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THE 
 
 LIFE AND WOEK 
 
 or 
 
 ST. PAUL 
 
 BY 
 
 F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S. 
 
 Late Felloio of Trinity College, Cambridge 
 
 Canon of Westminster 
 
 and Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 NEW YOEK <{ 
 
 E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY V 
 
 713 BEOADWAY \v^ n,^ Li 
 
 188Q \',', -Xi 
 
EIGHT RBY. J. B. LIG-.HTrOOT, D.D., 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF BUKHAM, 
 
 TO -WHOM ALL BTinjENTS OP ST. PAUL's EPISTLES ABE DEEPLY INBEBTED, 
 
 AKB PROM ■WHOM POE, THIETT TEARS I HATE RECEIVED MANT KINDNESSES, 
 
 ^ 2)elittate 
 
 THESE STUDIES ON THE LITE AND WORK 
 
 THE APOSTLE OF THE GENTILSa. 
 
PEE FACE. 
 
 In the Infe of Christ I endeavoured, to the hest of my 
 power, to furnish, in the form of a narrative, such a 
 commentary upon the Gospels as should bring to bear 
 the most valuable results of modern research. By 
 studying every line and word of the Evangelists with 
 close and reverent attention; by seeking for the most 
 genuine readings and the most accurate translations ; by 
 visiting the scenes in the midst of which our Lord had 
 moved; by endeavouring to form a conception at once 
 true and vivid of the circumstances of the age in which 
 He lived, and the daily conditions of religious thought 
 and national custom by which He was surrounded — I 
 thought that, while calling attention in large to His 
 Divine Nature as the Incarnate Son of God, I might be 
 enabled to set forth in clear outline the teaching and the 
 actions of that human life which He lived for our 
 example, and of that death which He died for us men 
 and for our salvation. 
 
 In that work it was no small part of my object to 
 enable readers to study the Gospels with a fuller under- 
 standing of their significance, and with a more intense 
 impression of their reality and truth. In the present 
 volume I have undertaken a similar task for the Acts of 
 
nii PBEPAOB, 
 
 the Apostles and the thirteen Epistles of St. Paul. My 
 first desire throughout has been to render some assistance 
 towards the study of that large portion of the New 
 Testament which is occupied with the labours and 
 writings of the Apostle of the Gentiles; to show the 
 grandeur of the work and example of one who was 
 indeed a " vessel of election ; " and to bring his cha- 
 racter and history to bear on the due comprehension of 
 those Epistles, which have bequeathed to all subsequent 
 ages an inestimable legacy of wisdom and knowledge. 
 In order to accomplish this task, I can conscientiously 
 say that I have used my best diligence and care. 
 Circumstances have precluded me from carrying out my 
 original intention of actually visiting the countries in 
 which .St. Paul laboured; and to do this was the less 
 necessary because abundant descriptions of them may be 
 found in the works of many recent travellers. This 
 branch of the subject has been amply illustrated in the 
 well-known volumes of Messrs. Conybeare and Howson, 
 and Mr. Thomas Lewin. To those admirable works all 
 students of St. Paul must be largely indebted, and I 
 need not say that my own book is not intended in' any 
 way to come into competition with theirs. It has 
 been written in great measure with a different purpose, 
 as well as from a different point of view. My chief 
 object has been to give a definite, accurate, and intelli- 
 gible impression of St. Paul's teaching; of the con- 
 troversies in which he was engaged ; of the circumstances 
 which educed his statements of doctrine and practice ; of 
 the inmost heart of his theology in each of its phases ; of 
 his Epistles as a whole, and of each Epistle in particular 
 
PREFACE. is 
 
 as complete and perfect in itself. The task is, I thiak, 
 more necessary than might be generally supposed. In our 
 custom of studying the Bible year after year in separate 
 texts and isolated chapters, we are but too apt to lose sight 
 of what the Bible is as a whole, and even of the special 
 significance of its separate books. I thought, then, that 
 if I could in any degree render each of the Epistles 
 more thoroughly familiar, either in their general aspect 
 or in their special particulars, I should be rendering some 
 service — ^however humble — ^to the Church of God. 
 
 With this object it would have been useless merely 
 to re-translate the Epistles. To do this, and to append 
 notes to the more diflScult expressions, would have been 
 a very old, and a comparatively easy task. But to make 
 the Epistles an integral part of the life — to put the 
 reader in the position of those to whom the Epistles 
 were first read in the infant communities of Macedonia 
 and Proconsular Asia — was a method at once less 
 frequently attempted, and more immediately necessary. 
 I wish above all to make the Epistles comprehen- 
 sible and real. On this account I have constantly 
 deviated from the English version. Of the merits of 
 that version, its incomparable force and melody, it would 
 be impossible to speak with too much reverence, and it 
 only requires the removal of errors which were inevitable 
 to the age in which it was executed, to make it as nearly 
 perfect as any work of man can be. But our very 
 familiarity with it is often a barrier to our due under- 
 standing of many passages ; for " words," it has been 
 truly said, " when often repeated, do ossify the very 
 organs of intelligence." My object in translating with- 
 
 A 2 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 out reference to the honoured phrases of our English 
 Bible has expressly been, not only to correct where 
 correction was required, but also to brighten the edge 
 of expressions which time has dulled, and to reproduce, 
 as closely as possible, the exact force and form of the 
 original, even in those roughnesses, turns, of expression, 
 and unfinished clauses which are rightly modified in 
 versions intended for pubhc reading. To aim in these 
 renderings at rhythm or grace of style has been far from 
 my intention. I have simply tried to adopt the best 
 reading, to give its due force to each expression, tense, 
 and particle, and to represent as exactly as is at all com- 
 patible with English idiom what St. Paul meant in the 
 very way in which he said it. 
 
 With the same object, I have avoided wearying the 
 reader with those interminable discussions of often unim- 
 portant minutise — ^those endless refutations of impossible 
 hypotheses — those exhaustive catalogues of untenable 
 explanations which encumber so many of our Biblical 
 commentaries. Both as to readings, renderings, and ex- 
 planations I have given at least a definite conclusion, 
 and indicated as briefly and comprehensively as possible 
 the grounds on which it is formed. 
 
 In excluding the enumeration of transient opinions, 
 I have also avoided the embarrassing multiplication of 
 needless references. When any German book has been 
 well translated I have referred to the translation of it 
 by its English title, and I have excluded in every way 
 the mere semblance of research. In this work, as in 
 the Life of Christ, I have made large use of illustra- 
 tions from Hebrew literature. The Talmud is becoming 
 
PBBFACB. xi 
 
 better known every day; the Mishna is open to the 
 study of every scholar in the magnificent work of 
 Surenhusius ; and the most important treatises of the 
 Gremara — such as the BeracMth and the Abhoda Zara — 
 are now accessible to all, in French and German transla- 
 tions of great learning and accuracy. I have diligently 
 searched the works of various Jewish scholars, such as 
 Jost, Gratz, Schwab, Weill, Eabbinowicz, Deutsch, 
 Derenbourg, Munk, and others; Hut I have had two 
 great advantages — ^first, in the very fuU collection of 
 passages from every portion of the Talmud, by Mi-. P. 
 J. Hershon, in his Talmudic Commentaries on Genesis 
 and Exodus — an English translation of the former of 
 which is now in the press — and, secondly, in the fact that ' 
 every single Talmudic reference in the following pages 
 has been carefully verified by a learned Jewish clergy- 
 man — the Rev. M. Wolkenberg, formerly a missionary 
 to the. Jews in Bulgaria. All scholars are aware that 
 references to the Gemara are in general of a most in- 
 accurate and uncertain character, but I have reason to 
 hope that, apart, it may be, from a few accidental errata, 
 every Hebraic reference in the following pages may be 
 received with absolute reliance. 
 
 The most pleasant part of my task remains. It is 
 to offer my heartfelt thanks to the many friends who 
 have helped me to revise the following pages, or have 
 given me the benefit of their kind suggestions. To 
 one friend in particular — 'Mr. C. J. Monro, late Fellow 
 of Trin. CoU., Cambridge — ^I owe the first expression of 
 my sincerest gratitude. To the Rev. J. LI. Davies and the 
 Rev. Prof. Plumptre I am indebted for an amount of 
 
xu PREFACE. 
 
 labour and trouble sucli as it can be the happiness of 
 few authors to receive from scholars at once so com- 
 petent and so fully occupied by pubHc and private duties. 
 From the Yery Eev. the Dean of Westminster; from 
 Mr. Walter Leaf,, Fell, of Trin. Coll., Cambridge, my 
 friend and former pupU ; from the Eev. J. E. Kempe; 
 Eector of St. James's, Piccadilly ; from Mr. E. Cramett, 
 of the British Museum ; and from my valued col- 
 leagues in the parish of St. Margaret's, the Eev. H. H. 
 Montgomery and the Eev. J. S. Northcote, I have 
 received valuable advice, or kind assistance in the 
 laborious task of correcting the proof-sheets. The 
 Bishop of Durham had kindly looked over the first few 
 pages, and but for his elevation to his present high 
 position, I might have derived still further benefit from 
 his wide learning and invariable kindness. If my book 
 fail to achieve the purposes for which it was written, I 
 shall at least have enjoyed the long weeks of labour 
 spent in the closest study of the Word of Grod, and 
 next to this I shall value the remembrance that I 
 received from so many friends, a self-sacrificing kindness 
 which I had so little right to expect, and am sp little 
 able to repay. 
 
 I desire also to express my best obligations to my 
 Publishers, and the gentlemen connected with their firm, 
 who have spared no labour in seeing these volumes 
 through the press. 
 
 After having received such ungrudging aid it would 
 be ungrateful to dwell on the disadvantages in the 
 midst of which this book has been Tvritten. I have 
 done my best under the circumstances in which a task 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 of sucli dimensions was alone possible ; and though I 
 have . fallen far short of my own ideal — though I am 
 deeply conscious o£ the many necessary imperfections of 
 my work — ^though it is hardly possible that I should 
 have escaped errors in a book involving so many hundreds 
 of references, and necessitating the examination of so many 
 critical and exegetical questions — I still hope that these 
 volumes will be accepted as furnishing another part of a 
 humble but faithful endeavour to enable those who read 
 them to acquire a more thorough knowledge of a large 
 portion of the Word of Q-od. 
 
 F. W. PAEEAE. 
 
TABLE OF CONTEJSTTS. 
 
 TBook I. 
 
 THE TRAINING OB" THE APOSTLE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 iNTEODrCTOET. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Various types of the Apostolate — St. Peter and St. John — The place of St. 
 Paul in the History, of the Church — His training in Judaism — What we 
 may learn of his Life — Modern Criticism of the Acts of the Apostles — 
 Authorities for the Biography of St. Paul — Eecords, though fragmentary, 
 Buffice for a true estimate — Grandeur of the Apostle's Work ... 1 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 Boyhood in a Heathen City. 
 
 Date of his Birth — Question of Birthplace — Gisoala or Tarsus ? — The Scenery 
 of Tarsus — Its History and Trade — Paul's indifference to the beauties of 
 Nature — His Parentage — Early Education — Contact with Pagatiism — Pa- 
 ganism as seen at Tarsus — Paganism as it was — A decadent culture — 
 Impressions left on the mind of St. Panl^St. Paul a Hebraist — His 
 supposed familiarity with Classical Literature shown to be an untenable 
 opinion .............13 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 The School oi' the Rabbi. 
 
 Roman Citizenship — School Life at Tarsus and Jerusalem — Gamaliel — Perma- 
 nent effects of Rabbinic training as traced in the Epistles — St. Paul's 
 knowledge of the Old Testament — His method of quoting and applying 
 the Scriptures^Instances — Rabbinic in form, free in spirit — Freedom 
 from RaBbinio faults — Examples of his allegoric method — St. Paul a 
 Hagadist — The Eagada and the Halacha ..••... 40 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Saul the Phaeiseb. 
 
 Early strnggles — The minutiae of Pharisaism — Sense of their insufficiency — 
 Legal blamelessness gave no peace — Pharisaic hypocrisies — Troubled 
 
62 
 
 £vi CONTENTS. 
 
 FAGI 
 
 years-Memories of these early doTibts never obUterated-Had Sanl seen 
 Jesus ?— It is almost certain that he had not— Was he a mamed mant' 
 — Strong probability that he was ..•••••* 
 
 CHAPTER v. 
 St. Petee and the First Pentecost. 
 
 Saul's First Contact with the Cairistians— Source of their energy— The Eesnr- 
 reotion— The Ascension-First Meeting— Election of Matthias— The Upper 
 Eoom— Three Temples— Tfie Descent of the Spirit at Pentecost— Earth- 
 quake, Wind, and Flame— Tongues— Nature of the Gift— Varying opinions- 
 Ancient and Modern Views— Glossolaly at Corinth— Apparent nature of the 
 sign— Derisive Comment— Speech of Peter— Immediate Effects on the 
 Progress of the Church ...••••••• 
 
 chaptee vi. 
 Eaelt Pbesectitions-. 
 
 Beauty and Power of the Primitive Christian Life— Alarm of the Sanhedrin— • 
 Peter and John— Gamaliel— Toleration and Caution- Critical Arguments 
 against the Genuineness of his Speech examined — The Tubingen School on 
 theAots • l'>'» 
 
 83 
 
 TSotik II. 
 
 ST. STEPHEN AND THE HELLENISTS. 
 CHAPTEE Vn. 
 
 The Diabpoea: Hbbeaism and Hellenism:. 
 
 Preparation for Christianity by three events- Spread of the Greek La'ngnage— 
 Eise of the Eoman Empire — Dispersion of the Jews — Its vast Effects — 
 Its Influence on the Greeks and Eomans— Its Influence on the Jews them- 
 selves — Worked in opposite directions— Pharisaic Jews— Growing Power 
 of the Scribes— Decay of Spirituality — Liberal Jews — Commerce Cosmo- 
 politan — Hellenes and Hellenists — Classes of Christians tabulated — Two 
 Schools of Hellenism — Alexandrian Hellenists — Hebraising Hellenists — 
 Hellenists among the Christians — ^Widows — The Seven — Stephen . . 114 
 
 CHAPTER Vm. 
 
 WOEK AND MAETTEDOM OF St. STEPHEN. * 
 
 Success of the Seven — Pre-eminent faith of Stephen — Clear Views of the 
 Kingdom — Tardier Enlightenment of the Apostles — Hollow Semblance of 
 Union with Judaism — Eelation of the Law to the Gospel — Ministry of St. 
 Stephen — Hellenistic Synagogues — Saul — Power of St. Stephen — Eabbinio 
 Views of Messiah — Scriptural View of a Suffering Messiah — Suspected 
 Heresies — Discomfiture and Violence of the Hellenists — St. Stephen 
 
CONTENTS. XTu 
 
 PAOB 
 
 ftrreBtea — Charges brought against him — The Trial — "The Face of an 
 Angel " — The Speech delivered in Greek — Line of Argument — Its consum- 
 mate Skill — Proofs of its Authenticity — His Method of Befntation and 
 Demonstration — Sudden Outburst of Indignation — LaWess Proceedings — 
 " He fell asleep "—Saul 135 
 
 TBotik III. 
 
 THE CONVERSION. 
 
 CHAPTER rX. 
 SatjIi the Pebsectttoe. 
 
 Age of Saul — His Violence — Severity of the Persecution underrated — " Com- 
 pelled them to blaspheme " — Flight of the Christians — Continued Fury of 
 Saul — Asks for Letters to Damascus — The High Priest Theophilus — Aretas 169 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Contbesion op Saul. 
 
 The Commissioner of the Sanhedrin — The Journey to Damascus — Inevitable 
 Reaction and Reflection — Lonely Musings — Kicking against the Pricks — 
 Doubts and Difficulties — Ifoon — The Journey's End — The Vision and the 
 Voice — Change of Heart — The Spiritual Miracle — Sad Entrance into 
 Damascus — Ananias — The Conversion as an Evidence of Christianity . 180 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The E/Etieement of St. Pauii. 
 
 SanI a " Nazarene " — ^Records of this Period fragmentary — His probable 
 Movements guided by Psychological Considerations — His Gospel not " of 
 man " — ^Yearnings for Solitude — Days in Damascus — Sojourn in Arabia — 
 Origin of the " Stake in the Flesh" — Feelings which it caused — Influence 
 on the Style of the Epistles— Peculiarites of St. Paul's Language — 
 Alternating Sensibility and Boldness ........ 205 
 
 CHAPTER Xn. 
 
 The Begini^ino or A Long Maettedom. 
 
 " To the Jew first " — ^Reappearance in Damascus — Saul in the Synagogues — 
 No ordinary Disputant — The Syllogism of Violence — First Plot to Murder 
 him — His Escape from Damascus — Journey to Jerusalem . . • . 223 
 
 CHAPTER Xm. 
 
 Saul's Reception at Jeeusalem. 
 
 Visit to Jerusalem — ^Apprehensions and Anticipations — St. Peter's Goodness 
 of Heart — Saul and James — Contrast of their Charaotex and Epistlei 
 
tviii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAQH 
 
 The Intervention of Barnabas— Intercourse with St. Peter— Sanl and the 
 HeUenists- Trance and Vision of Saul at Jerusalem— Plot to Murder him 
 —Plight— Silent Period at Tarsus ^^^ 
 
 CHAPTEE XrV. 
 Gaitts and the Jews— Peace oe the Chctech. 
 
 'Then had the Chnrch rest"— Surrey of the Period —Tiberius— Accession 
 of Gains (Caligula) — Herod Agrippa I. — Persecution of the Jews of 
 Alexandria — Pall of Placons — Madness of Gains — Determined to place 
 his Statue in the Temple — Anguish of the Jews — The Legate Petronius — 
 Embassy of Philo — Murder of Gains — Accession of Claudius . . . 243 
 
 ^OOfe IV. 
 THE RECOGNITION OF THE GENTILB& 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Samaritans — The Eunuch— The Oentueioit. 
 
 The brightening Dawn of the Church — " Other Sheep not of this Fold " — Conse- 
 quence of Saul's Persecution — Philip in Samaria — Simon Magus — The 
 Ethiopian Eunuch — Significance of his Baptism — St. Peter at Joppa — 
 House of Simon the Tanner — Two Problems : (I) AVhat was the Relation 
 of the Church to the Gentiles (2) and to the Levitioal Law f — Christ and 
 the Mosaic Law — tltterances of the Prophets — ^Uncertainties of St. Peter 
 — The Tanner's Eoof — The Trance — Its Strange Significance and Appro- 
 priateness — "This he said . . . making all meats pure" — Cornelius — 
 " God is no respecter of persons " — Bold initiative of Petei — ^Ferment 
 at Jerusalem — How it was appeased . . >•••>. 256 
 
 :i5oo& V. 
 
 ANTIOCH. 
 
 chaptee xvi; 
 
 The Second Capital op Cheistiaitity. 
 
 Hellenists boldly preach to the Gentiles — Barnabas at Antiooh — Need of a 
 Colleague— He brings Saul from Tarsus— The Third Metropolis of the' 
 World, the Second Capital of Christianity— Site and Splendour of Antiooh ^ 
 
 — Its Population — Its Moral Degradation — Scepticism and Credulity 
 
 Daphne and its Asylum- The Street Singon— The Name of " Christian"— 
 Its Historic Significance— Given by Gentiles— Christiani and Chrestiani— 
 Not at once adopted by the Church- Marks a Memorable Epoch— Joy of 
 Gentile Converts ••••...,, 284 
 
CONTENTS. m 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 A Maettbdom and a EBTEiBrTioN. 
 
 PAOE 
 
 A. Tear of Happy Work — Another Vision — Agabus and the Famine— Colleo- . 
 tions for Poor Brethren of Jerusalem — Paul and Barnabas sent with the 
 Chal/UiTca — The Eoyal Family of Adiabene — The PoUoy of Herod Agrippa I. 
 — Martyrdom of St. James the Elder — Seizure and Escape of Fetei — 
 Agrippa in his Splendour — Smitten of God — St. Mark . . • . 304 
 
 CHAPTER XVin. 
 
 Judaism and Heathenism. 
 
 The Church at Antiooh — Stirrings of the Missionary Spirit — The Prophets and 
 the Gentiles — Difficulties of the Work — Hostility of the Jews to the 
 Ctospel — ^Abrogation of the Law — ^A'Cruoified Messiah — Political Timidity 
 — Hatred of Gentiles for all Jews and especially for Christian Jews — 
 Depravity of the Heathen World — Influx of Oriental Superstitions — 
 Despairing Pride of Stoicism — The Voice oi the Spirit . • • • 322 
 
 ^oofe VI. 
 the fiest missionary journey. 
 
 chapter sk. 
 
 Otpeus. 
 
 "Sent forth by the. Holy Ghost" — Ancient Travelling — Prospects of the 
 Future — Paul, his Physical and Moral Nature — His Extraordinary Gifts — 
 Barnabas — Mark — Arrival at Cyprus — The Pagan Population — Salamia — 
 The Syrian Aphrodite — Paphos— Sergius Paulus— ^Elymas — Just Denuncia- 
 tion and Judgment — " Saul who also is called Paul" • • • • 336 
 
 CHAPTER- XX. 
 
 Antioch in Pisidia. 
 
 Perga — Defection of Mark — Passes of the Taurus — St. Paul's Absorption in 
 his one Purpose — Pisidiau Antioch — ^Worship of the Synagogue — The 
 Parashah and Haphtarah — The Sermon in the Synagogue — Example of 
 Paul's Method — Power of his Preaching — Its Effect on the Jews — Imme- 
 diate Results — " We turn to the Gentiles " — ^Driven from the City . . 357 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 The Close of the JorENET. 
 
 Iconinm — Persistent Enmity of the Jews — Lyatra — Healing of the Cripple^ 
 Unwelcome Honours — The Fickle Mob — The Stoning — Probable Meeting 
 with Timothy — Derbe — They Retrace their Steps — Return to Antioch — 
 Date of the Journey — Effects of Experience on St. Paul — The Apostle of 
 the Gentiles 377 
 
XX OONTEiraS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 The CoNSTJIiTATION AT JeBTTSAIiEM. 
 
 PA3B 
 
 "Certain from Judsea" visit Antioch— A Haxd Dogma — Cironmoision— A 
 Crashing Yoke— Paul's Indignation— Eeferenoe to Jernsalem— The Dele- 
 gates from Antioch— Sympathy with them in their Jonrney— The First 
 Meeting— The Private Conference— The Three won over to St. Panl'a 
 Views— Their Eeqnest about the Poor— Titus- Was he Ciroumoiaed? — 
 Strong Eeasons for believing that he was — Motives of St. Paul — The 
 Final Synod— Eager Debate— The Speech of St. Peter— St. James : his 
 Ciiaraoter and Speech — His Scriptural Argument — Final Results — The 
 Synod not a " Council"— The Apostolic Letter— Not a Comprehensive and 
 Final "Decree" — Questions still Unsolved — Certain GenoineuesB of the 
 Letter — Its Prohibitions . 398 
 
 CHAPTER XXin. 
 
 St. Petee anb St. Pattl at Antioch. 
 
 Joy at Antioch — Ascendency of St. Paul — St. Peter at Antioch — Arrival of 
 " certain from James " — " He separated himself " — Want of Moral Courage 
 — ^Unhappy Results — Arguments of St. Paul — Character of St. Peter — A 
 Public Rebuke — Effects of the Rebuke — Malignity of the Pseudo Clemen- 
 tine Writings — Mission-Hunger — The Quarrel of Paul and Barnabas — 
 Results of their Separation — Overruled for Good — Barnabas and Mark . 437 
 
 CHAPTER xxr v. . 
 
 Beginning of the Second Missionaet Journey — Paul, Silas, 
 Timothy — Paul in Galatia. 
 
 Paul and Silas — The Route by Land — The Cilician Gates — Derbe — Where is 
 Barnabas ? — Lystra — " Timothy, my Son " — His Circumcision and Ordina- 
 tion — The Phrygian and Galatian District — Scanty Details of the 
 Record — The Galatians — Ulnesa of St. Paul — Kindness of the Galatians 
 —Varied Forms of Religion— Pessinus, Ancyra, Tavium — Their course 
 - guided by Divine intimations —Troas — The Vision — "Come over into 
 Maccedonia and help ua" — Meeting with St. Luke — His Character and 
 Influence 454 
 
 TSook VII. 
 CHRISTIANITY IN MACEDONIA. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 Philippi. 
 
 The Sail to NeapoUs— Philippi— The Place of Prayer— lyaia^Maooaonlan 
 Women-Characteristics of PhiUppian Converts— The Girl with a Spirit o£ 
 Python — The Philippian Prsetors — Their Injustice- Scourging— The 
 Dungeon and the Stocks— Prison Psalms— The Earthquake— Conversion 
 of the Jailer— Honourably diamiaaed from Philippi 482 
 
CONTENTS. »d 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 THESSALOIiriCA AND BeBOIA. 
 
 PASS 
 
 Thessalonioa and its History — Poverty of the Apostles — Philippian Generosity 
 — Success among the Gentiles — Summary of Teaching — St. Paul's State 
 of Mind — ^The Mob and the Politarohs — Attack on the House of Jason — 
 Plight to Beroea — " These were more noble " — Sopater — Escape to Athens . 504 
 
 0&OO& VIII. 
 CHRISTIANITY IN ACHAIA. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXTII. 
 
 St. Pattl at Athens. 
 
 The Spell of Athena— Its Effect on St, Paul— A City of Statues— Heathen Art 
 — Impression produced on the Mind of St. Paul — Altar " to the Unknown 
 God" — Athens "under the Empire — Stoics and Epicureans — Curiosity 
 excited — The Areopagus — A Mock Trial — Speech of St. Paul — Its Power, 
 Tact, and Wisdom — Its many-sided Applications — Mockery at the Besur- 
 rection — ^Besnlts of St. Paul's Yisit ..••... 521 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVm. 
 St. Paul at Oobinth. 
 
 Corinth — ^Ita Population and Trade — ^Worship of Aphrodite — Aqnila and 
 Priacilla — Eager Activity — Crispus — Character ^f the Corinthian Converts 
 — Effect of Experience on St. Paul's Preaching — Eupture with the Jews — 
 Another Vision^Gallio — Discomfiture of the Jews — Beating of Soathenes 
 .—Superficial Disdain • • • • . 553 
 
 CHAPTEE XXrX. 
 The Fibst Epibtle to the Thessaloniaws. 
 
 Timothy with St. Paul — Advantages of Epistolary Teaching — Importance of 
 bearing its Characteristics in Mind — ^Vivid Spontaneity of Style — St. 
 Paul's Form of Greeting— The Use of " we " and " I "-Grace and Peace — 
 The Thanksgiving — Personal Appeal against Secret Calumnies — Going off 
 at a Word — Bitter Complaint against the Jews — ^Doctrinal Section — The 
 Coming of the Lord — Practical Exhortations — Unreasonable Tears asxegards 
 the Dead — Be ready — Warning against Insubordination and Despondency 
 —Its Eeception — The Second Advent — Conclusion of the First Epistle . 574 
 
 chaptee xxx. 
 
 The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. 
 
 News from Thessalonioa— EfPecta of the First Letter— A New Danger— Eaoha- 
 tological Excitement — " We which are alive and remain " — St. Paul's 
 Meaning — The Day of the Lord — Destruction of the Eoman and the 
 
OONTEBTTS. 
 
 MUM 
 
 Jewish Temples— Object of the Seoond Epistle— The Epistles Eioh in 
 Details, but TJnitorm in Method— Conaiat generally of Six Sections— The 
 Greeting- Dootrinal and Practical Sections of the Epistle — Moral 
 Warnings— Autograph Authentication— Passage respecting " the Man of 
 Sin" — Mysterious Tone of the Language — Eeason for this— Similar 
 Passage in Josephus— What ia meant by " the Checker " and " the Check " 
 — The rest incapable of present explanation 599 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 ExouEsiTS I. — The Style of St. Paul as Illustrative of his Character . . 619 
 
 ExcrcBSXJS n.— The Rhetoric of St. Paul 625 
 
 ExcTTESus in. — The Classic Quotations and Allusions of St. Paul . . . 630 
 
 ExcuESTTS IV. — St. Paul a Hagadist 638 
 
 ExcuEsus V. — Gamaliel and the School of Tubingen 644 
 
 ExotTESTJS VI. — On Jewish Stoning 647 
 
 ExcTTESTJS Vn. — On the Power of the Sanhedrin to Inflict Capital Panishment 648 
 
 ExotJESUs Vni. — Damascus under Hareth 650 
 
 ExCTTESTOS IX. — Saul in Arabia 651 
 
 ExcuEStrs X.— St. Paul's "Stake in the Elesh" 652 
 
 ExcUESTTS XI. — On Jewish Scourgings 661 
 
 ExcTiESTJS XII. — Apotheoais of Boman Emperors 664i 
 
 ExouEsus XIIL — Burdens laid on Proselytes 666 
 
 ExCTJESus XrV. — Hatred of the Jews in Classical Antiquity .... 667 
 ExcTJEStrs XV. — Judgment of Early Pagan Writers on Christiai^l^ . . 669 
 ExcuESXTS XVT.— The Proconsulate of Sergius Panlns . , . , . 671 
 
 ExcxTESUs AVll. — St. John and St. Paul 673 
 
 ExcuESus XVin. — St. Paul in the ClementinoB •••»,, 676 
 
THE 
 
 Life and Work of St. Paul. 
 
 THE TRAINING OF THE APOSTLE. 
 
 OHAPTEE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 3k(vos iK\oyijs fioi etxriv oZros, — ^ACTS iz. 15. 
 
 Op the twelve men whom Jesus chose to be His com- 
 panions and heralds during the brief years of His earthly- 
 ministry, two alone can be said to have stamped upon 
 the infant Church the impress of their own individuality. 
 These two were John and Simon. Our Lord Himself, 
 by the titles which He gave them, indicated the distinc- 
 tions of their character, and the pre-eminence of their gifts. 
 John was called a Son of Thunder; Simon was to be 
 known to all ages as Kephas, or Peter, the Apostle of 
 the Foundation stone.^ To Peter was granted the honour 
 of, authoritatively admitting the first uncircumcised 
 Gentile, on equal terms, into the brotherhood of Christ, 
 and he has ever been regarded as the main pillar of the 
 early Church.^ John, on the other hand, is the Apostle 
 of Love, the favourite Apostle of the Mystic, the chosen 
 Evangelist of those whose inward adoration rises above the 
 level of outward forms. Peter as the first to recognise 
 
 1 1 Pet. ii. 4-8. « GaL ii 9. 
 
 B 
 
2 THE LITE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 the Eternal Christ, John as the chosen friend of the 
 living Jesus, are the two of that first order of Apostles 
 whose names appear to human eyes to shine with the 
 brightest lustre upon those twelve precious stones, which, 
 are the foundations of the New Jerusalem.^ 
 
 Yet there was another, to whom was entrusted a 
 wider, a more fruitful, a more laborious mission; who 
 was to found more numerous churches, to endure intenser 
 suffering-s, to attract to the fold of Christ a vaster mul- 
 titude of followers. On the broad shoulders of St. Peter 
 rested, at first, the support and defence of the new Society; 
 yet his endurance was not tested so terribly as that of him 
 on whom fell daily the " care of all the churches." St. 
 John was the last survivor of the Apostles, and he barely 
 escaped sharing with his brother the glory of being one 
 of the earliest martyrs; yet even his life of long exile 
 and heavy tribulations was a far less awful trial than 
 that of him who counted it but a light and momentary 
 affliction to " die daily," to be " in deaths oft." ^ A third 
 type of the Apostolate was necessary. Besides the 
 Apostle of Catholicity and the Apostle of Love, the 
 Church of Christ needed also " the Apostle of Progress." 
 
 In truth it is hardly possible to exaggerate the 
 extent, the permanence, the vast importance, of those 
 services which were rendered to Christianity by Paul of 
 Tarsus. It would have been no mean boast for the most 
 heroic worker that he had toiled more abundantly than 
 such toilers as the Apostles. It woidd have been a suffi- 
 cient claim to eternal gratitude to have preached from 
 Jerusalem to Ulyricum, from Ulyricum to Eome, and, it 
 may be, even to Spain, the Gospel which gave new life to 
 a weary and outworn world. Yet these are, perhaps, the 
 least permanent of the benefits which mankind has reaped 
 ■ 1 Rev., xxi. 14. s 1 Cor. xv. 31 ; 2 Oor. xi. 23. 
 
WORK or ST. PATJIi. 3 
 
 from his life and genius. For it is in liis Epistles — casual 
 as was the origin of some of them — that we find the 
 earliest utterances of that Christian literature to which 
 the world is indebted for its richest treasures of poetry and 
 eloquence, of moral wisdom and spiritual consolation. It 
 is to his intellect, fired by th^ love and illuminated by 
 the Spirit of his Lord, that we owe the first systematic 
 statement, in their mutual connection and inter-depen- 
 dence, of the great truths of that Mystery of Godliness 
 which had been hidden from the ages, but was revealed in 
 the Gospel of the Christ. It is to his undaunted determi- 
 nation, his clear vision, his mbral loftiness that we are 
 indebted for the emancipation of religion from the intoler- 
 able yoke of legal observances — the cutting asunder of the 
 living body of Christianity from the heavy corpse of an 
 abrogated Leviti«m.^ It was he alone who was God's 
 appointed instrument to render possible the universal 
 spread of Christianity, and to lay deep in the hearts 
 of European churches the solid bases of Christendom. 
 As the Apostle of the Gentiles he was pre-eminently and 
 necessarily the Apostle of freedom, of culture, of the un- 
 derstanding ; yet he has, if possible, a higher glory than 
 all this, in the fact that he too, more than any other, is 
 the Apostle who made clear to the religious consciousness 
 of mankind the " justification by faith" which springs 
 from the mystic union of the soul with Christ — the 
 Apostle who has both brought home to numberless Chris- 
 tians in aU ages the sense of their own helplessness, and 
 pointed them most convincingly to the blessedness and 
 the universality of that redemption which their Saviour 
 wrought. And hence whenever the faith of Christ has 
 been' most dimmed in the hearts of men, whenever its pure 
 fires have seemed in greatest danger of being stifled, as in 
 
 » Gal. iv. 9; Rom. viii, 3. (Heb. to. 18.) 
 B 2 
 
4 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 the fifteenth century — under the dead ashes of sensuality, 
 or quenched, as in the eighteenth century, by the chilling 
 blasts of scepticism, it is mostly by the influence of his 
 writings that religious life has been revived.^ It was one 
 of his searching moral precepts — " Let us walk honestly, 
 as in the day ; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in 
 chamberiag, and wantonness, not in strife and envying " — 
 w:hich became to St. Augustine a guiding star out of the 
 night of deadly moral aberrations.^ It was his prevailing 
 doctrine of free deliverance through the merits of Christ 
 which, as it had worked in the spirit of Paul himself 
 to shatter the bonds of Jewish formalism, worked once 
 more in the soul of Luther to burst the gates of brass, 
 and break the bars of iron in sunder with which the 
 Papacy had imprisoned for so many centuries the souls 
 Avhich Grod made free. 
 
 It has happened not unfrequently in the providence 
 of God that the destroyer of a creed or system has been 
 bred and trained in the inmost bosom of the system 
 which he was destined to shake or to destroy. Sakya 
 Mouni had been brought up in Brahminism ; Luther had 
 taken the vows of an Augustinian; Pascal had been 
 trained as a Jesuit; Spinoza was a Jew; Wesley and 
 Whitefield were clergymen of the Church of England. It 
 was not otherwise with St. Paul. The victorious enemy 
 of heathen philosophy and heathen worship had passed his 
 boyhood amid the heathen surroundings of a philosophic 
 city. The deadliest antagonist of Judaic exclusiveness 
 was by birth a Hebrew of the Hebrews. The dealer 
 of the death- wound to the spirit of Pharisaism was a 
 Pharisee, a son of Pharisees ;^ had been brought up from 
 
 ' See Neander, Planting, E.T., p. 78. 
 
 2 Aug. Confess, viii. 12—18 ; Krenkel, Paidus der Ap. d. Eeiden, p. 1. 
 
 3 Acts xxiii. 6 (Phil. iii. 5). The true reading, vlhs iapi<ra'wi> («. A, B, 0, 
 Syr., Vulg.) i he was a Pharisee of the third generation, rpi<papi(raios. 
 
