiritual life of Antioch soon became manifested.
"The disciples were first called Christians at
Antioch." Saul of Tarsus possessed what Barnabas did
not possess. He possessed a powerful, a logical, and
a creative intellect. He realised from the beginning
what his own principles meant and to what they were
leading him. He taught not Judaism or the Law with an
addition merely about Jesus of Nazareth. He troubled
not himself about circumcision or the old covenant,
but he taught from the very beginning Christ Jesus,
Christ in His Divine and human nature, Christ in His
various offices, Jesus Christ as the one hope for mankind.
This was now at Antioch, as before at Damascus,
the staple topic of St. Paul's preaching, and therefore
the Antiochenes, with their ready wit and proverbial
power of giving nicknames, at once designated the
new sect not Nazarenes or Galileans as the Jews of
Jerusalem called them, but Christians or adherents of
Christ.The Antiochenes were always famous for the dangerous power of
ridicule and giving nicknames. They quarrelled on this account with the
emperors Hadrian, Verus, Marcus, Severus, and Julian. The last mentioned
has celebrated these tendencies in his celebrated treatise entitled
Misopogon, or the Beard-hater. Even in its final overthrow the city preserved
this distinction. In the year 540 the Persian king Chosroes
Nushirvan took it by storm. When he appeared before the city he
was received with a shower of arrows mingled with obscene sarcasms,
which so enraged him that he removed the inhabitants when he had
taken the town to a new Antioch in the province of Susa.
Here, however, I prefer to avail myself of the
exposition which one of the great spiritual teachers of
the last generation gave us of this expression. The
well-known and learned Archbishop of Dublin, Dr.
Trench, in his Study of Words (21st Ed.: Lond. 1890),
p. 189, thus draws out the lesson connected with this
word and the time of its appearance: "'The disciples
were called Christians first in Antioch.' That we have
here a notice which we would not willingly have
missed all will acknowledge, even as nothing can be
otherwise than curious which relates to the infancy of
the Church. But there is here much more than a
curious notice. Question it a little closer, and how
much it will be found to contain, how much which it is
waiting to yield up! What light it throws on the
whole story of the Apostolic Church to know where
and when this name of Christians was first imposed
on the faithful; for imposed by adversaries it certainly
was, not devised by themselves, however afterwards
they may have learned to glory in it as the name of
highest dignity and honour. They did not call themselves,
but, as is expressly recorded, they 'were called'
Christians first at Antioch; in agreement with which
statement the name occurs nowhere in Scripture, except
on the lips of those alien from or opposed to the faith
(Acts xxvi. 28; 1 Peter iv. 16). And as it was a
name imposed by adversaries, so among these adversaries
it was plainly heathens, and not Jews, who were
its authors; for Jews would never have called the
followers of Jesus of Nazareth 'Christians,' or those
of Christ, the very point of their opposition to Him
being, that He was not the Christ, but a false pretender
to the name. Starting then from this point that
'Christians' was a title given to the disciples by the
heathen, what may we deduce from it further? At
Antioch they first obtained this name—at the city, that
is, which was the headquarters of the Church's mission
to the heathen, in the same sense as Jerusalem had
been the headquarters of the mission to the seed of
Abraham. It was there and among the faithful there
that a conviction of the world-wide destination of the
gospel arose; there it was first plainly seen as intended
for all kindreds of the earth. Hitherto the
faithful in Christ had been called by their adversaries,
and indeed were often still called 'Galileans' or
'Nazarenes'—both names which indicated the Jewish
cradle wherein the Church had been nursed, and that
the world saw in the new society no more than a
Jewish sect. But it was plain that the Church had
now, even in the world's eyes, chipped its Jewish
shell. The name Christians or those of Christ, while
it told that Christ and the confession of Him was
felt even by the heathen to be the sum and centre
of this new faith, showed also that they comprehended
now, not all which the Church would be, but
something of this; saw this much, namely, that it
was no mere sect and variety of Judaism, but a
Society with a mission and a destiny of its own.
Nor will the thoughtful reader fail to observe that the
coming up of this name is by closest juxtaposition
connected in the sacred narrative, and still more
closely in the Greek than in the English, with the
arrival at Antioch, and with the preaching there, of
that Apostle who was God's appointed instrument for
bringing the Church to a full sense that the message
which it had was not for some men only, but for all.
As so often happens with the rise of new names, the
rise of this one marked a new epoch in the Church's
life, and that it was entering upon a new stage of
development." This is a long extract, but it sets forth
in dignified and aptly chosen words, such as Archbishop
Trench always used, the important lessons which
the thoughtful student of the Acts may gather from
the time and place where the term "Christians" first
sprang into existence.
Finally, we notice in connexion with Antioch that
the foundation of the great Gentile Church was
marked by the same universal impulse which we
trace wherever Christ was effectually preached. The
faith of the Crucified evermore produced love to the
brethren. Agabus, a prophet whom we shall again
meet many years after in the course of St. Paul's
life, and who then predicted his approaching arrest
and captivity at Jerusalem, made his earliest recorded
appearance at Antioch, where he announced an impending
famine. Agabus exercised the office of a prophet,
which implied under the New Dispensation rather
the office of preaching than of prediction. Prediction,
indeed, whether under the Old or the New Dispensation,
formed but a small portion of the prophetical
office. The work of the prophet was pre-eminently
that of telling forth God's will and enforcing it upon
a careless generation. Occasionally indeed, as in the
case of Agabus, that telling forth involved prediction or
announcement of God's chastisements and visitations;
but far oftener the prophet's work was finished when
he enforced the great principles of truth and righteousness
as the Christian preacher does still. Agabus
seems to have been specially gifted in the direction
of prediction. He announced a famine as impending
over the whole world, which came to pass in the age of
Claudius, offering to the Gentile Church of Antioch an
opportunity, of which they gladly availed themselves,
to repay somewhat of the spiritual obligation which the
Gentiles owed to the Jews according to St. Paul's own
rule: "If the Gentiles have been made partakers of
their spiritual things, they owe it to them also to
minister unto them in carnal things."This famine is thoroughly historical. It is noticed by several who
wrote of this time, as Dion, lx., 11; Suetonius, Claud., 20; Aurelius,
Victor; and is confirmed by the testimony of the coins: see Eckhel, vi.,
238, 239, 240. Cf. Lewin's Fasti Sacri, p. 274, A.D. 42.
We can trace
here the force and power of ancient Jewish customs.
We can see how the mould and form and external shape
of the Church was gained from the Jew. The Jewish
colony of Antioch had been of old famous for the
liberality of its gifts to the mother community at
Jerusalem. The predominant element in the Church
of Antioch was now Gentile, but still the ancient
customs prevailed. The Gentile Christian community
acted towards the Jerusalem Church as the Jewish
community had been used to treat their countrymen:
"The disciples, every man according to his ability,
determined to send relief unto the brethren that dwelt
in Judæa: which also they did, sending it to the elders
by the hand of Barnabas and Saul."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DEFEAT OF PRIDE.
"Now about that time Herod the king put forth his hands to afflict
certain of the Church. And he killed James the brother of John
with the sword. And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded
to seize Peter also.... Immediately an angel of the Lord
smote Herod, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten
of worms, and gave up the ghost. But the word of God grew and
multiplied."—Acts xii. 1-3, 23-24.
The chapter at which we have now arrived is very
important from a chronological point of view, as
it brings the sacred narrative into contact with the
affairs of the external world concerning which we have
independent knowledge. The history of the Christian
Church and of the outside world for the first time clearly
intersect, and we thus gain a fixed point of time to
which we can refer. This chronological character of
the twelfth chapter of the Acts arises from its introduction
of Herod and the narrative of the second
notable persecution which the Church at Jerusalem had
to endure. The appearance of a Herod on the scene
and the tragedy in which he was the actor demand a
certain amount of historical explanation, for, as we have
already noted in the case of St. Stephen five or six
years previously, Roman procurators and Jewish priests
and the Sanhedrin then possessed or at least used the
power of the sword in Jerusalem, while a word had not
been heard of a Herod exercising capital jurisdiction
in Judæa for more than forty years. Who was this
Herod? Whence came he? How does he emerge so
suddenly upon the stage? As great confusion exists
in the minds of many Bible students about the ramifications
of the Herodian family and the various offices
and governments they held, we must make a brief
digression in order to show who and whence this Herod
was concerning whom we are told, "Now about that
time Herod the king put forth his hands to afflict certain
of the Church."
This Herod Agrippa was a grandson of Herod the
Great, and displayed in the solitary notice of him which
Holy Scripture has handed down many of the characteristics,
cruel, bloodthirsty and yet magnificent, which
that celebrated sovereign manifested throughout his
life.The Herodian family form a notable instance of the modern doctrine
of heredity, which yet is only the ancient principle of Divine action announced
long ago in the Second Commandment, "Visiting the sins of
the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." The
moral taints which we behold in Esau, passion, self-indulgence quenching
all forethought, ostentation joined with magnificent generosity, displayed
themselves in Herod the Great. In him they were joined with
absolute power, and they produced their natural results. They made
his heart, his life, his home a howling wilderness, and handed down to
his descendants a legacy of wickedness which ceased not to bear fruit
so long as his name survived. Herod's family cruelties were so celebrated
that we are told by a pagan writer, named Macrobius, that
when the Emperor Augustus heard of the slaughter of the innocents of
Bethlehem, thinking they were Herod's children, he jokingly said, "Were
better to be Herod's pigs than Herod's children."
The story of Herod Agrippa his grandson was
a real romance. He made trial of every station in life.
He had been at times a captive, at times a conqueror.
He had at various periods experience of a prison house
and of a throne. He had felt the depths of poverty,
and had not known where to borrow money sufficient
to pay his way to Rome. He had tasted of the sweetness
of affluence, and had enjoyed the pleasures of
magnificent living. He had been a subject and a ruler,
a dependant on a tyrant, and the trusted friend and
councillor of emperors. His story is worth telling.
He was born about ten years before the Christian era,
and was the son of Aristobulus, one of the sons of
Herod the Great. After the death of Herod, his grandfather,
the Herodian family was scattered all over the
world. Some obtained official positions; others were
obliged to shift for themselves, depending on the fragments
of the fortune which the great king had left them.
Agrippa lived at Rome till about the year 30 A.D., associating
with Drusus, the son of the Emperor Tiberius,
by whom he was led into the wildest extravagance.
He was banished from Rome about that year, and was
obliged to retire to Palestine, contenting himself with
the small official post of Ædile of Tiberias in Galilee,
given him by his uncle Herod Antipas, which he held
about the time when our Lord was teaching in that
neighbourhood. During the next six years the fortunes
of Agrippa were of the most chequered kind. He soon
quarrelled with Antipas, and is next found a fugitive at
the court of Antioch with the Prefect of the East. He
there borrowed from a money-lender the sum of £800
at 121⁄2 per cent. interest, to enable him to go to Rome
and push his interests at the imperial court. He was
arrested, however, for a large debt due to the Treasury
just when he was embarking, and consigned to prison,
whence the very next day he managed to escape, and
fled to Alexandria. There he again raised another
timely loan, and thus at last succeeded in getting to
Rome. Agrippa attached himself to Caligula, the heir
of the empire, and after various chances was appointed
by him King of Trachonitis, a dominion which Caligula
and subsequently Claudius enlarged by degrees, till in
the year 41 he was invested with the kingdom of the
whole of Palestine, including Galilee, Samaria, and
Judæa, of which Agrippa proceeded to take formal possession
about twelve months before the events recorded
in the twelfth chapter of Acts.See Lewin's Fasti Sacri, A.D. 41, p. 271, for the authorities on the
subject of Herod's career.
Herod's career had been marked by various changes,
but in one respect he had been consistent. He was
ever a thorough Jew, and a vigorous and useful friend
to his fellow-countrymen. We have already noticed
that his influence had been used with Caligula to
induce the Emperor to forgo his mad project of erecting
his statue in the Holy of Holies at Jerusalem.See p. 95 above.
Herod had, however, one great drawback in the eyes of
the priestly faction at Jerusalem. All the descendants
of Herod the Great were tainted by their Edomite
blood, which they inherited through him. Their kind
offices and support were accepted indeed, but only
grudgingly. Herod felt this, and it was quite natural
therefore for the newly appointed king to strive to gain
all the popularity he could with the dominant party
at Jerusalem by persecuting the new sect which was
giving them so much trouble. No incident could
possibly have been more natural, more consistent with
the facts of history, as well as with the known dispositions
and tendencies of human nature, than that
recorded in these words—"Now about that time Herod
the king put forth his hands to afflict certain of the
Church. And he killed James the brother of John
with the sword." Herod's act was a very politic one
from a worldly point of view. It was a hard dose
enough for the Jewish people to swallow, to find a king
imposed upon them by an idolatrous Gentile power;
but it was some alleviation of their lot that the king
was a Jew, and a Jew so devoted to the service of the
ruling hierarchy that he was willing to use his secular
power to crush the troublesome Nazarene sect whose
doctrine threatened for ever to destroy all hopes of a
temporal restoration for Israel. Such being the historical
setting of the picture presented to us, let us apply
ourselves to the spiritual application and lessons of this
incident in apostolic history. We have here a martyrdom,
a deliverance, and a Divine judgment, which will
all repay careful study.
I. A martyrdom is here brought under our notice,
and that the first martyrdom among the apostles.
Stephen's was the first Christian martyrdom, but that
of James was the first apostolic martyrdom. When
Herod, following his grandfather's footsteps, would
afflict the Church, "he killed James the brother of John
with the sword." We must carefully distinguish
between two martyrs of the same name who have both
found a place in the commemorations of Christian
hope and love. May-day is the feast devoted to
the memory of St. Philip and St. James, July 25th
is the anniversary consecrated to the memorial of
St. James the Apostle, whose death is recorded in the
passage now under consideration. The latter was the
brother of John and son of Zebedee; the former was
the brother or cousin according to the flesh of our
Lord. St. James the Apostle perished early in the
Church's history. St. James the Just flourished for
more than thirty years after the Resurrection. He
lived indeed to a comparatively advanced period of the
Church's history, as is manifest from a study of the
Epistle which he wrote to the Jewish Christians of
the Dispersion. He there rebukes shortcomings and
faults, respect for the rich and contempt of the poor,
oppression and outrage and irreverence, which could
never have found place in that first burst of love
and devotion to God which the age of our Herodian
martyr witnessed, but must have been the outcome of
long years of worldly prosperity and ease. James the
Just, the stern censor of Christian morals and customs,
whose language indeed in its severity has at times
caused one-sided and narrow Christians much trouble,
must often have looked back with regret and longing to
the purer days of charity and devotion when James the
brother of John perished by the sword of Herod.
Again, we notice about this martyred apostle that,
though there is very little told us concerning his life and
actions, he must have been a very remarkable man.
He was clearly remarkable for his Christian privileges.
He was one of the apostles specially favoured by our
Lord. He was admitted by Him into the closest
spiritual converse. Thus we find that, with Peter and
John, James the Apostle was one of the three selected
by our Lord to behold the first manifestation of His
power over the realms of the dead when He restored
the daughter of Jairus to life; with the same two, Peter
and John, he was privileged to behold our Saviour
receive the first foretaste of His heavenly glory upon
the Mount of Transfiguration; and with them too he
was permitted to behold his great Master drink the first
draught of the cup of agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.
James the Apostle had thus the first necessary
qualification for an eminent worker in the Lord's
vineyard. He had been admitted into Christ's most
intimate friendship, he knew much of his Lord's will
and mind. And the privileges thus conferred upon
St. James had not been misused or neglected. He did
not hide his talent in the dust of idleness, nor wrap it
round with the mantle of sloth. He utilised his advantages.
He became a foremost, if not indeed the foremost
worker for his loved Lord in the Church of Jerusalem,
as is intimated by the opening words of this passage,
which tells us that when Herod wished to harass and
vex the Church he selected James the brother of John
as his victim; and we may be sure that with the keen
instinct of a persecutor Herod selected not the least
prominent and useful, but the most devoted and energetic
champion of Christ to satisfy his cruel purpose. And
yet, though James was thus privileged and thus faithful
and thus honoured by God, his active career is
shrouded thick round with clouds and darkness. We
know nothing of the good works and brave deeds and
powerful sermons he devoted to his Master's cause.
We are told simply of the death by which he glorified
God. All else is hidden with God till that day when
the secret thoughts and deeds of every man shall be
revealed. This incident in early Apostolic Church
history is a very typical one, and teaches many a
lesson very necessary for these times and for all times.
If an apostle so privileged and so faithful was content
to do his work, and then to pass away without a single
line of memorial, a single word to keep his name or his
labours fresh among men, how much more may we,
petty, faithless, trifling as we are, be contented to
do our duty, and to pass away without any public
recognition! And yet how we all do crave after such
recognition! How intensely we long for human praise
and approval! How useless we esteem our labours
unless they are followed by it! How inclined we are
to make the fallible judgment of man the standard by
which we measure our actions, instead of having the
mind's eye ever steadily fixed as James the brother of
John had on His approval alone who, now seeing our
secret trials, struggles, efforts, will one day reward
His faithful followers openly! This is one great lesson
which this typical passage by its silence as well as by
its speech clearly teaches the Church of every age.The tradition of the second century has only one story to tell
about this martyrdom. We find it in Eusebius, H. E., ii., 9, where we
read: "Concerning this James Clement hands down a story worthy of
remembrance in the seventh book of his Hypotyposes (or Outlines)
delivering it from the traditions of his predecessors, that the messenger
who led him to the judgment-seat, beholding his witness, was moved to
confess himself a Christian. Both were therefore led away, says he,
and on the road (to execution) he asked forgiveness from James.
And he, having considered for a little, said, Peace be to thee, and he
kissed him tenderly. And thus both were beheaded together."
Again, this martyrdom of St. James proclaims yet
another lesson. God hereby warns the Church against
the idolatry of human agents, against vain trust in
human support. Let us consider the circumstances of
the Church at that time. The Church had just passed
through a season of violent persecution, and had lost
one of its bravest and foremost soldiers in the person of
Stephen, the martyred deacon. And now there was
impending over the Church what is often more trying
far than a time short and sharp of violence and blood,—a
period of temporal distress and suffering, trying
the principles and testing the endurance of the weaker
brethren in a thousand petty trifles. It was a time
when the courage, the wisdom, the experience of the
tried and trusted leaders would be specially required
to guide the Church amid the many new problems
which day by day were cropping up. And yet it was
just then, at such a crisis, that the Lord permits the
bloody sword of Herod to be stretched forth, and
removes one of the very chiefest champions of the Christian
host just when his presence seemed most necessary.
It must have appeared a dark and trying dispensation to
the Church of that day; but though attended doubtless
with some present drawbacks and apparent disadvantages,
it was well and wisely done to warn the Church
of every age against mere human dependence, mere
temporal refuges; teaching by a typical example that
it is not by human might or earthly wisdom, not by the
eloquence of man or the devices of earth that Christ's
Church and people must be saved; that it is by His
own right hand, and by His own holy arm alone our
God will get Himself the victory.
Yet again we may learn from this incident another
lesson rich laden with comfort and instruction. This
martyrdom of St. James throws us back upon a circumstance
which occurred during our Lord's last journey
to Jerusalem before His crucifixion, and interprets it
for us. Let us recall it. Our Lord was going up to
Jerusalem, and His disciples were following Him with
wondering awe. The shadow of the Cross projecting
itself forward made itself unconsciously felt throughout
the little company, and men were astonished, though
they knew not why. They simply felt, as men do on a
close sultry summer's day when a thunderstorm is overhead,
that something awful was impending. They had,
however, a vague feeling that the kingdom of God
would shortly appear, and so the mother of Zebedee's
children, with all that boldness which affection lends to
feminine minds, drew near and strove to secure a boon
before all others for her own children. She prayed
that to her two sons might be granted the posts of
honour in the temporal kingdom she thought of as now
drawing so very near. The Lord replied to her request
in very deep and far-reaching language, the meaning
of which she then understood not, but learned afterwards
through the discipline of pain and sorrow and
death: "Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to
drink the cup that I am about to drink?" And then,
when James and John had professed their ability, he
predicts their future fate: "My cup indeed ye shall
drink." The mother and the sons alike spoke bold
words, and offered a sincere but an ignorant prayer.
Little indeed did the mother dream as she presented
her petition—"Command that these my two sons may
sit, one on Thy right hand, and one on Thy left hand in
Thy kingdom"—how that prayer would be answered,
and yet answered it was. To the one son, James, was
granted the one post of honour. He was made to sit
on the Master's right hand, for he was the first of the
apostles called to enter into Paradise through a baptism
of blood. While to the other son, St. John, was granted
the other post of honour, for he was left the longest
upon earth to guide, direct, and sustain the Church by
his inspired wisdom, large experience, and apostolic
authority.Bishop Lightfoot, in his celebrated essay on the Christian Ministry,
Philippians, pp. 200-205, 2nd edition, regards Episcopacy as the work
of St. John. "By whom was the new constitution organised? To
this question only one answer can be given. This great work must be
ascribed to the surviving apostles. St. John especially, who built up
the speculative theology of the Church, was mainly instrumental in completing
its external constitution also, for Asia Minor was the centre
from which the new movement spread." These words occur in his
analysis of Rothe's views, with which Dr. Lightfoot substantially agrees.
The contrast between the prayer offered
up to Christ in ignorance and shortsightedness and the
manner in which the same prayer was answered in
richest abundance suggests to us the comforting reflection
that no prayer offered up in sincerity and truth is
ever really left unanswered. We may indeed never see
how the prayer is answered. The mother of St. James
may little have dreamt as she beheld her son's lifeless
body brought home to her that this trying dispensation
was a real answer to her ambitious petition. But we
can now see that it was so, and can thus learn a lesson
of genuine confidence, of holy boldness, of strong faith in
the power of sincere and loving communion with God.
Let us only take care to cultivate the same spirit of
genuine humility and profound submission which possessed
the souls of those primitive Christians enabling
them to say, no matter how their petitions were answered,
whether in joy or sorrow, in smiles or tears, in riches or
poverty, "Not my will, but thine, O Lord, be done."
II. We have again in this twelfth chapter the record
of a Divine deliverance. Herod, seeing that the Jewish
authorities were pleased because they had now a
sympathetic ruler who understood their religious
troubles and was resolved to help in quelling them,
determined to proceed farther in the work of repression.
He arrested another prominent leader, St. Peter, and
cast him into prison. The details are given to us of
Herod's action and Peter's arrest. Peter was now
making his first acquaintance with Roman methods of
punishment. He had been indeed previously arrested
and imprisoned, but his arrest had been carried out
by the Jewish authorities, and he had been consigned
to the care of the Temple police, and had occupied the
Temple prison. But Herod, though a strict Jew in
religion, had been thoroughly Romanised in matters
of rule and government, and therefore he treated St.
Peter after the Roman fashion: "When he had taken
him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four
quarternions of soldiers to guard him; intending after
the Passover to bring him forth to the people." He
was delivered to sixteen men, who divided the night
into four watches, four men watching at a time, after
the Roman method of discipline.These elaborate precautions were doubtless taken on account of
his escape on the previous occasion, when the Sanhedrin had arrested
him, as narrated in the nineteenth verse of the fifth chapter.
And then, in contrast
to all this preparation, we are told how the Church
betook herself to her sure refuge and strong tower of
defence: "Peter therefore was kept in prison; but
prayer was made earnestly of the Church unto God
for him." These early Christians had not had their
faith limited or weakened by discussions whether
petition for temporal blessings were a proper subject
of prayer, or whether spiritual blessings did not
alone supply true matter for supplication before the
Divine throne. They were in the first fervour of Christian
love, and they did not theorise, define, or debate
about prayer and its efficacy. They only knew that
their Master had told them to pray, and had promised
to answer sincere prayer, as He alone knew how; and
so they gathered themselves in instant ceaseless prayer
at the foot of the throne of grace. I say "ceaseless"
prayer because it seems that the Jerusalem Church, feeling
its danger, organised a continuous service of prayer.
"Prayer was made earnestly of the Church unto God
for him" is the statement of the fifth verse, and then
when St. Peter was released "he came to the house
of Mary, where many were gathered together and
were praying," though the night must have been far
advanced. The crisis was a terrible one; the foremost
champion, St. James, had been taken, and now another
great leader was threatened, and therefore the Church
flung herself at the feet of the Master seeking deliverance,
and was not disappointed, as the Church has never
since been disappointed when she has cast herself in
lowliness and profound submission before the same holy
sanctuary.In the fifth century an order of monks was established at Constantinople
who practised this ceaseless worship. They were called Acoimetæ,
or the Watchers. They are described at length in Bingham's
Antiquities, Book VII., ch. ii., sect. 10, and in Smith's Dict. Christ.
Antiqq., vol. i., p. 13. A similar attempt was made in the reigns
of James I. and Charles I. by the well-known Nicholas Ferrar in a
monastic institution which he planned in connection with the Church
of England: see the article in the Dictionary of National Biography
upon his name.
The narrative then proceeds to give us the
particulars of St. Peter's deliverance, as St. Peter himself
seems to have told it to St. Luke, for we have
details given us which could only have come either
directly or indirectly from the person most immediately
concerned. But of these we shall treat in a little.
The story now introduces the supernatural, and for
the believer this is quite in keeping with the facts of
the case. A great crisis in the history of the Jerusalem
Church has arrived. The mother Church of
all Christendom, the fountain and source of original
Christianity, is threatened with extinction. The life
of the greatest existing leader of that Church is at
stake, and that before his work is done. The very
existence of the Christian revelation seems imperilled,
and God sends forth an angel, a heavenly messenger,
to rescue His endangered servant, and to prove to
unbelieving Jew, to the haughty Herod, and to the
frightened but praying disciples alike the care which
He ever exercises over His Church and people. Here,
however, a question may be raised. How was it that
an angel, a supernatural messenger, was despatched to
the special rescue of St. Peter? Why was not the
same assistance vouchsafed to St. James who had just
been put to death? Why was not the same assistance
vouchsafed to St. Peter himself when he was martyred
at Rome, or to St. Paul when he lay in the dungeon in
the same city of Rome or at Cæsarea? Simply, we
reply, because God's hour was not yet come and the
Apostle's work was not yet done. St. James's work
was done, and therefore the Lord did not immediately
interfere, or rather He summoned His servant to His
assigned post of honour by the ministry of Herod.
The wrath of man became the instrument whereby
the praises of God were chanted and the soul of the
righteous conveyed to its appointed place. The Lord
did not interfere when St. Paul was cast into the prison
house at Cæsarea, or St. Peter incarcerated in the
Roman dungeon, because they had then a great work
to do in showing how His servants can suffer as well
as work. But now St. Peter had many a long year of
active labour before him and much work to do as the
Apostle of the Circumcision in preventing that schism
with which the diverse parties and opposing ideas of
Jew and Gentile threatened the infant Church, in
smoothing over and reconciling the manifold oppositions,
jealousies, difficulties, misunderstandings, which
ever attend such a season of transition and transformation
as now was fast dawning upon the Divine society.
The arrest of St. Peter and his threatened death was
a great crisis in the history of the primitive Church.
St. Peter's life was very precious to the existence of
that Church, it was very precious for the welfare of
mankind at large, and so it was a fitting time for God
to raise up a banner against triumphant pride and
worldly force by the hand of a supernatural messenger.
The steps by which St. Peter was delivered are all
of them full of edification and comfort. Let us mark
them. "When Herod was about to bring him forth,
the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers,
bound with two chains: and guards before the door
kept the prison." It was on that fateful night the same
as when the angels descended on the Resurrection
morning: the guards were in their rightful place and
discharging their accustomed duties, but when God
intervenes then human precautions are all useless.
The words of the narrative are striking in their quiet
dignity. There is no working up of details. There is
no pandering to mere human curiosity. Everything
is in keeping with the sustained force, sublimity,
elevation which we ever behold in the Divine action.
Peter was sleeping between two soldiers; one chained
to each arm, so that he could not move without awaking
them. He was sleeping profoundly and calmly, because
he felt himself in the hands of an Almighty Father who
will order everything for the best. The interior rest
amid the greatest trials which an assured confidence
like that enjoyed by St. Peter can confer is something
marvellous, and has not been confined to apostolic
times. Our Lord's servants have in every age proved
the same wondrous power. I know of course that
criminals are often said to enjoy a profound sleep the
night before their execution. But then habitual
criminals and hardened murderers have their spiritual
natures so completely overmastered and dominated by
their lower material powers that they realise nothing
beyond the present. They are little better than the
beasts which perish, and think as little of the future
as they do. But persons with highly strung nervous
powers, who realise the awful change impending over
them, cannot be as they, specially if they have no such
sure hope as that which sustained St. Peter. He slept
calmly here as Paul and Silas rejoiced in the Philippian
prison house, as the Master Himself slept calmly in
the stern of the wave-rocked boat on the Galilean lake,
because he knew himself to be reposing in the arms
of Everlasting Love, and this knowledge bestowed
upon him a sweet and calm repose at the moment of
supreme danger of which the fevered children of time
know nothing.
And now all the circumstances of the celestial visit
are found to be most suitable and becoming. The
angel stood by Peter. A light shined in the cell, because
light is the very element in which these heavenly beings
spend their existence. The chains which bind St. Peter
fell off without any effort human or angelic, just as in a
few moments the great gate of the prison opened of its
own accord, because all these things, bonds and bolts
and bars, derive all their coercive power from the will
of God, and when that will changes or is withdrawn
they cease to be operative, or become the instruments
of the very opposite purpose, assisting and not hindering
His servants. Then the angel's actions and directions
are characteristic in their dignified vigour. He
told the awakened sleeper to act promptly: "He smote
him on the side, and awoke him, saying, Rise up
quickly." But there is no undue haste. As on the
Resurrection morning the napkin that was upon Christ's
head was found not lying with the rest of the grave-cloths,
but rolled up in a place by itself, so too on this
occasion the angel shows minute care for Peter's
personal appearance. There must be nothing undignified,
careless, untidy even, about the dress of the
rescued apostle: "Gird thyself, and bind on thy
sandals." St. Peter had naturally laid aside his
external garments, had unloosed his inner robes, and
taken off his sandals when preparing for sleep. Nothing,
however, escapes the heavenly messenger, and so he
says, "Cast thy garment about thee, and follow me,"
referring to the loose upper robe or overcoat which the
Jews wore over their underclothes; and then the angel
led him forth, teaching the Church the perpetual lesson
that external dignity of appearance is evermore becoming
to God's people, when not even an angel considered
these things beneath his notice amid all the excitement
of a midnight rescue, nor did the inspired writer omit
to record such apparently petty details. Nothing about
St. Peter was too trivial for the angel's notice and
direction, as again nothing in life is too trivial for the
sanctifying and elevating care of our holy religion.
Dress, food, education, marriage, amusements, all of
life's work and of life's interests, are the subject-matter
whereon the principles inculcated by Jesus Christ and
taught by the ministry of His Church are to find their
due scope and exercise.The early Church has left us a treatise showing how thoroughly it
recognised its duty in this respect. The "Pædagogue" or the "Instructor"
of Clement of Alexandria is a handbook of the social life of the
early Christians, teaching them what to do and wear and say under every
conceivable circumstance. Clement thinks nothing too trivial for the
rule of Christian principle, prescribing the kind of clothes, shoes, and
beds which should be used. He may seem at times to border on the
ludicrous in his minuteness; but then we cannot realise how profoundly
paganism had corrupted human life and manners. Thus in Book III.,
ch. xi., he treats of the management of the hair by men. Paganism
had introduced many sensual practices in this direction. Clement
lays down: "Let the head of men be shaven, unless it has curly hair.
But let the chin have the hair. But let not twisted locks hang far down
from the head gliding into womanish ringlets.... Since cropping is to
be adopted, not on account of elegance, but for the necessity of the case;
the hair of the head, that it may not grow so long as to come down and
interfere with the eyes, and that of the moustache similarly which is
dirtied in eating, is to be cut round, not by a razor, for that were
unbecoming, but by a pair of cropping scissors. But the hair on the chin
is not to be disturbed, as it gives no trouble, and lends to the face dignity
and paternal terror." This treatise of a very early Christian writer can
be easily consulted in Clark's Ante-Nicene Library.
Peter's deliverance was now complete. The angel
conducted him through one street to assure him that he
was really free and secure him from bewilderment,
and then departed. The Apostle thereupon sought out
the well-known centre of Christian worship, "the house
of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark,"
where stood the upper chamber, honoured as no other
upper chamber had ever been. There he made known
his escape, and then retired to some secret place
where Herod could not find him, remaining there
concealed till Herod was dead and direct Roman law
and authority were once more in operation at Jerusalem.There is an ancient tradition that our Lord bade the apostles
remain twelve years in Jerusalem before they dispersed to preach the
gospel all the world over (Eusebius, H. E., V., xviii.). Some think that
the famine and persecution which now happened may have been the
occasion of their dispersion.
There are two or three details in this narrative that are
deserving of special notice, as showing that St. Luke
received the story most probably from St. Peter himself.
These touches are expressions of St. Peter's
inner thoughts, which could have been known only to
St. Peter, and must have been derived from him. Thus
we are told about his state of mind when the angel
appeared: "He wist not that it was true which was
done by the angel, but thought he saw a vision."
Again, after his deliverance, we are told of the thoughts
which passed through his mind, the words which rose
to his lips when he found himself once again a free
man: "When Peter was come to himself, he said, Now
I know of a truth that the Lord hath sent forth His
angel, and delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and
from all the expectation of the people of the Jews."
While, again, how true to life and to the female nature
is the incident of the damsel Rhoda! She came across
the courtyard to hearken and see who was knocking at
the outer gate at that late hour: "When she knew
Peter's voice, she opened not the gate for joy, but ran
in and told that Peter stood before the gate." We
behold the impulsiveness of the maid. She quite forgot
the Apostle's knocking at the gate in her eager desire
to convey the news to his friends. And, again, how
true to nature their scepticism! They were gathered
praying for Peter's release, but so little did they
expect an answer to their prayers that, when the answer
does come, and in the precise way that they were
asking for it and longing for it, they are astonished,
and tell the maid-servant who bore the tidings, "Thou
art mad." We pray as the primitive Church did, and
that constantly; but is it not with us as with them?
We pray indeed, but we do not expect our prayers to
be answered, and therefore we do not profit by them
as we might.
Such were the circumstances of St. Peter's deliverance,
which was a critical one for the Church. It
struck a blow at Herod's new policy of persecution
unto death; it may have induced him to depart from
Jerusalem and descend to Cæsarea, where he met his
end, leaving the Church at Jerusalem in peace; and
the deliverance must have thrown a certain marvellous
halo round St. Peter when he appeared again at
Jerusalem, enabling him to occupy a more prominent
position without any fear for his life.
III. We have also recorded in this chapter a notable
defeat of pride, ostentation, and earthly power. The
circumstances are well known. Herod, vexed perhaps
by his disappointment in the matter of Peter, went down
to Cæsarea, which his grandfather had magnificently
adorned. But he had other reasons too. He had a
quarrel with the men of Tyre and Sidon, and he would
take effective measures against them. Tyre and Sidon
were great seaports and commercial towns, but their
country did not produce food sufficient for the maintenance
of its inhabitants, just as England, the emporium
of the world's commerce, is obliged to depend for its
food supplies upon other and distant lands.It is noteworthy, indeed, that it was with Tyre and Sidon in the days
of Herod as it was with them in the earlier days of King Solomon and of
the prophets. In 1 Kings v. 10, 11 we see that Hiram, king of Tyre,
depended on Solomon for food: "So Hiram gave Solomon timber of
cedar and timber of fir according to all his desire. And Solomon gave
Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household,
and twenty measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to Hiram year
by year"; with which may be compared Ezekiel xxvii. 17.
The men
of Tyre and Sidon were not, however, unacquainted
with the ways of Eastern courts. They bribed the
king's chamberlain, and Herod was appeased. There
was another motive which led Herod to Cæsarea. It
was connected with his Roman experience and with
his courtier-life. The Emperor Claudius Cæsar was his
friend and patron. To him Herod owed his restoration
to the rich dominions of his grandfather. That emperor
had gone in the previous year, A.D. 43, to conquer Britain.
He spent six months in our northern regions in Gaul
and Britain, and then, when smitten by the cold blasts
of midwinter, he fled to the south again, as so many of
our own people do now. He arrived in Rome in the
January of the year 44, and immediately ordered public
games to be celebrated in honour of his safe return,
assuming as a special name the title Britannicus.
These public shows were imitated everywhere throughout
the empire as soon as the news of the Roman
celebrations arrived. The tidings would take two or
three months to arrive at Palestine, and the Passover
may have passed before Herod heard of his patron's
doings. Jewish scruples would not allow him to celebrate
games after the Roman fashion at Jerusalem,
and for this purpose therefore he descended to the
Romanised city of Cæsarea, where all the appliances
necessary for that purpose were kept in readiness.
There is thus a link which binds together the history
of our own nation and this interesting incident in early
Christian history. The games were duly celebrated,
but they were destined to be Herod's last act. On an
appointed day he sat in the theatre of Cæsarea to receive
the ambassadors from Tyre and Sidon. He presented
himself early in the morning to the sight of the multitude
clad in a robe of silver which flashed in the light
reflecting back the rays of the early sun and dazzling
the mixed multitude—supple, crafty Syrians, paganised
Samaritans, self-seeking and worldly-wise Phœnicians.
He made a speech in response to the address of the
envoys, and then the flattering shout arose, "The
voice of a god, and not of a man." Whereupon the
messenger of God smote Herod with that terrible form
of disease which accompanies unbounded self-indulgence
and luxury, and the proud tyrant learned what
a plaything of time, what a mere creature of a day is
a king as much as a beggar, as shown by the narrative
preserved by Josephus of this event. He tells us
that, when seized by the mortal disease, Herod looked
upon his friends, and said, "I, whom you call a god,
am commanded presently to depart this life; while
Providence thus reproves the lying words you just
now said to me; and I, who was by you called immortal,
am immediately to be hurried away by death."The story of the death of Herod Agrippa as told by Josephus,
Antiqq., Book XIX., ch. viii., is in striking unison with that given in
the Acts. "Now when Agrippa had reigned three years over all
Judea, he came to the city Cæsarea, formerly called Strato's Tower; and
there he exhibited shows in honour of Cæsar, upon his being informed
that there was a certain festival celebrated on account of his safety.
At which festival a great multitude was gotten together of the principal
persons, and such as were of dignity through his province. On the
second day of which shows he put on a garment made wholly of silver,
and of a contexture truly wonderful, and came into the theatre early in
the morning; at which time the silver of his garment, being illuminated
by the fresh reflexion of the sun's rays upon it, shone out after a surprising
manner, and was so resplendent as to spread a terror over those
that looked intently upon him; and presently his flatterers cried out,
one from one place, and another from another (though not for his good),
that he was a god; and they added, 'Be thou merciful to us; for
though we have hitherto reverenced thee only as a man, yet shall we
henceforth own thee as superior to mortal nature.' Upon this the king
did neither rebuke them, nor reject their impious flattery. But as he
presently afterwards looked up he saw an owl sitting on a certain rope
over his head, and immediately understood that this bird was the
messenger of ill tidings, as it had once been the messenger of good tidings
to him, and fell into the deepest sorrow. A severe pain also arose in
his stomach, and began in a most violent manner. He therefore looked
upon his friends, and said, 'I, whom you call a god, am commanded
presently to depart this life; while Providence thus reproves the lying
words you just now said to me; and I, who was by you called immortal,
am immediately to be hurried away by death. But I am bound to accept
of what Providence allots, as it pleases God; for we have by no means
lived ill, but in a splendid and happy manner.' When he said this his
pain became violent, and he was carried into the palace." The reference
to the owl relates to a story about Agrippa's earlier life told by Josephus
in his Antiqq., Book XVIII., ch. vi. The Emperor Tiberius had bound
Agrippa, and placed him in his purple garments opposite his palace,
with a number of other prisoners, among whom was a German. An
owl perched on a tree near Agrippa, whereupon the German predicted
that he would be freed from his bonds, and be raised to highest station;
but that when he saw the owl again his death would be only five days
distant.
What
a striking picture of life's changes and chances, and of
the poetic retributions we at times behold in the course
of God's Providence! One short chapter of the Acts
shows us Herod triumphant side by side with Herod
laid low, Herod smiting apostles with the sword side
by side with Herod himself smitten to death by the
Divine sword. A month's time may have covered
all the incidents narrated in this chapter. But,
short as the period was, it must have been rich in
support and consolation to the apostles Saul and
Barnabas, who were doubtless deeply interested spectators
of the rapidly shifting scene, telling them clearly
of the heavenly watch exercised over the Church.
They had come up from Antioch, bringing alms to
render aid to their afflicted brethren in Christ. The
famine, as we have just now seen from the anxiety of
the men of Tyre and Sidon to be on friendly terms
with Herod, was rapidly making itself felt throughout
Palestine and the adjacent lands, and so the deputies
of the Antiochene Church hurried up to Jerusalem with
the much-needed gifts.The Jews themselves received at the same time the support of their
foreign proselytes. Helena, Queen of Adiabene, sent liberal gifts to
Jerusalem to support the famine-stricken multitudes of that city, as
Josephus tells in his Antiquities, XX., ii., 5. Cf. Lewin's Life of
St. Paul, vol. i., p. 108, where the reader will find engravings of her
mausoleum as it is still to be seen at Jerusalem.
It may indeed be said, how
could St. Paul hope to escape at such a time? Would
it not have been madness for him to risk his safety in
a city where he had once been so well known? But,
then, we must remember that it was at the Passover
season Saul and Barnabas went from Antioch to Jerusalem.
Vast crowds then entered the Holy City, and
a solitary Jew or two from Antioch might easily escape
notice among the myriads which then assembled from
all quarters. St. Paul enjoyed too a wondrous measure
of the Spirit's guidance, and that Spirit told him that
he had yet much work to do for God. The Apostle had
wondrous prudence joined with wondrous courage, and
we may be sure that he took wisest precautions to
escape the sword of Herod which would have so eagerly
drunk his blood. He remained in Jerusalem all the
time of the Passover. His clear vision of the spiritual
world must then have been most precious and most
sustaining. All the apostles were doubtless scattered;
James was dead, and Peter doomed to death. The temporal
troubles, famine and poverty, which called Saul
and Barnabas to Jerusalem, brought with them corresponding
spiritual blessings, as we still so often find, and
the brave words of the chosen vessel, the Vas Electionis,
aided by the sweet gifts of the Son of Consolation,
may have been very precious and very helpful to
those deepest souls in the Jerusalem Church who
gathered themselves for continuous prayer in the house
of Mary the mother of John, teaching them the true
character, the profound views, the genuine religion
of one whose earlier life had been so very different
and whose later views may have been somewhat suspected.
Saul and Barnabas arrived in Jerusalem at
a terrible crisis, they saw the crisis safely passed, and
then they returned to an atmosphere freer and broader
than that of Jerusalem, and there in the exercise of a
devoted ministry awaited the further manifestation of
the Divine purposes.
CHAPTER IX.
ST. PAUL'S ORDINATION AND FIRST MISSIONARY
TOUR.
"As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said,
Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called
them. Then, when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on
them, they sent them away. So they, being sent forth by the Holy
Ghost, went down to Seleucia; and from thence they sailed to Cyprus....
But they, passing through from Perga, came to Antioch of Pisidia;
and they went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and sat down."—Acts
xiii. 2-4, 14.
"And it came to pass in Iconium, that they entered together into
the synagogue of the Jews, and so spake, that a great multitude both
of Jews and of Greeks believed.... They sailed to Antioch, from
whence they had been committed to the grace of God for the work
which they had fulfilled."—Acts xiv. 1, 26.
We have now arrived at what we might call the
watershed of the Acts of the Apostles. Hitherto
we have had very various scenes, characters, personages
to consider. Henceforth St. Paul, his labours,
his disputes, his speeches, occupy the entire field, and
every other name that is introduced into the narrative
plays a very subordinate part. This is only natural.
St. Luke knew of the earlier history by information
gained from various persons, but he knew of the later
history, and specially of St. Paul's journeys, by personal
experience. He could say that he had formed
a portion and played no small part in the work of
which he was telling, and therefore St. Paul's activity
naturally supplies the chief subject of his narrative.
St. Luke in this respect was exactly like ourselves.
What we take an active part in, where our own powers
are specially called into operation, there our interest is
specially aroused. St. Luke personally knew of St. Paul's
missionary journeys and labours, and therefore when
telling Theophilus of the history of the Church down
to the year 60 or thereabouts, he deals with that part
of it which he specially knows. This limitation of
St. Luke's vision limits also our range of exposition.
The earlier portion of the Acts is much richer from
an expositor's point of view, comprises more typical
narratives, scenes, events than the latter portion,
though this latter portion may be richer in points of
contact, historical and geographical, with the world of
life and action.
It is with an expositor or preacher exactly the
opposite as with the Church historian or biographer
of St. Paul. A writer gifted with the exuberant
imagination, the minute knowledge of a Rénan or a
Farrar naturally finds in the details of travel with
which the latter portion of the Acts is crowded matter
for abundant discussion. He can pour forth the
treasures of information which modern archæological
research has furnished shedding light upon the movements
of the Apostle. But with the preacher or
expositor it is otherwise. There are numerous incidents
which lend themselves to his purpose in the journeys
recorded in this latter portion of the book; but while
a preacher might find endless subjects for spiritual
exposition in the conversion of St. Paul or the martyrdom
of St. Stephen, he finds himself confined to historical
and geographical discussions in large portions
of the story dealing with St. Paul's journeys. We
shall, however, strive to unite both functions, and
while endeavouring to treat the history from an expositor's
point of view, we shall not overlook details of
another type which will impart colour and interest to
the exposition.
I. The thirteenth chapter of the Acts records the
opening of St. Paul's official missionary labours, and
its earliest verses tell us of the formal separation or
consecration for that work which St. Paul received.
Now the question may here be raised, Why did St. Paul
receive such a solemn ordination as that we here read
of? Had he not been called by Christ immediately?
Had he not been designated to the work in Gentile
lands by the voice of the same Jesus Christ speaking
to Ananias at Damascus and afterwards to Paul himself
in the Temple at Jerusalem? What was the necessity
for such a solemn external imposition of hands as that
here recorded? John Calvin, in his commentary on
this passage, offers a very good suggestion, and shows
that he was able to throw himself back into the feelings
and ideas of the times far better than many a modern
writer. Calvin thinks that this revelation of the Holy
Ghost and this ordination by the hands of the Antiochene
prophets were absolutely necessary to complete the
work begun by St. Peter at Cæsarea, and for this
reason. The prejudices of the Jewish Christians against
their Gentile brethren were so strong, that they would
regard the vision at Joppa as applying, not as a general
rule, but as a mere personal matter, authorising the
reception of Cornelius and his party alone. They
would not see nor understand that it authorised the
active evangelisation of the Gentile world and the prosecution
of aggressive Christian efforts among the heathen.
The Holy Ghost therefore, as the abiding and guiding
power in the Church, and expressing His will through
the agency of the prophets then present, said, "Separate
me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have
called them"; and that work to which they were expressly
sent forth by the Holy Ghost was the work
of aggressive effort beginning with the Jews—but not
terminating with them—and including the Gentiles.
This seems to me thoroughly true, and shows how
Calvin realised the intellectual weakness, the spiritual
hardness of heart and slowness of judgment which prevailed
among the apostles. The battle of Christian
freedom and of catholic truth was not won in a moment.
Old prejudices did not depart in an hour. New
principles were not assimilated and applied in a few
days. Those who hold nobler views and higher
principles than the crowd must not be surprised or
dismayed if they find that year after year they have
to fight the same battles and to proclaim the same
fundamental truths and to maintain what may seem at
times even a losing conflict with the forces of unreasoning
prejudices. If this was the case in the primitive
Church with all its unity and love and spiritual gifts,
we may well expect the same state of affairs in the
Church of our time.One great lesson which the true expositor will derive from this
typical history is this, the long, doubtful, painful strife which the battle
of truth and justice ever involves. The struggle for Gentile freedom
waged by St. Paul is typical of the battle for freedom of conscience, for
freedom of knowledge, for human rights against slavery, and of every
other battle against tyranny and wrong which the world has ever seen.
The combat has ever been long and wearisome, and the chiefest of God's
champions have always been compelled to suffer much for their support
of the truth, which must, however, triumph in the long run.
An illustration borrowed from Church history will
explain this. Nothing can well be more completely
contrary to the spirit of Christianity than religious
persecution. Nothing can be imagined more completely
consonant with the spirit of the Christian religion
than freedom of conscience. Yet how hard has
been the struggle for it! The early Christians suffered
in defence of religious freedom, but they had no sooner
gained the battle than they adopted the very principle
against which they had fought. They became religiously
intolerant, because religious intolerance was part and
parcel of the Roman state under which they had been
reared. The Reformation again was a battle for
religious freedom. If it were not, the Reformers who
suffered in it would have no more claim to our compassion
and sympathy on account of the deaths they
suffered than soldiers who die in battle. A soldier
merely suffers what he is prepared to inflict, and so
it was with the martyrs of the Reformation unless
theirs was a struggle for religious freedom. Yet no
sooner had the battle of the Reformation been won
than all the Reformed Churches adopted the very
principle which had striven to crush themselves. It
is terribly difficult to emancipate ourselves from the
influence and ideas of bygone ages, and so it was with
the Jewish Christians. They could not bring themselves
to adopt missionary work among the Gentiles.
They believed indeed intellectually that God had
granted unto the Gentiles repentance unto life, but
that belief was not accompanied with any of the
enthusiasm which alone lends life and power to mental
conceptions. The Holy Ghost therefore, as the Paraclete,
the loving Comforter, Exhorter, and Guide of the
Church, interposes afresh, and by a new revelation
ordains apostles whose great work shall consist in
preaching to the Gentile world.
This seems to me one great reason for the prominent
place this incident at Antioch holds. The work of
Gentile conversion proceeded from Antioch, which may
therefore well be regarded as the mother Church of
Gentile Christendom; and the apostles of the Gentiles
were there solemnly set apart and constituted.
Barnabas and Saul were not previously called apostles.
Henceforth this title is expressly applied to them,See, for instance, ch. xiv. 4: "Part held with the Jews and
part with the apostles"; and again, verse 14: "But when the apostles
Barnabas and Paul heard of it." It must be remembered that the
term apostle was one used very freely among the Jews to signify
the official delegates of the high priest, the Sanhedrin, or even the
smallest synagogue. It has, however, gained a sanctity and special
application in the Christian Church which causes a certain amount
of mental confusion. At the same time, we must remember that the
title apostle was continued in the primitive Church after the age of
the Twelve. It was applied to their successors, as we learn from the
Didache, xi.; Hermas, Sim. ix.; 15, 16, 25. Cf. Origen on John iv.,
and Euseb., H. E., i. 12.
and independent apostolic action is taken by them.
But there seems to me another reason why Barnabas
and Saul were thus solemnly set apart, notwithstanding
all their previous gifts and callings and history. The
Holy Ghost wished to lay down at the very beginning
of the Gentile Church the law of orderly development,
the rule of external ordination, and the necessity for
its perpetual observance. And therefore He issued
His mandate for their visible separation to the work of
evangelisation. All the circumstances too are typical.
The Church was engaged in a season of special devotion
when the Holy Ghost spoke. A special blessing
was vouchsafed, as before at Pentecost, when the people
of God were specially waiting upon Him. The Church
at Antioch as represented by its leading teachers were
fasting and praying and ministering to the Lord when
the Divine mandate was issued, and then they fasted
and prayed again. The ordination of the first apostles
to the Gentiles was accompanied by special prayer and
by fasting, and the Church took good care afterwards
to follow closely this primitive example. The institution
of the four Ember seasons as times for solemn
ordinations is derived from this incident. The Ember
seasons are periods for solemn prayer and fasting, not
only for those about to be ordained, but also for the
whole Church, because she recognises that the whole
body of Christ's people are interested most deeply
and vitally in the nature and character of the Christian
ministry. If the members of that ministry are
devoted, earnest, inspired with Divine love, then indeed
the work of Christ flourishes in the Church, while if
the ministry of God be careless and unspiritual, the
people of God suffer terrible injury. And we observe,
further, that not only the Church subsequent to the
apostolic age followed this example at Antioch, but
St. Paul himself followed it and prescribed it to his
disciples. He ordained elders in every Church, and
that from the beginning. He acted thus on his very
first missionary journey, ordaining by the imposition
of hands accompanied with prayer and fasting, as we
learn from the fourteenth chapter and twenty-third
verse. He reminded Timothy of the gift imparted to
that youthful evangelist by the imposition of St. Paul's
own hands, as well as by those of the presbytery; and
yet he does not hesitate to designate the elders of
Ephesus and Miletus who were thus ordained by St.
Paul as bishops set over God's flock by the Holy Ghost
Himself. St. Paul and the Apostolic Church, in fact,
looked behind this visible scene. They realised vividly
the truth of Christ's promise about the presence of the
Holy Ghost in the Church. They took no miserably
low and Erastian views of the sacred ministry, as if it
were an office of mere human order and appointment.
They viewed it as a supernatural and Divine office,
which no mere human power, no matter how exalted,
could confer. They realised the human instruments
indeed in their true position as nothing but instruments,
powerless in themselves, and mighty only through God,
and therefore St. Paul regarded his own ordination
of the elders whom he appointed at Derbe, Iconium,
Lystra, or Ephesus as a separation by the Holy Ghost
to their Divine offices. The Church was, in fact,
then instinct with life and spiritual vigour, because it
thankfully recognised the present power, the living
force and vigour of the third person of the Holy
Trinity.
II. The apostles having been thus commissioned lost
no time. They at once departed upon their great work.
And now let us briefly indicate the scope of the first
great missionary tour undertaken by St. Paul, and sketch
its outline, filling in the details afterwards. According
to early tradition the headquarters of the Antiochene
Church were in Singon Street, in the southern quarter
of Antioch.An elaborate plan of ancient Antioch, accompanied with a description
of its various parts and references to the authorities for the same,
will be found in Lewin's St. Paul, vol. i., p. 92.
After earnest and prolonged religious
services they left their Christian brethren. St. Paul's
own practice recorded at Ephesus, Miletus, and at Tyre
shows us that prayer marked such separation from the
Christian brethren, and we know that the same practice
was perpetuated in the early Church; Tertullian, for
instance, telling us that a brother should not leave a
Christian house until he had been commended to God's
keeping. They then crossed the bridge, and proceeded
along the northern bank of the Orontes to Seleucia,
the port of Antioch, where the ruins still testify to the
vastness of the architectural conceptions cherished by
the Syrian kings. From Seleucia the apostles sailed to
the island of Cyprus, whose peaks they could see eighty
miles distant shining bright and clear through the
pellucid air. Various circumstances would lead them
thither. Barnabas was of Cyprus, and he doubtless
had many friends there. Cyprus had then an immense
Jewish population, as we have already pointed out;
and though the apostles were specially designated for
work among the Gentiles, they ever made the Jews the
starting-point whence to influence the outside world,
always used them as the lever whereby to move the
stolid mass of paganism. The apostles showed a
wholesome example to all missionaries and to all
teachers by this method of action. They addressed
the Jews first because they had most in common with
them. And St. Paul deliberately and of set purpose
worked on this principle, whether with Jews or Gentiles.
He sought out the ideas or the ground common to himself
and his hearers, and then, having found the points
on which they agreed, he worked out from them. It is
the true method of controversy. I have seen the opposite
course adopted, and with very disastrous effects. I
have seen a method of controversial argument pursued,
consisting simply in attacks upon errors without any
attempt to follow the apostolic example and discover
the truths which both parties held in common, and the
result has been the very natural one, that ill-will and bad
feeling have been aroused without effecting any changes
in conviction. We can easily understand the reason of
this, if we consider how the matter would stand with
ourselves. If a man comes up to us, and without any
attempt to discover our ideas or enter into sympathetic
relations with us, makes a very aggressive assault upon
all our particular notions and practices, our backs are
at once put up, we are thrown into a defensive mood,
our pride is stirred, we resent the tone, the air of the
aggressor, and unconsciously determine not to be convinced
by him. Controversial preaching of that class,
hard, unloving, censorious, never does any permanent
good, but rather strengthens and confirms the person
against whose belief it is directed. Nothing of this kind
will ever be found in the wise, courteous teaching of
the apostle Paul, whose few recorded speeches to Jews
and Gentiles may be commended to the careful study
of all teachers at home or abroad as models of mission
preaching, being at once prudent and loving, faithful
and courageous.
From Seleucia the apostles itinerated through the
whole island unto Paphos, celebrated in classical antiquity
as the favourite seat of the goddess Venus,
where they came for the first time into contact with a
great Roman official, Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of
the island. From Paphos they sailed across to the
mainland of Asia Minor, landed at Perga, where John
Mark abandoned the work to which he had put his
hand. They do not seem to have stayed for long at
Perga. They doubtless declared their message at the
local synagogue to the Jews and proselytes who
assembled there, for we are not to conclude, because
a synagogue is not expressly mentioned as belonging
to any special town, that therefore it did not exist.
Modern discoveries have shown that Jewish synagogues
were found in every considerable town or city
of Asia Minor, preparing the way by their pure morality
and monotheistic teaching for the fuller and richer
truths of Christianity.Hypæpa, for instance, was a celebrated sanctuary of Diana, between
Sardis and Ephesus. Jewish inscriptions have been found there proving
that a Jewish synagogue and community existed even in that pagan
stronghold: see Revue Archéologique for 1885, vol. ii., p. 111.
But St. Paul had fixed his
eagle gaze upon Antioch of Pisidia, a town which had
been made by Augustus Cæsar the great centre of this
part of Asia Minor, whence military roads radiated
in every direction, lending thereby the assistance of
imperial organisation to the progress of the gospel.
Its situation was, in fact, the circumstance which determined
the original foundation of Antioch by the Syrian
princes.There is a series of plates in Lewin's Life of St. Paul, vol. i., pp.
130-36, depicting the site and ruins of Antioch, and showing the roads
which connected it with all the leading towns of the neighbourhood,
Iconium, Lystra, Derbe. Professor Ramsay, in his Historical Geography
of Asia Minor, bestows a good deal of attention on Antioch of Pisidia
and its position: see pp. 47, 57, 85, 391, 453.
Facility of access, commercial convenience were
points at which they chiefly aimed in selecting the sites
of the cities they built, and the wisdom of their choice
in the case of Antioch in Pisidia was confirmed when
Augustus and Tiberius, some few years previous to
St. Paul's visit, made Antioch the centre from which
diverged the whole system of military roads throughout
this portion of Asia Minor. It was a very large city,
and its ruins and aqueducts testify to this day concerning
the important position it held as the great centre of
all the Roman colonies and fortresses which Augustus
planted in the year B.C. 6 along the skirts of the
Taurus Range to restrain the incursions of the rude
mountaineers of Isauria and Pisidia. When persecution
compelled the apostles to retire from Antioch they took
their way therefore to Iconium, which was some sixty
miles south-east of Antioch along one of these military
roads of which we have spoken, constructed for the
purpose of putting down the brigands which then, as in
modern times, constituted one of the great plagues
of Asia Minor.St. Paul, writing in 2nd Corinthians, speaks of himself as at times in
perils of robbers. This danger may well have happened to him in the
central districts of Asia Minor. There is an interesting story of St.
John and the bandits in Eusebius, H. E., iii., 23. The incidents there
told took place in Asia Minor.
But why did the apostles retire to
Iconium? Surely one might say, if the Jews had
influence enough at Antioch to stir up the chief men
of the city against the missionaries, they would have
had influence enough to secure a warrant for their
arrest in a neighbouring city. At first sight it seems
somewhat difficult to account for the line of travel or
flight adopted by the apostles. But a reference to
ancient geography throws some light upon the problem.
Strabo, a geographer of St. Paul's own day, tells us
that Iconium was an independent principality or
tetrarchy, surrounded indeed on all sides by Roman
territory, but still enjoying a certain amount of independence.
The apostles fled to Iconium when persecution
waxed hot because they had a good road thither, and
also because at Iconium they were secure from any
legal molestation being under a new jurisdiction.Iconium was in St. Paul's day the centre of an independent tetrarchy
ruled by native princes. See Pliny's Nat. Hist., v. 27. The site of
Iconium has never been uncertain. It was made the capital of their
dominions by the Sultans of the Seldjuk Turks, and continued to occupy
that position till the conquest of Constantinople. It is still called
Konia, a modification of its original name, and still continues to attract
a large population on account of the beauty and convenience of its
situation, which gives it the title of the Damascus of Asia Minor.
According to tradition Sosipatros, one of the seventy disciples, was the
bishop of Iconium, and was succeeded by Terentius, another member
of the same sacred company; Acta Sanctorum, June 20th, p. 67;
Ramsay, Historical Geography of Asia Minor, p. 332. The latest
account of Iconium as it is at present will be found in Sterrett's
Epigraphical Journey in Asia Minor, printed among the Papers of
the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Boston, 1884.
vol. ii., p. 188-225.
After a time, however, the Jews from Antioch made
their way to Iconium and began the same process
which had proved so successful at Antioch. They first
excited the members of the Jewish synagogue against
the apostles, and through them influenced the towns-people
at large, so that, though successful in winning
converts, St. Paul and his companion were in danger
of being stoned by a joint mob of Jews and Gentiles.
They had therefore to fly a second time, and when
doing so they acted on the same principle as before.
They again removed themselves out of the local jurisdiction
of their enemies, and passed to Derbe and Lystra,
cities of Lycaonia, a Roman province which had just
been formed by the Emperor Claudius.The apostles seem to have acted as in former times persons harassed
by legal processes could do in this country. A writ directed to a sheriff
only ran within his own county. A man could not be arrested under it if
he passed one step beyond the county bounds, till countersigned by the
sheriff of the county into which the delinquent had passed. Under the
Roman empire the local liberties and jurisdictions were simply infinite,
a fact which of course lent much assistance to persons persecuted as the
apostles were. Derbe, for instance, was a native city of Lycaonia,
and belonged to the Koinon or local assembly of that province. Lystra
was situated indeed in Lycaonia, but being a Roman colony had therefore
exceptional privileges, and scorned to belong to the local Assembly
of native cities. See Ramsay, Hist. Geog., pp. 332, 375, 376.
Then after a time, when the disturbances which the
Jews persistently raised wherever they came had subsided,
the apostles returned back over the same ground,
no longer indeed publicly preaching, but organising
quietly and secretly the Churches which they had
founded in the different towns through which they had
passed, till they arrived back at Perga, where perhaps,
finding no ship sailing to Antioch, they travelled to the
port of Attalia, where they succeeded in finding a
passage to that city of Antioch whence they had been
sent forth.It is well perhaps to note that the ι in this name is long, representing
the diphthong ει, the Greek name of the town being Ἀττάλεια.
This brief sketch will give a general view
of the first missionary tour made in the realms of
paganism, and will show that it dealt with little more
than two provinces of Asia Minor, Pisidia and Lycaonia,
and was followed by what men would count but scanty
results, the foundation and organisation of a few scattered
Christian communities in some of the leading towns of
these districts.
III. Let us now more particularly notice some of the
details recorded concerning this journey. The apostles
began their work at Cyprus, where they proclaimed
the gospel in the Jewish synagogues. They were
attracted as we have said to this island, first, because it
was the native land of Barnabas, and then because its
population was in large degree Jewish, owing to the
possession of the famous copper mines of the island by
Herod the Great.See vol. i., p. 216.
Synagogues were scattered all over
the island and proselytes appertained to each synagogue,
and thus a basis of operations was ready whence
the gospel message might operate. It was just the
same even at Paphos, where St. Paul came in contact
with the proconsul Sergius Paulus. The Jewish element
here again appears, though in more active opposition
than seems to have been elsewhere offered. Sergius
Paulus was a Roman citizen like Cornelius of Cæsarea.
He had become dissatisfied with the belief of his
forefathers. He had now come into contact with the
mystic East, and had yielded himself to the guidance
of a man who professed the Jewish religion, which
seems to have charmed by its pure morality and
simple monotheism many of the noblest minds of that
age. But, like all outsiders, Sergius Paulus did not
make accurate and just distinctions between man and
man. He yielded himself to the guidance of a man
who traded on the name of a Jew, but who really
practised those rites of weird sorcery which real Judaism
utterly repudiated and denounced. This alone accounts
for the stern language of St. Paul: "O full of all guile
and all villany, thou son of the devil, thou enemy of all
righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right
ways of the Lord?" St. Paul never addressed a lawful
opponent in this manner. He did not believe in the
efficacy of strong language in itself, nor did he abuse
those who withstood him in honest argument. But he
did not hesitate, on the other hand, to brand a deceiver
as he deserved, or to denounce in scathing terms those
who were guilty of conscious fraud. St. Paul might
well be taken as a model controversialist in this respect.
He knew how to distinguish between the genuine
opponent who might be mistaken but was certainly
conscientious, and the fraudulent hypocrite devoid of
all convictions save the conviction of the value of
money. With the former St. Paul was full of courtesy,
patience, consideration, because he had in himself experience
of the power of blind unthinking prejudice.
For the latter class St. Paul had no consideration, and
with them he wasted no time. His honest soul took
their measure at once. He denounced them as he did
Elymas on this occasion, and then passed on to deal
with nobler and purer souls, where honest and good
hearts offered more promising soil for the reception of
the Word of the Kingdom. Controversy of every kind
is very trying to tongue and temper, but religious
controversy such as that in which St. Paul spent his
life is specially trying to the character. The subject
is so important that it seems to excuse an over zeal
and earnestness which terminates in bad temper and
unwise language. And yet we sometimes cannot
shrink from controversy, because conscience demands
it on our part. When that happens to be the case, it
will be well for us to exercise the most rigorous control
over our feelings and our words; from time to time to
realise by a momentary effort of introspection Christ
hanging upon the cross and bearing for us the unworthy
and unjust reproaches of mankind; for thus and thus
only will pride be kept down and hot temper restrained
and that great advantage for the truth secured which
self-control always bestows upon its possessor.
There is an interesting illustration of the historic
accuracy of St. Luke connected with the apostolic visit
to Paphos and to Sergius Paulus the proconsul. Thrice
over in the narrative of St. Luke, Sergius Paulus is
called proconsul—first in the seventh verse of the
thirteenth chapter, where Elymas the sorcerer is described
thus, "who was with the proconsul, Sergius
Paulus, a man of understanding," while again the same
title of proconsul is applied to Sergius in the eighth and
twelfth verses. This has been the cause of much
misunderstanding and of no small reproach hurled
against the sacred writer. Let us inquire into its
justice and the facts of the case. The Roman provinces
were divided into two classes, senatorial and imperial.
The senatorial provinces were ruled by proconsuls
appointed by the Senate; the imperial by proprætors
appointed by the emperors. This arrangement was
made by Augustus Cæsar, and is reported to us by
Strabo who lived and wrote during St. Paul's early
manhood. But now a difficulty arises. Strabo gives
us the list of the provinces senatorial and imperial
alike, and expressly classes Cyprus amongst the
imperial provinces, which were ruled by proprætors
and not by proconsuls. In the opinion of the older
critics, St. Luke was thus plainly convicted of a
mistake and of a flagrant contradiction of that great
authority the geographer Strabo. But it is never safe
to jump to conclusions of that kind with respect to a
contemporaneous writer who has proved himself accurate
on other occasions. It is far better and far safer
to say, Let us wait awhile, and see what further investigations
will reveal. And so it has proved in this
special case. Strabo tells us of the original arrangement
made about thirty years B.C. between the Emperor
Augustus and the Senate, when Cyprus was most
certainly numbered amongst the imperial provinces;
but he omits to tell us what another historian of the
same century, Dion Cassius, does relate, that the same
Emperor modified this arrangement five years later,
handing Cyprus and Gallia Narbonensis over to the rule
of the Senate, so that from that date and henceforth
throughout the first century of our era Cyprus was
governed by proconsuls alone, as St. Luke most accurately,
though only incidentally, reports.The words of Dion are: "Eo tempore Cyprum ac Galliam Narbonensem,
quia nihil armis suis indigerent, populo reddidit; atque ita
proconsules etiam in istas provincias mitti cœperunt." See the works of
Dion, edited by H. Valerius, vol. i., p. 733 (Hamburg, 1750). Valerius,
in his note on this passage, notes the inaccuracies into which the older
critics—Grotius, Hammond, Baronius—had fallen about Acts xiii. 7.
Here, too,
the results of modern investigation among inscriptions
and coins have come in to supplement and support
the testimony of historians. The Greek inscriptions
discovered prior to and during the earlier half of this
century have been collected together in Boeckh's Corpus
of Greek Inscriptions, which is, indeed, a vast repertory
of original documents concerning the life, Pagan and
Christian, of the Greek world. In the inscriptions
numbered 2631 and 2632 in that valuable work we
have the names of Q. Julius Cordus and L. Annius
Bassus expressly mentioned as proconsuls of Cyprus
in A.D. 51, 52; while on coins of Cyprus have been found
the names of Cominius Proclus and Quadratus, who held
the same office. But the very latest investigations have
borne striking testimony to the same fact. The name
of the very proconsul whom St. Paul addressed appears
on an inscription discovered in our own time. Cyprus
has been thoroughly investigated since it passed into
British hands, specially by General Cesnola, who has
written a work on the subject which is well worth
reading by those who take an interest in Scripture lands
and the scenes where the apostles laboured. In that
work, p. 425, Cesnola tells us of a mutilated inscription
which he recovered dealing with some subject of no
special importance, but bearing the following precious
notice giving its date as "Under Paulus the Proconsul";
proving to us by contemporary evidence that Sergius
Paulus ruled the island, and ruled it with the special
title of proconsul. Surely an instance like this—and
we shall have several such to notice—is quite enough to
make fair minds suspend their judgment when charges
of inaccuracy are alleged against St. Luke dependent
upon our own ignorance alone of the entire facts of the
case. A wider knowledge, a larger investigation we
may well be sure will suffice to clear the difficulty and
vindicate the fair fame of the sacred historian.
From Cyprus the apostles passed over to the
continent, and opened their missionary work at Antioch
of Pisidia, where the first recorded address of St. Paul
was delivered. This sermon, delivered in the Pisidian
synagogue, is deserving of our special notice because
it is the only missionary address delivered by St. Paul
to the Jews of the Dispersion which has been handed
down to us, unless we include the few words delivered
to the Roman Jews reported in the twenty-eighth
chapter from the seventeenth to the twenty-eighth
verses. Let us briefly analyse it, premising that it
should be carefully compared with the addresses of
St. Peter to the Jews upon the Day of Pentecost and
with the speech delivered by St. Stephen before the
Sanhedrin, when all three will be found to run upon
the same lines. The apostles having reached Antioch
waited until the Sabbath came round, and then sought
the local meeting-place of the Jews. The apostles
felt indeed that they were entrusted with a great
mission important for the human race, but yet they
knew right well that feverish impetuosity or restless
activity was not the true way to advance the cause
they had in hand. They did not believe in wild
irregular actions which only stir up opposition. They
were calm and dignified in their methods, because
they were consciously guided by the Divine Spirit
of Him concerning whom it was said in the days of
His flesh, "He did not strive nor cry, neither did
any man hear His voice in the streets." On the
Sabbath day they entered the synagogue, and took
their place on a bench set apart for the reception of
those who were regarded as teachers. At the conclusion
of the public worship and the reading of the
lessons out of the law and the prophets, such as still
are read in the synagogue worship, the Rulers of the
Synagogue sent to them the minister or apostle of the
synagogue intimating their permission to address the
assembled congregation, whereupon St. Paul arose and
delivered an address, of which the following is an
analysis. St. Paul opened his sermon by a reference
to the lessons which had just been read in the service,
which—as all the writers of the Apostle's life, Lewin,
Conybeare and Howson, and Archdeacon Farrar, agree—were
taken from the first chapter of Deuteronomy and
the first of Isaiah. He points out, as St. Stephen had
done, the providential dealings of God with their forefathers
from the time of the original choice of Abraham
down to David. The Jews had been divinely guided
throughout their history down to David's days, and
that Divine guidance had not then ceased, but continued
down to the present, as the Apostle then proceeds to
show. In David's seed there had been left a hope for
Israel which every true Jew still cherished. He then
announces that the long-cherished hope had now at
last been fulfilled. This fact depended not on his
testimony alone. The Messiah whom they had long
expected had been preceded by a prophet whose
reputation had spread into these distant regions, and
had gained disciples, as we shall afterwards find, at
Ephesus. John the Baptist had announced the Messiah's
appearance, and proclaimed his own inferiority to Him.
But then an objection occurs to the Apostle which
might naturally be raised. If John's reputation and
doctrine had penetrated to Antioch, the story of the
crucifixion of Jesus may also have been reported there,
and the local Jews may therefore have concluded that
such an ignominious death was conclusive against the
claims of Jesus? The Apostle then proceeds to show
how that the providential rule of God had been exercised
even in that matter. The wrath of man had been
compelled to praise God, and even while the rulers at
Jerusalem were striving to crush Jesus Christ they were
in reality fulfilling the voices of the prophets which
went beforehand and proclaimed the sufferings of the
Messiah exactly as they had happened. And further
still, God had set His seal to the truth of the story by
raising Jesus Christ from the dead according to the predictions
of the Old Testament, which he expounds after
the manner of the Jewish schools, finding a hint of the
Resurrection of Christ in Isaiah lv. 3: "I will give
you the holy and sure blessings of David"; and a
still clearer one in Psalm xvi. 10: "Thou wilt not give
Thine Holy One to see corruption." The Apostle,
after quoting this text, which from its use by St. Peter
on the Day of Pentecost seems to have been a passage
commonly quoted in the Jewish controversy, terminates
his discourse with a proclamation of the exalted blessings
which the Messiah has brought, indicating briefly
but clearly the universal character of the gospel
promises, and finishing with a warning against stupid
obstinate resistance drawn from Habakkuk i. 5, which
primarily referred to the disbelief in impending
Chaldæan invasion exhibited by the Jews, but which
the Apostle applies to the Jews of Antioch and their
spiritual dangers arising from similar wilful obstinacy.
We have of course not much more than the heads
of the apostolic sermon. Five or seven minutes of a
not very rapid speaker would amply suffice to exhaust
the exact words attributed to St. Paul. He must have
enlarged on the various topics. He could not have
introduced John the Baptist in the abrupt manner in
which he is noticed in the text of our New Testament.
It seems quite natural enough to us that he should be
thus named, because John occupies a very high and
exalted position in our mental horizon from our earliest
childhood. But who was John the Baptist for these
Jewish settlers in the Pisidian Antioch? He was
simply a prophet of whom they may have heard a
vague report, who appeared before Israel for a year or
two, and then suffered death at the hands of Herod
the Tetrarch: and so it must have been with many
other topics introduced into this discourse. They must
have been much more copiously treated, elaborated,
discussed, or else the audience in the Pisidian synagogue
must have loved concentrated discourse more keenly
than any other assembly that ever met together.
And yet, though the real discourse must have been
much longer—and did we only possess the sermon in
its fulness many a difficulty which now puzzles us
would disappear at once—we can still see the line of
the apostolic argument and grasp its force. The
Apostle argues, in fact, that God had chosen the original
fathers of the Jewish race. He had gone on conferring
ever fresh and larger blessings in the wilderness,
in Canaan, under the Judges, and then under the
Kings, till the time of David, from whose seed God
had raised up the greatest gift of all in the person of
Jesus Christ, through whom blessings unknown before
and unsurpassed were offered to mankind. St. Paul
contends exactly as St. Stephen had done, that true
religion has been a perpetual advance and development;
that Christianity is not something distinct from
Judaism, but is essentially one with it, being the flower
of a plant which God Himself had planted, the crown
and glory of the work which He had Himself begun.
This address, as we have already noticed in the preface
to the first volume of this work, will repay careful
study; for it shows the methods adopted by the early
Christian when dealing with the Jews.Cf. vol. i., pp. xi, 300.
They did not
attack any of their peculiar views or practices, but
confining themselves to what they held in common
strove to convince them that Christianity was the logical
outcome of their own principles.
The results of this address were very indicative of
the future. The Jews of the synagogue seem to have
been for a time impressed by St. Paul's words. Several
of them, together with a number of the proselytes,
attached themselves to him as his disciples, and were
further instructed in the faith. The proselytes especially
must have been attracted by the Apostle's words.
They were, like Cornelius, Proselytes of the Gate, who
observed merely the seven precepts of Noah and renounced
idolatry, but were not circumcised or subject
to the restrictions and duties of the Jewish ritual.
They must have welcomed tidings of a religion embodying
all that which they venerated in the Jewish Law
and yet devoid of its narrowness and disadvantages.
Next Sabbath the whole city was stirred with excitement,
and then Jewish jealousy burst into a flame.
They saw that their national distinctions and glory
were in danger. They refused to listen or permit any
further proclamation of what must have seemed to
them a revolutionary teaching disloyal to the traditions
and existence of their religion and their nation.
They used their influence therefore with the chief men
of the city, exercising it through their wives, who were
in many cases attracted by the Jewish worship, or who
may have been themselves of Jewish birth, and the
result was that the apostles were driven forth to preach
in other cities of the same central region of Asia Minor.
This was the first attack made by the Jews upon St.
Paul in his mission journeys. He had already had
experience of their hostility at Damascus and at
Jerusalem, but this hostility was doubtless provoked
by reason of their resentment at the apostasy to the
Nazarene sect of their chosen champion. But here at
Antioch we perceive the first symptom of that bitter
hostility to St. Paul because of his catholic principles,
his proclamation of salvation as open to all alike, Jew
or Gentile, free from any burdensome or restrictive
conditions, a hostility which we shall find persistently
pursuing him, both within the Church, and still more
without the Church, at Iconium, at Lystra, at Thessalonica,
at Corinth, and at Jerusalem. It would seem
indeed as if the invention of the term "Christian" at
Antioch marked a crisis in the history of the early
Church. Henceforth St. Paul and his friends became
the objects of keenest hatred, because the Jews had
recognised that they taught a form of belief absolutely
inconsistent with the Jewish faith as hitherto known;
a hatred which seems, however, to have been limited
to St. Paul and his Antiochene friends, for the temporising
measures and the personal prejudices, the whole
atmosphere, in fact, of the Jerusalem Church led the
unbelieving Jews to make a broad distinction between
the disciples at Jerusalem and the followers of St. Paul.
IV. So far we have dealt with St. Paul's address at
Antioch as typical of his methods in dealing with the
Jews, and their treatment of the Apostle as typical of that
hostility which the Jews ever displayed to the earliest
teachers of Christian truth, as witnessed not only by the
New Testament, but also by the writings and histories
of Justin Martyr, and of Polycarp of Smyrna, and of
all the early apologists. But we are not left in this
typical Church history without a specimen of St. Paul's
earlier methods when dealing with the heathen. St.
Paul, after his rejection at Antioch, escaped to Iconium,
sixty miles distant, and thence, when Jewish persecution
again waxed hot, betook himself to Lystra, some
forty miles to the south. There the Apostle found himself
in a new atmosphere and amid new surroundings.
Antioch and Iconium had large Jewish populations,
and were permeated with Jewish ideas. Lystra was a
thoroughly Gentile town with only a very few Jewish
inhabitants. The whole air of the place—its manners,
customs, popular legends—was thoroughly pagan.
This offered St. Paul a new field for his activity, of
which he availed himself right diligently, finishing up
his work with healing a lifelong cripple, a miracle
which so impressed the mob of Lystra that they immediately
cried out in the native speech of Lycaonia,
"The gods are coming down to us in the likeness of
men," calling Barnabas Jupiter, on account of his lofty
stature and more commanding appearance, and Paul
Mercurius or Hermes, because of his more insignificant
size and more copious eloquence. Here again we have,
in our writer's words, an incidental and even unconscious
witness to the truth of our narrative. The cry
of the men of Lystra, these rude barbarian people of
the original inhabitants of the land, who, though they
could understand Greek, naturally fell back on their
native Lycaonian language to express their deeper feelings,—this
cry, I say, refers to an ancient legend connected
with their history, of which we find a lengthened
account in the works of the poet Ovid. Jupiter attended
by Mercury once descended to visit the earth
and see how man was faring. Some scoffed at the
deities, and were punished. Others received them, and
were blessed accordingly.See the story of Philemon and Baucis as told in Smith's Dictionary
of Classical Biography and Mythology.
The wondrous work performed
on the cripple naturally led the men of Lystra
to think that the Divine Epiphany had been repeated.
The colony of Lystra—for Lystra was a Roman colonyThe site of Lystra and the fact that it was a Roman colony were
unknown till 1884, when Sterrett discovered an inscription which
ascertained both facts: see Ramsay's Historical Geography of Asia
Minor, p. 332, and Sterrett's Epigraph. Journey, already quoted, from
"Papers of American School at Athens," vol. iii., p. 142 (Boston, 1888).
Artemas, one of the seventy disciples, is said to have been bishop of
Lystra: see Acta Sanct., June 20th, p. 67.
—was
devoted to the worship of Jupiter, in memory
doubtless of this celebrated visit. A temple to Jupiter
stood before and outside the gate of the city, as the
temple of Diana stood outside the gate of Ephesus,
lending sanctity and protection to the neighbouring
town. The priest and the people act upon the spur
of the moment. They bring victims and garlands
prepared to offer sacrifice to the deities who, as
they thought, had revisited their ancient haunts. They
were approaching the house where the apostles were
dwelling—perhaps that of Lois and Eunice and Timothy—when
Paul sprang forward and delivered a short impassioned
address deprecating the threatened adoration.
Let us quote the address in order that we may see
its full force: "Sirs, why do ye these things? We
also are men of like passions with you, and bring you
good tidings, that ye should turn from these vain things
unto the living God, who made the heaven and the
earth and the sea, and all that in them is: who in the
generations gone by suffered all the nations to walk
in their own ways. And yet He left not Himself without
witness, in that He did good, and gave you from
heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts
with food and gladness." How very different St. Paul's
words to the pagans are from those he addressed to
the Jews and proselytes, believers in the true God and
in the facts of revelation! He proves himself a born
orator, able to adapt himself to different classes of
hearers, and, grasping their special ideas and feelings,
to suit his arguments to their various conditions. St.
Paul's short address on this occasion may be compared
with his speech to the men of Athens, and the
first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and the
various apologies composed by the earliest advocates
of Christianity during the second century. Take, for
instance, the Apology of Aristides, of which we gave an
account in the preface to the first volume of this commentary
on the Acts. We shall find, when we examine
it and compare it with the various passages of Scripture
to which we have just referred, that all run upon
exactly the same lines. They all appeal to the evidence
of nature and of natural religion. They say not one
word about Scripture concerning which their hearers
know nothing. They are not like unwise Christian
advocates among ourselves who think they can overthrow
an infidel with a text out of Scripture, begging
the question at issue, the very point to be decided
being this, whether there is such a thing at all as
Scripture. St. Paul does with the men of Lystra and
the men of Athens what Aristides did when writing
for the Emperor Hadrian, and what every wise missionary
will still do with the heathen or the unbeliever
whose salvation he is seeking. The Apostle takes up
the ground that is common to himself and his hearers.
He shows them the unworthiness of the conception
they have formed of the Godhead. He appeals to the
testimony of God's works and to the interior witness
of conscience prophesying perpetually in the secret
tabernacle of man's heart, and thus appealing in God's
behalf to the eternal verities and evidences of nature
exterior and interior to man, he vindicates the Divine
authority, glorifies the Divine character, and restrains
the capricious and ignorant folly of the men of Lystra.
Lastly, we find in this narrative two typical suggestions
for the missionary activity of the Church in every
age. The men of Lystra with marvellous facility soon
changed their opinion concerning St. Paul. M. Rénan
has well pointed out that to the pagans of those times
a miracle was no necessary proof of a Divine mission.
It was just as easily a proof to them of a diabolical or
magical power. The Jews, therefore, who followed
St. Paul, had no difficulty in persuading the men of
Lystra that this assailant of their hereditary deities was
a mere charlatan, a clever trickster moved by wicked
powers to lead them astray. Their character and reputation
as Jews, worshippers of one God alone, would
lend weight to this charge, and enable them the more
easily to effect their purpose of killing St. Paul, in
which they had failed at Antioch and Iconium. The
fickle mob easily lent themselves to the purposes of the
Jews, and having stoned St. Paul dragged his body
outside the city walls, thinking him dead. A few
faithful disciples followed the crowd, however. Perhaps,
too, the eirenarch or local police authority with his
subordinates had interfered, and the rioters, apprehensive
of punishment for their disturbance of the peace,
had retired.The Romans had a local police in Asia Minor, organised after the
manner of our own local police. The chief of the police in each town
was called the eirenarch, and was annually appointed by the proconsul.
The Romans never made the mistake of placing the police in the
hands of discontented subjects. See, on this curious topic, Le Bas and
Waddington's Voyage Archéologique, t. iii., pp. 27 and 255.
As the disciples stood around weeping
for the loss they had sustained, the Apostle awoke from
the swoon into which he had fallen, and was carried
into the city by the faithful few, among whom doubtless
were Timothy and his parents. Lystra, however, was
no longer safe for St. Paul. He retired, therefore, some
twenty miles to Derbe, where he continued for some
time labouring with success, till the storm and the
excitement had subsided at Lystra. Then he returned
back over the same ground which he had already
traversed. He might have pushed on along the great
Eastern Road, nigh as Derbe was to the passes through
the Taurus Range which led directly to Cilicia and
Tarsus. He wished to go back indeed to Antioch. He
had been a year or so absent on this first excursion
into the vast fields of Gentile paganism. Wider and
more extensive missions had now to be planned. The
wisdom gained by personal experience had now to be
utilised in consultation with the brethren. But still a
work had to be done in Lycaonia and Pisidia if the
results of his labours were not to be lost. He had
quitted in great haste each town he had visited, forced
out by persecution, and leaving the organisation of the
Church incomplete. St. Paul came, like his Master, not
merely to proclaim a doctrine: he came still more to
found and organise a Divine society. He returns therefore
back again along the route he had first taken.
He does not preach in public, nor run any risks of
raising riots anew. His work is now entirely of a
character interior to the Church. He strengthens the
disciples by his teaching, he points out that earthly trials
and persecutions are marks of God's love and favour
rather than tokens of His wrath, he notes for them that
it is needful "through many tribulations to enter into
the kingdom of God," and above all he secures the permanence
of his work by ordaining presbyters after the
fashion of the Church at Antioch, with prayer and
fasting and imposition of hands. This is one great
typical lesson taught us here by St. Paul's return
journey through Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch of Pisidia.
Preaching and evangelistic work are important; but
pastoral work and Church consolidation and Church
order are equally important, if any permanent fruits
are to be garnered and preserved. And the other
typical lesson is implied in the few words wherein the
termination of his first great missionary journey is
narrated. "When they had spoken the word in Perga,
they went down to Attalia; and thence they sailed to
Antioch, from whence they had been committed to the
grace of God for the work which they had fulfilled."
Antioch was the centre whence Paul and Barnabas
had issued forth to preach among the Gentiles, and to
Antioch the apostles returned to cheer the Church with
the narrative of their labours and successes, and to
restore themselves and their exhausted powers with
the sweetness of Christian fellowship, of brotherly love
and kindness such as then flourished, as never before
or since, amongst the children of men. Mission work
such as St. Paul did on this great tour is very
exhausting, and it can always be best performed from
a great centre. Mission work, evangelistic work of any
kind, if it is to be successful, makes terrible demands
on man's whole nature, physical, mental, spiritual, and
bodily. The best restorative for that nature when so
exhausted is conversation and intercourse with men
of like minds, such as St. Paul found when, returning
to Antioch, he cheered the hearts and encouraged the
hopes of the Church by narrating the wonders he had
seen done and the triumphs he had seen won through
the power of the Holy Ghost.It has often been argued that the gift of tongues conferred by the
Holy Ghost at Pentecost was not necessary, as Greek was universally
spoken in Asia Minor. The use of the Lycaonian tongue at Lystra, even
though a Roman colony, is an important fact on the other side. Mr.
Ramsay, in his Hist. Geog. of Asia Minor, says; "Greek was not the
popular language of the plateau, even in the third century after Christ;
the mass of the people spoke Lycaonian and Galatian and Phrygian,
though those who wrote books wrote Greek and those who governed
spoke Latin." Cf. pp. 98, 99 of Mr. Ramsay's work, and p. 103 of the
previous volume of this commentary. This subject of the original
languages of Asia Minor and their survival to Christian times is an
interesting and novel subject of study, for which materials are gradually
accumulating. Thus the ancient Cappadocian language is discussed and
a lexicon of it compiled in a monograph which appeared in the Museum
of the Evangelical school at Smyrna (1880-84), pp. 47-265. A large
number of inscriptions in the Phrygian language have also been recovered.
St. Paul, addressing the natives of the central plateau of Asia
Minor in Greek, would have been like an Englishman preaching to the
inhabitants of Wales or of Connemara in English. I never heard of any
powerful results thus following, save in the case of Giraldus Cambrensis
who tells us in his Itinerary in Wales of the melting character of his own
Latin sermons upon the Welsh people, though they did not understand
a word of them. But then Giraldus was, to say the least, an imaginative
historian.
CHAPTER X.
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN COUNCIL.
"And certain men came down from Judæa and taught the brethren,
saying, Except ye be circumcised after the custom of Moses, ye cannot
be saved. And when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and
questioning with them, the brethren appointed that Paul and Barnabas,
and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles
and elders about this question.... And the apostles and the elders
were gathered together to consider of this matter."... James said, "My
judgment is, that we trouble not them which from among the Gentiles
turn to God."—Acts xv. 1, 2, 6, 19.
I have headed this chapter, which treats of Acts xv.
and its incidents, the First Christian Council, and
that of set purpose and following eminent ecclesiastical
example. People often hear the canons of the great
Councils quoted, the canons of Nice, Constantinople,
Ephesus, and Chalcedon, those great assemblies which
threshed out the controversies concerning the person
and nature of Jesus Christ and determined with marvellous
precision the methods of expressing the true
doctrine on these points, and they wonder where or
how such ancient documents have been preserved.
Well, the answer is simple enough. If any reader,
curious about the doings of these ancient assemblies,
desires to study the decrees which proceeded from
them, and even the debates which occurred in them,
he need only ask in any great library for a history of
the Councils, edited either by Hardouin or Labbe and
Cossart, or, best and latest of all, by Mansi. They
are not externally very attractive volumes, being vast
folios; nor are they light or interesting reading. The
industrious student will learn much from them, however;
and he will find that they all begin the history
of the Christian Councils by placing at the very head
and forefront thereof the history and acts of the Council
of Jerusalem held about the year 48 or 49 A.D., wherein
we find a typical example of a Church synod which set
a fashion perpetuated throughout the ages in councils,
conferences, and congresses down to the present time.
Let us inquire then into the origin, the procedure,
and the results of this Assembly, sure that a council
conducted under such auspices, reported by such a
divinely guided historian, and dealing with such burning
questions, must have important lessons for the
Church of every age.Mansi, A.D. 1692-1769, was Archbishop of Lucca. He was a very
learned man. Besides valuable editions of other men's works he
published his Sarcorum Conciliorum Collectio in thirty-one vols. folio,
Florence and Venice, 1759-98. Mansi fixes the date of the Jerusalem
Synod either to 49 or 51 A.D. He counts it the third synod, regarding
as the first synod that held for the election of Matthias, and as the
second that assembled for the choice of the deacons.
I. The question, however, naturally meets us at the
very threshold of our inquiry as to the date of this
assembly, and the position which it holds in the process
of development through which the Christian Church
was passing. The decision of this Synod at Jerusalem
did not finally settle the questions about the law and
its obligatory character. The relations between the
Jewish and Gentile sections of the Church continued
in some places, especially in the East, more or less
unsettled well into the second century; for the Jews
found it very hard indeed to surrender all their cherished
privileges and ancient national distinctions. But the
decree of the Jerusalem Assembly, though only a partial
settlement, "mere articles of peace," as it has been
well called, to tide over a pressing local controversy,
formed in St. Paul's hands a powerful weapon whereby
the freedom, the unity, and the catholicity of the
Church was finally achieved. Where, then, do we
locate this Synod in the story of St. Paul's labours?
The narrative of the Acts clearly enough places it
between the first and the second missionary tours in
Asia Minor undertaken by that apostle. Paul and
Barnabas laboured for the first time in Asia Minor
probably from the autumn of 44 till the spring or
summer of 46. Their work at that time must have
extended over at least eighteen months or more. Their
journeys on foot must alone have taken up no small
time. They traversed from Perga, where they landed,
to Derbe, whence they turned back upon their work, a
space of at least two hundred and fifty miles. They
made lengthened sojourns in large cities like Antioch
and Iconium. They doubtless visited other places of
which we are told nothing. Then, having completed
their aggressive work, they retraced their steps along
the same route, and began their work of consolidation
and Church organisation, which must have occupied on
their return journey almost as much, if not more, time
that they had spent in aggressive labour upon their
earlier journey. When we consider all this, and strive
to realise the conditions of life and travel in Asia Minor
at that time, eighteen months will not appear too long
for the work which the apostles actually performed.
After their return to Antioch they took up their abode
in that city for a considerable period. "They tarried
no little time with the disciples" are the exact words
of St. Luke telling of their stay at Antioch. Then
comes the tale of Jewish intrigues and insinuations,
followed by debates, strife, and oppositions concerning
the universally binding character of the Jewish law,
terminating with the formal deputation from Antioch to
Jerusalem. These latter events at Antioch may have
happened in a few weeks or months, or they may have
extended over a couple of years. But then, on the
other hand, we note that St. Paul's second missionary
journey began soon after the Synod of Jerusalem. That
journey was very lengthened. It led St. Paul right
through Asia Minor, and thence into Europe, where he
must have made a stay of at least two years. He was
at Corinth for eighteen months when Gallio arrived as
proconsul about the middle of the year 53, and previously
to that he had worked his way through Macedonia
and Greece. St. Paul on his second tour must have
been then at least four years absent from Antioch,
which he must therefore have left about the year 49
or 50. The Synod of Jerusalem must therefore be
assigned to the year 48 A.D. or thereabouts; or, in other
words, not quite twenty years after the Crucifixion.
II. And now this leads us to consider the occasion of
the Synod. The time was not, as we have said, quite
twenty years after the Crucifixion, yet that brief space
had been quite sufficient to raise questions undreamt
of in earlier days. The Church was at first completely
homogeneous, its members being all Jews; but the
admission of the Gentiles and the action of St. Peter
in the matter of Cornelius had destroyed this characteristic
so dear to the Jewish heart. The Divine revelation
at Joppa to St. Peter and the gift of the Holy Ghost
to Cornelius had for a time quenched the opposition
to the admission of the Gentiles to baptism; but, as
we have already said, the extreme Jewish party were
only silenced for a time, they were not destroyed.
They took up a new position. The case of Cornelius
merely decided that a man might be baptized without
having been previously circumcised; but it decided
nothing in their opinion about the subsequent necessity
for circumcision and admission into the ranks
of the Jewish nation. Their view, in fact, was the
same as of old. Salvation belonged exclusively to the
Jewish nation, and therefore if the converted Gentiles
were to be saved it must be by incorporation into
that body to which salvation alone belonged. The
strict Jewish section of the Church insisted the more
upon this point, because they saw rising up in the
Church of Antioch, and elsewhere among the Churches
of Syria and Cilicia, a grave social danger threatening
the existence of their nation as a separate people.
There were just then two classes of disciples in these
Churches. There were disciples who lived after the
Jewish fashion,—abstaining from unlawful foods, using
food slain by Jewish butchers, and scrupulous in
washings and lustrations; and there were Gentiles
who lived after the Gentile fashion, and in especial ate
pork and things strangled. The strict Jews knew
right well the tendency of a majority to swallow up
a minority, specially when they were all members of
the same religious community, enjoying the same privileges
and partakers of the same hope. A majority
does not indeed necessarily absorb a minority. Roman
Catholicism is the religion of the majority in Ireland
and France; yet it has not absorbed the small Protestant
minority. The adherents of Judaism were
scattered in St. Paul's day all over the world, yet
Paganism had not swallowed them up. In these cases,
however, the minority have been completely separated
from the majority by a middle wall, a barrier of rigid
discipline, and of strong, yea, even violent religious
repugnance. But the prospect now before the strict
Jewish party was quite different. In the Syrian
Church as they beheld it growing up Jew and Gentile
would be closely linked together, professing the same
faith, saying the same prayers, joining in the same
sacraments, worshipping in the same buildings. All
the advantages, too, would be on the side of the
Gentile. He was freed from the troublesome restrictions—the
more troublesome because so petty and
minute—of the Levitical Law. He could eat what he
liked, and join in social converse and general life
without hesitation or fear. In a short time a Jewish
disciple would come to ask himself, What do I gain
by all these observances, this yoke of ordinances, which
neither we nor our fathers have been able perfectly
to bear? If a Gentile disciple can be saved without
them, why should I trouble myself with them?
The Jewish party saw clearly enough that toleration
of the presence of the Gentiles in the Church and their
admission to full communion and complete Christian
privileges simply involved the certain overthrow of
Jewish customs, Jewish privileges, and Jewish national
expectations. They saw that it was a case of war to
the death, one party or the other must conquer, and
therefore in self-defence they raised the cry, "Unless
the Gentile converts be circumcised after the manner of
Moses they cannot be saved."
Antioch was recognised at Jerusalem as the centre
of Gentile Christianity. Certain, therefore, of the
zealous, Judaising disciples of Jerusalem repaired to
Antioch, joined the Church, and secretly proceeded to
organise opposition to the dominant practice, using for
that purpose all the authority connected with the name
of James the Lord's brother, who presided over the
Mother Church of the Holy City.
Now let us see what position St. Paul took up with
respect to these "false brethren privily brought in, who
came in privily to spy out the liberty he enjoyed in
Christ Jesus." Paul and Barnabas both set themselves
undauntedly to fight against such teaching. They had
seen and known the spiritual life which flourished free
from all Jewish observances in the Church of the
Gentiles. They had seen the gospel bringing forth
the fruits of purity and faith, of joy and peace in the
Holy Ghost; they knew that these things prepare the
soul for the beatific vision of God, and confer a present
salvation here below; and they could not tolerate the
idea that a Jewish ceremony was necessary over and
above the life which Christ confers if men are to gain
final salvation.
Here, perhaps, is the proper place to set forth St.
Paul's view of circumcision and of all external Jewish
ordinances, as we gather it from a broad review of his
writings. St. Paul vigorously opposed all those who
taught the necessity of Jewish rites so far as salvation
is concerned. This is evident from this chapter
and from the Epistle to the Galatians. But, on the
other hand, St. Paul had not the slightest objection
to men observing the law and submitting to circumcision,
if they only realised that these things were
mere national customs and observed them as national
customs, and even as religious rites, but not as necessary
religious rites. If men took a right view of circumcision,
St. Paul had not the slightest objection to it.
It was not to circumcision St. Paul objected, but to
the extreme stress laid upon it, the intolerant views
connected with it. Circumcision as a voluntary practice,
an interesting historical relic of ancient ideas and
customs, he never rejected,—nay, further, he even
practised it, as we shall see in the case of Timothy;
circumcision as a compulsory practice binding upon
all men St. Paul utterly abhorred. We may, perhaps,
draw an illustration from a modern Church in this
respect. The Coptic and Abyssinian Churches retain
the ancient Jewish practice of circumcision. These
Churches date back to the earliest Christian times,
and retain doubtless in this respect the practice of
the primitive Christian Church. The Copts circumcise
their children on the eighth day and before they are
baptized; but they regard this rite as a mere national
custom, and treat it as absolutely devoid of any
religious meaning, significance, or necessity. St. Paul
would have had no objection to circumcision in this
aspect any more than he would have objected to a
Turk for wearing a fez, or a Chinaman for wearing
a pigtail, or a Hindoo for wearing a turban. National
customs as such were things absolutely indifferent in
his view. But if Turkish or Chinese Christians were
to insist upon all men wearing their peculiar dress and
observing their peculiar national customs as being
things absolutely necessary to salvation, St. Paul, were
he alive, would denounce and oppose them as vigorously
as he did the Judaisers of his own day.We miss the true standpoint whence to judge St. Paul's conduct
aright, when we think as people generally do that St. Paul opposed
circumcision per se. He simply opposed it when connected with wrong
ideas. The Judaising disciples viewed the Jewish nation as the
covenant people to whom alone salvation belonged. St. Paul viewed
the Church as the body to whom alone salvation belonged, admission
to which was gained by baptism. If any Christian holding St. Paul's
view chose to add any private ceremony such as circumcision in order
to gain admission into any human society, St. Paul would not have
opposed him any more than, if he were now alive, he would have opposed
or denounced a Christian man because he became a Freemason, or an
Orangeman, or joined the Oddfellows, observing the special ceremonies
appointed for admission. The nearest approach in later times to the
position taken up by the strict Jewish party will be found in the history
of mediæval monasticism. The Cistercians and subsequently the
Mendicant Orders endeavoured to persuade every person that every one
who wished to be saved must join their Orders and assume their
peculiar dress. On this account Fitz Ralph, Archbishop of Armagh, and
his friend Wickliffe denounced them most vigorously. I have given
some amusing instances of the opposition to the Cistercians evoked two
centuries earlier by similar claims in Ireland and the Anglo-Norman
Church, p. 42.
This is the explanation of St. Paul's own conduct.
Some have regarded him as at times inconsistent
with his own principles with regard to the law of
Moses. And yet if men will but look closer and
think more deeply, they will see that St. Paul never
violated the rules which he had imposed upon himself.
He refused to circumcise Titus, for instance, because
the Judaising party at Jerusalem were insisting upon
the absolute necessity of circumcising the Gentiles if
they were to be saved. Had St. Paul consented to the
circumcision of Titus, he would have been yielding
assent, or seeming to yield assent, to their contention
(see Gal. ii. 3). He circumcised Timothy at Lystra
because of the Jews in that neighbourhood; not indeed
because they thought it necessary to salvation that an
uncircumcised man should be so treated, but because
they knew that his mother was a Jewess, and the
principle of the Jewish law, and of the Roman law too,
was that a man's nationality and status followed that
of his mother, not that of his father, so that the son of
a Jewess must be incorporated with Israel. Timothy
was circumcised in obedience to national law and
custom not upon any compromise of religious principle.
St. Paul himself made a vow and cut off his hair and
offered sacrifices in the Temple as being the national
customs of a Jew. These were things in themselves
utterly meaningless and indifferent; but they pleased
other people. They cost him a little time and trouble;
but they helped on the great work he had in hand,
and tended to make his opponents more willing to
listen to him. St. Paul, therefore, with his great large
mind, willing to please others for their good to edification,
gratified them by doing what they thought became
a Jew with a true national spirit beating within his
breast. Mere externals mattered nothing in St. Paul's
estimation. He would wear any vestments, or take
any position, or use any ceremony, esteeming them all
things indifferent, provided only they conciliated human
prejudices and cleared difficulties out of the way
of the truth. But if men insisted upon them as things
necessary, then he opposed with all his might. This
is the golden thread which will rule our footsteps
wandering amid the mazes of this earliest Christian
controversy. It will amply vindicate St. Paul's consistency,
and show that he never violated the principles
he had laid down for his own guidance. Had the
spirit of St. Paul animated the Church of succeeding
ages, how many a controversy and division would
have been thereby escaped!I have often noted what I consider an unfair use of this controversy
and of St. Paul's position in it. Men in the heat of argument have
represented the High Church, or rather the so-called Ritualists in the
Church of England, as answering to the Judaisers of St. Paul's day.
There seems to me, however, no parallel between them. The Judaisers
contended for a certain ceremony as necessary to salvation. I never
heard of any Ritualist who considered any of his dearest practices in
this light. He may view them as lawful, as edifying, and very necessary
for the instruction of the people; but I have never heard of their most
extreme adherents contending for their necessity to salvation. It would
be just as true to identify their opponents with the Judaisers, because
they have insisted, and often with great vigour, upon the use of the black
gown in the pulpit. I have known extreme men to take up the position
that the gospel could not be preached where the black gown was not used.
Any one who will take the trouble to read the Life of Bishop Blomfield
of London, edited by his son, vol. ii., will see some striking illustrations
of the extent to which such views were pushed half a century ago.
III. Now let us turn our attention to the actual history
of the controversy and strife which raged at Antioch
and Jerusalem, and endeavour to read the lessons the
sacred narrative teaches. What a striking picture of
early Church life is here presented! How full of
teaching, of comfort, and of warning! How corrective
of the false notions we are apt to cherish of the state
of the primitive Church! There we behold the Church
of Antioch rejoicing one day in the tidings of a gospel
free to the world, and on the next day torn with dissension
as to the points and qualifications necessary
to salvation. For we must observe that the discussion
started at Antioch touched no secondary question,
and dealt with no mere point of ritual. It was
a fundamental question which troubled the Church.
And yet that Church had apostles and teachers
abiding in it who could work miracles and speak with
tongues, and who received from time to time direct
revelations from heaven, and were endowed with the
extraordinary presence of the Holy Ghost. Yet there
it was that controversy with all its troubles raised its
head, and "Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension"
with their opponents. What a necessary warning
for every age, and specially for our own, we behold in
this narrative! Has not this sacred Book a message in
this passage specially applicable to our own time? A
great Romeward movement has within the last seventy
years, more powerful in the earlier portion of that
period than in the latter, extended itself over Europe.
English people think that they have themselves been
the only persons who have experienced it. But this
is a great mistake. Germany forty and fifty years ago
felt it also to a large extent. And what was the great
predisposing cause of that tendency? Men had simply
become tired of the perpetual controversies which raged
within the churches and communions outside the sway
of Rome. They longed for the perpetual peace and
rest which seemed to them to exist within the Papal
domains, and they therefore flung themselves headlong
into the arms of a Church which promised them
relief from the exercise of that private judgment and
personal responsibility which had become for them a
crushing burden too heavy to be borne. And yet they
forgot several things, the sudden discovery of which has
sent many of these intellectual and spiritual cowards
in various directions, some back to their original homes,
some far away into the regions of scepticism and
spiritual darkness. They forgot, for instance, to inquire
how far the charmer who was alluring them from the
land of their nativity by specious promises could satisfy
the hopes she was raising. They hoped to get rid
of dissension and controversy; but did they? When
they had left their childhood's home and their father's
house and sought the house of the stranger, did they
find there halcyon peace? Nay, rather did they not
find there as bitter strife, nay, far more bitter strife, on
questions like the Immaculate Conception and Papal
Infallibility than ever raged at home? Did they not
find, and do they not find still, that no man and no
society can put a hook in the jaws of that Leviathan,
the right of private judgment, which none can tame or
restrain, and which asserts itself still in the Roman
Communion as vigorously as ever even now when the
decree of Papal infallibility has elevated that dogma
into the rank of those necessary to salvation? Else
whence come those dissensions and discussions between
minimisers and maximisers of that decree? How is it
that no two doctors or theologians will give precisely
the same explanation of it, and that, as we in Ireland
have seen, every curate fresh from Maynooth claims
to be able to express his own private judgment and
determination whether any special Papal decree or
bull is binding or not?The conduct of the Romish clergy in Ireland when the Papal
rescripts were issued concerning the Parnell tribute, boycotting, and the
Plan of the Campaign was an amusing commentary on their view of
Papal Infallibility. Any one who will take the trouble to search the
columns of the Freeman's Journal at that time will see how freely
curates even criticised the Papal infallible utterances. One of them
remarked to me at the time, "I think we have taught the old gentleman
a lesson he will not forget," referring to the Papal rescripts. Infallibility
is very good so long as it is with us, but when against us it becomes
very fallible. Such is clearly the view of Irish Roman Catholics.
This is one important point
forgotten by those who have sought the Roman
Communion because of its promises of freedom from
controversy. They forgot to ask, Can these promises
be fulfilled? And many of them, in the perpetual
unrest and strife in which they have found themselves
involved as much in their new home as in their old,
have proved the specious hopes held out to be the veriest
mirage of the Sahara desert. But this was not the only
omission of which such persons were guilty. They
forgot that, suppose the Roman Church could fulfil its
promises and prove a religious home of perfect peace
and freedom from diverging opinions, it would in that
case have been very unlike the primitive Church. The
Church of Antioch or of Jerusalem, enjoying the ministry
of Peter and John and James and Paul,—these pillar-men,
as St. Paul calls some of them,—was much more
like the Church of England of fifty years ago than any
society which offered perfect freedom from theological
strife; for the Churches of ancient times in their
earliest and purest days were swept by the winds of
controversy and tossed by the tempests of intellectual
and religious inquiry just like the Church of England,
and they took exactly the same measures for the safety of
the souls entrusted to them as she did. They depended
upon the power of free debate, of unlimited discussion,
of earnest prayer, of Christian charity to carry them
on till they reached that haven of rest where every
doubt and question shall be perfectly solved in the light
of the unveiled vision of God.
Then, again, we learn another important lesson from
a consideration of the persons who raised the trouble
at Antioch. The opening words of the fifteenth
chapter thus describes the authors of it: "Certain men
came down from Judæa." It is just the same with the
persons who a short time after compelled St. Peter to
stagger in his course at the same Antioch: "When
certain came from James, then St. Peter separated
himself, fearing them of the circumcision" (Gal. ii. 12).
Certain bigots, that is, of the Jewish party, came, pretending
to teach with the authority of the Mother
Church, and secretly disturbing weak minds. But
they were only pretenders, as the apostolic Epistle
expressly tells us: "Forasmuch as we have heard, that
certain which went out from us have troubled you with
words, subverting your souls; ... to whom we gave no
such commandment." These religious agitators, with
their narrow views about life and ritual, displayed the
characteristics of like-minded men ever since. They
secretly crept into the Church. There was a want of
manly honesty about them. Their pettiness of vision
and of thought affected their whole nature, their entire
conduct. They loved the by-ways of intrigue and
fraud, and therefore they hesitated not to claim an
authority which they had never received, invoking
apostolic names on behalf of a doctrine which the
apostles had never sanctioned. The characteristics
thus displayed by these Judaisers have ever been seen
in their legitimate descendants in every church and
society, East and West alike. Narrowness of mind,
pettiness and intolerance in thought, have ever brought
their own penalty with them and have ever been connected
with the same want of moral uprightness. The
miserable conception, the wretched fragment of truth
upon which such men seize, elevating it out of its due
place and rank, seems to destroy their sense of proportion,
and leads them to think it worth any lie which
they may tell, any breach of Christian charity of which
they may be guilty, any sacrifice of truth and honesty
which they may make on behalf of their beloved idol.
The Judaisers misrepresented religious truth, and in
doing so they misrepresented themselves, and sacrificed
the great interests of moral truth in order that they
might gain their ends.
IV. The distractions and controversies of Antioch
were overruled, however, by the Divine providence to
the greater glory of God. As the Judaisers continually
appealed to the authority of the Church at Jerusalem,
the brethren at Antioch determined to send to that
body and ask the opinion of the apostles and elders
upon this question. They therefore despatched "Paul
and Barnabas and certain other of them," among whom
was Titus, an uncircumcised Gentile convert, as a
deputation to represent their own views. When they
came to Jerusalem the Antiochene deputies held a
series of private conferences with the leading men of
Jerusalem. This we learn, not from the Acts of the
Apostles, but from St. Paul's independent narrative
in Galatians ii., identifying as we do the visit there
recorded with the visit narrated in Acts xv.The reader should consult what Mr. Findlay has written on this
point in his Galatians, chs. vi. and vii., pp. 92-112.
St. Paul
here exhibits all that tact and prudence we ever trace
in his character. He did not depend solely upon his
own authority, his reputation, his success. He felt
within himself the conscious guidance of the Divine
Spirit aiding and guiding a singularly clear and powerful
mind. Yet he disdained no legitimate precaution.
He knew that the presence and guidance of the Spirit
does not absolve a man anxious for the truth from
using all the means in his power to ensure its success.
He recognised that the truth, though it must finally
triumph, might be eclipsed or defeated for a time
through man's neglect and carelessness; and therefore
he engaged in a series of private conferences, explaining
difficulties, conciliating the support, and gaining
the assistance of the most influential members of the
Church, including, of course, "James, Cephas, and
John, who were reputed to be pillars."
Is there not something very modern in the glimpse
thus given us of the negotiations and private meetings
which preceded the formal meeting of the Apostolic
Council? Some persons may think that the presence
and power of the Holy Ghost must have superseded
all such human arrangements and forethought. But
the simple testimony of the Bible dispels at once all such
objections, and shows us that as the primitive Church
was just like the modern Church, torn with dissension,
swept with the winds and storms of controversy, so too
the divinely guided and inspired leaders of the Church
then took precisely the same human means to attain
their ends and carry out their views of truth as now
find place in the meetings of synods and convocations
and parliaments of the present time. The presence of
the Holy Ghost did not dispense with the necessity
of human exertions in the days of the apostles; and
surely we may, on the other hand, believe that similar
human exertions in our time may be quite consonant
with the presence of the Spirit in our modern assemblies,
overruling and guiding human plans and intrigues to
the honour of God and the blessing of man. After
these private conferences the apostles and elders came
together to consider the difficult subject laid before
them. And now many questions rise up which we can
only very briefly consider. The composition of this
Synod is one important point. Who sat in it, and who
debated there? It is quite clear, from the text of the
Acts, as to the persons who were present at this Synod.
The sixth verse says, "The apostles and the elders
were gathered together to consider of this matter";
the twelfth verse tells us that "all the multitude kept
silence, and hearkened unto Barnabas and Paul rehearsing
what signs and wonders God had wrought
among the Gentiles by them"; in the twenty-second
verse we read, "Then it seemed good to the apostles
and the elders, with the whole Church, to choose men out
of their company, and to send them to Antioch"; while,
finally, in the twenty-third verse we read the superscription
of the final decree of the Council, which ran
thus, "The apostles and the elder brethren unto the
brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and
Syria and Cilicia." It seems to me that any plain man
reading these verses would come to the conclusion that
the whole multitude, the great body of the Church in
Jerusalem, were present and took part in this assembly.The fifth verse states that after Paul had rehearsed the wonders
done among the Gentiles certain of the sect of the Pharisees rose up
saying, "It is needful to circumcise them." Some maintain that this
was in a missionary meeting before the Synod, but that this is no proof
that such laymen, if they were laymen, were allowed to raise the question
in the Synod. Of course the next verse states that "the apostles and
elders" came together to consider this matter; but it also states that
there was much questioning before St. Peter opened his mouth to speak
on the subject. Surely the much questioning must have been on the
part of the "certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed"!
A great battle indeed has raged round the words of
the Authorized Version of the twenty-third verse, "The
apostles and elders and brethren send greeting unto
the brethren which are of the Gentiles," which are otherwise
rendered in the Revised Version. The presence
or the absence of the "and" between elders and
brethren has formed the battle-ground between two
parties, the one upholding, the other opposing the right
of the laity to take part in Church synods and councils.
Upon a broad review of the whole affair this Apostolic
Assembly seems to me to have an important bearing
upon this point. There are various views involved.
Some persons think that none but bishops should take
part in Church synods; others think that none but
clergymen, spiritual persons, in the technical and legal
sense of the word "spiritual," should enter these assemblies,
specially when treating of questions touching
doctrine and discipline.It is a curious thing that three parties otherwise very much opposed
unite in this view: the extreme High Church party in England, the
Roman Catholic Church, and the Wesleyan Conference, which latter
body restrains all questions of doctrine and discipline to ministers alone
as rigorously as either of the others. The Presbyterian Assemblies are
in many respects open to the same charge, the elders who represent
the laity being ordained by imposition of hands as truly as the ministers
and signing the same doctrinal tests. I cannot say how far this may
be true of the Established Assembly in Scotland, but as far as the Free
Church and the Irish General Assemblies are concerned, I am bold to
say that no unordained layman sits in them. I was much amused some
time ago reading the charge of a Wesleyan President of Conference to
the newly ordained ministers of the Irish Conference, when he bid them
remember that Christ had entrusted to them alone the care of all
questions touching doctrine and discipline. See for the High Anglican
theory, which is just the same as the Wesleyan President's, Joyce's
Acts of the Church, A.D. 1531-1885, p. 12.
Looking at the subject from
the standpoint of the Apostolic Council, we cannot
agree with either party. We are certainly told of the
speeches of four individuals merely—Paul, Barnabas,
Peter, and James—to whom may be conceded the
position of bishops, and even more. But, then, it is
evident that the whole multitude of the Church was
present at this Synod, and took an active part in it.
We are expressly told (vv. 4 and 5): "When they were
come to Jerusalem, they were received of the Church
and the apostles and the elders.... But there rose
up certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed,
saying, It is needful to circumcise them." This indeed
happened at the first meeting of the Church held to
receive the Antiochene deputation when they arrived.
But there does not seem to have been any difference
between the constitution and authority of the first
and second meetings. Both were what we should
call Ecclesiastical Assemblies. Laymen joined in the
discussions of the first, and doubtless laymen joined in
the discussions and much questioning of the second.
There is not indeed a hint which would lead us to
conclude that the Pharisees, who rose up and argued on
behalf of the binding character of the law of Moses, held
any spiritual office whatsoever. So far as the sacred
text puts it, they may have been laymen pure and
simple, such as were the ordinary Pharisees. I cannot,
indeed, see how any member of the Church of England
can consistently maintain either from Holy Scripture,
ancient ecclesiastical history, or the history of his
own Church, that laymen are quite shut out from
councils debating questions touching Christian faith,
and that their consideration must be limited to bishops,
or at least clergymen alone. The Apostolic Church
seems to have admitted the freest discussion. The
General Councils most certainly tolerated very considerable
lay interference. The Emperor Constantine,
though not even baptized, obtruded much of his
presence and exercised much of his influence upon the
great Nicene Council. Why even down to the sixteenth
century, till the Tridentine Council, the ambassadors
of the great Christian Powers of Europe sat in
Church synods as representing the laity; and it was
only in the Council of the Vatican, which met in 1870,
that even the Roman Catholic Church formally denied
the right of the people to exercise a certain influence
in the determination of questions touching faith and
discipline by the exclusion of the ambassadors who
had in every previous council held a certain defined
place. While again, when we come to the history of
the Church of England, we find that the celebrated
Hooker, the vindicator of its Church polity, expressly
defended the royal supremacy as exercised within that
Church on the ground that the king represented by
delegation the vast body of the laity, who through him
exercised a real influence upon all questions, whether
of doctrine or discipline. I feel a personal interest in
this question, because one of the charges most freely
hurled against the Church of Ireland is this, that she
has admitted laymen to discussions and votes concerning
such questions. I cannot see how consistently
with her past history as an established Church she
could have done otherwise. I cannot see how the
Church of England, if she comes in the future to be disestablished,
can do otherwise. That Church has always
admitted a vast amount of lay interference, even prior
to the Reformation, and still more since that important
event. Extreme men may scoff at those branches of their
own Communion which have admitted laymen to vote
in Church synods upon all questions whatsoever; but
they forget when doing so that statements and decrees
most dear to themselves bear manifest traces of far
more extreme lay intervention. The Ornaments Rubric,
standing before the order for Morning Prayer, is a
striking evidence of this. It is dear to the hearts of
many, because it orders the use of eucharistic vestments
and the preservation of the chancels in the
ancient style; but on what grounds does it do so? Let
the precise words of the rubric be the answer: "Here
it is to be noted that such ornaments of the Church
and of the ministers thereof, at all times of their
ministration, shall be retained, and be in use, as were
in this Church of England, by the authority of Parliament,
in the second year of the reign of King Edward
the Sixth." Objections to the determinations, rules,
and canons of the Irish Church Synod might have some
weight did they profess, as this rubric does, to have
been ordained and imposed by the order of laymen
alone. But when the bishops of a Church have an
independent vote, the clergy an independent vote, the
free and independent vote of the laity is totally
powerless by itself to introduce any novelty, and is only
powerful to prevent change in the ancient order. I do
not feel bound to defend some ill-judged expressions
and foolish speeches which some lay representatives
may have made in the Irish Church Synod as again no
member of the Church of England need trouble himself
to defend some rash speeches made in Parliament on
Church topics. In the first moments of unaccustomed
freedom Irish laymen did and said some rash things,
and, overawing the clergy by their fierce expressions,
may have caused the introduction of some hasty and
ill-advised measures. But sure I am that every sincere
member of the Church to which I belong will agree
that the admission of the lay representatives to a free
discussion and free vote upon every topic has had a
marvellous influence in broadening their conceptions
of Scripture truth and deepening their affections and
attachment to their Mother Church which has treated
and trusted them thus generously.I may perhaps be allowed to refer to a little tract of my own on
this topic published at the time, on "The Work of the Laity in the
Church of Ireland," as embodying the principles of Hooker applied to
modern times and needs.
V. The proceedings of the Apostolic Synod next
demand our attention. The account which has been
handed down is doubtless a mere outline of what actually
happened. We are not told anything concerning the
opening of the Assembly or how the discussion was
begun. St. Luke was intent merely on setting forth
the main gist of affairs, and therefore he reports but
two speeches and tells of two others. Some Christian
Pharisee having put forward his objections to the
position occupied by the Gentile converts, St. Peter
arose, as was natural, he having been the person
through whose action the present discussion and
trouble had originated. St. Peter's speech is marked
on this occasion by the same want of assumption of
any higher authority than belonged to his brethren
which we have noted before when objections were
taken to his dealings with Cornelius. His speech
claims nothing for himself, does not even quote the
Scriptures of the Old Testament, but simply repeats in
a concise shape the story of the conversion of Cornelius,
points out that God put no difference between Jew and
Gentile, suggesting that if God had put no difference
between them why should man dare to do so, and
then ends with proclaiming the great doctrine of grace
that men, whether Jews or Gentiles, are saved through
faith in Christ alone, which purifies their hearts and
lives. After Peter's speech there arose James the
Lord's brother, who from ancient times has been
regarded as the first bishop of Jerusalem, and who
most certainly, from the various references to him
both here and elsewhere in the Acts (chs. xii. 17,
xxi. 18) and in the Epistle to the Galatians, seems to
have occupied the supreme place in that Church.
James was a striking figure. There is a long account
of him left us by Hegesippus, a very ancient Church
historian, who bordered on apostolic times, and now
preserved for us in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius,
ii., 23. There he is described as an ascetic and a
Nazarite, like John the Baptist, from his earliest childhood.
"He drank neither wine nor fermented liquors,
and abstained from animal food. A razor never came
upon his head, he never anointed with oil, and never
used the bath. He alone was allowed to enter the
sanctuary. He never wore woollen, but linen garments.
He was in the habit of entering the Temple alone, and
was often found upon his bended knees, and interceding
for the forgiveness of the people; so that his knees
became as hard as camels', in consequence of his
habitual supplication and kneeling before God. And
indeed on account of his exceeding great piety he was
called the Just and Oblias, which signifies the Rampart
of the People." This description is the explanation of
the power and authority of James the Just in the
Apostolic Assembly. He was a strict legalist himself.