WORK OF ST. PAUL. 5 
 
 his youth at Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel ;^ had been 
 taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the 
 fathers ; had lived " after the most straitest sect " of the 
 Jewish service.® As his work dijffered in many respects 
 from that of the other Apostles, so his training was 
 wholly unlike theirs. Their earliest years had been 
 spent in the villages of Grennesareth and the fisher-huts 
 on the shores of the Sea of Galilee ; his in the crowded 
 ghetto of a Pagan capital. They, with few exceptions, 
 were men neither of commanding genius nor strongly 
 marked characteristics ; he was a man of intense indi- 
 viduality and marvellous intellectual power. They were 
 " unlearned and ignorant," untrained in the technicalities, 
 inexperienced in the methods, which passed among the 
 Jews for theologic learning ; he had sat as a " disciple of 
 the wise "^ at the feet of the most eminent of the Eabbis,' 
 and had been selected as the inquisitorial agent of Priests 
 and Sanhedrists because he surpassed his contemporaries 
 in burning zeal for the traditions of the schools.* 
 
 This is the man whose career will best enable us to 
 understand the Dawn of Christianity upon the darkness 
 alike of Jew and Gentile; the man who loosed Christianity 
 from the cerements of Judaism, and inspired the world 
 of Paganism with joy and hope. The study of his life 
 will leave upon our minds a fuller conception of the 
 extreme nobleness of the man, and of the truths which 
 he lived and died to teach. And we must consider 
 that life, as far as possible, without traditional bias, 
 and with the determination to see it a^ it appeared 
 to his contemporaries, as it appeared to Paul himself. 
 
 1 Acts xxii. 3 ; xxvi. 4. 
 
 " Acts xxvi. 5. Bpriiricela is rather " cult," " external service," than " religion." 
 
 8 The D3n To'jn of whose praises and pxiyileges the Talmud is full. 
 
 * Gal. i. 14, irpo€Koirrov Iv Tip 'loviaiapi^ {i.e., in Jewish observances), uirip, 
 
 «,T.A., iripKTtroTepais fT)\aiTJ)s, K.r.A. 
 
6 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 " For if lie was a Paid," says St. Chrysostom, " he also 
 was a man/'— nay, more than this, his very infirmities 
 enhanced his greatness. He stands infinitely ahove the 
 need of indiscriminate panegyric. If we describe him 
 as exempt from all human weakness — ^if we look at his 
 actions as though it were irreverence to suppose that they 
 ever feE' short of his own ideal — we not only describe an 
 impossible character, but we contradict his own reiterated 
 testimonies. It is not a sinless example which we are 
 now called upon to contemplate, but the life of one who, 
 in deep sincerity, called himself "the chief of sinners;" 
 it is the career of one whose ordinary life (/St'o?) was 
 human, not divine — human in its impetuosity, human in 
 its sensibilities, human, perhaps, in some of its concessions 
 and accommodations; but whose inner life (?»^) was truly 
 divine in so far as it manifested the workings of the Spirit, 
 in so far as it was dead to the world, and hid with Christ 
 in Grod.^ It is utterly alien to the purpose and manner of 
 Scripture to present to us any of our fellow-men in the 
 light of faultless heroes or unapproachable demi-gods. The 
 notion that it is irreverent to suppose a flaw in the conduct 
 of an Apostle is one of those instances of "false humility" 
 which degrade Scripture under pretence of honouring it, 
 and substitute a dead letter-worship for a living docility. 
 From idealised presentments of the lives of our fellow- 
 servants,^ there would be but little for us to learn ; but 
 we do learn the greatest and most important of all lessons 
 when we mark in a struggling soul the triumph of the grace 
 of God — ^when we see a man, weak like ourselves, tempted 
 like ourselves, erring like ourselves, enabled by the force of 
 a sacred purpose to conquer temptation, to trample on 
 .selfishness, to rear even upon sins and failures the super- 
 
 1 B(oj, vita quam vivimas; C<»i], vUa qua vivvmuB. (Gal u. 20.) 
 * Rev. xix. ]0. 
 
THE ACTS AND THE EPISTLES. V 
 
 stnieture of a great and holy life,^-to build (as it were) "the 
 cities of Juc(ah out of the ruined fortresses of Samaria." ^ 
 
 It may seem strange if I say that we know the heart 
 of St. Paul to its inmost depths. It is true that, besides 
 a few scattered remnants of ecclesiastical tradition, we 
 have but two sources whence to derive his history — 
 the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of Paul him- 
 self ; and the day has gone by when we could at once, 
 and without further inquiry, assume that both of these 
 sources, in the fullest extent, were absolutely and equally 
 to be relied on. Since Baur wrote his Paultts, and Zeller 
 his Apostelgeschichte, it has become impossible to make use 
 of the Acts of the Apostles, and the thirteen Epistles 
 commonly attributed to St. Paul, without some justifica- 
 tion of the grounds upon which their genuineness is 
 established. To do this exhaustively would require a 
 separate volume, and the work has been already done, and 
 is being done by abler hands than mine. All that is here 
 necessary is to say that I should in no instance make use of 
 any statement in those Epistles of which the genuineness 
 ,can still be regarded as fairly disputable, if I did not hope 
 to state some of the reasons which appear sujEcient to 
 justify my doing so ; and that if in any cases the genuine- 
 ness or proper superscription of any Epistle, or part of an 
 Epistle, seems to me to be a matter of uncertainty, I 
 shall feel no hesitation in expressing such an opinion. 
 Of the Acts of the Apostles I shall have various oppor- 
 tunities to speak incidentally, and, without entering on 
 any separate defence of the book against the assaults of 
 modern critics, I wUl at present only express my con- 
 viction that, even if we admit that it was " an ancient 
 Eirenicon," intended to check the strife of parties by 
 showing that there had been no irreconcilable opposition 
 
 * Boasuet (1 Kings xv. 22). Acts xiv. 15. 
 
8 THE LIFE AKD WOEK Or ST. PAUL. 
 
 between tlie views and ordinances o£ St. Peter and St. 
 Paul;— even if we concede the obvious priivjiple that 
 whenever there appears to be any contradiction between 
 the Acts and the Epistles, the authority o£ the latter 
 must be considered paramount ; — nay, even if we acknow- 
 ledge that subjective and artificial considerations may 
 have had some influence in the form and construction 
 of the book ; — yet the Acts of the Apostles is in all its 
 main outlines a genuine and trustworthy history. Let 
 it be granted that in the Acts we have a picture of 
 essential unity between the followers of the Judaic and 
 the Pauline schools of thought, which we might con- 
 jecture from the Epistles to have been less harmonious 
 and undisturbed ; let it be granted that in the Acts we - 
 more than once see Paul acting in a way which from the 
 Epistles we should a priori have deemed unlikely. Even 
 these concessions are fairly disputable; yet in granting them 
 we only say what is in itself sufficiently obvious, that both 
 records are confessedly fragmentary. They are fragmen- 
 tary, of course, because neither of them even professes to 
 give us any continuous narrative of the Apostle's life. 
 That life is — roughly speaking — only known to us at 
 intervals during its central and later period, between the 
 years A.D. 36 and A.D. 66. It is like a manuscript of 
 which the beginning and the end are irrecoverably lost. 
 It is like one of those rivers which spring from unknown 
 sources, and sink into the ground before they have reached 
 the sea. But more than this, how incomplete is our 
 knowledge even of that portion of which. these records and 
 notices remain ! Of this fact we can have no more over- 
 whelming proof than we may derive from reading that 
 " Ili-ad of woes," the famous passage of the Second Epistle 
 to the Corinthians, where, driven against his wUl by the 
 .calumnies of his enemies to an appearance of boastfulness 
 
THE RECORDS FRAGMENTARY. 9 
 
 of which the very notion was abhorrent to him, he is 
 forced to write a summary sketch of what he had done and 
 suflfered.^ That enumeration is given long before the end 
 of his career, and yet of the specific outrages and dangers 
 there mentioned no less than eleven are not once alluded 
 to in the Acts, though many others are there mentioned 
 which were subsequent to that sad enumeration. Not one, 
 for instance, of the five scourgings with Jewish thongs is 
 referred to by St. Luke ; one only of the three beatings 
 with Roman rods; not one of the three shipwrecks, though 
 a later one is so elaborately detailed ; no allusion to the 
 night and day in the deep ; two only of what St. Clement 
 teUs us were seven imprisonments.^ There are even whole 
 classes of perils to which the writer of the Acts, though 
 he was certainly at one time a companion of St. Paul, 
 makes no allusion whatever — as, for instance, the perils of 
 rivers, the perils of robbers, the perils in the wilderness, 
 the perils among false brethren, the hunger, the thirst, the 
 fasting, the cold, the nakedness. And these, which are 
 thus passed over without notice in the Acts, are in the 
 Epistles mentioned only so cursorily, so generally, so un- 
 chronologically, that scarcely one of them can be dwelt 
 upon and assigned with certainty to its due order of 
 succession in St. Paul's biography. If this, then, is the 
 case, who can pretend that in such a life there is not room 
 for a series <d events and actions — eten for an exhibition 
 of phases of character — in the narrative, which neither did 
 nor could find place in the letters ; and for events and 
 features of character in the letters which find no reflection 
 in the narrative ? For of those letters how many are 
 preserved ? Thirteen only — even if all the thirteen be 
 
 ^ 2 Cor. xi. 24 — 33, wriften about A.D. 57, nearly ten years before his 
 death. 
 
 * tTTTa/ctj Seit/uci ipopitras (Ep. 1 ad Cor, 5). 
 
10 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 indisputably genuine — out of a much larger multitude 
 which he must midoubtedly have written.^ And of these 
 thirteen some are separated from others by great intervals 
 of time; some contain scarcely a single particular which 
 can be made to bear on a consecutive biography; and not 
 one is preserved which gives us the earlier stage of his 
 views and experiences before he had set foot on European 
 soil. It is, then, idle to assume that either of our sources 
 must be rejected as untrustworthy because it presents us 
 with fresh aspects of a myriad-sided character; or that 
 events in the narrative must be condemned as scarcely 
 honest inventions because they present no prima facie 
 accordance with what we might otherwise have expected 
 from brief and Scattered letters out of the multiplex 
 correspondence of a varied life. If there were anything 
 in the Acts which appeared to me irreconcilable with 
 the certain indications of the Epistles, I should feel 
 no hesitation in rejecting it. But most, if not all, of 
 the objections urged against the credibility of the 
 Acts appear to me — for reasons to be hereafter given — 
 both frivolous and untenable. If there are any passages 
 in that book which have been represented as throwing a 
 shade of inconsistency over the character of the great 
 Apostle, there is no such instance which, however in- 
 terpreted, does not find its support and justification in 
 his own undoubted works. If men of grQ^t learning, 
 eminence, and acuteness had not assumed the contrary, it 
 might have seemed superfluous to say that the records of 
 history, and the experiences of daily life, furnish us with 
 abundant instances of lives narrated with perfect honesty, 
 though they have been presented from opposite points of 
 view; and of events which appear to be contradictory 
 
 1 I do not reckon the Epistle to the Hebrews, believing it to be the work 
 of ApoUos. 
 
ST. PAUL'S LIFE. 11 
 
 only because the point of reconcilement between thein has 
 been forgotten. Further than this, the points of contact 
 between the Acts and the Epistles are numberless, and 
 it must suffice, once for all, to refer to Paley's Hor<s 
 Paulinm in proof that even the undesigned coincidences 
 may be counted by scores. To furnish a separate refuta- 
 tion of all the objections which have been brought against 
 the credibility of the Acts, of the Apostles, would be a 
 tedious and interminable taskj but the actual nan-ative 
 of the following pages should exhibit a decisive answer 
 to them, unless it can be shown that it fails to combine 
 the separate data, or that the attempt to combine them 
 has led to incongruous and impossible results. 
 
 I believe, then, that we have enough, and more than 
 enough, still left to us to show what manner of life Paul 
 lived, and what manner of man he was. A biography 
 sketched in oxitline is often more true and more useful 
 than one that occupies itself with minute detail. We 
 do not in reality know more of a great man because 
 we happen to know the petty circumstances which made 
 up his daily existence, or because a mistaken admiration 
 has handed down to posterity the promiscuous common- 
 places of his ordinary correspondence. We know a man 
 truly when we know him at his greatest and his best ; we 
 reahse his significance for ourselves and for the world when 
 we see him in the noblest activity of his career, on the 
 loftiest summit, and in the fullest glory of his life. 
 There are lives which may be instructive from their 
 very littleness, and it may be well that the biographers of 
 such lives should enter into detail. But of the best and 
 greatest it may be emphatically asserted that to know 
 more about them would only be to know less of them. It 
 is quite possible that if, in the case of one so sensitive 
 and so impetuous as St. Paul, a minute and servile record 
 
12 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 had preserved for us every hasty expression, every fugitive 
 note, every momentary fall below the loftiest standard, the 
 small souls which ever rejoice at seeing the noblest of their 
 race degraded, even for an instant, to the same dead level 
 as themselves, might have found some things over which 
 to glory. That such must have been the result we may 
 infer from the energy and sincerity of self-condemnation 
 with which the Apostle recognises his own imperfections. 
 -But such miserable records, even had they been entirely 
 truthful, would only have obscured for us the true Paul 
 — Paul as he stands in the light of history ; Paul as he is 
 preserved for us in the records of Christianity ; Paul ener- 
 getic as Peter, and contemplative as John ; Paul the hero 
 of unselfishness; Paul the mighty champion of spiritual 
 freedom; Paul a greater preacher than Chrysostom, a 
 greater missionary than Xavier, a greater reformer than 
 Luther, a greater theologian than St. Thomas of Aqui- 
 num ; Paul the inspired Apostle of the Grentiles, the slave 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 BOYHOOD IN A HEATHEN CITY. 
 Oi/c i.ai\ii.ov ir<f\eus itoX/ttjj. — ACTS xxi. 39. 
 
 Though we cannot state with, perfect accuracy tlie date 
 either of the birth or death of the great Apostle of the 
 Grentiles, both may be inferred within narrow limits. 
 When he is first mentioned, on the occasion of Stephen's 
 martyrdom, he is called a. young man,^ and when he wrote 
 the Epistle to PhUemon he calls himself Paul the aged.^ 
 Naw, although the words veavla^ and 7rpe<7/3i;T??? were used 
 vaguely in ancient times, and though the exact limits of 
 " youth" and "age " were as indeterminate then as they 
 have ever been, yet, since we learn that immediately after 
 the death of Stephen, Saul was intrusted with a most im- 
 portant mission, and was, in all probability, a member of 
 the Sanhedrin, he must at that time have been a man of 
 thirty. Now, the martyrdom of Stephen probably took 
 place early in AD. 37, and the Epistle to Philemon was 
 vpritten about A.D. 63. At the latter period, therefore, 
 he would have been less tlian sixty years old, and this 
 may seem too young to claim the title of "the aged." 
 But "age" is a very relative term, and one who had 
 
 1 Acts vii. 58. 
 
 * Philem., verse 9. It should, indeed, be mentioned that whether we read 
 vperpirris or irpea-fiivriis, the meaning may be, " Paul an ambassador, ay, and 
 now even a chained ambassador, of Jesus Christ." Compare the fine anti- 
 thesis, (nrip o5 Trpia^eiu Iv aXi/rtt, " I am an ambassador in fetters " (Eph. vi. 20). 
 The tone of his later writings is, however, that of an old man. 
 
14 THE ' LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 been scourged, and lasted, and stoned, and imprisoned, 
 and shipwrecked — one who, for so many years, besides the 
 heavy burden of mental anguish and responsibility, had 
 been " scorched by the heat of Sirius and tossed by the 
 violence of Euroclydon,"i might well have felt himself an 
 .old and outworn man when he wrote from his Eoman 
 prison at the age of threescore years. ^ It is, therefore, 
 tolerably certain that he was born during the first ten 
 years of our era, and probable that he was bom about 
 A.D. 3. Since, then, our received Dionysian era is now 
 known to be four years too early, the birth' of Christ's 
 greatest follower happened in the same decade as that of 
 our Lord Himself.^ 
 
 But all the circumstances which surrounded the cradle 
 and infancy of the infant Saul were widely different from 
 those amid which his Lord had grown to boyhood. It 
 was in an obscure and lonely village of Palestine, aijaid 
 surroundings almost exclusively Judaic, that Jesus " grew 
 in wisdom and stature and favour with Grod and man ; " 
 but Saul passed his earliest years in the famous capital of 
 a Eoman province, and must have recalled, vdth his first 
 conscious reminiscences, the language and customs of the 
 Pagan world. 
 
 There is no suflB.cient reason to doubt the entire 
 accuracy of the expression " born in Tarsus," which is attri- 
 buted to St. Paul in his Hebrew speech to the infuriated 
 
 • Jer. Taylor. 
 
 2 Roger Bacon calls himself " senem," apparently at fifty-three, and Sir 
 Walter Scott speaks of himself as a " grey old man " at fif ty-fi-ye. (See Light- 
 foot, Colossians, p. 404.) According to Philo a man was veavias between 
 twenty-one and twenty-eight ; but his distinctions are purely artificial. It 
 seems that a man might be called vfavias and even veaplaKos till forty. (Xen. 
 Mem. i. 2, 35 ; Kriiger, Vit. Xen. 12.) 
 
 3 These dates agree fairly with the statement of the Pseudo-Chrysostom 
 [Oral Encom. in Pet. ei Paul, 0pp. viii, ed. Montfaucon), that he had been for 
 thirty-five years a servant of Christ, and was martyred at the age of sixiy- 
 eight. 
 
GISCALA. 15 
 
 multitude from the steps of the Tower of Antonia.^ To 
 assert that the speeches in the Acts could not have at- 
 tained to verbal exactness may he true of some of them, 
 but, on the other hand, those who on such grounds as 
 these disparage the work of St. Luke, as a mere " treatise 
 with an object," must bear in mind that it would, in this 
 point of view, have been far more to the purpose if he 
 had made St. Paul. assert that he was born in a Jewish 
 town. We must, therefore, reject the curious and twice- 
 repeated assertion of St. Jerome,^ that the Apostle was 
 born at Griscala,^ and had been taken to Tarsus by his 
 parents • when they lefb their native city, in consequence 
 of its devastation by the Romans. ' The assertion is indeed 
 discredited because it is mixed up with what appears to be 
 a flagrant anachronism as to the date at which Giscala 
 was destroyed.* It is, however, worthy of .attention. St. 
 Jerome, from his thorough familiarity with the Holy 
 Land, in which he spent so many years of his life, has 
 preserved for us several authentic fragments of tradition, 
 and we may feel sure that he would not arbitrarily have 
 set aside a general belief founded upon a distinct state- 
 ment in the Acts of the Apostles. If in this matter 
 
 1 Acts xxii. 3. 
 
 ' Jer. de Vvris Ulustr. 5 : " De tribu Benjamia et oppido Judaeae Giscalis 
 fuit, quo a Romania capto, cum parentibus suis Tarsum OiUeiae commigravit." 
 It has been again and again asserted that St. Jerome rejects or discredits this 
 tradition in his Commentary on Philemon (0pp. iv. 454), where he says that 
 some understood the term " my fellow-prisoner " to mean that Epaphras 
 had been taken captive at Giscala at the same time as Paul, , anil had been 
 settled in Oolossae. Even Neander {Planting, p. 79) follows this current 
 error, on the ground that Jerome says, "Quis sit Epaphras concaptivus Pauli 
 talem fabulam acoepimus." But that fabula does not here mean " false 
 accoiint," as he translates it, is sufficiently proved by the fact that St. Jerom:e 
 continues, "Quod si ita EST, possumus et Epaphram illo tempore c^tnm 
 Buspicari, quo captus est Faulus," &c. 
 
 * Giscala, now El- Jlsh, was the last place in Galilee that held out against 
 the Romans. (Jos. B. J. ii. 20, § 6; iv. 2, §§ 1— ^5.) 
 
 * It was taken A.D. 67. 
 
1^ THE LIFE AND WORK OE ST. PAUL. 
 
 pure invention tad been at work, it is almost inconceiv- 
 able that any one should have singled out for distinction 
 so insignificant a spot as Giscala, which is not once men- 
 tioned in the Bible, and which acquired its sole notoriety 
 ' from its connexion with the zealot Judas.^ We may, 
 therefore, fairly assume that the tradition mentioned by 
 St. Jerome is so far true that the parents or grand- 
 parents of St. Paul had been Gahlseans and had, from 
 some cause or other — though it cannot have been the 
 cause which the tradition assigned — been compelled to 
 migrate from Griscala to the busy capital of Pagan 
 CiHcia. 
 
 If this be the case, it helps, as St. Jerome himself points 
 out, to explain another difficulty. St. Paul, on every possible 
 occasion, assumes and glories in the title not only of " an 
 Israelite,"^ which may be regarded as a " name of honour," 
 but also of " a Hebrew" — " a Hebrew of the Hebrews."' 
 Now certainly, in its proper and technical sense, the word 
 " Hebrew" is the direct opposite of " Hellenist,"* and 
 St. Paul, if brought up at Tarsus, could only strictly be 
 regarded as a Jew of the Dispersion — a Jew of that vast 
 body who, even when they were not ignorant of Hebrew — 
 as even the most learned of them sometimes were — still 
 spoke Greek as their native tongue.* It may, of course, 
 be said that St. Paul uses the word Hebrew only iu its 
 general sense, and that he meant to imply by it that he 
 was not a Hellenist to the same extent that, for instance, 
 even so learned and eminent a Jew as Philo was, who, 
 
 1 Jos. B. J. Ti. 21, § 1 ; ru. 10. He calls it HoXixwi. 
 
 " Johni. 47; Aotsxiii. 16; Bom. ix.,4. 
 
 3 2Cor. xL22;Plia. iii. 5. 
 
 ' See Acta vi. 1, and infra, p. 125. 
 
 ' " Parentum oonditionem adolescentulum Paulum . secntam, et sic posse 
 stare illud, quod de se ipso testatur, ' Hebraei sunt P' et ego, &c., quae illiun 
 Judaeum magis indicant, quam Tarsensem " (Jer.). 
 
TARSUS. 17 
 
 with, all Hs great ability, did not know either the Biblical 
 Hebrew or the Aramaic vernacular, which was still called 
 by that name.^ Perhaps St. Paul spoke Aramaic with 
 equal or greater fluency than he spoke Greek itself;^ 
 and his knowledge of Hebrew may be inferred from his 
 custom of sometimes reverting to the Hebrew scriptures 
 in the original when the LXX. version was less suitable 
 to his purpose. It is an interesting, though undesigned,^ 
 confirmation of this fact, that the Divine Vision on the 
 road to Damascus spoke to him, at the supreme moment 
 of his life, in the language which was evidently the 
 language of his own inmost thoughts. As one, there- 
 fore, to whom the Hebrew of that day was a sort of 
 mother-tongue, and the Hebrew of the Bible an acquired 
 language, St. Paul might call himself a Hebrew, though 
 technically speaking he was also a Hellenist ; and the 
 term would be still more precise and cogent if his parents 
 and forefathers had, almost till the time of his birth, been 
 Palestinian Jews. 
 
 The Tarsus in which St, Paul was born was very 
 different from the dirty, squalid, and ruinous Mohammedan 
 city which still bears the nafne and stands upon the site. 
 The natural features of the city, indeed, remain unchanged : 
 the fertile plain still surrounds it ; the snowy mountains 
 of the chain of Taurus still look down on it ; the bright 
 swift stream of the Cydnus still refreshes it.* But with, 
 these scenes of beauty and majesty we are the less con- 
 
 * Philo's ignorance of Hebrew is generally admitted. 
 
 ' Acts xxi. 40 : rrj 'EppatSi StaAficTtf — i.e., of course, the Syriae. These 
 Jews of Palestine would for the most part be able to understand the Bible, 
 if not in the original Hebrew, at any rate through the aid of a paraphrast. 
 
 3 E.g., in 1 Cor. iii. 19; 2 Cor. viiL 15; 2 Tim. iL 19. Whether there 
 existed any Volksbibel of extracts besides the LXX. I will not discuss. See 
 Hilgenfeld, Zeitschr. xviii. (1875), p. 118. 
 
 * The Oydnus no longer, however, flows through Tersoos as it did (Strabo, 
 xiv, 5 ; Plia. H. JT. vi 22 ; Beaufort's Earamania, 271 sq.). 
 
 C 
 
18 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 cerned, because tliey seem to have had no influence over 
 the mind of the youthful Saul. We can well imagine.;- 
 how, in a nature differently constituted, they would have ; v 
 been like a continual inspiration ; how they would have 
 melted into the very imagery of his thoughts ; how, again 
 and agaui, in crowded cities and foul prisons, they would have 
 
 " Flashed upon that inward eye 
 Which is the bliss of solitude.'' 
 
 The scenes in which the whole life of David had been - 
 spent were far less majestic, as well as far less varied, 
 than many of those in which the lot of St. Paul was 
 cast; yet the Psalms of David are a very handbook of 
 poetic description, while in the Epistles of St. Paul we 
 only breathe the air of cities and synagogues. He alludes 
 indeed, to the Temple not made with hands, but never 
 to its mountain pillars, and but once to its nightly stars.^ 
 To David the whole visible universe is but one vast House 
 of Grod, in which, like angelic ministrants, the fire and 
 hail, snow and vapour, wind and storm, fulfil His word. 
 With St. Paul — ^though he, too, is well aware that "the 
 
 'invisible things of Him from the creation of the world 
 
 , are clearly visible, being apprehended by the things that ' 
 He hath made, even His eternal power and divinity" — 
 
 •yet to him this was an indisputable axiom, not a con- 
 viction constantly renewed with admiration and delight. 
 
 'There are few writers who, to judge' solely from their 
 writings, seem to have been less moved by the beauties 
 
 r&{ the external world. Though he had sailed again and 
 again across the blue Mediterranean, and must have been 
 
 Lfamiliar with the beauty of those Isles of Greece — ' 
 
 " Where burning Sappho loved and sung, 
 Where grew the arts of war and peace, 
 Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung •" 
 
 ' Acts xvii. 24 ; 1 Oor. xv. 41. 
 
INDirPERBNCE TO SCENERY. 19 
 
 though he had again and again traversed the pine-clad 
 gorges of the Asian hills, and seen Ida, and Olympus, 
 and Parnassus, in all their majesty ; though his life had 
 been endangered in mountain torrents and stormy waves, 
 and he must have often -wandered as a child along the 
 banks of his native stream, to see the place where it roars 
 in cataracts over its rocky course — his soul was so entirely 
 ahsorbed in the mighty moral and spiritual truths which it 
 was his great mission to proclaim, that not by one verse, 
 scarcely even by a single expression, in all his letters, does 
 he indicate the faintest gleam of delight or wonder in the 
 glories of Nature. There is, indeed, an exquisite passage 
 in his speech at Lystra on the goodness of "the living 
 G-od, which made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all 
 things that are therein," and " left not Himself without 
 witness, in that He. did good, and gave us rain from heaven, 
 and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and glad- 
 ness."^ But in this case Barnabas had some share in the 
 address, which even if it do not, as has been conjectured,^ 
 refer to the fragment of some choral song, is yet, in tone 
 and substance, directly analogous to passages of the Old 
 Testament.* And apart from this allusion, I cannot find 
 a single word which shows that Paul had even the smallest 
 susceptibility for the works of Nature. There arc souls 
 in which the burning heat of some transfusing purpose 
 calcines every other thought, every other desire, every 
 other admiration ; and St. Paul's was one. His Hfe was 
 ahsorbingly, if not solely and exclusively, the spiritual 
 life — the life which is utterly dead to every other 
 interest of the groaning and travailing creation, the 
 life hid with Christ in Grod. He sees the universe of 
 Grod only as it is reflected in the heart and life of man. 
 
 ' Acts xiv. 17. ^ By Mr. JIumphry, ad loc. 
 
 s Job V. 10; Ps. civ. 15, cxlvii. 8, 9. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 It is true— as Humboldt has shown in his Cosmos-- 
 that what is called the sentimental love of Nature is a 
 modern rather than an ancient feeling.^ In St. Paul, 
 however, this indifference to the outer world is neither 
 due to his antiquity nor to his Semitic birth, but solely 
 to his individual character. The poetry of the Old Testa- 
 ment is full of the tenderness and life of the pastures 
 of Palestine. In the discourses and conversations of 
 our Lord we iind frequent allusions to the loveliness of 
 the flowers, the joyous carelessness of birds, the shifting 
 winds, the red glow of morning and evening clouds. 
 St. Paul's inobservance of these things — ^for the total 
 absence of the remotest allusion to them by way of even 
 passing illustration amounts to a proof that they did not 
 deeply stir his heart — was doubtless due to the expulsive 
 power and paramount importance of other thoughts. It 
 may, however, have been due also to that early training 
 which made him more familiar with crowded assemblies 
 and thronged bazaars than with the sights and sounds of 
 Nature.^ It is at any rate remarkable that the only 
 elaborate illustration which he draws from Nature, turns 
 not on a natural phenomenon but on an artificial process, 
 and that even this process — if not absolutely unknown 
 
 ^ Compare the surprise expressed by the Athenian youth at Socrates' 
 description of the lovely scene at the beginning of the Fhae&ms, § 10, 
 2i> 56 7E S eaviidffie i.roTiiraT6s tis tpaivei. There is an admirable chapter on this 
 subject in Friedlander, Sittengesch. Boms. vii. 5, § 3. The reader will recall 
 the analogous cases of St. Bernard riding all day along the Lake of Geneva, 
 and asking in the evening where it was ; of Calvin showing no trace of delight 
 in the beauties of Switzerland; and of Whitefield, who seems not to have 
 borrowed a single impression or illustration from his thirteen voyagea 
 across the Atlantic and his travels from Georgia to Boston. 
 
 2 " For I was bred, 
 In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, 
 And saw nought lovely save the sky and stars." 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
POSITION OP TARSUS. 21 
 
 to the ancients — was the exact opposite of the one most 
 commonly adopted.'' 
 
 But if St. Paul derived no traceable influence from 
 the scenery with which Tarsus is surrounded, if no 
 voices from the neighbouring mountains or the neigh- 
 bouring sea mingled with the many and varied tones of 
 his impassioned utterance, other results of this pro- 
 vidential training may be easily observed, both in his 
 language and in his life. 
 
 The very position of Tarsus made it a centre of com- 
 mercial enterprise and political power. Situated on a 
 navigable stream by which it communicated with the eastern- 
 most bay of the Mediterranean, and lying on a fruitful 
 plain under that pass over the Taurus which was known 
 as "the Cilician gates," while by the Amanid and Syrian 
 gates it communicated with Syria, it was so necessary as a 
 central emporium that even the error of its having em- 
 braced the side of Antony in the civil war hardly disturbed 
 its fame and prosperity.^ It was here that Cleopatra held 
 
 1 I aJlnde to the famous illustration of the wild olive graft (Roin. si. 
 16 — 25). St. Paxil's argument requires that a wild slip should have heen 
 budded upon a, fruitful tree — ^viz.,the St,ypi4\aios of heathendom on the iKaia of 
 Judaism. But it is scarcely needful to remark that this is never done, but the 
 reverse — ^namely, the grafting of a fruitful scion on a wild stock. Tlie oHve 
 shoot would be grafted on the oleaster, not the oleaster on the olive (Aug. in 
 Ps. Ixxii.). It is true that St. Paul here cares solely for the general analogy, 
 and would have been eiitirely indifferent to its non-accordance with the ordinary 
 method of iyKei/Tpttr/iSs. Indeed, as he says that it is irapA (jtian' (xi. 24), it seems 
 needless to show that this kind of grafting was ever reaUy practised. Yet the 
 illustration would, under these circumstances, hardly have been used by a 
 writer more familiar with the facts of Nature. The notion that St. Paul alluded 
 to the much rarer African custom of grafting oleaster (or Ethiopic olive) on 
 olive, to strengthen the latter (cf. Plin. H. N. xvii. 18 ; Oolum. De re Rust. v. 9 ; 
 Palladins; &c.), is most unlikely, if only for the reason that it destroys the whole 
 force of the truth which he is desiring to inculcate. (See Ewbank, ii. 112 ; 
 Tholuck, Bom. 617 ; Meyer, 343.) He may have known the proverb, aiiapir6- 
 Tcpov aypiehaiov. See, however, a somewhat different view in Thomson, Land 
 amd Booh, p. 53. 
 
 " Tarsus resisted the party of Brutus and Oassius, but was conquered by 
 
22 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 tliat famous meeting with tlie Eoman Triumvir wHch 
 Shakspeare has immortalised, when she rowed up thfe 
 silver Cydnus,- and 
 
 " The barge she sat in like a burnished throne 
 Burnt on the water ; the poop was beaten gold. 
 Purple the sails, and so perfumfed that 
 The winds were love-sick with them.'' 
 
 Yet it continued to flourish under the rule of Augustus; 
 and enjoyed the distinction of being both a capital and a 
 free city — libera and immunis. It was from Tarsus that 
 the vast masses of timber, hewn in the forests of Taurus, 
 were floated down the river to the Mediterranean dock- 
 yards ; it was here that the vessels were unladen which 
 brought to Asia the treasures of Eui'ope; it was here 
 that much of the wealth of Asia Minor was accumulated 
 before it was despatched to Greece and Italy. On the 
 coins of the city she is represented as seated amid bales 
 of various merchandise. The bright and busy life of the 
 streets and markets must have been the earliest scenes 
 which attracted the notice of the youthful Saul. The 
 dishonesty which he had witnessed in its trade may h^ve 
 suggested to him his metaphors of "huckstering" and 
 ' ' adulterating " the word of life ; ^ and he may have borrowed 
 a metaphor from the names and marks of the OMmers\ 
 stamped upon the goods which lay upon the quays,^ and 
 from the earnest-money paid by the purchasers.^ It may 
 even have been the assembly of the free city which made 
 him more readily adopt from the Sqptuagint that name 
 
 Lucius Rufus, B.C. 43, and many Tarsians were sold as slaves to. pay the fine 
 of 1,500 talents which he inflicted on the city. (Appian, BeU. Civ. iv. 64.) 
 Ttipaos . . tra^ aiiTois ruv v6\ea>v i.^to\oyaTiTn liVrp6vo\is oS(ra (Jos. Autt, 1. 6, § 1). 
 
 ^ 2 Cor. ii. 17, KaiTTiXeiovTes ; iv. 2, 5o\oS»Tct. 
 
 2 Eph. i. 13 ; iv. 30, ia^pdyiaerirf. 
 
 ' 2 Cor. i. 22, a^^o/3<4v. 
 
' TENT-MAKING. 23 
 
 of Ecclesia for the Cliurcli of Christ's elect of which his 
 Epistles furnish the earliest instances.^ 
 
 It was his birth at Tarsus which also determined the 
 trade in which, during so many days and nights of toil 
 and self-denial, the Apostle earned his daily bread. The 
 staple manufacture of the city was the weaving, first into 
 ropes, then into tent-covers and garments, of the hair 
 which was supplied in boundless quantities by the goat 
 flocks of the Taurus.^ As the making of these cilicia was 
 unskilled labour of the commonest sort, the trade of tent- 
 maker^ was one both lightly esteemed and miserably paid. 
 It must not, however, be inferred from this that the family 
 of St. Paul were people of low position. The learning of 
 a trade was a duty enjoined by the Eabbis on the parents 
 of every Jewish boy.* The wisdom of the rule became 
 apparent in the case of Paul, as doubtless of hundreds 
 besides, when the changes and chances of life compelled 
 him to earn his own livelihood by manual labour. It is 
 
 ' ^P^ r Kings xii. 2 (LXX.) The word " Church," in its more technical 
 modem sense (as- in Eph. and Col.), is developed out of the simpler meaning 
 of congregation in St. Paul's earlier Epistles. 
 
 2 gee Phno, De Victim. 836; Plin. H. N. v. '32. 
 
 * (Ticnvoiroihs, Actaxxm.S; (TKijyo^^iJr^oj, Ps. Chrys. Orat. Bneon. {Opp. ■nil. 8, 
 Montf auc). When Ohrysostom calls him a o-kutotSiws, "leather-cutter" {Horn. 
 iv. 3, p. 864, on 2 Tim. ii.), this can hardly be correct, because such a ti'ade 
 would not be favoured by strict Pharisees. On the use of cilicium for tents 
 Bee Veget. Milit. iv. 6 ; Serv. ad Virg. Georg. iii. 313. It served for many 
 other purposes, as garden rugs, mantelets, shoes, and beds. (Colum. xii. 46 ; 
 Liv. xxxviii. 7; Mart. xir. 140; Jer. Up. 108.) To handle the "olentis barha 
 mariti" could not have been a pleasant trade. It was "bought from the 
 shepherds of Taurus, and sold to Greek shippers of the Levant." To this 
 day cilice means hair-cloth in French. 
 
 * On this subject see my Idfe of Christ, i. p. 82, n. Gamaliel himself 
 was the author of the celebrated aphorism, that "learning of any kind 
 (mm to, i.e., even the advanced study of the Law) unaccompanied by a trade 
 ends in nothing, and leads to sin " {Pi/rke AWioth, ii. 2). R. Judah said truly 
 that "labour honours the labourer " {Nedarvm, i. 49, 2) ; B. Meir said, " Let a 
 man always teach his son pure and easy trades" (Toseft. in Kidd. f. 82, 1) ; 
 Bi. Judah says, that not to teach one's son a trade is like teaching him robbery 
 (Kidduahin, {.30, Z). 
 