He desired no freedom for his own share, but rejoiced
in observances and restrictions far beyond the common
lot of the Jews. When such a man pronounced
against the attempt made to impose circumcision and
the law as a necessary condition of salvation, the
Judaisers must have felt that their cause was lost.
St. James expressed his views in no uncertain terms.
He begins by referring to St. Peter's speech and the
conversion of Cornelius. He then proceeds to show
how the prophets foretold the ingathering of the
Gentiles, quoting a passage (Amos ix. 11, 12) which
the Jewish expositors themselves applied to the Messiah.
His method of Scriptural interpretation is exactly the
same as that of St. Paul and St. Peter. It is very
different from ours, but it was the universal method of
his day; and when we wish to arrive at the meaning of
the Scriptures, or for that matter of any work, we ought
to strive and place ourselves at the standpoint and
amid the circumstances of the writers and actors. The
prophet Amos speaks of the tabernacle of David as
fallen down. The rebuilding of it is then foretold, and
James sees in the conversion of the Gentiles this predicted
rebuilding. He then pronounces in the most
decided language against "troubling those who from
among the Gentiles are turned to God" in the matter
of legal observances, laying down at the same time the
concessions which should be demanded from the Gentiles
so as not to cause offence to their Jewish brethren.
The sentence thus authoritatively pronounced by the
strictest Jewish Christian was naturally adopted by the
Apostolic Synod, and they wrote a letter to the disciples
in Syria and Cilicia embodying their decision, which for
a time settled the controversy which had been raised.
This epistle begins by disclaiming utterly and at once
the agitators who had gone forth to Antioch and had
raised the disturbances. It declared that circumcision
was unnecessary for the Gentile converts. This was
the great point upon which St. Paul was most anxious.
He had no objection, as we have already said, to the
Jews observing their legal rites and ceremonies, but he
was totally opposed to the Gentiles coming under any
such rule as a thing necessary to salvation. The
epistle then proceeds to lay down certain concessions
which the Gentiles should in turn make. They should
abstain from meats offered in sacrifice unto idols, from
blood, from things strangled, and from fornication; all
of them points upon which the public opinion of the
Gentiles laid no stress, but which were most abhorrent
to a true Jew. The decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem,
as the inspired historian expressly terms them in
ch. xvi. 4, were mere temporary expedients. They
determined indeed one important question, that circumcision
should not be imposed on the Gentiles—that
Judaism, in fact, was not in and by itself a saving
dispensation; but left unsolved many other questions,
even touching this very subject of circumcision and the
Jewish law, which had afterwards to be debated and
threshed out, as St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians
proves. But, turning our eyes from the obsolete
controversy which evoked the Apostolic Epistle, and
viewing the subject from a wider and a modern standpoint,
we may say that the decrees of this primitive
Synod narrated in this typical history bestow their
sanction upon the great principles of prudence, wisdom,
and growth in the Divine life and in Church work. It
was with the apostles themselves as with the Church
ever since. Apostles even must not make haste, but
must be contented to wait upon the developments of
God's providence. Perfection is an excellent thing, but
then perfection cannot be attained at once. Here a
little and there a little is the Divine law under the New
as under the Old Dispensation. Truth is the fairest
and most excellent of all possessions, but the advocates
of truth must not expect it to be grasped in all its
bearings by all sorts and conditions of men at one and
the same time. They must be content, as St. Paul was,
if one step be taken at a time; if progress be in the
right and not in the wrong direction; and must be
willing to concede much to the feelings and long-descended
prejudices of short-sighted human nature.
CHAPTER XI.
APOSTOLIC QUARRELS AND THE SECOND TOUR.
"And after some days Paul said unto Barnabas, Let us return now
and visit the brethren in every city wherein we proclaimed the word of
the Lord, and see how they fare.... And there arose a sharp contention
between them, so that they parted asunder one from the other."—Acts
xv. 36, 39.
"And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having
been forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia....
They came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the
night; There was a man of Macedonia standing, beseeching him, and
saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us."—Acts xvi. 6, 8, 9.
The second missionary tour of St. Paul now claims
our attention, specially because it involves the
first proclamation of Christianity by an apostle within
the boundaries of Europe. The course of the narrative
up to this will show that any Christian effort in Europe
by an apostle, St. Peter or any one else prior to St.
Paul's work, was almost impossible. To the Twelve
and to men like-minded with them, it must have seemed
a daring innovation to bring the gospel message directly
to bear upon the masses of Gentile paganism. Men
of conservative minds like the Twelve doubtless restrained
their own efforts up to the time of St. Paul's
second tour within the bounds of Israel according to
the flesh in Palestine and the neighbouring lands,
finding there an ample field upon which to exercise
their diligence. And then when we turn to St. Paul
and St. Barnabas, who had dared to realise the freeness
and fulness of the gospel message, we shall see that
the Syrian Antioch and Syria itself and Asia Minor
had hitherto afforded to them scope quite sufficient to
engage their utmost attention. A few moments' reflection
upon the circumstances of the primitive Christian
Church and the developments through which Apostolic
Christianity passed are quite sufficient to dispel all
such fabulous incrustations upon the original record as
those involved in St. Peter's episcopate at Antioch or
his lengthened rule over the Church at Rome. If the
latter story was to be accepted, St. Peter must have
been Bishop of Rome long before a mission was despatched
to the Gentiles from Antioch, if not even
before the vision was seen at Joppa by St. Peter when
the admission of the Gentiles to the Church was first
authorised under any terms whatsoever.St. Jerome places the beginning of St. Peter's twenty-five years'
episcopate at Rome in A.D. 42—that is, two years before Herod's
attempt to put St. Peter to death. This idea has been worked up into
an elaborate story, which will be found duly set forth in great detail
in Fleury's Ecclesiastical History, Book I., where St. Peter is made
Bishop of Rome prior to the death of Herod Agrippa, whence he
despatches disciples to found Churches in various towns of Italy, and
whence he writes his first Epistle to the Jews of the Dispersion in Asia
Minor. A simple statement of this is sufficient refutation for any one
who knows the bare text of the Acts. There seems, however, no reason
whatsoever to doubt the ancient tradition which fixes the martyrdom of
St. Peter at Rome. See on the whole subject the interesting article
on St. Peter in Schaff's Encyclopædia of Theology, p. 1814. In the
Acta Sanctorum, published by the Bollandists, April, vol. iii., p. 346,
we are told that St. Peter despatched St. Mark to found the Church
of Aquileia, which claims the next rank to the Church of Rome among
the Italian sees. In fact, the Bishops of Aquileia regarded themselves
as of such importance, owing to their apostolic origin, that they headed
a separation from the Church of Rome, which lasted from about A.D.
570 to 700. See Robertson's History of the Church, ii., p. 306, and the
authorities there quoted, on this interesting anticipation of the Reformation
in England.
In fact, it
would be impossible to fit the actions of St. Peter into
any scheme whatsoever, if we bring him to Rome and
make him bishop there for twenty-five years beginning
at the year 42, the time usually assigned by Roman
Catholic historians. It is hard enough to frame a
hypothetical scheme, which will find a due and fitting
place for the various recorded actions of St. Peter,
quite apart from any supposed Roman episcopate
lasting over such an extended period. St. Peter and
St. Paul had, for instance, a dispute at Antioch of which
we read much in the second chapter of the Galatian
Epistle. Where shall we fix that dispute? Some
place it during the interval between the Synod at
Jerusalem and the second missionary tour of which
we now propose to treat. Others place it at the conclusion
of that tour, when St. Paul was resting at
Antioch for a little after the work of that second
journey. As we are not writing the life of St. Paul,
but simply commenting upon the narratives of his
labours as told in the Acts, we must be content to refer
to the Lives of St. Paul by Conybeare and Howson,
and Archdeacon Farrar, and to Bishop Lightfoot's
Galatians, all of whom place this quarrel before the
second tour, and to Mr. Findlay's Galatians in our
own series, who upholds the other view. Supposing,
however, that we take the former view in deference to
the weighty authorities just mentioned, we then find
that there were two serious quarrels which must for
a time have marred the unity and Christian concord
of the Antiochene Church.
The reproof of St. Peter by St. Paul for his dissimulation
was made on a public occasion before the whole
Church. It must have caused considerable excitement
and discussion, and raised much human feeling in
Antioch. Barnabas too, the chosen friend and companion
of St. Paul, was involved in the matter, and
must have felt himself condemned in the strong language
addressed to St. Peter. This may have caused
for a time a certain amount of estrangement between
the various parties. A close study of the Acts of the
Apostles dispels at once the notion men would fain
cherish, that the apostles and the early Christians
lived just like angels without any trace of human
passion or discord. The apostles had their differences
and misunderstandings very like our own. Hot tempers
and subsequent coolnesses arose, and produced
evil results between men entrusted with the very
highest offices, and paved the way, as quarrels always
do, for fresh disturbances at some future time. So it
was at Antioch, where the public reproof of St. Peter
by St. Paul involved St. Barnabas, and may have left
traces upon the gentle soul of the Son of Consolation
which were not wholly eradicated by the time that a
new source of trouble arose.
The ministry of St. Paul at Antioch was prolonged
for some time after the Jerusalem Synod, and then the
Holy Ghost again impelled him to return and visit all
the Churches which he had founded in Cyprus and
Asia Minor. He recognised the necessity for supervision,
support, and guidance as far as the new converts
were concerned. The seed might be from heaven and
the work might be God's own, but still human effort
must take its share and do its duty, or else the work
may fail and the good seed never attain perfection.
St. Paul therefore proposed to Barnabas a second joint
mission, intending to visit "the brethren in every city
wherein they had proclaimed the word of the Lord."
Barnabas desired to take with them his kinsman Mark,
but Paul, remembering his weakness and defection on
their previous journey, would have nothing to say to the
young man. Then there arose a sharp contention between
them, or, as the original expression is, there arose
a paroxysm between the apostles, so that the loving
Christian workers and friends of bygone years, "men
who had hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ," separated the one from the other, and
worked from henceforth in widely different localities.
I. There are few portions of the Acts more fruitful
in spiritual instruction, or teeming with more abundant
lessons, or richer in application to present difficulties,
than this very incident. Let us note a few of them.
One thought, for instance, which occurs at once to any
reflecting mind is this: what an extraordinary thing it
is that two such holy and devoted men as Paul and
Barnabas should have had a quarrel at all; and when
they did quarrel, would it not have been far better to
have hushed the matter up and never have let the
world know anything at all about it? Now I do not
say that it is well for Christian people always to
proclaim aloud and tell the world at large all about
the various unpleasant circumstances of their lives,
their quarrels, their misunderstandings, their personal
failings and backslidings. Life would be simply intolerable
did we live always, at all times, and under
all circumstances beneath the full glare of publicity.
Personal quarrels too, family jars and bickerings have a
rapid tendency to heal themselves, if kept in the gloom,
the soft, toned, shaded light of retirement. They
have an unhappy tendency to harden and perpetuate
themselves when dragged beneath the fierce light of
public opinion and the outside world. Yet it is well
for the Church at large that such a record has been
left for us of the fact that the quarrel between Paul
and Barnabas waxed so fierce that they departed the
one from the other, to teach us what we are apt to
forget, the true character of the apostles. Human
nature is intensely inclined to idolatry. One idol may
be knocked down, but as soon as it is displaced the
heart straightway sets to work to erect another idol in
its stead, and men have been ready to make idols of
the apostles. They have been ready to imagine them
supernatural characters, tainted with no sin, tempted
by no passion, weakened by no infirmity. If these
incidents had not been recorded—the quarrel with
Peter and the quarrel with Barnabas—we should have
been apt to forget that the apostles were men of like
passions with ourselves, and thus to lose the full force—the
bracing, stimulating force—of such exhortations
as that delivered by St. Paul when he said to a
primitive Church, "Follow me, as I, a poor, weak,
failing, passionate man, have followed Christ." We
have the thorough humanity of the apostles vigorously
presented and enforced in this passage. There is no
suppression of weak points, no accentuation of strong
points, no hiding of defects and weaknesses, no dwelling
upon virtues and graces. We have the apostles
presented at times vigorous, united, harmonious; at
other times weak, timorous, and cowardly.
Again, we note that this passage not only shows us
the human frailties and weaknesses which marked the
apostles, and found a place in characters and persons
called to the very highest places; it has also a lesson
for the Church of all time in the circumstances which
led to the quarrel between Paul and Barnabas. We
do well to mark carefully that Antioch saw two such
quarrels, the one of which, as we have already pointed
out, may have had something to say to the other.
The quarrel between St. Paul and St. Peter indeed
has a history which strikingly illustrates this tendency
of which we have just now spoken. Some expositors,
jealous of the good fame and reputation and temper
of the apostles, have explained the quarrel at Antioch
between St. Paul and St. Peter as not having been a
real quarrel at all, but an edifying piece of acting, a
dispute got up between the apostles to enforce and
proclaim the freedom of the Gentiles, a mere piece of
knavery and deception utterly foreign to such a truth-loving
character as was St. Paul's."Origen started this theory that the dispute between Peter and Paul
was simulated; in other words, being of one mind in the matter they
got up this scene that St. Paul might the more effectually condemn the
Judaisers through the chief of the apostles, who, acknowledging the
justice of the rebuke, set them an example of submission. Thus he,
in fact, substituted the much graver charge of dishonesty against both
apostles in order to exculpate the one from the comparatively venial
offence of moral cowardice and inconsistency. Nevertheless this view
commended itself to a large number of subsequent writers, and for some
time may be said to have reigned supreme." (Lightfoot's Galatians,
p. 129.) St. Chrysostom and St. Jerome maintained the same view,
while St. Augustine opposed it. The epistles exchanged between
Jerome and Augustine on this topic are very interesting. They may
be most easily perused in Augustine's Epistles, vol. i., pp. 131 and 280,
as translated in T. & T. Clark's series (Edinburgh, 1872).
It is interesting,
however, to note as manifesting their natural characteristics,
which were not destroyed, but merely elevated,
purified, and sanctified by Divine grace, that the apostles
Paul and Barnabas quarrelled about a purely personal
matter. They had finished their first missionary tour
on which they had been accompanied by St. Mark, who
had acted as their attendant or servant, carrying, we
may suppose, their luggage, and discharging all the
subordinate offices such service might involve. The
labour and toil and personal danger incident to such
a career were too much for the young man. So with
all the fickleness, the weakness, the want of strong
definite purpose we often find in young people, he
abandoned his work simply because it involved the
exercise of a certain amount of self-sacrifice. And now,
when Paul and Barnabas are setting out again, and
Barnabas wishes to take the same favourite relative
with them,Mark is usually regarded as nephew to Barnabas. This opinion is
grounded upon Col. iv. 10, as translated in the Authorised Version.
They were, however, cousins merely. The Revised Version translates
Col. iv. 10 thus: "Mark, the cousin of Barnabas." Dr. Lightfoot, in
his Colossians, p. 236, has a long note showing that the word used
about St. Mark in that passage is ὁ ἀνεψιός, which always means cousin
german: see Thayer's edition of Grimm's Lexicon of New Testament, s.v.
St. Paul naturally objects, and then the
bitter passionate quarrel ensues. St. Paul just experienced
here what we all must more or less experience,
the crosses and trials of public life, if we wish to
pass through that life with a good conscience. Public
life, I say—and I mean thereby not political life, which
alone we usually dignify by that name, but the ordinary
life which every man and every woman amongst us
must live as we go in and out and discharge our duties
amid our fellow-men,—public life, the life we live once
we leave our closet communion with God in the early
morning till we return thereto in the eventide, is in all
its departments most trying. It is trying to temper,
and it is trying to principle, and no one can hope to pass
through it without serious and grievous temptations.
I do not wonder that men have often felt, as the old
Eastern monks did, that salvation was more easily won
in solitude than in living and working amid the busy
haunts of men where bad temper and hot words so
often conspire to make one return home from a hard
day's work feeling miserable within on account of
repeated falls and shortcomings. Shall we then act as
they did? Shall we shut out the world completely
and cease to take any part in a struggle which seems
to tell so disastrously upon the equable calm of our
spiritual life? Nay indeed, for such a course would
be unworthy a soldier of the Cross, and very unlike the
example shown by the blessed apostle St. Paul, who
had to battle not only against others, but had also to
battle against himself and his own passionate nature,
and was crowned as a victor, not because he ran away,
but because he conquered through the grace of Christ.
And now it is well that we should note the special
trials he had to endure. He had to fight against the
spirit of cowardly self-indulgence in others, and he had
to fight against the spirit of jobbery. These things
indeed caused the rupture in the apostolic friendship.
St. Barnabas, apostle though he was, thought far more
of the interests of his cousin than of the interests of
Christ's mission. St. Paul with his devotion to Christ
may have been a little intolerant of the weakness of
youth, but he rightly judged that one who had proved
untrustworthy before should not be rapidly and at once
trusted again. And St. Paul was thoroughly right, and
has left a very useful and practical example. Many
young men among us are like St. Mark. The St. Marks
of our own day are a very numerous class. They have
no respect for their engagements. They will undertake
work and allow themselves to be calculated upon, and
arrangements to be made accordingly. But then comes
the stress of action, and their place is found wanting,
and the work undertaken by them is found undone.
And then they wonder and complain that their lives are
unsuccessful, and that men and women who are in
earnest will not trust or employ them in the future!
These are the men who are the social wrecks in life.
They proclaim loudly in streets and highways the hard
treatment which they have received. They tell forth
their own misery, and speak as if they were the most
deserving and at the same time the most ill-treated of
men; and yet they are but reaping as they have sown,
and their failures and their misfortunes are only the
due and fitting rewards of their want of earnestness,
diligence, and self-denial. To the young this episode
proclaims aloud: Respect your engagements, regard
public employments as solemn contracts in God's sight.
Take pains with your work. Be willing to endure any
trouble for its sake. There is no such thing as genius
in ordinary life. Genius has been well defined as an
infinite capacity for taking pains. And thus avoid the
miserable weakness of St. Mark, who fled from his
work because it entailed trouble and self-denial on his
part.
Then, again, we view St. Paul with admiration
because he withstood the spirit of jobbery when it
displayed itself even in a saint. Barnabas in plain
language wished to perpetrate a job in favour of a
member of his family, and St. Paul withstood him.
And how often since has the same spirit thus displayed
itself to the injury of God's cause! Let us note how
the case stood. St. Barnabas was a good pious man
of very strong emotional feelings. But he allowed
himself to be guided, as pious people often do, by
their emotions, affections, prejudices, not by their
reason and judgment. With such men when their
affections come into play jobbery is the most natural
thing in the world. It is the very breath of their
nostrils. It is the atmosphere in which they revel.
Barnabas loved his cousin John Mark, with strong,
powerful, absorbing love, and that emotion blinded
Barnabas to Mark's faults, and led him on his behalf
to quarrel with his firmer, wiser, and more vigorous
friend. Jobbery is a vice peculiar to no age and to
no profession. It flourishes in the most religious as
in the most worldly circles. In religious circles it
often takes the most sickening forms, when miserable,
narrow selfishness assumes the garb and adopts the
language of Christian piety. St. Paul's action proclaims
to Christian men a very needful lesson. It says, in
fact, Set your faces against jobbery of every kind.
Regard power, influence, patronage as a sacred trust.
Permit not fear, affection, or party spirit to blind your
eyes or prejudice your judgment against real merit;
so shall you be following in the footsteps of the great
Apostle of the Gentiles, with his heroic championship
of that which was righteous and true, and of One higher
still, for thus you shall be following the Master's own
example, whose highest praise was this: "He loved
righteousness, and hated iniquity."The sequel of this story as made known through the Epistles is
most interesting. The quarrel between St. Paul and St. Barnabas
was not a permanent one. Five years or so later, when writing the
1st Epistle to the Corinthians (ix. 6), St. Paul associates himself with
Barnabas as if they were companions once again: "Or I only, and
Barnabas, have we not a right to forbear working?" It is interesting
too to trace the change that came in subsequent years over the relations
between St. Paul and St. Mark as revealed by the Epistles. About
the year 50 St. Paul treated Mark sternly, and that same sternness
was most beneficial to the young man. It was just what his character
wanted. Fifteen years passed over both their heads, and the scene
was then very different. In Col. iv. 10, 11 Mark is commended
unto the Church of Colossæ as one of the few Jewish Christians who
had been a comfort in his bonds to the prisoner of Jesus Christ; while
again, when on the point of his departure, in the 2nd Epistle to
Timothy, iv. 11, the once weak disciple is most touchingly and lovingly
remembered: "Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him
with thee: for he is useful to me for ministering." St. Mark, after
being the cause of this quarrel, appears no more in the Acts. The
traditions about him will be found collected in English in Nelson's
Fasts and Festivals, under his Feast Day, April 25th; or better still in
Cave's Lives of the Apostles, pp. 217-23 (London, 1684); and in Latin
in the Acta Sanctorum, Ed. Boll., April, iii., 344-58. Cave and the
Bollandists give all the traditions about his foundation of the Church
of Alexandria, the patriarchs of which still claim descent from him.
Some historical writers have maintained, that they used to be ordained
by the imposition of St. Mark's dead hand. This seems a mistake,
however. Mr. Butler, in his Coptic Churches of Egypt, vol. ii., p. 311,
says that the newly ordained Patriarch of Alexandria used to hold
St. Mark's head in his hands during the celebration of Mass after
his consecration. (See also Coptic Church in Dict. Christ. Biog.).
Renaudot, a learned French writer, published a history of the Alexandrian
Patriarchate in 1713, which industriously collects all the details
of St. Mark's life true and imaginary alike. St. Mark's supposed body
was carried to Venice from Alexandria about A.D. 1235.
We have now bestowed a lengthened notice upon
this quarrel, because it corrects a very mistaken notion
about the apostles, and shows us how thoroughly
natural and human, how very like our own, was the
everyday life of the primitive Church. It takes away
the false halo of infallibility and impeccability with
which we are apt to invest the apostles, making us
view them as real, fallible, weak, sinful men like ourselves,It is curious to note how widespread is this notion that the apostles
always possessed supernatural powers in virtue of their office, enabling
them, for instance, infallibly to read men's hearts and thoughts. In a
letter in the Church Times for August 19th, 1892, from an eminent
dignitary of the Church of England, I noticed an example of it. He
was discussing a question with which I have nothing to say, and in doing
so writes: "The commission given by our Lord to the apostles cannot
be used in precisely the same sense by ourselves. The apostles' powers
were miraculous.... They could tell whether the condition of the
soul of the recipient of their gifts was right or the reverse in a manner
not possible for us.... They could perceive and gauge faith in a way
that is not our prerogative.... It is clear that the apostles could have
perceived whether repentance and faith were genuine." I do not deny
that God sometimes made such special revelations to them. But quâ
apostles they had no such gift of discerning spirits, else why did Peter
baptize Simon Magus, or St. Paul and Barnabas take Mark with them
at all, or St. Paul tolerate Demas even for a moment, or why did he not
indicate the "grievous wolves" who should ravage the Ephesian Church
after his departure?
and thereby exalts the power of that grace
which made them so eminent in Christian character,
so abundant in Christian labours. Let us now apply
ourselves to trace the course of St. Paul's second
tour.
The effect of the quarrel between the friends was
that St. Paul took Silas and St. Barnabas took Mark, and
they separated; the latter going to Cyprus, the native
country of Barnabas, while Paul and Silas devoted
themselves to Syria and Asia Minor and their Churches.
The division between these holy men became thus
doubly profitable to the Church of Christ. It is perpetually
profitable, by way of warning and example,
as we have just now shown; and then it became profitable
because it led to two distinct missions being carried
on, the one in the island of Cyprus, the other on the
continent of Asia. The wrath of man is thus again
overruled to the greater glory of God, and human
weakness is made to promote the interests of the
gospel. We read, too, "they parted asunder the one
from the other." How very differently they acted
from the manner in which modern Christians do!
Their difference in opinion did not lead them to depart
into exactly the same district, and there pursue a policy
of opposition the one against the other. They sought
rather districts widely separated, where their social
differences could have no effect upon the cause they
both loved. How very differently modern Christians
act, and how very disastrous the consequent results!
How very scandalous, how very injurious to Christ's
cause, when Christian missionaries of different communions
appear warring one with another in face of
the pagan world! Surely the world of paganism is wide
enough and large enough to afford scope for the utmost
efforts of all Christians without European Christendom
exporting its divisions and quarrels to afford matter
for mockery to scoffing idolaters! We have heard
lately a great deal about the differences between
Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries in Central
Africa, terminating in war and bloodshed and in the
most miserable recriminations threatening the peace and
welfare of the nations of Europe. Surely there must
have been an error of judgment somewhere or another
in this case, and Africa must be ample enough to
afford abundant room for the independent action of the
largest bodies of missionaries without resorting to
armed conflicts which recall the religious wars between
the Roman Catholic and Protestant Cantons of
Switzerland! With the subsequent labours of Barnabas
we have nothing to do, as he now disappears from
the Acts of the Apostles,Ecclesiastical history and tradition tell us more about Barnabas and
Cyprus. They represent Barnabas as the Apostle of the Church of
Cyprus. This idea played a prominent part in the fifth century. The
ancient connection between Antioch and Cyprus was then kept up,
and the patriarchs of Antioch wished to subject the Archbishop and
Bishops of Cyprus to their rule. The Seventh Session of the Great
Council of Ephesus, which dealt with the Nestorian controversy, was
engaged with this question of Cyprus. The session was held on July
31st, 431. The Cypriote bishops claimed that they had been free from
the dominion of Antioch back to apostolic times, and the Council confirmed
their freedom: see Mansi's Councils, iv., 1465-1470; Hefele's
Councils (T. & T. Clark's translation), vol. ii., p. 72. Forty years
later the same claim was advanced by the celebrated Peter the Fuller,
Patriarch of Antioch, and resisted by Anthemius, Bishop of Salamis or
Constantia. The bishops of Cyprus were again successful, owing to the
timely discovery of the body of Barnabas lying in a tomb with a copy
of the Gospel of St. Matthew upon his heart, which, according to the
opinion of the times, settled the point in dispute: see Anthemius in
the Dict. Christ. Biog., vol. i., p. 118. Cave, in his Apostolici, or Lives
of the Fathers, pp. 33-43, diligently collects every scrap of information
about St. Barnabas. An early tradition found in the Clementine Recognitions,
lib. i., cap. 7, and dating from about A.D. 200, makes him the
first apostle to preach in Rome, preceding St. Peter himself, against
which theory as trenching on St. Peter's prerogatives Cardinal Baronius
disputes very vigorously in his Annals, A.D. 51, lii.-liv.; see also Dr.
Salmon on Clementine Literature in the Dict. Christ. Biog., i., 568.
though it would appear from
a reference by St. Paul—1 Cor. ix. 6, "Or I only, and
Barnabas, have we not a right to forbear working?"—as
if at that time four or five years after the quarrel
they were again labouring together at Ephesus, where
First Corinthians was written, or else why should
Barnabas be mentioned in that connexion at all?
Let us now briefly indicate the course of St. Paul's
labours during the next three years, as his second
missionary tour must have extended over at least that
space of time. St. Paul and his companion Silas
left Antioch amid the prayers of the whole Church.
Evidently the brethren viewed Paul's conduct with approbation,
and accompanied him therefore with fervent
supplications for success in his self-denying labours.
He proceeded by land into Cilicia and Asia Minor,
and wherever he went he delivered the apostolic decree
in order that he might counteract the workings of the
Judaisers. This decree served a twofold purpose. It
relieved the minds of the Gentile brethren with respect
to the law and its observances, and it also showed to
them that the Jerusalem Church and apostles recognised
the Divine authority and apostolate of St. Paul himself,
which these "false brethren" from Jerusalem had already
assailed, as they did four or five years later both in
Galatia and at Corinth. We know not what special
towns St. Paul visited in Cilicia, but we may be sure
that the Church of Tarsus, his native place, where in
the first fervour of his conversion he had already
laboured for a considerable period, must have received
a visit from him. We may be certain that his opponents
would not leave such an important town unvisited,
and we may be equally certain that St. Paul, who,
as his Epistles show, was always keenly alive to the
opinion of his converts with respect to his apostolic
authority, would have been specially anxious to let
his fellow townsmen at Tarsus see that he was no
unauthorised or false teacher, but that the Jerusalem
Church recognised his work and teaching in the
amplest manner.
Starting then anew from Tarsus, Paul and Silas set
out upon an enormous journey, penetrating, as few
modern travellers even now do, from the south-eastern
extremity of Asia Minor to the north-western coast, a
journey which, with its necessarily prolonged delays,
must have taken them at least a year and a half. St.
Paul seems to have carefully availed himself of the
Roman road system. We are merely given the very
barest outline of the course which he pursued, but then
when we take up the index maps of Asia Minor inserted
in Ramsay's Historical Geography of Asia Minor, showing
the road systems at various periods, we see that a
great Roman road followed the very route which St.
Paul took. It started from Tarsus and passed to Derbe,
whence of course the road to Lystra, Iconium, and
Antioch had already been traversed by St. Paul.The record of a very similar journey performed five years ago in
July 1887 may be read in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for April
1890. Mr. D. G. Hogarth, who writes the story, travelled on that occasion
from the borders of Galatia to the Cilician coast. His narrative gives
a vivid picture of the scenery over the Taurus Range as St. Paul must
have seen it on this second missionary tour, and of the difficulties by
which he must have been surrounded. Cf. Ramsay's Historical Geography
of Asia Minor, p. 362.
He
must have made lengthened visits to all these places,
as he had much to do and much to teach. He had to
expound the decree of the Apostolic Council, to explain
Christian truth, to correct the errors and abuses which
were daily creeping in, and to enlarge the organisation
of the Christian Church by fresh ordinations. Take the
case of Timothy as an example of the trouble St. Paul
must have experienced. He came to Derbe, where he
first found some of the converts made on his earlier
tour; whence he passed to Lystra, where he met
Timothy, whose acquaintance he had doubtless made
on his first journey. He was the son of a Jewess,
though his father was a Gentile. St. Paul took and
circumcised him to conciliate the Jews. The Apostle
must have bestowed a great deal of trouble on this
point alone, explaining to the Gentile portion of the
Christian community the principles on which he acted
and their perfect consistency with his own conduct
at Jerusalem and his advocacy of Gentile freedom from
the law. Then he ordained him. This we do not
learn from the Acts, but from St. Paul's Epistles to
Timothy. The Acts simply says of Timothy, "Him
would Paul have to go forth with him." But then
when we turn to the Epistles written to Timothy, we
find that it was not as an ordinary companion that
Timothy was taken. He went forth as St. Paul himself
had gone forth from the Church of Antioch, a duly
ordained and publicly recognised messenger of Christ.
We can glean from St. Paul's letters to Timothy the
order and ceremonies of this primitive ordination. The
rite, as ministered on that occasion, embraced prophesyings
or preachings by St. Paul himself and by others
upon the serious character of the office then undertaken.
This seems plainly intimated in 1 Tim. i. 18: "This
charge I commit unto thee, my child Timothy, according
to the prophecies which went before on thee";
while there seems a reference to his own exhortations
and directions in 2 Tim. ii. 2, where he writes, "The
things which thou hast heard from me among many
witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men."
After this there was probably, as in modern ordinations,
a searching examination of the candidate, with a solemn
profession of faith on his part, to which St. Paul refers
in 1 Tim. vi. 12, "Fight the good fight of faith, lay
hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called,
and didst confess the good confession in the sight of many
witnesses. I charge thee in the sight of God who
quickeneth all things, and of Christ Jesus, who before
Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession; that thou
keep the commandment, without spot, without reproach,
until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ." And
finally there came the imposition of hands, in which the
local presbyters assisted St. Paul, though St. Paul was
so far the guiding and ruling personage that, though in
one place (1 Tim. iv. 14) he speaks of the gift of God
which Timothy possessed, as given "by prophecy with
the laying on of the hands of the presbytery," in
another place he describes it as given to the young
evangelist by the imposition of St. Paul's own hands
(2 Tim. i. 6). This ordination of TimothyCave has a long account of Timothy in his Apostolici, or Lives of the
Fathers, pp. 45-53, where he gives an account of Timothy's martyrdom
at Ephesus from Photius, the celebrated Greek scholar and patriarch of
the ninth century: see Photius, Bibliotheca, cod. 254, and the Acta Sanctorum
for January, vol. ii., pp. 562-69. Timothy is said in the Martyrologies
to have been buried on Mount Prion, a hill upon the side of which
ancient Ephesus was built (see Wood's Ephesus, chap. i.), after he was
cruelly put to death by the Ephesians enraged at his protest against one
of their popular feasts. He suffered under Domitian about thirty years
after St. Paul, and according to Photius was succeeded at Ephesus by
St. John, who had been recalled from exile. His feast-day in the
Calendar is January 24th.
and
adoption of him as his special attendant stood at the
very beginning of a prolonged tour throughout the
central and northern districts of Asia Minor, of which
we get only a mere hint in Acts xvi. 6-8: "They went
through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been
forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in
Asia; and when they were come over against Mysia,
they assayed to go into Bithynia; and the Spirit
of Jesus suffered them not; and passing by Mysia,
they came unto Troas." This is the brief sketch of
St. Paul's labours through the north-western provinces
of Asia Minor, during which he visited the district
of Galatia and preached the gospel amid the various
tribal communities of Celts who inhabited that district.
St. Paul's work in Galatia is specially interesting to
ourselves. The Celtic race certainly furnished the
groundwork of the population in England, Ireland, and
Scotland, and finds to this day lineal representatives
in the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of these three islands.
Galatia was thoroughly Celtic in St. Paul's day. But
how, it may be said, did the Gauls come there? We
all know of the Gauls or Celts in Western Europe,
and every person of even moderate education has
heard of the Gauls who invaded Italy and sacked
Rome when that city was yet an unknown factor in
the world's history, and yet but very few know that
the same wave of invasion which brought the Gauls
to Rome led another division of them into Asia Minor,
where—as Dr. Lightfoot shows in his Introduction to
his Commentary—about three hundred years before
St. Paul's day they settled down in the region called
after them Galatia, perpetuating in that neighbourhood
the tribal organisation, the language,The provinces of Asia Minor all retained their ancient languages at
the time of St. Paul. Latin and Greek were the language of society,
but the mass of the people all spoke the original language of the
country. In the time of St. Jerome, four centuries after St. Paul,
Celtic was still spoken in Galatia as well as in Gaul. St. Paul must
then have heard a language identical with that of Wales and the
western districts of Ireland and Scotland, as is shown by Bishop Lightfoot
in his Galatians, pp. 240-44, by his analysis of the remains of the
Galatian language which ancient writers have handed down to us.
Texier, a modern French traveller, thought that he could even trace
Celtic features in the present inhabitants of the district. Cf. Lightfoot's
Galatians, p. 12. It is very probable that a careful study of the existing
language of Galatia, when treated according to the methods of modern
scientific philology, would disclose Celtic elements. When Celtic
elements survived in England and France, it is not likely they died out
in Galatia. We know at any rate that the other original languages of
Asia Minor have not perished without leaving some traces behind.
There is a learned Review published at Smyrna from time to time. It
is called the Museum of the Evangelical School of Smyrna. In the
volume published for 1880-84 there is an article of more than 200
pages treating of the ancient Cappadocian and Lycaonian dialects, and
the traces of them which remain. On p. 71 there is a notice of the
accuracy with which Acts xiv. 11 mentions the speech or dialect of the
men of Lystra, which Mr. Hogarth, in the article in the Journal of
Hellenic Studies, April 1890, p. 157, to which we have already referred,
identifies with the Phrygian dialect spoken till the sixth century of our
era. Mr. Hogarth copied several inscriptions in this ancient Lycaonian
or Phrygian speech. See also an English article by Professor W. M.
Ramsay in Kühn's Journal of Comparative Philology for 1887, where
he treats of this Lycaonian speech, and avows his belief (p. 382) that
Græco-Roman civilisation and language did not begin to affect the
rural parts of Northern and Eastern Phrygia till A.D. 100, long after
St. Paul's day. The mass of the people spoke nothing but the original
Phrygian. The reader who wishes to investigate what I consider the
bearing of this subject on the gift of tongues should consult another
article in English by Professor Ramsay, styled Laodicea Combusta, in
the Transactions of the German Archæological Institute, vol. xiii.,
p. 248 (Athens, 1888).
the national
feelings, habits, and customs which have universally
marked the Celtic race whether in ancient or in modern
times. St. Paul on this second missionary tour paid
his first visit to this district of Galatia. St. Paul usually
directed his attention to great cities. Where vast
masses of humanity were gathered together, there
St. Paul loved to fling himself with all the mighty force
of his unquenchable enthusiasm. But Galatia was
quite unlike other districts with which he had dealt
in this special respect. Like the Celtic race all the
world over, the Gauls of Galatia specially delighted in
village communities. They did not care for the society
and tone of great towns, and Galatia was wanting in
such. St. Paul, too, does not seem originally to have
intended to labour amongst the Galatians at all. In
view of his great design to preach in large cities, and
concentrate his efforts where they could most effectually
tell upon the masses, he seems to have been hurrying
through Galatia when God laid His heavy hand upon
the Apostle and delayed his course that we might be
able to see how the gospel could tell upon Gauls and
Celts even as upon other nations. This interesting
circumstance is made known to us by St. Paul himself
in the Epistle to the Galatians iv. 13: "Ye know that
because of an infirmity of the flesh I preached the
gospel unto you for the first time." Paul, to put it
in plain language, fell sick in Galatia.See Lightfoot's Galatians, pp. 22 and 172.
He was delayed
on his journey by the ophthalmia or some other form
of disease, which was his thorn in the flesh, and then,
utilising the compulsory delay, and turning every
moment to advantage, he evangelised the village communities
of Galatia with which he came in contact, so
that his Epistle is directed, not as in other cases to the
Church of a city or to an individual man, but the Epistle
in which he deals with great fundamental questions
of Christian freedom is addressed to the Churches of
Galatia, a vast district of country. Mere accident, as
it would seem to the eye of sense, produced the Epistle
to the Galatians, which shows us the peculiar weakness
and the peculiar strength of the Celtic race, their enthusiasm,
their genuine warmth, their fickleness, their love
for that which is striking, showy, material, exterior.Those who have access to great libraries will see a good description
of Galatia accompanied with splendid plates in Texier's Description de
l'Asie, in 3 vols. folio, published at Paris between 1839 and 1849. Mr.
Lewin has reproduced some of the pictures in his Life of St. Paul.
But when we pass from Galatia we know nothing of
the course of St. Paul's further labours in Asia Minor.
St. Luke was not with him during this portion of his
work, and so the details given us are very few. We
are told that "the Spirit of Jesus" would not permit
him to preach in Bithynia, though Bithynia became
afterwards rich in Christian Churches, and was one
of the districts to which St. Peter some years later
addressed his first Epistle.We owe one of the earliest glimpses of the Christian Church after
apostolic days to this same province of Bithynia. Pliny went there as
proconsul about 110 A.D. He found the whole country covered with
Christians, and the Church organised, with deaconesses even, as in
Greece and Ephesus. See the first volume of this commentary, p. 274.
The picture of the saintly slave deaconesses tortured for their faith
within ten years of St. John's death is an interesting confirmation of the
faith. It would be instructive to trace back the connexion of the second-century
martyrs who have been well authenticated, with the Churches
founded by the apostles. Justin Martyr suffered, for instance, at Rome
about A.D. 165. With him there died Hierax, who had been born of
Christian parents at Iconium. His grandfather might have been converted
by St. Paul. In his examination he dwells upon the fact that
he had been born of believing parents. See Ruinart's Acta Sincera,
p. 44, a translation of which passage will be found in the works of
Justin Martyr, in Clark's Series of Ante-Nicene Writers.
The Jews were numerous
in the districts of Bithynia and Asia, and "the Spirit
of Jesus" or "the Holy Ghost"—for the sacred writer
seems to use the terms as equivalent the one to the
other—had determined to utilise St. Paul in working
directly among the Gentiles, reserving the preaching
of the gospel to the Dispersion, as the scattered Jews
were called, to St. Peter and his friends. It is thus
we would explain the restraint exercised upon St. Paul
on this occasion. Divine providence had cut out his
great work in Europe, and was impelling him westward
even when he desired to tarry in Asia. How the Spirit
exercised this restraint or communicated His will we
know not. St. Paul lived, however, in an atmosphere of
Divine communion. He cultivated perpetually a sense of
the Divine presence, and those who do so, experience
a guidance of which the outer world knows nothing.
Bishop Jeremy Taylor, in one of his marvellous spiritual
discourses called the Via Intelligentiæ, or The Way of
Knowledge, speaks much on this subject, pointing out
that they who live closest to God have a knowledge
and a love peculiar to themselves.See this sermon in Taylor's works, vol. viii., Ed. C. P. Eden (London,
1850). On p. 380 we find the following eloquent and profound passage
bearing on this point: "Lastly there is a sort of God's dear servants
who walk in perfectness, who perfect holiness in the fear of God, and
they have a degree of charity and divine knowledge more than we can
discourse of, and more certain than the demonstrations of geometry,
brighter than the sun and indeficient as the light of heaven. This is
called by the Apostle the ἀπαύγασμα τοῦ θοῦ. Christ is this 'brightness
of God' manifested in the hearts of His dearest servants. But I shall say
no more of this at this time, for this is to be felt and not to be talked
of; and they that have never touched it with their finger, may secretly
perhaps laugh at it in their heart, and be never the wiser. All that
I have now to say of it is, that a good man is united unto God, κέντρον
κέντρῳ συνάψας, as a flame touches a flame and combines into splendour
and glory; so is the spirit of a man united unto Christ by the Spirit
of God. These are the friends of God, and they best know God's mind,
and they only that are so know how much such men do know. They
have a special unction from above."
And surely every
sincere and earnest follower of Christ has experienced
somewhat of the same mystical blessings! God's truest
servants commit their lives and their actions in devout
prayer to the guidance of their heavenly Father, and
then when they look back over the past they see how
marvellously they have been restrained from courses
which would have been fraught with evil, how strangely
they have been led by ways which have been full of
mercy and goodness and blessing. Thus it was that
St. Paul was at length led down to the ancient city of
Troas, where God revealed to him in a new fashion his
ordained field of labour. A man of Macedonia appeared
in a night vision inviting him over to Europe, and
saying, "Come over into Macedonia, and help us."
Troas was a very fitting place in which this vision
should appear. Of old time and in days of classic
fable Troas had been the meeting-place where, as Homer
and as Virgil tell, Europe and Asia had met in stern
conflict, and where Europe as represented by Greece
had come off victorious, bringing home the spoils which
human nature counted most precious. Europe and
Asia again meet at Troas, but no longer in carnal conflict
or in deadly fight. The interests of Europe and
of Asia again touch one another, and Europe again
carries off from the same spot spoil more precious far
than Grecian poet ever dreamt of, for "when Paul had
seen the vision, straightway we sought to go forth into
Macedonia, concluding that God called us for to preach
the gospel unto them." Whereupon we notice two
points and offer just two observations. The vision
created an enthusiasm, and that enthusiasm was contagious.
The vision was seen by Paul alone, but was
communicated by St. Paul unto Silas and to St. Luke,
who now had joined to lend perhaps the assistance of
his medical knowledge to the afflicted and suffering
Apostle. Enthusiasm is a marvellous power, and endows
a man with wondrous force. St. Paul was boiling
over with enthusiasm, but he could not always impart
it. The two non-apostolic Evangelists are marked
contrasts as brought before us in this history. St.
Paul was enthusiastic on his first tour, but that
enthusiasm was not communicated to St. Mark. He
turned back from the hardships and dangers of the
work in Asia Minor. St. Paul was boiling over again
with enthusiasm for the new work in Europe. He has
now with him in St. Luke a congenial soul who, when
he hears the vision, gathers at once its import, joyfully
anticipates the work, and "straightway sought to go
forth into Macedonia." Enthusiasm in any kind of
work is a great assistance, and nothing great or successful
is done without it. But above all in Divine work,
in the work of preaching the gospel, the man devoid
of enthusiasm begotten of living communion with God
such as St. Paul and St. Luke enjoyed is sure to be a
lamentable and complete failure.
Then again, and lastly, we note the slow progress of
the gospel as shown to us by this incident at Troas.
Here we are a good twenty years after the Crucifixion,
and yet the chief ministers and leaders of the Church
had not yet crossed into Europe. There were sporadic
Churches here and there. At Rome and at possibly
a few Italian seaports, whence intercourse with Palestine
was frequent, there were small Christian communities;
but Macedonia and Greece were absolutely untouched
up to the present. We are very apt to overrate the
progress of the gospel during those first days of the
Church's earliest Church life. We are inclined to
view the history of the Church of the first three
centuries all on an heap as it were. We have much
need to distinguish century from century and decennium
from decennium. The first ten years of the Church's
history saw the gospel preached in Jerusalem and
Palestine, but not much farther. The second decennium
saw it proclaimed to Asia Minor; but it is only when
the third decennium is opening that Christ despatches
a formal mission to that Europe where the greatest
triumphs of the gospel were afterwards to be won.
Ignorance and prejudice and narrow views had been
allowed to hinder the progress of the gospel then, as
they are hindering the progress of the gospel still;
and an express record of this has been handed down
to us in this typical history in order that if we too suffer
the same we may not be astonished as if some strange
thing had happened, but may understand that we are
bearing the same burden and enduring the same trials
as the New Testament saints have borne before us.
CHAPTER XII.
ST. PAUL IN MACEDONIA.
"The jailor called for lights, and sprang in, and, trembling for fear,
fell down before Paul and Silas, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be
saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be
saved, thou and thy house"—Acts xvi. 29-31.
"When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they
came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: and Paul,
as his custom was, went in unto them, and for three Sabbath days
reasoned with them from the Scriptures.... And the brethren immediately
sent away Paul and Silas by night into Berœa: who when they
were come thither went into the synagogue of the Jews."—Acts xvii.
1, 2, 10.
Troas was at this time the termination of St. Paul's
Asiatic travels. He had passed diagonally right
through Asia Minor, following the great Roman roads
which determined his line of march. From Troas he
proceeded to Philippi, and for exactly the same reason.
All the great roads formed under the emperors down to
the time of Constantine the Great led to Rome. When
the seat of empire was moved to Constantinople, all
the Asiatic roads converged upon that city; but in St.
Paul's day Rome was the world's centre of attraction,
and thither the highways all tended. This fact explains
St. Paul's movements. The Egnatian Road was one
of the great channels of communication established for
State purposes by Rome, and this road ran from
Neapolis, where St. Paul landed, through Philippi on
to Dyrrachium, a port on the Adriatic, whence the
traveller took ship to Brundusium, the modern Brindisi,
and thence reached Rome. What a striking commentary
we find in this simple fact upon the words
of St. Paul in Galatians iv. 4: "When the fulness of
the time came God sent forth His Son." Roman
dominion involved much suffering and war and bloodshed,
but it secured the network of communication, the
internal peace, and the steady, regular government
which now covered Europe as well as Asia, and thus
for the first time in the world's history rendered the
diffusion of the gospel possible, as St. Paul's example
here shows. The voyage from Troas to Neapolis was
taken by the Apostle after the usual fashion of the
time.Both Lewin and Conybeare and Howson in their Lives of St.
Paul enter into great details about the scenery and other circumstances
of St. Paul's voyage from Troas to Neapolis, which would be
out of place in this commentary, even if space did allow their insertion.
Mr. Lewin's account is specially interesting, as he gives the impressions
made upon himself when going over the ground. These writers all
point out that St. Paul must have travelled with a fair wind; Conybeare
and Howson even try to determine its exact direction, which they
maintain was from the southward. Otherwise he could not have made
the passage in two days, or followed the course actually taken. On a
subsequent occasion (Acts xx. 6) St. Paul took five days in sailing from
Philippi to Troas.
Neapolis was the port of Philippi, whence it is
distant some eight miles. Travellers from the East to
Rome always landed there, and then took the Egnatian
Road which started from Neapolis. If they were
official persons they could use the public postal service,
post-houses being established at a distance of six
miles from one another, where relays of horses were
kept at the public expense, to carry persons travelling
on the imperial service.Posts for the conveyance of intelligence were established by
Augustus (see Suetonius, Aug., 49). Gibbon, in the second chapter of
his History, has much information on this point. The reader curious in
such matters will find a learned account of the Roman postal service in
Godefroy's Commentary on the Theodosian Code, vol. ii., p. 526, where
he traces the system down from Augustus to the year 400 A.D. It was
somewhat similar to that which now prevails in Russia. An interesting
story is told concerning Constantine the Great, which illustrates the
system. During the Diocletian persecution Constantine, whose leanings
towards Christianity were suspected, was residing in Asia Minor with
the Emperor Galerius, the determined enemy of Christianity. Constantine
knew that there was a plot against him, so, having obtained the
authority necessary to use the post, he fled secretly one night, and as
he rode along took fresh horses, and at the same time brought the tired
animals with him. When his enemies followed him next day, they
found the post stables empty, and their prey escaped without any
possibility of pursuit. See Dict. Christ. Biog., vol. i., p. 526, Art.
Constantinus I., and De Broglie, L'Église et L'Empire, vol. i., p. 192.
Paul and Silas, Timothy and
Luke, must, however, have travelled on foot along
the Egnatian Road from Neapolis to Philippi, which
was their first objective point, according to St. Paul's
usual policy, of attacking large and important centres
of population, and then leaving the sacred leaven to
work out into the surrounding mass of paganism.
Philippi amply rewarded the wisdom of his plan, and
the Philippian Church became notable for its zeal,
its faith, its activity, among the Churches which owed
their origin to the Apostle, as we learn from the Epistles
addressed to the Corinthians and to the Philippians
themselves a short time after the foundation of the
Philippian Church.
Now let us look at the circumstances under which
that foundation was laid. To understand them we
must go back upon the course of history. Philippi was
a city built by King Philip, the father of Alexander
the Great. After the conquest of Macedonia by the
Romans, it became famous as the scene of the great
battle between Brutus and Cassius on the one hand,
and Mark Antony and Augustus on the other, which
decided the fate of the empire and influenced the
course of the world's history as few other battles have
done. At the time of St. Paul's visit the memory of
that battle was fresh, and the outward and visible
signs thereof were to be seen on every side, as indeed
some of them are still to be seen, the triumphal
arches, for instance, erected in memory of the victory
and the mound or rampart of earth raised by Brutus to
hinder the advance of the opposing forces.The remains of this rampart still exist. They are described in
the Mission Archéologique de Macédoine, p. 103, carried out under the
direction of M. Leon Heuzey, by order of Napoleon III., and published
at Paris between 1864 and 1876.
But these
things had for the holy travellers a very slight interest,
as their hearts were set upon a mightier conflict and a
nobler war far than any ever before waged upon earth's
surface. There is no mention made in the sacred
narrative of the memories connected with the place,
and yet St. Luke, as an honest writer setting down
facts of which he had formed an important part, lets
slip some expressions which involve and throw us
back upon the history of the place for an explanation,
showing how impossible it is to grasp the full force
and meaning of the sacred writers unless we strive
to read the Bible with the eyes of the people who
lived at the time and for whom it was written. St.
Luke calls Philippi "a city of Macedonia, the first
of the district, a colony." Now this means that in
that time it was situated in the Roman province of
Macedonia, that it was either the capital of the division
of Macedonia, in which it was situated, Macedonia
being subdivided into four distinct divisions which
were kept perfectly separate, or else that it was the
first city the traveller met upon entering Macedonia
from Asia, and further that it was a Roman colony,
and thus possessed peculiar privileges. When we
read in the Bible of colonies we must not understand
the word in our modern sense. Colonies were
then simply transcripts of the original city whence they
had come. Roman colonies were miniatures or copies of
Rome itself transplanted into the provinces, and ruling
as such amid the conquered races where they were
placed. They served a twofold purpose. They acted
as garrisons to restrain the turbulence of the neighbouring
tribes; and if we study Roman geography
carefully we shall find that they were always placed
in neighbourhoods where their military importance is
plainly manifest; and further still, they were used as
convenient places to locate the veteran soldiers of Italy
who had served their time, where they were rewarded
with grants of land, and were utilising at the same time
the skill and experience in military matters which they
had gained, for the general benefit of the State.
Augustus made Philippi into a colony, erecting a
triumphal arch to celebrate his victory over Brutus,
and placing there a large settlement of his veterans who
secured for him this important outpost. The colonies
which were thus dispersed along the military frontier,
as we should put it in modern language, were specially
privileged. All the settlers were Roman citizens, and
the government of the colony was like that of the
mother city itself, in the hands of two magistrates,
called in Greek Strategoi, or in Latin Prætors,The proper official title of the highest magistrates of a colony was
Duumviri. The colonies where a Greek spirit prevailed did not like
this title, and called themselves Prætors, or Στρατηγοί, as in the case of
Philippi. In exact accordance with St. Luke's usage Cicero, a century
earlier, tells us in one of his Epistles, speaking of the vanity of Capua,
which was thoroughly Greek in spirit, and therefore very vain: "While
in other colonies the magistrates are called Duumviri, these wish themselves
to be styled Prætors," a weakness laughed at in Horace's Satires,
lib. i., v. 34-6. Dion Chrysostom, a Greek rhetorician of St. Paul's day,
mocks the Greeks for the same flashy spirit.
who ruled
according to the laws of the Twelve Tables and after
Roman methods, though perhaps all the neighbouring
cities were still using their ancient laws and customs
handed down from times long prior to the Roman
Conquest. The details given us by St. Luke are in the
strictest accordance in all these respects with the facts
which we know independently concerning the history
and political status of Philippi.
St. Paul and his companions arrived in Philippi in
the early part of the week. He was by this time a
thoroughly experienced traveller. Five years later,
when writing his Second Epistle to Corinth, he tells
us that he had been already three times shipwrecked;
so that, unless peculiarly unfortunate, he must have
already made extended and repeated sea voyages, though
up to the present we have only heard of the journeys
from Antioch to Cyprus, from Cyprus to Perga, and
from Attaleia back to Antioch.The common pronunciation of Attaleia, or as it is spelt in the
Authorised Version, Attalia, is with the ι short. The "i" represents,
however, the Greek diphthong ει, and is long.
A two days' voyage
across the fresh and rolling waters of the Mediterranean,
following by a steep climb over Mountain Pangæus
which intervenes between Philippi and its port Neapolis,
made, however, a rest of a day or two very acceptable
to the Apostle and his friends. St. Paul never
expected too much from his own body, or from the
bodies of his companions; and though he knew the work
of a world's salvation was pressing, yet he could take
and enjoy a well-earned holiday from time to time.
There was nothing in St. Paul of that eternal fussiness
which we at times see in people of strong imaginations
but weak self-control, who, realising the awful
amount of woe and wickedness in the world, can
never be at rest even for a little. The men of God
remained quiet therefore (ch. xvi. 12, 13) till the Sabbath
Day, when, after their usual custom, they sought
out in the early morning the Jewish place of worship,
where St. Paul always first proclaimed the gospel.
The Jewish colony resident at Philippi must have been
a very small one. The Rabbinical rule was that where
ten wise men existed there a synagogue might be
established.See Dr. John Lightfoot's Horæ Hebraicæ on Matt. iv. 23; Works
(London, 1684), vol. ii., pp. 132-34, for the Rabbinical legislation on
Synagogues and their erection.
There cannot therefore have been ten
learned, respectable, and substantial Jews in Philippi
competent to act as a local sanhedrin or court. Where,
however, the Jews could not establish a synagogue,
they did not live without any external expression of
religion. They knew how easily neglect of public
worship is followed by practical atheism, as we often
see. Men may say indeed that God can be realised,
and can be worshipped anywhere,—a very great truth
and a very precious one for those who are unavoidably
cut off from the public worship of the Most High;
but a truth which has no application to those who
wilfully cut themselves off from that worship which
has the covenanted promise of His presence. It is not
a good sign for the young men of this generation that
so many of them utterly neglect public worship; for as
surely as men act so, then present neglect will be
followed by a total forgetfulness of the Eternal, and
by a disregard of the laws which He has established
amongst men. The Jews at Philippi did not follow this
example; when they could not establish a synagogue
they set apart an oratory or Place of Prayer, whither
they resorted on the Sabbath Day to honour the God
of their fathers, and to keep alive in their children's
hearts the memory of His laws and doings.A local illustration of this typical Church history occurs to me.
Oliver Cromwell planted Ireland, especially the golden vale of Tipperary,
with his Puritan soldiers. They were strong Nonconformists, and
refused therefore after the Restoration to worship according to the
forms of the Established Church. Their children after a generation or
two almost universally fell into the arms of the Church of Rome, and
now many of the leading members of the National League are Roman
Catholic descendants of Cromwell's Puritans, and display still the same
vigorous qualities which adorned their Protestant ancestors in the
copious abuse they pour upon the memory of the men from whom
they are descended.
The original name of Philippi was Crenides, or Place
of Streams.I am here reminded of a place with exactly the same name which
became as famous in the history of the Celtic Church as Philippi did
in that of the Macedonian Church. Fore, in the county of Westmeath,
means Place or Valley of Streams. It was celebrated in the seventh
century as a great missionary establishment, at the head of which stood
St. Fechin, a primitive Celtic missionary. His oratory, cell, and
ancient church are still to be seen. I have described them in a paper
contributed to the Journal of the Society of Irish Antiquaries for
this year (1892). A comparison of St. Paul's missionary methods with
those of St. Fechin would be interesting. They are fully described in
Colgan's Acts of the Irish Saints.
Beside one of these streams the Jews
had placed their oratory, and there St. Paul preached
his first sermon in Europe and gained Lydia, his first
European convert, a Jewess by blood, a woman of
Thyatira in Asia Minor by birth, of Philippi in
Macedonia by residence, and a dyer in purple by trade.The guild of dyers at Thyatira is celebrated in the inscriptions belonging
to that city found in Bœckh's Corpus Inscriptionum Græcarum.
The congregation of women assembled at that oratory
must have been a very small one. When Philippi did
not afford a sufficient Jewish population for the erection
of a synagogue such as was found among the smaller
towns of Asia Minor, and such as we shall in the course
of the present tour find to have existed at towns
and cities of no great size in Greece and Macedonia,
then we may be sure that the female population, who
assembled that Sabbath morning to pray and listen
to the Scriptures, must have been a small one. But
St. Paul and his companions had learned already one
great secret of the true evangelist's life. They never
despised a congregation because of its smallness. I have
read somewhere in the writings of St. Francis de Sales,
Bishop of Geneva, a remark bearing on this point.
De Sales was an extreme Roman Catholic, and his
mind was injured and his mental views perverted in
many respects by the peculiar training he thus received.
But still he was in many respects a very saintly man,
and his writings embody much that is good for every
one. In one of his letters which I have read he deals
with this very point, and speaks of the importance of
small congregations, first, because they have no tendency
to feed the preacher's pride, but rather help to keep
him humble; and secondly, because some of the most
effective and fruitful sermons have been preached to
extremely small congregations, two or three persons
at most, some one of whom has afterwards turned out to
be a most vigorous soldier of the Cross of Christ. The
most effective sermon perhaps that ever was preached
was that delivered to Saul of Tarsus when to him alone
came the voice, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
Me?" And here again, in the Philippian Oratory, the
congregation was but a small one, yet the Apostle
despised it not. He and his companions bent all their
powers to the work, threw their whole hearts into it,
and as the result the Lord rewarded their earnest,
thorough, faithful service as He rewards such service in
every department of life's action. The Lord opened
the heart of Lydia so that she attended to the apostolic
teaching, and she and all her household when duly instructed
became baptized disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.
This was an important incident in the history of
the Philippian Church, and was attended by far-reaching
results. Lydia herself, like so many others of God's
most eminent saints, disappears at once and for ever
from the scene. But her conversion was a fruitful
one. St. Paul and his friends continued quietly but
regularly working and teaching at the oratory. Lydia
would seem to have been a widow, and must have been
a woman of some position in the little community;
for she was able to entertain the Apostle and his
company as soon as she embraced the faith and felt
its exceeding preciousness. When inviting them, too,
she uses the language of a woman independent of all
other control. "If ye have judged me to be faithful
to the Lord, come into my house and abide there," are
words with the tone of one who as a widow owned no
superior, and whose will was law within her own household;
as well as the language of a woman who felt that
the gospel she had embraced demanded and deserved
the consecration to its service of all her worldly possessions.
Previously to this conversion St. Paul had
lived in hired lodgings, but now he moved to Lydia's
residence, abiding there, and thence regularly worshipping
at the Jewish oratory. The presence of
these Jewish strangers soon attracted attention. Their
teaching too got noised abroad, exaggerated doubtless
and distorted after the manner of popular reports.
And the crowd were ready to be suspicious of all
Eastern foreigners. The settlers in the colony of
Philippi belonged to the rural population of Italy, who,
after the manner of countrified folk of every generation,
were a good way behind, for good or ill, their city
brethren. The excavations made at Philippi have
brought to light the fact that the colonists there were
worshippers of the primitive Italian rustic gods,
specially of the god Silvanus, eschewing the fashionable
Greek deities, Jupiter, Juno, Venus, Diana, Apollo,
and such like. A temple of Silvanus was erected at
Philippi for the hardy Italian veterans, and numerous
inscriptions have been found and have been duly
described by the French Mission in Macedonia to
which we have already referred, telling of the building
of the temple and of the persons who contributed
towards it.See Leon Heuzey's Mission Archéologique de Macédoine, p. 71
(Paris, 1864-76). One tablet found furnishes a list of benefactions.
One man gives a bronze statue of the deity, another helps to roof
the building. Another tablet gives a list of the officials of the temple
worship. Curiously enough among these officials occur names well
known to us from St. Paul's Epistles, as Crescens, Secundus, Trophimus,
Aristarchus, Pudens, Urbanus, and Clemens: cf. the Philippian
inscriptions in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. iii., par. i.,
pp. 120-28. Among these rude Italian veterans, unspoilt by the
glitter and vices of Greek idolatry and civilisation, the Cross may have
found out many true soldiers of Jesus Christ: see Lewin's St. Paul,
vol. i., p. 210. It is interesting to notice that a similar set of tablets
commemorating the benefactors of the temple of Diana at Ephesus
was discovered in the excavations made twenty years ago at that
place. The inscriptions are translated in the Appendix to Wood's
Ephesus.
These simple Western soldiers were
easily prejudiced against the Eastern strangers by
reports spread concerning their doctrines, and specially
concerning the Jewish King, of whose kingdom they
were the heralds. Political considerations were at once
raised. We can scarcely now realise the suspicions
which must have been roused against the early preachers
of Christianity by the very language they used. Their
sacramental language concerning the body and blood
of Christ, the language of Christian love and union
which they used, designating themselves brethren and
sisters, caused for more than two centuries the dissemination
of the most frightful rumours concerning
the horrible nature of Christian love-feasts. They
were accused of cannibalism and of the most degraded
and immoral practices; and when we take up the
Apologists of the second century, Justin Martyr and
such like, we shall find that the efforts of these men
are largely directed to the refutation of such dreadful
charges.See, for instance, Justin Martyr's First Apology, ch. xxix., Second
Apology, ch. xii., and Athenagoras' Apology, chs. xxxi.-xxxv. These
passages will be found in Justin Martyr and Athenagoras as translated
in T. & T. Clark's Ante-Nicene Series, pp. 32, 81, 415-19.
And as it was in morals so was it too in
politics. The sacred and religious language of the
Christians caused them to be suspected of designs
hostile to the Roman Government. The apostles
preached about a King who ruled the kingdom of God.
Now the Romans abhorred the very name and title of
king, which they associated with the cruel acts of the
early tyrants who reigned in the times of Rome's
fabulous antiquity. The hostility to the title was so
great that, though the Roman people endured a
despotism much worse and crushing at the hands of
the Cæsars, they never would allow them to assume
the title of kings, but simply called them emperors,
imperators or commanders of the army, a name which
to their ears connoted nothing savouring of the kingly
office, though for moderns the title of emperor expresses
the kingly office and much more. The colonists
in Philippi, being Italians, would feel these prejudices
in their full force. Easterns indeed would have had
no objection to the title of king, as we see from the
cry raised by the mob of Jerusalem when they cried
in reference to Christ's claim, "We have no king but
Cæsar." But the rough and rude Roman veterans,
when they heard vague reports of St. Paul's teaching
to the Jews who met at the oratory by the river-side,
quite naturally mistook the nature of his doctrine, and
thought that he was simply a political agitator organising
a revolt against imperial authority.This political prejudice against Christianity lasted into the second
century: see the First Apology of Justin Martyr, ch. xi.: "When you
hear that we look for a kingdom, you suppose, without making any
inquiry, that we speak of a human kingdom; whereas we speak of that
which is with God, as appears also from the confession of their faith
made by those who are charged with being Christians, though they
know that death is the punishment awarded to him who so confesses";
words which imply that in Justin's day many had been martyred on
mere political accusations.
An incident
which then occurred fanned the slumbering embers
into a flame. There was a female slave the property
of some crafty men who by her means traded on the
simplicity of the colonists. She was possessed with
a spirit of divination. What the nature of this spirit
was we have not the means of now determining. Some
would resolve it into mere epilepsy, but such an explanation
is not consistent with St. Paul's action and words.
He addressed the spirit, "I charge thee in the name of
Jesus Christ to come out of her." And the spirit, we
are told, came out that very hour. The simple fact is
that psychology is at the best a very obscure science,
and the mysteries of the soul a very puzzling region,
even under the Christian Dispensation and surrounded
by the spiritual blessings of the kingdom of God. But
paganism was the kingdom of Satan, where he ruled
with a power and freedom he no longer enjoys, and we
can form no conception of the frightful disturbances
Satanic agency may have raised amid the dark places
of the human spirit. Without attempting explanations
therefore, which must be insufficient, I am content to
accept the statement of the sacred writer, who was an
eye-witness of the cure, that the spirit of divination,
the spirit of Python, as the original puts it, yielded
obedience to the invocation of the sacred Name which
is above every name, leaving the damsel's inner nature
once more calm and at union within itself. This was
the signal for a riot. The slave owners recognised
that their hopes of gain had fled. They were not
willing to confess that these despised Jews possessed a
power transcending far that which dwelt in the human
instrument who had served their covetous purposes.
They may have heard, it may be, of the tumults excited
about this same time by the Jews at Rome and of
their expulsion from the capital by the decree of the
Emperor, so the owners of the slave-girl and the mob of
the city dragged the Apostles before the local Duumvirs
and accused them of like disturbances: "These men,
being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, and set
forth customs which it is not lawful for us to receive or to
observe, being Romans." The accusation was sufficient.
No proof was demanded, no time for protest allowed.
The magistrates with their own hands dragged the
clothes off the backs of the Apostles, and they were
flogged at once by the lictors or sergeants, as our
translation calls them, in attendance upon the Duumvirs,
who then despatched their victims to the common
prison. Here a question may be raised, Why did not
St. Paul save himself by protesting that he was a
Roman citizen, as he did subsequently at Jerusalem
when he was about to be similarly treated? Several
explanations occur. The colonists were Italians and
spoke Latin. St. Paul spoke Hebrew and Greek, and
though he may have known Latin too, his Latin may
not have been understood by these rough Roman
soldiers. The mob again was excited, and when a mob
gets excited it is but very little its members attend to an
unfortunate prisoner's words. We know too, not only
from St. Paul's own words, but from the testimony of
Cicero himself, in his celebrated oration against Verres,
that in remote districts this claim was often disregarded,
even when urged by Italians, and much more when
made by despised Jews. St. Paul tells us in 2 Cor.
xi. 25, that he received three Roman floggings notwithstanding
his Roman citizenship, and though the Philippian
magistrates were afraid when they heard next day
of the illegal violence of which they had been guilty,
the mob, who could not be held accountable, probably
took right good care that St. Paul's protest never
reached the official ears to which it was addressed.
These considerations sufficiently account for the omission
of any notice of a protest on the Apostle's part.
He simply had not the opportunity, and then when the
tumultuous scene was over Paul and Silas were hurried
off to the common dungeon, where they were secured
in the stocks and thrust into the innermost prison as
notorious and scandalous offenders.
No ill-treatment could, however, destroy that secret
source of joy and peace which St. Paul possessed in
his loved Master's conscious presence. "I take pleasure
in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions,
in distresses for Christ's sake," is his own triumphant
expression when looking back a few years later over
the way by which the Lord had led him, and therefore
at midnight the astonished prisoners heard the inner
dungeon ringing with unwonted songs of praise raised
by the Jewish strangers. An earthquake, too, lent its
terrors to the strange scene, shaking the prison to its
foundations and loosing the staples to which the
prisoners' chains were fastened. The jailor, roused
from sleep, and seeing the prison doors opened wide,
would have committed suicide were it not for Paul's
restraining and authoritative voice; and then the astonished
official, who must have heard the strange rumours
to which the words of the demoniac alluded—"These
men are the servants of the Most High God, which
proclaim unto you the way of salvation"—rushed into
the presence of the Apostles crying out in words which
have ever since been famous, "Sirs, what must I do to
be saved?" to which the equally famous answer was
given, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be
saved, thou and thy house." The jailor then took the
Apostles, bathed their bruised bodies, set food before
them, gathered his household to listen to the glad
tidings, which they received so rapidly and grasped so
thoroughly that they were at once baptized and enabled
to rejoice with that deep spiritual joy which an experimental
knowledge of God always confers. The jailor,
feeling for the first time in his life the peace which
passeth all understanding, realised the truth which
St. Augustine afterwards embodied in the immortal
words: "Thou, O God, hast formed us for Thyself,
and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee."Augustine's Confessions, i. 1.
Let us look for a little at the question of the jailor
and the answer of the Apostle. They are words very
often used, and very often misused. The jailor, when
he rushed into St. Paul's presence crying out "What
must I do to be saved?" was certainly not the type of
a conscience-stricken sinner, convinced of his own sin
and spiritual danger, as men sometimes regard him.
He was simply in a state of fright and astonishment.
He had heard that these Jewish prisoners committed to
him were preaching about some salvation which they
had to offer. The earthquake seemed to him the expression
of some deity's wrath at their harsh treatment,
and so in his terror he desires to know what he must do
to be saved from this wrath. His words were notable,
but they were not Christian words, for he had yet much
to learn of the nature of sin and the nature of the salvation
from it which the Apostles were preaching. The
Philippian jailor was a specimen of those who are saved
violently and by fear. Terror forced him into communion
with the Apostles, broke down the barriers
which hindered the approach of the Word, and then
the power of the Holy Ghost, working through St. Paul,
effected the remainder, opening his eyes to the true
character of salvation and his own profound need of
it. St. Paul's words have been misunderstood. I have
heard them addressed to a Christian congregation and
explained as meaning that the jailor had nothing to do
but just realise Christ Jesus as his Saviour, whereupon
he was perfect and complete so far as the spiritual life
was concerned; and then they were applied to the congregation
present as teaching that, as it was with the
jailor, so was it with all Christians; they have simply
to believe as he did, and then they have nothing more
to do,—a kind of teaching which infallibly produces
antinomian results.See more on this point in vol. i., pp. 134-37, where I have given
conclusive proofs of the misuse of this text from the writers of the
seventeenth century.
Such an explanation ignores the
fact that there is a great difference between the jailor,
who was not a Christian in any sense and knew
nothing about Christ when he flung himself at St.
Paul's feet, and a Christian congregation, who know
about Christ and believe in Him. But this explanation
is still more erroneous. It misrepresents what St. Paul
meant and what his hearers understood him to mean.
What did any ordinary Jew or any ordinary pagan
with whom St. Paul came in contact understand him
to mean when he said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus,
and thou shalt be saved"? They first had to ask
him who Jesus Christ was, whence He had come, what
He had taught, what were the obligations of His
religion. St. Paul had to open out to them the nature
of sin and salvation, and to explain the obligation and
blessing of the sacrament of baptism as well as the
necessity of bodily holiness and purity. The initial
sacrament of baptism must have held a foremost place
in that midnight colloquy or conference concerning
Christian truth. St. Paul was not the man to perform
a rite of which his converts understood nothing, and to
which they could attach no meaning. "Believe on
the Lord Jesus" involved repentance and contrition
and submission to Christian truth, and these things
involved the exposition of Christian truth, history,
doctrines, and duties.
This text, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou
shalt be saved," is often quoted in one-sided and
narrow teaching to show that man has nothing to do
to be saved. Of course in one sense this is perfectly
true. We can do nothing meritoriously towards salvation;
from first to last our salvation is all of God's free
grace; but then, viewing the matter from the human
side, we have much to do to be saved. We have to
repent, to seek God for ourselves, to realise Christ and
His laws in our life, to seek after that holiness without
which no man shall see the Lord. There were two
different types of men who at different times addressed
practically the same inquiry to the Apostles. They
were both outside the Church, and they were both
seekers blindly after God. The Jews on the day of
Pentecost said, "Brethren, what shall we do?" and
Peter replied, "Repent ye, and be baptized, every one
of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, unto the remission
of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost." Such was apostolic teaching to the Jews of
Jerusalem. The jailer demanded, "What must I do to
be saved?" and St. Paul replied, "Believe on the Lord
Jesus, and thou shalt be saved." Such was apostolic
teaching to an ignorant pagan at Philippi; more
concise than the Jerusalem answer, but meaning the
same thing, and involving precisely the same doctrines
in the hands of such a great master of the spiritual life
as was the Apostle of the Gentiles.Mr. Sadler, in his Commentary on the Acts, treating of this passage
has a long explanation identical in meaning with that which we have
above urged. He says, for instance, p. 314: "This statement of the
way of salvation is one of the most important in the New Testament.
It contains the seed of the whole body of apostolic doctrine respecting
salvation by Christ. When I say apostolic, I mean the doctrine of
SS. Peter and John, as well as of St. Paul; for all being full of the
Holy Ghost preached the same. Few places have been more perverted
in order to uphold a heresy which, if St. Paul had been alive
now, he would have abhorred, and denounced as fatal to the whole
revelation of the Son of God, and that is antinomianism.... The
Philippian jailor to whom the words were first addressed had never in
all probability heard the name of Jesus Christ before.... 'Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ' then meant to him, 'Believe on Him whom
we are now about to set forth to thee.' And they there and then
began to set Him forth, for they spake unto him 'the word of the
Lord.'... This Word must have shown him how—on what principle—he
could exercise faith in Him so as to be saved. But did they call
on him in his then state to believe anything respecting the Church and
the sacraments of Christ? Unquestionably; for St. Paul would certainly
not baptize a man who was totally ignorant of the grace of union
with Christ which he would receive, and the obligations to serve
Christ which he would come under, by being baptized."
The remainder of the story is soon told. When the
morning came there came quiet reflection with it as
far as the magistrates were concerned. They became
conscious of their illegal conduct, and they sent their
lictors to order the release of the Apostles. St. Paul
now stood upon his rights. His protest had been
disregarded by the mob. He now claimed his rights
as a Roman citizen. "They have beaten us publicly,
uncondemned men, that are Romans, and have cast us
into prison; and do they now cast us out privily?
Nay, verily; but let them come themselves and bring
us out." These are St. Paul's words, and they are brave,
and at the same time wise words. They were brave
words because it took a strong man to send back such
an answer to magistrates who had treated him so outrageously
only the day before. They were wise words,
for they give us an apostle's interpretation of our Lord's
language in the Sermon upon the Mount concerning
the non-resistance of evil, and show us that in St. Paul's
estimation Christ's law did not bind a man to tolerate
foul injustice. Such toleration, in fact, is very wrong if
it can be helped; because it is simply an encouragement
to the wicked doers to treat others in the same scandalous
manner. Toleration of outrage and injustice is
unfair and uncharitable towards others, if they can be
lawfully redressed or at least apologised for. It is a
Christian man's duty to bring public evil-doers and
tyrants, instruments of unrighteousness like these
Duumvirs of Philippi, to their senses, not for his own
sake, but in order that he may prevent the exercise of
similar cruelties against the weaker brethren. We
may be sure that the spirited action of St. Paul, compelling
these provincial magnates to humble themselves
before the despised strangers, must have had a very
wholesome effect in restraining them from similar
violence during the rest of their term of office.
Such was St. Paul's stay at Philippi. It lasted a
considerable time, and made its mark, as a flourishing
Church was established there, to which he addressed
an Epistle when he lay the first time a captive at
Rome. This Epistle naturally forms a most interesting
commentary on the notices of the Philippian visit in
the Acts of the Apostles, a point which is worked out at
large in Bishop Lightfoot's Commentary on Philippians
and in Paley's Horæ Paulinæ. The careful student of
Holy Writ will find that St. Paul's letter and St. Luke's
narrative when compared illuminate one another in a
wondrous manner. We cannot afford space to draw
out this comparison in detail, and it is the less necessary
to do so as Dr. Lightfoot's writings are so generally
accessible. Let us, however, notice one point in this
Epistle to the Philippians, which was written about
the same time (a few months previously, in fact) as
the Acts of the Apostles. It corroborates the Acts
as to the circumstances under which the Church of
Philippi was founded. St. Paul in the Epistle refers
again and again to the persecutions and afflictions of
the Philippian Church, and implies that he was a fellow-sufferer
with them.Bishop Lightfoot (Philippians, p. 57) says: "St. Paul's first visit
to Philippi closed abruptly amid the storm of persecution. It was not
to be expected that where the life of the teacher had been so seriously
endangered, the scholars would escape all penalties. The Apostle left
behind him a legacy of suffering to this newly born Church. This is
not a mere conjecture; the affliction of the Macedonian Christians, and
of the Philippians especially, are more than once mentioned in St.
Paul's Epistles (cf. 1 Thess. ii. 2). If it was their privilege to believe
in Christ, it was equally their privilege to suffer for Him."
St. Paul dwells on this in the
beginning of the Epistle in words whose force cannot
be understood unless we grasp this fact. In the sixth
verse of the first chapter he expresses himself as,
"Confident of this very thing, that He which began
a good work in you will perfect it until the day of
Jesus Christ: even as it is right for me to be thus
minded on behalf of you all, because I have you in
my heart, inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the
defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are
partakers with me of grace." St. Paul speaks of the
Philippians as personally acquainted with chains and
sufferings and prison-houses for Christ's sake, and regards
these things as a proof of God's grace vouchsafed
not only to the Apostle, but also to the Philippians; for
St. Paul was living at that high level when he could
view bonds and trials and persecutions as marks of the
Divine love. In the twenty-eighth verse of the same
chapter he exhorts them to be in no wise "affrighted
by the adversaries," and in the next two describes them
as persons to whom "it hath been granted in the behalf
of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer
in His behalf: having the same conflict which ye saw
in me, and now hear to be in me," words which can
only refer to the violence and afflictions which they
witnessed as practised against himself, and which they
were now themselves suffering in turn. While to
complete St. Paul's references we notice that in an
Epistle written some five years later than his first
visit to Philippi he expressly refers to the persecutions
which the Philippian Church in common with all the
Macedonian Churches seems to have suffered from
the very beginning. In 2 Cor. viii. 1, 2, he writes:
"Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the
grace of God which hath been given in the Churches
of Macedonia; how that in much proof of affliction the
abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded
unto the riches of their liberality." Now all these passages
put together confirm for us what the Acts expressly
affirms, that from the very outset of their Christian career
the Philippian Church had endured the greatest trials,
and experienced a fellowship in the Apostle's sufferings.
And surely we may see in the character of the Philippian
Epistle something eminently characteristic of this
experience! It has been remarked that the Philippian
Epistle is the only Epistle addressed to a Church in
which there is no trace of blame or reproof. Temptation
and trial and chastisement had there worked their
appointed purpose. The Philippian Church had been
baptized in blood, and grounded in afflictions, and
purified by the cleansing fires of persecution, and consequently
the tried Church gathered itself closer to its
Divine Lord, and was perfected above all others in
His likeness, and profited above all others in the
Divine life.Bishop Lightfoot, in his Commentary on Philippians, l.c., dwells on
this point: "The unwavering loyalty of his Philippian converts is the
constant solace of the Apostle in his manifold trails, the one bright ray of
happiness piercing the dark clouds which gather ever thicker about the
evening of his life. They are his 'joy and crown, his brethren beloved
and eagerly desired.' From them alone he consents to receive alms
for the relief of his personal wants. To them alone he writes in
language unclouded by any shadow of displeasure or disappointment."
After the terrible experience of Philippi Paul and
Silas passed on to other towns of the same province
of Macedonia. The Apostle, however, when quitting
Philippi to do the same evangelistic work, breaking
up the ground in other towns after the manner of a
pioneer, did not leave the Church of Philippi devoid of
wisest pastoral care. It is most likely, as Dr. Lightfoot
points out in the Introduction to his Commentary on
Philippians, that St. Luke was left behind to consolidate
the work which had been thus begun by such a
noble company. Then Paul and Silas and Timotheus
proceeded to Thessalonica, one hundred miles west, the
capital of the province, where the proconsul resided,
and where was a considerable Jewish population, as
we see, not only from the fact that a synagogue is
expressly said to have existed there, but also because
the Jews were able to excite the city pagan mob against
the Apostles and drag them before the local magistrates.Thessalonica is to this day the abode of a large Jewish population.
Tozer, in his Highlands of Turkey, vol. i., p. 146, says: "Of the sixty
thousand inhabitants of Salonica two-thirds are Jews, the rest being
Turks and Greeks.... From early times the Hebrew race seem to
have been attracted by the commercial advantages of Salonica. Thus
when St. Paul preached there he found a considerable Jewish community....
A large number of the Salonica Jews are rich merchants,
and a great part of the wealth of the place is in their hands." Mr.
Lewin, in his St. Paul, vol. i., p. 222, gives a table of the distances all
along St. Paul's route.
St. Paul at Philippi had for the first time experienced
a purely pagan persecution. He had indeed previously
suffered at the hands of the heathen at Lystra, but they
were urged on by the Jews. At Philippi he gained
his first glimpse of that long vista of purely Gentile
persecution through which the Church had to pass till
Christianity seated itself in the person of Constantine
on the throne of the Cæsars. But as soon as he got
to Thessalonica he again experienced the undying
hostility of his Jewish fellow-countrymen using for their
wicked purposes the baser portion of the city rabble.Mr. Findlay, in a little work lately published, The Epistles of Paul
the Apostle, has many valuable observations on the subject of the Jewish
opposition experienced by the Apostle at Thessalonica.
St. Paul remained three weeks in Thessalonica teaching
privately and publicly the gospel message, without experiencing
any Jewish opposition. It is an interesting
fact that to this day St. Paul's visit to Thessalonica is
remembered, and in one of the local mosques, which was
formerly the Church of Sancta Sophia, a marble pulpit
is shown, said to have been the very one occupied by
the Apostle, while in the surrounding plains trees and
groves are pointed out as marking spots where he
tarried for a time. The Jews were at last, however,
roused to opposition, possibly because of St. Paul's
success among the Gentiles, who received his doctrines
with such avidity that there believed "of the devout
Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not
a few." In Thessalonica, as elsewhere, the spirit of
religious selfishness, desiring to have gospel promises
and a Messiah all to themselves, was the ruin of the
Jewish people. The Jews therefore, assisted by the
pagans, assaulted the residence of Jason, with whom
St. Paul and his friends were staying. They missed
the Apostles themselves, but they seized Jason and
some of the apostolic band, or at least some of their
converts whom they found in Jason's house, and
brought them before the town magistrates, who, acting
under the eye of the resident proconsul, did not lend
themselves to any irregular proceedings like the Philippian
prætors. A charge of treason was formally brought
against the prisoners: "These all act contrary to the
decrees of Cæsar, saying that there is another King,
one Jesus"; in the words of which charge we get a
glimpse of the leading topic on which the Apostles
insisted. Jesus Christ, the crucified, risen, glorified
King and Head of His people, was the great subject
of St. Paul's teaching as it struck the heathen. The
Thessalonian magistrates acted very fairly. They
entered the charge which was a serious one in the eye
of Roman law. Bail was then taken for the accused and
they were set free. The Apostles, however, escaped
arrest, and the local brethren determined that they
should incur no danger; so while the accused remained
to stand their trial, Paul and Silas and Timotheus were
despatched to Berœa, where they were for a time welcomed,
and free discussion permitted in the synagogue
concerning the truths taught by the Evangelists. After
a time, however, tidings having reached Thessalonica,
agents were despatched to Berœa, who stirring up
the Jewish residents, St. Paul was despatched in
charge of some trusty messengers who guided the steps
of the hunted servant of God to the city of Athens.
We see the physical infirmities of St. Paul, the difficulties
he had to contend with, hinted at in the fourteenth
and fifteenth verses of the seventeenth chapter. "Then
immediately the brethren sent forth Paul," and "They
that conducted Paul brought him to Athens," words
which give us a glimpse of his fearfully defective
eyesight. His enemies might be pressing upon him
and danger might be imminent, but he could make no
unaided effort to save himself. He depended upon the
kindly help of others that he might escape his untiring
foes and find his way to a place of safety.
Thus ended St. Paul's first visit to Thessalonica so
far as the Acts of the Apostles is concerned; but we
have interesting light thrown upon it from an Epistle
which St. Paul himself wrote to the Thessalonians
soon after his departure from amongst them. A
comparison of First Thessalonians with the text of
the Acts will furnish the careful student with much
information concerning the circumstances of that
notable visit, just as we have seen that the text of the
Philippian Epistle throws light upon his doings at
Philippi. The Thessalonian Epistles are more helpful
even than the Philippians in this respect, because they
were written only a few months after St. Paul's visit
to Thessalonica, while years elapsed, eight or ten at
least, before the Philippian Epistle was indited. First
Thessalonians shows us, for instance, that St. Paul's
visit to Thessalonica lasted a considerable time. In
the Acts we read of his discussing in the synagogue
three Sabbath days, and then it would appear as
if the riot was raised which drove him to Berœa and
Athens. The impression left on our minds by St.
Luke's narrative is that St. Paul's labours were almost
entirely concentrated upon the Jews in Thessalonica,
and that he bestowed very little attention indeed upon
the pagans. The Epistle corrects this impression.
When we read the first chapter of First Thessalonians
we see that it was almost altogether a church
of converted idolaters, not of converted Jews. St.
Paul speaks of the Thessalonians as having turned
from idols to serve the living God; he refers to the
instructions on various points like the resurrection,
the ascension, the second coming of Christ, which
he had imparted, and describes their faith and works
as celebrated throughout all Macedonia and Achaia.
A large and flourishing church like that, composed
of former pagans, could not have been founded in
the course of three weeks, during which time St. Paul's
attention was principally bestowed on the Jewish
residents. Then too, when we turn to Philippians iv. 16,
we find that St. Paul stayed long enough in Thessalonica
to receive no less than two remittances of money
from the brethren at Philippi to sustain himself and
his brethren. His whole attention too was not
bestowed upon mission work; he spent his days and
nights in manual labour. In the ninth verse of the
second chapter of First Thessalonians he reminds
them of the fact that he supported himself in their
city, "For ye remember, brethren, our labour and
travail: working night and day, that we might not
burden any of you, we preached unto you the gospel
of God." When we realise these things we shall
feel that the Apostle must have spent at least a
couple of months in Thessalonica. It was perhaps
his tremendous success among the heathen which so
stirred up the passions of the town mob as enabled
the Jews to instigate them to raise the riot, they themselves
keeping all the while in the background. St.
Paul, in First Thessalonians, describes the riots raised
against the Christians as being the immediate work of
the pagans: "Ye, brethren, became imitators of the
Churches of God which are in Judæa in Christ Jesus.
For ye also suffered the same things of your own
countrymen as they did of the Jews"; a statement
which is quite consistent with the theory that the persecution
was originally inspired by the Jews. But we
cannot further pursue this interesting line of inquiry
which has been thoroughly worked out by Mr. Lewin
in vol. ii., ch. xi., by Conybeare and Howson in ch. ix.,
and by Archdeacon Farrar, as well as by Dr. Salmon
in his Introduction to the New Testament, ch. xx.
The careful student will find in all these works most
interesting light reflected back upon the Acts from
the apostolic letters, and will see how thoroughly the
Epistles, which were much the earlier documents,
confirm the independent account of St. Luke, writing
at a subsequent period.
Before we terminate this chapter we desire to call
attention to one other point where the investigations
of modern travel have helped to illustrate the genuineness
of the Acts of the Apostles. It has been the
contention of the rationalistic party that the Acts was
a composition of the second century, worked up by a
clever forger out of the materials at his command.
There are various lines of proof by which this theory
can be refuted, but none appeal so forcibly to ordinary
men as the minute accuracy which marks it when
describing the towns of Asia Minor and Macedonia.
Macedonia is a notable case. We have already
pointed out how the Acts give their proper title to the
magistrates of Philippi and recognise its peculiar
constitution as a colony. Thessalonica forms an
interesting contrast to Philippi. Thessalonica was
a free city, like Antioch in Syria, Tarsus, and Athens,
and therefore, though the residence of the proconsul
who ruled the province of Macedonia, was governed by
its own ancient magistrates and its own ancient laws,
without any interference on the part of the proconsul.
St. Luke makes a marked distinction between Philippi
and Thessalonica. At Philippi the Apostles were brought
before the prætors, at Thessalonica they were brought
before the politarchs,This case of Thessalonica is an interesting illustration of Bishop
Lightfoot's statement:—"The government of the Roman provinces at
this time was peculiarly dangerous ground for the romance-writer
to venture upon" (Essays on Supernatural Religion, p. 291). If the
Roman provinces were a dangerous ground for a romance-writer, such
as some critics would make the author of the Acts, the government of
the large Græco-Roman towns and cities was still more dangerous, as
scarcely any two successive ones were alike. Thessalonica is a good
instance of this. St. Luke calls the magistrates politarchs, and the
triumphal arch at Thessalonica calls them politarchs; a title which
seems to have been a very rare one, as only one other instance of its
occurrence has been discovered. Monastir, in the north-west of Macedonia,
is an important town, and there an inscription belonging to the
ancient Deuriopus, twelve miles distant, was found more than twenty
years ago containing the same title, politarchs. Surely the stones out
of the walls of Thessalonica and of Monastir cry out in defence of
St. Luke's accuracy! See Mr. Tozer's Highlands of Turkey, vol. i.,
p. 145, and vol. ii., p. 358, Append. B; Bœckh's Corp. Ins. Græc.,
No. 1967; articles by the Abbé Belley in the Acad. des Inscript.,
xxxviii., p. 125, and by Mr. Vaux in the Trans. of Roy. Soc. of
Literature, vol. viii., new series.
a title strange to classical
antiquity, but which has been found upon a triumphal
arch which existed till a few years ago across the
main street of the modern city of Thessalonica. That
arch has now disappeared; but the fragments containing
the inscription were fortunately preserved and
have been now placed in the British Museum, where
they form a precious relic proving the genuineness of
the sacred narrative.
CHAPTER XIII.
ST. PAUL IN GREECE.
"Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked
within him, as he beheld the city full of idols. So he reasoned in the
synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the market-place
every day with them that met with him. And certain also of the
Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said,
What would this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter
forth of strange gods: because he preached Jesus and the resurrection."—Acts
xvii. 16-18.
"After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth."—Acts
xviii. 1.
There are parallelisms in history which are very
striking, and yet these parallelisms can be easily
explained. The stress and strain of difficulties acting
upon large masses of men evolve and call forth similar
types of character, and demand the exercise of similar
powers. St. Paul and St. Athanasius are illustrations
of this statement. They were both little men, both
enthusiastic in their views, both pursued all their lives
long with bitter hostility, and both had experience of
the most marvellous and hairbreadth escapes. If any
reader will take up Dean Stanley's History of the Eastern
Church, and read the account given of St. Athanasius in
the seventh chapter of that work, he will be strikingly
reminded of St. Paul in these various aspects, but
specially in the matter of his wondrous escapes from
his deadly enemies, which were so numerous that at
last they came to regard Athanasius as a magician who
eluded their designs by the help of his familiar spirits.
It was much the same with St. Paul. Hairbreadth
escapes were his daily experience, as he himself points
out in the eleventh chapter of his Second Epistle to
Corinth. He there enumerates a few of them, but
quite omits his escapes from Jerusalem, from the
Pisidian Antioch, from Iconium, Lystra, Thessalonica,
and last of all from Berœa, whence he was driven by
the renewed machinations of the Thessalonian Jews,
who found out after a time whither the object of
their hatred had fled. Paul's ministry at Berœa was
not fruitless, short as it may have been. He established
a Church there which took good care of the precious
life entrusted to its keeping, and therefore as soon as
the deputies of the Thessalonian synagogue came to
Berœa and began to work upon the Jews of the local
synagogue, as well as upon the pagan mob of the town,
the Berœan disciples took Paul, who was the special
object of Jewish hatred, and despatched him down to
the sea-coast, some twenty miles distant, in charge of
certain trusty messengers, while Silas remained behind,
in temporary concealment doubtless, in order that he
might consolidate the Church.It is well, perhaps, to bear in mind the distances which separate
the various stages of St. Paul's progress through Macedonia. Thessalonica
was about a hundred miles from Philippi, Berœa fifty from
Thessalonica, and the sea-coast of the Thermaic Gulf, or the Gulf
of Salonica, as it is now called, some twenty miles from Berœa.
Here we get a hint,
a passing glimpse of St. Paul's infirmity. He was despatched
in charge of trusty messengers, I have said,
who were to show him the way. "They that conducted
Paul brought him as far as Athens." His ophthalmia,
perhaps, had become specially bad owing to the rough
usage he had experienced, and so he could not escape
all solitary and alone as he did in earlier years from
Damascus, and therefore guides were necessary who
should conduct him "as far as the sea," and then, when
they had got that far, they did not leave him alone.
They embarked in the ship with him, and, sailing to
Athens, deposited him safely in a lodging. The journey
was by sea, not by land, because a sea journey was
necessarily much easier for the sickly and weary
Apostle than the land route would have been, offering
too a much surer escape from the dangers of pursuit.
The voyage was an easy one, and not too prolonged.
The boat or ship in which the Apostle was embarked
passed through splendid scenery. On his right hand, as
he steered for the south, was the magnificent mountain
of Olympus, the fabled abode of the gods, rising a clear
ten thousand feet into the region of perpetual snow,
while on his left was Mount Athos, upon which he
had been looking ever since the day that he left Troas.
But the Apostle had no eye for the scenery, nor had
St. Luke a word to bestow upon its description, though
he often passed through it, absorbed as they were in
the contemplation of the awful realities of a world
unseen. The sea voyage from the place where St. Paul
embarked till he came to Phalerum, the port of Athens,
where he landed, lasted perhaps three or four days,
and covered about two hundred miles, being somewhat
similar in distance, scenery, and surroundings to the
voyage from Glasgow to Dublin or Bristol, land in both
cases being in sight all the time and splendid mountain
ranges bounding the views on either side.The best description which I know of this neighbourhood is that
given by Mr. Tozer in his Highlands of Turkey, vol. ii., p. 8. St. Paul
embarked at the head of the long, narrow gulf, called anciently the
Thermaic Gulf, leading up to the city of Thessalonica. The Apostle
must have sailed in a mere fishing smack or good-sized boat, as the iron-bound
western coast of this gulf is devoid of harbours sufficient for large
ships. Mr. Tozer himself sailed from Thessalonica in such a vessel,
see l.c., vol. ii., p. 4: "We chartered a vessel to convey us down the
bay, a six-oared Smyrna caïque, quite elegant in her appointments as
compared with the ordinary lumbering market boats and coasters of
these seas, and a tight little craft withal, for though not more than six
feet in width, and without a deck, she had made a voyage to the Crimea
during the war." Cicero, even when going as proconsul into Asia
travelled in the "undecked vessel of the Rhodians," of whose weakness
and slowness he complains: see his letters to Atticus, v. 12 and 13.
St. Paul landed about November 1st, 51, at Phalerum,
one of the two ports of ancient Athens, the Piræus
being the other, and thence his uncertain steps were
guided to the city itself, where he was left alone in
some lodging. The Berœan Christians to whom he
was entrusted returned perhaps in the same vessel
in which they had previously travelled, as the winter
season, when navigation largely ceased, was now fast
advancing, bearing with them a message to Timothy and
Silas to come as rapidly as possible to his assistance,
the Apostle being practically helpless when deprived
of his trusted friends. At Athens St. Paul for a time
moved about examining the city for himself, a process
which soon roused him to action and brought matters
to a crisis. St. Paul was well used to pagan towns
and the sights with which they were filled. From his
earliest youth in Tarsus idolatry and its abominations
must have been a pain and grief to him; but Athens
he found to exceed them all, so that "his spirit was
provoked within him as he beheld the city full of idols."
We have in ancient Greek literature the most interesting
confirmation of the statement here made by
St. Luke. We still possess a descriptive account of
Greece written by a chatty Greek traveller named
Pausanias, in the days of the Antonines, that is, less
than a hundred years after St. Paul's visit, and when
Athens was practically the same as in the Apostle's day.
Pausanias enters into the greatest details about Athens,
describing the statues of gods and heroes, the temples,
the worship, the customs of the people, bestowing the
first thirty chapters of his first book upon Athens
alone. Pausanias's Description of GreeceThis important work may be most easily consulted in Shilleto's
translation, published in Bohn's Classical Library, Bell & Sons, London,
1886.
is most interesting
to every one because he saw Athens in the
height of its literary glory and architectural splendour,
and it is specially interesting to the Bible student because
it amply confirms and illustrates the details of
St. Paul's visit.
Thus we are told in words just quoted that St. Paul
found "the city full of idols," and this provoked his
spirit over and above the usual provocation he received
wherever he found dead idols like these usurping the
place rightfully belonging to the Lord of the universe.
Now let us take up Pausanias, and what does he tell
us? In his first chapter he tells how the ports of
Athens were crowded on every side with temples, and
adorned with statues of gold and silver. Phalerum,
the port where Paul landed, had temples of Demeter,
of Athene, of Zeus, and "altars of gods unknown," of
which we shall presently speak. Then we can peruse
chapter after chapter crowded with descriptions of
statues and temples, till in the seventeenth chapter we
read how in their pantheistic enthusiasm they idolised
the most impalpable of things: "The Athenians have
in the market-place, among other things not universally
notable, an altar of Mercy, to whom, though
most useful of all the gods to the life of man and its
vicissitudes, the Athenians alone of all the Greeks
assign honours. And not only is philanthropy more
regarded among them, but they also exhibit more piety
to the gods than others; for they have also an altar
to Shame and Rumour and Energy. And it is clear
that those people who have a larger share of piety
than others have also a larger share of good fortune."
While again, in chapter xxiv., dwelling upon
the statues of Hercules and Athene, Pausanias remarks,
"I have said before that the Athenians, more
than any other Greeks, have a zeal for religion."
Athens was, at the time of St. Paul's visit, the leading
university of the world, and university life then was
permeated with the spirit of paganism, the lovers of
philosophy and science delighting to adorn Athens
with temples and statues and endowments as expressions
of the gratitude they felt for the culture which
they had there gained.The Emperor Hadrian, for instance, adorned Athens with expensive
buildings and libraries, and enriched it with endowments. See Duhr's
work, p. 44, on the Journeys of the Emperor Hadrian, published in the
Proceedings of the Archæological Society of Vienna; and cf. Pausanias,
i. 18.
These things had, however, no
charm for the Apostle Paul. Some moderns, viewing
him from an unsympathetic point of view, would
describe him in their peculiar language as a mere
Philistine in spirit, unable to recognise the material
beauty and glory which lay around. And this is true.
The beauty which the architect and the sculptor would
admire was for the Apostle to a large extent non-existent,
owing to his defective eyesight; but even
when recognised it was an object rather of dislike and
of abhorrence than of admiration and pleasure, because
the Apostle saw deeper than the man of mere superficial
culture and æsthetic taste. The Apostle saw
these idols and the temples consecrated to their use
from the moral and spiritual standpoint, and viewed
them therefore as the outward and visible signs of an
inward festering corruption and rottenness, the more
beautiful perhaps because of the more awful decay
which lay beneath.
The glimpses which St. Paul got of Athens as he
wandered about roused his spirit and quickened him to
action. He followed his usual course therefore. He
first sought his own countrymen the Jews. There was
a colony of Jews at Athens, as we know from independent
sources. Philo was a Jew the authenticity of
whose writings, at least in great part, has never been
questioned. He lived at Alexandria at this very period,
and was sent, about twelve years earlier, as an ambassador
to Rome to protest against the cruel persecutions
to which the Alexandrian Jews had been subjected at
the time when Caligula made the attempt to erect his
statue at Jerusalem, of which we have spoken in a
previous chapter. He wrote an account of his journey
to Rome and his treatment by the Emperor, which is
called Legatio ad Caium, and in it he mentions Athens
as one of the cities where a considerable Jewish colony
existed.Any one wishing to consult the writings of this contemporary of
St. Paul can find Philo's works translated into English in 4 vols. in
Bohn's Library of Ecclesiastical Antiquity. A comparison of St. Paul's
writings with those of Philo will show us the wondrous superiority of
those of the Christian Apostle, owing to his inspiration by the Holy
Ghost. St. Paul's writings are a perpetual feast of fat things nourishing
the soul unto everlasting life. The writings of Philo are curious
and interesting, but no one would dream of taking them as a spiritual
guide of life.
We know practically nothing more about
this Jewish colony save what we are told here by St.
Luke, that it was large enough to have a synagogue,
not a mere oratory like the Philippian Jews.The Athenians had for a long time previous to St. Paul's visit some
commercial relations with the Jewish nation. Josephus, Antiqq.,
XIV. 8, tells us how they erected a brass statue of the high priest
Hyrcanus, as an expression of their good will to the Jewish nation.
This was a hundred years before St. Paul's visit. Bayet discovered
early Jewish inscriptions among the Athenian cemeteries. See his
De Titulis Atticæ Christianis, pp. 122-24, of which we treat in a note
infra.
It
cannot, however, have been a very large one. Athens
was not a seat of any considerable trade, and therefore
had no such attractions for the Jews as either Thessalonica
or Corinth; while its abounding idolatry and
its countless images would be repellant to their feelings.
Modern investigations have, indeed, brought to light a
few ancient inscriptions testifying to the presence of
Jews at Athens in these earlier ages; but otherwise
we know nothing about them. The synagogue seems
to have imbibed a good deal of the same easy-going
contemptuously tolerant spirit with which the whole
atmosphere of Athens was infected. Jews and pagans
alike listened to St. Paul, and then turned away to
their own pursuits. In a city where every religion was
represented, and every religion discussed and laughed
at, how could any one be very much in earnest? St.
Paul then turned from the Jews to the Gentiles. He
frequented the market-place, a well-known spot, near to
the favourite meeting-place of the Stoic philosophers.Pausanias, i. 15, gives a description of the Porch or Painted
Chamber, the Stoa Pœcile, whence the Stoics derived their name,
showing that it was close to the Agora, or market-place, where Paul
disputed.
There St. Paul entered into discussion with individuals
or with groups as they presented themselves.
The philosophers soon took notice of the new-comer.
His manner, terribly in earnest, would soon have
secured attention in any society, and much more in
Athens, where whole-souled and intense enthusiasm
was the one intellectual quality which was completely
wanting. For who but a man that had heard the
voice of God and had seen the vision of the Almighty
could be in earnest in a city where residents and
strangers sojourning there all alike spent their time in
nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new
thing? The philosophers and Stoics and Epicureans
alike were attracted by St. Paul's manner. They
listened to him as he discoursed of Jesus and the
Resurrection, the two topics which absorbed him.
They mistook his meaning in a manner very natural to
the place, strange as it may seem to us. In Athens
the popular worship was thoroughly Pantheistic. Every
desire, passion, infirmity even of human nature was
deified and adored, and therefore, as we have already
pointed out, Pity and Shame and Energy and Rumour,
the last indeed the most fitting and significant of them
all for a people who simply lived to talk, found spirits
willing to prostrate themselves in their service and altars
dedicated to their honour. The philosophers heard this
new Jewish teacher proclaiming the virtues and blessings
of Jesus and the Resurrection, and they concluded
Jesus to be one divinity and the Resurrection another
divinity, lately imported from the mysterious East.
The philosophers were the aristocracy of the Athenian
city, reverenced as the University professors in a
German or Scotch town, and they at once brought the
new-comer before the court of Areopagus, the highest
in Athens, charged, as in the time of Socrates, with
the duty of supervising the affairs of the national
religion, and punishing all attacks and innovations
thereon. The Apostle was led up the steps or stairs
which still remain, the judges took their places on the
rock-hewn benches, St. Paul was placed upon the defendant's
stone, called, as Pausanias tells us, the Stone
of Impudence, and then the trial began.
The Athenian philosophers were cultured, and they
were polite. They demand, therefore, in bland tones,
"May we know what this new teaching is, which is
spoken by thee? For thou bringest certain strange
things to our ears; we would know, therefore, what
these things mean." And now St. Paul has got his
chance of a listening audience. He has come across a
new type of hearers, such as he has not enjoyed since
those early days of his first Christian love, when, after
his escape from Jerusalem, he resided at the university
city of Tarsus for a long time, till sought out by
Barnabas to come and minister to the crowds of
Gentiles who were flocking into the Church at Antioch.That period of retirement at Tarsus may have been utilised by
St. Paul in studying classical literature and Greek philosophy by way
of preparation for that life's work among the Gentiles, to which he was
appointed at his conversion.
St. Paul knew right well the tenets of the two classes
of men, the Stoics and the Epicureans, with whom he
had to contend, and he deals with them effectually in
the speech which he delivered before the court. Of
that address we have only the barest outline. The
report given in the Acts contains about two hundred
and fifty words, and must have lasted little more than
two minutes if that was all St. Paul said. It embodies,
however, merely the leading arguments used by the
Apostle as Timothy or some other disciple recollected
them and told them to St. Luke. Let us see what
these arguments were. He begins with a compliment to
the Athenians. The Authorised, and even the Revised,
Version represent him indeed as beginning like an
unskilled and unwise speaker with giving his audience
a slap in the face. "Ye men of Athens, in all things
I perceive that ye are somewhat superstitious," would
not have been the most conciliatory form of address
to a keen-witted assembly like that before which he
was now standing. It would have tended to set their
backs up at once. If we study St. Paul's Epistles,
specially his First Epistle to Corinth, we shall find that
even when he had to find the most grievous faults
with his disciples, he always began like a prudent man
by conciliating their feelings, praising them for whatever
he could find good or blessed in them. Surely
if St. Paul acted thus with believers living unworthy
of their heavenly calling, he would be still more careful
not to offend men whom he wished to win over to
Christ! St. Paul's exordium was complimentary rather
than otherwise, bearing out the description which
Pausanias gives of the Athenians of his own day, that
"they have more than other Greeks, a zeal for religion."
Let us expand his thoughts somewhat that we may
grasp their force. "Men of Athens, in all things I perceive
that ye are more religious and more devoted to the
worship of the deity than other men. For as I passed
along and observed the objects of your worship, I found
also an altar with this inscription, To the unknown
God." St. Paul here displays his readiness as a
practised orator. He shows his power and readiness
to become all things to all men. He seizes upon the
excessive devotion of the Athenians. He does not
abuse them on account of it, he uses it rather as a good
and useful foundation on which he may build a worthier
structure, as a good and sacred principle, hitherto
misapplied, but henceforth to be dedicated to a nobler
purpose. The circumstance upon which St. Paul
seized, the existence of an altar dedicated to the unknown
God, is amply confirmed by historic evidence.
St. Paul may have noticed such altars as he passed
up the road from Phalerum, where he landed, to the
city of Athens, where, as we learn from Pausanias,
the next-century traveller, such altars existed in his
time; or he may have seen them on the very hill of Areopagus
on which he was standing, where, from ancient
times, as we learn from another writer, altars existed
dedicated to the unknown gods who sent a plague upon
Athens.There are frequent notices of the altars to the unknown gods in
ancient Greek writers: as in Pausanias, Description of Greece, vol. i., p. 2
(Shilleto's translation); Life of Apollonius, by Philostratus, vi., 3;
Lucian's Philopatris, 29. See, however, for exhaustive discussions of
this point, and the whole subject of the topography of ancient Athens,
Lewin's St. Paul, vol. i., p. 242; Farrar's St. Paul, ch. xxvii., and
Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul, vol. i., ch. x. Spon and Wheeler
were travellers of the seventeenth century, whose works on this subject
are important as showing Athens as it existed before modern changes.
Some of the reports of travels in Greece, made by eminent scholars in
the same century, and now very little known, may be found in the early
volumes of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
St. Paul's argument then was this. The
Athenians were already worshippers of the Unknown
God. This was the very deity he came proclaiming,
and therefore he could not be a setter forth of strange
gods nor liable to punishment in consequence. He then
proceeds to declare more fully the nature of the Deity
hitherto unknown. He was the God that made the
world and all things therein. He was not identical
therefore with the visible creation as the Pantheism of
the Stoics declared,St. Paul shows that he could sympathise with the true element in
pantheistic stoicism by his famous words which have a certain pantheistic
ring, but still a very different one from that of the Stoics: "In
Him we live and move and have our being."
but gave to all out of His own
immense fulness life and wealth, and all things; neither
was He like the gods of the Epicureans who sat far
aloof from all care and thought about this lower world.
St. Paul taught God's personal existence as against the
Stoics, and God's providence as against the Epicureans.
Then he struck straight at the root of that national
pride, that supreme contempt for the outside barbaric
world, which existed as strongly among these cultured
agnostic Greek philosophers as among the most narrow,
fanatical, and bigoted Jews: "He made of one
every nation of men for to dwell on all the face of the
earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and
the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek
God, if haply they might feel after Him, and find
Him." A doctrine which must have sounded exceeding
strange to these Greeks accustomed to despise the
barbarian world, looking down upon it from the height
of their learning and civilisation, and regarding themselves
as the only favourites of Heaven. St. Paul
proclaims on the Hill of Mars Christian liberalism, the
catholic and cosmopolitan character of the true religion
in opposition to this Greek contempt grounded on mere
human position and privilege, as clearly and as loudly
as he proclaimed the same great truth at Jerusalem or
in the synagogues of the Dispersion in opposition to
Jewish exclusiveness grounded on the Divine covenant.
St. Paul had grasped the great lesson taught by the
prophets of the Old Testament as they prophesied
concerning Babylon, Egypt, and Tyre. They proclaimed
the lesson which Jewish ears were slow to learn, they
taught the Jews the truth which Paul preached to the
philosophers of Athens, they acted upon the principle
which it was the great work of Paul's life to exemplify,
that God's care and love and providence are over all
His works, that His mercies are not restrained to any
one nation, but that, having made of one all nations
upon the face of the earth, His blessings are bestowed
upon them all alike. This truth here taught by St.
Paul has been slow to make its way. Men have been
slow to acknowledge the equality of all nations in
God's sight, very slow to give up their own claims to
exceptional treatment and blessing on the part of the
Almighty. The great principle enunciated by the
Apostle struck, for instance, at the evil of slavery, yet
how slowly it made its way. Till thirty years ago
really good and pious men saw nothing inconsistent
with Christianity in negro slavery. Christian communions
even were established grounded on this fundamental
principle, the righteous character of slavery.
John Newton was a slave trader, and seems to have
seen nothing wrong in it. George Whitfield owned
slaves, and bequeathed them as part of his property to
be held for his Orphan House in America. But it is
not only slavery that this great principle overthrows.
It strikes down every form of injustice and wrong.
God has made all men of one; they are all equally
His care, and therefore every act of injustice is a
violation of the Divine law which is thus expressed.
Such ideas must have seemed exceedingly strange,
and even unnatural to men accustomed to reverence
the teaching and study the writings of guides like
Aristotle, whose dogma was that slavery was based on
the very constitution of nature itself which formed
some men to rule and others to be slaves.
St. Paul does not finish with this. He has not yet
exhausted all his message. He had now dealt with
the intellectual errors and mistakes of his hearers.
He had around him and above him, if he could but
see the magnificent figure of Athene, the pride and
glory of the Acropolis, with its surrounding temples,
the most striking proofs how their intellectual mistakes
had led the wise of this world into fatal and degrading
practices. In the course of his argument, having shown
the nearness of God to man, "In Him we live and
move and have our being," and the Divine desire that
man should seek after and know God, he quoted
a passage common to several well-known poets, "For
we are also His offspring."These words are directly and literally taken out of the Phænomena
of Aratus, a Greek poet of Cilicia and a fellow-countryman of the
orator. He was absolutely correct, however, in saying "certain of your
own poets," as the same sentiment is found in a hymn to Jupiter, composed
by the Stoic philosopher and poet Cleanthes, a poem which will
be found with a Latin version in Cudworth's Intellectual System.
Cleanthes was the immediate successor of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism.
His words therefore would have the more weight with his disciples three
centuries later. He died, like a Stoic, of hunger, aged eighty, and a
statue was erected to him by the Roman Senate in his native place
Assos, a town of Æolis in Greece. See for more about Cleanthes and
Aratus, Fabricius, Bibliotheca Græca, or Smith's Dict. Greek and Rom.
Biog.
This was sufficient for
St. Paul, who as we see, in all his Epistles, often flies
off at a tangent when a word slips as it were by chance
from his pen, leading him off to a new train of ideas.
We are the offspring of God. How is it then that men
can conceive the Godhead, that which is Divine, to be
like unto those gold and silver, brass or marble statues,
even though wrought with the greatest possible skill.
The philosophers indeed pretended to distinguish
between the Eternal Godhead and these divinities
and images innumerable, which were but representations
of his several characteristics and attributes.
But even if they distinguished intellectually, they did
not distinguish in practice, and the people from the
highest to the lowest identified the idol with the deity
itself, and rendered thereto the honour due to God.As it was with the ancient image worshippers, so is it with the
modern. The excuses made for the pagans in ancient times are exactly
the same as those made for the image worshippers of the eighth and
later centuries: see the article on Iconoclasm in the Dict. Christ. Biog.
St. Paul then proceeds to enunciate his own doctrines.
He lightly touches upon, as he did previously at Lystra
(ch. xiv. 16), a subject which neither the time at his
disposal nor the position of his hearers would permit
him to discuss. He glances at, but does not attempt to
explain, why God had postponed to that late date this
novel teaching: "The times of ignorance God overlooked;
but now He commandeth men that they should
all everywhere repent." This doctrine of repentance,
involving a sense of sin and sorrow for it, must have
sounded exceeding strange to those philosophic ears, as
did the announcement with which the Apostle follows
it up, the proclamation of a future judgment by a Man
whom God had ordained for the purpose, and authenticated
by raising him from the dead. Here the crowd
interrupted him. The Resurrection, or Anastasis,
which Paul preached was not then a new deity, but an
impossible process through which no man save in
fable had ever passed. When the Apostle got thus
far the assembly broke up. The idea of a resurrection
of a dead man was too much for them. It was too
ludicrous for belief. "Some mocked: but others said,
We will hear thee again of this matter," and thus ended
St. Paul's address, and thus ended too the Athenian
opportunity, for St. Paul soon passed away from such a
society of learned triflers and scoffers. They sat in the
seat of the scorner, and the seat of the scorner is never
a good one for a learner to occupy who wishes to profit.
He felt that he had no great work to do in such a place.
His opportunity lay where hearts were broken with sin
and sorrow, where the burden of life weighed upon the
soul, and men heavy laden and sore pressed were
longing for real deliverance and for a higher, nobler
life than the world could offer. His work, however, was
not all in vain, nor were his personal discussions and
his public address devoid of results. The Church of
Athens was one of those which could look back to
St. Paul as its founder. "Not many wise after the
flesh were called" in that city of wisdom and beauty,
but some were called, among whom was one of those
very judges who sat to investigate the Apostle's teaching:
"But certain clave unto him, and believed:
among whom also was Dionysius the Areopagite, and
a woman named Damaris, and others with them."
And this Church thus founded became famous; Dionysius
the Areopagite became afterwards a celebrated
man, because his name was attached some five centuries
later to a notorious forgery which has played no
small part in later Christian history.Few biblical characters have been so surrounded with a haze of
fable as Dionysius the Areopagite. All that we certainly know about
him is from this passage in the Acts, and from two notices by Eusebius,
H. E., iii. 4, and iv. 23. In the Acta Sanctorum the Bollandists bestow
an immense quantity of space on Dionysius and the literature of the
subject under the date Oct. 9th, in their Fourth Volume for October,
pp. 696-987. The name of Dionysius became specially celebrated when
about the year 500 it was attached to an impudent forgery called the
Heavenly Hierarchy, from which has been largely derived the modern
Roman doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and which
has also exercised a great influence on the development of modern pantheism:
see the article on Dionysius in vol. i. of Smith's Dict. Christ.
Biog. Johannes Scotus Erigena, an Irish scholar of the ninth century,
was the only man in France found capable of translating these Greek
works when brought to Western Europe from the East: see Vett. Epistt.
Hibernic. Sylloge, xxii., xxiii., xxiv., in Ussher's Works (Ed. Elrington),
iv. 474-87. Dionysius is commemorated on Oct. 3rd in the ancient
Latin Martyrologies, on Oct. 9th in the modern Roman Martyrology.
The ancient Martyrologies—the ancient Roman, Ado's, Usaurd's—have
a curious notice stating that Aristides the Athenian, in a work which he
wrote about the Christian religion, described the martyrdom of Dionysius
in the reign of Hadrian. There is no notice of this in the Apology
of Aristides which has lately come to light. A curious story is told
in one of his alleged letters, addressed to Polycarp. Apollophanes,
a pagan sophist, was attacking Polycarp about Christianity. Dionysius
tells Polycarp to remind his opponent of the miraculous darkness on
the day of Crucifixion which Dionysius and Apollophanes had seen at
Hierapolis, where they were then both students, when Dionysius said,
"Either the God of nature suffers, or the world is in process of
dissolution."
Dionysius was
the first bishop of the Athenian Church according to
the testimony of another Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth,
who lived in the middle of the second century, while
persons were yet living who could remember the
Areopagite. He was succeeded by Publius, who presided
over the Church at an important period of its
existence. The Emperor Hadrian came to Athens,
and was charmed with it about the year 125 a.d. At
that time the Athenian Church must have included
among its members several learned men; for the two
earliest Apologies in defence of Christianity were produced
by it. The Athenian Church had just then been
purified by the fiery trials of persecution. Quadratus
and Aristides stood forth to plead its cause before the
Emperor.The visits of the Emperor Hadrian to Athens, and his delight in
that city, have been confirmed by the latest antiquarian investigations
in the region of coins and inscriptions. The student who wishes to make
acquaintance with the evidence on this point, which has an important
bearing upon the historic proof of our holy religion, should consult the
learned treatise of Julius Dürr, styled, Die Reisen der Kaisers Hadrian,
(Vienna, 1881). It minutely investigates the records of Hadrian's life, and
shows us that Hadrian visited and lived at Athens in A.D. 125. This
work was published ten years before the Apology of the Athenian
Christian Aristides was discovered, serving to illustrate its history from
an independent point of view. I have endeavoured to set forth the
bearing of this point at greater length than I can now bestow upon
it in a series of papers on the Apology of Aristides in the Sunday at
Home for 1891-2. Mrs. Rendal Harris, the wife of the discoverer
of it, has published an interesting work on this Apology, to which I
would refer the reader (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1892). The
Apology itself was published in 1891, in the series called Cambridge
Texts and Studies.
Of Quadratus and his work we know but
little. Eusebius, the great Church historian, had, however,
seen it, and gives us (H. E., iv. 3) a brief abstract of
it, appealing to the miracles of our Saviour, and stating
that some of the dead whom Christ had raised had
lived to his own time. While as for Aristides, the
other apologist, his work, after lying hidden from the
sight of Christendom, was printed and published last
year, as we have told in the former volume of this commentary.
That Apology of Aristides has much important
teaching for us, as we have there tried to show.
There is one point, however, to which we did not allude.
The Apology of Aristides shows us that the Athenian
Church accepted in the fullest degree and preserved
the great Pauline doctrine of the freedom and catholic
nature of Christianity. In the year 125 Judaism and
Christianity were still struggling together within the
Church in other places; but at Athens they had clean
separated the one from the other. Till that year no
one but a circumcised Jewish Christian had ever presided
over the Mother Church of Jerusalem, which
sixty years after the martyrdom of St. Peter and St.
Paul preserved exactly the same attitude as in the days
of James the Just.The testimony of Eusebius, H. E., iv. 5, is express on this point:
"Down to the siege of the Jews under Hadrian there were fifteen
bishops in the Church of Jerusalem, all of whom, as they say, were
Hebrews from the first, and received the genuine knowledge of
Christ, so that in the estimation of those able to judge they were
counted worthy of the episcopal office."
The Church of Athens, on the other
hand, as a thoroughly Gentile Church, had from the
first enjoyed the ministry of Dionysius the Areopagite,
a Gentile of culture and education. He had been
attracted by the broad liberal teaching of the Apostle
in his address upon Mars' Hill, enunciating a religion
free from all narrow national limitations. He embraced
this catholic teaching with his whole heart, and transmitted
it to his successors, so that when some seventy
years later a learned Athenian stood forth in the person
of Aristides, to explain the doctrines of the Church, contrasting
them with the errors and mistakes of all other
nations, Aristides does not spare even the Jews. He
praises them indeed when compared with the pagans,
who had erred on the primary questions of morals;
but he blames them because they had not reached the
final and absolute position occupied by the Christians.
Listen to the words of Aristides which proclaim the
true Pauline doctrine taught in St. Paul's sermons,
re-echoed by the Epistles, "Nevertheless the Jews too
have gone astray from accurate knowledge, and they
suppose in their minds that they are serving God, but
in the methods of their service, their service is to angels
and not to God, in that they observe Sabbaths and new
moons, and the passover, and the great fast, and the fast
and circumcision, and cleanness of meats," words which
sound exactly the same note and embody the same
conception as St. Paul in his indignant language to
the Galatians (iv. 9-11): "Now that ye have come to
know God, or rather to be known of God, how turn ye
back again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto
ye desire to be in bondage over again? Ye
observe days, and months, and seasons, and years.
I am afraid of you, lest by any means I have bestowed
labour upon you in vain."The whole subject of the origin and history of the primitive Church
of Athens has been minutely investigated by a modern French scholar,
C. Bayet, a member of the French school of antiquaries at Athens.
The title of his book, to which I have already referred, is De Titulis
Atticæ Christianis Antiquissimis Commentatio (Thorin: Paris, 1878).
He gives a large number of primitive Christian and Jewish inscriptions
found at Athens. The above quotation from Aristides will be
found in Rendal Harris's edition, p. 48, in the Cambridge Texts and
Studies.