24 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 clear, from the education provided for Paul by his parents, 
 that they could little indeed have conjectured how abso- 
 lutely their son would be reduced to depend on a toil so 
 miserable and so unremunerative.^ But though we see 
 how much he felt the burden of the wretched labour by 
 which he determined to earn his own bread rather than 
 trespass on the charity of his converts,^ yet it had one 
 advantage in being so absolutely mechanical as to leave the 
 thoughts entirely free. While he plaited the black, strong- 
 scented goat's hair, he might be soaring in thought to the 
 inmost heaven, or holding high converse with ApoUos or 
 Aquila, with Luke or Timothy, on the loftiest' themes 
 which can engage the mind of man. 
 
 Before considering further the influence exei^cised by 
 his birthplace on the future fortunes of St. Paul, we must 
 pause to inquire what can be discovered about his imme- 
 diate family. It must be admitted that we can ascertain 
 but little. Their possession, by whatever means, of the 
 Eoman . citizenship — the mere fact of their leaving Pales- 
 tine, perhaps only a short time before Paul's birth, to 
 become units in the vast multitude of the Jews of the 
 Dispersion — the fact, too, that so many of St. Paul's 
 "kinsmen" bear Greek and Latin names,® and lived in 
 Rome or in Ephesus,* might, at first sight, lead us to sup- 
 pose that his whole family were of Hellenising tendencies. 
 On the other hand, we know nothing of the reasons which 
 
 1 The reason why he was taught this particular trade may have ^been 
 purely local. Possibly his father had been taught the same trade as a boy. 
 " A man should not change his trade, nor that of his father," says R. Tochanan;' 
 for it is said, " Hiram of Tyre was a widow's son, ... and his father was . . ' 
 a worker in brass " (1 Kings vii. 13, 14) ; JErecUn, t 16, 2 
 
 2 1 Thess. ii. 6, 9 ; 2 Thess. iii. 8 ; 1 Cor. ix. 12, 15. 
 
 3 Rom. xvi. 7 ; Andi-onicus, Junia, or perhaps Junias (=Jnnianus) • 11 
 Herodion ; 21, Lucius, Jason, Sosipater {(rvyy^vf^s). ' ' 
 
 * See infra, ad loc, for the question whether oh. xvi. is a gennine portion 
 of the Epistle to the Romans. 
 
PAUL'S PARENTS. 25 
 
 may have compelled them to leave Palestine, and we 
 have only the vaguest conjectures as to their possession 
 of the franchise. Even if it be certain that a-v/yeveli 
 means "kinsmen" in our sense of the word, and not, 
 as Olshausen thinks, "fellow-countrymen,"-^ it was so 
 common for Jews to have a second name, which they 
 adopted during their residence in heathen countries, 
 that Andronicus and the others, whom he salutes in the 
 last chapter of the Epistle to the Eomans, may all have 
 been genuine Hebrews. The real name of Jason, for 
 instance, may have been Jesus, just as the real name of 
 Paul was Saul.^ However this may be, the thorough 
 Hebraism of the family appears in, many ways. Paul's 
 father and grandfather had been Pharisees,^ and were, 
 therefore, most strict observers of the Mosaic law. They 
 had so httle forgotten their extraction from the tribe of 
 Benjamin — one of the two tribes which had remained 
 faithful to the covenant — that they called their son Saul,* 
 partly perhaps because the name, like Thesetetus, means 
 "asked" (of Grod), and partly because it was the name of 
 that unfortunate hero-king of their native tribe, whose sad 
 fate seems for many ages to have rendered his very name 
 unpopular.* They sent him, probably not later than the age 
 of thirteen, to be trained at the feet of GamaKel. They 
 seem to have had a married daughter in Jerusalem, whose 
 son, on one memorable occasion, saved Paul's life.® Though 
 
 ' As in Bom. ix. 3. 
 
 2 'Wien a Greek or Boman name bore any resemblance in sound to a Jewish 
 one, it was obviously conTenient for the Jew to make so slight a change. Thus 
 Dosthai became Dositheus ; Tarphon, Tryphon ; EliaMm, Alkimos, &c. 
 
 ' Acts xxiii. 6. ■* ■»><*, Shaul. 
 
 ' It is found as a Hebrew name in the Pentateuch (Geu. xxsvi. 37; 
 xItI. 10 ; Ex. 7i. 15 ; Numb. xxvi. 13) ; but after the death of King Saul it 
 does not occur- till the time of the Apostle, and again later in Josephus 
 (Antt. XI. 9, 4 ; B. J. ii. 17, 4 j Krenkel, Paulus, p. 217). 
 
 A Acts xdii 16. 
 
26 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 they must have ordinarily used the Septuagint version of 
 the Bible, from which the great majority of the Apostle's 
 quotations are taken,^ and from which nearly his whole 
 theological phraseology is derived, they yet trained him to 
 use Aramaic as his native tongue, and to read the Scriptures 
 — an accomplishment not possessed by many learned Jewish 
 Hellenists — in their own venerable original Hebrew.^ 
 
 That St. Paul was a " Hebraist " in the fuUest sense of. 
 the word is clear from almost every verse of his Epistles. 
 He reckons time by the Hebrew calendar. He makes 
 constant allusion to Jewish customs, Jewish laws, and 
 Jewish festivals. His metaphors and turns of expres- 
 sion are derived with great frequency from that quiet 
 family life for which the Jews have been in all ages dis- 
 tinguished. Though he writes in Greek, it is not by any 
 means in the Greek of the schools,^ or the Greek which, 
 in spite of its occasional antitheses and paronomasias, 
 would have been found tolerable by the rhetoricians of his 
 native city. The famous critic Longinus does indeed, if 
 the passage be genuine, praise him as the master of a 
 dogmatic style; but certainly a Tarsian professor or a 
 philosopher of Athens would have been inclined to ridicule 
 his Hebraic peculiarities, awkward anakolutha, harshly- 
 mingled metaphors, strange forms, and irregular construc- 
 tions.* St. Jerome, criticising the oi KaTevapKifaa vfj,S)v of 
 
 1 There are about 278 quotations from the Old Testament in the New. Of 
 these 53 are identical in the Hebrew, Septuagint, and New Testament; in 
 jlO the Septuagint is correctly altered ; in 76 it is altered incorrectly— *.e., into 
 greater divergence from the Hebrew ; in 37 it is accepted where it differs from ' 
 the Hebrew; in 99 all three differ; and there are 3 doubtful allusions. (See 
 Turpie, The Old Testament m the New, p. 267, a.nd passim.) 
 
 ^ V. supra, p. 16. 
 
 ^ Among numerous explanations of the irijXfKois ypAnnainv of Gal. vi. 11, 
 one is that his Greet letters were so iU-formed, from want of practice, as to 
 look almost laughable. 
 
 ■• See infra, Excursus I., "The Stj^e of St. Paul; " and Excui-sus IL, 
 " Rhetoric of St. Paul" 
 
CILICIA. 27 
 
 2 Cor. xi, 9, xii. 13 — ^which in our version is rendered, 
 "I was not burdensome to you," but appears to mean 
 literally, " I did not benumb you " — speaks of the 
 numerous dUcispis of his style ; and it is probable that 
 such there were, though they can hardly be detected with 
 certainty by a modern reader.^ For though Tarsus was 
 a city of advanced culture, Cilicia was as intellectually 
 barbarous as it was morally despicable. The proper 
 language of Cilicia was ^ dialect of Phoenician,^ and the 
 Greek spoken by some of the cities was so faulty as 
 to have originated the term " solecism," which has been 
 perpetuated in all languages to indicate impossible 
 constructions.' 
 
 The residence of a Jew in a foreign city might, of 
 course, tend to undelmine his national religion, and make 
 him indifferent to his hereditary customs. It might, 
 however, produce an effect directly the reverse of this. 
 There had been abundant instances of Hellenistic Jews 
 who Hellenised in matters far more serious than the 
 language which they spoke ; but, on the other' hand, the 
 Jews, as a nation, have ever shown an almost miraculous 
 vitality, and so far from being denationalised by a hom,e 
 
 * " Multa sunt verba, quibus juxta morem urbis et provinciae suae, fami- 
 liatios Apostolus utitnr: e quibus exempli gratia, pauca ponenda sunt." 
 He refers to Kdrecop/cTjo-a (2 Oor. xi. 9), irh &vepimlvns v/iipas (1 Cor. iv. 3), and 
 KaTaPpa$cv4ri>> (Ool. ii. 18) ; and adds, " Quibus, et aliis multis, usque hodie 
 utuntui- Cilices " (Jer. Up. ad Algas, qu. 10). Wetstein, ho-wrever, adduces 
 imovapKita, from Plut. De Liber. Mdiui. p. 8, and vapKiu occurs ia the LXX. 
 (Gen. xxxii. 25, 82; Job xxxiii. 19) and in Jos. Antt. viii. 8, § 5; vapxri is the 
 torpedo or gymnotus. Since xwravapKia is only found in Hippocrates, Dr. 
 Plumptre thinks it may have been a medical word in vogue in the schools of 
 Tarsus. Gregory of Nyssa, on 1 Oor. xv. 28, quotes ixivaafv (Phil. ii. 7), 
 6iieip6ii(V0i (1 Thess. ii. 8), mpnepeifrai (1 Cor. xiii. 4), iptBelas (Rom. ii. 8), &c., 
 as instances of St. iPaul's autocracy over words. 
 
 2 See Hdt. i. 74, vii. 91 ; Xen. Anab. b. ii 26. 
 
 • So\otKi(rn6s. See Strabo, p. 663 ; Diog. Laert. i 61. But the derivation 
 from Soli is not certain. 
 
28 
 
 THE LIFE Ami WORK OE ST. PAUL, 
 
 among the heatten, have only been confirmed in the in- 
 tensity of their patriotism and their faith. We know 
 that this had been the case with that numerous and 
 important body, the Jews of Tarsus. In this respect 
 they differed considerably from the Jews of Alexandria. 
 They could not have been exempt from that hatred which 
 has through so many ages wronged and dishonoured their 
 noble race, and which was already virulent among the" 
 Eomans of that day. All that we hear about them 
 shows that the Oilician Jews were as capable as any 
 of their brethren of repaying hate with double hatred, 
 and scorn with double scorn. They would be aU the more 
 likely to do so from the condition of things around them. 
 The belief in Paganism was more firmly rooted in the 
 provinces than in Italy, and was specially vigorous ia 
 Tarsus — ^in this respect no unfitting burial-place for 
 Julian the Apostate. No ages are worse, no places more 
 corrupt, than those that draw the iridescent film of 
 an intellectual culture over the deep stagnancy of moral 
 degradation. And this was the condition of Tarsus. 
 The seat of a celebrated school of letters, it was at the 
 same time the metropolis of a province so low in universal 
 estimation that it was counted among the rpia Kamra KaKurra 
 — the three most villainous k's of antiquity, Kappadokia, 
 Kilikia, and Ea-ete. What religion there was at this period 
 had chiefly assumed an orgiastic and oriental character, and 
 the popular faith of many even in Eome was a strange 
 mixture of Greek, Eoman, Egyptian, Phrygian, Phoenician, 
 and Jewish elements. The wUd, fanatical enthusiasms of 
 the Eastern cults shook with new sensations of mad sen- 
 suality and weird superstition the feeble and jaded despair 
 of Aryan Paganism. The Tarsian idolatry was composed of 
 these mingled elements. There, in Plutarch's time, a gene- 
 ration after St. Paul, the sword of Apollo, miraculously pre- 
 
PAGAN SYNCRETISM. 29 
 
 served from decay and rust, was still displayed. Hermes 
 Eriounios, or the luck-bringer, still appears, purse in hand, 
 upon their coins. iEsculapius was still believed to mani- 
 fest his power and presence in the neighbouring iEgse.^ 
 But the traditional founder of the city was the Assyrian, 
 Sardanapalus, whose semi- historical existence was confused, 
 in the then syncretism of Pagan worship, with various 
 representatives of the sun-god — ^the Asiatic Sandan, the 
 Phoenician Baal, and the Grecian Hercules. The gross 
 allusiveness and origin of this worship, its connection 
 with the very types and ideals of luxurious effeminacy, 
 unbounded gluttony, and brutal licence, were quite suffi- 
 cient to awake the indignant loathing of each true-hearted 
 Jew ; and these revolts of natural antipathy in the hearts 
 of a people in whom true religion has ever been united 
 with personal purity would be intensified with patriotic 
 disgust when they saw that, at the main festival of this 
 degraded cult the effeminate Sardanapalus and the mascu- 
 line Semiramis — each equally detestable — were worshipped 
 with rites which externally resembled the pure and thank- 
 ful rejoicings of the Feast of Tabernacles. St. Paul must 
 have witnessed this festival. He must have seen at 
 Anchiale the most defiant symbol of cynical contentment 
 with all which is merely animal in the statue of Sarda- 
 napalus, represented as snapping his fingers while he 
 uttered the sentiment engraved upon the pedestal — 
 
 " Eat, drink, enjoy thyself; the rest is nothing." * 
 The result which such spectacles and such sentiments 
 
 1 Be Def. Orae. 41; Hausrath, pp. 7—9. ■ See, too, Plutarch, wtp! 
 iiiaiiaiiioviat koX iBeirriTos, ii. ; Neander, Gh. Hist. i. 15 sq. 
 
 ' Strabo, xir. 4 ; Atlten. xii. p. 529 ; Cio. Tusc. Disp. v. 35. Hausrath, p. 7, 
 finds a remiiiiBcence of this in 1 Cor. xt. 32, which may, however, have been 
 quite as probably derived from the wide-spread fable of the Epicurean fly 
 dying in the honey-pot, koI 0e0puKa kkI veiruKa koI \4\oviiai K&f irroSdviii ouSkii 
 
30 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 had left upon his mind, had not Been one of tolerance, or 
 of blunted sensibility to the horror of evil. They had 
 inspired, on the one hand, an overpowering sense of 
 disgust; on the other, an overwhelming conviction, 
 deepened by subsequent observation, that mental per- 
 versity leads to, and is in its turn aggravated by, moral 
 degradation; that error in the intellect involves an ulti- 
 mate error^in the life and in the will ; that the darkening 
 of the understanding is inevitably associated with the 
 darkening of the soul and spirit, and that out of such 
 darkness spring the hidden things which degrade im- 
 moral lives. He who would know what was the aspect 
 of Paganism to one who had seen it from his childhood 
 upwards in its characteristic developments, must read that 
 most terrible passage of all Scripture, in which the full 
 blaze of scorching sunlight burns with its fiercest flame 
 of indignation iipon the pollutions of Pagan wickedness. 
 Under that glare of holy wrath we see Paganism in aU 
 its unnatural deformity. No halo of imagination sur- 
 rounds it, no gleam of fancy plays over its glittering 
 corruption. We see it as it was. Par other may be 
 its aspect when the glamour of Hellenic grace is flung 
 over it, when " the lunar beam of Plato's genius " or the 
 meteoric wit of Aristophanes light up, as by enchantment, 
 its revolting sorceries. But he who would truly judge 
 of it — ^he who would see it as it shall seem when there 
 shall fall on it a ray out of God's eternity, must view 
 it as it appeared to the penetrating glance of a pure 
 and enlightened eye. St. Paul, furnished by inward chas- 
 tity with a diviner moly, a more potent haemony, than 
 those of Homer's and Milton's song — unmoved, untempted, 
 unbewitched, unterrified— sees in this painted Circe no 
 laughing maiden, no bright-eyed daughter of the sun, 
 but a foul and baleful harlot; and, seizing her by the hair,, 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TTANA. 31 
 
 stamps deep upon her leprous forehead the burning titles 
 of her shame. Henceforth she may go for all time 
 throughout the world a branded sorceress. All may read 
 that, festering stigma; none can henceforth de.ceive the 
 nations into regrets for the vanished graces of a world 
 which knew not God.^ 
 
 But besides this unmitigated horror inspired by the 
 lowest aspect of heathen life, St. Paul derived from his 
 early insight into its character his deep conviction that 
 earthly knowledge has no necessary connection with 
 heavenly wisdom. If we may trust the romance of the 
 sophist Philqstratus, and if he is not merely appropriating 
 the sentiments which he had derived from Christianity, 
 the youthful ApoUonius of Tyana, who was afterwards held 
 up as a kind of heathen parallel to Christ, was studying 
 under the oratoi: Euthydemus at Tarsus at the very time 
 when it must also have been the residence of the youthful 
 Paul ; ^ and even ApoUonius, at the age of thirteen, was so 
 struck with the contrast between the professed wisdom of 
 the city and its miserable morality, that he obtained leave 
 from his father to remove to JEigad, and so piursue his 
 studies at a more serious and religious place .^ The picture 
 .drawn, so long afterwards, by Philostratus, of the luxury, 
 the buffoonery, the petulance, the dandyism, the gossip, of 
 the life at Tarsus, as a serious boy -philosopher is supposed 
 to have witnessed it, might have no historical value if it 
 were not confirmed in every particular by the sober narra- 
 tive of the contemporary Strabo. "So great," he says, " is 
 the zeal of the inhabitants, for philosophy and aU other 
 encyclic training, that they have surpassed even Athens and 
 
 1 y. infra, on Rom. i. 18—32. 
 ^.Philostrat. Vit. Apoll. i.-7. 
 
 * 'O si rhv /ihv SiSdffKdKov etxero rh Si rrjs iroX«<»y ?flos &tot6v re Jiyeho Kal ob 
 XPV^rhv ifjL(ln\ofro<priirai. Tpvtprjs re yap ovSafiov fiaWov airTovTaif tTKa}WT6Tai re jcal 
 
 fi/Bpio-Tol irdi'Tes (Philostr. Vit. Apollon, i. p. 8, chap. 7, ed. Olear. 1709). 
 
32 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 Alexandria, and every other place one could mention in 
 which philological and philosophical schools have arisen."^ 
 The state 6£ affairs resulting from, the social atmosphere 
 which he proceeds to describe is as amusing as it is des- 
 picable. It gives us a glimpse o£ the professorial world 
 in days of Pagan decadence ; of a professorial world, not 
 such as it now is, and often has been, in our English and 
 German Universities, where Christian brotherhood and 
 mutual esteem have taken the place of wretched rivalism, 
 and where good and learned men devote their lives to 
 " gazing on the bright countenance of truth in the mild 
 and dewy air of delightful studies," but as it was also in the 
 days of the Poggios, Pilelfos, and Politians of the Eenais- 
 sance — cliques of jealous savans, narrow, selfish, unscrupu- 
 lous, base, sceptical, impure — bursting with gossip, scandal, 
 and spite. " The thrones " of these little " academic gods" 
 were as mutually hostile and as universally degraded as 
 those of the Olympian deities, in which it was, perhaps, a 
 happy thing that they had ceased to believe. One illus- 
 trious professor cheated the State by stealing oil ; another 
 avenged himself on an opponent by epigrams; another by a 
 nocturnal bespattering of his house ; and rhetorical jealousies 
 often ended in bloody quarrels. On this unedifying spec- 
 tacle of littleness in great places the people in general looked 
 with admiring eyes, and discussed the petty discords of 
 these squabbling sophists as though they were matters 
 of historical importance.^ We , can well imagine how un- 
 utterably frivolous this apotheosis of pedantism would 
 appear to a serious-minded and faithful Jew ; and it may 
 have been his Tarsian reminiscences which added emphasis 
 
 1 Strabo, xiT. 4, pp. 672, 673. Seo, too, Xen. Anah. i. 2, 23; Plin. v. 22; 
 Q. Curt. iii. 5, 1. The Stoics, Athenodoriis, tutor of Augustus, and Nestor; 
 tutor of Tiberius, lived at Tarsus ; and others are mentioned. 
 
 2 noTO/*(is T6 airohs Sia^^Ct KiSvos, § irapaKiStirriu, Kifloirep f&v ipviBav o'l frypot 
 (PhUostr. libi sv^,). 
 
THE FOLLY OF "WISDOM." 33 
 
 to St. Paul's reiterated warnings — tliat the wise men of 
 heathendom, " alleging themselves to be wise, became 
 fools ; " that " they became vain in their disputings, and 
 their unintelligent heart was darkened; " ^ that "the wisdom 
 of this world is folly in the sight of God, for it is written. 
 He who graspeth the wise in their own craftiness." And 
 again, "the Lord knoweth the reasonings of the wise that 
 they are vain."^ But while he thus confirms his tenet, 
 according to his usual custom, by Scriptural quotations 
 from Job and the Psalms, and elsewhere from Isaiah and 
 Jeremiah,^ he reiterates again and again from his own ex- 
 perience that the Greeks seek after wisdom and regard the 
 Cross as foolishness, yet that the foolishness of God is wiser 
 than men, and the weakness of God stronger than men, 
 and that God hath chosen the foolish things of the world 
 to confound the wise, and the base things of the world 
 to confound the mighty; and that when, in the Avisdom of 
 God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God 
 by " the foolishness of the proclamation"* — ^for in his strong 
 irony he loves and glories in the antitheses of his oppo- 
 nent's choosing — "by the foolishness of the thing preached" 
 to save them that believe.^ If the boasted wisdom of 
 the Greek and Eoman world was such as the young Saul 
 had seen, if their very type of senselessness and foolish- 
 ness was that which the converted Paul believed, then 
 Paul at least — so he says in his passionate and scornful 
 irony — would choose for ever to be on the side of, to cast 
 in his lot with, to be gladly numbered among, the idiots 
 and the fools. 
 
 » Rom. i. 21, 22, 
 " 1 Cor. iii. 18—20. 
 
 ' Job V. 13; Pa. xeiv. 11; Is. xxix. 14; zzxiii. 18; xliv. 25; Jer. viii. 9; 
 1 Cor. i. 18—27. 
 
 * 1 Cor. L 21, 5iA TTis fUDplat Tov Kripiy/iOfos. 
 
 • 1 Oor. i. 18 - 25; iL 14 ; iii 19; iv. 10; 2 Cor. xi. 16, 19. 
 
 D 
 
34, THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 « He who hath felt the Spirit of the Highest 
 Cannot confound, or doubt Him, or defy; 
 Yea, with one voice, O world, though thou deniest, 
 Stand thou on that side— for on this am 1 1 " 
 
 St. Paiil, then, was to the very heart a Jew — a Jew in 
 culture, a Jew in sympathy, a Jew in nationality, a Jew in 
 faith. His temperament was in no sense what we ordina- 
 rily regard as a poetic temperament; yet when we re- 
 member how all the poetry which existed in the moral 
 depths of his nature was sustained by the rhythms and 
 imagery, as his soul itself was sustained by the thoughts 
 and hopes, of his national literature — ^when we consider 
 how the star of Abraham had seemed to shine on his 
 cradle in a heathen land, and his boyhood in the dim 
 streets of unhallowed Tarsus to gain freshness and sweet- 
 ness "from the waving and rustling of the oak of 
 Mamre "' — ^we can understand that though in Christ 
 there is neither Jew nor Grreek, neither circumcision nor 
 uncircumcision, but a new creation,^ yet for no earthly 
 possession would he have bartered his connection with 
 the chosen race. In his Epistle to the Komans he 
 speaks in almost the very language of the Talmudist: 
 "Israel hath sinned (Josh. vii. 11), but although he hath 
 sinned," said Eabbi Abba bar Zavda; " he is still Israel. 
 Hence the proverb — A myrtle among nettles is still called 
 a myrtle."* And when we read the numerous passages in 
 which he vaunts his participation in the hopes of Israel, 
 his claim to be a fruitful branch in the rich olive of 
 Jewish life ; when we hear him speak of their adoption, 
 their Shechinah, their covenants, their Law, their worship, 
 their promises, their Fathers, their oracles of Grod, their 
 
 • Hausrath, p. 20. 
 
 » KTltris, Gal. 7i. 15; iii. 28. 
 
 ■ Sanhediin, f, 44, L Bom. iiL 2; i^., passim. 
 
PATRIOTISM. 35 
 
 claim of kinsmansMp with the humanity of Christ,^ we 
 can understand to the full the intense ejaculation of his 
 patriotic fervour, when — in language which has ever been 
 the stumbling-block of reKgious selfishness, but which 
 surpasses the noblest utterances of heroic self-devotion — 
 he declares that he could wish himself accursed froip 
 Christ^ for his brethren, his kinsmen, according to the 
 flesh.^ The valiant spirit of the Jews of Tarsus sent them 
 in hundreds to die, sword in hand, amid the carnage of 
 captured Jerusalem, and to shed their last blood to slake, 
 if might be, the very embers of the conflagration which 
 destroyed the Temple of their love. The same patriotism 
 burned in the spirit, the same blood flowed in the veins, 
 not only of Saul the Pharisee, but of Paul the prisoner of 
 the Lord. 
 
 It will be seen from all that we have said that we 
 wholly disagree with those who have made it their 
 favourite thesis to maintain for St. Paul the early acqui- 
 sition of an advanced Hellenic culture. His style and 
 his dialectic method have been appealed to in order to 
 support this view.* His style, however, is that of a man 
 who wrote in a peculiar and provincial Greek, but thought 
 
 ' Rom. IX. 1 — 5 ; X. 1 ; zi. 1. 
 
 ^ Eom. ix. 3. 
 
 ' Anyone who wishes to see the contortions of a narrow exegesis struggling 
 to extricate itself out of a plain meaning, which is too noble for its compre- 
 hension, may see specimens of it in commentaries upon this text. This, alas ! 
 is only one instance of the spirit which so often makes the reading of an 
 ordinary variorum Pauline colnmentary one of the most tedious, bewilder- 
 ing, and unprofitable of employments. Strange that, with the example of 
 Christ before their eyes, many erudite Christian commentators should know 
 so little of the sublimity of unselfishness as to force us to look to the parallels 
 of a Moses — nay, even of a Danton — in order that we may be able to conceive 
 of the true nobleness of a Patd ! But there are cases in which he who would 
 obtain from the writings of St. Paul their true, and often quite simple and 
 transparent, meaning, must tear away with unsparing hand the accumulated 
 cobwebs of centuries of error. 
 
 * See SchafE, Siat of Anct. Chrisiianity, i, 68. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 in Syriac ; and his dialectical method is purely Eabbinic. As 
 for his deep knowledge of heathen life, we may be sure that 
 it was not derived from books, but from the fatal wickedness 
 of which he had been a daily witness. A Jew in a heathen 
 city needed no books to reveal to him the "depths of 
 Satan." In this respect how startling a revelation to the 
 modem world was the iadisputable evidence of the ruins of 
 Pompeii ! Who would have expected to find the infamies of 
 the Dead Sea cities paraded with such infinite shamelessness 
 in every street of a little provincial town ? What innocent 
 snow could ever, hide the guilty front of a life so unspeak- 
 ably abominable? Could anything short of the earthquake 
 have engulfed it, or of the volcano have burnt it up? 
 And if Pompeii was like this, we may judge, from the 
 works of Aristophanes and Athenseus, of Juvenal and 
 Martial, of Petronius and Apuleius, of Strato and Meleager 
 — ^which may be regarded as the "pieces justijicatives " of 
 St. Paul's estimate of heathendom — what Tarsus and 
 Ephesus, what Corinth and Miletug, were likely to have 
 been. In days and countries when the darkness was so 
 deep that the very deeds of darkness did not need to hide 
 themselves — ^in days and cities where the worst vilenesses 
 of idolatry were trumpeted/ in its streets, and sculptured 
 in its market-places, and. consecrated in its worship, and 
 stamped upon its coins — did Paul need Greek study to tell 
 him the characteristics of a godless civilisation ? The 
 notion of Baumgarten that, after his conversion, St. Paul 
 earnestly studied Greek literature at Tarsus, with a view 
 to his mission among the heathen — or that the " books " 
 and parchments which he asked to be sent to him from 
 the house of Carpus at Troas,i were of this description— is 
 as precarious as the fancy that his parents sent him to be 
 educated at Jerusalem in order to counteract the com- 
 
 » 2 Tim. iv. 13. 
 
PAGAN LITERATURE. 37 
 
 tnencing sorcery exercised over his imagination by 
 ^.Hellenic studies. Gamaliel, it is true, was one of the few 
 Eabbis who took the liberal and enlightened view about 
 the permissibility of the Chokmah Jovanith, or " wisdom 
 of the Greeks " — one of the few who held the desirability 
 of not wholly dissevering the white ialUth of Shem from 
 the stained pallium of Japhet.^ But, on the one hand, 
 neither would Gamaliel have had that false toleration 
 which seems to think that " the ointment of the apothe- 
 cary " is valueless without " the fly which causeth it to 
 stink ; " and, on the other hand, if Gamaliel had allowed 
 his pupils to handle such books, or such parts of books, as 
 dwelt on the darker side of Paganism, Paul was not the 
 kind of pupil who would, for a moment, have availed 
 himself of such " ruinous edification." ^ The Jews were 
 so scrupulous, that some of them held concerning books of 
 their own hagiographa — such, for instance, as the Book of 
 Esther — ^that they were dubious reading. They would 
 not allow their youth even to open the Song of Solomon 
 
 ' See Life of Christ, Exc. IV. voL ii. 461. The study of Greek literature by the 
 Euuse of Gamaliel is said to hare been connived at by the Rabbis, on the plea 
 that they needed a knowledge of Greek in civil and diplomatic intercourse, on 
 behalf of their countrymen (see Etheridge,fie6. Lit p. 45). Rabban Shimon Ben 
 Gamaliel is said to have remarked that there were 1,000 children in his father's 
 house, of whom 500 studied the law, and 500 the wisdom of the Greeks, and that 
 of these all but two perished [in the rebellion of Bar-chocba P] {Bdbha Kama, 
 f. 83, 1). The author of the celebrated comparison, that "because the two sons of 
 Noah, Shem and Japhet, united to cover with one garment their father's naked- 
 ness, Shem obtained the fringed garment (tallitK), and Japhet the philosopher's 
 garment {pallium), which ought to be united again," was R. Jochanan Ben 
 Napuchah {Mick. Babbah, Gen. xxxvi. ; Jer. Sotah, ad f. ; Selden, De Synedr. 
 ii. 9, 2 ; Bisooe, p. 60). On the other hand, the narrower Rabbis identified Greek 
 learning vrith Egyptian thaumaturgy ; and when R. Elieser Ben Dama asked 
 his uncle, R. Ismael, whether one might not learn Greek knowledge after 
 having studied the entire law, R. Ismael quoted in reply Josh. i. 8, and said, 
 "Go and find a moment which is neither day nor night, and then abandon 
 yourself in it to Greek knowledge " {Menachoth, 99, 2). 
 
 ' 1 Cor. viii. 10, v (rvvelSTi<ris airov SurBn'ovs ovtos otKoSo/i(7)0^(reTai ets ri ri 
 flSu\6eura 4aeluv. Buinosa aedificaiio, Calv. ad loo. 
 
88 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 before the age of twenty-one. Nothing, therefore,^ can be 
 more certain than that " a Pharisee of Pharisees," evea 
 though his boyhood were spent in heathen Tarsus, would 
 not have been allowed to read— barely even allowed to 
 know the existence of— any but the sweetest and soundest 
 portions of Greek letters, if even these.^ But who that 
 has read St. Paul can believe that he had ever studied 
 Homer, or ^Eschylus, or Sophocles? I£ he had done 
 so, would there — in a writer who often "thinks in 
 quotations " — have been no touch or trace of any re- 
 miniscence of, or allusion to, epic or tragic poetry in 
 epistles written at Athens and at Corinth, and beside 
 the very tumuli of Ajax and Achilles ? Had Paul been 
 a reader of Aristotle, would he have argued in the style 
 which he adopts in the Epistles to the Gralatians and the 
 Eomans ?^ Had he been a reader of Plato, would the 
 fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians 
 have carried in it not the most remotely faint allusion to 
 the splendid guesses of the Phaedo ? Nothing can be more 
 clear than that he had never been subjected to a classic 
 training. His Greek is not the Greek of the Atticists, nor 
 his rhetoric the rhetoric of the schools, nor his logic the 
 logic of the philosophers. It is doubtful whether the in- 
 comparable energy and individuality of his style and of his 
 
 ' See Soict, 49,- 6; and the strong condemnation of allGrentile books by 
 E. AMbha, Bab. Sanhedr. 90, a. (Gfrorer, Jahrh. d. EeiU. i. 114 j Philo, ii. 
 £150; Gratz, iii. 602; Dereubourg, Palest. 114.) In Yadayim, iv. 6, th6 
 Sadducees complain of some Pharisees for holding that iSbB Books of Eoole- 
 siastes and Canticles " defile the hands,'' while " the books of Homeros " do not. 
 The comment appended to this remark shows, however, the most astounding 
 ignorance. The two Rabbis {in loco) take " Meros " to be the proper name, 
 preceded by the article, and deriving Meros from rasas, to destroy, make 
 the poems of Homer into books which cavil against the Law and are doomed 
 to destruction ! Gratz denies that won is Homer. 
 
 2 " Melius haec sibi convenissent," says Fritzsche, in alluding to one of 
 St. Paul's antinomies, "si Apostolus Aristotelis non Gamalielis alumnus 
 fuisset." 
 
HELLENIC TRAINING. 39 
 
 reasoning would not have been merely enfeebled and con- 
 ventionalised if be bad gone tbrongb any prolonged course 
 of tbe only training wbicb tbe Sopbists of Tarsus could 
 bave given bim.^ 
 
 > See Excursus L, " The Style of St. Paul ; " Excursus II., " Ehetorie of 
 St. Paul ; " and Excursus III., " The Classic Quotations and Allusions of 
 St. Paul." I may sum up the conclusion of these essays by statiijg that 
 St. Paul had but a slight acquaintance with Greek literature, but that he had 
 very probably attended some elementary classes in Tarsus, in which he had 
 gained a tiaeture of Greek rhetoric, and possibly eTeu of Sioic principles. 
 
CHAPTEE in. 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF THE RABBI. 
 
 'HKoirart 'yip t^c in^v hvaarpo^'liv ttotc iv 'lovSaTafi^, 3Tt ... vpocKinrTov ir r^ 
 'lovSaTtrfi^ 6ir4p ttoWoIs avvri\ticitiTas if r^ yefet fiou. — GaL. 1 13, 14. 
 
 " Let thy house be a place of resort for the wise, and cover thyseK with the 
 dust of their feet, and drink their words with thirstiness." — Pirke Abhoih, i. 4. 
 
 " The world was created for the sake of the Thorah." — Nedarim, 32, 1. 
 
 " Whoever is busied in the law for its own sake is worth the whole world." 
 — ^Pbeek R. Meie, 1. 
 
 So far, then, we liave atfceinpted to trace in detail, by 
 tlie aid of St. Paul's own writings, the degree and the 
 character of those influences Which were exercised upon 
 his mind by the early years which he spent at Tarsus, 
 modified or deepened as they must have been by long in- 
 tercourse with heathens, and with converts from heathen- 
 dom, in later years. And already we have seen abundant 
 reason to believe that the impressions which he received 
 from Hellenism were comparatively superficial and fugitive, 
 while those of his Hebraic training and nationality worked 
 deep among the very bases of his life. It is this Hebraic 
 side of his character, so important to any understanding 
 of his life and writings, that we must now endeavour to 
 trace and estimate. 
 
 , That St. Paul was a Eoman citizen, that he could go 
 through the world and say in his own defence, when 
 needful or possible, Civis Momanus sum, is stated so dis- 
 tinctly, and under circumstances so manifestly probable, 
 that the fact stands above all doubt. There are, indeed, 
 some difficulties about it which induce many German 
 theologians quietly to deny its truth, and attribute 
 
THE ROMAN FRANCHISE. 41 
 
 the statement to a desire on the part of the author of 
 the Acts " to recommend St. Paul to the Eomans as a 
 native Eoman," or "to remove the reproach that the 
 originators of Christendom had been enemies of the 
 Eoman State." It is true that, if St. Paul was a free- 
 born Eoman citizen, his legal rights as established by 
 the Lex Porcia^ must, according to his own statement, 
 have, been eight times violated at the time when he wrote 
 the Second Epistle to the Corinthians -^ while a ninlh vip- 
 lation of those rights was only prevented by his direct 
 appeal. Five of these, however, were Jewish scourgings, 
 and what we have already said, as well as what we shaU. 
 say hereafter, may well lead us to suppose that, as against 
 the Jews, St. Paul would have purposely abstained from 
 putting forward a claim which, from the mouth of a 
 Jew, would have been regarded as an odious sign that 
 he was willing to make a personal advantage of his 
 country's subjection. The Jewish authorities possessed 
 the power to scourge, and it is only too sadly probable 
 that Saul himself, when he was their agent, had been the 
 cause of its infliction on other Christians. If so, he would 
 have felt a strong additional reason for abstaioiug from 
 the plea which would have exempted him from the 
 authority of his countrymen; and we may see iu this 
 abstention a fresh and, so far as I am aware, a hitherto 
 unnoticed trait of his natural nobleness. As to the Eoman 
 scourgings, it is clear that the author of the Acts, though 
 well aware of the privileges which Eoman citizenship 
 entailed, was also aware that, on turbulent occasions 
 and in remote places, the plea might be summarily set 
 aside in the case of those who were too weak or too 
 
 1 "Porcia lex tirgas ab omninm cmnin Bomanonun corpore amovet" 
 (Oic 'pto Bab. 3 ; Liv. x. 9). 
 