St. Paul did not stay long at Athens. Five or six
weeks perhaps, two months at most, was probably the
length of his visit, time enough just for his Berœan
guides to go back to their own city two hundred miles
away, and forward their message to Thessalonica fifty
miles distant, desiring Timothy and Silas to come to
him. Timothy, doubtless, soon started upon his way,
tarried with the Apostle for a little, and then returned
to Thessalonica, as we learn from 1 Thess. iii. 1:
"When we could no longer forbear, we thought it good
to be left at Athens alone, and sent Timothy to establish
you and comfort you." And now he was again all
alone in that scoffing city where neither the religious,
moral, nor intellectual atmosphere could have been
pleasing to a man like St. Paul. He quitted Athens
therefore and came to Corinth. In that city he laboured
for a period of a year and a half at least; and yet the
record of his brief visit to Athens, unsuccessful as it
was so far as immediate results are concerned, is
much longer than the record of his prolonged work in
Corinth.
Now if we were writing a life of St. Paul instead of a
commentary on the history told us in the Acts, we should
be able to supplement the brief narrative of the historical
book with the ample details contained in the Epistles
of St. Paul, especially the two Epistles written to Corinth
itself, which illustrate the life of the Apostle, his work
at Corinth, and the state of the Corinthians themselves
prior and subsequent to their conversion. A consideration
of these points would, however, lead me to intrude
on the sphere of the commentator on the Corinthian
Epistles, and demand an amount of space which we
cannot afford. In addition, the three great biographies
of St. Paul to which we have so often referred—Lewin's,
Farrar's, and that of Conybeare and Howson—treat this
subject at such great length and with such a profusion of
archæological learning as practically leave a fresh writer
nothing new to say in this direction. Let us, however,
look briefly at the record in the Acts of St. Paul's work
in Corinth, viewing it from the expositor's point of view.
St. Paul went from Athens to Corinth discouraged, it
may have been, by the results of his Athenian labours.
Opposition never frightened St. Paul; but learned
carelessness, haughty contemptuous indifference to his
Divine message, the outcome of a spirit devoid of any
true spiritual life, quenched his ardour, chilled his enthusiasm.
He must indeed have been sorely repelled by
Athens when he set out all alone for the great capital
of Achaia, the wicked, immoral, debased city of Corinth.
When he came thither he united himself with Aquila,
a Jew of Pontus, and Priscilla his wife, because they
were members of the same craft. They had been lately
expelled from Rome, and, like the Apostle, were tentmakers:
for convenience' sake therefore, and to save
expense, they all lodged together.This expulsion of the Jews from Rome by Claudius, which in the
providence of God brought Aquila and Priscilla into contact with St.
Paul, is mentioned by the Roman historian Suetonius, Claudius, 25,
in the following suggestive words: "He expelled the Jews who were
continually creating tumults, Chestus impelling them." The tumults
roused by the teaching of Christian doctrine, like those in the Thessalonian
and Berœan synagogues, were evidently the origin of the edict.
Aquila and Priscilla were constant travellers, and seem to have been
influential Christians. We find them afterwards at Ephesus, where they
tarried some time: see Acts xviii. 18, 19, 26; 1 Cor. xvi. 19; and
subsequently 2 Tim. iv. 19. They also lived at Rome for a period
between their two residences at Ephesus, as we learn from the fact that
St. Paul sends a salutation to them in Romans xvi. 3, 4.
Here again St. Paul
experienced the wisdom of his father's training and of
the Rabbinical law, which thus made him in Corinth,
as before in Thessalonica, thoroughly independent of
all external circumstances, and able with his own hands
to minister to his body's wants. And it was a fortunate
thing too for the gospel's sake that he was able to do
so. St. Paul never permits any one to think for a
moment that the claim of Christ's ministry for a fitting
support is a doubtful one. He expressly teaches again
and again, as in 1 Cor. ix., that it is the Scriptural
as well as rational duty of the people to contribute
according to their means to the maintenance of Christ's
public ministry. But there were certain circumstances
at Thessalonica, and above all at Corinth, which made
St. Paul waive his just claim and even cramp, limit, and
confine his exertions, by imposing on himself the work
of earning his daily food. Thessalonica and Corinth
had immense Jewish populations. The Jews were
notorious in that age as furnishing the greatest number
of impostors, quack magicians and every other kind of
agency which traded upon human credulity for the
purposes of gain. St. Paul was determined that neither
Jew nor Gentile in either place should be able to hinder
the work of the gospel by accusing him of self-seeking
or covetous purposes. For this purpose he united
with Aquila and Priscilla in working at their common
trade as tentmakers, employing the Sabbath days in
debating after his usual fashion in the Jewish synagogues;
and upon ordinary days improving the hours
during which his hands laboured upon the coarse hair
cloth of which tents were made, either in expounding
to his fellow-workmen the glorious news which he
proclaimed or else in meditating upon the trials of his
converts in Macedonia, or perhaps, most of all, in that
perpetual communion with God, that never-ceasing
intercession for which he ever found room and time in
the secret chambers of the soul. St. Paul's intercessions
as we read of them in his Epistles were immense.
Intercessory prayers for his individual converts are
frequently mentioned by him. It would have been
impossible for a man so hard pressed with labours of
every kind temporal and spiritual to find place for them
all in formal prayers if St. Paul did not cultivate the
habit of ceaseless communion with his Father in heaven,
perpetually bringing before God those cases and persons
which lay dearest to his heart. This habit of secret
prayer must be the explanation of St. Paul's widespread
intercessions, and for this reason. He commends the
same practice again and again to his converts. "Pray
without ceasing" is his language to the Thessalonians
(1 Thess. v. 17). Now this could not mean, prolong
your private devotions to an inordinate length, because
great numbers of his converts were slaves who were
not masters of their time. But it does mean cultivate
a perpetual sense of God's presence and of your own
communion with Him, which will turn life and its
busiest work into a season of refreshing prayer and
untiring intercession.
Meanwhile, according to Acts xviii. 5, Silas and
Timothy arrived from Macedonia, bringing contributions
for the Apostle's support, which enabled him to fling
himself entirely into ministerial and evangelistic work.
This renewed activity soon told. St. Paul had no
longer to complain of contemptuous or listless conduct,
as at Athens. He experienced at Jewish hands in
Corinth exactly the same treatment as at Thessalonica
and Berœa. Paul preached that Jesus was the Christ.
The Jews blasphemed Him, and called Him accursed.
Their attitude became so threatening that Paul was at
length compelled to retire from the synagogue, and,
separating his disciples, Jews and Gentiles alike, he
withdrew to the house of one Justus, a man whose
Latin name bespeaks his Western origin, who lived next
door to the synagogue. Thenceforth he threw himself
with all his energy into his work. God too directly
encouraged him. The very proximity of the Christian
Church to the Jewish Synagogue constituted a special
danger to himself personally when he had to deal with
fanatical Jews. A heavenly visitor appeared, therefore,
to refresh the wearied saint. In his hour of danger and
of weakness God's strength and grace were perfected,
and assurance was granted that the Lord had much
people in the city of Corinth, and that no harm should
happen to him while striving to seek out and gather
God's sheep that were scattered abroad in the midst of
the naughty world of Corinthian life. And the secret
vision did not stand alone. External circumstances
lent their assistance and support. Crispus, the chief
ruler of the synagogue, and his family became converts,
and were baptized. Gaius and Stephanas were important
converts gathered from amongst the Gentiles; so
important indeed were these three individuals and their
families that St. Paul turned aside from his purely
evangelistic and missionary labours and devoted himself
to the pastoral work of preparing them for baptism
administering personally that holy sacrament, a duty
which he usually left to his assistants, who were not so
well qualified for the rough pioneer efforts of controversy,
which he had marked out for himself.See 1 Cor. i. 14-17: "I thank God that I baptized none of you, save
Crispus and Gaius; lest any man should say that ye were baptized into
my name. And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides,
I know not whether I baptized any other. For Christ sent me not to
baptize, but to preach the gospel." I have often heard a very wrong
conclusion drawn from this passage. People think that St. Paul was
here casting a certain slight upon baptism as contrasted with preaching.
His meaning, however, is evident to any one who will realise the
circumstances. The Corinthians were breaking up into sects, calling
themselves by the names of various Christian leaders. St. Paul thanks
God that very few can call themselves by his name, as they had not
even the poor excuse for doing so, which his officiating at their baptism
might give. To him, in God's providence, had been assigned the
rough, dangerous pioneer work of preaching to the adversaries, Jews
and pagans, outside the Church; to others the work of introducing the
converts made by him into the Mystical Body of Christ.
And so the work
went on for a year and a half, till the Jews thought
they saw their opportunity for crushing the audacious
apostate who was thus making havoc even among
the officials of their own organisation, inducing them
to join his Nazarene synagogue.In vol. i., p. 270, I have pointed out that in Corinth the Christians
probably adopted, not only the name, but the organisation of the
synagogues.
Achaia, of which
Corinth was the capital, was a Roman province, embracing,
broadly speaking, the territory comprised in the
modern kingdom of Greece. Like a great many other
provinces, and specially like Cyprus, to which we have
already called attention, Achaia was at times an
imperial, at times a senatorial province. Forty years
earlier it was an imperial province. The Acts describes
it as just then, that is, about A.D. 53, a senatorial or
proconsular province; and Suetonius, an independent
Roman historian, confirms this, telling us (Claud., 25)
that the Emperor Claudius restored it to the senate.
Gallio, a brother of the celebrated philosophic writer
Seneca, had been sent to it as proconsul, and the Jews
thought they now saw their opportunity. Gallio, whose
original and proper name was Annæus Novatus, was
a man distinguished by what in Rome was considered
his sweet, gentle, and loving disposition. His reputation
may have preceded him, and the Jews of Corinth may
have thought that they would play upon his easy-going
temper. The Jews, being a very numerous community
at Corinth, had it of course in their power to prove very
unpleasant to any ruler, and specially to one of Gallio's
reputed temper.Cicero, in his oration Pro Flacco, ch. xxviii., shows how troublesome
and dangerous, even to the very highest persons, the Jews at
Rome could be one hundred years earlier than Gallio's day.
The Roman governors were invested
with tremendous powers; they were absolute despots,
in fact, for the time being, and yet they were often
very anxious to gain popularity, especially with any
troublesome body of their temporary subjects. The
Roman proconsuls, in fact, adopted a principle we
sometimes see still acted out in political life, as if it
were the highest type of statesmanship. They were
anxious to gain popularity by gratifying those who made
themselves specially obnoxious and raised the loudest
cries. They petted the naughty, and they neglected the
good. So it was with Pontius Pilate, who perpetrated
a judicial murder because it contented the multitude;
so it was with Festus, who left an innocent man in
bonds at Cæsarea because he desired to gain favour
with the Jews; and so too, thought the Jews of Corinth,
it would be with Gallio. They arrested the Apostle,
therefore, using the messengers of the synagogue for
the purpose, and brought him to the proconsular court,
where they set him before the bema, or elevated platform,
whence the Roman magistrates dispensed justice.
Then they laid their formal accusation against him:
"This man persuadeth men to worship God contrary
to the law"; expecting perhaps that he would be
remitted by the proconsul to the judgment and discipline
of their own domestic tribunal, even as Pilate said to
the Jews about our Lord and their accusation against
Him: "Take ye Him, and judge Him according to your
law." But the philosophic brother of the Stoic Seneca
had a profound contempt for these agitating Jews. His
Stoic education too had trained him to allow external
things as little influence upon the mind as possible.
The philosophic apathy which the Stoics cultivated
must have more or less affected his whole nature, as
he soon showed the Jews; for before the Apostle had
time to reply to the charge Gallio burst in contemptuously.
If it were a matter of law and order, he
declares, it would be right to attend to it; but if your
complaint is touching your own national law and
customs I will have nothing to say to it. And then
he commanded his lictors to clear the court. Thus
ended the attempt on St. Paul's freedom or life, an
attempt which was indeed more disastrous to the Jews
themselves than to any one else; for the Gentile mob
of Corinth, hating the Jews, and glad to see them
baulked of their expected prey, seized the chief accuser
Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him
before the judgment-seat; while Gallio all the while
cared for none of these things, despising the mob, Jew
and Gentile alike, and contemptuously pitying them
from the height of his philosophic self-contentment.
Gallio has been at all times regarded as the type of
the mere worldling, who, wrapped in material interests,
cares for nothing higher or nobler. But this is scarcely
fair to Gallio. The Stoic philosopher was not dead to
better things. But he is the type rather of men who,
blinded by lower truths and mere intellectual wisdom,
are thereby rendered careless of those spiritual matters
in which the soul's true life alone consists. He had so
thoroughly cultivated a philosophic contempt for the
outside world and its business, the sayings and doings,
the joys and the sorrows of the puny mortals who
fume and strut and fret their lives away upon this
earthly stage, that he lost the opportunity of hearing
from the Apostle's lips of a grander philosophy, a
deeper contentment, of a truer, more satisfying peace
than was ever dreamt of in stoical speculation. And
this type of man is not extinct. Philosophy, science,
art, literature, politics, they are all great facts, all offer
vast fields for human activity, and all may serve for
a time so thoroughly to content and satisfy man's inner
being as to render him careless of that life in Christ
which alone abideth for evermore.
The attempt of the Jews marked the termination of
St. Paul's work in Corinth. It was at least the beginning
of the end. He had now laboured longer in
Corinth than anywhere else since he started out from
Antioch. He had organised and consolidated the
Church, as we can see from his Corinthian Epistles
and now he longed once more to visit his old friends,
and report what God had wrought by his means during
his long absence. He tarried, therefore, yet a while,
visiting doubtless the various Churches which he had
established throughout all the province of Achaia, and
then, accompanied by a few companions, set sail for
Syria, to declare the results of his eventful mission,
taking Ephesus on his way. This was his first visit
to that great city, and he was probably led to pay
it owing to the commercial necessities of Aquila. Life's
actions and deeds, even in the case of an apostle, are
moulded by very little things. A glance, a chance
word, a passing courtesy, forgotten as soon as done,
and life is very different from what it otherwise would
have been. And so, too, the tent-making and tent-selling
of Aquila brought Paul to Ephesus, shaped the
remainder of his career, and endowed the Church with
the rich spiritual heritage of the teaching imparted to
the Ephesian disciples by word and epistle.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE EPHESIAN CHURCH AND ITS FOUNDATION.
"Paul, and with him Priscilla and Aquila, came to Ephesus, and
he left them here: but he himself entered into the synagogue, and
reasoned with the Jews. And when they asked him to abide a longer
time, he consented not; but taking his leave of them, and saying, I
will return again unto you, if God will, he set sail from Ephesus....
Now a certain man named Apollos, an Alexandrian by race, a learned
man, came to Ephesus; and he was mighty in the Scriptures. This
man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent
in spirit, he spake and taught carefully the things concerning Jesus,
knowing only the baptism of John: and he began to speak boldly in the
synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him
unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more carefully."—Acts
xviii. 19-21, 24-26.
"And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul
having passed through the upper country, came to Ephesus."—Acts
xix. 1.
Ephesus has been from very ancient times a
distinguished city. It was famous in the religious
history of Asia Minor in times long prior to the Christian
Era. It was celebrated at the time of the Roman
Empire as the chief seat of the worship of Diana and
of the magical practices associated with that worship;
and Ephesus became more celebrated still in Christian
times as the city where one of the great Œcumenical
Councils was held which served to determine the
expression of the Church's faith in her Divine Lord
and Master. It must then be of great interest to the
Christian student to note the first beginnings of such
a vast transformation as that whereby a chief seat of
pagan idolatry was turned into a special stronghold of
Christian orthodoxy. Let us then devote this chapter
to tracing the upgrowth of the Ephesian Church, and
to noting the lessons the modern Church may derive
therefrom.
St. Paul terminated his work in Corinth some time
about the middle or towards the close of the year
53 A.D. In the early summer of that year Gallio came
as proconsul to Achaia, and the Jewish riot was raised.
After a due interval, to show that he was not driven
out by Jewish machinations, St. Paul determined to
return once more to Jerusalem and Antioch, which he
had left some four years at least before. He went
down therefore to Cenchreæ, the port of departure for
passengers going from Corinth to Ephesus, Asia Minor,
and Syria. A Christian Church had been established
there by the exertions of St. Paul or some of his
Corinthian disciples. As soon as an early Christian
was turned from sin to righteousness, from the adoration
of idols to the worship of the true God, he began
to try and do something for Him whose love and grace
he had experienced. It was no wonder that the Church
then spread rapidly when all its individual members
were instinct with life, and every one considered
himself personally responsible to labour diligently
for God. The Church of Cenchreæ was elaborately
organised. It had not only its deacons, it had also its
deaconesses, one of whom, Phœbe, was specially kind
and useful to St. Paul upon his visits to that busy seaport,
and is by him commended to the help and care
of the Roman Church (Rom. xvi. 1, 2).
From Cenchreæ St. Paul, Aquila, and Priscilla sailed
for Ephesus, where, as we have already hinted, it is
most likely the latter pair had some special business
avocations which led them to stay at that city. They
may have been large manufacturers of tents, and have
had a branch establishment at Ephesus, which was then
a great mercantile emporium for that part of Asia Minor.
An incidental remark of the sacred writer "having
shorn his head in Cenchreæ, for he had a vow," has
raised a controverted question. Some refer this expression
to Aquila, and I think with much the greater
probability. It was customary with the Jews at that
time when in any special danger to take a temporary
Nazarite vow, binding themselves to abstain from wine
and from cutting their hair till a certain definite period
had elapsed. Then when the fixed date had arrived,
the hair was cut off and preserved till it could be
burned in the fire of a sacrifice offered up at Jerusalem
upon the individual's next visit to the Holy City. The
grammatical order of the words naturally refer to
Aquila as the maker of this vow; but I cannot agree
in one reason urged for this latter theory. Some have
argued that it was impossible for Paul to have made
this vow; that it would, in fact, have been a return
to the bondage of Judaism, which would have been
utterly inconsistent on his part. People who argue
thus do not understand St. Paul's position with respect
to Jewish rites as being things utterly unimportant,
and, as such, things which a wise born Jew would do
well to observe in order to please his countrymen.
If St. Paul made a vow at Corinth it would have been
simply an illustration of his own principle, "To the
Jews I became as a Jew, in order that I might gain
the Jews." But further, I must say that the taking of
a vow, though derived from Judaism, need not have
necessarily appeared to St. Paul and the men of his
time a purely Jewish ceremony. Vows, in fact, naturally
passed over from Judaism to Christianity.Jeremy Taylor, in his Holy Living, in his chapter on Prayer, has
some wise remarks on vows. He includes them under the head of
Prayer: "A vow to God is an act of prayer and a great degree and
instance of opportunity, and an increase of duty by some new uncommanded
instance, or some more eminent degree of duty or frequency
of action, or earnestness of spirit in the same. And because it hath
pleased God in all ages of the world to admit of intercourse with His
servants in the matter of vows, it is not ill advice that we make vows
to God in those cases in which we have great need or great danger."
He then proceeds to lay down rules and cautions for making vows.
Vows,
indeed, of this peculiar character, and with this peculiar
external sign of long hair, are no longer customary
amongst Christians; but surely special vows cannot be
said to have gone out of fashion, when we consider the
wide spread of the teetotal movement, with its vows identical
in one important element with that of the Nazarites!
But viewing the matter from a still wider standpoint,
people, when contending thus, forget what a large part
the tradition of ancient customs must have played in
the life, manners, and customs of St. Paul. All his
early life he was a strict Pharisaic Jew, and down to
the end of life his early training must have largely
modified his habits. To take but one instance, pork
was the common and favourite food of the Romans at
this period. Now I am sure that St. Paul would have
vigorously resisted all attempts to prevent the Gentile
Christians eating bacon or ham; but I should not
be in the least surprised if St. Paul, trained in Pharisaic
habits, never once touched a food he had been
taught to abhor from his earliest youth. Life is a
continuous thing, and the memories of the past are very
powerful. We can to this day trace among ourselves
many customs and traditions dating back to the times
antecedent to the Reformation, and much farther. The
fires still lighted on St. John's Eve throughout Ireland,
and once customary in Scotland, are survivals of the
times of Druidical paganism in these islands. The
ceremonies and social customs of Shrove Tuesday and
Hallow E'en are survivals of the rude mirth of our pre-Reformation
forefathers, on the nights before a celebrated
fast, Ash Wednesday, in one case, before a celebrated
feast, All Saints' Day, in the other. Or perhaps I may
take another instance more closely analogous still which
every reader can verify for himself. The use of the
Church of England has to this day a curious instance
of the power of tradition as opposed to written law.
There is a general rubric placed in the Book of Common
Prayer before the first Lord's Prayer. It runs as
follows: "Then the minister shall kneel and say the
Lord's Prayer with an audible voice; the people also
kneeling and repeating it with him, both here, and
wheresoever else it is used in Divine Service." This
rubric plainly prescribes that clergy and people shall
always say the Lord's Prayer conjointly. And yet, let
my readers go into any church of the Anglican Communion
on Sunday next, I care not what the tone of its
theological thought, and observe the first Lord's Prayer
used at the beginning of the Communion Service. They
will find that this general rubric is universally neglected,
and the celebrating priest says the opening Lord's
Prayer by himself with no voice of the people raised
to accompany him. Now whence comes this universal
fact? It is simply an illustration of the strength of
tradition. It is a survival of the practice before the
Reformation handed down by tradition to the present
time, and over-riding a positive and written law. In
the days before the Reformation, as in the Roman
Catholic Church of the present day, the opening
Dominical or Lord's Prayer in the Mass was said by
the priest alone. When the service was translated
into English the old custom still prevailed, and has
lasted to the present day.See Procter on the Common Prayer, p. 212; Canon Evan Daniel
on the Prayer Book, pp. 87 and 300.
This was only human
nature, which abhors unnecessary changes, and is intensely
conservative of every practice which is linked
with the fond memories of the past. This human
nature was found strong in St. Paul, as in other men,
and it would have argued no moral or spiritual weakness,
no desire to play fast and loose with gospel
liberties, had he, instead of Aquila, resorted to the
old Jewish practice and bound himself by a vow in
connexion with some special blessing which he had
received, or some special danger he had incurred.
When we are studying the Acts we must never forget
that Judaism gave the tone and form, the whole outer
framework to Christianity, even as England gave the
outward shape and form to the constitutions of the
United States and her own numberless colonies throughout
the world. St. Paul did not invent a brand new
religion, as some people think; he changed as little as
possible, so that his own practice and worship must
have been to mere pagan eyes exactly the same as
that of the Jews, as indeed we might conclude beforehand
from the fact that the Roman authorities seem
to have viewed the Christians as a mere Jewish sect
down to the close of the second century.See on this subject of the confusion of Christianity with Judaism
by the Romans, Wieseler's Die Christenverfolgungen der Cäsaren,
pp. 1-10.
I. Let us now take a rapid survey of the extensive
journey which our book disposes of in very concise
fashion. St. Paul and his companions, Aquila and
Priscilla, Timothy and Silas, sailed from Cenchreæ to
Ephesus, which city up to this seems to have been
untouched by Christian influences. St. Paul, in the
earlier portion of his second tour, had been prohibited
by the Holy Spirit from preaching in Ephesus, or in
any portion of the provinces of Asia or Bithynia.
Important as the human eye of St. Paul may have
viewed them, still the Divine Guide of the Church saw
that neither Asia nor Bithynia, with all their magnificent
cities, their accumulated wealth, and their political
position, were half so important as the cities and
provinces of Europe, viewed from the standpoint of
the world's conversion. But now the gospel has
secured a substantial foothold in Europe, has taken a
firm grasp of that imperial race which then ruled the
world, and so the Apostle is permitted to visit Ephesus
for the first time. He seems to have then paid a
mere passing visit to it, lasting perhaps while the
ship discharged the portion of her cargo destined for
Ephesus. But St. Paul never allowed time to hang heavy
on his hands for want of employment. He left Aquila
and Priscilla engaged in their mercantile transactions,
and, entering himself into the principal synagogue,
proceeded to expound his views. These do not seem
to have then aroused any opposition; nay, the Jews
even went so far as to desire him to tarry longer and
open out his doctrines at greater length. We may
conclude from this that St. Paul did not remain during
this first visit much beyond one Sabbath day. If he
had bestowed a second Sabbath day upon the Ephesian
synagogue, his ideas and doctrines would have been
made so clear and manifest that the Jews would not
have required much further exposition in order to see
their drift. St. Paul, after promising a second visit to
them, left his old friends and associates, Aquila and
his wife, with whom he had lived for nearly two years,
at Ephesus, and pushed on to Cæsarea, a town which
he must have already well known, and with which he
was subsequently destined to make a long and unpleasant
acquaintanceship, arriving at Jerusalem in
time probably for the Feast of Tabernacles, which was
celebrated on September 16th, A.D. 53. Concerning
the details of that visit we know nothing. Four years
at least must have elapsed since he had seen James
and the other venerated heads of the Mother Church.
We can imagine then how joyously he would have
told them, how eagerly they would have heard the glad
story of the wonders God had wrought among the
Gentiles through the power of Jesus Christ. After a
short sojourn at Jerusalem St. Paul returned back to
Cæsarea, and thence went on to Antioch, the original
seat of the Gentile mission for the propagation of the
faith. After refreshing himself with the kindly offices
of fraternal intercourse and conversation at this great
Christian centre, where broad liberal sentiment and
wide Christian culture, free from any narrow prejudices,
must have infused a tone into society far more agreeable
to St. Paul than the unprogressive Judaising views
which flourished in Jerusalem, St. Paul then determined
to set off upon his third great tour, which must
have begun at the earliest some time in the spring of
A.D. 54, as soon as the snows of winter had passed
away and the passes through the Taurus Range into
the central regions of Asia Minor had been opened.
We know nothing more concerning the extended
journey he took on this occasion. He seems to have
avoided towns like Lystra and Derbe, and to have
directed his march straight to Galatia, where he had
sufficient work to engage all his thought. We have
no mention of the names of the particular Churches
where he laboured. Ancyra, as it was then called,
Angora as it is now named, in all probability demanded
St. Paul's attention. If he visited it, he looked as the
traveller does still upon the temple dedicated to the
deity of Augustus and of Rome, the ruins of which
have attracted the notice of every modern antiquary.
Glad, however, as we should have been to gratify
our curiosity by details like these, we are obliged to
content ourselves with the information which St. Luke
gives us, that St. Paul "went through the region
of Galatia and Phrygia, in order, stablishing all the
disciples," leaving us a speaking example of the energising
power, the invigorating effects, of a visitation
such as St. Paul now conducted, sustaining the weak,
arousing the careless, restraining the rash, guiding the
whole body of the Church with the counsels of sanctified
wisdom and heavenly prudence. Then, after his
Phrygian and Galatian work was finished, St. Paul
betook himself to a field which he long since desired
to occupy, and determined to fulfil the promise made
a year previously at least to his Jewish friends of the
Ephesian Synagogue.
II. Now we come to the foundation of the Ephesian
Church some time in the latter part of the year 54 A.D.
Here it may strike some reader as an extraordinary
thing that more than twenty years after the Crucifixion
Ephesus was as yet totally untouched by the gospel,
so that the tidings of salvation were quite a novel
sound in the great Asiatic capital. People sometimes
think of the primitive Church as if, after the Day of
Pentecost, every individual Christian rushed off to preach
in the most distant parts of the world, and that the
whole earth was evangelised straight off. They forget
the teaching of Christ about the gospel leaven, and
leaven never works all on an heap as it were; it is
slow, regular, progressive in its operations. The
tradition, too, that the apostles did not leave Jerusalem
till twelve years after His ascension ought to
be a sufficient corrective of this false notion; and
though this tradition may not have any considerable
historical basis, yet it shows that the primitive Church
did not cherish the very modern idea that enormous
and immediate successes followed upon the preaching
of the gospel after Pentecost, and that the conversion
of vast populations at once occurred. The
case was exactly contrary. For many a long year
nothing at all was done towards the conversion of
the Gentile world, and then for many another long
year the preaching of the gospel among the Gentiles
entirely depended upon St. Paul alone. He was the
one evangelist of the Gentiles, and therefore it is no
wonder he should have said in 1 Cor. i. 17, "Christ
sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel."
He was the one man fitted to deal with the prejudices,
the ignorance, the sensuality, the grossness with
which the Gentile world was overspread, and therefore
no other work, no matter how important, was to
be allowed to interfere with that one task which he
alone could perform. This seems to me the explanation
of the question which might otherwise cause some
difficulty, how was it that the Ephesians, Jews and
Gentiles alike, inhabiting this distinguished city, were
still in such dire ignorance of the gospel message
twenty years after the Ascension? Now let us come
to the story of the circumstances amid which Ephesian
Christianity took its rise. St. Paul, as we have already
said, paid a passing visit to Ephesus just a year before
when going up to Jerusalem, when he seems to have
made a considerable impression in the synagogue.
He left behind him Aquila and Priscilla, who, with
their household, formed a small Christian congregation,
meeting doubtless for the celebration of the Lord's
Supper in their own house while yet frequenting the
stated worship of the synagogue. This we conclude
from the following circumstance which is expressly
mentioned in Acts xviii. 26. Apollos, a Jew, born in
Alexandria, and a learned man, as was natural coming
from that great centre of Greek and Oriental culture,
came to Ephesus. He had been baptized by some of
John's disciples, either at Alexandria or in Palestine.
It may very possibly have been at Alexandria. St.
John's doctrines and followers may have spread to
Alexandria by that time, as we are expressly informed
they had been diffused as far as Ephesus (see ch.
xix. 1-4). Apollos, when he came to Ephesus, entered,
like St. Paul, into the synagogue, and "spake and taught
carefully the things concerning Jesus, knowing only
the baptism of John." He knew about Jesus Christ,
but with an imperfect knowledge such merely as John
himself possessed. This man began to speak boldly
in the synagogue on the topic of the Messiah whom
John had preached. Aquila and Priscilla were present
in the synagogue, heard the disputant, recognised his
earnestness and his defects, and then, having taken
him, expounded to him the way of God more fully,
initiating him into the full mysteries of the faith by
baptism into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost.Meyer, in his Commentary on ch. xix. 5, enunciates the following
extraordinary theory about Apollos, which plainly shows that, valuable
as may be his textual criticism, his conception of Christian doctrine and
of Apostolic Church life is very defective: "We may not infer from this
passage that the disciples of John, who passed over to Christianity,
were uniformly re-baptized; for in the case of the apostles who passed
over from John to Jesus this certainly did not take place; and even as
regards Apollos the common opinion that he was baptized by Aquila
is purely arbitrary, as in xviii. 26 his instruction in Christianity, and
not his baptism, is narrated." Again: "Apollos could dispense with
re-baptism, seeing that he, with his fervid spirit, following the references
of John to Christ, and the instruction of his teachers, penetrated without
any new baptismal consecration into the pneumatic elements of
life." Meyer evidently fails to grasp what the sacrament of baptism
was, as conceived by St. Paul, and uses the most dangerous line of argument,
that from silence, concluding that, because there is no mention
of the Christian baptism of Apollos, therefore such a baptism never
took place. But this is not all. Meyer's theory cannot possibly explain
why baptism was necessary for Cornelius, though he enjoyed the gift of
the Holy Ghost, while it was not necessary for Apollos, "who penetrated
without any new baptismal consecration into the pneumatic element of
life." Meyer says, indeed, that in the whole New Testament there is no
example except in xix. 1-5 of the re-baptism of a disciple of John. But
then in the Acts and Epistles, where alone we read of the administration
of Christian baptism, there are only two examples of the admission of
John's disciples. In one case twelve such were admitted, and they were
all baptized by Paul's own order. In the case of Apollos there is
silence. Surely the sounder conclusion is that Christian baptism was
administered there too, though nothing is said about it! As for the
apostles not being baptized with Christian baptism, the explanation is
not far to seek. Baptism is the reception of a disciple into covenant
with Christ through the medium of water. In the case of the apostles
this reception took place in person, and not through any medium. In
the apostles' case, too, there is another consideration. Meyer's conclusion
is simply one e silentio even in their case. We know not,
however, everything that Christ did as regards His apostles.
This incident has an important bearing upon
the foundation and development of the Ephesian Church,
but it hears more directly still upon the point on which
we have been dwelling. Apollos disputed in the synagogues
where Aquila and Priscilla heard him, so that
they must have been regular worshippers there notwithstanding
their Christian profession and their close
intercourse with St. Paul for more than eighteen months.
After a little time further, Apollos desired to pass over
to Greece. The little Christian Church which met at
Aquila's house told him of the wonders they had seen
and heard in Achaia and of the flourishing state of the
Church in Corinth. They gave him letters commendatory
to that Church, whither Apollos passed over, and
rendered such valuable help that his name a year or
two later became one of the watchwords of Corinthian
party strife. The way was now prepared for St. Paul's
great mission to Ephesus, exceeding in length any
mission he had hitherto conducted, surpassing in its
duration of three years the time spent even at Corinth
itself. His own brief visit of the year before, the visit
and work of the Alexandrian Jew, the quiet conversations,
the holy lives, the sanctified examples of Aquila
and Priscilla, these had done the preliminary work.
They had roused expectation, provoked discussion,
developed thought. Everything was ready for the
great masterful teacher to step upon the ground and
complete the work which he had already so auspiciously
begun.
I do not propose to discuss the roads by which
St. Paul may have travelled through the province of
Asia on this eventful visit, nor to discuss the architectural
features, or the geographical position of the
city of Ephesus. These things I shall leave to the
writers who have treated of St. Paul's life. I now
confine myself to the notices inserted by St. Luke
concerning the Apostle's Ephesian work, and about it
I note that upon his arrival St. Paul came in contact
with a small congregation of the disciples of John the
Baptist,The movement instituted by St. John the Baptist was perpetuated into
the second century, and in some measure developed into, or connected
itself with, the sect subsequently called the Hemerobaptists. The history
of this movement from apostolic days is elaborately traced by Bishop
Lightfoot in his Essay on the Essenes, contained in his Colossians and
Philemon; see especially pp. 400-407, to which we must refer the reader
desirous of more information. The Hemerobaptists are mentioned in
the Clementine Recognitions, i. 54, the Clementine Homilies, ii. 23, which
date from about 200 A.D., and in the Apostolic Constitutions, vi. 6, which
may be put down as a century later. This shows the continuity of the
sect. There are still some fragments of it existing in Babylonia, under
the name of Mandeans: see further the article "Sabians" in Smith's
Dict. Christ. Biog., iv. 569-73.
who had hitherto escaped the notice of the
small Church existing at Ephesus. This need not
excite our wonder. We are apt to think that because
Christianity is now such a dominant element in our own
intellectual and religious atmosphere it must always
have been the same. Ephesus, too, was then an immense
city, with a large population of Jews, who may have had
many synagogues. These few disciples of John the
Baptist may have worshipped in a synagogue which
never heard of the brief visit of a Cilician Jew, a teacher
named Saul of Tarsus, much less of the quiet efforts
of Aquila and Priscilla, the tentmakers, lately come
from Corinth. St. Paul, on his second visit, soon came
in contact with these men. He at once asked them a
question which tested their position and attainments
in the Divine life, and sheds for us a vivid light upon
apostolic doctrine and practice. "Did ye receive the
Holy Ghost when ye believed?" is plainly an inquiry
whether they had enjoyed the blessing connected with
the solemn imposition of hands, from which has been
derived the rite of confirmation, as I showed in the
previous volume. The disciples soon revealed the
imperfect character of their religion by their reply:
"Nay, we did not so much as hear whether the Holy
Ghost was," words which led St. Paul to demand what
in that case was the nature of their baptism. "Into
what then were ye baptized?" and they said, "Into
John's baptism."
Now the simple explanation of the disciples' ignorance
was that they had been baptized with John's baptism,
which had no reference to or mention of the Holy
Ghost. St. Paul, understanding them to be baptized
disciples, could not understand their ignorance of the
personal existence and present power of the Holy
Ghost, till he learned from them the nature of their
baptism, and then his surprise ceased. But then we
must observe that the question of the Apostle astonished
at their defective state—"Into what then were ye
baptized?"—implies that, if baptized with Christian
baptism, they would have known of the existence of
the Holy Ghost, and therefore further implies that the
baptismal formula into the name of the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, was of universal application among Christians;
for surely if this formula were not universally
used by the Church, many Christians might be in
exactly the same position as these disciples of John,
and never have heard of the Holy Ghost!See my remarks on this topic on pp. 141, 142 of my first volume
on Acts.
St. Paul,
having expounded the difference between the inchoate,
imperfect, beginning knowledge, of the Baptist, and the
richer, fuller teaching of Jesus Christ, then handed them
over for further preparation to his assistants, by whom,
after due fasting and prayer, they were baptized,See the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, concerning the
methods used in preparation for baptism.
and
at once presented to the Apostle for the imposition
of hands; when the Holy Ghost was vouchsafed in
present effects, "they spake with tongues and prophesied,"
as if to sanction in a special manner the decided
action taken by the Apostle on this occasion.
The details concerning this affair, given to us by the
sacred writer, are most important. They set forth at
greater length and with larger fulness the methods
ordinarily used by the Apostle than on other similar
occasions. The Philippian jailor was converted and
baptized, but we read nothing of the imposition of
hands. Dionysius and Damaris, Aquila and Priscilla,
and many others at Athens and Corinth, were converted,
but there is no mention of either baptism or
any other holy rite. It might have been very possible
to argue that the silence of the writer implied utter
contempt of the sacraments of the gospel and the rite
of confirmation on these occasions, were it not that
we have this detailed account of the manner in which
St. Paul dealt with half-instructed, unbaptized, and
unconfirmed disciples of Christ Jesus. They were instructed,
baptized, and confirmed, and thus introduced
into the fulness of blessing, required by the discipline
of the Lord, as ministered by his faithful servant. If
this were the routine observed with those who had been
taught "carefully the things of Jesus, knowing only
the baptism of John," how much more would it have
been the case with those rescued out of the pollutions
of paganism and called into the kingdom of light!
III. After this favourable beginning, and seeing the
borders of the infant Church extended by the union of
these twelve disciples, St. Paul, after his usual fashion,
flung himself into work amongst the Jews of Ephesus
upon whom he had previously made a favourable impression.
He was well received for a time. He continued
for three months "reasoning and persuading as to the
things concerning the kingdom of God." But, as it was
elsewhere, so was it at Ephesus, the offence of the Cross
told in the long run upon the worshippers of the synagogue.
The original Christian Church was Jewish.
Aquila and Priscilla, Apollos and Timothy, and the
disciples of John the Baptist would have excited no resentment
in the minds of the Jews; but when St. Paul
began to open out the hope which lay for Gentiles as
well as for Jews in the gospel which he preached, then
the objections of the synagogue were multiplied, riots
and disturbances became, as elsewhere, matters of daily
occurrence, and the opposition became at last so bitter
that, as at Corinth, so here again at Ephesus the Apostle
was obliged to separate his own followers, and gather
them into the school of one Tyrannus, a teacher of philosophy
or rhetoric, whom perhaps he had converted,
where the blasphemous denunciations against the Divine
Way which he taught could no longer be heard.See pp. 32, 33 above for some remarks on this title, the Way,
used in the Acts for the Gospel Dispensation or the Christian Church.
Cf. also ch. ix. 2, xix. 23, xxii. 4, xxiv. 14, and the expression the
Way of Life in the Didache.
In
this school or lecture-hall St. Paul continued labouring
for more than two years, bestowing upon the city of
Ephesus a longer period of continuous labour than he
ever vouchsafed to any place else. We have St. Paul's
own statement as to his method of life at this period in
the address he subsequently delivered to the elders of
Ephesus. The Apostle pursued at Ephesus the same
course which he adopted at Corinth in one important
direction at least. He supported himself and his immediate
companions, Timothy and Sosthenes, by his own
labour, and that we may presume for precisely the
same reason at Ephesus as at Corinth. He desired
to cut off all occasion of accusation against himself.
Ephesus was a city devoted to commerce and to magic.
It was full of impostors too, many of them Jewish, who
made gain out of the names of angels and magical
formulæ derived from the pretended wisdom of Solomon
handed down to them by secret succession, or derived
to them from contact with the lands of the far-distant
East. St. Paul determined, therefore, that he would
give no opportunity of charging him with trading upon
the credulity of his followers, or working with an eye
to covetous or dishonest gains. "I coveted no man's
silver or gold or apparel. Ye yourselves know that
these hands ministered unto my necessities, and to
them that were with me," is the description he gave
of the manner in which he discharged his apostolic
office in Ephesus, when addressing the elders of that
city. We can thus trace St. Paul labouring at his
trade as a tentmaker for nearly a period of five years,
combining the time spent at Ephesus with that spent at
Corinth. Notwithstanding, however, the attention and
energy which this exercise of his trade demanded,
he found time for enormous evangelistic and pastoral
work. In fact, we find St. Paul nowhere else so much
occupied with pastoral work as at Ephesus. Elsewhere
we see the devoted evangelist, rushing in with the
pioneers, breaking down all hindrances, heading the
stormers to whom was committed the fiercest struggle,
the most deadly conflict, and then at once moving into
fresh conflicts, leaving the spoils of victory and the
calmer work of peaceful pastoral labours to others. But
here in Ephesus we see St. Paul's marvellous power
of adaptation. He is at one hour a clever artisan
capable of gaining support sufficient for others as well
as for himself; then he is the skilful controversialist
"reasoning daily in the school of one Tyrannus"; and
then he is the indefatigable pastor of souls "teaching
publicly, and from house to house," and "ceasing not
to admonish every one night and day with tears."
But this was not all, or nearly all, the burden the
Apostle carried. He had to be perpetually on the alert
against Jewish plots. We hear nothing directly of
Jewish attempts on his life or liberty during the period
of just three years which he spent on this prolonged
visit. We might be sure, however, from our previous
experience of the synagogues, that he must have run
no small danger in this direction; but then when we
turn to the same address we hear something of them.
He is recalling to the minds of the Ephesian elders the
circumstances of his life in their community from the
beginning, and he therefore appeals thus: "Ye yourselves
know from the first day that I set foot in Asia,
after what manner I was with you all the time, serving
the Lord with all lowliness of mind, and with tears,
and with trials which befell me with plots of the Jews."
Ephesus again was a great field wherein he personally
worked; it was also a great centre for missionary operations
which he superintended. It was the capital of the
province of Asia, the richest and most important of all
the Roman provinces, teeming with resources, abounding
in highly civilised and populous cities, connected with
one another by an elaborate network of admirably
constructed roads. Ephesus was cut out by nature
and by art alike as a missionary centre whence the
gospel should radiate out into all the surrounding
districts. And so it did. "All they which dwelt in
Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and
Greeks," is the testimony of St. Luke with respect to
the wondrous progress of the gospel, not in Ephesus
alone, but also throughout all the province, a statement
which we find corroborated a little lower down in the
same nineteenth chapter by the independent testimony
of Demetrius the silversmith, who, when he was
endeavouring to stir up his fellow-craftsmen to active
exertions in defence of their endangered trade, says,
"Ye see and hear that not alone at Ephesus, but almost
throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and
turned away much people." St. Paul's disciples
laboured, too, in the other cities of Asia, as Epaphras
for instance in Colossæ. And St. Paul himself, we may
be certain, bestowed the gifts and blessings of his
apostolic office by visiting these local Churches, as far
as he could consistently with the pressing character of
his engagements in Ephesus.Bishop Lightfoot, Colossians, Introd., p. 30, has some good remarks
bearing on this topic: "How or when the conversion of the Colossians
took place we have no direct information. Yet it can hardly be wrong
to connect the event with St. Paul's long sojourn at Ephesus. Here he
remained preaching for three whole years. It is possible, indeed, that
during this period he paid short visits to other neighbouring cities of
Asia; but if so, the notices in the Acts oblige us to suppose these
interruptions to his residence in Ephesus to have been slight and
infrequent. Yet, though the Apostle himself was stationary in the
capital, the Apostolic influence and teaching spread far beyond the
limits of the city and its immediate neighbourhood. It was hardly an
exaggeration when Demetrius declared that 'almost throughout all
Asia this Paul had persuaded and turned away much people.' The
sacred historian himself uses equally strong language in describing the
effects of the Apostle's preaching: 'All they which dwelt in Asia heard
the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.' In accordance with
these notices the Apostle himself, in an Epistle written during this
sojourn, sends salutations to Corinth, not from the Church of Ephesus
specially, as might have been anticipated, but from the 'Churches of
Asia' generally (1 Cor. xvi. 19). St. Luke, it should be observed,
ascribes this dissemination of the gospel not to journeys undertaken by
the Apostle, but to his preaching at Ephesus itself. Thither, as to the
metropolis of Western Asia, would flock crowds from all the towns and
villages far and near. Thence they would carry away, each to his own
neighbourhood, the spiritual treasure which they had so unexpectedly
found."
But even the superintendence
of vast missions throughout the province of
Asia did not exhaust the prodigious labours of St. Paul.
He perpetually bore about in his bosom anxious
thoughts for the welfare, trials, and sorrows of the
numerous Churches he had established in Europe and
Asia alike. He was constant in prayers for them,
mentioning the individual members by name, and he
was unwearied in keeping up communications with them,
either by verbal messages or by written epistles, one
specimen of which remains in the First Epistle to the
Corinthians, written to them from Ephesus, and showing
us the minute care, the comprehensive interest, the
intense sympathy which dwelt within his breast with
regard to his distant converts all the while that the
work at Ephesus, controversial, evangelistic and pastoral,
to say nothing at all of his tentmaking, was making
the most tremendous demands on body and soul alike,
and apparently absorbing all his attention. It is only
when we thus realise bit by bit what the weak, delicate,
emaciated Apostle must have been doing, that we are
able to grasp the full meaning of his own words to the
Corinthians: "Besides those things that are without,
there is that which presseth upon me daily, anxiety
for all the Churches."
This lengthened period of intense activity of mind
and body terminated in an incident which illustrates
the peculiar character of St. Paul's Ephesian ministry.
Ephesus was a town where the spiritual and moral
atmosphere simply reeked with the fumes, ideas, and
practices of Oriental paganism, of which magical incantations
formed the predominant feature. Magic
prevailed all over the pagan world at this time. In
Rome, however, magical practices were always more
or less under the ban of public opinion, though at
times resorted to even by those whose office called
upon them to suppress illegal actions. A couple of
years before the very time at which we have arrived,
workers in magic, among whom were included astrologers,
or mathematicians, as the Roman law called
them, were banished from Rome simultaneously with
the Jews, who always enjoyed an unenviable notoriety
for such occult practices.I allude, of course, to the decree of Claudius against the Jews in
A.D. 52, to which Suetonius (Claudius, 25) and Dio Cassius, lx. 6,
refer; cf. Tacitus, Annals, xii. 52, and Lewin's Fasti Sacri, A.D. 52.
In Asia Minor and the East
they flourished at this time under the patronage of
religion, and continued to flourish in all the great cities
down to Christian times. Christianity itself could not
wholly banish magic which retained its hold upon
the half-converted Christians who flocked into the
Church in crowds during the second half of the fourth
century; and we learn from St. Chrysostom himself,
that when a young man he had a narrow escape for
his life owing to the continuance of magical practices
in Antioch, more than three hundred years after St.
Paul.The story is an interesting one. It will be found in Stephens'
Life of St. Chrysostom, p. 61. The Emperor Valens had discovered
that some of his enemies had been endeavouring, through magical
contrivances something like table-rapping, to spell out the name of his
successor, and had succeeded so far that they had found out the first
part of the name as Theod, but the oracle could tell nothing more.
The jealous Emperor ordered every prominent man with the names
Theodore or Theodosius to be slain, vainly thinking to kill his own
successor. He also ordered every one found with magical books in
their possession to be at once slain. Chrysostom and a friend were
walking in A.D. 374 on the banks of the Orontes when they saw a book
floating down the stream. They stretched forth and rescued it, when,
seeing that it was a magical book, they at once flung it back into the
river, and not a moment too soon, as just then a police officer on
detective duty appeared on the scene, from whom a moment earlier
they could not have escaped. St. Chrysostom always regarded this as
one of the great escapes of his life: see Art. "Chrysostom" in Dict. Christ.
Biog., vol. i., p. 520, and his own reference to the escape in his 38th
Homily on the Acts, translated in the Oxford Library of the Fathers.
Mr. Stephens, l.c., gives an account of the magical rites and their ceremonial,
which was doubtless much the same in A.D. 374 as in A.D. 54,
whence we take a brief extract: "The twenty-four letters of the
alphabet were arranged at intervals round the rim of a kind of charger,
which was placed on a tripod consecrated by magic songs and frequent
ceremonies. The diviner, habited as a heathen priest, in linen robes,
sandals, and with a fillet wreathed about his head, chanted a hymn to
Apollo, the god of prophecy, while a ring in the centre of the charger
was slipped rapidly round a slender thread. The letters in front of
which the ring successively stopped indicated the character of the
oracle."
It is no wonder that when Diana's worship
reigned supreme at Ephesus, magical practices should
also flourish there. If, however, there existed a special
development of the power of evil at Ephesus, God also
bestowed a special manifestation of Divine power in
the person and ministry of St. Paul, as St. Luke
expressly declares: "God wrought special miracles by
the hands of Paul, insomuch that unto the sick were
carried away from his body handkerchiefs or aprons,
and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits
departed from them." This passage has been often
found a stumbling-block by many persons. They have
thought that it has a certain legendary air about it, as
they in turn think that there is a certain air of legend
about the similar passage in Acts v. 12-16, which makes
much the same statement about St. Peter. When
writing about this latter passage in my previous volume,
p. 230, I offered some suggestions which lessen, if they
do not quite take away, the difficulty; to these I shall
now only refer my readers. But I think we can see a
local reason for the peculiar development or manifestation
of miraculous power through St. Paul. The devil's seat
was just then specially at Ephesus, so far as the great
province of Asia was concerned. The powers of evil
had concentrated all their force and all their wealth of
external grandeur, intellectual cleverness, and spiritual
trickery in order to lead men captive; and there God,
in order that He might secure a more striking victory
for truth upon this magnificent stage, armed His faithful
servant with an extraordinary development of the good
powers of the world to come, enabling him to work
special wonders in the sight of the heathen. Can we
not read an echo of the fearful struggle just then waged
in the metropolis of Asia in words addressed some years
later to the members of the same Church, "For our
wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the
principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers
of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts
of wickedness in the heavenly places"? We make
a great mistake when we think of the apostles as
working miracles when and as they liked. At times
their evangelistic work seems to have been conducted
without any extraordinary manifestations, and then at
other times, when the power of Satan was specially
put forth, God displayed His special strength, enabling
His servants to work wonders and signs in His Name.
It was much the same as in the Old Testament. The
Old Testament miracles will be found to cluster themselves
round the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt,
and its Reformation at the hand of Elijah. So, too,
the recorded miracles of the apostles will be found to
gather round St. Peter's earlier work in Jerusalem,
where Satan strove to counter-work God's designs in
one way, and St. Paul's ministry in Ephesus, where
Satan strove to counter-work them in another way.
One incident at Ephesus attracted special attention.
There was a priestly family, consisting of seven sons,
belonging to the Jews at Ephesus. Their father had
occupied high position among the various courses which
in turn served the Temple, even as Zacharias, the father
of the Baptist, did. These men observed the power
with which St. Paul dealt with human spirits disordered
by the powers of evil, using for that purpose
the sacred name of Jesus. They undertook to use
the same sacred invocation; but it proved, like the
censers of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, a strange fire
kindled against their own souls. The man possessed
by the evil spirit recognised not their presumptuous
efforts, but attacked them, and did them serious bodily
injury. This circumstance spread the fame of the man
of God wider and wider. The power of magic and of
the demons fell before him, even as the image of Dagon
fell before the Ark. Many of the nominal believers in
Christianity had still retained their magical practices
as of yore, even as nominal Christians retained them
in the days of St. Chrysostom. The reality of St. Paul's
power, demonstrated by the awful example of Sceva's
sons, smote them in their inmost conscience. They
came, confessed their deeds, brought their magical
books together,The magical books thus consigned to the flames by the Christian
believers who practised magic were filled with figures or characters
technically called "Ephesian letters," Γράμματα Ἐφέσια. These were
mystic characters and strange words which were engraven on the
crown, zone, and feet of the goddess. Clement of Alexandria discusses
their use, and says the Greeks were greatly addicted to them, in his
Stromata, v. 8, as translated in Clement's works, vol. ii., p. 247, in
Clark's Ante-Nicene Library. The same use of curious mystic words
passed over to the Manichæans and other secret sects of mediæval
times. See also Guhl's Ephesiaca, p. 94 (Berlin, 1843), where all the
authorities on this curious subject are collected together. Conybeare
and Howson, ch. xiv., give them from Guhl in a handy shape.
Great quantities of these "Ephesian letters" have been found among
the Fayûm Manuscripts discovered in Egypt, which almost universally
make a large use of the name Iao or Jehovah, showing
their contact with Judaism.
and gave the greatest proof of their
honest convictions; for they burned them in the sight
of all, and counting the price thereof found it fifty thousand
pieces of silver, or more than two thousand pounds
of our money. "So mightily grew the word of the
Lord and prevailed" in the very chosen seat of the
Ephesian Diana.
CHAPTER XV.
THE EPHESIAN RIOT AND A PRUDENT TOWN CLERK.
"About that time there arose no small stir concerning the Way. For
a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines
of Diana, brought no little business unto the craftsmen; whom he
gathered together, with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs,
ye know that by this business we have our wealth. And ye see and
hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this
Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be
no gods, which are made with hands; and not only is there danger
that this our trade come into disrepute; but also that the temple of the
great goddess Diana be made of no account, and that she should even
be deposed from her magnificence, whom all Asia and the world
worshippeth."—Acts xix. 23-8.
St. Paul's labours at Ephesus covered, as he informs
us himself, when addressing the elders of that city,
a space of three years. The greater portion of that
period had now expired, and had been spent in peaceful
labours so far as the heathen world and the Roman
authorities were concerned. The Jews, indeed, had
been very troublesome at times. It is in all probability
to them and their plots St. Paul refers when
in 1 Cor. xv. 32 he says, "If after the manner of men
I fought with beasts at Ephesus, what doth it profit
me?" as the unbelieving Gentiles do not seem to have
raised any insurrection against his teaching till he felt
his work was done, and he was, in fact, preparing to
leave Ephesus. Before, however, we proceed to discuss
the startling events which finally decided his immediate
departure, we must consider a brief passage which
connects the story of Sceva's sons and their impious
temerity with that of the silversmith Demetrius and the
Ephesian riot.
The incident connected with Sceva's sons led to
the triumph over the workers in magic, when the secret
professors of that art came and publicly acknowledged
their hidden sins, proving their reality by burning the
instruments of their wickedness. Here, then, St. Luke
inserts a notice which has proved to be of the very
greatest importance in the history of the Christian
Church. Let us insert it in full that we may see its
bearing: "Now after these things were ended, Paul
purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through
Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, After
I have been there, I must also see Rome. And having
sent into Macedonia two of them that ministered unto
him, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia
for a while." This passage tells us that St. Paul, after
his triumph over the practices of magic, and feeling too
that the Church had been effectually cleansed, so far as
human foresight and care could effect it, from the corroding
effects of the prevalent Ephesian vice, now determined
to transfer the scene of his labours to Macedonia
and Achaia, wishing to visit those Churches which five
years before he had founded. It was full five years,
at least, since he had seen the Philippian, Thessalonian,
and Berœan congregations. Better than three years
had elapsed since he had left Corinth, the scene of more
prolonged work than he had ever bestowed on any
other city except Ephesus. He had heard again and
again from all these places, and some of the reports,
especially those from Corinth, had been very disquieting.
The Apostle wished, therefore, to go and see
for himself how the Churches of Christ in Macedonia
and Achaia were faring. He next wished to pay a visit
to Jerusalem to consult with his brethren, and then felt
his destiny pushing him still westwards, desiring to see
Rome, the world's capital, and the Church which had
sprung up there, of which his friends Priscilla and
Aquila must have told him much. Such seems to have
been his intentions in the spring of the year 57, to
which his three years' sojourn in Ephesus seems now
to have brought him.
The interval of time covered by the two verses
which I have quoted above is specially interesting,
because it was just then that the First Epistle to the
Corinthians was written. All the circumstances and
all the indications of time which the Epistle itself offers
conspire to fix the writing of it to this special date and
place. The Epistle, for instance, refers to Timothy as
having been already sent into Macedonia and Greece:
"For this cause have I sent unto you Timothy, who
shall put you in remembrance of my ways which be
in Christ" (1 Cor. iv. 17). In Acts xix. 22 we have
it stated, "Having sent into Macedonia Timothy and
Erastus." The Epistle again plainly tells us the very
season of the year in which it was written. The
references to the Passover season—"For our passover
also hath been sacrificed, even Christ; wherefore let
us keep the feast"—are words which naturally were
suggested by the actual celebration of the Jewish feast,
to a mind like St. Paul's, which readily grasped at every
passing allusion or chance incident to illustrate his
present teaching. Timothy and Erastus had been despatched
in the early spring, as soon as the passes and
roads were thoroughly open and navigation established.
The Passover in A.D. 57 happened on April 7th, and
the Apostle fixes the exact date of the First Epistle to
Corinth, when in the sixteenth chapter and eighth verse
he says to the Corinthians, "I will tarry at Ephesus
until Pentecost." I merely refer now to this point to
illustrate the vastness of the Apostle's labours, and to
call attention to the necessity for comparing together
the Acts and the Epistles in the minute manner exemplified
by Paley in the Horæ Paulinæ, if we wish to
gain a complete view of a life like St. Paul's, so
completely consecrated to one great purpose.This subject properly belongs to commentators on 1 Corinthians.
Paley, in Horæ Paulinæ, ch. iii., and Dr. Marcus Dods, in his Introduction
to the New Testament, pp. 104, 105, set forth the evidence in a
convenient shape. I may remark that here, as elsewhere, I adopt in
the main Mr. Lewin's chronology, as contained in his Fasti Sacri.
Without pledging myself to agree in all his details, his scheme forms
a good working hypothesis, on which a writer can work when composing
an expositor's commentary, not one for professed critics or
profound scholars.
Man may propose, but even an apostle cannot dispose
of his fate as he will, or foretell under ordinary
circumstances how the course of events will affect him.
St. Paul intended to stay at Ephesus till Pentecost,
which that year happened on May 28th. Circumstances
however hastened his departure. We have been considering
the story of St. Paul's residence in Ephesus,
but hitherto we have not heard one word about the
great Ephesian deity, Diana, as the Romans called
her, or Artemis, as St. Luke, according to the ordinary
local use, correctly calls her in the Greek text of
the Acts, or Anaïtis, as her ancient name had been
from early times at Ephesus and throughout Asia
Minor.The student may consult on the identification of Artemis and the
Oriental or Persian deity Anaïtis, the Revue Archéologique for 1885, vol. ii.,
pp. 105-115, and Derenbourg and Saglio's Dict. des Antiq., s.v. Diana.
If this riot had not happened, if our attention
had not been thus called to Diana and her worship,
there might have been a total blank in St. Luke's
narrative concerning this famous deity, and her equally
famous temple, which was at the time one of the
wonders of the world. And then some scoffers reading
in ancient history concerning the wonders of this
temple, and finding the records of modern discoveries
confirming the statements of antiquity might have triumphantly
pointed to St. Luke's silence about Diana and
the Ephesian temple as a proof of his ignorance. A
mere passing riot alone has saved us from this difficulty.
Now this case well illustrates the danger of
arguing from silence. Silence concerning any special
point is sometimes used as a proof that a particular
writer knew nothing about it. But this is not the
sound conclusion. Silence proves in itself nothing
more than that the person who is silent either had
no occasion to speak upon that point or else thought
it wiser or more expedient to hold his tongue. Josephus,
for instance, is silent about Christianity; but that is
no proof that Christianity did not exist in his time, or
that he knew nothing about it. His silence may simply
have arisen because he found Christianity an awkward
fact, and not knowing how to deal with it he left it
alone. It is well to bear this simple law of historical
evidence in mind, for a great many of the popular
objections to the sacred narratives, both of the Old and
New Testaments, are based upon the very dangerous
ground of silence alone.This argument may be pressed further. The silence which we
observe in much of second-century literature about the New Testament
Canon and Episcopacy is of the same character. The best known and
most notorious facts are those about which authors are most apt to be
silent when writing for contemporaries, simply because every person
acknowledges them and takes them for granted.
Let us, however, return to
Diana of the Ephesians. The worship of the goddess
Artemis dominated the whole city of Ephesus,This is manifest at once if the reader will consult Mr. Wood's
Ephesus or Guhl's Ephesiaca, a work which, though published (in
1843) before modern discoveries had taught all we now know, is a most
elaborate account of ancient Ephesus gleaned out of ancient writers.
and
helped to shape the destinies of St. Paul at this season,
for while intending to stay at Ephesus till Pentecost
at the end of May, the annual celebration of Artemisia,
the feast of the patron deity of the city, happened, of
which celebration Demetrius took advantage to raise a
disturbance which hastened St. Paul's departure into
Macedonia.
We have now cleared the way for the consideration
of the narrative of the riot, which is full of the most
interesting information concerning the progress of the
gospel, and offers us the most wonderful instances of
the minute accuracy of St. Luke, which again have
been illustrated and confirmed in the fullest manner by
the researches so abundantly bestowed upon Ephesus
within the lifetime of the present generation. Let us
take the narrative in the exact order given us by
St. Luke: "About that time there arose no small stir
about the Way." But why about that special time?
We have already said that here we find an indication
of the date of the riot. It must have happened during
the latter part of April, A.D. 57, and we know that
at Ephesus almost the whole month of April, or
Artemisius, was dedicated to the honour and worship of
Artemis.See on the exact time of the Macedonian and Ephesian month of
Artemisius, Ussher's treatise on the Macedonian and Asiatic solar year,
in the seventh volume of his works Ed. Elrington, p. 425, with which
may be compared Bishop Lightfoot's Ignatius, i. 660-700. Mr. Lewin,
in his Fasti Sacri, p. 309, makes it the month of May. The Macedonian
month Artemisius extended from March 25th to April 24th. This
point is further discussed in Lewin's St. Paul, vol. i., p. 405. If St.