 * When he was about fifty-three years old. 
 
42 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 obscure to support it. If under the full glare of publi- 
 city in Sicily, and when the rights of the " Civitas " 
 were rare, a Verres could contemptuously ignore them 
 to an extent much more revolting to the Eoman 
 sense of dignity than scourging was — then very little 
 difficulty remains in reconciling St. Paul's expression, 
 " Thrice was I beaten with rods," with the claim 
 which he put forth to the praetors of Philippi and to 
 the chiliarch at Jerusalem. How St. Paul's father or 
 grandfather obtained the highly-prized distinction we 
 have no means of ascertaining. It certainly did not 
 belong to any one as a citizen of Tarsus, for, if so, 
 Lysias at Jerusalem, knowing that St. Paul came from 
 Tarsus, would have known that he had also' the rights 
 of a Eoman. But Tarsus was not a Golonia or a Muni- 
 cipium, but only an TJrbs Libera ; and this privilege, be- 
 stowed upon it by Augustus, did not involve any claim to 
 the Civitas. The franchise may either have been purchased 
 by Paul's father, or obtained as a reward for some services 
 of which no trace remains.^ When Cassius punished 
 Tarsus by a heavy fine for having embraced the side of 
 Antony, it is said that many Tarsians were sold as slaves 
 in order to pay the money; and one conjecture is that 
 St. Paul's father, in his early days, may have been one of 
 these, and may have been first emancipated and then pre- 
 sented with the Civitas during a residence at Eome. The 
 conjecture is just possible, but nothing more. 
 
 At any rate, this Eoman citizenship is not in 
 any way inconsistent with his constant claim to the 
 purest Jewish descent; nor did it appreciably affect his 
 
 ' See for such means of acquiring it, Suet. Aug. 47 ; Jos. B. J. ii. 14; Acts 
 xxii. 28. The possession of citizensMp had to be proved by a " diploma," and 
 Claudius punished a false assumption of it with death. (Suet. Clcmd. 25; 
 Ccdig. 28 ; Nero, 12 ; Epiotet. Dissert, iii. 24.) 
 
TRAINING OP A JEWISH BOT. 43 
 
 character. The father of Saul may. have been glad 
 that he possessed an inalienable right, transmissible to 
 his son, which would protect him in many of those 
 perils which were only too possible in such times ; 
 but it made no difference in the training which he 
 gave to the young Saul, or in the destiny which he 
 marked out for him. That training, as we can clearly 
 see, was the ordinary training of every Jewish boy. 
 "The prejudices of the Pharisaic house," it has been 
 said, " surrounded his cradle ; his Judaism grew like the 
 mustard-tree in the Gospel, and intolerance, fanaticism, 
 national hatred, pride, and other passions, built their nests 
 among its branches." ^ At the age of five he would begin 
 to study the Bible with his parents at home; and even 
 earlier than this he would doubtless have learnt the 
 Shema^ and the HaUel (Psalms cxiii. — cxviii.) in whole 
 or^in part. At six he would go to his "vineyard," as the 
 later Eabbis called their schools. At ten he would begin to 
 study those earher and simpler developments of the oral 
 law, which were afterwards collected in the Mishna. At 
 thirteen he would, by a sort of " confirmation," become a 
 "Son of the Commandment."^ At fifteen he would be 
 trained in yet more minute and burdensome halachbth, 
 analogous to those which ultimately filled the vast mass 
 of the Gemara. At twenty, or earUer, like every orthodox 
 Jew, he would marry. During many years he would be 
 ranked among the " pupils of the wise," * and be mainly 
 occupied with " the traditions of the Fathers."* 
 
 ' Hausrath, p. 19. 
 
 « Strictly Deut. vi. 4—9 ; but also xi. 13—27 j Num. xv. 37—41. 
 
 * Bmr Mitevah. 
 
 * Tirke Abhoth, v. 21. See too Dr. Ginsburg's excellent article on 
 « Education" in Kitto's Bibl. Cyel. 
 
 * Pi/rhe Ahh6th, i. 1. The two favourite words of the Pharisees were 
 iuiplPfia and Tck v&Tpia MBn. See Acts xxvi. 5 ; xxii. 3; Jos. B. J. ii. 8, 14 ; i. 5, 
 2; Antt. xiil 10,-6; svii. 2, ad fin. , 
 
U THE LITE AND WOEK OP ST. PAUL 
 
 It was in studies and habits like these that the young 
 Saul of Tarsus grew up to the age o£ thirteen, which 
 was the age at which a Jewish boy, if he were destined 
 for the position of a Eabbi, entered the school of some 
 great master. The master among whose pupils Saul 
 was enrolled was the famous Eabban^ Gamaliel, a son of 
 Eabban Simeon, and a grandson of Hillel, "a doctor 
 of the law had in reputation among all the people."^ 
 There were only seven of the Eabbis to whom the Jews 
 gave the title of Eabban, and three of these were Gama- 
 liels of this family, who each in turn rose to the high 
 distinction of JYast, or President of the School. Gama- 
 liel I., like his grandfather Hillel, held the somewhat 
 anomalous position of a liberal Pharisee. A Pharisee in 
 heartfelt zeal for the traditions of his fathers,^ he yet 
 had none of the narrow exclusiveness which characterised 
 Shammai, the rival of his grandfather, and the hard school 
 which Shammai had founded. His liberality of intellect 
 showed itself in the permission of Pagan literature ; 
 his largeness of heart in the tolerance which breathes 
 through his speech before the Sanhedrin. There is 
 no authority for the tradition that he was a secret 
 Christian,^ but we see from the numerous notices of him 
 in the Talmud, and from the sayings there ascribed 
 to him, that he was a man of exactly the character 
 
 * Acts V. 34, xxii. 3. See Gratz, Gesch. d. Jvden, iu. 274 
 ' I have noticed farther on (see Exenisus Y.) the difficulty of being snre 
 which of the Gamaliels is referred to when the name occurs in the Talmud. This, 
 howeyer, is less important, since they were all of the same school, and entirely 
 faithful to Mosaism. We may see the utter change which subsequently took 
 place in St. Paul's -views if we compare Bom. xiv. 5, Col. ii. 16, Gal. iv. 10, with 
 the following anecdote : — " Rabban Gamaliel's ass happened to be laden with 
 honey, and it was found dead one Sabbath evening, because he had been un- 
 willing to unload it on that day" {Shabbath, f. 154, c. 2). 
 
 ' Becogn. Clem. i. 65; Phot. Cod. 171, p. '199; Thilo, Cod. Apow. p. 501 
 (Meyer ad Acts v. 34). 
 
GAMALIEL. 45 
 
 which we should infer from the brief notice of him 
 and of his sentiments in the Acts of the Apostles. 
 In both sources alike we see a humane, thoughtful, 
 high-minded, and religious man — a man of sufficient 
 culture to elevate him above vulgar passions, and of 
 sufficient wisdom to see, to state, and to act upon the 
 broad principles that hasty judgments are dangerously- 
 liable to error ; . that there is a strength and majesty in 
 truth which needs no aid from persecution ; that a light 
 from heaven falls upon the destinies of man, and that by 
 that light Grod " shows all things in the slow history of 
 their ripening." 
 
 At the feet of this eminent Sanhedrist sat Saul of 
 Tarsus in aU probability for many years ;^ and though for 
 a time the burning zeal of his temperament may have 
 carried him to excesses of intolerance in which he was 
 untrue to the best traditions of his school, yet, since the 
 sunlight of the grace of God ripened in his soul the latent 
 seeds of all that was wise and tender, we may believe that 
 some of those germs of charity had been implanted in his 
 heart by his eminent teacher. So far from seeing any 
 improbability in the statement that St. Paul had been 
 a scholar of Gamaliel, it seems to me that it throws a 
 flood of light on the character and opinions of the Apostle. 
 With the exception of HiUel, there is no one of the Jewish 
 Eabbis, so far as we see them in the light of history, 
 whose virtues made him better suited to be the teacher of a 
 Saul, than HiUel's grandson. We must bear in mind that 
 the dark side of Pharisaism which is brought before us 
 in the Gospels — ^the common and current Pharisaism, half 
 
 * Acts xxii. 3. The Jewish.Eabbis sat on lofty chairs, and their pupils sat 
 at their feet, either on the ground or on benches. There is no sufficient 
 ground for the tradition that up tiU the time of Gamaliel's death it had been 
 ^e custom for the pupils to stand. (2 Kings ii 3, It. 38 ; Bab. Samhedr. 
 viL 2; Biscoejp. 77.) 
 
46 THE LIFE A^D WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 hypocritical, half mechanical, and wholly selfish, which 
 justly incurred the blighting flash of Christ's denunciation 
 — was not the onl^ aspect which Pharisaism could wear. 
 When we speak of Pharisaism we mean obedience petri- 
 fied into formalism, religion degraded into ritual, morals 
 cankered by casuistry j we mean the triumph and per- 
 petuity of all the worst and weakest elements in religious 
 party-spirit. But there were Pharisees and Pharisees. 
 The New Testament furnishes us with a favourable pic- 
 ture of the candour and wisdom of a. Nicodemus and a 
 Gamaliel. In the Talmud, among many other stately 
 figures who walk in a peace and righteousness worthy of 
 the race which sprang from Abraham, we see the lovable 
 and noble characters of a Hillel, of a Simeon, of a 
 Chaja, of a Juda " the Holy." It was when he thought 
 of such as these, that, even long after his conver- 
 sion, Paul could exclaim before the Sanhedrin with no. 
 sense of shame or contradiction — " Men and brethren, I 
 am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees." He would be the 
 more able to make this appeal because, at that moment, he 
 was expressly referriug to the resurrection of the dead, 
 which has been too sweepingly characterised as "the 
 one doctrine which Paul the Apostle borrowed from Saul 
 ■.the Pharisee." 
 
 It is both interesting, and for the study of St. Paul's 
 Epistles most deeply important, to trace the influence 
 ■ of these years upon his character and intellect. Much 
 ithat he learnt during early manhood continued to be, 
 till the last, an essential part of his knowledge and ex- 
 :perience. To the day of his death he neither denied nor 
 ■underrated the advantages of the Jew; and flrst among 
 'those advantages he placed the possession of " the oracles 
 lof God."^ He had begun the study of these Scriptures 
 
 ' Bom. iii. 2. 
 
KNOWLEDGE OF SCRIPTURE. 47 
 
 at the age of six, and to tliem, and tlie elucidations 
 of them which had been gathered during many centuries 
 in the schools of Judaism, he had devoted the most stu- 
 dious years of his life. The eflfects of that study are more 
 or less traceable in every Epistle which he wrote ; they 
 are specially remarkable in those which, like the , Epistle 
 to the Romans, were in whole or in part addressed to 
 Churches in which Jewish converts were numerous or 
 predominant. 
 
 His profound knowledge of the Old Testanient Scrip- 
 tures shows how great had been his familiarity with them 
 from earliest childhood. From the Pentateuch, from the 
 Prophets, and above all from the Psalter, he not only 
 quotes repeatedly, advancing at each step of the argument 
 from quotation to quotation, as though without these his 
 argument, which is often in reality quite independent of 
 them, would lack authority; but he also quotes, as is 
 evident, from memory, and often into one brief quota- 
 tion weaves the verbal reminiscences of several passages.^ 
 Like all Hellenistic Jews, he uses the Greek version of 
 the LXX., but he had an advantage over most Hellenists 
 in that knowledge of the original Hebrew which some- 
 times stands him in good stead. Tet though he can 
 refer to the original when occasion requires, the LXX. 
 was to him as much " the Bible " as our English version 
 is to us; and, as is the case with many Christian writere, 
 he knew it so well that his sentences are constantly 
 moulded by its rhythm, and his thoughts iacessantly 
 coloured by its expressions. 
 
 And the controversial use which he makes of it is very 
 remarkable. It often seems at first- sight to be wholly in- 
 dependent of the context. It often seems to read between 
 
 1 Il.g., Rom. i. 24, iii. 6, iv. 17, ix. 33, x. 18, xi. 8 ; 1 Cor, Ti., 2 ix. 7, 
 XT. 45; &C. 
 
48 THE LIFE AND WORK OT ST. PAUI/. 
 
 the lines.^ It often seems to consider the mere words of 
 a writer as of conclusive authority entirely apart from their 
 original application.^ It seems to regard the word and 
 letter of Scripture as full of divine mysterious oracles, 
 which might not only he cited in matters of doctrine, hut 
 even to illustrate the simplest matters of contemporary 
 fact.' It attaches consequences of the deepest importance 
 to what an ordiaary reader might regard as a mere gram- 
 matical expression.* But if the general conception of 
 this style of argumentation was due to Paul's long 
 training in Eabbinic principles of exegesis, it should not 
 be forgotten that while these principles often modified 
 the form of his expressions, they cannot in any single 
 instance be said to have furnished the essential matter 
 of his thoughts. It was quite inevitable that one who 
 had undergone the elaborate training 6f a Eabbi — one 
 who, to full manhood, had never dreamt that any training 
 could be superior to it — would not instantly unlearn the 
 reiterated lessons of so many years. Nor was it in any 
 way necessary to the interests of religious truth that he 
 should do so. The sort of traditional culture in the 
 explanation of Scripture which he learnt at the feet of 
 Gamaliel was not only of extreme value in all his contro- 
 versies with the Jews, but also enriched his style, and lent 
 fresh vividness to his arguments, without enfeebling his 
 judgment or mystifying his opinions. The ingenuity of 
 
 1 Rom. ii. 24, iii. 10—18, ix. 15 ; 1 Cor. x. 1—4 ; Gal. iv. 24—31 ; Ac. This 
 is the essence of the later Kabbala, with its Pardes — namely, Peshat, " expla- 
 nation;" Remes, "hint;" Berush, "homily;" and Sod, "mystery." Yet in 
 St. Paul there is not a trace of the methods (Geneth) of Gematria, Notoiikon, 
 or Themourah, which the Jews applied very early to Old Testament exegesis. 
 I have fully explained these terms in a paper on "Rabbinic Exegesis," 
 .Expositor; May, 1877. 
 
 2 1 Cor. xiv. 21 ; Rom. x. 6—9; 1 Cor. xv. 45 
 « See Eom. x. 15—21. 
 
 * Gal. iii. 16 
 
BABBINIO EXEGESIS. 49 
 
 the Jewish Eabbi never for one moment overpowers the 
 vigorous sense and illuminated intellect of the Christian 
 teacher. Although St. Paul's method of handling Scrip- 
 ture, undoubtedly, in its general features, resembles and 
 recalls the method which reigns throughout the Talmud, 
 yet the practical force, the inspired wisdom, the clear 
 intuition, of the great Apostle, preserve him from that 
 extravagant abuse of numerical, kabbalistic, esoteric, and 
 impossibly inferential minutiae which make anything 
 mean anything — from all attempt to emulate the re- 
 markable exegetical feats of those letter- worshipping 
 Eabbis who prided themselves on suspending dogmatic 
 mountains by textual hairs. He shared, doubtless, in 
 the views of the later Jewish schools — the Tanaim and 
 Amoraim — on the nature of inspiration. These views, 
 which we find also in Philo, made the words of Scrip- 
 ture co-extensive and identical with the words of God, 
 and in the clumsy and feeble hands of the more fanatical 
 Talmudists often attached to the dead letter an im- 
 portance which stifled or destroyed the living sense. But 
 as this extreme and mechanical literalism — ^this claim to 
 absolute infallibility even in accidental details and passing 
 allusions — this superstitious adoration of the letters and 
 vocables of Scripture as though they were the articulate 
 vocables and immediate autograph of Grod — finds no en- 
 couragement in any part of Scripture, and very direct 
 discouragement in more than one of the utterances of 
 Christ, so there is not a single passage in which any 
 approach to it is dogmatically stated in the writings of 
 St. Paul.^ Nay, more — ^the very point of his specific 
 
 ' 2 Tim. iii. 16 is no exception ; even if Beittvevtrros be tliere regarded as a 
 predicate, nothing would be more extravagant than to rest on that single 
 adjective the vast hypothesis of literal dictation, (see infra, ad loc). On 
 this great subject of inspiration I have stated what I believe to be the 
 CathoUc faith fully and clearly in the Bible Educator, i. 190 sg. 
 
50 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 difference from the Judseo-Clu-istians was his denial^ of 
 the permanent validity of the entire scheme of legislation 
 which it was the immediate object of the Pentateuch to 
 record. If it be asserted that St. Paul deals with the Old 
 Testament in the manner of a Eabbi, let it be said in 
 answer that he uses it to emancipate the souls which 
 Judaism enslaved ; and that he deduces from it, not the 
 Kabbala and the Talmud— "a philosophy for dreamers 
 and a code for mummies"^ — ^but the main ideas of the 
 Gospel of the grace of God. 
 
 It will be easy for any thoughtful and unprejudiced 
 reader of St. Paul's Epistles to verify and illustrate for 
 himself the Apostle's use of Scripture. He adopts the 
 current mode of citation, but he ennobles and enlightens it.** 
 That he did not consider the method universally applicable 
 is clear from its omission in those of his Epistles which 
 were intended in the main for Gentile Christians,* as also 
 in his speeches to heathen assemblies. But to the Jews 
 he would naturally address a style of argument which was 
 in entire accordance with their own method of dialectics. 
 Many of the truths which he demonstrates by other con- 
 siderations may have seemed to him to acquire additional 
 authority from their assonance with certain expressions of 
 Scripture. We cannot, indeed, be sure in some instances 
 how far St. Paul meant his quotation for an argument, and 
 how far he used it as a mere illustrative formula. Thus, 
 we feel no hesitation in admitting the cogency of his proof < 
 of the fact that both Jews and Gentiles were guilty in God's 
 sight ; but we should not consider the language of David 
 about his enemies in the fourteenth and fifty- third Psalms, 
 still less his strong expressions "all" and "no, not one," 
 
 ' Reuss, Theol. Chrei. i. 268 and 408—421. 
 
 ', See Jowett, Romans, i. 353 — 362. 
 
 ' There are no Scriptural quotations in 1, 2 Thess., Pliil., OoL 
 
SCRIPTURAL QUOTATION. 51 
 
 at) Aill'iXjy any great additional force to the general argu- 
 mtni. It is probable that a Jew would have done so ; 
 an(A St. Paul, as a Jew trained in this method of Scrip- 
 tural application, may have done so too. But what 
 has been called his "inspired Targum" of the Old 
 Testament does not bind us to the mystic method of 
 Old Testament commentary. As the Jews were more 
 likely to adopt any conclusion which was expressed 
 for them in the words of Scripture, St. Paul, having 
 undergone" the same training, naturally enwove into his 
 style — ^though only when he wrote to them — this 
 particular method of Scriptural illustration. To them 
 an argument of this kind would be an argumentum ex 
 concessis. To us its argumentative force would be much 
 smaller, because it does not appeal to us, as to him and to 
 his readers, with all the force of famihar reasoning. So 
 far from thinking this a subject for regret, we may, on 
 the contrary, be heartily thankful for an insight which 
 could give explicitness to deeply latent truths, and find in an 
 observation of minor importance, like that of Habakkuk, 
 that " the soul of the proud man is not upright, but 
 the just man shall live by his steadfastness " ^ — i.e., that 
 the Chaldeans should enjoy no stable prosperity, but that 
 the Jews, here ideally represented as " the upright man," 
 should, because of their fidehty, live secure — ^the depth of 
 power and meaning which we attach to that palmary 
 truth of the Pauline theology that " the just shall live hy 
 'his faith." 3 
 
 A similar but more remarkable instance of this appa- 
 rent subordination of the historic context in the illustrative 
 
 1 Hab. iL 4 (Heb. ^rowMj, by his trustworthiness.) See Lightfoot ad 
 Gal. iii. 11, and p. 149. 
 
 ° Gal. iii. 11 ; Rom. i. 17 ; a]so in Heb. x. 38. St. Fan! omits the /uov of 
 the LXX., which is not in the Hebrew. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 application of prophetic words is found in 1 Cor. xiv. 21. 
 St. Paul is there speaking of the gift of tongues, and speak- 
 ing of it with entire disparagement in comparison with the 
 loftier gift of prophecy, i.e., of impassioned and spiritual 
 teaching. In support.of this disparaging estimate, and as 
 a proof that the tongues, being mainly meant as a sign 
 to unbelievers, ought only to be used sparingly and under 
 definite Kmitations in the congregations of the faithful, 
 he quotes &om Isaiah xxviii. 11^ the verse — which he does 
 not in this instance borrow from the LXX. version — " WitA 
 men of other tongues and other lips mill speak unto this people, 
 and yet for all that will they not hear me, saith the Lord" 
 The whole meaning and context are, in the original, very 
 interesting, and generally misunderstood. The passage 
 implies that since the drunken, shameless priests and 
 prophets,- chose, in their hiccoughing scorn, to deride the 
 manner and -method of the divine instruction which came 
 to them,^ God should address them in a wholly different 
 way, namely, by the Assyrians, who spake tongues which 
 they could not understand ; and yet even to that instruc- 
 tion — ^the stern and unintelligible utterance of foreign 
 victors — they should continue deaf. This passage, in a 
 manner quite alien from any which woul^ be natural 
 to us, St. Paul embpdied in a pre-eminently noble and 
 able argument, as though it illustrated, if it did not 
 prove, his view as to the proper object and limitations 
 of those soliloquies of ecstatic spiritual emotion which 
 were known as Grlossolaha, or " the Gift of Tongues." 
 One more instance, and that, perhaps, the most re- 
 
 • The quotation is introduced with the formula, " It has been written in tfee 
 Law" a phrase which is sometimes applied to the entire Old Testament. 
 
 "^ They ridiculed Isaiah's repetitions by saying they were all " bid and bid, 
 bid and bid, forbid and forbid, forbid and forbid,'- &c. {T&m la-tsiw, tsav 
 lortaav, hm la-hcw, ka/v la-lcav, &c., Heb.). (See an admirable paper on thia 
 passage by Rev. S. Cox, Ea^ositor, i. p. 101). 
 
"TO THY SEED." 53 
 
 markable of all, will enable us better to understand a 
 peculiarity which, was the natural result of years of 
 teaching. In Gal. iii. 16 he says, "Now the promises 
 were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He saith not. 
 And to seeds, as applying to many, but, as applying to 
 one. And to thy seed — who is Christ." Certainly at 
 first sight we should say that an argument of immense 
 importance was here founded on the use of the Hebrew 
 word zero, in the singular,^ and^ its representative the 
 crjripfm of the LXX. ; and that the inference which 
 St. Paul deduces depends solely on the fact that the 
 plural, zeraim ((nripfiara), is not used ; and that, therefore, 
 the promise of Gen. xiii. 15 pointed from the first to a 
 special fulfilment in one of Abraham's descendants. This 
 prima facie view must, however, be erroneous, because 
 it is inconceivable that St. Paul — a good Hebraist and 
 a master of Hellenistic Greek — was unaware that the 
 plural zeraim, as in 1 Sam. viii. 15, Dan. i. 12, and 
 the title of the Talmudic treatise, could not by any pos- 
 sibility have been used in the original promise, because 
 it could only mean " various kinds of grain " — exactly 
 in the sense in which he himself uses spermata in 
 1 Cor. XV. 38 — and that the Greek spermata, in the 
 sense of " offspring," would be nothing less than an 
 impossible barbarism. The argument, therefore — if it 
 be an argument at all, and not what the Eabbis would 
 have called a sod, or "mystery" — does not, and cannot, 
 "turn, as has been so unhesitatingly assumed, on the fact 
 that sperma is a singular noun, but on the fact that it is a 
 collective noun, and was deliberately used instead of "sons" 
 or " children ; " ^ and St. Paul declares that this collective 
 term was meant from the first to apply to Christ, as 
 elsewhere he applies it spiritually to the servants of 
 
 1 STj 2 See Lightfoot, ad loc. p. 139. 
 
H THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 Christ. In the interpretation, then, of this word, St. 
 Paul reads between the Hnes of the original, and is 
 enabled to see in it deep meanings which are the true, 
 but not the primary ones. He does not say at once that 
 the promises to Abraham found in Christ — as in the 
 purpose of God it had always been intended that they 
 should find in- Christ^ — their highest and truest fulfil- 
 ment ; but, in a manner belonging peculiarly to the 
 Jewish style of exegesis, he illustrates this high truth 
 by the use of a collective noun in which he believes it to 
 have been mystically foreshadowed.^ 
 
 This passage is admirably adapted to throw light on 
 the Apostle's use of the Old Testament. Eabbinic in 
 form, it was free in spirit. Though he does not disdain 
 either Amoraic or Alexandrian methods of dealing with 
 Scripture, St. Paul never falls into the follies or extrava- 
 gances of either. Treating the letter of Scripture with 
 intense respect, he yet made the literal sense of it bend 
 at will to the service of the spiritual consciousness. 
 On the dead letter of the TJrim, which recorded the 
 names of lost tribes, he flashed a mystic ray, which made 
 them gleam forth into divine and hitherto undreamed-of 
 oracles. The actual words of the sacred writers became 
 but as the wheels and wings of the Cherubim, and 
 whithersoever the Spirit went they went. Nothing is 
 more natural, nothing more interesting, in the hands of 
 an inspired teacher nothing is more valuable, than this 
 
 1 As in Gen. iii. 15. The Jews could not deny the force of the argument, 
 for they interpreted Gen. iv. 25, &e., of the Messiah. But 8t. Jerome's remark, 
 " Galatis, quos paulo ante stultos dixerat, factus est stultus," as though the 
 Apostle had purposely used an "accommodation" argument, is founded on 
 wrong principles. 
 
 2 The purely illustrative character of the reference seems to be clear from 
 the different, yet no less spiritualised, sense given to the text in Rom iv. 13 
 16, 18 ; ix. 8 i Gal. iii. 28, 29. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS NOT ARGUMENTS. 55 
 
 mode of application. We have not in St. Paul the frigid 
 spirit of Philonian allegory whicli to a great extent 
 depreciated the original and historic sense of Scripture, 
 and was chiefly bent on educing philosophic mysteries 
 from its living page ; nor have we a single instance of 
 Grematria or Notariton, of Atbash or Albam, of Hillel's 
 middoth or Akibha's method of hanging legal decisions 
 on the horns of letters. Into these unreal mysticisms 
 and exegetical frivolities it was impossible that a man 
 should fall who was intensely earnest, and felt, ia the vast 
 mass of what he wrote, that he had the Spirit of the 
 Lord. In no single instance does he make one of 
 these general quotations the demonstrative basis of the 
 point which he is endeavouring to impress. In every 
 instance he states the solid argument on which he rests 
 his conclusion, and only adduces Scripture by way of 
 sanction or support. And this is in exact accordance 
 with all that we know of his spiritual history — of the 
 genuineness of which it afibrds an unsuspected confirma- 
 tion. He had not arrived at any one of the truths of his 
 special gospel by the road of ratiocination. They cajne 
 to him with the flash of intuitive conviction at the miracle 
 of his conversion, or in the gradual process of subsequent 
 psychological experience. We hear from his own lips that 
 he had not originally found these truths in Scripture, or 
 been led to them by inductive processes in the course of 
 Scripture study. He received them, as again and again he 
 tells us,, by revelation direct from Christ. It was only 
 when God had taught him the truth of them that he 
 became cognisant that they must be latent in the writings 
 of the Old Dispensation. When he was thus enlightened 
 to see that they existed in Scripture, he found that all 
 Scripture was fuU of them. When he knew that the 
 treasure lay hid in the field, he bought the whole field. 
 
56 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAITL. 
 
 to become its owner. When God had revealed to him 
 the doctrine of justification by faith, he saw— as we may 
 now see, but as none had seen before him — that it 
 existed implicitly in the trustfulness of Abraham and 
 the "life" and "faith" of Habakkuk. Given the 
 right, nay, the necessity, to spiritualise the meaning of 
 the Scriptures — and given the fact that this right was 
 assumed and practised by every teacher of the schools in 
 which Paul had been trained and to which his country- 
 men looked up, as it has been practised by every great 
 teacher since — we then possess the key to all such 
 passages as those to which I have referred ; and we also 
 see the cogency with which they would come home to the 
 minds of those for whom they were intended. In other 
 words, St. Paul, when speaking to Jews, was happily 
 able to address them, as it were, in their, own dialect, 
 and it is a dialect from which Gentiles also have deep 
 lessons to learn. 
 
 It is yet another instance of the same method when 
 'he points to the two wives of Abraham as types of 
 the Jewish and of the Christian covenant, and in the 
 ^struggles and jealousies of the two, ending in the ejection 
 of Agar, sees allegorically foreshadowed the triumph of 
 the new covenant over the old. In this allegory, by mar- 
 ■vellous interchange, the physical descendants of Sarah 
 'become, in a spiritual -point of view, the descendants 
 'of Agar, and those who were Agar's children become 
 Sarah's true spiritual offspring. The inhabitants of the 
 Jerusalem that now is, though descended from Sarah and 
 Abraham, are foreshadowed for rejection under the type 
 of the offspring of Ishmael ; and the true children of 
 Abraham and Sarah are those alone who are so spiritually, 
 but of whom the vast majority were not of the chosen 
 ^eed. .And .the j)roof of this — if proof be in any case the 
 
STSTOIOHIA. 57 
 
 right word for what perhaps St. Paul himself may only have 
 regarded as allegoric confirmation — is found in Isaiah liv. 
 1, where the prophet, addressing the New Jerusalem 
 which is to rise out of the ashes of her Babylonian 
 ruin, calls to her as to a barren woman, and bids her to 
 rejoice as having many more children than she that hath 
 a husband. The Jews become metamorphosed into the 
 descendants of Agar, the Gentiles into the seed of Abra- 
 ham and heirs of the Promiset^ 
 
 This very ranging in corresponding columns of type 
 and antitype, or of the actually existent and its ideal 
 counterpart — this Systoichia in which Agar, Ishmael, the 
 Old Covenant, the earthly Jerusalem, the unconverted 
 Jews, &c., in the one column, are respective counter- 
 parts of their spiritual opposites, Sarah, Isaac, the !New 
 Covenant, the heavenly Jerusalem, the Christian Church, 
 &c., in the other column — is in itself a Rabbinic method 
 of setting forth a series of conceptions, and is, therefore, 
 another of the many traces of the influence of Eabbinic 
 training upon the mind of St. Paul. A part of the 
 system of the Eabbis was to regard the earth as — 
 
 " But the shadow of heaven, and things therein 
 Each to the other like more than on earth is thought." 
 
 This notion was especially applied to everything connected 
 
 * Other spedmens of exegesis accordant in result with the known views of 
 the Rabbis may be found in Bom. ix, 33 (compared with Is. viii. 14, xxviii. 16; 
 Luke ii. 34), since the Babbis appUed both the passages referred to — " the rock 
 of offence," and " the comer-stone " — to the Messiah ; and in 1 Cor. ix. 9, where 
 by a happy analogy (also found in Philo, Be Vktimas Offerentibus, 1) the pro- 
 hibition to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the com is applied to the duty 
 of maintaining ministers (1 Cor. ix. 4, 11 ; Eph. ir. 8). The expressions in 
 Bom. v. 12; 1 Cor. xi. 10 ; 2 Cor. xi. 14 ; Gal. iii. 19 ; iv. 29, find parallels 
 in the Targums, &c. To these may be added various images and expressions 
 in 1 Cor. xv. 36 ; 2 Cor. xiL 2 j 1 Thess. iv. 16. (See Immer, Nevi. Theol. 210 ; 
 Krenkel, p. 218.) 
 
58 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 with the Holy People, and there was no event in the 
 wanderings of the wilderness which did not stand typi- 
 cally for matters of spiritual experience or heavenly .- 
 hope.^ This principle is expressly stated in the First 
 Epistle to the Corinthians,^ where, in exemplification of 
 it, not only is the manna made the type of the bread ; 
 of the Lord's Supper, but, by a much more remote 
 analogy, the passing through the waters of the Ked Sea, 
 and the being guided by the pillar of cloud by day, is 
 described as "being baptised unto Moses in the cloud 
 and in the sea," and is made a prefigurement of Christian 
 baptism.^ 
 
 But although St. Paul was a Hebrew by virtue of 
 his ancestry, and by virtue of the language which he 
 had learnt as his mother-tongue, and although he would 
 probably have rejected the appellation of " Hellenist," 
 which is indeed never applied to him, yet his veiy 
 Hebraism had, in one most important respect, and one 
 which has very little attracted the attention of scholars, ] 
 an Hellenic bias and tinge. This is apparent in the • 
 fact which I have already mentioned, that he was, 
 or at any rate that he became, to a marked extent, 
 in ' the technical language of the Jewish schools, an 
 Hagadist, not an Halachist.* It needs but a glance at 
 the Mishna, and stiU more at the Gemara, to see that 
 the question which mainly occupied the thoughts and 
 interests of the Palestinian and Babylonian Rabbis, and 
 
 ' " Quicquid eTenit patribus signum filiis," &c. CWetstein, and Schottgen 
 on 1 Cor. X. 11). (See Wisd. xi., xvi. — ^xviii.) ^ 
 
 ' 1 Oor. I. 6. ToDto SJ rivoi tiiiZv ly(v^6i\<rav. On the manna ( = SeTos ^({yo;), 
 compare PhUo, Be Leg. Alleg. iv. 56 ; on the rock ( = aoipia rov fleo), id. ii. 21. 
 
 5 So Greg. Naz. Oral. 39, p. 688, Jer. Ep. ad Fahiol. and most commentators, 
 followed by the collect in our baptismal service, " figuring thereby thy holy 
 baptism." But observe that the typology is quite incidental, the moral lesson ji 
 paramount (1 Cor. x. 6, 11). 5 
 
 * See Excursus IV., " St. Paul a Hagadist." j 
 
HALAOHA AND HAGADA. 59 
 
 whicli almost constituted tlie entire education of their 
 scholars, was the Halacha, or " rule ; " and if we compare 
 the Talmud with the Midrashim, we see at once that 
 some Jewish scholars devoted themselves to the Hagada 
 almost exclusively, and others to the Halacha, and that 
 the names frequent in the one region of Jewish litera- 
 ture are rarely found in the other. The two classes of 
 students despised each other. The Hagadist despised 
 the Halachist as a minute pedant, and was despised in 
 turn as an imaginative ignoramus. There was on the 
 part of some Eabbis a jealous dislike of teaching the 
 Hagadoth at all to any one who had not gone through 
 the laborious training of the Halacha. "I hold from 
 my ancestors," said R. Jonathan, in refusing to teach the 
 Hagada to E. Samlai, "that one ought not to teach 
 the Hagada either to a Babylonian or to a southern 
 Palestinian, because they are arrogant and ignorant." 
 The consequences of the mutual dis-esteem in which 
 each branch of students held the other was that the 
 Hagadists mainly occupied themselves with the Prophets, 
 and the Halachists with the Law. And hence the latter 
 became more and more Judaic, Pharisaic, Rabbinic. The 
 seven rules of Hillel became the thirteen rules of Ishmael,^ 
 and the thirty-three of Akibha, and by the intervention 
 of these rules almost anything might be added to ' or 
 subtracted from the veritable Law.^ The letter of the 
 Law thus lost its comparative simplicity in boundless 
 complications, until the Talmud tells us how Akibha 
 was seen in a vision by the astonished Moses, drawing 
 
 ' See Derenbonrg, Palest p. 397. 
 
 * Even Er. Ishmael, who shares with R. Akibha the title of Father of the 
 World, admits to haTing found three cases in which the Halacha was contrary 
 to the letter of the Pentateuch. It would not be difficult to discover very 
 many more. 
 
60 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST, PAUL. 
 
 from every horn of every letter wHole bushels of de- 
 cisions.^ Meanwhile the Hagadists were deducing from 
 the utterances of the Prophets a spirit which almost 
 amounted to contempt for Levitical minutiae ; * were de- 
 veloping the Messianic tradition, and furnishing a 
 powerful though often whoUy unintentional assistance 
 to the logic of Christian exegesis. This was because 
 the Hagadists were grasping the spirit, while the Hala- 
 chists were blindly groping amid the crumbled frag- 
 ments of the letter. It is not wonderful that the 
 Jews got to be so jealous of the Hagada, as betraying 
 possible tendencies to the heresies of the minim — i.e., 
 the Christians — that they imposed silence upon those 
 who used certain suspected hagadistic expressions, which 
 in themselves were perfectly harmless. " He who pro- 
 fanes holy things," says Eabbi Ehezer of Modin, in the 
 Pirke Abhbth, " who slights the festivals, who causes his 
 neighbour to blush in public, who breaks the covenant 
 of Abraham, and discovers explanations of the Law con- 
 trary to the Halacha, even if he knew the Law and his 
 works were good, would stUl lose his share in the hfe to 
 come."' 
 
 It is easy to understand from these interesting par- 
 ticulars that if the Hagada and the Halacha were alike 
 taught in the lecture-room of Gamaliel, St. Paul, whatever 
 may have been his original respect for and study of the 
 one, carried with him in mature years no trace of such 
 studies, while he by no means despised the best parts of 
 the other, and, illuminated by the Holy Spirit of Grod, 
 found in the training with which it had furnished him 
 -^^ i-'isf an occasional germ, or illustration, of those 
 
 * Menachoth, 29, 2. 
 
 ^ Is. i. 11-16 ; Iviii. 5—7 ; Jer. vii. 21. 
 
 ' Pirlee 4bhoth, iii. 8; Gratz, iii. 79. 
 
OHEISTIAN HAGADISM. 61 
 
 Christian and Messianic arguments wMch he addressed 
 with such consummate force alike to the rigid Hebraists 
 and the most bigoted Hellenists in after years.^ 
 
 ' See Derenbonrg's Sist. de la Palestine d'aprhs les Thahrmds (ch. xxi. snd 
 xxiii.), which seems to me to throw a flood of light on the views and early 
 trMuisg of St. FauL 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 8ATJL THE PHARISEE. 
 
 ZriKan^is iiripx^y TtSc varptKciv /lov TtapaSiaeav. — GaX, i. 14 ; AcTS XZlL 3. 
 KaTct tV hMptfifariTitv alpeirtv Trjs THierdpas 6pri(TK(las ^foira fapurcuos, — ^AcT8 
 xxvi. 5. 
 
 If tlie gathered lore of the years between tlie ages of 
 thirteen and thirty -three has left, as it must inevitably 
 have left, unmistakable traces on the pages of St. Paul, 
 how much more must this be the case with all the moral 
 struggles, all the spiritual experiences, all those inward 
 battles which are not fought with earthly weapons, through 
 which he must have passed during the long period in which 
 '■' he lived a Pharisee " ? 
 
 We know well the kind of hfe which lies hid behind 
 that expression. We know the minute and intense 
 scrupulosity of Sabbath observance wasting itself in all 
 those ahJidih and tolddth — those primary and. derivative 
 rules and prohibitions, and inferences from rules and 
 prohibitions, and combinations of inferences from rules 
 and prohibitions, and cases of casuistry and conscience 
 arising out of the infinite possible variety of circumstances 
 to which those combinations of inference might apply— 
 which had degraded the Sabbath from " a delight, holy of 
 the Lord and honourable," partly into an anxious and 
 pitiless burden, and partly into a network of contrivances 
 hypocritically designed, as it were, in the lowest spirit of 
 heathenism, to cheat the Deity with the mere semblance of 
 
LBVITIO PHAEISAISM. 63 
 
 accurate observance.^ We know the carefulness about the 
 colour of fringes, and the tying of tassels, and the lawful- 
 ness of meats and drinks. We know the tithings, at once 
 troublesome and ludicrous, of mint, anise, and cummin, 
 and the serio-comic questions as to whether in tithing the 
 seed it was obligatory also to tithe the stalk. We know 
 the double fasts of the week, and the triple prayers of the 
 day, and the triple visits to the Temple. We know 
 the elaborate strainings of the water and the wine, that 
 not even the carcase of an animalcula might defeat the 
 energy of Levitical anxiety. We know the constant 
 rinsings and scourings of brazen cups and pots and tables, 
 carried to so absurd an extreme that, on the occasion 
 of washing the golden candelabrum of the Temple, the 
 Sadducees remarked that their Pharisaic rivals would wash 
 the Sun itself if they could get an opportunity. We 
 know the entire and laborious ablutions and bathings 
 of the whole person, with carefully tabulated ceremonies 
 and normal gesticulations, not for the laudable purpose 
 of personal cleanliness, but for the nervously strained 
 endeavour to avoid every possible and impossible chance of 
 contracting ceremonial uncleanness. We know how this 
 notion of perfect Levitical purity thrust* itself with 
 irritating recurrence into every aspect and relation of 
 ordinary life, and led to the scornful avoidance of the very 
 contact and shadow of fellow-beings, who might after all 
 be purer and nobler -than those who would not touch them 
 with the tassel of a garment's hem. We know the 
 obtrusive prayers,^ the ostentatious almsgivings,^ the 
 broadened phylacteries,* the petty ritualisms,* the pro- 
 fessorial arrogance,^ the reckless proselytism,'' the greedy 
 
 » See the rules about the mixtures {Ervbhin), Life of Christ, i. 436, ii. 472. 
 ' Matt. vi. 5. ' Matt. vi. 2, * Matt, xxiii. 5. 
 
 * Mark vii. 4 — 8. ' John vii. 49. ' Matt, xxiii. 15. 
 
64 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL, 
 
 avarice,^ the haughty assertion of pre-eminence/ the ill- 
 concealed hypocrisy,' which were often hidden under this 
 venerable assumption of superior holiness. And we know 
 aU this quite as much, or more, from the admiring records 
 of the Talmud — which devotes one whole treatise to hand- 
 washings,* and another to the proper method of killing a 
 fowl,^ and another to the stalks of legumes" — as from 
 the reiterated " woes " of Christ's denunciation.'' But 
 we may be sure that these extremes and degeneracies 
 of the Pharisaic aim would be as grievous and displeas- 
 ing to the youthful Saul as they were to all the noblest 
 Pharisees, and as they were to Christ Himself. Of the 
 seven kinds of Pharisees which the Talmud in various 
 places enumerates, we may be quite sure that Saul of 
 Tarsus would neither be a " bleeding " Pharisee, nor a 
 " mortar " Pharisee, nor a " Shechemite " Pharisee, nor a 
 " timid " Pharisee, nor a " tumbling " Pharisee, nor a 
 "painted" Pharisee at all; but that the only class of 
 Pharisee to which he, as a true and high-minded Israelite, 
 would have borne any shadow of resemblance, and that not 
 in a spirit of self-contentment, but in a spirit of almost 
 morbid and feverish anxiety to do aU that was commanded, 
 would be thfi Tell-me-anything-more-to-do-and-I-wiU-do-it 
 Pharisee !^ 
 
 And this type of character, which bears no remote re- 
 semblance to that of many of the devotees of the monastic 
 life — ^however erroneous it may be, however bitter must be 
 the pain by which it must be accompanied, however deep the 
 dissatisfaction which it must ultimately suffer — is very far 
 from being necessarily ignoble. It is indeed based on the 
 
 ' Luke XX. 47. ' Lnke x-dii. 11. ' Matt. xxii. 17. 
 
 * Tadayim. * CUolm. • Ozehin. 
 
 1 See Sehottgen, Eor. Eehr. pp. 7, 160, 204. 
 
 ' Jer. Beraehoth, ix. 7, &c See Life of Chriet, voL ii. p. 248, whero 
 these names are explained. 
 
LEGAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 65 
 
 enormous error that man can deserve heaven by care in ex- 
 ternal practices ; that he can win by quantitative goodness 
 his entrance into the iingdom of Grod ; that that kingdom 
 is meat and drink, not righteousness and peace and joy in 
 believing. Occasionally, by some flash of sudden con- 
 viction, one or two of the wisest Doctors of the Law 
 seem to have had some glimmering of the truth, that 
 it is not by works of righteousness, but only by God's 
 mercy, that, man is saved. But the normal and all but 
 universal belief of the religious party among the Jews was 
 that, though of the 248 commands and 365' prohibitions 
 of the Mosaic Law some were " light " and some were 
 " heavy," ^ yet that to one and all alike — not only in the 
 spirit but in the letter — ^not only in the actual letter, but 
 in the boundless inferences to which the letter might lead 
 when every grain of sense and meaning had begn crushed 
 out of it under mountain loads of "decisions" — a rigidly 
 scrupulous obedience was (Jue. This was what God 
 absolutely required. This, and this only, came up to the 
 true conception of the blameless righteousness of the Law. 
 And how much depended on it ! Nothing less than 
 recovered freedom, recovered empire, recovered pre-eminence 
 among the nations ; nothing less than the restoration of 
 their national independence in all its perfectness, of their 
 national worship in all its splendotir ;, nothing less than 
 the old fire upon the altar,, the holy oil, the sacred ark, 
 the cloud of glory between the wings of the cherubim ; 
 nothing less, in short, than the final hopes which for many 
 centuries they and their fathers had most deeply cherished. 
 If but one person could only for one day keep the whole Law 
 
 * See Life of Christ, ii. 239. All these distinctions were a part of the 
 Seyyag, the "hedge of the Law," which it was the one raison d'etre of 
 Babbinism to construct. The object of all Jewish learning was to make a 
 mishmereth ("ordinance," Lev. xviii. 30) to God's mishmereth [Yebhamoth, 
 f. 21, L) 
 
 V 
 
66 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 and not offend in one point— nay, if but one person could 
 but keep that one point of the Law whicb affected tlie due 
 observance of the Sabbath— then (so the Eabbis taught) 
 the troubles of Israel would be ended, and the Messiah at 
 last would come.-^ 
 
 And it was at nothing less than this that, with all the 
 intense ardour of his nature, Saul had aimed. It is doubt- 
 ful whether at this period the utter nuUity of the Oral 
 Law could have dawned upon him. It sometimes dawned 
 even on the Eabbis through the dense fogs of sophistry 
 and- self-importance, and even on their lips we sometimes 
 find the utterances of the Prophets that humility and 
 justice and mercy are better than sacrifice. " There was a 
 flute in the Temple," says the Talmud, " preserved from 
 the days of Moses ; it was smooth, thin, and formed of a 
 reed. At the command of the king it was overlaid with 
 gold, which ruined its sweetness of tone until the gold was 
 taken away. There were also a cymbal and a mortar, 
 which had become injured in course of time, and were 
 mended by workmen of Alexandria summoned by the 
 wise men ; but their usefulness was so completely destroyed 
 by this process, that it was necessary to restore them to 
 their former condition."^ Are not these things an 
 allegory ? Do they not imply that by overlaying the 
 written Law with what they called the gold, but what 
 was in reality the dross and tinsel of tradition, the 
 Rabbis had destroyed or injured its beauty and useful- 
 ness ? But probably Saul had not realised this. To him 
 there was no distinction between the relative importance 
 of the Written and Oral, of the moral and ceremonial Law. 
 To every precept — and they were countless — obedience was 
 
 1 See Acts iii. 19, where Svwstiv is "in order that haply," not "when," as 
 in E. V. {Shabhath, f. 118, 6). 
 
 2 EirecUn, f. 10, 2. 
 
LEGAL BLAMBLESSNESS. 67 
 
 due. If it could be done, he would do it. If on him, on 
 his accuracy of observance, depended the coming of the 
 Messiah, then the Messiah should come. Were others 
 learned in all that concerned legal rectitude ? he would 
 be yet more learned. Were others scrupulous? he would 
 be yet more scrupulous. Surely God had left man free?^ 
 Surely He would not have demanded obedience to the Law 
 if that obedience were not possible ! All things pointed to 
 the close of one great aeon in the world's history, and the 
 dawn of another which should be the last. The very 
 heathen yearned for some deliverer, and felt that there 
 could be no other end to the physical misery and moral 
 death which had spread itself over their hollow societies.^ 
 Deep midnight was brooding alike over the chosen people 
 and the Grentile world. From the East should break forth 
 a healing light, a purifying flame. Let Israel be true, 
 and God's promise would not fail. 
 
 And we know from his own statements that if external 
 conformity were aU — ^if obedience to the Law did not 
 mean obedience in all kinds of matters which escaped all 
 possibility of attention — ^if avoidance of its prohibitions 
 did not involve avoidance in matters which evaded the 
 reach of the human senses — then Saul was, touching 
 the righteousness of the Law, blameless, having lived 
 in all good conscience towards God.' Had he put the 
 question to the Great Master, " What shall I do to be 
 saved?" or been bidden to "keep the commandments," it 
 is certain that he would have been able to reply with the 
 youthful ruler, " All these have I kept from my youth," 
 and — he might have added — "very much besides." And 
 
 ' The Babbis said, "EverytHng is in the hands of heaven, except the fear 
 of heaven." " All things are ordained by God, bnt a man's actions are his 
 own." (Barclay, Talmud, 18.) 
 
 " Virg. EcL iv. Suet. Aug. 94; Vesp. 4 
 
 * 2 Cor. xi. 22; Horn. xi. 1 ; Acts xxii. 3, sxiii. 1 6. 
 
 P 2 '^ 
 
68 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 yet we trace in his Epistles tow bitterly he felt the hollow. 
 ness of this outward obedience — how awful and how bur- 
 densome had been to him "th^ curse of the Law." Even 
 moral obedience could not silence the voice of the con- 
 science, or satisfy the yearnings of the soul ; but these 
 infinitesimal Levitisms, what could they do ? Tormenting 
 questions would again and again arise. Of what use was 
 all this? from what did the necessity of it spring? to 
 what did the obedience to it lead ? Did God indeed care 
 for the exact size of a strip of parchment, or the par- 
 ticular number of lines in the texts which were upon it, 
 or the way in which the letters were formed, or the shape 
 of the box into which it was put, or the manner in which 
 that box was tied upon the forehead or the , arm ?^ Was 
 it, indeed, a very important matter whether "between 
 the two evenings " meant, as the Samaritans believed, be- 
 tween sunset and darkness, or, as the Pharisees asserted, 
 between the beginning and end of sunset ? Was it a mat- 
 ter worth the discussion of two schools to decide whether 
 an egg laid on a festival might or might not be eaten ?^ 
 Were all these things indeed, and in themselves, impor- 
 tant ? And even if they were, would it be errors as to 
 these littlenesses that would really kindle the wrath of a 
 jealous Grod ? How did they contribute to the beauty of 
 holiness? in what way did they tend to fill the soul 
 with the mercy which was better than sacrifice, or to edu- 
 cate it in that justice and humility, that patience and 
 purity, that peace and love, which, as some of the prophets 
 had found grace to see, were dearer to Grod than thousands 
 of rams and ten thousands of rivers of oil ? And behind 
 
 1 I have adduced abundant illustrations from Rabbinic writers of the ex- 
 trayagant importance attached to minutiae in the construction of the two 
 phylacteries of the hand {TepUlUn shel Tad) and of the head (Tepfc. sM 
 Bosh), in the Expositor, 1877, No. xxvii. 
 
 * See Bltsah, 1 adin. 
 
RABBINIC EYASION. 69 
 
 all these questions lay that yet deeper one which agitated 
 the schools of Jewish thought — the question whether, 
 after all, man could reach, or with all his efforts must 
 inevitably fail to reach, that standard of righteousness 
 which Grod and the Law required? And if indeed he 
 failed, what more had the Law to say to him than to 
 deliver its sentence of unreprieved condemnation and 
 indiscriminate 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 . Eabbis had learnt the art of 
 straining .out gnats and swallowing camels. They had 
 long learnt to nulUfy 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 fundamen- 
 tal institution of the Sabbatic year had been stultified by 
 the mere legal fiction of the prosbol. Teachers who were 
 on the high road to a casuistry which could construct 
 "rules" out of every saperfluous particle had found- it 
 easy to win credit for ingenuity by elaborating pre- 
 scriptions 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 sufl&cient ingenuity to prove from the written Law 
 that a creeping thing is ceremonially clean; " ^ and that 
 
 » Eom. X. 5 ; Gal. iii. 10. » Sarihed/r. f . 17, 1. 
 
70 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 there was an tmimpeacliable 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 stu- 
 dent of Tarsus sat at the feet of GamaKel ; and can we 
 imagine any period of his hfe when he would not have 
 been wearied by a system at once so meaningless, so strin- 
 gent, and so insincere ? Could he fail to notice that they 
 "hugely violated what they trivially obeyed? " 
 
 We may see from St. Paul's own words that these years 
 must have been very troubled years. Under the dignified 
 exterior of the Pharisee lay a wildly -beating heart ; an 
 anxious brain throbbed with terrible questionings under 
 the broad phylactery. Saul as a Pharisee believed ia 
 eternity, he believed in the resurrection, he believed in 
 angel and spirit, in voices and appearances, in dreaming 
 dreams and seeing visions. But in all this struggle to 
 achieve his own righteousness — this struggle so minutely 
 tormenting, so revoltingly burdensome — there seemed to 
 be no hope, no help, no enlightenment, no satisfaction, no 
 nobility — ^nothing but a possibly mitigated and yet 
 inevitable curse. Grod seemed silent to him, and heaven 
 closed. No vision dawned on his slumbering senses, no 
 voice sounded in his eager ear. The sense of sin oppressed 
 him ; the darkness of mystery hung over him ; he was 
 ever falling and falling, and no hand was held out to help 
 him ; he strove with all his soul to be obedient, and he 
 was obedient — and yet the Messiah did not come. 
 
 The experience of Saul of Tarsus was the heartrending 
 experience of all who have looked for peace elsewhere than 
 in the love of God. All that Luther suffered at Erfurdt 
 Saul must have suffered in Jerusalem j and the record of 
 
 * Eruhhm, f. 13, 2. 
 
SAUL'S INTEGRITY. 71 
 
 the early religious agonies and awatenment of the one is 
 the best commentary on the experience of the other. 
 That the life of Saul was free from flagrant transgressions 
 we see from his own bold appeals to his continuous 
 rectitude. He was not a convert from godlessness or 
 profligacy, like John Bunyan or John Newton. He 
 claims integrity when he is speaking of his life in 
 the aspect which it presented to his fellow-men, but he 
 is vehement in self-accusatiori when he thinks of that 
 life in the aspect which it presented to his God. He 
 found that no external legality could give him a clean 
 heart, or put a right spirit within him. He found that 
 servile obedience inspired no inward peace. He must 
 have yearned for some righteousness, could he but know 
 of it, which would be better than the righteousness of the 
 Scribes and Pharisees. The Jewish doctors had imagined 
 and had directed that if a man did not feel inclined to do 
 this or that, he should force himself to do it by a direct 
 vow. "Vows," said Eabbi Akibha,-^ "are the enclosures 
 of holiness." But Saul the Pharisee, long before he 
 became Paul the Apostle, must have proved to the very 
 depth the hollowness of this direction. Yows might be 
 the enclosures of formal practice ; they were not, and 
 could not be, the schooling of the disobedient soul ; they 
 could not give calm to that place in the human being 
 where meet the two seas of good and evil impulse^ — to 
 the heart, which is the battle-field on which passionate 
 desire clashes into collision with positive command. 
 
 Even when twenty years of weariness, and wandering, 
 and struggle, and sufEering, were over, we still catch inithe 
 Epistles of St. Paul the mournful echoes of those days of 
 stress and storm — echoes as of the thunder when its fury 
 
 1 rttfns^ j;:p Dn-i.?, PirJce Abhoth, iii. lO. 
 
 » The Tetser tohh and the Yetser ha-rd of the Talmud. 
 
72 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 is over, and it is only sobbing far away among tbe distant 
 hills. We hear those echoes most of all in the Epistle to 
 the Eomans. We hear them when he talks of " the curse 
 of the law." We hear them when, in accents of deep 
 self-pity, he tells us of the struggle between the flesh and 
 the spirit ; between the law of sin in his members, and 
 that law of God which, though holy and just and good 
 and ordained to life, he found to be unto death. In the 
 days, indeed, when he thus writes, he had at last found 
 peace ; he had wrung from the lessons of his life the hard 
 experience that by the works of the law no man can be 
 justified in Grod's sight, but that, being justified by faith, 
 we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 And though, gazing on his Own personality, and seeing it 
 disintegrated by a miserable dualism, he still found a law 
 within him which warred against that inward delight 
 which he felt in the law of God — though groaning 
 in this body of weakness, he feels like one who is im- 
 prisoned in a body of death, he can still, in answer to the 
 question, " Who shall deliver me ? " exclaim with a burst - 
 of triumph, " I thank God, through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord." ^ But if the Apostle, after he has found Christ, 
 after he has learnt that " there is no condemnation to 
 them that are in Christ Jesus " ^. still felt the power 
 and continuity of the inferior law striving to degrade 
 his life into that captivity to the law of sin from which 
 Christ had set him free, through what hours of mental 
 anguish must he not have passed when he knew of no 
 other dealing of God with his soul than the impossible, f 
 unsympathising, deathful commandment, " Thi? do, and - 
 thou shalt Hve ! " Could he " this do " ? And, if he could 
 
 ' See Bom. vi., vii., viii., passim. 
 
 " Rom. viii. 1. The rest of this verse in our B. V. is probably a gloss, or a 
 repetition, since it is not found in «, B, C, D, P, G. 
 
HAD HE SEEN JESUS P 73. 
 
 not, wliiit hope, what help ? Was there any voice of pity 
 among the thunders of Sinai ?^ Could the mere blood 
 of bulls and goats be any true propitiation for wilful 
 sins ? 
 
 But though we can see the mental anguish through 
 which Saul passed in his days of Pharisaism, yet over 
 the events of that period a complete darkness falls ; and 
 there are only two questions, both of them deeply 
 interesting, which it may, perhaps, be in our power to 
 answer. 
 
 The first is. Did Saul in those days ever see the Lord 
 Jesus Christ ? 
 
 At first sight we might suppose that the question was 
 answered, and answered affirmatively, in 1 Cor. ix. 1, where 
 he asks, " Am I not an Apostle ? Have I not seen Jesus, 
 our Lord?" and still more in 2 Cor. v. 16, where he says, 
 " Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet 
 now henceforth know we Him no more." ^ 
 
 But a little closer examination of these passages wiU 
 show that they do not necessarily involve any such mean- 
 ing. In thfe first of them, St. Paul cannot possibly be 
 alluding to any knowledge of Jesus before His crucifixion, 
 because such mere external sight, from the position of one. 
 who disbelieved in Him, so far from being a confirmation 
 of any claim to be an Apostle, would rather have been a 
 reason for rejecting such a claim. It can only apply to 
 the appearance of Christ to him on the way to Damascus, 
 
 ' " That man that overtook you," said Christian, "was Moses. He spareth 
 none, neither knoweth he how to show mercy to them that transgress his 
 law." (Pilgriin's Progress.) 
 
 ^ 61 kbI iyyeiKanev. It is perfectly true that «i koI [quamquam, "even 
 though," weun auah) in classical writers — though perhaps less markedly 
 in St. Paul — concedes a fact, whereas )cal ei {eliam si, " even if,") puts 
 am hypothesis; but the explanation hero turns, not on the admitted 
 force of the particles, but on what is meant by " knowing Christ after 
 the flesh." 
 
74 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 or to some similar and subsequent revelation.^ The 
 meaning of the second passage is less obvious. St. Paul 
 has there been explaining the grounds of his Apostolate in 
 the constraining love of Christ for man. He has shown 
 how that love was manifested by His death for all, and 
 how the results of that death and resurrection are 
 intended so utterly to destroy the self-love of His children, 
 so totally to possess and to change their individuality, 
 that "if any man be in Christ he is a new creation." 
 And the Christ of whom he is here speaking is the 
 risen, glorified, triumphant Christ, in whom all things 
 are become new, because He has reconciled man to Grod. 
 Hence the Apostle will know no man, judge of no 
 man, in his mere human and earthly relations, but 
 only in his union with their risen Lord. The partisans 
 who used, and far more probably abused, the name of 
 James, to thrust their squabbling Judaism even into the 
 intercourse between a Paul and a Peter, and who sowed 
 the seeds of discord among the converts of the Churches 
 which St. Paul had founded, were constantly under- 
 rating the Apostolic dignity of Paul, because he had not 
 been an eye-witness of the human life of Christ. The 
 answer of the Apostle always was that he too knew Christ 
 by an immediate revelation, that "it had pleased Grod 
 to reveal His Son in him that he might preach Christ among 
 the Gentiles." ^ The day had been when he had known 
 " Christ according to the flesh "-—not indeed by direct 
 
 * Of. Acts xTiii. 9, xxii. 18 ; 2 Cor. xii. 1. . The absence of such per- 
 sonal references to Jesus in St. Paul's Epistles as we find in 1 Pet. ii. 21 sg., 
 iii. 18 sq.; 1 John i. 1 — confirms this view (Ewald, Oesch. vi. 389). 
 
 " Gal. i. 16. I cannot agree with Dr. Lightfoot (following Jerome, 
 Erasmus, &c.) that iv i/iol means " a revelation made through Paul to others," 
 as in ver. 24, 1 Tim. i. 16, and 2 Cor. xiii. 3 ; because, as a friend points out, 
 there is an eicaci parallelism of clauses between i. 11,12 and 13—17, and 
 4iro/caAi;i)/ai riy vtbv oftroD iv i/iol balances Si' &7roK«AiJi((6»i "IjjtroB XpiiTToD in ver. 12. 
 
KNOWING CHRIST. 75 
 
 personal intercourse with Him in the days of His earthly 
 ministry, but by the view which he and others had taken 
 of Him. ^ In his unconverted days he had regarded Him 
 as a mesith — an impostor who deceived the people, or at 
 the very, best as a teacher who deceived himself. And 
 after his conversion, he had not perhaps, at first, fully 
 learnt to apprehend the Plenitude of the glory of the 
 risen Christ as rising far above the conception of the Jewish 
 Messiah. AU this was past. To apprehend by faith the 
 glorified Son of God was a" far more blessed privilege 
 than ^;o have known a living Messiah by earthly inter- 
 course. Even if he had known Christ as a living man, 
 that knowledge would have been less near, less imme- 
 diate, less intimate, less eternal, in its character, than the 
 closeness of community wherewith he now lived and 
 died in Him; and although he had known Him first 
 only by false report, and then only with imperfect realisa- 
 tion as Jesus of Nazareth, the earthly and human concep- 
 tion had now passed away, and been replaced by the true 
 and spiritual belief. The Christ, therefore, whom now 
 he knew was no " Christ after the flesh," no Christ in the 
 days of His flesh, no Christ in any earthly relations, but 
 Christ sitting for ever at the right hand of God. To have 
 seen the Lord Jesus with the eyes was of itself nothing 
 — ^it was nothing to boast of. Herod had seen Him, and 
 Annas, and Pilate, and many a coarse Jewish mendicant 
 and many a brutal Eoman soldier. But to have seen 
 Him with the eye of Faith — to have spiritually appre- 
 hended the glorified Bedeemer — that was indeed to be a 
 Christian. 
 
 All the other passages which can at all be brought to 
 bear on the question support this view, and lead us to be- 
 lieve that St. Paul had either not seen at all, or at the 
 best barely seen, the Man Christ Jesus. Indeed, the 
 
76 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL, 
 
 question, " Who art Thou, Lord ?"^ preserved in all three 
 narratives of his conversion, seems distinctly to imply that 
 the personal appearance of the Lord was unknown to him, 
 and this is a view which is confirmed by the allusion to 
 the risen Christ in 1 Cor. xv. St. Paul there says that 
 to him, the least of the Apostles, and not meet to be called 
 an Apostle, Christ had appeared last of all, as to the 
 abortive-born of the Apostolic family.^ And, indeed, it is 
 inconceivable that Saul could in any real sense have seen 
 Jesus in His lifetime. That ineffaceable impression pro- 
 duced by His very aspect; that unspeakable personal 
 ascendency, which awed His worst enemies and troubled 
 the hard conscience of His Eoman judge ; the ineffable 
 charm and power in the words of Him who spake as never 
 man spake, could not have appealed to him in vain. We 
 feel an unalterable conviction, not only that, if Saul had 
 seen Him, Paul would again and again have referred to 
 Him, but also that he would in that case have been saved 
 from the reminiscence which most of all tortured him in 
 after days — the undeniable reproach that he- had persecuted 
 the Church of God. If, indeed, we could imagine that 
 Saul had seen Christ, and, having seen Him, had looked on 
 Him only with the bitter' hatred and simulated scorn of 
 a Jerusalem Pharisee, then we may be certain that that 
 Holy Pace which looked into the troubled dreams of PUate's 
 wife — that the infinite sorrow in those eyes, of which one 
 glance broke the repentant h^art of Peter — would have 
 recurred so often and so heartrendingly to Paul's remem- 
 brance, that his sin in persecuting the Christians would 
 have assumed an aspect of tenfold aggravation, from the 
 thought that in destroying and imprisoning them he had 
 
 1 Acts ix. 5 (xxii. 8, xxvi. 15). There is not the shadow of probability in 
 the notion of Ewald, that St. Paul was the young man clad in a sindon, of 
 Mark xiv. 52. a 1 Oor. xv. 9. 
 
SAUL'S IMPRESSIBILITY. 77 
 
 yet more openly been crucifying the Son of Grod afresh, 
 and putting Him to an open shame. The intense impressi- 
 bility of Paul's mind appears most remarkably in the efEect 
 exercised , upon him by the dying rapture of St. Stephen. 
 The words of Stephen, though listened to at the time with 
 inward fury, not only lingered in his memory, but produced 
 an unmistakable influence on his writings. If this were 
 so with the speech of the youthful Hellenist, how infi- 
 nitely more would it have been so with the words which 
 subdued into admiration even the alien disposition of 
 Pharisaic emissaries ? Can we for a moment conceive that 
 Paul's Pharisaism would have lasted nnconsumed amid the 
 white lightnings of that great and scathing denunciation 
 which Christ uttered in the Temple in the last week of His 
 ministry, and three days before His death ? Had St. Paul 
 heard one of these last discourses, had he seen one of those 
 miracles, had he mingled in one of those terrible and tragic 
 scenes to which he must have afterwards looked back as 
 events the most momentous in the entire course of human 
 history, is there any one who can for a moment imagine that 
 no personal reminiscence of such scenes would be visible, 
 even ever so faintly, through the transparent medium of 
 his writings ? 
 
 We may, then, regard it as certain that when the gloom 
 fell at mid-day over the awful sacrifice of Grolgotha, when 
 the people shouted their preference for the murderous 
 brigand, and yelled their execration of the Saviour whose 
 day all the noblest and holiest of their fathers had longed 
 to see, Saul was not at Jerusalem. "Where, then, was 
 he? It is impossible to answer the question with any 
 certainty. He may have been at Tarsus, which, even after 
 his conversion, he regarded as his home.^ Or perhaps the 
 
 > Acts is.. 30, xi. 26 ; Gal. i. 21. 
 
78 
 
 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST, PAUL. 
 
 explanation of his absence may be seen in Gal. v. 11. 
 He there represents himself as having once been a preacher 
 of circumcision. Now we know that one of the charac- 
 teristics of the then Pharisaism was an active zeal in 
 winning proselytes. "Te compass sea and land," said 
 Christ to them, in burning words, " to make one proselyte ; 
 and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the 
 child of Grehenna than yourselves."^ The conversion 
 which changed Paul's deepest earlier convictions left 
 unchanged the natural impulse of his temperament. 
 Why may not the same impetuous zeal, the same rest- 
 less desire to be always preaching some truth and 
 doing some good work which marked him out as the 
 Apostle of the Grentiles,^ have worked in him also in these 
 earlier days, and made him, as he seems to imply, a mis- 
 sionary of Pharisaism? If so, he may have been absent 
 on some journey enjoined upon him by the party whose 
 servant, heart and soul, he was, during the brief visits to 
 Jerusalem which marked the three years' ministry of Christ 
 on earth. 
 
 2. The other question which arises is. Was Saul mar- 
 ried ? Had he the support of some loving heart during 
 the fiery struggles of his youth ? Amid the to-and-fro con- 
 tentions of spirit which resulted from an imperfect and 
 unsatisfying creed, was there in the troubled sea of his 
 life one little island home where he could find refuge fi:om 
 incessant thoughts ? ^m 
 
 Little as we know of his domestic relations.'little as 
 he cared to mingle mere private interests with the great 
 spiritual truths which occupy his soul, it seems to me 
 that we must answer this question in the afiirmative. St. 
 Paul, who has been very freely charged with egotism, had 
 
 1 Matt, xxiii. 16. ' Gal. i. 16. (See Krenkel, p. 18.) 
 
WAS SAUL MARRIED? 79 
 
 not one particle of that egptism whidi consists in attaching 
 any importance to his personal surroundings. The cir- 
 cumstances of his individual life he would have looked 
 on as having no .interest for any one but himself. When 
 he speaks of himself he does so always from one of two 
 reasons — ^f rom the necessity of maintaining against detrac- 
 tion his apostolic authority, or from the desire to utilise 
 for others his remarkable experience. The things that 
 happened to him, the blessings and privations of his 
 earthly condition, would have seemed matters of supreme 
 indifference, except in so far as they possessed a moral 
 significance, or had any bearing on the lessons which he 
 desired to teach. 
 
 It is, then, only indirectly that we can expect to find 
 an answer to the question as to his marriage. If, in- 
 deed, he was a member of the Sanhedrin, it follows that, 
 by the Jewish requirements for that position, he must 
 have been a married man. His official position will be 
 examined hereafter ; but, meanwhile, his marriage may be 
 inferred as probable from passages in his Epistles. In 
 1 Cor. ix. 5 he asks the Corinthians, " Have we not power 
 to lead about a sister, a wife, as weU, as other Apostles, 
 and as the brethren of the Lord, and Kephas?" This 
 passage is inconclusive, though it asserts his right both 
 to marry, and to take a wife with him in his missionary 
 journeys if he thought it expedient.^ But from 1 Cor. 
 vii. 8 it seems a distinct inference that he classed him- 
 self among widowers; for, he says, "I say, therefore, to 
 the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they 
 abide Qieivaa-iv) even as I." That by "the unmarried" 
 
 1 The notion that the " true yokefellow" (yvfifie iriSCvye) of Phil. iv. 3 has 
 any bearing on the qnestion is an error as old as Clemens Alexandrinus. (See 
 Strom, iii. 7 ; Ps. Ignat. ad Philad. 4, 'Qs Uhpov koI Uai\ou xal tSi/ &K\ar 
 lmaffT6\av ray yd/ion d/ii\7lirdyTay.) 
 
80 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 he here means " widowers "—for which there is no special 
 Greek word— seems clear, because he has been already 
 speaking, in the first seven verses of the chapter, to those 
 who have never been married.^ To them he concedes, far 
 more freely than to the others, the privilege of marrying ^ 
 if they considered it conducive to godliness, though, in 
 the present state of things, he mentions his own personal 
 predilection for celibacy, in the case of all.who had the grace 
 of inward purity. And even apart from the interpretation 
 of this passage, the deep and fine insight of Luther had 
 drawn the conclusion that Paul knew by experience what 
 marriage was, from the wisdom and tenderness which 
 characterise his remarks respecting it. One who had 
 never been married could hardly have written on the 
 subject as he has done, nor could he have shown 
 the same profound sympathy with the needs of all, 
 and received from all the same ready confidence. To 
 derive any inference from the loving metaphors which 
 he draws from the nurture of little children^ would 
 be more precarious. It is , hardly possible that Paul 
 ever had a child who lived. Had this been the case, 
 his natural affection could hardly have denied itself 
 some expression of the tender love which flows out 
 so freely towards his spiritual children. Timothy would 
 not have been so exclusively "his own true child" 
 in the faith if he had bad son or daughter of his own. 
 If we are right in the assumption that he was married, 
 
 ' If so, Chaucer is mistaken when he says, " I wot wel the Apostle was a 
 mayd," i.e., irapScVos, Rev. xiv. 4 (Prologue to Wife of Bath's Tales). Ver. 7 
 does not militate against this view, because there he is alluding, not to his 
 condition, hut to the grace of continence. It is not true, as has been said, that 
 early tradition was unanimous in saying that he had never married. Ter- 
 tullian (De Monogam. 3) and Jerome {Ep. 22) says so ; but Origen is doubtful, 
 and Methodius (Conviv. 45), as well as Clemens Alex, and Ps. Ignatius 
 (t. sv/pra), say that he ■^as a, widower. 
 
 2 1 Cor. iii. 2, vii. 14, iv. 15; 1 Thess. il 7j v. 3. 
 
IMPORTANCE OP MARRIAGE. 81 
 
 it seems probable that it was for a sbort time only, and 
 tbat his wife had died. 
 