Paul wrote 1 Corinthians at or shortly before April 7th, the date of
the Passover, the riot which hastened his departure must have happened
within the succeeding fortnight. Bœckh, in the Corpus of Greek Inscriptions,
No. 2954, inserts a long Greek inscription, found one hundred
and seventy years ago at Ephesus, laying down the ceremonial to be observed
in honour of the deity throughout the whole month, which Mr.
Lewin translates, vol. i., p. 405. See, however, more upon this below.
But here it may be asked, How did it come
to pass that Artemis or Diana occupied such a large
share in the public worship of Ephesus and the province
of Asia? Has modern research confirmed the impression
which this chapter leaves upon the mind, that
the Ephesian people were above all else devoted to the
worship of the deity? The answers to both these
queries are not hard to give, and serve to confirm our
belief in the honesty and accuracy of the sacred
penman. The worship of Artemis, or of Anaïtis rather,
prevailed in the peninsula of Asia Minor from the
time of Cyrus, who introduced it six or seven centuries
before.The Persian language was still used in the worship of Diana at
Hierocæsarea and Hypæpa, two well-known towns of the province of
Asia in the second century of our era. See Pausanias, v. 27; cf.
Tacitus, Annals, iii. 62, and Ramsay's Hist. Geog., p. 128.
Anaïtis was the Asiatic deity of fruitfulness,
the same as Ashtoreth of the Bible, whom the Greeks
soon identified with their own goddess Artemis. Her
worship quickly spread, specially through that portion
of the country which afterwards became the province
of Asia, and through the adjacent districts; showing
how rapidly an evil taint introduced into a nation's
spiritual life-blood spreads throughout its whole organisation,
and when once introduced how persistently it
holds its ground; a lesson taught here in New Testament
times, as in Old Testament days it was proclaimed
in Israel's case by the oft-repeated statement concerning
her kings, "Howbeit from the sins of Jeroboam [king
after king] departed not." The spiritual life and tone
of a nation is a very precious thing, and because it is
so the Church of England does well to bestow so much
of her public supplication upon those who have power,
like Cyrus and Jeroboam, to taint it at the very foundation
and origin thereof. When, for instance, St. Paul
landed at Perga in Pamphylia, on the first occasion
when he visited Asia Minor as a Christian missionary,
his eye was saluted with the splendid temple of Diana
on the side of the hill beneath which the city was built,
and all over the country at every important town similar
temples were erected in her honour, where their ruins
have been traced by modern travellers.Voluntary associations were formed all over Asia Minor to
cultivate the worship of Artemis. Modern research, for instance, has
found inscriptions raised by the Xenoi Tekmoreioi indicating their
peculiar devotion to Diana and her worship. They specially flourished
at a place called Saghir, near Antioch in Pisidia. It is a curious fact
that the cult of the B.V.M. has been substituted for that of Artemis by
the Greeks of the neighbourhood, and a feast in her honour is celebrated
at the same time as the ancient feast. See Revue Archéologique,
1887, vol. i., p. 96; Ramsay, in his Geography of Asia Minor, p. 409,
and in Jour. Hell. Studies for 1883.
The cult or
worship introduced by Cyrus exactly suited the morals
and disposition of these Oriental Greeks, and flourished
accordingly.
Artemis was esteemed the protectress of the cities
where her temples were built, which, as in the case
of Ephesus and of Perga, were placed outside the
gates like the temple of Jupiter at Lystra, in order that
their presence might cast a halo of protection over the
adjacent communities. The temple of Diana at Ephesus
was a splendid building. It had been several times
destroyed by fire notwithstanding its revered character
and the presence of the sacred image,The original sacred image, which was preserved inside a screen
or curtain in the inmost temple, was a shapeless mass of wood something
like the prehistoric blocks of wood or stone which were esteemed
at Athens and elsewhere the most venerable images of their favourite
deities: see Pausanias, Description of Greece, i. 26. The legend at
Ephesus was just the same as at Athens and elsewhere, that these
prehistoric images had fallen down from heaven. Some of them may
have been aerolites.
and had been
as often rebuilt with greater splendour than before,
till the temple was erected existing in St. Paul's day,
which justly excited the wonder of mankind, as its
splendid ruins have shown, which Mr. Wood has excavated
in our own time at the expense of the English
Government.The temple of Ephesus is depicted in Conybeare and Howson's
and Lewin's St. Paul, as well as it could have been restored from a
study of books. At the time of their publication neither Mr. Wood's
discoveries had been made nor his work on Ephesus published. The
plans and engravings in Mr. Wood's work of course supersede all others.
The plans, etc., in the other works are sufficiently accurate to enable
the reader to realise the language of the Acts.
The devotion of the Ephesians to this
ancient Asiatic deity had even been increasing of late
years when St. Paul visited Ephesus, as a decree still
exists in its original shape graven in stone exactly as
St. Paul must have seen it enacting extended honours
to the deity. As this decree bears directly upon the
famous riot which Demetrius raised, we insert it here
in full, as an interesting confirmation and illustration
of the sacred narrative: "To the Ephesian Diana.
Forasmuch as it is notorious that not only among the
Ephesians, but also everywhere among the Greek
nations, temples are consecrated to her, and sacred
precincts, and that she hath images and altars dedicated
to her on account of her plain manifestations of herself,
and that, besides, the greatest token of veneration paid
to her, a month is called after her name, by us Artemision,
by the Macedonians and other Greek nations
and their cities, Artemisius, in which month general
gatherings and festivals are celebrated, and more
especially in our own city, the nurse of its own, the
Ephesian goddess. Now the people of Ephesus deeming
it proper that the whole month called by her name
should be sacred and set apart to the goddess, have
resolved by this decree, that the observation of it by
them be altered. Therefore it is enacted, that the
whole month Artemision in all the days of it shall be
holy, and that throughout the month there shall be
a continued celebration of feasts and the Artemisian
festivals and the holy days, seeing that the entire
month is sacred to the goddess; for from this improvement
in her worship our city shall receive additional
lustre and enjoy perpetual prosperity."The original of this decree will be found in Bœckh's Corp. Inscriptt.
Græc., No. 2954, and the translation in Lewin's St. Paul, 405.
Now this decree,
which preceded St. Paul's labours perhaps by twenty
years or more, has an important bearing on our subject.
St. Luke tells us that "about this time there arose no
small stir about the Way"; and it was only quite natural
and quite in accord with what we know of other pagan
persecutions, and of human nature in general, that the
precise time at which the Apostle had then arrived
should have been marked by this riot. The whole
city of Ephesus was then given up to the celebration
of the festival held in honour of what we may call the
national religion and the national deity. That festival
lasted the whole month, and was accompanied, as all
human festivals are apt to be accompanied, with a
vast deal of drunkenness and vice, as we are expressly
told in an ancient Greek romance, written by a Greek
of whom little is known, named Achilles Tatius.There is a long account of Achilles Tatius in the Bibliotheca Græca
of Fabricius. He was a pagan first, and then became a Christian. His
age is uncertain, but he certainly seems to have lived when pagan
feasts were still observed in their ancient splendour. The book in
which he describes them is called De Amoribus Clitophontis et Leucippes,
where in Book VI., ch. iii. there is an account of the drunkenness
and idleness at the feast of Diana. The words of Achilles Tatius
bring the scene vividly before us as St. Paul must have seen it: "It
was the festival of Artemis, and every place was full of drunken men,
and all the market-place was full of a multitude of men through
the whole night." In Mason's Diocletian Persecution, p. 361, there
will be found an account of a festival celebrated in honour of Artemis
in the same spring season at Ancyra in Galatia. This latter account
is useful as giving us an authentic account of a Celtic festival of Diana
about the year 306 A.D. It would seem as if an annual public washing
of the image of Diana constituted an important part of the ceremonial.
Both at Ancyra as told in the Acts of St. Theodotus and at Ephesus
the image of Diana was annually carried about in a waggon drawn by
mules: see Guhl's Ephesiaca, p. 114. At Ancyra, during the Diocletian
persecution, seven Christian virgins were dressed as priestesses of Diana
and condemned to publicly wash the idol. Upon their refusal they were
all drowned in the lake where the image was washed. The Seven
Virgins of Ancyra are celebrated in the annals of Christian martyrdom
for their heroic resistance on this occasion. See Mason, l.c., and the
Dict. Christ. Biog., s.v. Seven Virgins of Ancyra and Theodotus.
The
people of Ephesus were, in fact, mad with excitement,
and it did not require any great skill to stir them up
to excesses in defence of the endangered deity whose
worship was the glory of their city. We know from
one or two similar cases that the attack made upon
St. Paul at this pagan festival had exact parallels in
these early ages.
This festival in honour of Diana was generally
utilised as the meeting-time of the local diet or parliament
of the province of Asia, where deputies from
all the cities of the province met together to consult
on their common wants and transmit their decisions
to the proconsul, a point to which we shall later on
have occasion to refer. Just ninety years later one
of the most celebrated of the primitive martyrs suffered
upon the same occasion at Smyrna. Polycarp, the
disciple of St. John, lived to a very advanced period,
and helped to hand down the tradition of apostolic
life and doctrine to another generation. Polycarp,
is, in fact, through Irenæus, one of the chief historic
links uniting the Church of later times with the
apostles. Polycarp suffered martyrdom amid the excitement
raised during the meeting of the same diet of
Asia held, not at Ephesus, but at Smyrna, and attended
by the same religious ceremonies and observances.
Or let us again turn towards the West, and we shall find
it the same. The martyrdoms of Vienne and Lyons
described by Eusebius in the fifth book of his history
are among the most celebrated in the whole history of
the Church, and as such have been already referred to
and used in this commentary.See vol. i., pp. 8, 9.
These martyrdoms are
an illustration of the same fact that the Christians were
always exposed to peculiar danger at the annual pagan
celebrations. The Gallic tribes, the seven nations of the
Gauls, as they were called, were holding their annual diet
or assembly, and celebrating the worship of the national
deities when their zeal was excited to red-hot pitch
against the Christians of Vienne and Lyons, resulting in
the terrible outbreak of which Eusebius in his fifth book
tells us.See the articles on Polycarp in the Dict. Christ. Biog., iv. 426, and
on Martyrs of Lyons, iii. 764. As regards Polycarp, see also Lightfoot's
Ignatius, vol. i., p. 436; and as regards the Martyrs of Lyons, see
Rénan's Marc-Aurèle, pp. 329, 331. It is interesting to notice, in the
writings of St. Paulinus of Nola written about the year 400 A.D., his
complaints about the abuses, drunkenness and idleness, connected with
the feasts and holy days observed in honour of his great patron and
hero St. Felix the Martyr. A similar feeling of the moral dangers
connected with religious holy days led to the abbreviation of the
week's holiday following Easter and Whitsunday to Monday and
Tuesday as at present.
As it was in Gaul about 177 A.D. and in Smyrna
about 155 A.D., so was it in Ephesus in the year 57; the
month's festival, celebrated in honour of Diana, accompanied
with eating and drinking and idleness in abundance,
told upon the populace, and made them ready for any
excess, so that it is no wonder we should read, "About
that time there arose no small stir about the Way."
Then too there is another circumstance which may have
stirred up Demetrius to special violence. His trade was
probably falling off owing to St. Paul's labours, and this
may have been brought home to him with special force
by the results of the festival which was then in process
of celebration or perhaps almost finished. All the
circumstances fit this hypothesis. The shrine-makers
were, we know, a very important element in the population
of Ephesus, and the trade of shrine-making and
the manufacture of other silver ornaments conduced in
no small degree to the commercial prosperity of the
city of Ephesus. This is plainly stated upon the face
of our narrative: "Ye know that by this business we
have our wealth, and ye see and hear that not alone at
Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath
turned away much people," facts which could not have
been more forcibly brought home to them than by the
decreasing call they were experiencing for the particular
articles which they produced.
Now the question may be proposed, Was this
the fact? Was Ephesus celebrated for its shrine-makers,
and were shrines and silver ornaments a
favourite manufacture in that city? Here modern
research comes in to testify to the marked truthfulness,
the minute accuracy of St. Luke. We do not now need
to appeal to ancient authors, as Lives of St. Paul like
those written by Mr. Lewin or by Messrs. Conybeare
and Howson do. The excavations which have taken
place at Ephesus since the publication of these valuable
works have amply vindicated the historic character of
our narrative on this point. Mr. Wood in the course of
his excavations at Ephesus discovered a vast number
of inscriptions and sculptures which had once adorned
the temple of Ephesus, but upon its destruction had
been removed to the theatre, which continued in full
operation long after the pagan temple had disappeared.The pagan temples were almost universally destroyed about the
year 400. The edicts dealing with this matter and an ample commentary
upon them will be found in the Theodosian Code, edited by that
eminent scholar Godefroy.
Among these inscriptions there was one enormous one
brought to light. It was erected some forty years or
so after St. Paul's time, but it serves in the minuteness
of its details to illustrate the story of Demetrius, the
speech he made, and the riot he raised. This inscription
was raised in honour of a wealthy Roman named Gaius
Vibius Salutarius, who had dedicated to Artemis a large
number of silver images weighing from three to seven
pounds each, and had even provided a competent endowment
for keeping up a public festival in her honour,
which was to be celebrated on the birthday of the
goddess, which happened in the month of April or May.
The inscription, which contains the particulars of the
offering made by this Roman, would take up quite too
much space if we desired to insert it. We can only now
refer our readers to Mr. Wood's book on Ephesus,
where they will find it given at full length. A few
lines may, however, be quoted to illustrate the extent
to which the manufacture of silver shrines and silver
ornaments in honour of Artemis must have flourished
in Ephesus. This inscription enumerates the images
dedicated to the goddess which Salutarius had provided
by his endowments, entering into the most minute
details as to their treatment and care. The following
passage gives a vivid picture of Ephesian idolatry
as the Apostle saw it: "Let two statues of Artemis
of the weight of three pounds three ounces be religiously
kept in the custody of Salutarius, who himself
consecrated them, and after the death of Salutarius,
let the aforesaid statues be restored to the town-clerk
of the Ephesians, and let it be made a rule that they
be placed at the public meetings above the seat of the
council in the theatre before the golden statue of
Artemis and the other statues. And a golden Artemis
weighing three pounds and two silver deer attending
her, and the rest of the images of the weight of two
pounds ten ounces and five grammes, and a silver
statue of the Sacred Senate of the weight of four pounds
two ounces, and a silver statue of the council of the
Ephesians. Likewise a silver Artemis bearing a torch
of the weight of six pounds, and a silver statue of
the Roman people." And so the inscription proceeds
to name and devote silver and golden statues literally
by dozens, which Salutarius intended to be borne in
solemn procession on the feast-day of Diana. It is
quite evident that did we possess but this inscription
alone, we have here amply sufficient evidence showing
us that one of the staple trades of Ephesus, one upon
which the prosperity and welfare of a large section of
its inhabitants depended, was this manufacture of silver
and gold ornaments directly connected with the worship
of the goddess.An interesting confirmation of this fact came to light in modern
times. In the year 1830 there was found in Southern France a piece of
such Ephesian silver work wrought in honour of Artemis, and carried
into Gaul by one of her worshippers. It is now deposited in the
Bibliothèque Nationale, and has been fully described in an interesting
article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. iii., pp. 104-106, written
by that eminent antiquary C. Waldstein.
For it must be remembered that the
guild of shrine-makers did not depend alone upon the
chance liberality of a stray wealthy Roman or Greek
like Salutarius, who might feel moved to create a
special endowment or bestow special gifts upon the
temple. The guild of shrine-makers depended upon
the large and regular demand of a vast population who
required a supply of cheap and handy shrines to satisfy
their religious cravings. The population of the surrounding
districts and towns poured into Ephesus at
this annual festival of Diana and paid their devotions in
her temple. But even the pagans required some kind
of social and family religion. They could not live
as too many nominal Christians are contented to live,
without any family or personal acknowledgment of
their dependence upon a higher power. There was
no provision for public worship in the rural districts
answering to our parochial system, and so they supplied
the want by purchasing on occasions like this
feast of Diana, shrines, little silver images, or likenesses
of the central cell of the great temple where the sacred
image rested, and which served as central points to
fix their thoughts and excite the gratitude due to the
goddess whom they adored. Demetrius and his fellow-craftsmen
depended upon the demand created by a vast
population of devout believers in Artemis, and when
this demand began to fall off Demetrius traced the bad
trade which he and his fellows were experiencing to
the true source. He recognised the Christian teaching
imparted by St. Paul as the deadly enemy of his unrighteous
gains, and naturally directed the rage of the
mob against the preacher of truth and righteousness.
The actual words of Demetrius are deserving of the
most careful study, for they too have been illustrated by
modern discovery in the most striking manner. Having
spoken of the results of St. Paul's teaching in Asia of
which they all had had personal experience, he then proceeds
to expatiate on its dangerous character, not only
as regards their own personal interests, but as regards
the goddess and her sacred dignity as well: "And
not only is there danger that this our trade come into
disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess
Diana be made of no account, and that she should be
deposed from her magnificence whom all Asia and the
world worshippeth." Demetrius cleverly but lightly
touches upon the self-interest of the workmen. He does
not dwell on that topic too long, because it is never
well for an orator who wishes to rouse his hearers to
enthusiasm to dwell too long or too openly upon merely
selfish consideration. Man is indeed intensely selfish
by nature, but then he does not like to be told so too
openly, or to have his own selfishness paraded too
frequently before his face. He likes to be flattered
as if he cherished a belief in higher things, and to
have his low ends and baser motives clothed in a
similitude of noble enthusiasm. Demetrius hints therefore
at their own impoverishment as the results of
Paul's teaching, but expatiates on the certain destruction
which awaits the glory of their time-honoured
and world-renowned deity if free course be any longer
permitted to such doctrine. This speech is a skilful
composition all through. It shows that the ancient
rhetorical skill of the Greeks still flourished in Ephesus,
and not the least skilful, and at the same time not
the least true touch in the speech was that wherein
Demetrius reminded his hearers that the world were
onlookers and watchers of their conduct, noting whether
or not they would vindicate Diana's assailed dignity. It
was a true touch, I say, for modern research has shown
that the worship of the Ephesian Artemis was world-wide
in its extent; it had come from the distant east,
and had travelled to the farthest west. We have
already noted the testimony of modern travellers showing
that her worship extended over Asia Minor in
every direction. This fact Demetrius long ago told the
Ephesians, and ancient authors have repeated his testimony,
and modern travellers have merely corroborated
them. But we were not aware how accurate was
Demetrius about the whole world worshipping Artemis,
till in our own time the statues and temples of the
Ephesian goddess were found existing so far west as
Southern Gaul, Marseilles, and the coast of Spain,
proving that wherever Asiatic sailors and Asiatic
merchants came thither they brought with them the
worship of their favourite deity.See the Revue Archéologique for 1886, vol. ii., p. 257, about the
worship of the Ephesian Artemis in Marseilles and Southern Gaul, and
an article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1889, vol. x., p. 216, by
Professor Ramsay, on the vast extent of Artemis worship in Asia. In
the same journal, for 1890, vol. xi., p. 235, we have an account of the
discovery of one of the original seats of Artemis worship in Eastern
Cilicia by Mr. J. T. Bent; while again, in vol. iv., p. 40-43, Ramsay
gives us a subscription list raised in Pisidia for the purpose of building
a temple of Artemis in a country district.
Let us pass on, however, and see whether the
remainder of this narrative will not afford us subject-matter
for abundant illustrations. The mob drank in the
speech of Demetrius, and responded with the national
shout, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," a cry which
has been found inscribed on altars and tablets all over
the province of Asia, showing that it was a kind of
watchword among the inhabitants of that district. The
crowd of workmen whom Demetrius had been addressing
then rushed into the theatre, the usual place of
assembly for the people of Ephesus, dragging with
them "Gaius and Aristarchus,Aristarchus is described in the Martyrologies as the first bishop of
Thessalonica, and is said to have suffered martyrdom under Nero. He
is commemorated on August 4th.
men of Macedonia,
Paul's companions in travel." The Jews too followed
the mob, eager to make the unexpected tumult serve
their own hostile purposes against St. Paul. News
of the riot was soon carried to the Apostle, who
learning of the danger to which his friends were
exposed desired to enter that theatre the magnificent
proportions and ornamentation of which have been for
the first time displayed to modern eyes by the labours
of Mr. Wood. But the local Christians knew the
Ephesian mob and their state of excitement better than
St. Paul did, and so they would not allow him to risk
his life amid the infuriated crowd. The Apostle's teaching
too had reached the very highest ranks of Ephesian
and Asiatic society. The very Asiarchs, being his
friends, sent unto him and requested him not to enter
the theatre. Here again we come across one of those
incidental references which display St. Luke's acquaintance
with the local peculiarities of the Ephesian constitution,
and which have been only really appreciated
in the light of modern discoveries. In the time of
King James I., when the Authorised Version was made,
the translators knew nothing of the proof of the sacred
writer's accuracy which lay under their hands in the
words, "Certain of the Asiarchs or chief officers of
Asia," and so they translated them very literally but
very incorrectly, "Certain of the chief of Asia," ignoring
completely the official rank and title which these men
possessed. A few words must suffice to give a brief
explanation of the office these men held. The province
of Asia from ancient times had celebrated this feast of
Artemis at an assembly of all the cities of Asia. This
we have already explained. The Romans united with
the worship of Artemis the worship of the Emperor
and of the City of Rome; so that loyalty to the
Emperor and loyalty to the national religion went hand
in hand. They appointed certain officials to preside at
these games, they made them presidents of the local
diets or parliaments which assembled to discuss local
matters at these national assemblies, they gave them
the highest positions in the province next to the proconsul,
they surrounded them with great pomp, and
endued them with considerable power so long as the
festival lasted, and then, being intent on uniting
economy with their generosity, they made these Asiarchs,
as they were called, responsible for all the expenses
incurred in the celebration of the games and diets.
It was a clever policy, as it secured the maximum of
contentment on the people's part with the minimum of
expense to the imperial government. This arrangement
clearly limited the position of the Asiarchate to
rich men, as they alone could afford the enormous
expenses involved. The Greeks, specially those of
Asia, as we have already pointed out, were very flashy
in their disposition. They loved titles and decorations;
so much so that one of their own orators of St. Paul's
day, Dion Chrysostom, tells us that, provided they got
a title, they would suffer any indignity. There were
therefore crowds of rich men always ready to take
the office of Asiarch, which by degrees was turned
into a kind of life peerage, a man once an Asiarch
always retaining the title, while his wife was called
the Asiarchess, as we find from the inscriptions. The
Asiarchs were, in fact, the official aristocracy of the
province of Asia. They had assembled on this occasion
for the purpose of sitting in the local parliament and
presiding over the annual games in honour of Diana.These local parliaments under the Roman Empire have been the
subject of much modern investigation at the hands of French and
German scholars. See for references to the authorities on the point
an article which I wrote in Macmillan's Magazine for 1882.
Their interests and their honour were all bound up
with the worship of the goddess, and yet the preaching
of St. Paul had told so powerfully upon the whole
province, that even among the very officials of the
State religion St. Paul had friends and supporters
anxious to preserve his life, and therefore sent him a
message not to adventure himself into the theatre. It is
no wonder that Demetrius the silversmith roused his
fellow-craftsmen into activity and fanned the flame of
their wrath, for the worship of Diana of the Ephesians
was indeed in danger when the very men whose
office bound them to its support were in league with
such an uncompromising opponent as this Paul of
Tarsus. St. Luke thus gives a glimpse of the constitution
of Ephesus and of the province of Asia in his
time. He shows us the peculiar institution of the
Asiarchate, and then when we turn to the inscriptions
which Mr. Wood and other modern discoverers have
unearthed, we find that the Asiarchs occupy a most prominent
position in them, vindicating in the amplest manner
the introduction of them by St. Luke as assembled at
Ephesus at this special season, and there interesting
themselves in the welfare of the great Apostle.See the index to Lightfoot's Ignatius and Polycarp for extended
references to the Asiarchate, and also Mommsen's Roman Provinces
(Dickson's translation), vol. i., pp. 345-7.
But now there comes on the scene another official,
whose title and office have been the subject of many an
illustration furnished by modern research. The Jews
who followed the mob into the theatre, when they did
not see St. Paul there, put forward one Alexander as
their spokesman.The Ephesian mob four hundred years later displayed at the third
General Council held at Ephesus in 431 an extraordinary power of
keeping up the same cry for hours. See the story of the Council as
told by Hefele in the third volume of his General Councils (Clark's
translation). Nothing will give such a vigorous idea of the confusion
which then prevailed at Ephesus as a glance at Mansi's Acts of that
Council. The cry "Anathema to Nestorius," the heretic against whom
the Council declared, was maintained so long and so continuously that
one would imagine that orthodoxy depended on strength of lungs.
This man has been by some identified
with Alexander the coppersmith, to whom St. Paul
refers (2 Tim. iv. 14) when writing to Timothy, then
resident at Ephesus, as a man who had done much
injury to the Christian cause. He may have been well
known as a brother-tradesman by the Ephesian silversmiths,
and he seems to have been regarded by the
Jews as a kind of leader who might be useful in directing
the rage of the mob against the Christians whom
they hated. The rioters, however, did not distinguish
as clearly as the Jews would have wished between the
Christians and the Jews. They made the same mistake
as the Romans did for more than a century later,
and confounded Jews and Christians together. They
were all, in any case, opponents of idol worship and
chiefly of their favourite goddess, and therefore the sight
of Alexander merely intensified their rage, so much that
for the space of two hours they continued to vociferate
their favourite cry, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians."
Now, however, there appeared another official, whose
title and character have become famous through his
action on this occasion: "When the town-clerk had
quieted the multitude, he saith, Ye men of Ephesus,
what man is there who knoweth not that the city
of the Ephesians is temple-keeper (or Neocoros) of
the great Diana, and of the image which fell down
from Jupiter?" Here we have several terms which
have been illustrated and confirmed by the excavations
of Mr. Wood. The town-clerk or recorder is
introduced, because he was the chief executive officer
of the city of Ephesus, and, as such, responsible to the
Roman authorities for the peace and order of the city.
The city of Ephesus was a free city, retaining its ancient
laws and customs like Athens and Thessalonica, but
only on the condition that these laws were effective and
peace duly kept. Otherwise the Roman authorities and
their police would step in. These town-clerks or recorders
of Ephesus are known from this one passage in
the Acts of the Apostles, but they are still better known
from the inscriptions which have been brought to light at
Ephesus. I have mentioned, for instance, the immense
inscription which Mr. Wood discovered in the theatre
commemorating the gift to the temple of Diana of a
vast number of gold and silver images made by one
Vibius Salutarius. This inscription lays down that
the images should be kept in the custody of the town-clerk
or recorder when not required for use in the
solemn religious processions made through the city.
The names of a great many town-clerks have been
recovered from the ruins of Ephesus, some of them
coming from the reign of Nero, the very period when
this riot took place. It is not impossible that we may
yet recover the very name of the town-clerk who gave
the riotous mob this very prudent advice, "Ye ought
to be quiet, and to do nothing rash," which has made
him immortal. Then, again, a title for the city of
Ephesus is used in this pacific oration which is strictly
historical, and such as would naturally have been
used by a man in the town-clerk's position. He calls
Ephesus the "temple-keeper," or "Neocoros," as the
word literally is, of the goddess Diana, and this is one
of the most usual and common titles in the lately
discovered inscriptions. Ephesus and the Ephesians
were indeed so devoted to the worship of that deity and
so affected by the honour she conferred upon them that
they delighted to call themselves the temple-sweepers,
or sextons, of the great Diana's temple. In fact, their
devotion to the worship of the goddess so far surpassed
that of ordinary cities that the Ephesians were accustomed
to subordinate their reverence for the Emperors
to their reverence for their religion, and thus in the
decree passed by them honouring Vibius Salutarius
who endowed their temple with many splendid gifts,
to which we have already referred, they begin by
describing themselves thus: "In the presidency of
Tiberius Claudius Antipater Julianus, on the sixth
day of the first decade of the month Poseideon, it
was resolved by the Council and the Public Assembly
of the Necori (of Artemis) and Lovers of Augustus."
The Ephesians must have been profoundly devoted to
Diana's worship when in that age of gross materialism
they would dare to place any deity higher than that of
the reigning emperor, the only god in whom a true
Roman really believed; for unregenerate human nature
at that time looked at the things alone which are seen
and believed in nothing else.
The rest of the town-clerk's speech is equally deserving
of study from every point of view. He gives us
a glimpse of the Apostle's method of controversy: it
was wise, courteous, conciliatory. It did not hurt the
feelings or outrage the sentiments of natural reverence,
which ought ever to be treated with the greatest
respect, for natural reverence is a delicate plant, and
even when directed towards a wrong object ought to
be most gently handled. "Ye have brought hither
these men, which are neither robbers of temples nor
blasphemers of our goddess.St. Paul's zeal never outran his discretion. He never blasphemed
or spoke lightly of ideas and names held sacred by his hearers. I
remember in our local ecclesiastical history an example of the opposite
course which has often found imitators. When Charles Wesley first
visited Dublin about the year 1747, he left behind a zealous but very
unwise preacher to continue his work. His language was so violent
that the mob were roused to burn his meeting-house, which stood in
Marlborough Street near the spot where the Roman Catholic Cathedral
now stands. He then took his stand on Oxmantown Green in the
northern suburbs, where he preached in the open air. On Christmas
Day he took the Incarnation as his subject, and began, as St. Paul
never would have done, by crying aloud, "I curse and blaspheme all
gods and goddesses in heaven and earth, save the Babe that was born
in Bethlehem and was wrapped in swaddling clothes," whereupon the
Dublin mob with their ready wit in the matter of nick-names called
the Methodists swaddlers, a title which has ever since stuck to them in
Ireland, and is to this day commonly used by the Roman Catholics.
This seems an interesting illustration of the typical character of the Acts.
If therefore Demetrius,
and the craftsmen that are with him, have a matter
against any man, the courts are open, and there are
proconsuls: let them accuse one another." Modern
research has thrown additional light upon these words.
The Roman system of provincial government anticipated
the English system of assize courts, moving from place
to place, introduced by Henry II. for the purpose of
bringing justice home to every man's door.See Preface by Bishop Stubbs to Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta
Regis Hen. II., t. ii., pp. lxv.-lxxi. (Rolls Series); Madox, Hist. of
Exchequer, pp. 84-96, for an account of the rise of the English Assize
System; see Le Blant, Les Actes des Martyrs, pp. 50-121, and Marquardt's
Röm. Staatsverwalt, p. 365 about Roman assizes. There were eleven
circuits in Asia.
It was
quite natural for the proconsul of Asia to hold his court
at the same time as the annual assembly of the province
of Asia and the great festival of Diana. The great
concourse of people rendered such a course specially
convenient, while the presence of the proconsul helped
to keep the peace, as, to take a well-known instance,
the presence of Pontius Pilate at the great annual
Paschal feast at Jerusalem secured the Romans against
any sudden rebellion, and also enabled him to dispense
justice after the manner of an assize judge, to which
fact we would find an allusion in the words of St.
Mark (xv. 6), "Now at the feast he used to release
unto them one prisoner, whom they asked of him."
It has been said, indeed, that St. Luke here puts
into the town-clerk's mouth words he could never have
used, representing him as saying "there are proconsuls"
when, in fact, there was never more than
one proconsul in the province of Asia. Such criticism
is of the weakest character. Surely every man that
ever speaks in public knows that one of the commonest
usages is to say there are judges or magistrates,
using the plural when one judge or magistrate may
alone be exercising jurisdiction! But there is another
explanation, which completely solves the difficulty
and vindicates St. Luke's minute accuracy. Three
hundred years ago John Calvin, in his commentary,
noted the difficulty, and explained it by the supposition
that the proconsul had appointed deputies or assessors
who held the courts in his name. There is, however, a
more satisfactory explanation. It was the reign of
Nero, and his brutal example had begun to debauch the
officials through the provinces. Silanus, the proconsul
of Asia, was disliked by Nero and by his mother as a
possible candidate for the imperial crown, being of the
family of Augustus. Two of his subordinates, Celer
and Ælius, the collectors of the imperial revenue in
Asia, poisoned him, and as a reward were permitted
to govern the province, enjoying perhaps in common
the title of proconsul and exercising the jurisdiction
of the office.See Lewin's St. Paul, i. 337, 338.
Finally, the tone of the town-clerk's
words as he ends his address is thoroughly that of a
Roman official. He feels himself responsible for the
riot, and knows that he may be called upon to account
for it. Peace was what the Roman authorities sought
and desired at all hazards, and every measure which
threatened the peace, or every organisation, no matter
how desirable, a fire brigade even, which might conceivably
be turned to purposes of political agitation,
was strictly discouraged.
The correspondence of Pliny with the Emperor
Trajan some fifty years or so later than this riot is
the best commentary upon the town-clerk's speech.
We find, for instance, in Pliny's Letters, Book X.,
No. 42, a letter telling about a fire which broke out
in Nicomedia, the capital of Bithynia, of which province
Pliny was proconsul. He wrote to the Emperor
describing the damage done, and suggesting that a fire
brigade numbering one hundred and fifty men might
be instituted. The Emperor would not hear of it, however.
Such clubs or societies he considered dangerous,
and so he wrote back a letter which proves how
continuous was Roman policy, how abhorrent to the
imperial authorities were all voluntary organisations
which might be used for the purposes of public agitation:
"You are of opinion that it would be proper to establish
a company of fire-men in Nicomedia, agreeably to what
has been practised in several other cities. But it is
to be remembered that societies of this sort have greatly
disturbed the peace of the province in general and of
those cities in particular. Whatever name we give
them, and for whatever purposes they may be founded,
they will not fail to form themselves into factious
assemblies, however short their meetings will be";
and so Pliny was obliged to devise other measures for
the security and welfare of the cities committed to his
charge.A similar jealousy of voluntary organisations is still perpetuated in
France under the code Napoleon, which largely embodies Roman
methods and ideas.
The accidental burning of a city would not
be attributed to him as a fault, while the occurrence of
a street riot might be the beginning of a social war
which would bring down ruin upon the Empire at large.
When the recorder of Ephesus had ended his speech
he dismissed the assembly, leaving to us a precious
record illustrative of the methods of Roman government,
of the interior life of Ephesus in days long gone
by, and, above all else, of the thorough honesty of
the writer whom the Holy Spirit impelled to trace the
earliest triumphs of the Cross amid the teeming fields
of Gentile paganism.
CHAPTER XVI.
ST. PAUL AND THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY.
"And after the uproar was ceased, Paul having sent for the disciples
and exhorted them, took leave of them, and departed for to go into
Macedonia.... And upon the first day of the week, when we were
gathered together (at Troas) to break bread, Paul discoursed with them,
intending to depart on the morrow; and prolonged his speech until
midnight.... And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called to him
the elders of the church. And when they were come to him, he said
unto them, Ye yourselves know, from the first day I set foot in Asia,
after what manner I was with you all the time, serving the Lord with
all lowliness of mind, and with tears.... Take heed unto yourselves,
and to all the flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you
bishops, to feed the Church of God, which He purchased with His own
blood."—Acts xx. 1, 7, 17-19, 28.
The period of St. Paul's career at which we have now
arrived was full of life, vigour, activity. He was
in the very height of his powers, was surrounded with
responsibilities, was pressed with cares and anxieties;
and yet the character of the sacred narrative is very
peculiar. From the passover of the year 57, soon after
which the Apostle had to leave Ephesus, till the passover
of the next year, we learn but very little of St.
Paul's work from the narrative of St. Luke. The five
verses with which the twentieth chapter begins tell us
all that St. Luke apparently knew about the Apostle's
actions during that time. He gives us the story of a
mere outsider, who knew next to nothing of the work
St. Paul was doing. The Apostle left Ephesus and
went into Macedonia, whence he departed into Greece.
Three months were occupied in teaching at Corinth, and
then, intending to sail from Cenchreæ to Ephesus, he
suddenly changed his mind upon the discovery of a
Jewish plot, altered his route, disappointed his foes,
and paid a second visit to Macedonia. In this narrative,
which is all St. Luke gives, we have the account,
brief and concise, of one who was acquainted merely
with the bare outlines of the Apostle's work, and knew
nothing of his inner life and trials. St. Luke, in fact,
was so much taken up with his own duties at Philippi,
where he had been labouring for the previous five
years, that he had no time to think of what was going
on elsewhere. At any rate his friend and pupil
Theophilus had simply asked him for a narrative so
far as he knew it of the progress of the gospel. He
had no idea that he was writing anything more than
a story for the private use of Theophilus, and he therefore
put down what he knew and had experienced,
without troubling himself concerning other matters.
I have read criticisms of the Acts—proceeding principally,
I must confess, from German sources—which
seem to proceed on the supposition that St. Luke was
consciously writing an ecclesiastical history of the whole
early Church which he knew and felt was destined to
serve for ages.I do not wish to decry the industry and learning of German critics,
to whom I owe much, as my various references show; but I am always
suspicious of their historical conclusions, simply because they are pure
students, and are therefore ignorant of life and men. The more industrious
and secluded a life a man may lead, so much the more ignorant of
the practical world a man becomes, and so much the more unfitted to be
a real historian, who must know men as well as books. History is a
picture of real life in the past, and to paint it a man must know real
life in the present. As well might we set an academic scientist who
regarded all lines as straight and all bars as rigid to build the Forth
Bridge, as set a man who knows nothing of human nature and how it
acts under the stress of practical affairs to write the story of human
life two thousand years ago. We may take and use German investigations,
but we should apply English common sense and experience to
test German conclusions. This rule is, I fear, too much forgotten in a
great deal of the literature that is now being pawned off upon the
English world in the name of criticism. Surely the fate of Baur's
theories ought to be a warning to all young men against swallowing
as the latest results of scholarship everything that comes clothed in the
German language! The English nation has a reputation for solid
common sense. What fools the Germans would be did they take
everything English as full of common sense because printed in our
language!
But this was evidently not the case.
St. Luke was consciously writing a story merely for a
friend's study, and dreamt not of the wider fame and use
destined for his book. This accounts in a simple and
natural way, not only for what St. Luke inserts, but also
for what he leaves out, and he manifestly left out a great
deal. We may take this passage at which we have
now arrived as an illustration of his methods of writing
sacred history. This period of ten months, from the time
St. Paul left Ephesus till he returned to Philippi at the
following Easter season, was filled with most important
labours which have borne fruit unto all ages of the
Church, yet St. Luke dismisses them in a few words.
Just let us realise what happened in these eventful
months. St. Paul wrote First Corinthians in April A.D.
57. In May he passed to Troas, where, as we learn from
Second Corinthians, he laboured for a short time with
much success. He then passed into Macedonia, urged
on by his restless anxiety concerning the Corinthian
Church. In Macedonia he laboured during the following
five or six months. How intense and absorbing
must have been his work during that time! It was
then that he preached the gospel with signs and wonders
round about even unto Illyricum, as he notes in Romans
xvi. 19, an epistle written this very year from Corinth.
The last time that he had been in Macedonia he was a
hunted fugitive fleeing from place to place. Now he
seems to have lived in comparative peace, so far at least
as the Jewish synagogues were concerned. He penetrated,
therefore, into the mountainous districts west
of Berœa, bearing the gospel tidings into cities and
villages which had as yet heard nothing of them. But
preaching was not his only work in Macedonia. He had
written his first Epistle to Corinth from Ephesus a few
months before. In Macedonia he received from Titus,
his messenger, an account of the manner in which that
epistle had been received, and so from Macedonia he
despatched his second Corinthian Epistle, which must be
carefully studied if we desire to get an adequate idea
of the labours and anxieties amid which the Apostle
was then immersed (see 2 Cor. ii. 13, and vii. 5 and 6).
And then he passed into Greece, where he spent three
months at Corinth, settling the affairs of that very
celebrated but very disorderly Christian community.
The three months spent there must have been a period
of overwhelming business. Let us recount the subjects
which must have taken up every moment of St. Paul's
time. First there were the affairs of the Corinthian
Church itself. He had to reprove, comfort, direct, set
in order. The whole moral, spiritual, social, intellectual
conceptions of Corinth had gone wrong. There
was not a question, from the most elementary topic of
morals and the social considerations connected with
female dress and activities, to the most solemn points
of doctrine and worship, the Resurrection and the Holy
Communion, concerning which difficulties, disorders,
and dissensions had not been raised. All these had
to be investigated and decided by the Apostle. Then,
again, the Jewish controversy, and the oppositions
to himself personally which the Judaising party had
excited, demanded his careful attention. This controversy
was a troublesome one in Corinth just then,
but it was a still more troublesome one in Galatia,
and was fast raising its head in Rome. The affairs
of both these great and important churches, the one in
the East, the other in the West, were pressing upon
St. Paul at this very time. While he was immersed
in all the local troubles of Corinth, he had to find
time at Corinth to write the Epistle to the Galatians
and the Epistle to the Romans. How hard it must
have been for the Apostle to concentrate his attention
on the affairs of Corinth when his heart and brain
were torn with anxieties about the schisms, divisions,
and false doctrines which were flourishing among his
Galatian converts, or threatening to invade the Church
at Rome, where as yet he had not been able to set
forth his own conception of gospel truth, and thus
fortify the disciples against the attacks of those subtle
foes of Christ who were doing their best to turn the
Catholic Church into a mere narrow Jewish sect, devoid
of all spiritual power and life.
But this was not all, or nearly all. St. Paul was
at the same time engaged in organising a great
collection throughout all the churches where he had
ministered on behalf of the poor Christians at Jerusalem,
and he was compelled to walk most warily
and carefully in this matter. Every step he took was
watched by foes ready to interpret it unfavourably;
every appointment he made, every arrangement, no
matter how wise or prudent, was the subject of keenest
scrutiny and criticism. With all these various matters
accumulating upon him it is no wonder that St. Paul
should have written of himself at this very period in
words which vividly describe his distractions: "Beside
those things that are without, there is that which
presseth upon me daily, the care of all the churches."
And yet St. Paul gives us a glimpse of the greatness
of his soul as we read the epistles which were the
outcome of this period of intense but fruitful labour.
He carried a mighty load, but yet he carried it lightly.
His present anxieties were numerous, but they did not
shut out all thoughts upon other topics. The busiest
man then was just the same as the busiest man still.
He was the man who had the most time and leisure to
bestow thought upon the future. The anxieties and
worries of the present were numerous and exacting, but
St. Paul did not allow his mind to be so swallowed up
in them as to shut out all care about other questions
equally important. While he was engaged in the
manifold cares which present controversies brought,
he was all the while meditating a mission to Rome,
and contemplating a journey still farther to Spain and
Gaul,I say to Gaul, because I take it that he would have sailed to
Marseilles, which was then the great port of communication with Asia
Minor, as we have noted above, pp. 372-74, when treating of the
worship of Diana and its extension from the East to Marseilles.
and the bounds of the Western ocean. And
then, finally, there was the care of St. Paul's own soul,
the sustenance and development of his spirit by prayer
and meditation and worship and reading, which he
never neglected under any circumstances. All these
things combined must have rendered this period of
close upon twelve months one of the Apostle's busiest
and intensest times, and yet St. Luke disposes of it in
a few brief verses of this twentieth chapter.
After St. Paul's stay at Corinth, he determined to
proceed to Jerusalem according to his predetermined
plan, bringing with him the proceeds of the collection
which he had made. He wished to go by sea, as he had
done some three years before, sailing from Cenchreæ
direct to Syria. The Jews of Corinth, however, were
as hostile as ever, and so they hatched a plot to
murder him before his embarkation. St. Paul, however,
having learned their designs, suddenly changed his
route, and took his journey by land through Macedonia,
visiting once more his former converts, and tarrying
to keep the passover at Philippi with the little company
of Christian Jews who there resided. This circumstance
throws light upon verses 4 and 5 of this twentieth chapter,
which run thus: "There accompanied him as far as
Asia Sopater of Berœa, the son of Pyrrhus; and of the
Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius
of Derbe, and Timothy; and of Asia, Tychicus and
Trophimus. But these had gone before, and were waiting
for us at Troas." St. Paul came to Philippi, found
St. Luke there, celebrated the passover, and then sailed
away with St. Luke to join the company who had gone
before. And they had gone before for a very good reason.
They were all, except Timothy, Gentile Christians,
persons therefore who, unlike St. Paul, had nothing to
do with the national rites and customs of born Jews,
and who might be much more profitably exercised in
working among the Gentile converts at Troas, free from
any danger of either giving or taking offence in connexion
with the passover, a lively instance of which
danger Trophimus, one of their number, subsequently
afforded in Jerusalem, when his presence alone in
St. Paul's company caused the spread of a rumour
which raised the riot so fatal to St. Paul's liberty:
"For they had seen with him in the city Trophimus
the Ephesian, whom they supposed that Paul had
brought into the temple" (xxi. 29). This incident,
together with St. Paul's conduct at Jerusalem as told
in the twenty-sixth verse of the twenty-first chapter
illustrates vividly St. Paul's view of the Jewish law
and Jewish rites and ceremonies. They were for
Jews national ceremonies. They had a meaning for
them. They commemorated certain national deliverances,
and as such might be lawfully used. St. Paul
himself could eat the passover and cherish the feelings
of a Jew, heartily thankful to God for the deliverance
from Egypt wrought out through Moses centuries ago
for his ancestors, and his mind could then go on and
rejoice over a greater deliverance still wrought out at
this same paschal season by a greater than Moses. St.
Paul openly proclaimed the lawfulness of the Jewish
rites for Jews, but opposed their imposition upon the
Gentiles. He regarded them as tolerabiles ineptiæ, and
therefore observed them to please his weaker brethren;
but sent his Gentile converts on before, lest perhaps the
sight of his own example might weaken their faith and
lead them to a compliance with that Judaising party
who were ever ready to avail themselves of any opportunity
to weaken St. Paul's teaching and authority.
St. Paul always strove to unite wisdom and prudence
with faithfulness to principle lest by any means his
labour should be in vain.
St. Luke now joined St. Paul at Philippi, and henceforth
gives his own account of what happened on this
eventful journey. From Philippi they crossed to Troas.
It was the spring-time, and the weather was more
boisterous than later in the year, and so the voyage
took five days to accomplish, while two days had
sufficed on a previous occasion. They came to Troas,
and there remained for a week, owing doubtless to the
exigencies of the ship and its cargo. On the first day
of the week St. Paul assembled the Church for worship.
The meeting was held on what we should call Saturday
evening; but we must remember that the Jewish first
day began from sundown on Saturday or the Sabbath.There is to this day a trace of this custom in the Book of Common
Prayer in the rubric which prescribes that the collect for Sunday shall
be said on Saturday evening. In colleges, too, according to Archbishop
Laud's rules, surplices are worn on Saturday evenings as well as on
Sundays.
This is the first notice in the Acts of the observance of
the Lord's day as the time of special Christian worship.
We have, however, earlier notices of the first day in
connexion with Christian observances. The apostles,
for instance, met together on the first day, as we are
told in John xx. 19, and again eight days after, as the
twenty-sixth verse of the same chapter tells. St. Paul's
first Epistle to Corinth was written twelve months
earlier than this visit to Troas, and it expressly mentions
(ch. xvi. 2) the first day of the week as the time
ordered by St. Paul for the setting apart of the Galatian
contribution to the collection for the poor saints at
Jerusalem; and so here again at Troas we see that the
Asiatic Christians observed the same solemn time for
worship and the celebration of the Eucharist. Such
glimpses—chance notices, we might call them, were there
not a higher Providence watching over the unconscious
writer—show us how little we can conclude from mere
silence about the ritual, worship, and government of the
Apostolic Church,See above, pp. 342 and 361, where I have pointed out the
dangerous character of the argument from mere silence. I may perhaps
recur to the example of Meyer, the eminent textual critic, to illustrate my
view of German critics stated in my first note to this chapter, p. 386
above. Meyer is an exhaustive textual critic, but as soon as he ventures
on the region of history he falls into this trap, and concludes from the
argument of silence that Apollos was never baptized with Christian
baptism because he was so clever and spiritually enlightened that he did
not need it. But, then, how does he account for the case of St. Paul?
Was Apollos superior to St. Paul? And yet he was baptized. But the
illustrations of the fallacies of this method of argumentation would be
endless. If the argument of silence is sufficient to prove a negative,
what are we to do with female communicants? There is not a single
instance of them in the New Testament. It is here, however, that the
study of the second-century writers is so valuable as illustrating the
silence of the first. See my note on p. 342 above.
and illustrate the vast importance of
studying carefully the extant records of the Christian
Church in the second century if we wish to gain
fresh light upon the history and customs of the
apostolic age. If three or four brief texts were blotted
out of the New Testament, it would be quite possible
to argue from silence merely that the apostles and their
immediate followers did not observe the Lord's Day in
any way whatsoever, and that the custom of stated
worship and solemn eucharistic celebrations on that
day were a corruption introduced in post-apostolic
times. The best interpreters of the New Testament
are, as John Wesley long ago well pointed out
in his preface to his celebrated but now almost unknown
Christian Library, the apostolic fathers and
the writers of the age next following the apostles.The Christian library was a series of fifty volumes which Wesley
published for the use of his followers. They were begun in 1749 and
completed in 1755. "The opening volume contains, 1. The Epistles
of the apostolical fathers Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp, whom he
believed to be endued with the extraordinary assistance of the Holy
Spirit, and whose writings, though not of equal authority with the Holy
Scriptures, are worthy of a much greater respect than any composures that
have been made since. 2. The martyrdoms of Ignatius and Polycarp.
3. An extract from the Homilies of Macarius, born about the year 301."
See Tyerman's Life of Wesley, ii. 25, 65-67.
We may take it for a certain rule of interpretation
that, whenever we find a widely established practice
or custom mentioned in the writings of a Christian
author of the second century, it originated in apostolic
times. It was only natural that this should have
been the case. We are all inclined to venerate the
past, and to cry it up as the golden age. Now this
tendency must have been intensified tenfold in the case
of the Christians of the second century. The first
century was the time of our Lord and the age of the
apostles. Sacred memories clustered thick round it, and
every ceremony and rite which came from that time
must have been profoundly reverenced, while every new
ceremony or custom must have been rudely challenged,
and its author keenly scrutinised as one who presumptuously
thought he could improve upon the wisdom
of men inspired by the Holy Ghost and miraculously
gifted by God. It is for this reason we regard the
second-century doctors and apologists as the best commentary
upon the sacred writers, because in them
we see the Church of the apostolic age living, acting,
displaying itself amid the circumstances and scenes of
actual life.
Just let us take as an illustration the case of this
observance of the first day of the week. The Acts of
the Apostles tells us but very little about it, simply
because there is but little occasion to mention what
must have seemed to St. Luke one of the commonest
and best-known facts. But Justin Martyr some eighty
years later was describing Christianity for the Roman
Emperor. He was defending it against the outrageous
and immoral charges brought against it, and depicting
the purity, the innocency, and simplicity of its sacred
rites. Among other subjects dealt with, he touches
upon the time when Christians offered up formal and
stated worship. It was absolutely necessary therefore
for him to treat of the subject of the Lord's Day. In
the sixty-seventh chapter of Justin's First Apology,
we find him describing the Christian weekly festival in
words which throw back an interesting light upon the
language of St. Luke touching the Lord's Day which
St. Paul passed at Troas. Justin writes thus on this
topic: "Upon the day called Sunday all who live in
cities or in the country gather together unto one place,
and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the
prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when
the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs,
and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then
we all rise together and pray, and as we before said,
when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water
are brought, and the president in like manner offers
prayers and thanksgivings according to his ability,
and the people assent, saying Amen;Here we have an illustration of 1 Cor. xiv. 16: "Else if thou bless
with the Spirit, how shall he that filleth the place of the unlearned say
the Amen at the giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what
thou sayest?" See also ch. lxv. of Justin's same Apology for another
reference to the Amen, and cf. Apost. Constitutions, viii. 10; Cyril of
Jerusalem, Cat., ch. v.; Euseb., H. E., vi. 43 and vii. 9; Ambros.
De Sacrament., iv. 4; Jerom., Epist., 62; Chrysost., Hom., xxxv. on
1st Cor.; Bingham's Antiqq., XV. iii. 26; and the article on Amen in
the first volume of Smith's Dict. Christ. Antiqq. The preceding chapters
of Justin's Apology, lxv. and lxvi., are full of information. They
expressly state that in the Primitive Church no unbaptized person was
allowed to communicate, an elementary point of Christian practice
about which some persons and some Christian societies seem at present
very uncertain. Hooker's words, Eccles. Pol., Book V. ch. lxvii., are very
clear on this topic.
and there is a
distribution to each, and a participation of that over
which thanks have been given, and to those who are
absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And those
who are well to do and willing, give what each thinks
fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president,
who succours the orphans and widows, and those who
through sickness or any other cause are in want, and
those who are in bonds, and the strangers sojourning
among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in
need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold
our common assembly, because it is the first day on
which God, having wrought a change in the darkness
and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our
Saviour on the same day rose from the dead." This
passage gives us a full account of Christian customs in
the first half of the second century, when thousands
must have been still alive who remembered the times
of the apostles, enabling us to realise what must have
been the character of the assembly and of the worship
in which St. Paul played a leading part at Troas.The continuous character, the strong conservatism of the early
Christian Church receives an interesting illustration from the history of
the Sabbath as distinguished from the Lord's Day. The Jewish Church
gave the outward form to Christianity; and though Christianity parted
company with Judaism by the end of the first century, yet the sacred
character of the Sabbath was still perpetuated among the Gentiles notwithstanding
St. Paul's strong language in Galatians and Colossians.
In the fourth century the Sabbath was observed in many places in
the same manner as the Lord's Day. St. Athanasius says: "We meet
on the Sabbath, not indeed being infected with Judaism, but to worship
Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath." Timothy, one of his successors at
Alexandria, says that the Holy Communion was administered on the
Sabbath as on the Lord's Day, and that these two were the only days
on which it was celebrated in that city. In the time of St. Chrysostom
the two great weekly festivals were the Sabbath and the Lord's Day.
It was the same in the fifth century in the Egyptian monasteries, where
the services for Saturday and Sunday were exactly the same. See a
full account of this matter in Bingham's Antiquities, Book XIII. ch.
ix. sec. iii.
There was, however, a difference between the celebration
at Troas and the celebrations of which Justin
Martyr speaks, though we learn not of this difference
from Justin himself, but from Pliny's letter to Trajan,
concerning which we have often spoken. St. Paul met
the Christians of Troas in the evening, and celebrated
the Holy Communion with them about midnight. It
was the first day of the week according to Jewish computation,
though it was what we should call Saturday
evening. The ship in which the apostolic company
was travelling was about to sail on the morrow, and
so St. Paul gladly joined the local church in its
weekly breaking of bread. It was exactly the same
here at Troas as reported by St. Luke, as it was at
Corinth where the evening celebrations were turned
into occasions of gluttony and ostentation, as St. Paul
tells us in the eleventh of First Corinthians. The
Christians evidently met at this time in the evening to
celebrate the Lord's Supper. It has been often thought
that St. Paul, having referred just twelve months
before in the First Corinthian Epistle to the gross
abuses connected with the evening celebrations at
Corinth, and having promised to set the abuses of
Corinth in order when he visited that church, did
actually change the time of the celebration of Holy
Communion from the evening to the morning, when he
spent the three months there of which this chapter
speaks.St. Augustine, in Epist., cxviii., Ad Januar., cc. vi. vii., was one
of the first to suggest this idea. The passage is quoted by Bingham,
Antiqq., XV. vii. 8.
Perhaps he did make the change, but we have
no information on the point; and if he did make the
change for Corinth, it is evident that he did not intend
to impose it as a rule upon the whole Christian Church
when a few weeks after leaving Corinth he celebrated
the Lord's Supper at Troas in the evening. By the
second century, however, the change had been made.
Justin Martyr indeed does not give a hint as to the
time when Holy Communion was administered in the
passages to which we have referred. He tells us that
none but baptized persons were admitted to partake
of it, but gives us no minor details. Pliny, however,
writing of the state of affairs in Bithynia,—and it bordered
upon the province where Troas was situated,—tells
us from the confession extracted out of apostate
Christians that "the whole of their fault lay in this,
that they were wont to meet together on a stated day,
before it was light, and sing among themselves alternately
a hymn to Christ as God, and to bind themselves
by a sacrament (or oath) not to the commission
of any wickedness, but not to be guilty of theft or
robbery or adultery." After this early service they
then separated, and assembled again in the evening to
partake of a common meal. The Agape or Love-Feast
was united with the Holy Communion in St. Paul's day.
Experience, however, showed that such a union must
lead to grave abuses, and so in that final consolidation
which the Church received during the last quarter of
the first century, when the Lord's Second Coming was
seen to be not so immediate as some at first expected,
the two institutions were divided; the Holy Communion
being appointed as the early morning service of the
Lord's Day, while the Agape was left in its original
position as an evening meal. And so have matters
continued ever since. The Agape indeed has almost
died out. A trace of it perhaps remains in the blessed
bread distributed in Roman Catholic churches on the
Continent; while again the love-feasts instituted by
John Wesley and continued among his followers were
an avowed imitation of this primitive institution. The
Agape continued indeed in vigorous existence for centuries,
but it was almost always found associated with
grave abuses. It might have been innocent and useful
so long as Christian love continued to burn with the
fervour of apostolic days, though even then, as Corinth
showed, there were lurking dangers in it; but when we
reach the fourth and fifth centuries we find council
after council denouncing the evils of the Agape, and
restricting its celebration with such effect that during
the Middle Ages it ceased to exist as a distinctive
Christian ordinance.See the exhaustive article on Agapæ in Smith's Dict. Christ.
Antiqq., vol. i., p. 39.
The change of the Holy Communion
to the earlier portion of the day took almost
universal effect, and that from the earliest times. Tertullian
(De Corona, iii.) testifies that in his time the
Eucharist was received before daybreak, though Christ
had instituted it at a meal-time. Cyprian witnesses
to the same usage in his sixty-third Epistle, where he
speaks of Christ as instituting the Sacrament in the
evening, that "the very hour of the sacrifice might
intimate the evening of the world," but then describes
himself as "celebrating the resurrection of the Lord in
the morning."The early Christians celebrated the Holy Communion in memory
of Christ's resurrection as much as in memory of His death. The
resurrection of Christ was, in fact, the central point of their belief and
thought. This alone would have conduced to the practice of early
morning communion, even before day, inasmuch as it was at that time
the resurrection took place. Cf. Dict. Christ. Antiqq., vol. i., p. 419,
on the hours of celebration of the Holy Communion. On p. 41 of
the same volume the writer of the article on the Agapæ makes an
extraordinary statement that it was only at the third Council of Carthage,
A.D. 391, that the time of Eucharistic celebration was changed to the
morning, and that then the Agape was first separated from the Holy
Communion. The change and the separation had taken place in
Pliny's time, as I have already shown.
St. Augustine, as quoted above, writing
about 400, speaks of fasting communion as the general
rule; so general, indeed, that he regards it as having
come down from apostolic appointment. At the same
time St. Augustine recognises the time of its original
institution, and mentions the custom of the African
Church which once a year had an evening communion
on Thursday before Easter in remembrance of the Last
Supper and of our Lord's action in connection with it.
My own feeling on the matter is, that early fasting
communion when there is health and strength is far
the most edifying. There is an element of self-denial
about it, and the more real self-denial there is about
our worship the more blessed will that worship be.
A worship that costs nothing in mind, body, or estate
is but a very poor thing to offer unto the Lord of the
universe. But there is no ground either in Holy
Scripture or the history of the primitive Church justifying
an attempt to put a yoke on the neck of the
disciples which they cannot bear and to teach that
fasting communion is binding upon all Christians. St.
Augustine speaks most strongly in a passage we have
already referred to (Epist. cxviii., Ad Januar.) about
the benefit of fasting communion; but he admits the
lawfulness of non-fasting participation, as does also
that great Greek divine St. Chrysostom, who quotes
the examples of St. Paul and of our Lord Himself
in justification of such a course.This whole subject of fasting communion is discussed at length with
all the authorities duly given in Bingham's Antiquities, Book XV. ch.
vii. sec. 8, whence I have taken my references, and where he quotes
Bishop Fell's Notes on Cyprian, Epist. lxiii. p. 156, who says that
"the custom of communicating after supper lasted for a long time in
the Church": cf. Socrates, H. E., v. 22, and the Dict. Christ. Antiqq.,
vol. i., p. 417, on Fasting Reception of H. C.
The celebration of the Eucharist was not the only
subject which engaged St. Paul's attention at Troas.
He preached unto the people as well; and following
his example we find from Justin Martyr's narrative
that preaching was an essential part of the communion
office in the days immediately following the apostles'
age; and then, descending to lower times still, we know
that preaching is an equally essential portion of the
eucharistic service in the Western Church, the only
formal provision for a sermon according to the English
liturgy being the rubric in the service for the Holy
Communion, which lays down that after the Nicene
Creed, "Then shall follow the sermon or one of the
Homilies already set forth, or hereafter to be set forth,
by authority." St. Paul's discourse was no mere
mechanical homily, however. He was not what man
regarded as a powerful, but he was a ready speaker,
and one who carried his hearers away by the rapt
intense earnestness of his manner. His whole soul was
full of his subject. He was convinced that this was
his last visit to the churches of Asia. He foresaw too
a thousand dangers to which they would be exposed
after his departure, and he therefore prolonged his
sermon far into the night, so far indeed that human
nature asserted its claims upon a young man named
Eutychus, who sat in a window of the room where they
were assembled. Human nature indeed was never for
a moment absent from these primitive Church assemblies.
If it was absent in one shape, it was present
in another, just as really as in our modern congregations,
and so Eutychus fell fast asleep under the
heart-searching exhortations of an inspired apostle,
even as men fall asleep under less powerful sermons
of smaller men; and as the natural result, sitting
in a window left open for the sake of ventilation, he
fell down into the courtyard, and was taken up apparently
lifeless. St. Paul was not put out, however.
He took interruptions in his work as the Master
took them. He was not upset by them, but he seized
them, utilised them, and then, having extracted the
sweetness and blessedness which they brought with
them, he returned from them back to his interrupted
work. St. Paul descended to Eutychus, found him
in a lifeless state, and then restored him. Men have
disputed whether the Apostle worked a miracle on this
occasion, or merely perceived that the young man was
in a temporary faint. I do not see that it makes any
matter which opinion we form. St. Paul's supernatural
and miraculous powers stand on quite an independent
ground, no matter what way we decide this particular
case. It seems to me indeed from the language of
St. Paul—"Make ye no ado; for his life is in him"—that
the young man had merely fainted, and that St.
Paul recognised this fact as soon as he touched him.
But if any one has strong opinions on the opposite side
I should be sorry to spend time disputing a question
which has absolutely no evidential bearing. The great
point is, that Eutychus was restored, that St. Paul's
long sermon was attended by no fatal consequences, and
that the Apostle has left us a striking example showing
how that, with pastors and people alike, intense enthusiasm,
high-strung interest in the affairs of the spiritual
world, can enable human nature to rise superior to all
human wants, and prove itself master even of the
conquering powers of sleep: "And when he was gone
up, and had broken the bread, and eaten, and had talked
with them a long while, even till break of day, so he
departed."
We know nothing of what the particular topics were
which engaged St. Paul's attention at Troas, but we
may guess them from the subject-matter of the address
to the elders of Ephesus, which takes up the latter
half of this twentieth chapter. Troas and Ephesus,
in fact, were so near and so similarly circumstanced
that the dangers and trials of both must have been much
alike. He next passed from Troas to Miletus. This
is a considerable journey along the western shore of
Asia Minor. St. Paul was eagerly striving to get to
Jerusalem by Pentecost, or by Whitsuntide, as we should
say. He had left Philippi after Easter, and now there
had elapsed more than a fortnight of the seven weeks
which remained available for the journey to Jerusalem.
How often St. Paul must have chafed against the
manifold delays of the trading vessel in which he
sailed; how frequently he must have counted the days
to see if sufficient time remained to execute his purpose!
St. Paul, however, was a rigid economist of time. He
saved every fragment of it as carefully as possible.
It was thus with him at Troas. The ship in which
he was travelling left Troas early in the morning. It
had to round a promontory in its way to the port of
Assos, which could be reached direct by St. Paul in
half the time. The Apostle therefore took the shorter
route, while St. Luke and his companions embarked
on board the vessel. St. Paul evidently chose the
land route because it gave him a time of solitary
communion with God and with himself. He felt, in
fact, that the perpetual strain upon his spiritual nature
demanded special spiritual support and refreshment,
which could only be obtained in the case of one who led
such a busy life by seizing upon every such occasion
as then offered for meditation and prayer. St. Paul
left Troas some time on Sunday morning. He joined
the ship at Assos, and after three days' coasting voyage
landed at Miletus on Wednesday, whence he despatched
a messenger summoning the elders of the Church of
Ephesus to meet him.The Lives of St. Paul by Lewin and by Conybeare and Howson
enter into minute computations as to the days of the month upon which
the Apostle touched at the various towns mentioned in the Acts. I
can now merely refer the reader to these works for such details about
St. Paul's life, as they scarcely come within the scope of an expositor's
duty.
The ship was evidently to
make a delay of several days at Miletus. We conclude
this from the following reason. Miletus is a town
separated by a distance of thirty miles from Ephesus.
A space therefore of at least two days would be required
in order to secure the presence of the Ephesian elders.
If a messenger—St. Luke, for instance—started immediately
on St. Paul's arrival at Miletus, no matter how
quickly he travelled, he could not arrive at Miletus
sooner than Thursday at midday. The work of
collecting the elders and making known to them the
apostolic summons would take up the afternoon at least,
and then the journey to Ephesus either by land or
water must have occupied the whole of Friday. It is
very possible that the sermon recorded in this twentieth
of Acts was delivered on the Sabbath, which, as we have
noted above, was as yet kept sacred by Christians as
well as by Jews, or else upon the Lord's Day, when,
as upon that day week at Troas, the elders of Ephesus
had assembled with the Christians of Miletus in order
to commemorate the Lord's resurrection.
We have already pointed out that we know not the
subject of St. Paul's sermon at Troas, but we do know
the topics upon which he enlarged at Miletus, and we
may conclude that, considering the circumstances of the
time, they must have been much the same as those
upon which he dwelt at Troas. Some critics have found
fault with St. Paul's sermon as being quite too much
taken up with himself and his own vindication. But
they forget the peculiar position in which St. Paul was
placed, and the manner in which the truth of the gospel
was then associated in the closest manner with St. Paul's
own personal character and teaching. The Apostle was
just then assailed all over the Christian world wherever
he had laboured, and even sometimes where he was
only known by name, with the most frightful charges;
ambition, pride, covetousness, deceit, lying, all these
things and much more were imputed to him by his
opponents who wished to seduce the Gentiles from that
simplicity and liberty in Christ into which he had led
them. Corinth had been desolated by such teachers;
Galatia had succumbed to them; Asia was in great
peril. St. Paul therefore, foreseeing future dangers,
warned the shepherds of the flock at Ephesus against
the machinations of his enemies, who always began
their preliminary operations by making attacks upon
St. Paul's character. This sufficiently explains the
apologetic tone of St. Paul's address, of which we
have doubtless merely a brief and condensed abstract
indicating the subjects of a prolonged conversation with
the elders of Ephesus, Miletus, and such neighbouring
churches as could be gathered together. We conclude
that St. Paul's conference on this occasion must have
been a long one for this reason. If St. Paul could find
matter sufficient to engage his attention for a whole
night, from sundown till sunrise, in a place like Troas,
where he had laboured but a very short time, how
much more must he have found to say to the presbyters
of the numerous congregations which must have been
flourishing at Ephesus where he had laboured for years
with such success as to make Christianity a prominent
feature in the social and religious life of that idolatrous
city!
Let us now notice some of the topics of this address.
It may be divided into four portions. The first part
is retrospective, and autobiographical; the second is
prospective, and sets forth his conception of his future
course; the third is hortatory, expounding the dangers
threatening the Ephesian Church; and the fourth is
valedictory.
I. We have the biographical portion. He begins
his discourse by recalling to the minds of his hearers
his own manner of life,—"Ye yourselves know, from
the first day that I set foot in Asia, after what manner
I was with you all the time, serving the Lord with
all lowliness of mind, and with tears, and with trials
which befell me by the plots of the Jews"; words
which show us that from the earliest portion of his
ministry at Ephesus, and as soon as they realised
the meaning of his message, the Jews had become as
hostile to the Apostle at Ephesus as they had repeatedly
shown themselves at Corinth, again and again making
attempts upon his life. The foundations indeed of the
Ephesian Church were laid in the synagogue during
the first three months of his work, as we are expressly
told in ch. xix. 8; but the Ephesian Church must
have been predominantly Gentile in its composition,
or else the language of Demetrius must have been
exaggerated and the riot raised by him meaningless.
How could Demetrius have said, "Ye see that at
Ephesus this Paul hath persuaded and turned away
much people, saying that they be no gods which are
made with hands," unless the vast majority of his
converts were drawn from the ranks of those pagans
who worshipped Diana? These words also show us
that during his extended ministry at Ephesus he was
left at peace by the heathen. St. Paul here makes no
mention of trials experienced from pagan plots. He
speaks of the Jews alone as making assaults upon his
work or his person, incidentally confirming the statement
of ch. xix. 23, that it was only when he was
purposing to retire from Ephesus, and during the
celebration of the Artemisian games which marked his
last days there, that the opposition of the pagans
developed itself in a violent shape.
St. Paul begins his address by fixing upon Jewish
opposition outside the Church as his great trial at
Ephesus, just as the same kind of opposition inside
the Church had been his great trial at Corinth, and
was yet destined to be a source of trial to him in
the Ephesian Church itself, as we can see from the
Pastoral Epistles. He then proceeds to speak of
the doctrines he had taught and how he had taught
them; reminding them "how that I shrank not from
declaring unto you anything that was profitable, and
teaching you publicly, and from house to house, testifying
both to Jews and Greeks repentance toward God,
and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." St. Paul
sets forth his manner of teaching. He taught publicly,
and public teaching was most effective in his case,
because he came armed with a double power, the
powers of spiritual and of intellectual preparation.
St. Paul was not a man who thought that prayer and
spiritual life could dispense with thought and mental
culture. Or again, he would be the last to tolerate
the idea that diligent visitation from house to house
would make up for the neglect of that public teaching
which he so constantly and so profitably practised.
Public preaching and teaching, pastoral visitation and
work, are two distinct branches of labour, which at
various periods of the Church's history have been
regarded in very different lights. St. Paul evidently
viewed them as equally important, the tendency in
the present age is, however, to decry and neglect
preaching and to exalt pastoral work—including under
that head Church services—out of its due position.
This is, indeed, a great and lamentable mistake. The
"teaching publicly" to which St. Paul refers is the
only opportunity which the majority of men possess
of hearing the authorised ministers of religion, and
if the latter neglect the office of public preaching,
and think the fag end of a week devoted to external and
secular labours and devoid of any mental study and
preparation stirring the soul and refreshing the spirit,
to be quite sufficient for pulpit preparation, they cannot
be surprised if men come to despise the religion that
is presented in such a miserable light and by such
inefficient ambassadors.I do not think there is any greater want in the Church of England
than the revival of preaching. It is simply lamentable to see the
numbers who under usual circumstances will walk out of church before
the sermon, and still more lamentable to see the number of men who
do not go to church at all. This I attribute to the low estate to which
the ordinary sermon has fallen. In the days of evangelical supremacy
the pulpit may have been unduly exalted; now it is unduly neglected,
and with terrible results.
St. Paul insists in this passage on the publicity and
boldness of his teaching. There was no secrecy about
him, no hypocrisy; he did not come pretending one
view or one line of doctrine, and then, having stolen in
secretly, teaching a distinct system. In this passage,
which may seem laudatory of his own methods,
St. Paul is, in fact, warning against the underhand
and hypocritical methods adopted by the Judaising
party, whether at Antioch, Galatia, or Corinth. In
this division of his sermon St. Paul then sets forth
the doctrines which were the sum and substance of
the teaching which he had given both publicly and
from house to house. They were repentance towards
God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ, and that
not only in the case of the Jews, but also of the Greeks.
Now here we shall miss the implied reference of St.
Paul, unless we emphasize the words "I shrank not
from declaring unto you anything that was profitable."
His Judaising opponents thought there were many
other things profitable for men besides these two points
round which St. Paul's teaching turned. They regarded
circumcision and Jewish festivals, washings and sacrifices,
as very necessary and very profitable for the
Gentiles; while, as far as the Jews were concerned,
they thought that the doctrines on which St. Paul
insisted might possibly be profitable, but were not
at all necessary. St. Paul impresses by his words
the great characteristic differences between the Ebionite
view of Christ and of Christianity and that catholic
view which has regenerated society and become a
source of life and light to the human race.I think I hear in St. Paul's words in this passage an echo of the
Epistle to the Romans which he had written a month or two previously.
The idea, "Repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus
Christ," as the essence of Christianity is the central idea of that
Epistle.
II. We have, then, the prospective portion of his
discourse. St. Paul announces his journey to Jerusalem,
and professes his ignorance of his fate there.
He was warned merely by the testimony of the Holy
Spirit that bonds and afflictions were his portion in
every city. He was prepared for them, however, and
for death itself, so that he might accomplish the ministry
with which the Lord Jesus Christ had put him in trust.
He concluded this part of his address by expressing
his belief that he would never see them again. His
work among them was done, and he called them to
witness that he was pure from the blood of all men,
seeing that he had declared unto them the whole counsel
of God. This passage has given rise to much debate,
because of St. Paul's statement that he knew that he
should never see them again, while the Epistles to
Timothy and that to Titus prove that after St. Paul's
first imprisonment, with the notice of which this book
of the Acts ends, he laboured for several years in the
neighbourhood of Asia Minor, and paid lengthened
visits to Ephesus.
We cannot now bestow space in proving this point,
which will be found fully discussed in the various
Lives of St. Paul which we have so often quoted: as,
for instance, in Lewin, vol. ii., p. 94, and in Conybeare
and Howson, vol. ii., p. 547. We shall now merely
indicate the line of proof for this. In the Epistle to
Philemon, ver. 22, written during his first Roman
imprisonment, and therefore years subsequent to this
address, he indicates his expectation of a speedy deliverance
from his bonds, and his determination to travel
eastward to Colossæ, where Philemon lived (cf. Philippians
i. 25, ii. 24). He then visited Ephesus, where he
left Timothy, who had been his companion in the latter
portion of his Roman imprisonment (cf. Philem. 1
and 1 Tim. i. 3), expecting soon to return to him in
the same city (1 Tim. iii. 14); while again in 2 Tim.
i. 18 he speaks of Onesiphorus having ministered to
himself in Ephesus, and then in the same Epistle
(ch. iv. 20), written during his second Roman imprisonment,
he speaks of having just left Trophimus
at Miletus sick. This brief outline, which can be followed
up in the volumes to which we have referred, and
especially in Appendix II. in Conybeare and Howson on
the date of the Pastoral Epistles, must suffice to prove
that St. Paul was expressing a mere human expectation
when he told the Ephesian elders that he should see
their faces no more. St. Luke, in fact, thus shows us
that St. Paul was not omniscient in his knowledge, and
that the inspiration which he possessed did not remove
him, as some persons think, out of the category of
ordinary men or free him from their infirmities. The
Apostle was, in fact, supernaturally inspired upon
occasions. The Holy Ghost now and again illuminated
the darkness of the future when such illumination
was necessary for the Church's guidance; but on other
occasions St. Paul and his brother apostles were left
to the guidance of their own understandings and to the
conclusions and expectations of common sense, else
why did not St. Peter and St. John read the character
of Ananias and Sapphira or of Simon Magus before
their sins were committed? why did St. Peter know
nothing of his deliverance from Herod's prison-house
before the angel appeared, when his undissembled
surprise is sufficient evidence that he had no expectation
of any such rescue? These instances, which might
be multiplied abundantly out of St. Paul's career and
writings, show us that St. Paul's confident statement in
this passage was a mere human anticipation which was
disappointed by the course of events. The supernatural
knowledge of the apostles ran on precisely the
same lines as their supernatural power. God bestowed
them both for use according as He saw fit and beneficial,
but not for common ordinary every-day purposes,
else why did St. Paul leave Trophimus at Miletus sick,
or endure the tortures of his own ophthalmia, or exhort
Timothy to take a little wine on account of his bodily
weakness, if he could have healed them all by his
miraculous power? Before we leave this point we may
notice that here we have an incidental proof of the early
date of the composition of the Acts. St. Luke, as we
have often maintained, wrote this book about the close
of St. Paul's first imprisonment. Assuredly if he had
written it at a later period, and above all, if he wrote
it twenty years later, he would have either modified
the words of his synopsis of St. Paul's speech, or else
given us a hint that subsequent events had shown
that the Apostle was mistaken in his expectations,
a thing which he could easily have done, because he
cherished none of these extreme notions about St.
Paul's office and dignity which have led some to assume
that it was impossible for him ever to make a mistake
about the smallest matters.See on this point Dr. Salmon's Introduction to New Testament,
4th ed., p. 445.
III. This discourse, again, is hortatory, and its exhortations
contain very important doctrinal statements.
St. Paul begins this third division with an exhortation
like that which our Lord gave to His apostles under
the same circumstances, "Take heed unto yourselves."
The Apostle never forgot that an effective ministry of
souls must be based on deep personal knowledge
of the things of God. He knew, too, from his own experience
that it is very easy to be so completely taken
up with the care of other men's souls and the external
work of the Church, as to forget that inner life which
can only be kept alive by close communion with God.
Then, having based his exhortations on their own
spiritual life, he exhorts the elders to diligence in the
pastoral office: "Take heed unto yourselves, and to
all the flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made
you bishops, to feed the Church of God, which He
purchased with His own blood." St. Paul in these
words shows us his estimate of the ministerial office.
The elders of Ephesus had been all ordained by St.
Paul himself with the imposition of hands, a rite that
has ever been esteemed essential to ordination. It was
derived from the Jewish Church, and was perpetuated
into the Christian Church by that same spirit of conservatism,
that law of continuity which in every department
of life enacts that everything shall continue as it
was unless there be some circumstance to cause an alteration.This rule or law is the principle of Butler's great argument for a
future life in the first chapter of his Analogy. He expressly states in
the following words, "There is in every case a probability that things
will continue as we experience they are, in all respects, except those in
which we have some reason to think they will be altered. This is that
kind of presumption of probability from analogy expressed in the word
continuance which seems our only natural reason for believing the
course of the world will continue to-morrow as it has done so far back
as our experience or knowledge of history can carry us back."
Now there was no cause for alteration in this
case; nay, rather there was every reason to bring about
a continuance of this custom, because imposition of
hands indicates for the people the persons ordained, and
assures the ordained themselves that they have been
individually chosen and set apart. But St. Paul by
these words teaches us a higher and nobler view of the
ministry. He teaches us that he was himself but the
instrument of a higher power, and that the imposition of
hands was the sign and symbol to the ordained that the
Holy Ghost had chosen them and appointed them to feed
the flock of God. St. Paul here shows that in ordination,
as in the sacraments, we should by faith look away
beyond and behind the human instrument, and view the
actions of the Church of Christ as the very operations
and manifestations in the world of time and sense of
the Holy Ghost Himself, the Lord and Giver of life.
He teaches the Ephesian elders, in fact, exactly what
he taught the Corinthian Church some few months
earlier, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels,
that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of
God, and not from ourselves" (2 Cor. iv. 7); the
treasure and the power were everything, the only things,
in fact, worth naming, the earthen vessels which contained
them for a little time were nothing at all. How
awful, solemn, heart-searching a view of the ministerial
office this was! How sustaining a view when its
holders are called upon to discharge functions for which
they feel themselves all inadequate in their natural
strength! Is it any wonder that the Church, taking
the same view as St. Paul did, has ever held and
taught that the ministerial office thus conferred by
supernatural power is no mere human function to be
taken up or laid down at man's pleasure, but is a
life-long office to be discharged at the holder's peril,—a
savour of life unto life for the worthy recipient, a
savour of death unto death for the unworthy and the
careless.
In connexion with this statement made by St. Paul
concerning the source of the ministry we find a title
given to the Ephesian presbyters round which much
controversy has centred. St. Paul says, "Take heed
unto the flock, over which the Holy Ghost has made
you bishops." I do not, however, propose to spend
much time over this topic, as all parties are now agreed
that in the New Testament the term presbyter and
bishop are interchangeable and applied to the same
persons.Irenæus, however, writing in the second century, states that the
bishops and presbyters of Ephesus and the neighbouring cities were
assembled at Miletus, so that he distinguishes between bishops and
presbyters even on this occasion: see his work Against Heresies, iii. 14.
Dr. Hatch had an extraordinary theory, which he elaborates in his
article "Priest" in the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, vol. ii.,
p. 1700. He thus states it: "Whether the institution of Presbyters
existed in the first instance outside the limits of the Judæo-Christian
communities is doubtful. There is no evidence that it did so; the
presumption is that it did not, for when St. Paul, writing to the
churches which were presumably non-Jewish in their character, recognises
the existence of church officers, he designates them by other
names: προϊστάμενοι (1 Thess. v. 12), ἐπίσκοροι (Philip. i. 1)." To put
it briefly, his idea is that bishop as a title was confined to predominantly
Greek communities, and presbyter as a title was confined to
predominantly Gentile communities. Will this theory and the instances he
gives stand the test of facts? Philippi was, he thinks, a predominantly
Gentile Church, so thoroughly Gentile that its members would necessarily
prefer titles drawn from impure pagan sources rather than from
Judaism. But was Philippi so thoroughly Gentile? If so, why did
St. Paul stay there and celebrate the days of unleavened bread and the
passover, as we have above noted? A large element in the church
must have been Jewish when this happened. Again, take Thessalonica.
We have already noted that the majority of that church must have
been Gentile in origin; but there must have been a large and influential
minority Jewish by race in a town where the Jews were so large an
element in the population. Again, we find the title presbyter applied
to the church officials of Ephesus. Dr. Hatch on the same page
enumerates Ephesus among the Judæo-Christian communities, one,
therefore, which would presumably prefer Jewish titles for its clergy.
But was it predominantly Jewish? St. Paul laboured three months
in the synagogue at Ephesus, and was then expelled. He laboured
there for two years among the Gentiles with such success, that Demetrius
describes him as having turned away all Asia from Diana's worship.
Surely if ever there was a Gentile Christian Church it was Ephesus!
(Cf. Ephes. ii. and iii., where the Gentile character of the Ephesian
Church is expressly asserted.) Yet here we have the title presbyter
in use. Dr. Hatch's is not scientific historical reasoning, but the
exercise of what Bishop Butler well designates, that delusive faculty
called man's imagination and fancy. Upon this whole question of the
origin of Christian presbyters, I may notice an exhaustive Biblical
inquiry, called "The Ruling Elder," by the Rev. Robert King of
Ballymena, the learned author of a well-known Irish Church History.
It appeared after this chapter was written.
The question to be decided is not about a
name, but about an office, whether, in fact, any persons
succeeded in apostolic times to the office of rule and
government exercised by St. Paul and the rest of the
apostles, as well as by Timothy, Titus, and the other
delegates of the Apostle, and whether the term bishop,
as used in the second century, was applied to such
successors of the apostles.In the second century bishops were often called presbyters,
though presbyters were not called bishops, or, to quote Bishop Lightfoot,
"Essay on the Ministry," Philippians, p. 226: "In the language
of Irenæus, a presbyter is never designated a bishop, while on the other
hand he very frequently speaks of a bishop as a presbyter." This
usage long continued in the Church. Cyprian often expresses himself
thus: cf. article on word "Senior" in Dict. Christ. Antiqq. Many
instances of it occur in the literature of the early Celtic Church in
Ireland, which was an offshoot of the Gallican Church and, through
Gaul, of the Church of Western Asia Minor. In fact, this custom
of calling bishops seniors or presbyters was used in Ireland till the
twelfth century: see Ussher's Works, Ed. Elrington, vi. 517, 528. St.
Bernard, for instance, in his Life of St. Malachy, calls the Bishop of
Lismore "Senior Lesmorensis." I do not, as I have said, propose to
enter any further into the debateable subject of Church government;
but as I have come across this passage, and as I have already announced
that I am writing this commentary as a decided Churchman, I
may be permitted to state my own views, as history seems to me to set
them forth, without entering into any discussion on the point. During
the apostolic age the terms bishop and presbyter were interchangeable.
As the apostles passed away, they seem to me to have established
Episcopacy as the normal rule of the Church, though, doubtless, it was
only by degrees that the title of bishop was appropriated to the office so
created. By the time of Ignatius, that is, about 110 A.D., this appropriation
was complete. As regards my authority for saying the
apostles established Episcopacy, I simply appeal to Irenæus, who, in
his great work against Heresies, Book III., ch. iii., states in section i.
that "the apostles instituted bishops in the churches," and then
in sec. 3 proceeds to trace the line of these bishops in the Roman
Church, beginning with Linus, "into whose hands the blessed apostles
committed the office of the Episcopate." Now it is upon Irenæus we
largely depend for the proof of the canon of the New Testament and
the Johannine origin of the Fourth Gospel. Surely if Irenæus is a
witness sufficient to establish the apostolic origin of the Gospels, he
should be quite sufficient to establish the apostolic origin of Episcopacy!
If Irenæus is a competent witness to the true authorship of
an anonymous document like the Fourth Gospel, he is surely competent
to tell us of the true origin of a worldwide institution like Episcopacy.
It is assuredly much easier to learn the origin of institutions than of
documents.
This, however, is not a
question which comes directly within the purview of an
expositor of the Acts of the Apostles, as the appointment
of Timothy and Titus to manage the affairs of
the Church in Ephesus and in Crete lies beyond the
period covered by the text of the Acts, and properly
belongs to the commentary on the Pastoral Epistles.
St. Paul's words in this connexion have, however, an
important bearing on fundamental doctrinal questions
connected with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
St. Paul speaks of the presbyters as called "to feed
the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His
own blood." These words are very strong, so strong
indeed that various readings have been put forward
to mitigate their force. Some have read "Lord"
instead of "God," others have substituted Christ for it;
but the Revised Version, following the text of Westcott
and Hort, have accepted the strongest form of the verse
on purely critical ground, and translates it as "the
Church of God, which He hath purchased with His
own blood." This passage, then, is decisive as to the
Christological views of St. Luke and the Pauline circle
generally. They believed so strongly in the deity of
Jesus Christ and His essential unity with the Father that
they hesitated not to speak of His sacrifice on Calvary
as a shedding of the blood of God, an expression which
some fifty years afterwards we find in the Epistle
of Ignatius to the Ephesians, where St. Ignatius speaks
of them as "kindled into living fire by the blood of
God," and a hundred years later still, in Tertullian, Ad
Uxor., ii. 3. This passage has been used in scientific
theology as the basis of a principle or theory called the
"Communicatio Idiomatum," a theory which finds an
illustration in two other notable passages of Scripture,
St. John iii. 13 and 1 Cor. ii. 8. In the former passage
our Lord says of Himself, "No man hath ascended
into heaven, but He that descended out of heaven, even
the Son of man which is in heaven," where the Son of
man is spoken of as in heaven as well as upon earth
at the same time, though the Son of man, according to
His humanity, could only be in one place at a time.
In the second passage St. Paul says, "Which none of
the rulers of this world knew; for had they known it,
they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory," where
crucifixion is attributed to the Lord of Glory, a title
derived from His Divine nature. Now the term "Communicatio
Idiomatum," or "transference of peculiar properties,"
is given to this usage because in all these texts
the properties of the nature pertaining either to God or
to man are spoken of as if they belonged to the other;
or, to put it far better in the stately language of
Hooker, v. liii. where he speaks of "those cross and
circulatory speeches wherein there are attributed to
God such things as belong to manhood, and to man
such as properly concern the deity of Jesus Christ, the
cause whereof is the association of natures in one
subject. A kind of mutual commutation there is,
whereby those concrete names, God and man, when
we speak of Christ, do take interchangeably one
another's room, so that for truth of speech it skilleth
not whether we say that the Son of God hath created
the world and the Son of man by His death hath saved
it, or else that the Son of man did create and the Son
of God die to save the world." This is a subject of
profound speculative and doctrinal interest, not only in
connexion with the apostolic view of our Lord's Person,
but also in reference to the whole round of methodised
and scientific theology. We cannot, however, afford
further space for this subject. We must be content to
have pointed it out as an interesting topic of inquiry, and,
merely referring the reader to Hooker and to Liddon's
Bampton Lectures (Lect. V.) for more information, must
hurry on to a conclusion. St. Paul terminates this
part of his discourse with expressing his belief in the
rapid development of false doctrines and false guides
as soon as his repressive influence shall have been
removed; a belief which the devout student of the
New Testament will find to have been realised when
in 1 Tim. i. 20, in 2 Tim. i. 15, and ii. 17, 18 he finds
the Apostle warning the youthful Bishop of Ephesus
against Phygelus and Hermogenes, who had turned
all Asia away from St. Paul, and against Hymenæus,
Philetus, and Alexander, who had imbibed the Gnostic
error concerning matter, which had already led the
Corinthians to deny the future character of the Resurrection.
St. Paul then terminates his discourse with
a solemn commendation of the Ephesian elders to
that Divine grace which is as necessary for an apostle
as for the humblest Christian. He exhorts them to
self-sacrifice and self-denial, reminding them of his
own example, having supported himself and his companions
by his labour as a tentmaker at Ephesus, and
above all of the words of the Lord Jesus, which they
apparently knew from some source which has not
come down to us, "It is more blessed to give than to
receive."
When the Apostle had thus terminated his address,
which doubtless was a very lengthened one, he knelt
down, probably on the shore, as we shall find him kneeling
in the next chapter (xxi. 5, 6) on the shore at Tyre.
He then commended them in solemn prayer to God,
and they all parted in deep sorrow on account of the
final separation which St. Paul's words indicated as
imminent; for though the primitive Christians believed
in the reality of the next life with an intensity of faith
of which we have no conception, and longed for its
peace and rest, yet they gave free scope to those
natural affections which bind men one to another
according to the flesh and were sanctified by the Master
Himself when He wept by the grave of Lazarus.
Christianity is not a religion of stoical apathy, but of
sanctified human affections.
CHAPTER XVII.
A PRISONER IN BONDS.
"Having found a ship crossing over unto Phœnicia, we went aboard,
and set sail.... We sailed unto Syria, and landed at Tyre: for there
the ship was to unload her burden.... When we were come to
Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.... Then the chief captain
came near, and laid hold on him, and commanded him to be bound with
two chains; and inquired who he was, and what he had done....
But Paul said, I am a Jew, of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean
city: and I beseech thee, give me leave to speak unto the people."—Acts
xxi. 2, 3, 17, 33, 39, 40.
"And they gave him audience unto this word; and they lifted up
their voice, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is
not fit that he should live.... But on the morrow, desiring to know
the certainty, wherefore he was accused of the Jews, he loosed him, and
commanded the chief priests and all the council to come together, and
brought Paul down, and set him before them."—Acts xxii. 22, 30.
"And after five days the high priest Ananias came down with
certain elders, and with an orator, one Tertullus; and they informed the
governor against Paul."—Acts xxiv. 1.
"And Agrippa said unto Paul, Thou art permitted to speak for
thyself. Then Paul stretched forth his hand, and made his defence."—Acts
xxvi. 1.
The title we have given to this chapter, "A Prisoner
in Bonds," expresses the central idea of the last
eight chapters of the Acts. Twenty years and more
had now elapsed since St. Paul's conversion on the
road to Damascus. These twenty years had been
times of unceasing and intense activity. Now we come
to some five years when the external labours, the
turmoil and the cares of active life, have to be put aside,
and St. Paul was called upon to stand apart and learn
the lesson which every-day experience teaches to all,—how
easily the world can get along without us, how
smoothly God's designs fulfil themselves without our
puny assistance. The various passages we have placed
at the head of this chapter cover six chapters of the
Acts, from the twenty-first to the twenty-sixth. It
may seem a large extent of the text to be comprised
within the limits of one of our chapters, but it must
be remembered that a great deal of the space thus
included is taken up with the narrative of St. Paul's
conversion, which is twice set forth at great length,
first to the multitude from the stairs of the tower of
Antonia, and then in his defence which he delivered
before Agrippa and Bernice and Festus, or else with
the speeches delivered by him before the assembled
Sanhedrin and before Felix the governor, wherein he
dwells on points previously and sufficiently discussed.Thus in ch. xxiv. 10-16 he enlarges upon the subject of "the
Way which they call a sect," a topic and a name fully discussed above
on pp. 32, 33.
We have already considered the narrative of the
Apostle's conversion at great length, and noted the
particular directions in which St. Paul's own later
versions at Jerusalem and Cæsarea throw light upon
St. Luke's independent account. To the earlier chapters
of this book we therefore would refer the reader who
wishes to discuss St. Paul's conversion, and several of
the other subjects which he introduces. Let us now,
however, endeavour, first of all, to gather up into one
connected story the tale of St. Paul's journeys, sufferings,
and imprisonments from the time he left Miletus
after his famous address till he set sail for Rome from
the port of Cæsarea, a prisoner destined for the judgment-seat
of Nero. This narrative will embrace from
at least the summer of A.D. 58, when he was arrested
at Jerusalem, to the autumn of 60, when he set sail
for Rome. This connected story will enable us to see
the close union of the various parts of the narrative
which is now hidden from us because of the division
into chapters, and will enable us to fix more easily
upon the leading points which lend themselves to the
purposes of an expositor.
I. St. Paul, after parting from the Ephesian Church,
embarked on board his ship, and then coasted along
the western shore of Asia Minor for three days,
sailing amid scenery of the most enchanting description,
specially in that late spring or early summer
season at which the year had then arrived. It was
about the first of May, and all nature was bursting
into new life, when even hearts, the hardest and
least receptive of external influences, feel as if they
were living a portion of their youth over again. And
even St. Paul, rapt away in the contemplation of things
unseen, must have felt himself touched by the beauty
of the scenes through which he was passing, though
St. Luke tells us nothing but the bare succession of
events. Three days after leaving Miletus the sacred
company reached Patara, a town at the south-western
corner of Asia Minor, where the coast begins to turn
round towards the east. Here St. Paul found a trading
ship sailing direct to Tyre and Palestine, and therefore
with all haste transferred himself and his party into
it. The ship seems to have been on the point of
sailing, which suited St. Paul so much the better,
anxious as he was to reach Jerusalem in time for
Pentecost. The journey direct from Patara to Tyre
is about three hundred and fifty miles, a three days'
sail under favourable circumstances for the trading
vessels of the ancients, and the circumstances were
favourable. The north-west wind is to this day the
prevailing wind in the eastern Mediterranean during
the late spring and early summer season, and the
north-west wind would be the most favourable wind for
an ancient trader almost entirely depending on an
immense main sail for its motive power. With such
a wind the merchantmen of that age could travel at the
rate of a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles a day,
and would therefore traverse the distance between
Patara and Tyre in three days, the time we have
specified. When the vessel arrived at Tyre St. Paul
sought out the local Christian congregation. The ship
was chartered to bring a cargo probably of wheat or
wine to Tyre, inasmuch as Tyre was a purely commercial
city, and the territory naturally belonging to
it was utterly unable to furnish it with necessary provisions,
as we have already noted on the occasion of
Herod Agrippa's death. A week, therefore, was spent
in unloading the cargo, during which St. Paul devoted
himself to the instruction of the local Christian Church.
After a week's close communion with this eminent
servant of God, the Tyrian Christians, like the elders
of Ephesus and Miletus, with their wives and children
accompanied him till they reached the shore, where they
commended one another in prayer to God's care and
blessing. From Tyre he sailed to Ptolemais, thirty
miles distant. There again he found another Christian
congregation, with whom he tarried one day, and then
leaving the ship proceeded by the great coast road to
Cæsarea, a town which he already knew right well, and
to which he was so soon to return as a prisoner in
bonds. At Cæsarea there must now have been a very
considerable Christian congregation. In Cæsarea Philip
the Evangelist lived and ministered permanently.
There too resided his daughters, eminent as teachers,
and exercising in their preaching or prophetical
functions a great influence among the very mixed
female population of the political capital of Palestine.
St. Paul and St. Luke abode in Cæsarea several days
in the house of Philip the Evangelist. He did not wish
to arrive in Jerusalem till close on the Feast of Pentecost,
and owing to the fair winds with which he had
been favoured he must have had a week or more to
stay in Cæsarea. Here Agabus again appears upon the
scene. Fourteen years before he had predicted the
famine which led St. Paul to pay a visit to Jerusalem
when bringing up the alms of the Antiochene Church
to assist the poor brethren at Jerusalem, and now
he predicts the Apostle's approaching captivity. The
prospect moved the Church so much that the brethren
besought St. Paul to change his mind and not enter
the Holy City. But his mind was made up, and nothing
would dissuade him from celebrating the Feast as he
had all along proposed. He went up therefore to
Jerusalem, lodging with Mnason, "an early disciple,"
as the Revised Version puts it, one therefore who
traced his Christian convictions back probably to the
celebrated Pentecost a quarter of a century earlier,
when the Holy Ghost first displayed His supernatural
power in converting multitudes of human souls. Next
day he went to visit James, the Bishop of Jerusalem,
who received him warmly, grasped his position, warned
him of the rumours which had been industriously and
falsely circulated as to his opposition to the Law of
Moses, even in the case of born Jews, and gave him
some prudent advice as to his course of action.
St. James recommended that St. Paul should unite
himself with certain Christian Nazarites, and perform
the Jewish rites usual in such cases. A Nazarite, as
we have already mentioned, when he took the Nazarite
vow for a limited time after some special deliverance
vouchsafed to him, allowed his hair to grow till he
could cut it off in the Temple, and have it burned in
the fire of the sacrifices offered up on his behalf.
These sacrifices were very expensive, as will be seen
at once by a reference to Numbers vi. 13-18, where
they are prescribed at full length, and it was always
regarded as a mark of patriotic piety when any stranger
coming to Jerusalem offered to defray the necessary
charges for the poorer Jews, and thus completed the
ceremonies connected with the Nazarite vow. St. James
advised St. Paul to adopt this course, to unite himself
with the members of the local Christian Church who
were unable to defray the customary expenses, to pay
their charges, join with them in the sacrifices, and thus
publicly proclaim to those who opposed him that,
though he differed from them as regards the Gentiles,
holding in that matter with St. James himself and with
the apostles, yet as regards the Jews, whether at
Jerusalem or throughout the world at large, he was
totally misrepresented when men asserted that he
taught the Jews to reject the Law of Moses. St. Paul
was guided by the advice of James, and proceeded to
complete the ceremonial prescribed for the Nazarites.
This was the turning-point of his fate. Jerusalem was
then thronged with strangers from every part of the
world. Ephesus and the province of Asia, as a great
commercial centre, and therefore a great Jewish resort,
furnished a very large contingent.See Lightfoot's Ignatius, vol. i., p. 452, upon the presence of Jews
in the towns and cities of Proconsular Asia. Antiochus the Great
transported two thousand Jewish families to these parts from Babylonia
and Mesopotamia.
To these, then,
Paul was well known as an enthusiastic Christian
teacher, toward whom the synagogues of Ephesus felt
the bitterest hostility. They had often plotted against
him at Ephesus, as St. Paul himself told the elders in
his address at Miletus, but had hitherto failed to effect
their purpose. Now, however, they seemed to see their
chance. They thought they had a popular cry and
a legal accusation under which he might be done to
death under the forms of law. These Ephesian Jews
had seen him in the city in company with Trophimus,
an uncircumcised Christian, belonging to their own
city, one therefore whose presence within the temple
was a capital offence, even according to Roman law.Inscriptions, according to Josephus, were graven in Greek and
Latin on stones fixed in a wall or balustrade which ran round the
Temple, warning the Gentiles not to enter on pain of death: see
Josephus, Wars, V. v. 2; Antiqq., XV. xi. 5. One of these stones was
discovered some twenty years ago by M. Clermont Ganneau, with the
inscription intact. It had been buried in the ground on the Via
Dolorosa in Jerusalem, where this learned Frenchman discovered it.
A transcript of it can now be seen in Lewin's St. Paul, ii. 133. The
inscription literally translated runs thus: "No alien to pass within the
balustrade round the Temple and the inclosure. Whosoever shall be
caught (so doing) must blame himself for the death that will ensue."
This stone must often have been read by our Lord and His apostles,
as they frequented the temple.
They raised a cry therefore that he had defiled the
Holy Place by bringing into it an uncircumcised Greek;
and thus roused the populace to seize the Apostle,
drag him from the sacred precincts, and murder him.
During the celebration of the Feasts the Roman
sentinels, stationed upon the neighbouring tower of
Antonia which overlooked the Temple courts, watched
the assembled crowds most narrowly, apprehensive of
a riot. As soon therefore as the first symptoms of an
outbreak occurred, the alarm was given, the chief
captain Lysias hurried to the spot, and St. Paul was
rescued for the moment. At the request of the Apostle,
who was being carried up into the castle, he was allowed
to address the multitude from the stairs. They listened
to the narrative of his conversion very quietly till he
came to tell of the vision God vouchsafed to him in
the Temple some twenty years before, warning him to
leave Jerusalem, when at the words "Depart, for I will
send thee forth far hence unto the Gentiles," all their
pent-up rage and pride and national jealousy burst forth
anew. St. Paul had been addressing them in the
Hebrew language which the chief captain understood
not, and the mob probably expressed their rage and
passion in the same language. The chief captain
ordered St. Paul to be examined by flogging to know
why they were so outrageous against him. More fortunate,
however, on this occasion than at Philippi, he
claimed his privilege as a Roman citizen, and escaped
the torture. The chief captain was still in ignorance
of the prisoner's crime, and therefore he brought him
the very next day before the Sanhedrin, when St. Paul
by a happy stroke caused such a division between the
Sadducees and Pharisees that the chief captain was
again obliged to intervene and rescue the prisoner from
the contending factions. Next day, however, the Jews
formed a conspiracy to murder the Apostle, which his
nephew discovered and revealed to St. Paul and to
Claudius Lysias, who that same night despatched him
to Cæsarea.It is very curious how perpetually St. Paul escaped the plots of the
Jews at Corinth, Ephesus, and elsewhere. At Corinth the plot formed
was revealed as it would seem just as he was about to go on board
his vessel (ch. xx. 3). Doubtless there were concealed Christians to
whose ears the plots came and by whom they were revealed.
All these events, from his conference with James
to his arrival under guard at Cæsarea, cannot have
covered more than eight days at the utmost, and yet
the story of them extends from the middle of the
twenty-first chapter to the close of the twenty-third,
while the record of twelve months' hard work preaching,
writing, organising is embraced within the first
six verses of the twentieth chapter, showing how very
different was St. Luke's narrative of affairs, according
as he was present or absent when they were transacted.See Lewin's Fasti Sacri, pp. 314-16, for an elaborate account of
each day's proceedings, and a discussion of the various problems,
chronological and otherwise, which they raise.
From the beginning of the twenty-fourth chapter to
the close of the twenty-sixth is taken up with the
account of St. Paul's trials, at first before Felix, and
then before Festus, his successor in the procuratorship
of Palestine. Just let us summarise the course of
events and distinguish between them. St. Paul was
despatched by Claudius Lysias to Felix accompanied
by a letter in which he contrives to put the best construction
on his own actions, representing himself as
specially anxious about St. Paul because he was a
Roman citizen, on which account indeed he describes
himself as rescuing him from the clutches of the mob.
After the lapse of five days St. Paul was brought up
before Felix and accused by the Jews of three serious
crimes in the eyes of Roman law as administered in
Palestine. First, he was a mover of seditions among
the Jews;The Romans were always afraid of Jewish seditions. Seven years
before St. Paul's imprisonment there had been a terrible outburst, in
which Ananias the high priest had been himself involved, and which
led to the despatch of Felix himself as procurator. He had effectually
put down all disturbances, which led to the prolongation of his rule in
Palestine for the very unusual period of eight years, from 52 to 60 A.D.
This accounts for the words of Tertullus (ch. xxiv. 2): "Seeing that
by thee we enjoy much peace, and that by thy providence evils are
corrected for this nation." See Lewin's Fasti, pp. 296-98, 315, 320;
Conybeare and Howson, ch. xxii.; and for the latest authority, Schürer's
Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes, i. 477-83, ii. 170 (Leipzig, 1886).
second, a ringleader of a new sect, the
Nazarenes, unknown to Jewish law; and third, a
profaner of the Temple, contrary to the law which
the Romans themselves had sanctioned. On all these
points Paul challenged investigation and demanded
proof, asking where were the Jews from Asia who had
accused him of profaning the Temple. The Jews
doubtless thought that Paul was a common Jew, who
would be yielded up to their clamour by the procurator,
and knew nothing of his Roman citizenship. Their
want of witnesses brought about their failure, but did
not lead to St. Paul's release. He was committed to
the custody of a centurion, and freedom of access was
granted to his friends. In this state St. Paul continued
two full years, from midsummer 58 to the same period
of A.D. 60, when Felix was superseded by Festus.
During these two years Felix often conversed with St.
Paul. Felix was a thoroughly bad man. He exercised,
as a historian of that time said of him, "the power of
a king with the mind of a slave." He was tyrannical,
licentious, and corrupt, and hoped to be bribed by St.
Paul when he would have set him at liberty. At this
period of his life St. Paul twice came in contact with the
Herodian house which thenceforth disappears from
sacred history. Felix about the period of St. Paul's
arrest enticed Drusilla, the great-granddaughter of
Herod the Great, from her husband through the medium
as many think, of Simon Magus. Drusilla was very
young and very beautiful, and, like all the Herodian
women, very wicked.Drusilla perished with her child by this union with Felix in the
famous eruption of Vesuvius A.D. 79.
Felix was an open adulterer,
therefore, and it is no wonder that when Paul reasoned
before the guilty pair concerning righteousness,
temperance, and the judgment to come, conscience
should have smitten them and Felix should have
trembled. St. Paul had another opportunity of bearing
witness before this wicked and bloodstained family.
Festus succeeded Felix as procurator of Palestine about
June A.D. 60. Within the following month Agrippa II.,
the son of the Herod Agrippa who had died the
terrible death at Cæsarea of which the twelfth chapter
tells, came to Cæsarea to pay his respects unto the
new governor. Agrippa was ruler of the kingdom of
Chalcis, a district north of Palestine and about the
Lebanon Range. He was accompanied by his sister
Bernice, who afterwards became the mistress of Titus,
the conqueror of Jerusalem in the last great siege.
Festus had already heard St. Paul's case, and had
allowed his appeal unto Cæsar. He wished, however,
to have his case investigated before two Jewish experts,
Agrippa and Bernice, who could instruct his own
ignorance on the charges laid against him by the Jews,
enabling him to write a more satisfactory report for the
Emperor's guidance. He brought St. Paul therefore
before them, and gave the great Christian champion
another opportunity of bearing witness for his Master
before a family which now for more than sixty years
had been more or less mixed up, but never for their
own blessing, with Christian history. After a period
of two years and three months' detention, varied by
different public appearances, St. Paul was despatched
to Rome to stand his trial and make his defence before
the Emperor Nero, whose name has become a synonym
for vice, brutality, and self-will.
II. We have now given a connected outline of St.
Paul's history extending over a period of more than
two years. Let us omit his formal defences, which
have already come under our notice, and take for our
meditation a number of points which are peculiar to
the narrative.
We have in the story of the voyage, arrest, and
imprisonment of St. Paul, many circumstances which
illustrate God's methods of action in the world, or else
His dealings with the spiritual life. Let us take a few
instances. First, then, we direct attention to the steady
though quiet progress of the Christian faith as revealed
in these chapters. St. Paul landed at Tyre, and from
Tyre he proceeded some thirty miles south to Ptolemais.
These are both of them towns which have never
hitherto occurred in our narrative as places of Christian
activity. St. Paul and St. Peter and Barnabas and
the other active leaders of the Church must often have
passed through these towns, and wherever they went
they strove to make known the tidings of the gospel.
But we hear nothing in the Acts, and tradition tells us
nothing of when or by whom the Christian Church
was founded in these localities.See my remarks in the next chapter on the case of the church at
Puteoli, which St. Paul found flourishing there on his voyage to Rome.
We get glimpses, too, of the ancient organisation of
the Church, but only glimpses; we have no complete
statement, because St. Luke was writing for a man who
lived amidst it, and could supply the gaps which his informant
left. The presbyters are mentioned at Miletus,
and Agabus the prophet appeared at Antioch years
before, and now again he appears at Cæsarea, where
Philip the Evangelist and his daughters the prophetesses
appear. Prophets and prophesying are not confined to
Palestine and Antioch, though the Acts tells us nothing
of them as existing elsewhere. The Epistle to Corinth
shows us that the prophets occupied a very important
place in that Christian community. Prophesying indeed
was principally preaching at Corinth; but it did not
exclude prediction, and that after the ancient Jewish
method, by action as well as by word, for Agabus
took St. Paul's girdle, and binding his own hands and
feet declared that the Holy Ghost told him, "So shall
the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this
girdle, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles."This prophecy was not literally fulfilled. The Jews did not bind
St. Paul, nor deliver him into Gentile hands. The Romans took him
out of Jewish hands, and bound him for their own purposes. The
Jews, however, brought this binding about, and were the cause of his
captivity in Roman hands. On the question of prophets and prophesying
in the primitive Church, see Dr. Salmon's article on Hermas, in
the Dictionary of Christian Biography, vol. ii., pp. 916-19.
But how little we know of the details of the upgrowth
of the Church in all save the more prominent places!
How entirely ignorant we are, for instance, of the
methods by which the gospel spread to Tyre and
Ptolemais and Puteoli! Here we find in the Acts the
fulfilment of our Lord's words as reported in St.
Mark iv. 26: "So is the kingdom of God, as if a
man should cast seed upon the earth; ... and the
seed should spring up and grow, he knoweth not how."
It was with the last and grander temple of God as
it was with the first. Its foundations were laid, and
its walls were built, not with sound of axe and hammer,
but in the penitence of humbled souls, in the godly
testimony of sanctified spirits, in the earnest lives of
holy men hidden from the scoffing world, known only
to the Almighty.
Again, we notice the advice given by James and the
course actually adopted by St. Paul when he arrived at
Jerusalem. It has the appearance of compromise of
truth, and yet it has the appearance merely, not the
reality of compromise. It was in effect wise and sound
advice, and such as teaches lessons useful for our own
guidance in life. We have already set forth St. Paul's
conception of Jewish rites and ceremonies. They were
nothing in the world one way or another, as viewed from
the Divine standpoint. Their presence did not help on
the work of man's salvation; their absence did not
detract from it. The Apostle therefore took part in
them freely enough, as when he celebrated the passover
and the days of unleavened bread at Philippi, viewing
them as mere national rites.St. Paul, writing twelve months earlier than his arrest, expressly
lays down this principle in 1 Corinthians vii. 18-20: "Was any man
called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. Hath
any been called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised. Circumcision
is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but the keeping
of the commandments of God. Let each man abide in that calling
wherein he was called."
He had been successful
in the very highest degree in converting to this view
even the highest and strictest members of the Jerusalem
Church. St. James, in advising St. Paul how to act
on this occasion, when such prejudices had been
excited against him, clearly shows that he had come
round to St. Paul's view. He tells St. Paul that the
multitude or body of the Judæo-Christian Church at
Jerusalem had been excited against him, because they
had been informed that he taught the Jews of the
Dispersion to forsake Moses, the very thing St. Paul
did not do. St. James grasped, however, St. Paul's
view that Moses and the Levitical Law might be
good things for the Jews, but had no relation to the
Gentiles, and must not be imposed on them. St.
James had taught this view ten years earlier at the
Apostolic Council. His opinions and teaching had
percolated downwards, and the majority of the Jerusalem
Church now held the same view as regards
the Gentiles, but were as strong as ever and as
patriotic as ever so far as the Jews were concerned,
and the obligation of the Jewish Law upon them and
their children. St. Paul had carried his point as regards
Gentile freedom. And now there came a time when he
had in turn to show consideration and care for Jewish
prejudices, and act out his own principle that circumcision
was nothing and uncircumcision was nothing.
Concessions, in fact, were not to be all on one side, and
St. Paul had now to make a concession. The Judæo-Christian
congregations of Jerusalem were much
excited, and St. Paul by a certain course of conduct,
perfectly innocent and harmless, could pacify their excited
patriotic feelings, and demonstrate to them that he
was still a true, a genuine, and not a renegade Jew. It
was but a little thing that St. James advised and public
feeling demanded. He had but to join himself to a
party of Nazarites and pay their expenses, and thus Paul
would place himself en rapport with the Mother Church
of Christendom. St. Paul acted wisely, charitably, and
in a Christlike spirit when he consented to do as St.
James advised. St. Paul was always eminently prudent.
There are some religious men who seem to think
that to advise a wise or prudent course is all the same
as to advise a wicked or unprincipled course. They
seem to consider success in any course as a clear
evidence of sin, and failure as a proof of honesty and
true principle. Concession, however, is not the same
as unworthy compromise. It is our duty in life to
see and make our course of conduct as fruitful and as
successful as possible. Concession on little points has
a wondrous power in smoothing the path of action and
gaining true success. Many an honest man ruins a
good cause simply because he cannot distinguish, as
St. Paul did, things necessary and essential from things
accidental and trivial. Pig-headed obstinacy, to use
a very homely but a very expressive phrase, which
indeed is often only disguised pride, is a great enemy
to the peace and harmony of societies and churches.
St. Paul displayed great boldness here. He was not
afraid of being misrepresented, that ghost which
frightens so many a popularity hunter from the course
which is true and right. How easily his fierce opponents,
the men who had gone to Corinth and Galatia to oppose
him, might misrepresent his action in joining himself
to the Nazarites! They were the extreme men of the
Jerusalem Church. They were the men for whom
the decisions of the Apostolic Council had no weight,
and who held still as of old that unless a man be
circumcised he could not be saved. How easily, I
say, these men could despatch their emissaries, who
should proclaim that their opponent Paul had conceded
all their demands and was himself observing the law
at Jerusalem. St. Paul was not afraid of this misrepresentation,
but boldly took the course which seemed
to him right and true, and charitable, despite the malicious
tongues of his adversaries. The Apostle of the
Gentiles left us an example which many still require.
How many a man is kept from adopting a course that
is charitable and tends to peace and edification, solely
because he is afraid of what opponents may say, or
how they may twist and misrepresent his action. St.
Paul was possessed with none of this moral cowardice
which specially flourishes among so-called party-leaders,
men who, instead of leading, are always led and governed
by the opinions of their followers.We see enough of this in politics. We see it in the Church as well.
Writing as one with nearly a quarter of a century's experience of a
disestablished, and therefore of a popularly governed Church, I have
seen a great deal of this tendency in ecclesiastical matters. Prominent
and ambitious men are ever apt to fall into the snare here noted. The
tendency of popular assemblies is ever to develop a class of men who
will have but little backbone, and will be always ready to rectify their
convictions to suit their constituencies. "Show thou me the way I
should walk in," but in a very different sense from the Psalmist's, is
the unuttered prayer of their lives, addressed to the popular audiences
of whose opinions they are the mere expressions, not the guides. For
such men this typical history has many a reproof in St. Paul's brave
conduct upon this and every other occasion. He was never afraid of
a little temporary misrepresentation, and therefore he proved a real
guide to the Church of his own and of every age.
St. Paul simply
determined in his conscience what was right, and then
fearlessly acted out his determination.
Some persons perhaps would argue that the result
of his action showed that he was wrong and had
unworthily compromised the cause of Christian freedom.
They think that had he not consented to appear as a
Nazarite in the Temple no riot would have occurred,
his arrest would have been avoided, and the course
of history might have been very different. But here
we would join issue on the spot. The results of his
action vindicated his Christian wisdom. The great
body of the Jerusalem Church were convinced of his
sincerity and realised his position. He maintained his
influence over them, which had been seriously imperilled
previously, and thus helped on the course of development
which had been going on. Ten years before
the advocates of Gentile freedom were but a small
body. Now the vast majority of the local church
at Jerusalem held fast to this idea, while still clinging
fast to the obligation laid upon the Jews to observe
the law. St. Paul did his best to maintain his friendship
and alliance with the Jerusalem Church. To put
himself right with them he travelled up to Jerusalem,
when fresh fields and splendid prospects were opening
up for him in the West. For this purpose he submitted
to several days restraint and attendance in the Temple,
and the results vindicated his determination. The
Jerusalem Church continued the same course of
orderly development, and when, ten years later, Jerusalem
was threatened with destruction, the Christian
congregations alone rose above the narrow bigoted
patriotism which bound the Jews to the Holy City.
The Christians alone realised that the day of the
Mosaic Law was at length passed, and, retiring to the
neighbouring city of Pella, escaped the destruction
which awaited the fanatical adherents of the Law and
the Temple.See Eusebius, H. E., iii. 5, and the notes of Valesius on that
passage.
Another answer, too, may be made to this objection.
It was not his action in the matter of the Nazarites
that brought about the riot and the arrest and his
consequent imprisonment. It was the hostility of the
Jews of Asia; and they would have assailed him whenever
and wherever they met him. Studying the matter
too even in view of results, we should draw the opposite
conclusion. God Himself approved his course. A Divine
vision was vouchsafed to him in the guard-room of
Antonia, after he had twice experienced Jewish violence,
and bestowed upon him the approbation of Heaven:
"The night following the Lord stood by him, and said,
Be of good cheer; for as thou hast testified concerning
Me at Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at
Rome." His courageous and at the same time charitable
action was vindicated by its results on the Jerusalem
Church, by the sanction of Christ Himself, and lastly,
by its blessed results upon the development of the
Church at large in leading St. Paul to Rome, in giving
him a wider and more influential sphere for his efforts,
and in affording him leisure to write epistles like those
to Ephesus, Philippi, and Colossæ, which have been so
instructive and useful for the Church of all ages.
Another point which has exercised men's minds is
found in St. Paul's attitude and words when brought
before the Sanhedrin on the day after his arrest. The
story is told in the opening verses of the twenty-third
chapter. Let us quote them, as they vividly present
the difficulty: "And Paul, looking stedfastly on the
council, said, Brethren, I have lived before God in all
good conscience until this day. And the high priest
Ananias commanded them that stood by him to smite
him on the mouth. Then said Paul unto him, God
shall smite thee, thou whited wall: and sittest thou to
judge me according to the law, and commandest me to
be smitten contrary to the law? And they that stood
by said, Revilest thou God's high priest? And Paul
said, I wist not, brethren, that he was high priest: for
it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of a ruler of thy
people."
Two difficulties here present themselves. (a) There
is St. Paul's language, which certainly seems wanting
in Christian meekness, and not exactly modelled after
the example of Christ, who, when He was reviled,
reviled not again, and laid down in His Sermon on the
Mount a law of suffering to which St. Paul does not
here conform. But this is only a difficulty for those
who have formed a superhuman estimate of St. Paul
against which we have several times protested, and
against which this very book of the Acts seems to take
special care to warn its readers. If people will make
the Apostle as sinless and as perfect as our Lord, they
will of course be surprised at his language on this
occasion. But if they regard him in the light in which
St. Luke portrays him, as a man of like passions and
infirmities with themselves, then they will feel no difficulty
in the fact that St. Paul's natural temper was roused
at the brutal and illegal command to smite a helpless
prisoner on the mouth because he had made a statement
which a member of the court did not relish.
This passage seems to me not a difficulty, but a divinely
guided passage witnessing to the inspiring influence of
the Holy Ghost, and inserted to chasten our wandering
fancy which would exalt the Apostle to a position equal
to that which rightly belongs to his Divine Master
alone.
(b) Then there is a second difficulty. Some have
thought that St. Paul told a lie in this passage, and that,
when defending himself from the charge of unscriptural
insolence to the high priest, he merely pretended
ignorance of his person, saying, "I wist not, brethren,
that he was high priest." The older commentators
devised various explanations of this passage. Dr. John
Lightfoot, in his Horæ Hebraicæ, treating of this verse,
sums them all up as follows. Either St. Paul means
that he did not recognise Ananias as high priest
because he did not lawfully occupy the office, or else
because that Christ was now the only high priest; or
else because there had been so many and so frequent
changes that as a matter of fact he did not know who
was the actual high priest. None of these is a satisfactory
explanation. Mr. Lewin offers what strikes
me as the most natural explanation, considering all the
circumstances. Ananias was appointed high priest
about 47, continued in office till 59, and was killed in
the beginning of the great Jewish war. He was a
thoroughly historical character, and his high priesthood
is guaranteed for us by the testimony of Josephus,
who tells us of his varied fortunes and of his tragic
death. But St. Paul never probably once saw him,
as he was absent from Jerusalem, except for one brief
visit all the time while he enjoyed supreme office.
Now the Sanhedrin consisted of seventy-one judges,
they sat in a large hall with a crowd of scribes and
pupils in front of them, and the high priest, as we
have already pointed out (vol. i., p. 181), was not
necessarily president or chairman. St. Paul was very
short-sighted, and the ophthalmia under which he continually
suffered was probably much intensified by the
violent treatment he had experienced the day before.
Could anything be more natural than that a shortsighted
man should not recognise in such a crowd the
particular person who had uttered this very brief, but
very tyrannical command, "Smite him on the mouth"?
Surely an impartial review of St. Paul's life shows him
ever to have been at least a man of striking courage,
and therefore one who would never have descended to
cloke his own hasty words with even the shadow of an
untruth!There is no necessity to adopt forced and unnatural explanations
when an easy one lies ready to our hand, and we all have daily experience
how hard it is for even a keen-sighted man to distinguish
among a crowd the person who utters a brief exclamation; a fact which
the debates in the House of Commons often illustrate. I can myself
quite appreciate St. Paul's difficulty. I am extremely short-sighted,
and am never able to discern—say in a meeting of one of our synods—who
it is that interrupts or contradicts me.
Again, the readiness and quickness of St. Paul in
seizing upon every opportunity of escape have important
teaching for us. Upon four different occasions at
this crisis he displayed this characteristic. Let us
note them for our guidance. When he was rescued by
the chief captain and was carried into the castle, the
captain ordered him to be examined by scourging to
elicit the true cause of the riot, St. Paul then availed
himself of his privilege as a Roman citizen to escape
that torture. When he stood before the council he
perceived the old division between the Pharisees and
the Sadducees to be still in existence, which he had
known long ago when he was himself connected with
it. He skilfully availed himself of that circumstance
to raise dissension among his opponents. He grasped
the essential principle which lay at the basis of his
teaching, and that was the doctrine of the Resurrection
and the assertion of the reality of the spiritual world.