 But there is one more ground which has not, I think, 
 been noticed, which seems to me to render it extremely 
 probable that Saul, before the time of his conversion, had 
 been a married man. It is the extraordinary importance 
 attached by the majority of Jews in aU ages to marriage 
 as a moral duty, nay, even a positive command, incumbent 
 on every man.-' The Mishna fixes the age of marriage at 
 eighteen,^ and even seventeen was preferred. The Baby- 
 lonist Jews fixed it as early as fourteen.* Marriage is, 
 iu fact, the first of the 613 precepts. They derived 
 the duty partly from the command of Gen. i. 28, partly 
 from allusions to early marriage in the Old Testament 
 (Prov. ii. 17; v. 18), and partly from allegorising explana- 
 tions of passages like Eccl. xi. 6 ; Job v. 24.* The Babbis 
 in aU ages have laid it down as a stringent duty that 
 parents should marry their children young ; ^ and the 
 one or two who, like Ben Azai, theoretically placed on a 
 higher level the duty of being more free from incumbrance 
 in order to study the Law, were exceptions to the almost 
 universal rule. But even these theorists were themselves 
 married men. If St. Paul had ever evinced the smallest 
 sympathy with the views of the Therapeutse and Essenes 
 
 4 
 
 1 "A Jew who has no wife is not a mam" (Gren. v. 2, Tebhamoth, f. 63, 1). 
 
 " Pirlee Abhoth, v. 21. 
 
 ' God was supposed to curse all who at twenty were unmarried {KMdvshin, 
 29, 1; 30; Tebhamoth, 62, 63). (See Hamburger, Talmud, ^orterb. s.v. Ehe, 
 Verheirathimg ; Weill, La Morale du Jvdaisme, 49, seq.) The precept is in- 
 ferred from " He called their name man (sing.)," and is found in the Rabbinic 
 digest Twr-Shwlchan Arwch. 
 
 * See Ecelus. vii. 25 ; xlii. 9 ; cf . 1 Cor. Tii. 36. 
 
 * Early marriages are to this day the curse of the Jews in Eastern countries. 
 Sometimes girls are married at ten, boys at fourteen (Erankl. Jews in East, 
 ii. 18, 84). Not long ago a Jewish girl at Jerusalem, aged fourteen, when 
 asked in school why she was sad, replied that she hid been three times 
 divorced. 
 
 G 
 
82 THE LIFE AJJD WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 — ^if his discountenancing of marriage, under certain 
 immediate conditions, had been tinged by any Grnostic 
 fancies about its essential inferiority — we might have 
 come to a different conclusion. But he held no such 
 views either before or after his conversion ; ^ and cer- 
 tainly, if he lived unmarried as a Jerusalem Pharisee, his 
 case was entirely exceptional. 
 
 > 1 Oor. vii. 9, 36; 1 Tim. iv. 3j t. 14 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 ST. PETER AND THE FIRST PENTECOST. 
 
 'EicKpiTos ^f T&v ii,vo(TT6\ciiv, Kol ffrSna ran /noffrjTSv, kuI Kopv^ toS xV"'"" 
 Chsts. In Joan. Horn. 88. 
 
 Xlirpos fi i.pxh t^* o/)9oSo£fas, 6 fiAyat r^s 4KKKri<rias Upotpivrris. — Ps. ChETS. 
 Orat. Encom. 9, 
 
 Whatever may have been tlie cause of Saul's absence 
 from Jerusalem during tbe brief period of the ministry of 
 Jesus, it is inevitable that, on his return, he must have 
 heard much respecting it. Yet all that he heard would be 
 exclusively from the point of view of the Pharisees, who 
 had so bitterly opposed His doctrines, and of the Saddu- 
 cees, who had so basely brought about His death. But 
 he would have abundant opportunities for seeing that the 
 Infant Church had not, as the Jews of Jerusalem had 
 hoped, been extinguished by the murder of its founder. 
 However much the news might fiU him with astonish- 
 ment and indignation, he could not have been many days 
 in Jerusalem without receiving convincing proofs of the 
 energy of what he then regarded as a despicable sect. 
 
 Whence came this irresistible energy, this inextinguish- 
 able vitality ? The answer to that question is the history 
 of the Church and of the world. 
 
 Por the death of Jesus had been followed by a suc- 
 cession of events, the effects of which will be felt to the 
 end of time — events whichy by a spiritual power at once 
 astounding and indisputable, transformed a timid handful 
 of ignorant and terror-stricken Apostles into teachers of 
 G 2 
 
84 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 unequalled grandeur, who became in God's hands the 
 instruments to regenerate the world. 
 
 The Eesurrection of Christ had scattered every cloud 
 from their saddened souls. The despair which, for a 
 moment, had followed the intense hope that this was He 
 who would redeem Israel, had been succeeded' by a joyous 
 and unshaken conviction that Christ had risen from the- 
 dead. In the light of that Eesurrection, all Scripture, 
 all history, all that they had seen and heard during the 
 ministry of Jesus, was illuminated and transfigured. And 
 though during the forty days between the Eesurrection 
 and the Ascension, the intercourse held with them by 
 their risen Lord was not continuous, but brief and ia- 
 terrupted,^ yet — as St. Peter himself testifies, appealing, 
 in confirmation of his testimony, to the scattered Jews to 
 whom his Epistle is addressed — God had begotten them 
 again by the Resurrection unto a lively hope, to an. in- 
 heritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not 
 away.^ Bat besides this glorious truth, of which they felt 
 themselves to be the chosen witnesses,* their Eisen Lord 
 had given them many promises and instructions, and 
 spoken to them about the thiags which concerned the 
 Kingdom of God. In His last address He had specially 
 bidden, them to stay in Jerusalem, and there await the 
 outpouring of the Spirit of which they had already heard.* 
 That promise was to be fulfilled to them, not only in- 
 dividually, but as a body, as a Church; and it was to be 
 fulfilled in the same city in which they had witnessed His 
 
 Acts 1. 3, !i* rjftcpuv TfffffapiKOVTa ovravSnevos abroTs. TMs IS tte Only 
 
 passage in Scripture which tells ns the interval which elapsed between the 
 Resurrection and the Ascension. 
 
 2 1 Pet. i. 3, 4 
 
 « Acts ii. 32 ; iii. 15 ; iv. 33 ; t. 32 ; x. 40, 41 ; Luke xxiv. 48, &c. On this 
 fact St. Luke dwells repeatedly and emphatically. (See Meyer on Acts i. 22.) 
 
 * Acts i. 4; Luke xxiv. 49. ' 
 
PROMISB OF THE SPIRIT. 85 
 
 uttermost humiliation. And they were assured that they 
 should not have long to wait. But though they knew that 
 they shoiild be baptised with the Holy Grhost and with 
 fire " not many days hence," yet, for the exercise of their 
 faith and to keep them watchful, the exact time was not 
 defined.^ 
 
 Then came the last walk towards Bethany, and that 
 solemn parting on the Mount of Olives, when their Lord 
 was taken away from them, and " a cloud received Him 
 out of their sight." But even in His last discourse He 
 had rendered clear to them their position and their duties. 
 When, with lingerings of old Messianic fancies, they had 
 asked Him whether He would at that time re-constitute^ 
 the kingdom for Israel, He had quenched such material 
 longings by telling them that it was not for them to know 
 "the times or the seasons,"* which the Fa,ther placed in 
 His own authority.* But though these secrets of God 
 were not to be revealed to them or to any living man, there 
 was a power which they should receive when the Holy 
 Ghost had fallen upon them — a power to be witnesses to 
 Christ, His sufEerings, and His Eesurrection, first in the 
 narrow limits of the Holy Land, then to all the world. 
 
 • Chrys. ad loe. " Numerus dierum non definitus exercebat fidem aposto- 
 lornm " (Bengel). The reading ^as rrjs irei/TeitoirT^s of D and the Sahidicyersion 
 is a mere gloss. 
 
 ' Acts i. 6, &TroKttii(rrivets, 
 
 8 Acts i. 7, xfJ"""* ^ Kaipohs, " periods or crises." 
 
 ■• The E.V. passes over the distinction between l^ovcrta here and Siyajits in 
 the next verse, and a neglect of this distinction has led Bengel and others to 
 understand oux V^" ^"■''i in the sense that it was not yet their prerogative to 
 know these things (" quae apostolorum nondum erat nosse " — Beng.), but that 
 it should be so hereafter. That this, however, was not the error of our trans- 
 lators appears from, their marginal gloss to Sim/tts in ver. 8, " the power of the 
 Holy Ghost coming upon you." We shall see hereafter that St. Paul, in 
 common with all the early Christians (1 Thess. iv. 16, 17 ; 2 Thess. ii. 8 ; Rom. 
 xiii. 12; 1 Cor. xvi. 22; Phil. iv. 6; 1 Pet. iv. 5; James v. 8j Heb. x. 37), 
 hoped for the near return of Christ to earth. 
 
86 THE LIFE AOT) WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 From tlie mountain slopes of Olivet they returned that 
 Sabbath-day's journey^ to Jerusalem, and at once assembled 
 in the upper chamber,^ which was so suitable a place for 
 their early gatherings. It was one of those large rooms 
 under the flat roof o£ Jewish houses, which, for its 
 privacy, was set apart for religious purposes ; and in the 
 poverty of these Galilaean Apostles, we can scarcely doubt 
 that it was the same room of which they had already availed 
 themselves for the Last Supper, and for those gatherings 
 on the "first day of the week,"* at two of which Jesus had 
 appeared to them. Hallowed by these divine associations, 
 it seems to have been the ordinary place of sojourn of the 
 Apostles during the days of expectation.* Here, at stated 
 hours of earnest prayer, they were joined by the mother of 
 Jesus ® and the other holy women who had attended His 
 ministry ; as well as by His brethren, of whom one in 
 particular® plays henceforth an important part in the 
 history of the Church. Hitherto these " brethren of the 
 Lord" had scarcely been numbered among those who 
 believed in Christ,'' or, if they had believed in Him, it had 
 only been in a secondary and material sense, as a human 
 Messiah. But now, as we might naturally conjecture, even 
 apart from tradition, they had been convinced aaid con- 
 verted by "the power of His Eesurrection." Even in 
 these earliest meetings of the whole Church of Christ at 
 Jerusalem it is interesting to see that, though the Apostles 
 
 ' 2,000 cubits, between fiTe and six furlongs, the distance between the 
 Tabernacle and the farthest part of the camp (cf. Numb. xxxv. 5). Tliis is the 
 only place in which it is alluded to in the N.T. 
 
 2 Not " an upper room," as in B.V. It is probably the n»^, or topmost 
 room of the house, which is called ivdytov in Mark xiv. 15. 
 
 3 John xx. 19, 26. 
 
 * Acts i. 13, o5 ^<rav KaTajiivovres S re Xlerpos, k.t.\. 
 
 * Here last mentioned in the N.T. 
 
 * James, the Lord's brother. 
 
 ' Matt. xii. 46 ; xiii. 55 ; Mark tI. 3; 1 Cor. xv. 7. 
 
VAOANOT OP JTJDAS. 87 
 
 were still Jews in their religion, with no other change as 
 yet beyond thp belief in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the 
 Living Grod,'^ they yet suffered the women to meet with 
 them in prayer, not in any separate court, as in the Temple 
 services, not with dividing partitions, as in the worship 
 of the synagogue,^ but in that equality of spiritual com- 
 munion, which was to develop hereafter into the glorious 
 doctrine that among Christ's redeemed " there is neither 
 Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is 
 neither male and female," but that, in Christ Jesus, aU 
 are one.* 
 
 During the ten days which elapsed between the 
 Ascension and Pentecost, it was among the earliest 
 cares of the Apostles to fill up the vacancy which had 
 been caused in their number by the death of Judas. 
 This was done at a full conclave of the believers in 
 Jerusalem, who, in the absence of many of those five 
 hundred to whom Christ had appeared in Gralilee, num- 
 bered about one hundred and twenty. The terrible cir- 
 cumstances of the traitor's suicide, of which every varied 
 and shuddering tradition was full of horror, had left upon 
 their minds a deeper faith in Grod's immediate retribu- 
 tion upon guilt. He had fallen from his high charge 
 by transgression, and had gone to his own place.* That 
 
 ' " The Church, so to speak, was but half horn; the other half was still in 
 the womb of the synagogue. The followers of Jesus were under the guidance 
 of the Apostles, but continued to acknowledge the authority of the chair of 
 Moses in Jerusalem " (Dr. DoUinger, Mrat Age, p. 43). 
 
 « Jos. Antt. XT. 11, § 6; Philo, ii. 476. 
 
 « Gal. iii. 28. 
 
 * Acts i. 25, CIS rhv rinov rhv ISwd (fll. Sixatoy). This profound and reverent 
 euphemism is one of the many traces of the reticence with which the early 
 Church spoke of the fate of those who had departed. The reticence is all the 
 more remarkable if the word " place " be meant to bear allusive reference to 
 the same word in the earlier part of the text, where the true reading is 
 tAtoc t^s SiaKovlas (A, B, 0, D), not xKripov, aa in E.V. The origin of this 
 
88 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 his place should be supplied appeared reasonable, both 
 because Jesus Himself had appointed t^j^elve Apostles 
 — the ideal number of the tribes of Israel — and also 
 because Peter, and the Church generally, saw in Judas 
 the antitype of Ahitophel, and applying to him a pas- 
 sage of the 109th Psalm, they wished, now that his 
 habitation was desolate, that another should take his 
 office.^ The essential qualification for the new Apostle was 
 that he should have been a witness of the Eesurrection, 
 and should have companied with the disciples all the time 
 that the Lord Jesus went in and out among them. The 
 means taken for his appointment, being unique in the 
 New Testament, seem to result from the unique position 
 of the Chujch during the few days between the Ascen- 
 sion and the Descent of the Holy Ghost. As though 
 they felt that the swift power of intuitive discernment 
 was not yet theirs, they selected two, Joseph Barsabbas, 
 who in Grentile circles assumed the common surname of 
 Justus, and Matthias.^ They then, in accordance with 
 Old Testament analogies * and Jewish custom,* prayed to 
 
 striking expression may perhaps be the Babbinic comments on Nnmb. xxiv. 25, 
 where " Balaam went to his own place " is explained to mean " to Gehenna." 
 Of. Judg. ix. 65, iDipD% and Targ. Eccles. vi. 6. ; v. Schottgen, p. 407 ; and of. 
 Olem. B/om. ad Cor. i. 5; Polyo. ad Phil. 9; Ignat. ad Magnes. 6 (Meyer). 
 See too Dan. xii. 13. 
 
 * Ps. xli. 9; cix. 8. The alteration of the LXX. airSy into airov is a ' 
 good illustration of the free method of quotation and interpretation of the 
 Old Testament, which is universally adopted in the New. The 109th has 
 been called the Isoariotio Psalm. 
 
 ' Of these nothing is known, unless it be true that they were among the 
 Seventy (Euseb. H. B. i. 12 ; Epiphan. Haer. i. 20) ; and that Joseph drank 
 poison unharmed (Papias op. Euseb. H. H. iii. 39). On the uncertain derivation 
 of Barsabbas (so in », A, B, E), see Lightfoot, Sor, Hehr., ad loc. There is 
 a Judas Barsabbas in Acts xv. 22. Matthias is said to have been martyred 
 (Niceph. ii. 60), and there were apocryphal writings connected with his name 
 (Euseb. H. JS. iii. 23; Olem. Alex. Strom, ii. 163). 
 
 * Numb. xxvi. 55, 56 j Josh. vii. 14; 1 Sam. x. 20; Prov. xvi. 33. 
 
 * Luke i. 9. 
 
THE DAT OF PENTECOST. 89 
 
 God that He would appoint^ tlie one whom. He chose. 
 The names were written on tablets and dropped into a 
 vessel. The vessel was shaken, and the name of Matthias 
 leapt out. He was accordingly reckoned among the twelve 
 Apostles.^ 
 
 We are told nothing further respecting the events of 
 the ten days which elapsed between the Ascension and 
 Pentecost. With each of those days the yearning hope, 
 the keen expectation, must have grown more and more 
 intense, and most of all when the day of Pentecost had 
 dawned.^ It was the first day of the week, and the 
 fiftieth day after Nisan 16. The very circumstances of 
 the day would add to the vividness of their feelings. 
 The Pentecost was not only one of the three great 
 yearly feasts, and the Feast of Harvest, but it came to 
 be identified — and quite rightly — in Jewish consciousness 
 with the anniversary of the giving of the Law on Sinai.* 
 
 * AciiSeiJoi',-" appoint," not "show": Luke x. 1, jucTct B4 t«Sto ice'Seifec 4 
 Ktfpios It€/)o«i, ipSofi-fiKovTa. The word is peculiar in the N.Tw to St. Luke. For 
 ^JtAefw, see Acts i. 2, toJs lmo<rT6\ots . ... oris ^|e\E'|«To. I need hardly notice 
 the strange yiew that the election of St. Matthias was a sheer mistake made 
 before the gift of the Spirit, and that Paul was in reality the destined tweMth 
 Apostle ! (Stier, Reden d. Apostl. i. 15.) 
 
 ' The method in which the lot was cast (see Lev. xvi. 8 ; Ezek. xxiv., 6) is not 
 certain, but the expression ISuxav, rather than %$aKov K\i)povs airSis, goes against 
 the notion of their casting dice as in Luke xxiii. 34. " The loi fell on Matthias" 
 is a common idiom in all languages (Horn. H. v. 316 ; Od. E. 209 ; Ps. xxiL 18 ; 
 Jon. i. 7, &o.; nt oujusque sors exciderat; Liv.xxi. 42). From the use o^ the 
 word K\ripos in this passage, in ver. 17 and in -viii. 21, xxvi. 18, is probably 
 derived the Latin clems and our clergy, clerioi, K\rjpas = rh aiarniJia rav Smk6vu» 
 Koi Trpecr^vTepav. (Suid.) (Wordsworth, ad loc.) 
 
 * This is 'the obvious meaning of o-u/twXijpoi/o-floi, not "was drawing near" 
 (cf . Eph. i. 10), or " had passed." 
 
 * It is true that this point is not adverted to by either PhUo or Josephua. 
 The inference arises, Jiowever, so obviously from the comparison of Ex. xii. 2; 
 six. 1, that we can hardly suppose that it was wholly missed. (See Sohbttgen, 
 ad loc. ; Jer. Ep. ad Fabiolam, xii. ; Aug. c. Faustum, xxxii. 12; Maimon. Mar. 
 Nevoch. iii. 41.) The Simcath Thorah, or " Feast of ,the Joy of the Law," is 
 kept on the last day of the Feaat of Tabernacles, when the last Haphtarah 
 from the Pentateuch is read. 
 
90 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 The mere fact that another solemn festival had come 
 round, and that at the last great festival their Lord had 
 been crucified in the sight of the assembled myriads 
 who thronged to the Passover, would be sufficient on this 
 solemn morning to absorb their minds with that over- 
 whelming anticipation which was the forecast of a change 
 in themselves and in the world's history — of a new and 
 eternal consecration to the service of a new law and the 
 work of a new life. 
 
 It was early morning. Before " the third hour of 
 the day " summoned them to the Temple for morning 
 prayer,^ the believers, some hundred and twenty in 
 number, were gathered once more, according to their 
 custom, in the upper room. It has been imagined by 
 some that the great event of this first Whit-Sunday must 
 have taken place in the Temple. The word rendered 
 " house "^ might equally well mean a "chamber," and is 
 actually used by Josephus of the thirty small chambers 
 which were attached to the sides of Solomon's Temple, 
 with thirty more above them.^ But it is supremely im- 
 probable that the poor and suspected disciples should 
 have been able to command the use of such a room; 
 and further, it is certain that if, in the Herodian Temple, 
 these rooms were no larger than those in the Temple of 
 Solomon, the size of even the lower ones would have been 
 wholly inadequate for the accommodation of so large a 
 number. The meeting was probably one of those holy 
 and simple meals which were afterwards known among 
 Christians as the Agapce, or Love Feasts. It need hardly 
 be added that any moral significance which might attach 
 to the occurrence of the event in the Temple would be no 
 less striking if we think of the sign of a new era as having 
 
 1 i.e., 9 o'clock in the morning (of. Lute xxit. 63 ; Acts ii. 46 ; iii. 1). 
 ' Acts ii. 2, oIkoi-. » Jos. Anit. viii. 3, § 2. 
 
SIGNIFIOANCE OF PENTECOST. 91 
 
 hallowed tlie common street and the common dwelling- 
 place ; as the visible inauguration of the days in which 
 neither on Zion nor on Gerizim alone were men to worship 
 the Father, but to worship Him everywhere in spirit and 
 in truth.^ 
 
 It is this inward significance of the event which con- 
 stitutes its sacredness and importance. Its awfulness 
 consists in its being the solemn beginning of the new 
 and final phase of Grod*s dealings with mankind. To 
 Abraham He gave a promise which was the germ of a 
 religion. When He called His people from Egypt He 
 gave them the Moral Law and that Levitical Law which 
 was to serve as a bulwark for the truths of the .theocracy. 
 During the two thousand years of that Mosaic Dispen- 
 sation the Tabernacle and the Temple had been a visible 
 sign of His presence. Then, for the brief period of the 
 life of Christ on earth. He had tabernacled among men, 
 dwelling in a tent like ours and of the same material.'' 
 That mortal body of Christ, in a sense far deeper than 
 could be true of any house built with hands, was a Temple 
 of God. Last of all. He who had given to mankind His 
 Son to dwell among them, gave His Spirit into their very 
 hearts. More than this He could not give ; nearer than 
 this He could not be. Henceforth His Temple was to 
 be the mortal body of every baptised Christian, and His 
 Spirit was to prefer 
 
 " Before all temples the upright heart and pure." 
 
 He who believes this in all the fulness of its meaning, 
 he whose heart and conscience bear witness to its truth, 
 wiU consider in its true aspect the fulfilment of Christ's 
 promise in the effusion of His Spirit ; and regarding the 
 
 > John iv. 21—23. 
 
 ' Archbishop Leighton, John i. 14, i \6yos irhpi iyivtro Kal< Itr/c^roiKrci' iv fiiiio. 
 
92 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. , 
 
 outward, wonder as the least marvellous part of the Day 
 of Pentecost, will not, as Neander says, be tempted to 
 explain the greater by the less, or " consider it strange 
 that the most wonderful event in the inner life of mankind 
 should be accompanied by extraordinary outward appear- 
 ances as sensible indications of its existepce." ^ 
 
 Suddenly, while their hearts burned within them with 
 such ardent zeal, and glowed with such enkindled hope — 
 suddenly on the rapt and expectant assembly came the 
 sign that they had desired — the inspiration of Christ's 
 promised Presence in their hearts — ^the baptism with the 
 Holy Grhost and with fire — the transforming impulse of a 
 Spirit and a Power from on high — the eternal proof to 
 them, and through them, in unbroken succession, to all 
 who accept their word, that He who had been taken from 
 them into heaven was still with them, and would be with 
 them always to the end of the world. 
 
 It came from heaven with the sound as of a rushing 
 mighty wind, filling the whole house where they were 
 sitting, and with a semblance as of infolded flame,^ 
 which, parting itself in every direction,' played like a 
 tongue of lambent light over the head of every one of 
 them. It was not wind, but " a sound as of wind in its 
 rushing violence ; " it was not fire, but something which 
 seemed to them like quivering tongues of a flame whic|i 
 gleamed but did not burn — fit symbol of that Holy Spirit 
 which, like the wind, bloweth where it Hsteth, though we 
 know not whence it cometh or whither it goeth ; and, like 
 
 ' Neander, p. 3. 
 
 2 Acta ii. 2, 3, fio-Trep wo^r . . . &ae\ irupjir. (Of. Luke iii. 22, &«! irepitrrepiai J 
 Bzek. i. 24; xliii. 2; 1 Kings xix. 11.) 
 
 ' yXaatrat Bm^epif((/ievai, not " cloven tongues," as in the E.V., though this 
 view of the word is said to have determined the symbolic shape of the Epis- 
 copal mitre. The expression " tongue of fire " la found also in Isa. v. 24, but 
 there it is a devouring fiame. 
 
A NEW JEON. 93 
 
 the kindled fire of love, glowing on the holy altar of every 
 faithful heart, utters, not seldom, even from the stammering 
 lips of ignorance, the bnming words of inspiration. 
 
 And that this first Pentecost marked an eternal 
 moment in the destiny of mankind, no reader of history 
 will surely deny. Undouhtedly in every age since then 
 the sons of Grod have, to an extent unknown before, 
 been taught by the Spirit of Grod. Undoubtedly since 
 then, to an extent unrealised before, we may know that 
 the Spirit of Christ dwelleth in us. Undoubtedly we 
 may enjoy a? nearer sense of union with God in Christ 
 than was accorded to the saints of the Old Dispensation, 
 and a thankful certainty that we see the days which kings 
 and prophets desired to see and did not see them, and 
 hear the truths which they desired to hear and did not 
 hear them. And this New Dispensation began henceforth 
 in all its fulness. It was no exclusive consecration to a 
 separated priesthood, no isolated endowment of a narrow 
 Apostolate. It was the consecration of a whole Church 
 — its men, its women, its children — to be aU of them 
 " a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, 
 a peculiar people ; " it was an endowment, of which the 
 full free offer was meant ultimately to be extended to 
 all mankind. Each one of that hundred and twenty was 
 not the exceptional recipient of a blessing and witness 
 of a revelation, but the forerunner and representative of 
 myriads more. And this miracle was not merely transient, 
 but is continuously renewed. It is not a rushing sound 
 and gleaming light, seen perhaps only for a moment, but 
 it is a liyiilg energy and an unceasing inspiration. It is 
 not a visible symbol to a gathered handful of human souls 
 in the upper room of a Jewish house, but a vivifying wind 
 which shall henceforth breathe in all ages of the world's 
 history; a tide of light which is rolling, and shall roll, 
 
94 ''' "^HB LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 from shore to shore until tlie eartB is full of the kaow- 
 ledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. 
 
 And if this be the aspect under which it is regarded, 
 the outward symbol sinks into subordinate importance. 
 They who hold the truths on which I have been dwelling 
 will not care to enter into the voluminous controversy as 
 to whether that which is described as audible and visible 
 was so in seeming only — ^whether the something which 
 sounded like wind, and the something which gleamed like 
 flame,^ were external realities, or whether they were but 
 subjective impressions, so vivid as to be identified with 
 the things themselves. When the whole soul is fiUed with 
 a spiritual light and a spiritual fire — when it seems to 
 echo, as in the Jewish legend of the great Lawgiver, with 
 the music of other worlds — when it is caught up into the 
 third heaven and hears words which it is not possible 
 for man to utter — when, to the farthest horizon of its 
 consciousness, it seems as it were filled with the " rush of 
 congregated wings " — when, to borrow the language of St. 
 Augustine, the natural life is dead, and the soul thrills, 
 under the glow of spiritual illumination, with a life which 
 is supernatural — what, to such a soul, is objective and 
 what is subjective ? To such questions the only answer 
 it cares to give is, " Whether in the body or out of the 
 body, I cannot teU. Grod knoweth."'^ 
 
 But when from these mysterious phenomena we 
 turn to the effects wrought by them in those for 
 whom they were manifested, we are dealing with things 
 more capable of being defined. Here, however, it is 
 necessary to distinguish between the immediate result 
 and the permanent inspiration. The former astounded a 
 
 1 Acts ii. 2, 3, fio-irep . . . &<rel 
 
 ^ " It did me much harm that I did not then know it was possible to see 
 anything otherwise than with the eyes pf the body " (St. Teresa, Vida, vii. 11). 
 
"OTHER TOWUES." 95 
 
 multitude ; the latter revived a world. The former led 
 to an immediate conversion; the latter is the power 
 of a holy life. The former was a new and amazing out- 
 burst of strange emotion; the latter was the sustaining 
 influence which enables the soul to soar from earth 
 heavenwards in steady flight on the double wings of 
 Faith and Love. 
 
 Yet, though there be no manner of comparison between 
 the real importance of the transient phenomenon and the 
 continuous result, it is necessary to a true conception of 
 the age of the Apostles that we should understand what 
 is told us of the former. " And they were all immediately 
 filled," it is said, " with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak 
 with other tongues as the Spirit gave them to utter." ^ 
 
 The prima fade aspect of the narrative which follows 
 — apart from the analogy of other Scriptures — ^has led 
 to the belief that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at 
 Pentecost was succeeded by an outburst of utterance, in 
 which a body of GralUseans spoke a multitude of languages 
 which they had never learned; and this has led to the 
 inference that throughout their lives the Apostles pos- 
 sessed the power of speaking languages which they had 
 
 not acquired.^ 
 
 « 
 
 > Acts ii. 4. XaA-eTc, " to Speak," as distinguished from X^yew, " to say," 
 points rather to the actual articulations than to the thoughts which words 
 convey; iiroipeiyyea-eai, eZogm, implies a brief forcible utterance. Neither Ircpal 
 nor y\u<riTai throw light on the nature of the phenomena, except as referring 
 to Isa. xxviii. 11. 
 
 ^ Against this view (which, with the contrast with Babel, &o., is not found, 
 I think, earlier than the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries), see Herder, 
 Die Gabe d. Sprache; Bunsen, Eippol. ii. 12; Ewald, Gesch. Isr. vi. 110; 
 Neander, Planting, 13,14; De "Wette, iJmZeii. 27— 37 ; HUgenfeld, Mnleii. 
 275; Eeuss, Eist. Apol. 50 — 65; Olshansen, ad loc; De Pressense, Trois 
 prem. Siecles, i. 355; and almost every unbiassed modern commentator. 
 Meyer {ad loe.) goes so far as to say that "the sudden communication of 
 the gift of speaking in foreign languages is neither logically possible nor 
 psychologically and morally conceivable." 
 
96 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 But if we examine other passages where the same 
 phenomenon is alluded to or discussed, they will show us 
 that this view of the matter is at least questionable. In 
 Mark xvi. 17 — waiving all argument as to the genuine- 
 ness of the passage — the word Kaivak, "new," is omitted 
 in several uncials and versions;^ but if retained, it goes 
 against the common notion, for it points to strange 
 utterances, not to foreign languages. In the other places 
 of the Acts ^ where the gift of ,the Spirit is alluded to, 
 no hint is given of the use of unknown languages. In 
 fact, that view of the subject has chiefly been stereotyped 
 in the popular conception by the interpolation of the 
 word " un&nowfi " in 1 Cor. xiv!^ The glossolalia, or 
 "speaking with a tongue," is connected with "prophesy- 
 ing" — that is, exalted preaching — and magnifying Grod. 
 The sole passage by which we can hope to understand it 
 is the section of the First Epistle to the Corinthians to 
 which I have just alluded.* It is impossible for any one 
 to examine that section carefully without being forced 
 to the conclusion that, at Corinth at any rate, the gift 
 of tongues had not the least connexion with foreign 
 languages. Of such a knowledge, if this single passage 
 of the Acts be not an exception, there is not the shadow 
 of a trace in Scripture. That this passage is noi an 
 exception seems to be clear from the fact that St. Peter, 
 in rebutting the coarse insinuation that the phenomenon 
 was the result of drunkenness, does not so much as make 
 
 ' 0, L, A, Copt., Ann. Apart from these qnesiions, the tmlimited umTer- 
 sality o£ the promise leads us to believe that our Lord here, as elsewhere, is 
 using the language of spiritual metaphor. Many a great missionary. and 
 preacher has, in the highest sense, spoken " with new tongues." who has yet 
 found insuperable difficulty in the acquisition of foreign lansuaeea. 
 
 »x.46; xix.6(ef.xi.l6). . see 
 
 " 1 Oor. xiv. 4, 13, 14, 27. 
 
 * 1 Cor. xii.— xiv. 33. 
 
THE GIFT or TONGUES. 97 
 
 the most passing aUusion to an evidence so unparalleled ; 
 and that the passage of Joel of which he sees the fulfil- 
 ment in the outpouring of Pentecost, does not contain the 
 remotest hint of foreign languages. Hence the fancy that 
 this was the immediate result of Pentecost is unknown to 
 the first two centuries, and only sprang up when- the 
 true tradition had been obscured. The inference that 
 the gift of unlearnt languages was designed to help the 
 Apostles in their future preaching is one that unites 
 a mass of misconceptions. In the first place, such a 
 gift would be quite alien to that law of God's Provi- 
 dence which never bestows on man that which man 
 can acquire by his own unaided efEorts. In the second 
 place, owing to the universal dissemination at that time 
 of Grreek and Latin, there never was a period in which 
 such a gift would have been more absolutely needless.'^ 
 In the third place, though all other miracles of the New 
 Testament found their continuance and their analogies, 
 for a time at any rate, after the death of the Apostles, 
 there is no existing allusion, or even early legend, which 
 has presumed the existence of this power .^ In the fourth 
 place, although Paul ' spoke with a tongue '''' more than all 
 his converts, it is clear from the narrative of what occurred 
 at Lycaouia, that at a most crucial moment he did not 
 understand the Lycaonian dialect. In the fifth place, early 
 
 1 For instance, the whole multitude from fifteen countries which heard the 
 Apostles speak " in' their own tongues " the wonderful works of God, yet all 
 understood the speech which St. Peter addressed to them in Greek. Hence 
 such a power of speaking unlearnt foreign languages would have been a 
 " Lnxus-wunder " (Immer, Neut. Theol. 195). Far different was it with the 
 true glossolaly which- in its controlled force involTed a spiritual power of 
 stirring to its inmost depths the heart of unbelief. (1 Cor. xiv. 22.) 
 
 ' Middleton, Mirac. Powers, 120. The passage of Irenseus {Haer. v. 6, 1) 
 usually quoted in favour of such a view, tells the other way, since the object 
 of the navroSairal yKuaaai is there explained to be rck Kfi^ia Tuc 
 ^airephy &yetv. 
 
 » 1 Oor. xiv. 18, yXdSiro-T) («, A, D, E, F, G). 
 
98 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 Christian tradition distinctly asserts that the Apostles did 
 not possess a supernatural knowledge of foreign tongues, 
 since Papias teUs us that Mark accompanied St. Peter as 
 an " interpreter " (e/j/ii^wur^?), and Jerome that Titus was 
 useful to St. Paul from his knowledge of Grreek.^ We 
 are, therefore, forced to look for some other aspect of 
 the utterance of that inspiration which accompanied the 
 heavenly signs of Pentecost. The mistaken explanation of 
 it has sprung from taking too literally St. Luke's dramatic 
 reproduction of the vague murmurs of a throng, who 
 mistook the nature of a gift of which they witnessed the 
 reality. I do not see how any thoughtful student who 
 has really considered the whole subject can avoid the con- 
 clusion of Neander, that "any foreign languages which were 
 spoken on this occasion were only something accidental, 
 and not the essential element of the language of the 
 Spirit."^ 
 
 In ancient times — especially before Origen — there 
 seems to have been an impression that only one language 
 was spoken, but that the miracle consisted in each hearer 
 imagining it to be his own native tongue.^ The explana- 
 tion is remarkable as showing an early impression that 
 the passage had been misunderstood. The modern view, 
 developed especially by Schneckenburger (following St. 
 
 1 Papists, ap. Euseb. ff. 'E. iii. 30 ; cf . Iren. lii. 1 ; interpres. Tert. aM, 
 'Marc. iv. 5. 
 
 ' Plcmting, 13, 14 I have not touched on any modern analogies to these 
 spiritual manifestations, but agree with the view of Dr. Dollinger, who says 
 that they have occurred "in a lower sphere, and without any miraculous 
 «ndowment ... an unusual phenomenon, but one completely within the 
 range of natural operations, which the gift of the Apostolic age came into to 
 ■ exalt and ennoble it " (First Age of Chv/rch, 315). 
 
 ' Greg. Nyss. De Spi/r. Srnict. Bp. Martensen, Christl. Dogm. 881; 
 (Overbeck, Apg., p. 26, and many others. The often-repeated objection of 
 •Gregory of Nazianzus (Orai. xliv.) that this is to transfer the miracle to the 
 hearers, has no weight whatever. The effect on the' hearers was solely due to 
 jthe power of the new spiritual " tongue." 
 