Without that doctrine Christianity and Christian teaching
was utterly meaningless, and in that doctrine
Pharisees and Christians were united. Dropping the
line of defence he was about to offer, which probably
would have proceeded to show how true to conscience
and to Divine light had been his course of life, he cried
out, "I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees: touching the
hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question."
Grotius, an old and learned commentator, dealing
with ch. xxiii. 6, has well summed up the principles
on which St. Paul acted on this occasion in the following
words: "St. Paul was not lacking in human
prudence, making use of which for the service of the
gospel, he intermingled the wisdom of the serpent with
the gentleness of the dove, and thus utilised the dissensions
of his enemies." Yet once more we see the same
tact in operation. After the meeting of the Sanhedrin
and his rescue from out of its very midst, a plot was
formed to assassinate him, of which he was informed
by his nephew. Then again St. Paul did not let things
slide, trusting in the Divine care alone. He knew right
well that God demanded of men of faith that they
should be fellow-workers with God and lend Him their
co-operation. He knew too the horror which the Roman
authorities had of riot and of all illegal measures; he
despatched his nephew therefore to the chief captain,
and by his readiness of resource saved himself from
imminent danger. Lastly, we find the same characteristic
trait coming out at Cæsarea. His experience of
Roman rule taught him the anxiety of new governors
to please the people among whom they came. He
knew that Festus would be anxious to gratify the
Jewish authorities in any way he possibly could.
They were very desirous to have the Apostle transferred
from Cæsarea to Jerusalem, sure that in some
way or another they could there dispose of him.
Knowing therefore the dangerous position in which
he stood, St. Paul's readiness and tact again came to
his help. He knew Roman law thoroughly well. He
knew that as a Roman citizen he had one resource left
by which in one brief sentence he could transfer himself
out of the jurisdiction of Sanhedrin and Procurator
alike, and of this he availed himself at the critical
moment, pronouncing the magic words Cæsarem Appello
("I appeal unto Cæsar"). St. Paul left in all these cases
a healthy example which the Church urgently required
in subsequent years. He had no morbid craving after
suffering or death. No man ever lived in a closer
communion with his God, or in a more steadfast readiness
to depart and be with Christ. But he knew that
it was his duty to remain at his post till the Captain of
his salvation gave a clear note of withdrawal, and that
clear note was only given when every avenue of escape
was cut off. St. Paul therefore used his knowledge and
his tact in order to ascertain the Master's will and
discover whether it was His wish that His faithful
servant should depart or tarry yet awhile for the discharge
of his earthly duties. I have said that this was
an example necessary for the Church in subsequent ages.
The question of flight in persecution became a very
practical one as soon as the Roman Empire assumed
an attitude definitely hostile to the Church. The more
extreme and fanatical party not only refused to take
any measures to secure their safety or escape death, but
rather rushed headlong upon it, and upbraided those as
traitors and renegades who tried in any way to avoid
suffering.Any reader who wishes to see how this question was discussed about
the year 200 A. D. should turn to Tertullian's treatise De Fuga in Persecutione,
c. 6., in his works translated in Clark's Ante-Nicene Library, vol. i.,
p. 364, where Tertullian admits that the apostles fled in time of persecution,
but argues that the permission to do so was merely temporary and
personal to the apostles. The study of Church history is specially useful
in showing us how exactly the same tendencies emerge in ancient and
modern schisms and sects. Tertullian would have been a Quietist had
he lived in the seventeenth century; see note 2, p. 446.
From the earliest times, from the days of
Ignatius of Antioch himself, we see this morbid tendency
displaying itself; while the Church in the person
of several of its greatest leaders—men like Polycarp
and Cyprian, who themselves retired from impending
danger till the Roman authorities discovered them—showed
that St. Paul's wiser teaching and example were
not thrown away.St. Ignatius of Antioch was very desirous of martyrdom. St.
Polycarp fifty years avoided it till he was arrested. St. Clement of
Alexandria, in his Stromata, iv. 16, 17, condemns the suicidal passion for
martyrdom. St. Cyprian, enthusiastic as he was, retired like Polycarp
till escape was impossible. These holy men all acted like St. Paul.
They waited till God had intimated His will by shutting up all way of
escape. The story of Polycarp has an interesting warning against
presumptuous rushing upon trials. Quintus, one of St. Polycarp's flock,
gave himself up to death. His courage failed him at the last, and he
became an apostate: see on this subject Lightfoot's Ignatius and Polycarp,
vol. i., pp. 38, 393, 603.
Quietism was a view which two
centuries ago made a great stir both in England and
France, and seems embodied to some extent in certain
modern forms of thought. It taught that believers
should lie quite passive in God's hands and make no
effort for themselves. Quietism would never have
found a follower in the vigorous mind of St. Paul, who
proved himself through all those trials and vicissitudes
of more than two years ever ready with some new
device wherewith to meet the hatred of his foes.Quietism, Jansenism, and Quakerism were all manifestations of the
same spirit, and arose about the same time. Molinos was the founder
of Quietism in Spain. A concise account of the movement will be found
in Schaffs Theological Encyclopædia in connexion with the names
of Molinos and Guyon.
III. We notice lastly in the narrative of St. Paul's
imprisonment his interviews with and his testimony
before the members of the house of Herod. St. Peter
had experience of the father of Herod Agrippa, and now
St. Paul comes into contact with the children, Agrippa,
Drusilla and Bernice. And thus it came about. Felix
the procurator, as we have already explained, was a very
bad man, and had enticed Drusilla from her husband.
He doubtless told her of the Jewish prisoner who lay
a captive in the city where she was living. The
Herods were a clever race, and they knew all about
Jewish hopes and Messianic expectations, and they
ever seem to have been haunted by a certain curiosity
concerning the new sect of the Nazarenes. One Herod
desired for a long time to see Jesus Christ, and was
delighted when Pilate gratified his longing. Drusilla,
doubtless, was equally curious, and easily persuaded
her husband to gratify her desire. We therefore read
in ch. xxiv. 24, "But after certain days, Felix came
with Drusilla, his wife, which was a Jewess, and sent
for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith in Christ
Jesus."
Neither of them calculated on the kind of man they
had to do with. St. Paul knew all the circumstances
of the case. He adapted his speech thereto. He made
a powerful appeal to the conscience of the guilty pair.
He reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and the
judgment to come, and beneath his weighty words
Felix trembled. His convictions were roused. He
experienced a transient season of penitence, such as
touched another guilty member of the Herodian house
who feared John and did many things gladly to win
his approval. But habits of sin had grasped Felix too
firmly. He temporised with his conscience. He put
off the day of salvation when it was dawning on him,
and his words, "Go thy way for this time, and when
I have a convenient season I will call thee unto me,"
became the typical language of all those souls for whom
procrastination, want of decision, trifling with spiritual
feelings, have been the omens and the causes of eternal
ruin.
But Felix and Drusilla were not the only members
of the Herodian house with whom Paul came in contact.
Felix and Drusilla left Palestine when two years of
St. Paul's imprisonment had elapsed. Festus, another
procurator, followed, and began his course, as all the
Roman rulers of Palestine began theirs. The Jews,
when Felix visited Jerusalem, besought him to deliver
the prisoner lying bound at Cæsarea to the judgment
of their Sanhedrin. Festus, all powerful as a Roman
governor usually was, dared not treat a Roman citizen
thus without his own consent, and when that consent
was asked Paul at once refused, knowing right well the
intentions of the Jews, and appealed unto Cæsar. A
Roman governor, however, would not send a prisoner
to the judgment of the Emperor without stating the
crime imputed to him. Just at that moment Herod
Agrippa, king of Chalcis and of the district of Ituræa,
together with his sister Bernice, appeared on the scene.
He was a Jew, and was well acquainted therefore with
the accusations brought against the Apostle, and could
inform the procurator what report he should send to
the Emperor. Festus therefore brought Paul before
them, and gave him another opportunity of expounding
the faith of Jesus Christ and the law of love and purity
which that faith involved to a family who ever treated
that law with profound contempt. St. Paul availed
himself of that opportunity. He addressed his whole
discourse to the king, and that discourse was typical of
those he addressed to Jewish audiences. It was like
the sermon delivered to the Jews in the synagogue of
Antioch in Pisidia in one important aspect. Both
discourses gathered round the resurrection of Jesus
Christ as their central idea. St. Paul began his
address before Agrippa with that doctrine, and he
ended with the same. The hope of Israel, towards
which their continuous worship tended, was the resurrection
of the dead. That was St. Paul's opening idea.
The same note lay beneath the narrative of his own
conversion, and then he returned back to his original
statement that the Risen Christ was the hope of Israel
and of the world taught by Moses and proclaimed by
prophets. But it was all in vain as regards Agrippa
and Bernice. The Herods were magnificent, clever,
beautiful. But they were of the earth, earthy.
Agrippa said indeed to Paul, "With but little persuasion
thou wouldest fain make me a Christian." But
it was not souls like his for whom the gospel message
was intended. The Herods knew nothing of the burden
of sin or the keen longing of souls desirous of holiness
and of God. They were satisfied with the present transient
scene, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Agrippa's
father when he lay a-dying at Cæsarea consoled himself
with the reflection that though his career was
prematurely cut short, yet at any rate he had lived
a splendid life. And such as the parent had been,
such were the children. King Agrippa and his sister
Bernice were true types of the stony-ground hearers,
with whom "the care of the world and the deceitfulness
of riches choke the word." And they choked the word
so effectually in his case, even when taught by St. Paul,
that the only result upon Agrippa, as St. Luke reports
it, was this: "Agrippa said unto Festus, This man
might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed
unto Cæsar."
CHAPTER XVIII.
IN PERILS ON THE SEA.
"And when it was determined that we should sail for Italy, they
delivered Paul and certain other prisoners to a centurion named Julius,
of the Augustan band. And embarking in a ship of Adramyttium,
which was about to sail unto the places on the coast of Asia, we put to
sea, Aristarchus, a Macedonian of Thessalonica, being with us. And
the next day we touched at Sidon: and Julius treated Paul kindly, and
gave him leave to go unto his friends and refresh himself."—Acts
xxvii. 1-3.
"And when we entered into Rome, Paul was suffered to abide by
himself with the soldier that guarded him."—Acts xxviii. 16.
This chapter terminates our survey of the Acts
of the Apostles, and leads us at the same time
to contemplate the Apostle of the Gentiles in a new
light as a traveller and as a prisoner, in both which
aspects he has much to teach us. When St. Paul was
despatched to the judgment-seat of Cæsar from the
port of Cæsarea, he had arrived at the middle of his
long captivity. Broadly speaking he was five years a
prisoner from the day of his arrest at Jerusalem till his
release by the decision of Nero. He was a prisoner
for more than two years when Festus sent him to
Rome, and then at Rome he spent two more years in
captivity, while his voyage occupied fully six months.
Let us now first of all look at that captivity, and strive
to discover those purposes of good therein which God
hides amidst all his dispensations and chastisements.
We do not always realise what a length of time was
consumed in the imprisonments of St. Paul. He must
have spent from the middle of 58 to the beginning of
63 as a prisoner cut off from many of those various
activities in which he had previously laboured so
profitably for God's cause. That must have seemed to
himself and to many others a terrible loss to the gospel;
and yet now, as we look back from our vantage-point,
we can see many reasons why the guidance of his
heavenly Father may have led directly to this imprisonment,
which proved exceedingly useful for himself and
his own soul's health, for the past guidance and for the
perpetual edification of the Church of Christ. There is
a text in Ephesians iv. 1 which throws some light on
this incident. In that Epistle, written when St. Paul
was a captive at Rome, he describes himself thus, "I
therefore the prisoner in the Lord," or "the prisoner of
the Lord," as the Authorised Version puts it. These
words occur as the beginning of the Epistle for the
Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity. Now there is often
a marvellous amount of spiritual wisdom and instruction
to be gained from a comparison between the epistles
and gospels and the collects for each Sunday. All my
readers may not agree in the whole theological system
which underlies the Prayer Book, but every one will
acknowledge that its services and their construction are
the result of rich and varied spiritual experiences extending
over a period of more than a thousand years.
The mere contrast of an epistle and of a collect will
often suggest thoughts deep and searching. So it is
with this text, "I therefore the prisoner in the Lord."
It is preceded by the brief pithy prayer, "Lord, we
pray Thee that Thy grace may always prevent and
follow us, and make us continually to be given to all
good works, through Jesus Christ our Lord." The
words of St. Paul to the Ephesians speaking of himself
as the prisoner of God and in God suggested immediately
the idea of God's grace surrounding, shaping,
constraining to His service every external circumstance;
and thus led to the formation of the collect which in
fact prays that we may realise ourselves as so completely
God's as, like the Apostle, continually to be
given to all good works. St. Paul realised himself as
so prevented, using that word in its ancient sense,
preceded and followed by God's grace, guarded before
and behind by it, that he looked beyond the things
seen, and discarding all secondary agents and all lower
instruments, he viewed his imprisonment as God's own
immediate work.
I. Let us then see in what way we may regard St.
Paul's imprisonment as an arrangement and outcome
of Divine love. Take, for instance, St. Paul in his own
personal life. This period of imprisonment, of enforced
rest and retirement, may have been absolutely necessary
for him. St. Paul had spent many a long and busy year
building up the spiritual life of others, founding churches,
teaching converts, preaching, debating, struggling,
suffering. His life had been one of intense spiritual,
intellectual, bodily activity on behalf of others. But
no one can be engaged in intense activity without
wasting some of the spiritual life and force necessary
for himself. Religious work, the most direct spiritual
activity, visiting the sick, or preaching the gospel, or
celebrating the sacraments, make a tremendous call
upon our devotional powers and directly tend to lower
our spiritual vitality, unless we seek abundant and
frequent renewal thereof at the source of all spiritual
vitality and life. Now God by this long imprisonment
took St. Paul aside once again, as He had taken him
aside twenty years before, amid the rocks of Sinai.
God laid hold of him in his career of external business,
as He laid hold of Moses in the court of Pharaoh,
leading him into the wilderness of Midian for forty
long years. God made St. Paul His prisoner that,
having laboured for others, and having tended diligently
their spiritual vineyard, he might now watch over and
tend his own for a time. And the wondrous manner
in which he profited by his imprisonment is manifest
from this very Epistle to the Ephesians, in which he
describes himself as God's prisoner—not, be it observed,
the prisoner of the Jews, or of the Romans,
or of Cæsar, but as the prisoner of God—dealing in
the profoundest manner, as that Epistle does, with the
greatest mysteries of the Christian faith. St. Paul had
an opportunity during those four or five years, such
as he never had before, of realising; digesting, and
assimilating in all their fulness the doctrines he had
so long proclaimed to others, and was thus enabled out
of the depth of his own personal experience to preach
what he felt and knew to be true, the only kind of
teaching which will ever be worth anything.
Again, St. Paul designates himself the prisoner
of the Lord because of the benefits his imprisonment
conferred upon the Church of Christ in various ways.
Take his imprisonment at Cæsarea alone. We are
not expressly told anything about his labours during
that time. But knowing St. Paul's intense energy we
may be sure that the whole local Christian community
established in that important centre whence the gospel
could diffuse itself as far as the extremest west on the
one side and the extremest east on the other, was permeated
by his teaching and vitalised by his example.
He was allowed great freedom, as the Acts declares.
Felix "gave orders to the centurion that he should be
kept in charge, and should have indulgence; and not
to forbid any of his friends to minister unto him."
If we take the various centurions to whom he was
intrusted, we may be sure that St. Paul must have
omitted no opportunity of leading them to Christ. St.
Paul seems to have known how to make his way to the
hearts of Roman soldiers, as his subsequent treatment
by Julius the centurion shows, and that permission
of the governor would be liberally interpreted when
deputies from distant churches sought his presence.
Messengers from the various missions he had founded
must have had recourse to Cæsarea during those two
years spent there, and thence too was doubtless
despatched many a missive of advice and exhortation.
At Cæsarea, too, may then have been written the
Gospel of St. Luke. Lewin (vol. i., p. 221), indeed,
places its composition at Philippi, where St. Luke
laboured for several years prior to St. Paul's visit in
57 A.D. after leaving Ephesus; and he gives as his
reason for this conclusion that St. Paul called St.
Luke in 2 Cor. viii. 18, written about that time, "the
brother whose praise is in the Gospel," referring to
his Gospel then lately published.This involves, however, the supposition that St. Luke's narrative
had then obtained its more modern name of "the Gospel," which is in
my opinion an anachronism. In the earliest writings which refer to
apostolic narratives they are simply called the writings or memoirs or
commentaries of the apostles, as in Aristides, c. xvi., and Justin
Martyr, Apol., i. 67. In Aristides there is one passage in ch. ii.
where the word gospel is used, but not in the sense of a special title for
a book: "This is taught from that Gospel which a little while ago was
spoken among them as being preached; wherein if ye also will read,
ye will comprehend the power that is upon it." Irenæus, III. xi. 7, 8,
is the earliest I can now recall who uses the word gospel in this
technical sense. He speaks there of the Gospel of St. Matthew, etc.
But this was in the last quarter of the second century. In the year 57,
when Second Corinthians was written, the word gospel was applied to
the whole body of revealed truth held by the Church, and not to a book.
I think the suggestion
much more likely that St. Luke took advantage
of this pause in St. Paul's activity to write his Gospel
at Cæsarea when he had not merely the assistance of
the Apostle himself, but of Philip the deacon, and was
within easy reach of St. James and the Jerusalem
Church. St. Luke's Gospel bears evident traces of
St. Paul's ideas and doctrine, was declared by Irenæus
(Hær., iii. 1) to have been composed under his direction,Iren., iii. 1: "Luke, also the companion of Paul, recorded in
a book the gospel preached by him." With respect to the relation
between St. Paul and St. Luke, see also Iren., iii., xiv., xv.
and may with much probability be regarded as one of
the blessed results flowing forth from St. Paul's detention
as Christ's prisoner given by Him in charge to the
Roman governor.
The Apostle's Roman imprisonment again was most
profitable to the Church of the imperial capital. The
Church of Rome had been founded by the efforts
of individuals. Private Christians did the work, not
apostles or eminent evangelists. St. Paul came to it
first of all as a prisoner, and found it a flourishing
church. And yet he benefited and blessed it
greatly. He could not, indeed, preach to crowded
audiences in synagogues or porticoes as he had done
elsewhere. But he blessed the Church of Rome most
chiefly by his individual efforts. This man came to him
into his own hired house, and that man followed him
attracted by the magnetic influence he seemed to bear
about. The soldiers appointed as his keepers were
told the story of the Cross and the glad tidings of the
resurrection life, and these individual efforts were
fruitful in vast results, so that even into the household
and palace of the Cæsars did this patient, quiet, evangelistic
work extend its influence.The subject of Christianity and the household of Cæsarea would
form an interesting subject of inquiry did only space permit. I have,
however, the less hesitation in passing it over because it has been
exhaustively discussed by Bishop Lightfoot in the following places,
to which I must refer my readers: Philippians, Introduction pp. 1-28,
and in dissertations on, pp. 97-102 and 169-76. This is also the
subject of an elaborate monograph by Professor Harnack in the Princeton
Review for July 1878, entitled "Christians and Rome," with which
should be compared Schürer's Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes, ii.
506-512, and a treatise published by him Die Gemeindeverfassung der
Juden in Rom., Leipzig 1879.
Nowhere else, in
fact, not even in Corinth, where St. Paul spent two
whole years openly teaching without any serious interruption;
not even in Ephesus, where he laboured so long
that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word; nowhere
else, was the Apostle's ministry so effective as here in
Rome, where the prisoner of the Lord was confined to
individual effort and completely laid aside from more
public and enlarged activity. It was with St. Paul as
it is with God's messengers still. It is not eloquent or
excited public efforts, or platform addresses, or public
debates, or clever books that are most fruitful in spiritual
results. Nay, it is often the quiet individual efforts of
private Christians, the testimony of a patient sufferer
perhaps, the witness all-powerful with men, of a life
transformed through and through by Christian principle,
and lived in the perpetual sunshine of God's reconciled
countenance. These are the testimonies that speak
most effectually for God, most directly to souls.
Lastly, St. Paul's imprisonment blessed the Church
of every age, and through it blessed mankind at large
far more than his liberty and his external activity could
have done in one other direction. Is it not a contradiction
in terms to say that the imprisonment of this
courageous leader, this eloquent preacher, this keen,
subtle debater should have been more profitable to the
Church than the exercise of his external freedom and
liberty, when all these dormant powers would have found
ample scope for their complete manifestation? And
yet if Christ had not laid His arresting hand upon the
active, external labour in which St. Paul had been
absorbed, if Christ had not cast the busy Apostle into
the Roman prison-house, the Church of all future time
would have been deprived of those masterly expositions
of Christian truth which she now enjoys in the various
Epistles of the Captivity, and specially in those addressed
to the churches of Ephesus, Philippi, and
Colossæ. We have now noted some of the blessings
resulting from St. Paul's five years' captivity, and indicated
a line of thought which may be applied to the
whole narrative contained in the two chapters with
which we are dealing. St. Paul was a captive, and
that captivity gave him access at Cæsarea to various
classes of society, to the soldiers, and to all that
immense crowd of officials connected with the seat of
government, quæstors, tribunes, assessors, apparitors,
scribes, advocates. His captivity then led him on
board ship, and brought him into contact with the
sailors and with a number of passengers drawn from
diverse lands. A storm came on, and then the
Apostle's self-possession, his calm Christian courage,
when every one else was panic-stricken, gave him
influence over the motley crowd. The waves flung
the ship of Alexandria in which he was travelling
upon Malta, and his stay there during the tempestuous
winter months became the basis of the conversion of
its inhabitants. Everywhere in St. Paul's life and
course at this season we can trace the outcome of
Divine love, the power of Divine providence shaping
God's servant for His own purposes, restraining man's
wrath when it waxed too fierce, and causing the
remainder of that wrath to praise Him by its blessed
results.
II. Let us now gather up into a brief narrative the
story contained in these two chapters, so that we may
gain a bird's eye view over the whole. Festus entered
upon his provincial rule about June A.D. 60. According
to Roman law the outgoing governor, of whatever kind
he was, had to await his successor's arrival and hand
over the reins of government—a very natural and proper
rule which all civilised governments observe. We have
no idea how vast the apparatus of provincial, or, as we
should say, colonial government among the Romans
was, and how minute their regulations were, till we
take up one of those helps which German scholars have
furnished towards the knowledge of antiquity, as, for
instance, Mommsen's Roman Provinces, which can be
read in English, or Marquardt's Römische Staatsverwaltung,
vol. i., which can be studied either in German or
French.The governors brought with them regular bodies of assessors, who
assisted them like a privy council. There is a reference to this council
in Acts xxv. 12 and xxvi. 30. These councils served as training schools
in law and statesmanship for the young Roman nobility. See Marquardt,
l.c., p. 391.
The very city where first the new governor
was to appear and the method of fulfilling his duties as
the Judge of Assize were minutely laid down and duly
followed a well-established routine. We find these
things indicated in the case of Festus. He arrived at
Cæsarea. He waited three days till his predecessor
had left for Rome, and then he ascended to Jerusalem
to make the acquaintance of that very troublesome and
very influential city. Felix then returned to Cæsarea
after ten days spent in gaining an intimate knowledge
of the various points of a city which often before had
been the centre of rebellion, and where he might at any
moment be called upon to act with sternness and
decision. He at once heard St. Paul's cause as the
Jews had demanded, brought him a second time before
Agrippa, and then in virtue of his appeal to Cæsar
despatched him to Rome in care of a centurion and a
small band of soldiers, a large guard not being necessary,
as the prisoners were not ordinary criminals,
but for the most part men of some position, Roman
citizens, doubtless, who had, like the Apostle, appealed
unto the judgment of Cæsar.Roman citizens had the right of appeal no matter where they were
born or of what race they came or how humble their lot in life. Mere
provincials devoid of citizenship, no matter how distinguished their
position, had not that right.
St. Paul embarked,
accompanied by Luke and Aristarchus, as the ship,
being an ordinary trading vessel, contained not only
prisoners, but also passengers as well. We do not
intend to enter upon the details of St. Paul's voyage,
because that lies beyond our range, and also because
it has been thoroughly done in the various Lives of
the Apostle, and above all in the exhaustive work of
Mr. James Smith of Jordanhills. He has devoted
a volume to this one topic, has explored every source
of knowledge, has entered into discussions touching
the build and rigging of ancient ships and the direction
of Mediterranean winds, has minutely investigated the
scenery and history of such places as Malta where
the Apostle was wrecked, and has illustrated the whole
with beautiful plates and carefully drawn maps. That
work has gone through four editions at least, and
deserves a place in every man's library who wishes to
understand the life and labours of St. Paul or study
the Acts of the Apostles. We may, however, without
trenching on Mr. Smith's field, indicate the outline of
the route followed by the holy travellers. They
embarked at Cæsarea under the care of a centurion
of the Augustan cohort, or regiment, as we should say,
whose name was Julius.Julius is one of those unknown characters of Scripture about whom
we would desire more information. He is described as a centurion of
the Augustan band, which was the imperial guard, and was always
stationed at Rome. Julius may possibly have been an officer of this
guard sent out with Festus and now returning back to his duties.
They took their passage at
first in a ship of Adramyttium, which was probably
sailing from Cæsarea to lie up for the winter. Adramyttium
was a seaport situated up in the north-west of
Asia Minor near Troas, and the Sea of Marmora, or, to
put it in modern language, near Constantinople. The
ship was, in fact, about to travel over exactly the same
ground as St. Paul himself had traversed more than
two years before when he proceeded from Troas to
Jerusalem. Surely, some one may say, this was not the
direct route to Rome! But then we must throw ourselves
back into the circumstances of the period. There
was then no regular transport service. People, even
the most exalted, had to avail themselves of whatever
means of communication chance offered. Cicero, when
chief governor of Asia, had, as we have already noted,
to travel part of the way from Rome in undecked
vessels, while ten years later than St. Paul's voyage
the Emperor Vespasian himself, the greatest potentate
in the world, had no trireme or warship waiting upon
him, but when he wished to proceed from Palestine to
Rome at the time of the great siege of Jerusalem was
obliged to take a passage in an ordinary merchant vessel
or corn ship.See Josephus, Wars, VII. ii. 1. It was exactly the same with
Titus, Vespasian's son, after the war ended. He travelled from Alexandria
to Italy in a trading vessel. Suet., Tit., c. 5.
It is no wonder, then, that the prisoners
were put on board a coasting vessel of Asia, the centurion
knowing right well that in sailing along by the
various ports which studded the shore of that province
they would find some other vessel into which they could
be transferred. And this expectation was realised.
The centurion and his prisoners sailed first of all to
Sidon, where St. Paul found a Christian Church. This
circumstance illustrates again the quiet and steady
growth of the gospel kingdom, and also gave Julius an
opportunity of exhibiting his kindly feelings towards the
Apostle by permitting him to go and visit the brethren.
In fact, we would conclude from this circumstance that
St. Paul had already begun to establish an influence
over the mind of Julius which must have culminated in
his conversion. Here, at Sidon, he permits him to visit
his Christian friends; a short time after his regard for
Paul leads him to restrain his troops from executing the
merciless purposes their Roman discipline had taught
them and slaying all the prisoners lest they should
escape; and yet once again when the prisoners land
on Italian soil and stand beside the charming scenery
of the Bay of Naples he permits the Apostle to spend
a week with the Christians of Puteoli. After this brief
visit to the Sidonian Church, the vessel bearing the
Apostle pursues its way by Cyprus to the port of Myra
at the south-western corner of Asia Minor, a neighbourhood
which St. Paul knew right well and had often
visited. It was there at Patara close at hand that he had
embarked on board the vessel which carried him two
years before to Palestine, and it was there too at Perga
of Pamphylia that he had first landed on the shores
of the Asiatic province seeking to gather its teeming
millions into the fold of Jesus Christ. Here at Myra the
centurion realised his expectations, and finding an Alexandrian
transport sailing to Italy he put the prisoners
on board. From Myra they seem to have sailed at once,
and from the day they left it their misfortunes began.
The wind was contrary, blowing from the west, and to
make any way they had to sail to the island Cnidus,
which lay north-west of Myra. After a time, when the
wind became favourable, they sailed south-west till they
reached the island of Crete, which lay half-way between
Greece and Asia Minor. They then proceeded along
the southern coast of this island till they were struck
by a sudden wind coming from the north-east, which
drove them first to the neighbouring island of Clauda,
and then, after a fortnight's drifting through a tempestuous
sea, hurled the ship upon the shores of Malta.
The wreck took place towards the close of October or
early in November, and the whole party were obliged
to remain in Malta till the spring season permitted
the opening of navigation. During his stay in Malta
St. Paul performed several miracles. With his intensely
practical and helpful nature the Apostle flung
himself into the work of common life, as soon as the
shipwrecked party had got safe to land. He always
did so. He never despised, like some religious fanatics,
the duties of this world. On board the ship he had
been the most useful adviser to the whole party. He
had exhorted the captain of the ship not to leave a good
haven; he had stirred up the soldiers to prevent the
sailors' escape; he had urged them all alike, crew and
passengers and soldiers, to take food, foreseeing the
terrible struggle they would have to make when the
ship broke up. He was the most practical adviser his
companions could possibly have had, and he was their
wisest and most religious adviser too. His words on
board ship teem with lessons for ourselves, as well as
for his fellow-passengers. He trusted in God, and
received special revelations from heaven, but he did
not therefore neglect every necessary human precaution.
The will of God was revealed to him that he had been
given all the souls that sailed with him, and the angel
of God cheered and comforted him in that storm-driven
vessel in Adria, as often before when howling
mobs thirsted like evening wolves for his blood. But
the knowledge of God's purposes did not cause his
exertions to relax. He knew that God's promises are
conditional upon man's exertions, and therefore he
urged his companions to be fellow-workers with God
in the matter of their own salvation from impending
death. And as it was on board the ship, so was it on
the shore. The rain was descending in torrents, and
the drenched passengers were shivering in the cold.
St. Paul shows the example, so contagious in a crowd,
of a man who had his wits about him, knew what to do,
and would do it. He gathered therefore a bundle of
sticks, and helped to raise a larger fire in the house
which had received him. A man is marvellously helpful
among a cowering and panic-stricken crowd which
has just escaped death who will rouse them to some
practical efforts for themselves, and will lead the way
as the Apostle did on this occasion. And his action
brought its own reward. He had gained influence
over the passengers, soldiers, and crew by his practical
helpfulness. He was now to gain influence over the
barbarian islanders in exactly the same way. A viper
issued from the fire and fastened on his hand. The
natives expected to see him fall down dead; but after
looking awhile and perceiving no change, they concluded
him to be a god who had come to visit them.
This report soon spread. The chief man therefore of
the island sought out St. Paul and entertained him.
His father was sick of dysentery and the Apostle
healed him, using prayer and the imposition of hands
as the outward symbols and means of the cure, which
spread his fame still farther and led to other miraculous
cures. Three months thus passed away. No distinct
missionary work is indeed recorded by St. Luke, but
this is his usual custom in writing his narrative. He
supposes that Theophilus, his friend and correspondent,
will understand that the Apostle ever kept the great end
of his life in view, never omitting to teach Christ and
Him crucified to the perishing multitudes where his
lot was cast. But St. Luke was not one of those who
are always attempting to chronicle spiritual successes
or to tabulate the number of souls led to Christ. He
left that to another day and to a better and more
infallible judge. In three months' time, when February's
days grew longer and milder winds began to blow, the
rescued travellers joined a corn ship of Alexandria
which had wintered in the island, and all set forward
towards Rome. They touched at Syracuse in Sicily,
sailed thence to Rhegium, passing through the Straits
of Messina, whence, a favourable south wind springing
up, and the vessel running before it at the rate of
seven knots an hour, the usual speed for ancient
vessels under such circumstances, they arrived at
Puteoli, one hundred and eighty-two miles distant
from Rhegium, in the course of some thirty hours.
At Puteoli the sea voyage ended. It may at first seem
strange to us with our modern notions that St. Paul
was allowed to tarry at Puteoli with the local Christian
Church for seven days. But then we must remember
that St. Paul and the centurion did not live in the days
of telegraphs and railway trains. There was doubtless
a guard-room, barrack or prison in which the prisoners
could be accommodated. The centurion and guard
were weary after a long and dangerous journey, and
they would be glad of a brief period of repose before
they set out again towards the capital. This hypothesis
alone would be quite sufficient to account for the
indulgence granted to St. Paul, even supposing that
his Christian teaching had made no impression on the
centurion. The Church existing then at Puteoli is
another instance of that quiet diffusion of the gospel
which was going on all over the world without any
noise or boasting. We have frequently called attention
to this, as at Tyre, Ptolemais, Sidon, and here again we
find a little company of saintly men and women gathered
out of the world and living the ideal life of purity and
faith beside the waters of the Bay of Naples. And
yet it is quite natural that we should find them at
Puteoli, because it was one of the great ports which
received the corn ships of Alexandria and the merchantmen
of Cæsarea and Antioch into her harbour, and in
these ships many a Christian came bringing the seed
of eternal life which he diligently sowed as he travelled
along the journey of life. In fact, seeing that the
Church of Rome had sprung up and flourished so
abundantly, taking its origin not from any apostle's
teaching, but simply from such sporadic effects, we
cannot wonder that Puteoli, which lay right on the road
from the East to Rome, should also have gained a
blessing.The accuracy of the Acts in representing Puteoli as the seat of an
early church has been amply illustrated by modern investigations.
Judaism was flourishing there from the earliest times. In the year 4
B.C. a colony of wealthy Jews was established at Puteoli (Josephus,
Wars, II. vii. 1). An inscription has been found there commemorating
a Jewish merchant of Ascalon named Herod (Schürer's Jüdisch. Volk.,
I. 234).
A circumstance, however, has come to light
within the last thirty years which does surprise us
concerning this same neighbourhood, showing how
extensively the gospel had permeated and honeycombed
the country parts of Italy within the lifetime of the first
apostles and disciples of Jesus Christ. Puteoli was a
trading town, and Jews congregated in such places,
and trade lends an element of seriousness to life which
prepares a ground fitted for the good seed of the kingdom.
But pleasure pure and unmitigated and a life
devoted to its pursuit does not prepare such a soil.
Puteoli was a trading city, but Pompeii was a pleasure-loving
city thinking of nothing else, and where sin and
iniquity consequently abounded. Yet Christianity had
made its way into Pompeii in the lifetime of the
apostles. How then do we know this? This is one of
the results of modern archæological investigations and
of epigraphical research, two great sources of new light
upon early Christian history which have been only of
late years duly appreciated. Pompeii, as every person
of moderate education knows, was totally overthrown
by the first great eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the
year 79 A.D. It is a curious circumstance that contemporaneous
authors make but the very slightest and most
dubious references to that destruction, though one would
have thought that the literature of the time would have
rung with it; proving conclusively, if proof be needed,
how little the argument from silence is worth, when the
great writers who tell minutely about the intrigues and
vices of emperors and statesmen of Rome do not bestow
a single chapter upon the catastrophe which overtook
two whole cities of Italy.This point is elaborated by Mr. Cazenove in an article on the
Theban Legion contained in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, iii.
642.
These cities remained for
seventeen hundred years concealed from human sight
or knowledge till revealed in the year 1755 by excavations
systematically pursued. All the inscriptions found
therein were undoubtedly and necessarily the work of
persons who lived before A.D. 79 and then perished.
Now at the time that Pompeii was destroyed there was
a municipal election going on, and there were found on
the walls numerous inscriptions formed with charcoal
which were the substitutes then used for the literature
and placards with which every election decorates our
walls. Among these inscriptions of mere passing and
transitory interest, there was one found which illustrates
the point at which we have been labouring, for
there, amid the election notices of 79 A.D., there appeared
scribbled by some idle hand the brief words, "Igni
gaude, Christiane" ("O Christian, rejoice in the fire"),
proving clearly that Christians existed in Pompeii at
that time, that they were known as Christians and not
under any other appellation, that persecution and death
had reached them, and that they possessed and displayed
the same undaunted spirit as their great leader and
teacher St. Paul, being enabled like him to rejoice even
amid the sevenfold-heated fires, and in view of the
resurrection life to lift the victorious pæan, "Thanks
be to God, which giveth us the victory through our
Lord Jesus Christ."This interesting inscription will be found in Mommsen, Corpus of
Latin Inscriptions, vol. iv., No. 679. I described it in the Contemporary
Review for January 1881, p. 97, in an article on Latin Christian
Inscriptions. This inscription fully bears out Lord Lytton in the
picture he gives of the introduction of Christianity into the neighbourhood
of Vesuvius and Naples in his Last Days of Pompeii.
After the week's rest at Puteoli the centurion marched
towards Rome. The Roman congregation had received
notice of St. Paul's arrival by this time, and so the
brethren despatched a deputation to meet an apostle
with whom they were already well acquainted through
the epistle he had sent them, as well as through the
reports of various private Christians like Phœbe, the
deaconness of Cenchreæ.Romans xvi. is a sufficient witness of the intimate knowledge of the
Roman Church and its membership possessed by St. Paul. We may be
sure that many mentioned in that catalogue written three or four years
before found a place in the two deputations who went to meet
St. Paul.
Two deputations from the
Roman Church met him, one at Appii Forum, about
thirty miles, another at the Three Taverns, about
twenty miles, from the city. How wonderfully the heart
of the Apostle must have been cheered by these kindly
Christian attentions! We have before noticed in the
cases of his Athenian sojourn and elsewhere how keenly
alive he was to the offices of Christian friendship, how
cheered and strengthened he was by Christian companionship.
It was now the same once again as it was
then. Support and sympathy were now more needed
than ever before, for St. Paul was going up to Rome
not knowing what should happen to him there or what
should be his sentence at the hands of that emperor
whose cruel character was now famous. And as it
was at Athens and at Corinth and elsewhere, so was
it here on the Appian Way and amid the depressing
surroundings and unhealthy atmosphere of those Pomptine
Marshes through which he was passing; "when
Paul saw the brethren, he thanked God, and took
courage." And now the whole company of primitive
Christians proceeded together to Rome, allowed doubtless
by the courtesy and thoughtfulness of Julius ample
opportunities of private conversation. Having arrived
at the imperial city, the centurion hastened to present
himself and his charge to the captain of the prætorian
guard, whose duty it was to receive prisoners consigned
to the judgment of the Emperor. Upon the favourable
report of Julius, St. Paul was not detained in custody,
but suffered to dwell in his own hired lodgings, where
he established a mission station whence he laboured
most effectively both amongst Jews and Gentiles during
two whole years. St. Paul began his work at Rome
exactly as he did everywhere else. He called together
the chief of the Jews, and through them strove to gain
a lodgment in the synagogue. He began work at once.
After three days, as soon as he had recovered from the
fatigue of the rapid march along the Appian Way, he
sent for the chiefs of the Roman Synagogues which
were very numerous.See for proof of this Harnack's article in the Princeton Review,
quoted above.
How, it may be thought, could
an unknown Jew entering Rome venture to summon
the heads of the Jewish community, many of them men
of wealth and position? But, then, we must remember
that St. Paul was no ordinary Jew from the point of
view taken by Roman society. He had arrived in
Rome a state prisoner, and he was a Roman citizen of
Jewish birth, and this at once gave him position entitling
him to a certain amount of consideration. St. Paul
told his story to these chief men of the Jews, the local
Sanhedrin perhaps, recounted the bad treatment he
had received at the hands of the Jews of Jerusalem,
and indicated the character of his teaching which he
wished to expound to them. "For this cause therefore
did I entreat you to see and speak with me: for because
of the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain,"
emphasizing the Hope of Israel, or their Messianic
expectation, as the cause of his imprisonment, exactly
as he had done some months before when pleading
before King Agrippa (ch. xxvi. 6, 7, 22, 23). Having
thus briefly indicated his desires, the Jewish council
intimated that no communication had been made to
them from Jerusalem about St. Paul. It may have
been that his lengthened imprisonment at Cæsarea
had caused the Sanhedrin to relax their vigilance,
though we see that their hostility still continued as
bitter as ever when Festus arrived in Jerusalem and
afterwards led to St. Paul's appeal; or perhaps they
had not had time to forward a communication from
the Jerusalem Sanhedrin to the Jewish authorities at
Rome; or perhaps, which is the most likely of all, they
thought it useless to prosecute their suit before Nero,
who would scoff at the real charges which dealt merely
with questions of Jewish customs, and which imperial
lawyers therefore would regard as utterly unworthy the
imprisonment or death of a Roman citizen. At any rate
the Jewish council gave him a hearing, when St. Paul
followed exactly the same lines as in the synagogue at
Antioch of Pisidia and in his speech before Agrippa.
He pointed out the gradual development of God's purposes
in the law and the prophets, showing how they
had been all fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It was with the
Jews at Rome as with the Jews elsewhere. Some
believed and some believed not as Paul preached unto
them. The meeting was much more one for discussion
than for addresses. From morning till evening the disputation
continued, till at last the Apostle dismissed
them with the stern words of the Prophet Isaiah, taken
from the sixth chapter of his prophecy, where he
depicts the hopeless state of those who obstinately
close their ears to the voice of conviction. But the
Jews of Rome do not seem to have been like those of
Thessalonica, Ephesus, Corinth, and Jerusalem in one
respect. They did not actively oppose St. Paul or
attempt to silence him by violent means, for the last
glimpse we get of the Apostle in St. Luke's narrative
is this: "He abode two whole years in his own hired
dwelling, and received all that went in unto him,
preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching the things
concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness,
none forbidding him."The various biographies of the Apostle, and specially that of
Conybeare & Howson, follow the Apostle's history in great detail
during these two years; but the story of that period more properly falls
under the consideration of the writers upon the Epistles of the Captivity
than of one dealing with the Acts of the Apostles. If I were to discuss
St. Paul's life at Rome I should have simply to borrow all my details
from these Epistles. The abruptness of St. Luke's termination of his
narrative is very noteworthy, and the best proof of the early date of the
Acts. I do not think I need add anything to Dr. Salmon's argument on
this point contained in the following words, which I take from chap. xviii.
of his Introduction: "To my mind the simplest explanation why St.
Luke has told us no more is, that he knew no more; and that he knew
no more, because at the time nothing more had happened—in other
words, that the book of the Acts was written a little more than two years
after Paul's arrival in Rome."
INDEX.
Abbott, Dr.,
Biblical Essays,
12,
43.
Abgar, King,
53.
Achaia, Province of,
326.
Achilles Tatius,
367.
Acoimetæ, or Watching Monks,
176.
Acta Sanctorum,
56,
141,
200,
213,
247.
Æneas,
97.
Agabus, the prophet,
162,
426,
434.
Agape,
399,
400.
Agrippa II.,
432,
448.
Alabarch,
81,
153.
Alexander, the Coppersmith,
378.
Amen, Eucharistic,
396.
Ammianus Marcellinus,
152.
Ananias, of Damascus,
53,
54,
55,
57,
58,
59,
68.
Ananias, the high priest,
431,
440-443.
Ancyra,
339,
367.
Annas,
30.
Antinomianism,
62.
Antioch, (Syrian) church of,
146,
154.
—— city of,
150-13.
—— synagogue of,
155.
—— people of, and nicknames,
159.
—— of Pisidia,
198.
Apollos,
341-43,
347.
Apostle, meaning of,
83,
84,
193.
Apostolic Constitt.,
344.
Aquila and Priscilla,
322,
323,
332,
333,
337,
341,
347.
Aquileia, church of,
247.
Aratus,
11,
315.
Areopagus, court of,
309-17.
Aretas,
30,
81.
Aristides,
35,
214,
318-20.
Artemas, bishop of Lystra,
213.
Artemis (see Diana),
360,
362,
376.
Artemisius, month of,
362.
Asiarchs,
375-78.
Assize Courts,
382.
Athanasius, St.,
301.
Athenagoras,
Apol.,
282.
—— church of,
321.
Athens, topography of,
312.
Attalia,
201,
276.
Augustine, St.,
Confessions of,
29,
286.
——
Epp.,
398,
401.
Aurelius, Victor,
163.
Baptismal formula,
345.
Barclay, Robert,
122.
Barnabas, St.,
7,
8,
81,
155,
258.
Baronius,
Annals of,
259.
Bartolocci,
Bibl. Rabbin.,
13.
Basnage,
History of the Jews,
13,
19.
Baur,
1.
Bayet,
De Titulis Atticæ Christ.,
308,
321.
Bent, J. T.,
374.
Bernard, St.,
Life of St. Malachy,
417.
Bernice,
432,
448.
Berœa,
296,
302.
Bingham's
Antiqq.,
176,
396.
Bishops, origin of,
416-18.
Blomfield, Bishop,
229.
Boeckh,
Gr. Ins., Corp. 205,
278,
300,
363,
366.
Butler, Bishop,
Analogy of,
133,
413.
Butler's
Coptic Churches,
256.
Buxtorf's
Lexicon,
16.
Cæsar, Augustus,
273.
—— Claudius,
323.
—— Julius,
31.
—— Tiberius,
36,
166,
185.
Cæsarea-on-the-Sea,
101,
147.
Caiaphas,
30.
Caligula,
82,
94,
166,
167.
Calvin's
Commentary N.T.,
128,
383.
Capes, W. W.,
The Early Empire,
109.
Cave's
Lives of the Apostles,
256,
259,
263.
Celebrations, evening,
398-401.
Celtic language,
264.
Cenchreæ,
332.
Cesnola, General,
205.
Charlemagne,
11.
Chosroes, King,
159.
Christian Library,
394.
Christian, title of,
159-62,
211.
Chrysostom, Dion,
276,
377.
Chrysostom, St.,
46,
84,
251,
352.
——
Homilies,
55.
Cicero,
275,
304,
327.
Circumcision, controversy about,
222,
228.
Cistercians,
227.
Cleanthes,
315.
Clement of Alexandria,
Pædagogue,
180.
——
Stromata,
356,
446.
Clement,
Recognitions of,
259,
344.
——
Homilies,
344.
Clermont Ganneau,
428.
Communion Office, rubrics of,
335,
336.
—— evening,
398-401.
"Communicatio Idiomatum,"
419.
Constantine, Emperor,
238,
273.
Contemporary Review,
468.
Conybeare and Howson,
St. Paul,
46,
57.
Corinth, First Epistle to, date of,
359,
387.
Cornelius à Lapide,
46.
Cornelius, the Centurion, chaps.
v.,
vi.
—— baptism of,
140.
Council of Jerusalem, chap.
x.
Councils, histories of,
219.
Cramer's
Catena,
46.
Crispus,
325,
326.
Cudworth's
Intellect. Syst.,
315.
Cyprus, gospel in,
196,
201-206,
258.
Cyril of Jerusalem,
396.
Damascus,
30,
36.
Daphne,
157,
158.
De Broglie,
L'Église et l'Empire,
273.
Demetrius,
350,
369,
372-75.
Derbe,
200,
216,
260.
Derenbourg and Saglio,
Dict. des Antiqq.,
361.
Diana (see Artemis),
331,
360.
Didache,
34,
345.
Dion Cassius,
163,
204.
Dion Chrysostom,
276,
377.
Dionysius, Areop.,
317,
318,
320.
Discipline,
107.
Dods, Dr. M.,
Introd. N.T.,
360.
Döllinger, Dr.,
145.
Dorcas,
97.
Drusilla,
431,
447.
Duhr's
Journeys of Hadrian,
306.
Duumviri,
275.
Ebionites,
6.
Eckhel,
on Coins,
163.
Edersheim, Dr.,
14.
Egnatian Road,
271.
Elymas,
203.
Ember seasons,
194.
Enthusiasm, power of,
269.
Epaphras,
350.
Ephesian letters,
355.
Ephesus, council of,
258.
Epimenides,
11.
Epiphanes, Antiochus,
6.
Epiphanius, in
Corpus Hæreseolog.,
6.
Ethnarch,
153.
Eucharist, celebration of,
393-401.
Eusebius,
H. E.,
171,
181,
199,
241,
320.
Eutychus,
403.
Expositor,
viii.
Fabricius,
Biblioth. Græc.,
315,
367.
Farrar's
St. Paul,
15,
16,
19,
20,
50,
51,
152.
Fayûm MSS.,
356.
Fechin, St.,
89,
278.
Felix,
430-432.
Fell, Bishop, on Cyprian,
401.
Ferrar, Nicholas,
176.
Festus,
448.
Findlay,
Epp. of St. Paul,
60,
295.
—— on Galatians,
234.
Fitz Ralph, Archbishop of Armagh,
227.
Fleury's
Eccles. Hist.,
246.
Forms, use of,
121.
Fox, George,
122.
Francis de Sales, St.,
279.
Friends, Society of,
122,
142.
Gaius,
326.
Galerius, Emperor,
273.
Gallio,
327-29.
Gamaliel,
13,
14,
15.
Geikie,
Holy Land,
38,
101,
119.
German criticism,
386.
Gibbon,
Decline and Fall,
150,
158,
273.
Gischala,
4,
6.
Gnosticism,
420.
Godefroy's
Comment. on Theodos. Code,
273.
Gospel, slow progress of,
269.
Goulburn's
Personal Religion,
121.
Guhl's
Ephesiaca,
356,
362,
367.
Guyon, Madame,
446.
Habakkuk,
20.
Hadrian, Emperor,
306.
Harris, Rendal, on Aristides,
321.
Hatch, Dr., on Episcopacy,
416.
Hefele's
Councils,
379.
Hegesippus,
241.
Helena, Queen,
186.
Heliogabalus,
36.
Hemerobaptists,
344.
Hermas,
434.
Herod the Great,
102,
151,
166.
—— Antipas,
30,
166.
—— Agrippa,
95,
164,
168,
183-187.
Heuzey, Leon,
Mission Archéol.,
274,
281.
Hilary,
84.
Hiram of Tyre,
183.
Hogarth, D. G.,
261.
Holy Ghost and Ordination,
414.
Hooker,
Eccles. Pol.,
29,
74,
238,
396,
419.
Horace's
Satires,
276.
Hours, canonical,
122.
Hypæpa,
198.
Hyrcanus,
31.
Iconium,
199,
260.
Imposition of hands,
414.
Incarnation, delay of,
99.
Inscriptions on Temple wall,
428.
Irenæus,
416-418.
Irenarch,
216.
Irish Academy, Royal,
89.
Island monasteries,
89.
Italian band,
103.
Jailor, Phillippian,
286-90.
James, apostle and martyr,
168-74.
James, Bishop of Jerusalem,
241,
426,
427.
Jebb, Bishop,
99.
Jerome, St.,
84,
141,
251.
——
Cat. of Illust. Writers,
4,
6.
Jews, hostility of, to early Church,
212.
—— at Athens,
308.
—— at Ephesus,
427.
Johannes Scotus,
318.
John's Eve, St.,
335.
John Baptist, disciples of,
342-44.
Jonah,
119.
Jonathan,
30.
Joppa,
118.
Josephus,
Antiqq.,
11,
31,
32,
33.
Journal of Hellenic Studies,
261,
265,
364,
372,
374,
53,
95,
102,
185,
428.
——
Wars,
95,
102,
428.
Joyce's
Acts of the Church,
237.
——
Irish Names,
88.
Judas,
56.
Julius, the centurion,
460.
Justin Martyr,
Apologies,
27,
267,
282,
395,
396.
Justus,
325.
Juvenal's
Satires,
152.
Keble, John,
70.
King, Rev. Robert,
The Ruling Elder,
417.
Kitto's
Bib. Encycl.,
16.
Knox, Alexander,
100.
Kühn's
Journal Comp. Philol.,
265.
Lacroix,
Manners of Middle Ages,
16.
Laymen in synods,
236.
Le Bas and Waddington,
Voy. Archéol.,
216.
Legions in Palestine,
103.
Lewin,
Fasti,
31,
60,
163,
167,
360.
——
St. Paul,
31,
32,
39,
45,
80,
102,
119,
186,
198.
Libanius,
151,
152.
Liddon's,
Bampt. Lect.,
420.
Lightfoot, Bishop, on the Essenes,
344.
——
Colossians,
252,
350.
——
Essays,
96,
300.
——
Galatians,
19,
20,
50,
79,
84,
247,
251,
264,
266.
——
Ignatius,
363,
378,
427.
——
Philippians,
173,
291-93,
417.
Lightfoot, Dr. J.,
Hor. Heb.,
32,
57,
441.
Lipsius, R. A.,
5.
——
Apoc. Acts,
53.
Lord's Day, observance of,
393-397.
Lucian's
Philopatris.,
312.
Luke, St., at Philippi,
391.
Lycaonia, language of,
212,
265.
Lydia,
278.
Lysias, Claudius,
429.
Lystra,
200,
212-17,
260.
Lyttelton, Lord, on
Conver. St. Paul,
40.
Lytton, Lord,
Last Days of Pompeii.
Macmillan's Mag.,
377.
Magic at Ephesus,
352.
Malalas, John,
157.
Malta,
462.
Mandeans,
344.
Mansi's
Councils,
220,
259,
379.
Maps, use of,
100.
Marcellinus, Pope,
144.
Mark, St.,
252-54,
256.
Marquardt,
104,
458.
Marseilles,
374,
390.
Mason's
Diocletian Persecution,
367.
Massutius,
Vita S. Pauli,
11,
55,
60.
Melville, Henry,
Voices of the Year,
114.
Menander,
11.
Mendicant orders,
227.
Meyer's Theory of Baptism,
342.
Miletus,
405.
Milligan, Dr., on
Resurrection,
134.
Misopogon,
159.
Mithras,
35.
Mnason,
426.
Molinos,
446.
Mommsen's
Provinces,
96,
103,
150,
378.
——
Corp. Ins. Lat.,
281,
468.
—— in
Ephem. Epig.,
140.
Monasticism, Celtic,
88.
Morinus,
Exerc. Bibl.,
13.
Müller's
Antiqq. of Antioch.,
150.
Museum Evang. Sch. of Smyrna,
264.
Nazarite vow,
333,
436.
Neapolis,
272.
Nelson's
Fasts and Festivals,
256.
Neocoros,
379,
380.
Nero, Emperor,
433,
470.
Nestorianism,
258.
Œcumenius,
84.
Oehler,
6.
Ordination and imposition of hands,
194,
414.
Ornaments rubric,
239.
Orontes,
151,
196.
Paley's
Horæ Paulinæ,
291,
360.
Pangæus, Mount,
276.
Papal Infallibility,
230.
—— Supremacy, rise of,
144.
Paphos,
197,
201.
Paul, St., in Antioch (Pisidian),
206-10.
—— in Antioch (Syrian),
157.
—— in Arabia,
77-91.
—— in Athens,
305-21.
—— baptism of,
72-77.
—— birthplace of,
4.
—— at Cæsarea, chap.
xvii.
—— and Church organisation,
216.
—— and circumcision,
225-28,
392,
435.
—— conversion of, chap.
ii.
—— at Corinth, chap.
xiii.
—— dispute at Antioch,
247.
—— at Ephesus, chaps.
xiv.,
xv.
—— exegesis of,
18,
19,
207.
—— family of,
7.
—— in Galatia,
263.
—— language of,
9.
—— in Macedonia, chap.
xii.
—— at Malta, chap.
xviii.
—— martyrdom of,
246.
—— at Miletus,
405-21.
—— on ordination,
414,
415.
—— ordination of, chap.
ix.
—— at Patara,
424.
—— portrait of,
51.
—— at Puteoli,
465.
—— quarrel with Barnabas,
248-251.
—— and Roman. See,
246.
—— and Sanhedrin,
23,
429,
442.
—— second tour of, chap.
xi.
—— at Sidon,
461.
—— speech at Apostolic Council,
241.
—— thorn in flesh,
49,
296.
—— trade of,
10,
348.
—— at Troas,
268,
392-406.
—— at Tyre,
425.
—— voyage to Rome, chap.
xviii.
Paulinus of Nola, St.,
369.
Pausanius,
Descr. of Greece,
305,
308,
312,
363,
365.
Perga,
197,
201,
364.
Persecution, religious,
192.
Peter, St., on baptism,
140.
—— on the resurrection,
133.
—— sermon at Cæsarea,
131-41.
—— vision at Joppa, chap.
vi.
—— in prison,
174-82.
Petrie's
Tara,
37.
Petronius,
95.
Pfitzner,
104.
Phalerum,
303.
Pharisees,
33.
Philemon and Baucis, story of,
213.
Philip, St., evangelist,
143,
426.
Philippi, gospel at,
273-89.
Philo,
14,
19,
23,
96,
307.
Philostratus,
Life of Apollonius,
312.
Phœbe,
332.
Photius,
263.
Pliny,
Epistles of,
28,
35,
266,
383.
——
Nat. Hist.,
199.
Police, Roman,
216.
Politarchs,
300.
Polycarp,
367,
446.
Pompeii,
466.
Pontius Pilate,
30.
Pork, use of,
128.
Porter's
Damascus,
38,
53.
Postal service under the Romans,
272.
Prayer,
66.
Preaching, decline of,
409.
Prion, Mount,
263.
Procter on
B. C. P.,
336.
Prophets,
434.
Prosbol,
16.
Proselytes,
110,
210.
Provinces, Roman, division of,
203-206.
Ptolemais,
96,
425.
Puteoli,
465.
Quadratus,
318.
Quaresmius,
Eluc. Ter. Sanct.,
57.
Quietism,
446.
Radzivilus,
Peregrinatio,
57.
Ramsay, Prof.,
Hist. Geog.,
100,
198,
200,
213,
260,
261,
363,
364.
—— on Artemis worship,
374.
Rénan,
215,
369.
Renaudot,
256.
Resurrection, evidence of,
133.
Revue Archéol.,
198,
361,
364,
374.
Roads, ancient,
37,
260,
271.
Robbers and the Apostles,
199.
Ruinart's
Acta Sincera,
267.
Sabbath,
16,
397.
Sabians,
344.
Sadducees,
33.
Sadler
on the Acts,
289.
Saint, meaning of,
60,
62,
63,
64.
Salamis,
197.
Salmon, Dr.,
Introduction to N. T.,
vi.
1,
413.
—— on Clementine literature,
259.
Sceva's sons,
355.
Schaff's
Encyclop.,
13,
110,
247.
Schœttgen's
Hor. Hebr.,
9.
Schürer,
25,
431.
Seleucia,
157,
196.
Senior, title of,
417.
Serarius,
De Rabbinis,
13.
Sergius Paulus,
201-206.
Shrine-makers, Ephesian,
369.
Sidon, church at,
461.
Silas,
257,
325.
Silence, argument from,
342,
361,
393.
Simon the Tanner,
119.
Singon Street,
157.
Sinuessa, Council of,
144.
Skelligs,
88.
Slavery,
314.
Smith, Mr. James, of Jordanhills, on
Voyage of St. Paul,
459.
Smith,
Dict. Christ. Biog.,
6,
14,
259,
273,
344,
353,
367,
434.
——
Dict. Rom. Antiqq.,
104.
——
Dict. Christ. Antiqq.,
176.
——
Dict. of Class. Biog.,
213.
Sosipatros,
199.
Spon and Wheeler,
312.
Stanley, Dean,
57.
——
Hist. East. Ch.,
301.
Stephanas,
326.
Stephens'
St. Chrysost.,
352.
Sterrett's
Epig. Journ.,
200,
213.
Stokes, G. T.,
Anglo-Norman Church,
16,
227.
——
Celtic Church,
37,
89.
Strabo,
199,
204.
Straight Street,
52.
Suetonius,
163,
273,
323,
327.
Survey of Palestine,
Memoirs of,
101.
Synagogue,
277.
Tacitus,
Annals,
352,
363.
Talmud,
13,
16.
Tanning,
120.
Taylor, Jeremy,
Holy Living,
29,
334.
——
Via Intellig.,
267.
Tertullian,
Apol.,
36.
——
De Corona,
400.
——
De Fuga,
445.
——
De Pudic.,
50.
——
on Prayer,
122-24,
195.
Texier on Galatia,
266.
Thayer's edition of Grimm's
Lex. N. T.,
252.
Theodore of Mopsuestia,
84.
Theodoret,
84.
Theodosian Code,
370.
Theophilus,
30,
32.
Thessalonica,
294-300.
Timothy,
325,
347.
—— and circumcision,
227.
—— family of,
8,
9.
—— martyrdom of,
263.
—— ordination of,
261.
Tozer's
Highlands of Turkey,
294,
300,
303.
Trajan,
28.
Trench, Archbishop,
on Words,
159.
Tridentine Council,
238.
Tyrannus,
347.
Ussher's Works,
318,
362.
Valens, Emperor,
352.
Valesius,
439.
"Vas Electionis,"
64,
65.
Vatican Council,
238.
Vespasian, Emperor,
460.
Vibius Salutarius, Gaius,
370,
371.
Vincentian rule,
100.
Virgil,
70.
Vitellius,
30,
33.
Waldstein, C.,
372.
Way, meaning of,
32,
33,
34,
347,
362,
423.
Wesley, Charles,
381.
—— John,
394.
Whately, Archbishop,
73.
Wickliffe,
227.
Wieseler's
Die Christenverfolg. der Cäsaren,
336.
Williams, Dr.,
64.
Wood's
Ephesus,
281,
362.
Xenoi Tekmoreioi, Societies of,
364.
Zeller,
On the Acts,
vi.
THE END.
Indexes
Index of Scripture Commentary
Index of Citations
Index of Latin Words and Phrases
- Mixtio conclavium:
1
- e silentio:
1
2
- imperium in imperio:
1
- in loco:
1
- in situ:
1
- laborare est orare:
1
- per se:
1
- quâ:
1
Index of Pages of the Print Edition