THE GIFT OP TONGUES. 99 
 
 Cyprian and !Erasnius), is tliat the "tongue" was, from 
 its own force and significance, intelligible egually to all 
 who heard it. That such a thing is possible may be 
 readily admitted, and it derives some probabihty from 
 many analogies in the history of the Church. The stories 
 of St. Bernard, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Vincent Ferrer, 
 St. Louis Bertrand, St. Francis Xavier, and others who are 
 said to have been endowed with the spiritual power of 
 swaying the passions, kindling the enthusiasm, or stirring 
 the penitence of vast multitudes whom they addressed in 
 a language unintelligible to the majority of the hearers, 
 are so far from being inventions, that any one who has 
 been present at the speech of a great orator, though 
 beyond the range of his voice, can i-eadily understand the 
 nature and the intensity of the effect produced.^ But 
 neither of these theories taken alone seems adequate to 
 account for the language used by St. Peter and St. Paul. 
 Almost all the theories about the glossolalia are too 
 partial. The true view can only be discovered by a 
 combination of them. The belief that languages were 
 used which were unknown, or only partially known, or 
 which, had only been previously known to the speaker ; 
 that the tongue was a mystic, exalted, poetic, unusual 
 style of phraseology and utterance ;** that it was a dithy- 
 rambic outpouring of strange and rhythmic praise ; that 
 it was the impassioned use of ejaculatory words and 
 sentences of Hebrew Scripture; that it was a wild, un- 
 intelligible, inarticulate succession of sounds, which either 
 conveyed no impression to the ordinary hearer, or could 
 
 ' See Chapters on Language, p. 63 ; Marsh, Leet. on Lang. 486—488; Cic. 
 de Orat. iii. 216. 
 
 ^ r\i(r(Ta sometimes means " an nnnsnal expression" (Arist. Rket.iii. 2,14), 
 Of. OUT "gloss," "glossology." See especially Bleek, Stud. u. KriL 1829. 
 " Lin^uam esse cum quis loquatur obacuras et mysticas significationes " (Aug, 
 de Gen. ad litt. xii. 8). « 
 
 h3 
 
100 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 only be interpreted by one whose special gift it was to 
 understand the rapt and ecstatic strain — none of these 
 views is correct separately, all may have some elements of 
 truth in their combination. This is the meaning of St. 
 Paul's expression " lands of tongues." If we assume, as 
 must be assumed, that the glossolalia at Corinth and else- 
 where was identical with the glossolalia at Pentecost, 
 then we must interpret the narrative of St. Luke by the 
 full and earnest discussion of the subject — written, be it 
 remembered, at a far earlier period, and in immediate 
 contact with, and even experiende of, the manifestation — 
 by St. Paul. That the glossolaly at Corinth was not a 
 speaking in foreign languages is too clear to need proof. 
 St. Paul in speaking of it uses the analogies of the 
 clanging of a cymbal, the booming of a gong,^ the 
 indistinct blare of a trumpet,^ the tuneless strains of 
 flute or harp.' We learn that, apart from interpre- 
 tation, it was not for the edification of any but the 
 speaker;* that even the speaker did not always under- 
 stand it;® that it was sporadic in its recurrences;® that . 
 it was excited, inarticulate, astonishing,^ intended as a 
 sign to unbelievers rather than as an aid to believers, but 
 even on unbelievers liable, when not under due regulation, 
 to leave an impression of madness ;^ lastly, that, though 
 controllable 'by all who were truly and nobly under its in- 
 fluence, it often led to spurious and disorderly outbreaks.' 
 
 ' 1 Cor. xiii. 1, XB\Kbj ^x&v, Kifi$a\ov &\a\dCov. 
 
 ' 8, iav aSrjXov ipayiiv (rd\iriy( S^j. St. Clirysostom uses language equally 
 disparaging of analogous outbreats in Constantinople (Horn, in Ps. Ti. 12 
 see Dr. Plranptre's interesting article in Smith's Bict. iii. 1560). 
 
 ^ xiv. 7, t/ius T& iif/uxa (pavriv SMvra, K.T.X., iiiv SioffToXV ToTi <l>e6yyots /ij( i<f. 
 
 * xiv. 2, ouK acflpairo.s \oAe7. 4, lauriij' oiKoSo|iieT. Of. 11. The proper 
 meaning of the words AaXeTi-, y\Sa-(ra, ^myi,, all point in this direction. In St. 
 Luke's phraseology the word for a language is not y\a<T(ra, but S.aAeKTos. 
 
 « xiv. 19. 8 xiv. 27. 'xiv. 2. » xiv. 23, »&« ^p<,S.r,K Jri ^ofwaStl 
 
 • Xiv. 9, 11, 17, 20-23, 26-28, 83. 40. 
 
THE GIFT OF TONGUES. 101 
 
 Any one wlio fairly ponders these indications can hardly 
 doubt that, when the consciousness of the new power came 
 over the assembled disciples, they did not speak as men 
 ordinarily speak. The voice they uttered was awful in its 
 range, in its tone, in its modulations, in its startling, 
 penetrating, almost appalling power ;'^ the words they 
 spoke were exalted, intense, passionate, full of mystic 
 significance ; the language they used was not their ordi- 
 nary and familiar tongue, but was Hebrew, or Greek, or 
 Latin, or Ajramaic, or Persian, or Arabic, as some over- 
 powering and unconscious impulse of the moment might 
 direct ; the burden of their thoughts was the ejaculation 
 of rapture, of amazement, of thanksgiving, of prayer, of 
 empassioned psahn, of dithyrambic hymn ; their utterances 
 were addressed not to each other, but were like an in- 
 spired soliloquy of the soul with God. And among these 
 strange sounds of many voices, all simultaneously raised in 
 tjie accordance of ecstatic devotion,^ there were some which 
 none could rightly interpret, which rang on the air like the 
 voice of barbarous languages, and which, except to those 
 who uttered them, and who in uttering them felt carried 
 out of themselves, conveyed no definite significance beyond 
 the fact .that they were reverberations of one and the 
 same ecstasy — echoes waked in different consciousnesses 
 by the same immense emotion. Such — as we" gather from 
 the notices of St. Luke, St. Peter, and St. Paul — was the 
 " Gift of Tongues." And thus regarded, its strict accord- 
 
 * So we infer from St. Paul's allnsions, 'whioli find illustration in modem 
 analogies. Archd. Stopford describes the "unknown tongue" of the Irish 
 Bevivalists in 1859 as " a sound such as I never heard before, unearthly and 
 unaccountable." 
 
 ' This simultaneity of utterance by people under the same impressions is 
 recorded several times in the Acts of the Apostles. It was evidently analogous 
 to, though not perhaps identical with " glossolalia " — the eloquence of religious 
 transport thrilling with rapture and conviction. 
 
102 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 ance with the known laws of psychology ^ furnishes us 
 with a fresh proof of the truthfulness of the history, and 
 shows us that no sign of the outpouring of the Holy 
 Spirit conld have been more natural, more evidential, or 
 more intense. 
 
 The city of Jerusalem at that moment was crowded 
 by a miscellaneous multitude of Jews and Proselytes. 
 It was inevitable that the awful sound ^ should arrest 
 the astonished attention, first of one, then of more, 
 lastly of a multitude of the inhabitants and passers-by. 
 The age — an age which was in keen expectation of some 
 divine event ; the day — ^the great anniversary of Pentecost 
 and of Sinai ; the hour — when people were already be- 
 ginning to throng the streets on their way to the Temple 
 service — would aU tend to swell the numbers, and in- 
 tensify the feehngs of the crowd. Tip the steps which 
 led outside the house to the "upper room" they would 
 first begin to make their way in twos and threes, and 
 then to press in larger numbers, until their eagerness, 
 their obtrusion, their exclamations of fear, surprise, admi- 
 ration, insult, could not fail to break the speU. The 
 Church for the first time found itself face to face with 
 the world — a world loud in its expressions of perplexity, 
 through which broke the open language of hate and 
 scorn. . That which fixed the attention of aU the better 
 portion of the crowd was the fact that these " ©alilseans " 
 were magnifying, in strange tongues, the mercies and 
 power of Grod. But most of the spectators were filled 
 
 1 Compare in the Old Testament the cases of Saul, &c. (1 Sam. x. 11; 
 xviii. 10; six. 23, 24). "Cost le langage brulant et mysterieux de I'extase" 
 (Do Pressens^, i. 355). 
 
 ^ In Acts ii. 6 the words ytvoiierns 84 t^s 0oji/?s rairris do not mean (as 
 in the E.V.) " now when this was noised abroad," but " when this sound 
 occurred " (ef. ^x"^, ver. 2 ; John iii. 8 ; Rev. vi. 1). It is e-vidently an aUusion 
 to the Bath Kol. (See Herzog, Beal. Encycl., s,v.) 
 
SPEECH or ST. PETER. 103 
 
 with contempt at what seemed to them to be a wild 
 fanaticism. " These men," they jeeringly exclaimed, 
 "have been indulging too freely in the festivities of 
 Pentecost.^ Th^ are drunk with sweet wine."^ 
 
 It was the prevalence of this derisive comment which 
 forced upon the Apostles the necessity of. immediate ex- 
 planation.^ "The spirits of the prophets," as St. Paul 
 says, with that masculine practical wisdom which in 
 him is found in such rare combination with burning 
 enthusiasm, " are subject unto the -prophets."* The 
 Apostles were at once able not only to calm their own 
 exaltation, but also, even at this intense moment, to hush 
 into absolute silence the overmastering emotion of their 
 brethren. They saw well that it would be fatal to 
 their position as witnesses to a divine revelation i£ anyr 
 thing in their worship could, however insultingly, be 
 represented as the orgiastic exhibition of undisciplined 
 fervour. It was a duty to prove from the very first that 
 the Christian disciple offered no analogy to the fanatical 
 fakeer. Clearing the room of all intruders, making a 
 space for themselves at the top of the steps, where they 
 could speak in the name of the brethren to the surging 
 throng who filled the street, the Apostles came forward, 
 and Peter assumed the ofi&ce of their spokesman. Stand- 
 ing in an attitude, and speaking in a tone, which 
 commanded attention,® he first begged for serious atten- 
 tion, and told the crowd that their coarse suspicion 
 
 * See Deut. xvi. 11. 
 
 * 7Xeunoi cannot be " new wine," as in E.V., for Pentecost fell in June, and 
 the vintage was in August. 
 
 * Acts ii. 15, i>s ineis iirohaiipdvere. There is a slight excuse for this insult, 
 since spiritual emotion may produce effects similar to those which result 
 from intoxication (Eph. t. 18; 1 Sam. x. 10, 11; xviii. 10— Heb., "raved"). 
 Compare the German expression, " Ein Gott-trunkeuer Mauu." 
 
 * 1 Cor. xiv. 32. 
 
 * Acts ii. 14, ffraBtU . . . iwfpt t^v 4>ai'?)i>. 
 
104 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 was refuted at once by the fact that it was but nine 
 o'clock. He then proceeded to explain to them that this 
 was the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel that, among 
 other signs and portents of the last day% there should be 
 a special effusion of the Spirit of God, like that of which 
 they had witnessed the manifestations. It was the object 
 of the remainder of his speech to prove that this Spirit 
 had been outpoured by that same Jesus of Nazareth' 
 whom they had nailed to the cross, but whose resurrection 
 and deliverance from the throes of death were foreshadowed 
 in the Psalms of His glorious ancestor. 
 
 The power with which this speech came home to the 
 minds of the hearers ; the force and fearlessness with 
 which it was delivered by one who, not two months 
 before, had been frightened, by the mere question' of a 
 curious girl, into the denial of his Lord ; the insight 
 into Scripture which it evinced in men who so recently 
 had shown themselves but ' fools and slow of heart ' 
 to believe all that the prophets had spoken concerning 
 Christ;^ the three thousand who were at once baptised 
 into a profession of the new faith — were themselves the 
 most convincing proofs — ^proofs even more convincing 
 than rushing wind, and strange tongues, and lambent 
 flames — that now indeed the Promise of the Pafaclete 
 had been fulfilled, and that a new cBon had begun in God's 
 dealings with the world. 
 
 1 Acts u. 22, NaCufMos, the Galileeaa form of Na^cyoZis* 
 * Lake szir. 25i 
 
. CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 EARLY PERSECUTIONS. 
 
 "It fills the Church of God; it fills 
 The sinful world around ; 
 Only in stubborn hearts and wiUs 
 No place for it is found.'' — Keble. 
 
 The life of these early Christians was the poetic childhood 
 of the Church in her earliest innocence. It was marked by 
 simplicity, by gladness, by w'orship, by brotherhood. At 
 home, and in their place of meeting, their lives were a per- 
 petual prayer, their meals a perpetual love-feast and a per- 
 petual eucharist. In the Temple they attended the public 
 services with unanimous zeal. In the first impulses of 
 fraternal joy many sold their possessions to contribute to 
 a common stock. The numbers of the little community 
 increased daily, and the mass of the people looked on them 
 not only with tolerance, but with admiration and esteem. 
 
 The events which followed all tended at first to 
 strengthen their position. The healing of the cripple 
 in Solomon's porch ; the bold speech of Peter afterwards ; 
 the unshaken constancy with which Peter and John faced ' 
 the fury of the Sadducees ; the manner in which all the 
 disciples accepted and even exulted in persecution, if it 
 came in the fulfilment of their duties ; * the power with 
 
 • It is a very interesting fact that on the first summons of Peter and 
 John before the Hierarchs, they were dismissed, with threats, indeed, and 
 warnings, but unpunished, because the Council became convinced (icoTo\a/3ifjii6i'o() 
 that they were "unlearned and ignorant men" (Acts iv. 13). The words, 
 however, convey too contemptuous a notion to EngUsh readers. 'Aypdii/iuToi 
 
106 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PATTL. 
 
 which they witnessed to the resurrection of their Lord; 
 the beautiful spectacle of their unanimity; the awful 
 suddenness with which Ananias and Sapphira had been 
 stricken down; the signs and wonders which were wrought 
 by the power of faith ; the zeal and devotion which marked 
 their gatherings in Solomon's porch, caused a rapid advance 
 in the numbers and position of the Christian brothers. 
 As their influence increased, the hierarchic clique, which 
 at that time governed the body which stiU called itsielf 
 the Sanhedrin, grew more and more alarmed. In spite 
 of the populace, whose sympathy made it dangerous at 
 that time to meddle with the followers of Jesus, they at 
 last summoned the two leading Apostles before a solemn 
 conclave of the Sanhedrin and senate.^ Probably, as at 
 the earlier session, the whole priestly party were there — 
 the crafty Annas, the worldly Caiaphas,^ the rich, unscru- 
 pulous, money-loving body of Kamhiths, and Phabis, and 
 Eantheras, and Boethusim,' the Pharisaic doctors of the 
 law, with Gamaliel at their head ; John, perhaps the cele- 
 
 simply means that their knowledge of Jewish culture was confined to the Holy 
 Scriptures; JSiStoi, that they had never studied in rabbinic schools. The 
 •woii Hediot (ISi^rvs) occurs frequently in the Talmud, and expresses a position 
 far superior to that of the am-haarets. The Hediot is one who, though not a 
 frequenter of the schools, stiU pays deference to the authority of the Rabbis; 
 the am-haarets is one who hates and despises that authority. Hillel was dis- 
 tinguished for his forbearing condescension towards the ignorance of Hediota 
 (Bahha Metzia, f. IQi, 1). Compare John vii. 15, " How knowetb this man 
 letters, having never learned 7" 
 
 * "Populus sanior quam qui praesunt" (Bengel). The use of the word 
 •yefovala in Acts T. 21 is somewhat perplexing, because we know nothing of 
 any Jewish "senate" apart from the Sanhedrin, and because if yepomia be 
 taken in an etymological rather than a political sense, the Sanhedrin included 
 the elders (iv. 8 ; xxv. 15). It is impossible, in the obscurity of the subject, to 
 distinguish between the political and the Talmudic Sanhedrin. See Deren- 
 bourg (Palestine, 213), who thinks that Agrippa had been the first to introduce 
 Eabbis into the Sanhedrin. 
 
 ^ Both of these are mentioned as having been at the earlier meeting, and 
 we are probably intended to understand they were also present at this. 
 
 ' On these, ,see Life of Christ, ii., pp. 329—342. 
 
MEETINGS OP THE SANHBDRIN. 107 
 
 brated Johanan Ben Zakkai ; ^ Alexander, pej^haps tlie 
 wealthy brother of thp learned Philo;^ the same body 
 who had been present, at those secret, guilty, tumultuous, 
 illegal meetings in which they handed over the Lord Jesus 
 to their Eoman executioners — were again assembled, bat 
 now with something o£ misgiving and terror, to make one 
 more supreme efEort to stamp out the Galilsean heresy. 
 
 The Apostles, when first brought before the San- 
 hedrin, had been arrested in the evening by the 
 Captain of the Temple, and had been released with strong 
 threats, partly because the Sadducees affected to despise 
 them, but still more because they did not know how to 
 gainsay the miracle of the healing of the cripple. The 
 Apostles had then openly declared that they shotdd be 
 compelled by the law of a higher duty to disregard these 
 threats, and they had continued to teach to increas- 
 ing thousands that , doctrine of the resurrection which 
 filled the Sadducees with the greatest jealousy. It was 
 impossible to leave them unmolested in their career, 
 and by the High Priest's order they were thrust 
 into prison. The Sanhedrin met at dawn to try them; 
 but when they sent for them to the prison they found 
 that the Apostles were not there, but that, delivered by 
 " an angel of the Lord," they were calmly teaching in 
 the Temple. In the deepest perplexity, the Sanhedrists 
 once more despatched the Levitical officer to arrest them, 
 but this time without any violence, which might lead to 
 dangerous results. They offered no resistance, and were 
 once more placed where their Lord had once stood — in 
 the centre of that threatening semicircle of angry judges. 
 In reply to the High Priest's indignant reminder of the 
 warning they'had received, St, Peter simply laid down the 
 
 * Lightfoot, Cent Ghor. in Matt., cap. 15. 
 ' Jos. Antt. xviii. 8, § 1. 
 
108 THE LIFE AND "WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 principle tliat when our duty to man clashes with our 
 duty to God, it is God that must be obeyed.^ The High 
 Priest had said, " Te want to bring upon us the blood 
 of this man." The words are an awful comment on the 
 defiant cry, " His blood be on us, and on our children." 
 Tlien the Sanhedrin had not been afraid of Jesus ; now 
 they were trembling at the vengeance which might yet be 
 brought on them by two of the despised disciples. The 
 phrase is also remarkable as furnishing the first instance 
 of that avoidance -of the name of Christ which makes 
 the Talmud, in the very same terms, refer to Him most 
 frequently as Pelonf^ — " so and so." Peter did not 
 aggravate the Priests' alarm. He made no allusion to 
 the charge of an intended vengeance ; he only said that 
 the Apostles, and the Holy Spirit who wrought in them. 
 Were witnesses to the resurrection and exaltation of Him 
 whom they had slain. At these words the Sanhedria 
 ground their teeth with rage, and began to advise another 
 judicial murder, which would, on their own principles, 
 have rendered them execrable to their countrymen, as an 
 assembly given to deeds of blood.^ This disgrace was 
 averted by the words of one wise man among them. How 
 far the two Apostles were protected by the animosities 
 between the rival sects of Sadducees and Pharisees we do 
 not know, but it was certainly the speech of Gamaliel 
 which saved them from worse results than that scourging 
 by Jewish thongs — ^those forty stripes save one — which 
 they received, and in which they exulted.* 
 
 1 Cf . Plat. Apol. 29. miffontti SJ et# liSwov fi ifuv. " It were better for me 
 to be called 'fool' all the days of my life, than to be made wicked before 
 Ka-Makom," i.e., God; literally "the Place" {Edioth, ch. v. 6). 
 
 ' In Spanish and Portuguese /wZawo (through the Arabic). The designation 
 otho haish, " that man," is still more contemptuous, ic {Yeshu) is used as the 
 contraction for sim', and is composed of the initial letters of an imprecation. 
 
 ' "The Sanhedrin is not to save, but to destroy life" {Sanhe&r. 42 6). (See 
 Life of Christ, ii. 352, and infra. Excursus YH. * Dent. xxv. 2. 
 
SPEECH OF GAMALIEL. 109 
 
 That speecli of Gamaliel was not unworthy of a grand- 
 son of Hillel — of one of those seven who alone won the 
 supreme title of Eabbanim^ — of one who subsequently 
 became a President of the Sanhedrin. It has been 
 strangely misunderstood. The supposed anachronism of 
 thirty years ia the reference to Theudas has led the school 
 of Baur to deny altogether the genuineness of the speech, 
 but it has yet to be proved that the allusion may not 
 have been perfectly correct. The notion that the speech 
 was due to a secret leaning in favour of Christianity, 
 and the tradition of the Clementine Recognitions, that 
 Gamaliel was in heart a Christian,® have no shadow of 
 probability in their favour, since every allusion to him in 
 the Talmud shows that he lived and died a Pharisee. 
 Nor, again, is there the least ground for Schrader's in- 
 dignation against his supposed assertion of the principle 
 that the success of a religion is a sufficient test of its 
 truth. We must remember that only the briefest outline 
 of his speech is given, and all that Gamaliel seems to 
 have meant was this — * Let these men alone at present. 
 As far as we can see, they are only the victims of a 
 harmless delusion. There is nothing seditious in their 
 practice, nothing subversive in their doctrines. Even if 
 there were we should have nothing to fear from them, 
 and- no need to adopt violent measures of precaution. 
 Fanaticism and imposture are short-lived, even when 
 backed by popular insurrection ; but in the views of 
 these men there may be something more than at present 
 appears. Some germ of truth, some gleam of revelation, 
 may inspire their singular enthusiasm, and to fight 
 against this may be to fight against God.' Gamaliel's 
 
 ^ AH the Eabbans except Jolianan Ben Zakkai were descendants of 
 Gamaliel. 
 
 « Thilo, Cod. Apocr., p. 501. 
 
110 THE LIFE AND WORK OE ST. PAITL. 
 
 plea was not so much a plea for systematic tolerance as 
 for temporary caution.^ The day of open rupture between 
 Judaism and Christianity was indeed very near at hand, 
 but it had not yet arrived. His advice is neither due to 
 the quiescence of Pharisaic fatalism, nor to a 'fallacious 
 laisser alter view of the matter, which serves to show how 
 low the Jews had sunk in theology and political sagacity if 
 such was the counsel of their wisest.' ^ There was time, 
 Gamaliel thought, to wait and watch the development 
 of this new fraternity. To interfere with it might only 
 lead to a needless embroilment between the people and 
 the Sanhedrin. A little patience would save trouble, anc 
 indicate the course which should be pursued. Gamalie" 
 was sufficiently clear-sighted to have observed that the 
 fire of a foolish fanaticism dies out if it be neglected, and 
 is only kindled into fury by premature opposition. Lei 
 those who venture to arraign the principle of the wise 
 Eabbi remember that it is practically identical with the 
 utterance of Christ, "Every plant, which my heavenly 
 Father planted not, shall be plucked up by the roots."^ 
 
 The advice was too sound, and the authority of the 
 speaker too weighty, to be altogether rejected. The 
 Priests and Eabbis, tortured already with guilty anxiety 
 as to the consequences of their judicial murder, renewed 
 their futile command to the Apostles to preach no more 
 in the name of Jesus, and scourging them for disobedience 
 
 ' Too nmch has, perhaps, heen made of the ikv fj ii hvBpdnrav as contrasted 
 with «• 8i iK 0«oS {(TTiv, TV. 38, 39; cf. Gal. i. 8, 9— (Beng. ikv ^ si fit, con- 
 ditionaliter ; rf lariv si est, categorice)— as though Gamaliel leaned to the latter 
 ■view — "womach der gesetzte Zioeife Tail als der dem Gamaliel wahrschein- 
 lichere erscheint" (Meyer). It merely means—' If it shordd be from men, as 
 results wiU show,' and, 'if, a case which I at present suppose, from God.' 
 (Seo Winer.) 
 
 ^ Alford, following Schrader, Ber Aposiel Pauhis. 
 
 ' See Matt. xv. 13. It was in this sense that Luther urged the advice of 
 Gamaliel upon the Elector of Trives. 
 
THE TUBINGEN SCHOOL. Ill 
 
 to their former injunctions, let tliem go. Neither in 
 public nor in private did the Apostles relax their exertions. 
 The gatherings still continued in Solomon's porch; the 
 agapcB were still held in the houses of the .brethren. So 
 far from being intimidated, the two Apostles only rejoiced 
 that they were counted worthy of the honour of being 
 dishonoured for the name of Him on whom they believed. 
 And here I must pause for a moment tp make a 
 remark on the grounds which have led many modern critics 
 to reject the authority of the Acts of the Apostles, and to 
 set it down as a romance, written in the cause of recon- 
 ciliation between Judaising and Pauline Christians. My 
 object in these volumes is not controversial. It has been 
 my endeavour here, as in my Life of Christ, to diffuse as 
 widely as I can a clear knowledge of the Dawn of the 
 Christian Faith, and to explain as lucidly as is in my 
 power the bearing of its earliest documents. But I have 
 carefully studied the objections urged against the authen- 
 ticity and the statements of the New Testament widtings ; 
 and I cannot forbear the expression of my astonishment 
 at the baselessness of many of the hypotheses which have 
 been accepted in their disparagement. Honesty of course 
 demands that we should admit the existence of an error 
 where such an error can be shown to exist ; but the same 
 honesty demands the rejection of all charges against the 
 accuracy of the sacred historian which rest on nothing 
 better than hostile prepossession. It seems to me that 
 writers like Baur and Zeller^n spite of their wide 
 learning and great literary acumen — often prove, by cap- 
 tious objections and by indifference to counter considera- 
 tions, the fundamental weakness of their own system.-' 
 
 * See Baur, Paul. i. 35 ; Zoller, Bie Apostelgeseh., p. 134. Baur asserts that 
 Gamaliel could not have delivered the speech attributed to him because of 
 " the striking chronological error in the appeal to the example of Theudaa." 
 
112 THE LIFE AIJD WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 Hausrath. altogether rejects the statement that Paul was 
 " brought up at the feet of Gamaliel," on the ground that 
 Paul calls himself " a zealot " for the traditions of the 
 fathers, and must therefore have belonged far rather to 
 the school of Shammai. He could not, according to this 
 
 And yet he does not offer any proof either that the Thendas here allnded to 
 is identical with the Thendas of Josephns, or that Josephns mnst necesaarihj 
 he right and St. Luke necessarily wrong. Zeller,' while entering more fully 
 into the discussion, seems only to be struck by the resemblance between the 
 two impostors, without allowing for the obvious differences in the accounts of 
 them ; and he attaches an extravagant importance to the silence of Josephus 
 about the unimportant movement of the earlier fanatic to whom Gamaliel 
 is supposed to allude; nor does he notice the possibility, admitted even by a 
 Jewish writer (Jest, Gesch. d. Jvd. ii. 76), that the Thendas of Gamaliel may 
 be the Simon, a slave of Herod, of Jos. Antt. xvii. 10, § 6 ; Tac. H. v. 9. On this 
 identification, see Sonntag, Stvd. u. Kfit, 1837, p. 622 ; and Haokett, ad loe. 
 Again, critics of the Tubingen school point out the supposed absurdity of 
 believing that the Sanhedrin would admit " a notable miracle " and yet 
 punish the men who had performed it. But this is to reason from the stand- 
 point of modem times. The Jews have never denied the miracles of Jesus, 
 but they have not on that account believed in His mission. Just as a modern 
 Protestant, familiar with the peculiarities of nervous maladies, might accept 
 the nanative of wonderful cures performed at La Salette, without for a 
 moment admitting the reality of the vision which is supposed to have' con-., 
 secrated the place, so the Jews freely admitted the possibility of incondusive 
 miracles, which they attributed generally to WsAottf (i.e., thaumaturgyy miracles 
 wrought by unhallowed influence), or to D'st? nvm, phantasmagoria, or de- 
 ception of the eyes. (Derenbourg, Palest. 106, n. 3 ; 361, n. 1.) Thus they 
 allowed miraculous power to idols (Abhoda Zara, f. 54, 2). There is a 
 Talmudic anecdote (perhaps a sort of allegory on Ecdes. x. 8) which 
 exactly illustrates tlus very point. R. Eliezer ben Dama was bitten by 
 a serpent, and Jacob the min (i.e.. Christian) offered to heal him in the 
 name of Jesus. "Ben Dama, it is forbidden!" said his uncle, R. Ismael. 
 " Let me do it," urged Jacob; " I will prove to you by the Law that it is 
 allowable." , Before the argument was over the sick man died. " Happy Ben 
 Dama ! " exclaimed his uncle ; " thou hast yielded thy soul in purity, without 
 violating a precept* of the wise" {Ahhoda Zara, cf. 27, 6; 55, 1; Jer. 
 Shahhath, 14, 4).— "When St. Luke makes Gamaliel speak of "Judas of 
 Galilee," whereas Judas was born at Gamala, and commonly known as Judas 
 the G«,ulonite {TavKavlTiis i-v^p, Jos. Antt. xvjji. 1, § 1), this trivial peculiarity 
 would unquestionably have been paraded by German critics as a proof of the 
 unhistorical character of the speech, but for the fortunate accident that 
 Josephus, with reference to the sphere of his activity, thrice calls him 
 i TaXiKaios {Antt. xviii. 1, § 6 ; XX. 5, § 2 i B. /. ii. 8, § 1). 
 
AOCURAOT OF ST. LUKE. U3 
 
 writer, have been, trained by a Eabbi wbo was remarkable 
 for his mildness and laxity. He accordingly assumes that 
 the author of the Acts only invents the relations between 
 St. Paul and Gamaliel in order to confer a sort of distinc- 
 tion upon, the foimer, when the fame of Gamaliel the 
 Second, founder of the, school of Jabne, kept alive, in 
 the second century, the fame of his grandfather, Gamaliel 
 the Elder.^ Now of what value is a criticism which con- 
 temptuously, and I may even say calumniously, contra- 
 dicts a writer whose accuracy, in matters where it can be 
 thoroughly tested, receives striking confirmation from the 
 most opposite sources ? It would have been rightly con- 
 sidered a very trivial blot on. St. Luke's accuracy if he 
 had fallen into some slight confusion about the enrolment 
 of Quirinus, the tetrarchy of Abilene, the Ethnarch under 
 Aretas, the Asiarchs of Ephesus, the "Praetors" of Philippi, 
 the "Politarchs" of Thessalonica, the " Protos " of Malta, or 
 the question, whether " Propraetor," or " Pro-consul," was, 
 in the numerous changes of those days, the exact official 
 title of the Eoman Governor of Cyprus or Corinth. .On 
 several of these points he has been , triumphantly charged 
 with ignorance and error ; and on all these points his 
 minute exactitude has been completely vindicated or 
 rendered extremely probable. In every historical allusion 
 — as, for instance, the characters of Gallio, Felix, Pestus, 
 Agrippa II., Ananias, the famine in the days of Claudius, 
 the decree to expel Jews from Eome, the death of 
 Agrippa I., the rule of Aretas at Damascus, the Italian 
 band, &c. — he has been shown to be perfectly faithful 
 to facts. Are we to charge him with fraudulent 
 assertions about Paul's relation to Gamaliel on the 
 questionable supposition that, after reaching the age of 
 
 1 Ha-zaken, as he is usually called. 
 
114 THE LITE AND WOIIK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 manliood, the pupil deviated from his teacher's doctrines?* 
 Are we, on similar grounds, to charge Diogenes Laertius 
 with falsehood when he tells us that Antisthenesj the 
 Cynic, and Aristippus, the Cyrenaic, were both of them 
 pupils of Socrates? A remarkable anecdote, which will 
 be quoted farther on, has recorded the terrible quarrel 
 between the parties of Eabbi Eliezer and Eabbi Joshua, 
 of whom the former is called a Shammaite, and the latter 
 a Hillelite ;^ and yet both of them were pupils of the 
 same Eabbi, the celebrated Hillelite, E. Johanan Ben 
 Zaccai. Such instances might be indefinitely multiplied. 
 And if so, what becomes of Hausrath's criticism ? Like 
 many of the Tubingen theories, it crumbles into dust.* 
 
 > Taming to Buddseus, Philos. Sebraeorum (1720), I find that lie answered 
 this objection long ago. An interesting anecdote in Serachoth, f . 16, 2, shows 
 that the natural kindness of Gamaliel was too strong for the soTerity of bis 
 own teaching. 
 
 * Jer. Shaibbath, L 7. 
 
 ^ See Excnrsna Y. : " Gamaliel and the School of Tttbiogen." 
 
ST, STEPHEN AND THE HELLENISTft 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE DIASPORA: HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 
 
 " TiJiroc oKk eirrt ^ifSlus eipelv rijs oikou/ueVt): iis oli irapaScScKTai toSto rh ijniKov, 
 Ji^S' (sic) i-irMpareiTai W airov. — StEABO, ap. Jos. Antt. SIT. 7, § 2. (Cf. Fhilo, 
 Leg. ad Gaium, xxxvi.) 
 
 •The gradual change of relation between the Jews and the 
 Christians was an inevitable result of the widening boun- 
 daries of the Church. Among the early converts were 
 " Grecians," as well as " Hebrews," and this fact naturally 
 led to most important consequences, on which hinged the 
 historic future of the Christian Faith. 
 
 It is not too much to say that any real comprehension 
 of the work of St. Paul, and of the course of events in 
 the days after Christ must depend entirely on our in- 
 sight into the difference between these two classes of Jews. 
 And this is a point which has been so cursorily treated 
 that we must here pause while we endeavour to see it in 
 its proper light. 
 
 When the successive judgments, first of the Assyrian, 
 then of the Babylonian captivity, had broken all hopes of 
 secular power and aU thoughts of secular pride in the 
 hearts of the Jews, a whoUy different impulse was given 
 to the current of their life. Settled in the countries to 
 which they had been transplanted, allowed the full rights 
 I 2 
 
116 THE LIFE AND "WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 of citizensliip, finding free ocope for their individual 
 energies, they rapidly developed tliat remarkable genius 
 for commerce by whicb tbey have been characterised in 
 all succeeding ages. It was only a wretched handful 
 of the nation — compared by the Jewish writers to the 
 chaff of the wheat — who availed themselves of the free 
 permission of Cyrus, and subsequent kings of Persia, to 
 return to their native land.^ The remainder, although 
 they jealously preserved their nationality and their tradi- 
 tions, made their homes in every land to which they had 
 been drifted by the wave of conquest, and gradually 
 multiplying until, as Josephus teUs us,® they crowded 
 every comer of the habitable globe, formed that great and 
 remarkable body which continues to be known to this day 
 as "the Jews of the Dispersion.""* 
 
 This Dispersion of the Chosen People was one of 
 those three vast and world-wide events in which a 
 Christian cannot but see the hand of God so ordering the 
 cotirse of history as to prepare the world for the Eevelar 
 tion of His Son. (i.) The immense field covered by the 
 
 1 Of the whole nation only 42,360 returned ; and as the separate items of 
 the returning families given by Ezra and Nehemiah only amount to 30,000, 
 it was precariously conjectured by the Jews that the surplus consisted of 
 members of the ten tribes. As a body, however, the ten tribes were finally 
 and absolutely absorbed iato the nations — ^not improbably of Semitic origin — 
 among whom they were scattered (Jos. Antt. xi. 5, § 2; 2 Esdr. xiii. 45). 
 Such expressions as rb SaSeKa<pv\ov of James i. 1 ; Acts xxvi. 7, point rather to 
 past reminiscences, to patriotic yearnings, and to the sacredly- treasured genea- 
 logical records of a very few families, than to any demonstrable reality. Of 
 the priestly families only four courses out of the twenty-four returned (Ear, 
 ii. 36—39). 
 
 » Jos. Antt. xiv. 7, § 2. 
 
 ' The word is first found in this sense in Beut. xxviii. 25 ; Ps. cdvii. 2, 
 " He shall gather together the outcasts ('iTj? ; LXX., t&s Siarriropits) of Israel." 
 It is also found in 2 Mace. i. 27, " Gather together those that are scattered 
 from us, deliver them that serve among the heathen." They were originally 
 called Btni Galoofha (Ezr. vi. 16.) In John vii. 35, thv Staavophv rSiv "i-KK^vm 
 means the Jews scattered over the Greek world. The only other passages 
 where it occurs in the N.T. are James i, 1 j 1 Pet. i, 1. 
 
THREE GREAT EVENTS, 117 
 
 conquests of Alexander gave to the civilised world a 
 Unity of Language, without wHch. it would have been, 
 humanly speaking, impossible for the earliest preachers to 
 have made known the good tidings in every land which 
 they traversed, (ii.) The rise of the Eoman Empire created 
 a Political Unity which reflected in every direction the doc- 
 trines o£ the new faith. ' (iii.) The dispersion of the Jews 
 prepared vast multitudes of Greeks and Eomans for the 
 Unity of a pure Morality and a monotheistic Faith. The 
 Gospel emanated from the capital of Judsea ; it was preached 
 in the tongue of Athens ; it was diffused through the empire 
 of Rome : the feet of its earliest missionaries traversed, from 
 the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules, the solid structure 
 of undeviating roads by which the Roman legionaries^ 
 " those massive hammers of the whole earth " ^ — had 
 made straight in the desert a highway for our God. 
 Semite and Aryan had been unconscious instruments in 
 the hands of God for the spread of a religion which, in 
 its first beginnings, both alike detested and despised. 
 The letters of Hebrew and Greek and Latin inscribed 
 above the cross were the prophetic and unconscious testi- 
 mony of three of the world's noblest languages to the 
 undying claims of Him who suffered to obliterate the 
 animosities of the nations which spoke them, and to unite 
 them all together in the one great Family of God. 
 
 This contact of Jew with Greek was fruitful of mo- 
 mentous consequences both to the Aryan and the Semitic 
 race. It is true that the enormous differences between 
 the morals^ the habits, the tendencies, the religious 
 systems, the whole tone of mind and view of life in these 
 two great human families, inspired them with feelings of 
 mutual aversion and almost detestation. Out of the chaos 
 
 1 Shairp, Mod. Cultwre, 
 
118 THE LITE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 of struggling interests which, followed the death of 
 Alexander, there gradually emerged two great kingdoms, 
 the Egyptian and the Syrian, ruled respectively hy the 
 Ptolemies and the Seleucids. These dynasties had in- 
 herited the political conceptions of the great Macedoniaa 
 conqueror, and desired to produce a fusion of the hetero- 
 geneous elements included in their government. Both 
 alike turned their eyes to Palestine, which became 
 the theatre of their incessant contentions, and which 
 passed alternately under the sway of each. The Ptolemies 
 continuing the policy of Alexander, did their utmost to 
 promote the immigration of Jews into Egypt. The 
 Seleucids, both by force and hy various political induce- 
 ments, settled them as largely as they could in their 
 western cities. Alike the Lagidse and the Seleucidae knew 
 the value of the Jews as quiet and order-loving citizens. 
 To the shores of the Mediterranean flocked an ever- 
 increasing multitude of Greek merchants and Greek 
 colonists. " The torrent of Greek immigration soon met 
 the torrent of Jewish emigration. Like two rivers which 
 poured their differently coloured waves into the same 
 basin without mixing with one another, these two peoples 
 cast themselves on the young Macedonian cities, and 
 there simultaneously established themselves without 
 intermixture, continually separated by the irrecon- 
 cilable diversity of their beliefs and customs, though con- 
 tinually flung into connexion 'hy community of business 
 and by the uniform legislation which protected their 
 interests." ^ 
 
 The effect of this on the Greek was less marked and 
 less memorable than its effect on the Jew. Judaism was 
 more Hellenised by the contact than Hellenism was 
 
 ' Eeuss, Theol. Chret. I. i. 93; and in Herzog, Cyclop., s.v. "Hellenism." 
 On this isopolity see Jos. c. Aja. ii. 4. 
 
JUDAISM AND HELLENISM. 119 
 
 Judaised. There can be no more striking proof of this 
 fact than the total loss by the " Sons o£ the Dispersion " 
 of their own mother tongue. That the effects on the 
 Pagan world were less beneficial than might have been 
 anticipated was, in great measure, the fault of the Jews 
 themselves. That sort of obtrusive humilitj which so 
 often marks a race which has nothing to live on but its 
 memories, was mingled with an invincible prejudice, a 
 rooted self-esteem, an unconcealed antipathy to those of 
 alien race and religion, which, combined as it was with 
 commercial habits by no means always scrupulous, and a 
 success by no means always considerate, alienated into 
 disgust the very sympathies which it should have striven 
 to win. The language in which the Jews are spoken of 
 by the writers of the Empire — a language expressive 
 of detestation mingled with curiosity — sufficiently accounts 
 for the outbreaks of mob violence, from which in so many 
 ages they have been liable to suffer. These outbreaks, if 
 not connived at by the governing authorities, were too often 
 condoned. Yet, in spite of this, the influence insensibly 
 exercised by the Jews over the heathen among whom they 
 lived was fuU of important consequences for Christianity. 
 " Victi" says Seneca, " vidorihus leges dederunt." The 
 old Paganism was, in intellectual circles, to a great extent 
 effete. Great Pan was dead. Except in remote country 
 districts, the gods of Olympus were idle names. In Eome 
 the terrors of Tartarus were themes for a schoolboy's 
 laughter. Religion had sunk into a state machinery.* 
 The natural consequences followed. Those minds which 
 were too degraded to feel the need of a religion were 
 content to wallow, like natural brute beasts, in the Stygian 
 pool of a hideous immorality. Others became the votaries 
 
 ' See Juv. ii. 149 ; Boiasier, La Keligion Bomaine, i. 374 — 450 and conf/ra 
 Friedlimder, SUtengeech. Boms, (who goes too far). 
 
120 THE LIFE AST) WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 of low foreign superstitions,^ or the dupes of every variety. 
 o£ designing charlatans. But not a few were attracted 
 into the shadow of the synagogue, and the majority of 
 these were women,® who, restricted as was their influence, 
 yet could not fail to draw the attention of their domestic 
 circles to the belief which they had embraced. In every 
 considerable city of the Eoman Empire the service of the 
 synagogue was held in Grreek, and these services were 
 perfectly open to ^ny one who liked to be present at 
 them. Greek, too, became emphatically the language 
 of Christianity. Multitudes of early converts had been 
 Jewish proselytes before they became Christian disciples. 
 They passed from the synagogue of Hellenists into the 
 Church of Christ. 
 
 The influences exercised by the Dispersion on the Jews 
 themselves were, of course, too varied and multitudinous to 
 be summed up under one head ; yet we may trace two con- 
 sequences which, century after century, worked in opposite 
 directions, but each of which was deeply marked. On the 
 one hand they became more faithful to their religion; on the 
 other more cosmopoUtan in their Adews. Although they 
 made their home in the heathen countries to which they had 
 been removed by conquest, or had wandered in pursuit of 
 commerce, it must not be supposed that they were at all 
 
 * Becaase these presented vaguer and more shadowy conceptions of the 
 Diyine, more possible to gi-asp than gross concrete images (see Hausrath, 
 Neut. Zeitg. ii. 76), and because Greek religion was too gay for a sick and 
 suffering world (Apul. Metam. xi. passim). See Oat. x. 26 ; Ov. F. iv. 309; 
 A. A. i. 78 ; Jut. vi. 4,89, 523 ; Tac. Ann. xvi. 6, &c. 
 
 " The important part played by these proselytes (who are also called 
 aepiiifvoi, eiffePets, eb\aPeh) maybe seen in Acts x. 2 ; xiii. 43; xri. 14, &c., and 
 passim. Owing to the painful and, to Hellenic imagination, revolting rite of 
 cii'cumcision, women were more fi-equently converted to Judaism than men. 
 Josephus (5. /. ii., xx. 2) tells us that nearly all the women of Damascus had 
 adopted Judaism ; and even in the first century three celebrated Rabbis were 
 sons of heathen mothers who had embraced the faith of Moses (Derenbourg, 
 Palest., p. 2231. 
 
INTENSIFIED JUDAISM. 121 
 
 ready to forfeit their nationality or abandon their 
 traditions. On the contrary, the great majority of them 
 dung to both with a more desperate tenacity. In the 
 destruction of their independence they had recognised the 
 retribution threatened in that long-neglected series of 
 prophecies which had rebuked them for their idolatries. 
 Of all polytheistic tendencies the Jew was cured for ever, 
 and as though to repair past centuries of rebellion and 
 indifference — as though to earn the fulfilment of that great 
 promise of an Anointed Deliverer which was the centre of 
 all their hopes — they devoted themselves with 'all the 
 ardour of their self-conscious pride to keep the minutest 
 observances of their Law and ritual. Their faithfulness — 
 a complete contrast to their old apostasies — was due to 
 the work of the Sopherim, or Scribes. It was towards 
 Jerusalem that they worshipped ; it was to the Sanhedrin 
 of Jerusalem that they looked for legal decisions ; it 
 was from the Amoraim and Tanaim of Jerusalem that they 
 accepted all solutions of casuistical difiiculties ; it was 
 from Jerusalem that were flashed the fire-signals which 
 announced over many lands the true date of the new 
 moons ; it was into the treasury of Jerusalem that they 
 poured, not only the stated Temple-tribute of half a 
 shekel, but gifts far more costly, which told of their 
 unshaken devotion to the church of their fathers. It was 
 in Jerusalem that they maintained a special synagogue, 
 and to Jerusalem that they made incessant pilgrimages.^- 
 The hatred, the suspicion, the contempt created in many 
 countries by the exclusiveness of their prejudices, the 
 peculiarity of their institutions, the jealousy of their 
 successes, only wedded them more fanatically to. the 
 observance of their Levitical rules by giving a tinge of 
 
 • 
 
 * See Philo, Legat. 36 ; in Flace. 7 ; Jos. Antt. xvi. 6 ; xviii. 9, § 1 j 
 Cic. pro Mace, xxviii. ; Shekalim, 7, 4 ; Bosh Eashana, 2, 4. 
 
122 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL; 
 
 martyrdom to the fulfilment of obligations. It became 
 witli them a point of conscience to maintain the insti- 
 tutions which their heathen neighbours attacked with 
 ever}' weapon of raillery and scorn. But these very 
 circumstances tended to produce a marked degeneracy of 
 the religious spirit. The idolatry, which in old days 
 had fastened on the visible symbols of alien deities, 
 only assumed another form when concentrated on the 
 dead-letter of documents, and the minute ritualism of 
 service. Gradually, among vast masses of the Jewish 
 people, religion sank almost into fetichism. It lost all 
 power over the heart and conscience, aU its tender love, 
 all its inspiring warmth, all its illuminating light. It 
 bound the nation hand and foot to the corpse of meaning- 
 less traditions. Even the ethics of the Mosaic legislation 
 were perverted by a casuistry which was at once timid 
 in violating the letter, and audacious in superseding the 
 spirit. In the place of moral nobleness and genial bene- 
 volence, Judaism in its decadence bred only an incapacity 
 for spiritual insight, a self-satisfied orthodoxy, and an 
 offensive pride. It enlisted murder and falsity in defence 
 of ignorant Shibboleths and useless forms. The difference 
 between the ideal Jew of earlier and later times can only 
 be measured by th,e difierence between the moral principles, 
 of the Law and the dry precedents of the Mishna — by 
 the difierence which separates the Pentateuch from the 
 Talmud, the Book of Exodus from the Abhoda Zara.^ 
 
 But while it produced these results in many of the 
 Jewish communities, there were others, and there were 
 special individuals in all communities, in whom the 
 influence of heathen surroundings worked very differently. 
 There were many great and beautiful lessons to be learnt 
 
 1 "The author of the Pentateuch and the Tanaim moved in different 
 nrorlds of ideas" (Enenen, iii. 291). 
 
JUDAISM HBLUSmSED. 123 
 
 from the better aspects of tlie heathen world. If there 
 was a grace that radiated from Jerusalem, there were 
 also gifts which brightened Athens. The sense of 
 beauty — the exquisiteness of art — the largeness and clear- 
 ness of insight — the perfection of literary form which 
 characterised the Greek of the age of Pericles, had left 
 the world an immortal heritage ; and Eome had her own 
 lessons to teach of dignity, and law, and endurance, 
 and dolonisation, and justice. Commerce is eminently 
 cosmopolitan. The Jewish Captivity, with the events 
 which followed it, made the Jews a commercial people. 
 This innate tendency of the race had been curbed, first 
 by the Mosaic legislation,^ then by the influence of the 
 prophets. But when these restrictions had been provi- 
 dentially removed, the Jew flung himself with ardour 
 into a career from which he had been hitherto restrained. 
 So far from regarding as identical the notions of "mer- 
 chant " and " Canaanite,"^ the Eabbis soon began to sing 
 the praises of trade. " There can be no worse occupa- 
 tion than agriculture ! " said R. Eleazar. " All the 
 fanning in the world will not make you so remunerative 
 as commerce," said Eabh^ as he saw a cornfield bowing 
 its golden ears under the summer breeze.* So easy is it 
 for a people to get over an archaic legislation if it stands 
 in the way of their interests or inclinations ! The Mosaic 
 
 1 Dent. xvi. 16, 17; Lev. xxv.; Ps. cvii. 23. See Job. c. Ap. i. 12. The 
 chapter begins with the remark, riiiets -roivvv aire x'^P"" o^i'o^l'-^'' irapdhiov oir 
 i/iiropiais x»V<'/'"''> "^^^ '''•'* "'P^' SAXous Sitk Toirav iTt/u^lais. Munk (Palest, p. 
 393) make% some excellent remarks on this subject, showing that commerce 
 would not only have encouraged intercourse with the heathen, but would also 
 have disturbed the social equilibrium at which Moses aimed, so that it was 
 impossible as long as the Law was rigidly observed (Hos. 3di. 8 ; Amos viii. 
 4f— 6, &c.).' 
 
 ' Targum of Jonathan (Zech. xiv. 21). , 
 
 ' Rabh was a contemporary of Babbi (Jndah the Holy), and was "Head of 
 the Captivity." 
 
 * Yebhamoth, f. 63, 1. 
 
124 TKB LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 restrictions upon commerce were, of course, impracticable 
 in dealing with Grentiles, and in material successes the 
 Jews found something, at any rate, to make up to them 
 for the loss of political independence. The busy inter- 
 course of cities wrought a further change in their opinions. 
 They began to see that God never meant the nations of 
 the world to stand to each other in the position of 
 frantic antagonism or jealous isolation. A Jerusalem 
 Eabbi, ignorant of everything in heaven and earth and 
 under the earth, except his own Halacha, might talk of 
 aU the rest of the world promiscuously as an " elsewhere " 
 of no importance; ^ but an educated Alexandrian Jew 
 would be well aware that the children of heathen lands 
 had received from their Father's tenderness a share in 
 the distribution of His gifts. The silent and imperceptible 
 influences of life are often the most permanent, and no 
 amount of exclusiveness could entirely blind the more 
 intelligent sons of the Dispersion to the merits of a 
 richer civilisation. No Jewish boy familiar with the 
 sights and sounds of Tarsus or Antioch could remain 
 •unaware that all wisdom was not exhausted in the trivial 
 discussions of the Babbis; that there was something 
 ■valuable to the human race in the Greek science which 
 •Jewish nescience denounced as thaumaturgy ; that there 
 imight be a better practice for the reasoning powers than 
 :an interminable application of the MiddSth of Hillel;. in 
 : short, that the development of humanity involves larger 
 .and diviner duties than a virulent championship of the 
 'exclusive privileges of the Jew.*^ 
 
 1 ns') rwin • outside ihe land ' (Frankl. Jews in the Bast, ii. 34). Some- 
 •tMng like the French la-has. 
 
 2 Many of the Rabbis regarded the Gentiles as little better than so much 
 rfael for the fires of Oehenna. R. Jose construes Isa. xxxiii. 12, " And the 
 peoples shall be a burning like lime." iRabh Bar Shilo explained it "that they 
 sshouldbe burnt because of their neglect of the Law, Tvhich was written upon 
 
DISPERSION OF THE JEWS. 125 
 
 We might naturally have conjectured that these wider 
 sympathies would specially be awakened among those 
 Jews who were for the first time brought into close contact 
 with the great peoples of the Aryan race. That contact 
 was first effected by the conquests of Alexander. He 
 settled 8,000 Jews in the Thebais, and the Jews formed 
 a third of the population of his new city of Alexandria. 
 Large numbers were brought from Palestine by Ptolemy 
 I., and they gradually spread from Egypt, not only over 
 *' the parts of Libya about Cyrene," but along the whole 
 Mediterranean coast of Africa.^- Seleucus Nicator, after 
 the battle of Ipsus, removed them by thousands from 
 Babylonia, to such cities as Antioch and Seleucia; and, 
 when their progress and prosperity were for a time shaken 
 by the senseless persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, they 
 scattered themselves in every direction until there was 
 hardly a seaport or a commercial centre in Asia Minor, 
 Macedonia, Grreece, or the Islands of the ^gean, in which 
 Jewish communities were not to be found. The vast 
 majority of these Jewish settlers adopted the Grreek lan- 
 guage, and forgot that Aramaic dialect which had been 
 since the Captivity the language of their nation. 
 
 Jt is to these Greek-speaking Jews that the term 
 Hellenist mainly and properly refers. In the New Testa- 
 ment there are two words, Hellen and Hellenistes, of which 
 the first is rendered " Greek," and the second " Grecian." 
 The word " Greek " is used as an antithesis either to 
 
 lime." (See the curious J5ra5radaMnSo<afe,f. 35, 2.) But the Hellenist would 
 Booa learn to feel that — 
 
 "AH knowledge is not conch'd in Moses' Lair, 
 The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote ; 
 The Qentiles also know, and write, and teach 
 I To admiration, taught by Nature's light."— Milton, Pa/r. Reg. iv. 225. 
 
 » See PhUo, c. Fl. ii. 523 j Job. Antt. rvi. 7, § 2; Dr. Deutsch in Kitto's 
 Cycl., s.v. " Dispersion; " and Canon Westcott in Smith's Bible Diet. 
 
126 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 
 
 "barbarians" or to "Jews." In the first case it means 
 all nations which spoke the Grreek language j^ in 
 the second case it is equivalent to " Gentiles." ^ The 
 meaning of the word Hellenist or " Grrecian " is wholly 
 different. As far as the form is concerned, it means, in 
 the first instance, one who "Graecises" in language or 
 mode of life, and it points to a difference of training and 
 of circumstances, not to a difierence of race.^ It is there- 
 fore reserved as the proper antithesis, not to "Jews," — since 
 vast numbers of the Hellenists were Jews by birth, — but 
 to strict " Hebrews." The word occurs but twice in the 
 New Testament,* and in both cases is used of Jews who 
 had embraced Christianity but who spoke Greek and used 
 the Septuagint version of the Bible instead of the origiual 
 Hebrew or the Chaldaic Targum of any Interpreter.^ 
 
 Now this Hellenism expressed many shades of differ- 
 
 J See Actsxviii. 17; 1 Oor. i. 22, 23; Eom. i. 14 The emissaries of 
 Abgarus— if such they were — who applied to Philip when they wished to see 
 Jesus were " Greeks," not " Grecians " (John xii. 20). 
 
 2 Rom. i. 16; ii. 9; iii. 9; 1 Oor. x. 32; Gal. ii. 3, &c. Thus in 2 Mace, 
 iv. 13, 'EWijwir/iis is equivalent to li\\o(i>u\urii6s ; and in ir. 10, 1.5 ; Ti. 9, tA 
 EWtiPiiA iieri means " Paganism ; " and in Isa. ix. 12, " Philistines " is tendered 
 by the LXX. 'EWnms. 
 
 3 Of. Xen. Anab. Tii. 3, 12. 
 
 * Acts vi. 1 ; ix. 29. la xi. 20 the true reading is "EWjjcoi. 
 
 * Some of the Hebraising Hellenists hated even the Septnagint (Gteiger, 
 Urschr, 419, 439 ; Zunz, QoUe^d. Vort. 95). The various classes of Christians 
 may be tabulated as follows : — 
 
 CSuistiantL 
 I 
 
 Circumcised. UncircumcisecL 
 
 HebraiBtB, Hellenists. " Proselytes of "Proselytes of Heathan 
 
 ' Eighteousneas." the Gate." CBnTerts. 
 
 e.g. Nicolas, e.g. ComeUus, e.g. Trophimu% 
 Acts vi. 6. A«ts X. 2. Acts xsL 29. 
 
 Strict. Liberal. Judaic. LiberaL 
 
 t.g. "Certain e.igr. Peter, (Hala- (Haga- 
 
 from Acts xi. 3, chists). dists). 
 
 James," Actsix. e.o.Faul. 
 
 Oal ii 12. 29. 
 
HELLENISTS. 127 
 
 ence, and therefore tlie exact meaning of tlie word Hellenist 
 varies with the circumstances under which it is used. The 
 accident of language might make a man, technically speak- 
 ing, a Hellenist, when politically and theologically he was 
 a Hebrew; and this must have been the condition of those 
 Hellenists who disputed against the arguments of St. Paul 
 in his first visit to Jerusalem.^ On the other hand, the 
 name might imply that alienation from the system of 
 Judaism, which in some Jews extended into positive 
 apostasy, and into so deep a shame of their Jewish origin, 
 as to induce them, not only in the days of Jason and 
 Menelaus,^ but even under the Herods, to embrace the 
 practices of the Greeks, and even to obliterate the external 
 sign of their nationality.^ Others again, like the astute 
 Herodian princes, were hypocrites, who played fast and 
 loose with their religion, content to be scrupulous Jews at 
 Jerusalem, while they could be shamelessi heathen at 
 Berytus or Csesarea. But the vast majority of Hellenists 
 lay between these extremes. Contact with the world 
 had widened their intelligence and enabled them so far to 
 raise their heads out of the heavy fog of Jewish scholas- 
 ticism as to distinguish between that which was of eternal 
 and that which was but of transient significance. • Ear 
 away from Jerusalem, where alone it was possible to 
 observe the Levitical law, it was a natural result that 
 they came to regard outward symbols as merely valuable 
 
 > Acts k. 29. 
 
 " See 2 Mace. iv. 13, seq^., " Now such was the height of Greek fashions, and 
 increase of heafiheniah manners, through the exceeding profaneness of Jason, 
 that ungodlj wretch, and no high p. iest, . . . that the priests, . . . despising 
 the temple, . . . hastened to be partakers of the unlawful allowance in the 
 place of exercise, after the game of Discus called them forth," &c. rwunn ]v mate, 
 " the abominable kingdom of Javan " is an expression which stereotypes the 
 hatred for Greek fashions. 
 
 3 ^miriroff/iis (1 Cor. vii. 18). The condition of a ^ii»to (1 Mace. i. 15 ; Job. 
 Antt. xii. 5, § 1). (On Judaic Hellenism, see Ewald, Gesch. v. § ii. 4) 
 
128 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PlUL. 
 
 for the sake of inward truths. To this class belonged the 
 wisest members of the Jewish Dispersion. It is to them 
 that we owe the Septuagint translation, the writings of 
 Philo and Josephns, and a large cycle of historical, poetic, 
 and apocryphal literature. Egypt was the main centre of 
 this Grseco-Jewish activity, and many of the Jews of 
 Alexandria distinguished themselves in the art, the learn- 
 ing, and the accomplishments of the Greeks.-' It is hardly 
 to be wondered at that these more intellectual Jews were 
 not content with an infructuose Eabbinism. It is not 
 astonishing that they desired to represent the facts of 
 their history, and the institutions of their religion, ia 
 such an aspect as should least waken the contempt of the 
 nations among whom they lived.* But although this 
 might be done with perfect honesty, it tended, no doubt, 
 in some to the adoption of unauthorised additions to their 
 history, and unauthorised explanations of their Scriptures 
 — in one word,' to that style of exegesis which, since it 
 deduced anything out of a,nything, nullified the real sig- 
 nificance of the sacred records.^ Nor can we be surprised 
 
 ' Thus, an Bzekiel wrote a tragedy on Moses ; another, Philo, wrote an Epic 
 on Jerusalem; Theodotns, a tragedy on the Bape of Dina; Demetrias and 
 Eupolemos wrote secular history. The story of Susanna is a novelette. But 
 the feeling of stricter Jews was sternly opposed to these forms of literary 
 activity. In the letter of Aristeas we are told that Theopompus was struck 
 with madness, and Theodektes with blindness, for ofEences in this direction 
 (Hausrath, Neat. Zeitg. ii, 130). 
 
 ' Such was the main object of Josephus in his Antiquities. 
 
 ' The views of these liberal Hellenists may be seen represented in the works 
 of the pseudo-Aristeas, the psendo-Aristobulus, and in the verses of Pho- 
 cylides (Kuenen, Religion of. Israel, iii. 180). It was the aim of an entire 
 cycle of literature to prove that all Greek wisdom was derived from Jewish 
 jsources, and the names of Orpheus and the Sibyl were frequently given to 
 Jewish forgeries and interpolations (Olem. Alex. Strom, t. 4; Euseb. Praep. 
 Bvang. vii. 14 ; viii. 10 ; xiii. 12). Bel and the Dragon, the Epistle of Jeremiah, 
 the letter of pseudo-Heraclitus, &c., belong to this class of writings. See too 
 Wisd. of Solomon x.— xii.; Jos. c. Ap. ii. 39; Hausrath, N. Zeitgesch. ii. 100, sj. 
 Josephus says that Pythagoras borrowed from Moses (c. Ap. i, 22). 
 
REACTION AGAINST HELLENISTS, 129 
 
 that tills Alexandrian theosopty — ^these allegoric interpre- 
 tations — this spirit of toleration for the Pagan systems 
 by which they were surrounded — were regarded by the 
 stricter Jews as an incipient revolt from Mosaism thinly 
 disguised under a hybrid phraseology.^ Hence arose the 
 the antagonism between advanced Hellenists and the 
 Hebrews, whose whole patriotic existence had concentrated 
 itself upon the Mosaic and Oral Law. The severance 
 between the' two elements became wider and wider as 
 the Jews watched the manner in which Christianity spread 
 in the Grentile world. The consciousness that the rapidity 
 of that diffusion was due, not only to the offer of a 
 nobler faith, but also to the loosening of an intolerable 
 yoke, only made their exclusiveness more obstinate. It 
 was not long before the fall of Jerusalem that there 
 took place in the school of E. Hananiah Ben Hiskiah 
 Ben Graron, that memorable meeting at which eighteen 
 ordinances were resolved upon, of which it was the exclu- 
 sive object to widen the rift of difference between Jews 
 and Pagans. These ordinances, to which the Mishna only 
 alludes, are found in a bardita (" supplemental addition ") 
 of E. Simeon Ben Johai in the second century, and they 
 consist of prohibitions which render impossible any inter- 
 change of social relations between Jews and heathen. It 
 was in vain that E. Joshua and the milder HiUelites pro- 
 tested against so dangerous a bigotry. The quarrel passed 
 from words to blows. The followers of Hillel were attacked 
 with swords and lances, and some of them were killed. 
 "That day," says the Jerusalem Tahnud, "was as dis- 
 
 * Snch Hebraising Hellenists are tlie author of "the Epistle of Jeremiah," 
 and (on the whole) of Wisdom (see Tii. 22, seq., xiii.— xix.). "The Liberal Hel- 
 lenists spiritualised and volatilised the -wall of partition between Jews and 
 Pagans," so that, although PhUo said that the wall should still be kept up, 
 it- is not surprising to find that his nephew, the Procurator Tiberius Alexander, 
 had abandoned Judaism (Jos. AM. xz. 5, § 2 ; Knenen, Bel. of Israel,, iii.). 
 
 J 
 
130 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 astroiis to Israel as the one on which, they made the 
 golden calf ; " but it seemed to be a general opinion that 
 the eighteen resolutions could not be rescinded even by 
 Elias himself, because the discussion had been closed by 
 bloodshed; and they were justified to the national con- 
 science by the savage massacres which had befallen the 
 Jews at Beth-shan, Csesarea, and Damascus.^ The 
 feelings of Jews towards Pagans were analogous to the 
 hatred of Hebrews to Hellenists. In later days the Chris- 
 tians absorbed the entire fury of that detestation which 
 had once burned in the Jewish heart against Hellenism. 
 When a question arose as to the permissibility of burn- 
 ing the Gospels and other books of the Christians {Minim), 
 considering how frequently they contained the name of 
 Crod, " May I lose my son," exclaimed Eabbi Tarphon, 
 "if I do not fling these books into the fire when they 
 come into my hands, name of God and aU. A man 
 chased by a murderer, or threatened by a serpent's bite, 
 ought rather to take refuge in an idol's temple than ia 
 the houses of the Minim, for these latter know the truth 
 and deny it, whereas idolaters deny God because they 
 know Him not." ® 
 
 Such, then, being the feelings of the Palestinian Jews 
 with regard to every approach towards idolatry, the 
 antagonism between them and the more liberal Hellenists 
 rose from the very nature of things, and was so deeply 
 rooted that we are not surprised to find a trace of it 
 even in the history of the Church; — ^for the earhest 
 Christians — the Apostles and disciples of Jesus — were 
 almost exclusively Hebrews and Israelites,' the former 
 
 * Shdbbath, i. 7 ; Gratz, iii. 494; Derenbourg, Palest., p. 274 
 
 * Shdbbath, 116 a ; Derenbourg, p. 380. 
 
 ' The Hellenic names of Philip and Andrew prove nothing, because at this 
 epoch such names were common among the Jews. But they may have had 
 Hellenic connexions. (John xii. 20.) 
 
WIDOWS or HELLENISTS. 131 
 
 being a general, and the latter a religious designation. 
 Their feelings towards those who were Hellenists in 
 principles as well as in language would be similar to that 
 of other Jews, however much it might be softened by 
 Christian love. But the jealousies of two sections so 
 widely diverse in their sympathies would be easily 
 kindled ; and it is entirely in accordance with the inde- 
 pendent records of that period that, "when the number 
 of the disciples was being multipKed," there should have 
 arisen, as a natural consequence, "a murmuiiag of the 
 Grecians against the Hebrews." 
 
 The special ground of complaint was a real or fancied 
 neglect of, the widows of Hellenists in the daily ministra- 
 tion of food and assistance. There might be some 
 jealousy because all the offices of the little Church were 
 administered by Hebrews, who would naturally have 
 been more cognisant of the claims of their immediate com- 
 patriots. Widows, however, were a class who specially 
 required support. We know how full a discussion St. 
 Paul applies to their general position even at Coriuth, 
 and we have already mentioned that some of the wisest 
 regulations attributed to Gamaliel were devoted to 
 ameliorating the sufferings to which they were exposed. 
 In the seclusion to which centuries of custom had de- 
 voted the Oriental woman, the lot of a widow, with none 
 to plead her cause, might indeed be bitter. Any inequali- 
 ties in the treatment of the class would awaken a natural 
 resentment, and the more so because previous to their 
 conversion these widows would have had a claim on' the 
 Corban, or Temple treasury.^ 
 
 But the Apostles met these complaints in that spirit' 
 of candour and generosity which is the best proof how 
 
 ' 2 Mace. iiL 10, " Then the high priest told him (Heliodbrns) that there 
 was such money laid up for the relief of widows and fatherless children."" 
 
 J 2 
 
132 THE LIFE AND "WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 little tHey were responsible for any partiality whicli may 
 have been shown to the widows of the Hebrews. Sum- 
 moning a meeting of the disciples, they pointed out to 
 them that the day had now come in which it was incon- 
 venient for the Apostles to have anything further to do. 
 with the apportionment of charity^ — a routine task which 
 diverted them from more serious and important duties. 
 They therefore bade the meeting elect seven men of 
 blameless character, high spiritual gifts, and practical 
 wisdom, to form what we should call a committee of 
 management, and relieve the Apostles from the burden, 
 in order that they might devote their energies to prayer 
 and pastoral work. The advice was followed, and seven 
 were presented to the Apostles as suitable persons. They 
 were admitted to the duties of their position with prayer 
 and the laying on of hands, which have been thenceforth 
 naturally adopted in every ordination to the oflS.ce of a 
 deacon.^ 
 
 The seven elected were Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, 
 Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte of 
 Antioch. The fact that every one of them bears a Greek 
 
 ' Acts vi. 2, SioKowic rpmr^Cais. That rpdirfCa has not here its meaning of 
 "bank" (Jos. Antt. xii. 1, § 2; cf. rpaveCirais, Matt. xxv. 27; rpiiteCav, Luke 
 xix, 23), is clear from the context. 
 
 ' The seven ofiBlcers wore not, however, " deacons " in the modem sense of 
 the word, nor were they mere almoners. The only special title given to any 
 one of them is Evangelist (Acts xxi. 8). Alike their gifts and their functions 
 are loftier than those required for deacons in 1 Tim. iii. Deacons in the 
 modem sense find their nearer prototypes in the i/edrepat and vrnvlaxoi (Acts 
 V. 5, 10 ; cf . Luke xxii. 26), and in the Chazzantm of the synagogue (Luke iv. 2Q). 
 The seven, as St. Chrysostom observes, rather had the duties of presbyters, 
 and must be regarded as a body chosen only for a spedal purpose— t^oji eU 
 TovTo ^x^'poToi'^flTjo-oi'. Another analogy for this appointment was furnished 
 by the existing institution of three almoners (Parnasim), who undertook the 
 collection and distribution of the " alms of the cup " (see Dr. Ginsbnrg in 
 Kitto, s.v. " Synagogue") and "alms of the box" in the Jewish synagogues ; 
 and these were always chosen by the entire congregation of the synagogue, 
 as the Apostles here suggest should be done in tiie case of the new fane* 
 tionaries. 
 
THE SEVEN. 133 
 
 name lias often been appealed to as a proof of the con- 
 ciliatoriness of the Apostles, as though they had elected 
 every one of their committee from the very body which 
 had found some reason to complain. This, however, would 
 have been hardly just. It would have been to fly into an 
 opposite extreme. The frequency with which the Jews of 
 this time adopted Greek names prevents us from drawing 
 any conclusion as to their nationality. But although we 
 cannot be certain about the conjecture of Gieseler that 
 three of them were Hebrews, three of them Hellenists, 
 and one a proselyte, it is only natural to suppose that 
 the choice of them from different sections of the Church 
 would be adopted as a matter of fairness and common 
 sense. And the fact that a Gentile like Nicolas should 
 thus have been selected to fill an office so honourable and 
 so responsible is one of the many indications which mark 
 the gradual dawn of a new conception respecting the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 Though two alone ^ of the seven are in any way 
 
 * Nicolas is no exception. If, as early tradition asserted, Luke -vras 
 himself "a proselyte of Antiocli"(Eus6b.B'.i?. iii. 4 ; Jer. De Vir. Illustr. 7), 
 this may have suggested the passing reference to him. The evidence which 
 connects him with " the sect of the Nicolaitanes " (Rev. ii. 6, 15), and the story 
 that they adopted both their name and their abomiuable doctriues from a 
 perversion of his remark that we ought Ttapaxpv(fSat tj TapKl are insufficient, 
 iropaxpijo'flai, though used of unrestrained indulgence (Suid.), has also the sense 
 of Siaxpfja-eai, to mortify (Just. M. Apol. 49). Irenaeus (c. Saer. i. 47), followed 
 by many of the Fathers (Hippolytus, B. 3. vii. 36 ; TertuUian, De praescr. 
 Jiaeret. c. 46), accepts the tradition of his connexion with the sect. Clemens 
 of Alexandria, whUe defending him from the charge of personal immorality, 
 and admitting that the meanlag of his words (which, to say the least, were 
 nnfortunately chosen) had been entirely misunderstood (t^i* iyicpdreiav tuv vept- 
 trirovSdirTay riSovSv rb " Tro/JaxpSo'fl'" ^p trapul " iSiSiffKet, 8trom. 'in. iv. 26, ed. Pott., 
 p. 523), yet tells a dubious, and probably mistaken, story about his conduct 
 when charged with jealousy of his wife. This story is repeated by Eusebius 
 {H. E. iii. 29), and other Fathers. For further information on the subject, 
 and on the identification by Oocceius of Nicolas with Balaam in Rev. uL, see 
 Gieseler, Bee. Hist, i. 86, E.T.; Mausel, Gnostic Ser., p. 72; Derenbonrg, 
 p. 363. 
 
134 THE LIFE AOT) WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 known to us, yet this election was a crisis in the history 
 of the Church. At the work of Philip we shall glance 
 hereafter, but we must now follow the career of Stephen, 
 which, brief as it was, marked the beginning of a memor- 
 able epoch. For St. Stephen must be regarded as the 
 immediate predecessor of him who took the most promi- 
 nent part in bringing about his martyrdom; he must be 
 regarded as having been, in a far truer sense than 
 Gamaliel himself, the Teacher of St. Paul. St. Paul has, 
 indeed, been called a " colossal St. Stephen ;" but had 
 the life of St. Stephen been prolonged — had he not been 
 summoned, it may be, to yet loftier spheres of activity 
 — we know not to what further heights of moral grandeur 
 he might have attained. We possess but a single speech 
 to show his intellect and inspiration, and we are suffered 
 to catch but one glimpse of his life. His speech in- 
 fluenced the whole career of the greatest of the Apostles, 
 and his death is the earliest martyrdom. 
 
CHAPTEE Vin. 
 
 WORK AND MAKTTRDOM OF ST. STEPHEN. 
 
 na^\av & SiidffKaKos. — ^Basil Seleuc. Orat. de 8. Steph. 
 
 Kal 1.^01 Tis &u rh Keyifievoy ffatpas et t^v ffoipiav tov 'Sretpdvov, el r^v Hirpov yXurrav, 
 61 T^y lIai\ou ppii^y ivvo'licreic, irus oiS^i/ avTobs l<j>fpiv ovShv i<fii(rTaro, ov Srnuiv Bujihs, 
 ov rvpAvvav iiravaariitTm, ov Saiii6vaiv lirij3ou\^, oil Sivwrot Ka0niJ.epivol. i.\\' Sinrep 
 woTUfiol iroW^ T$ pol^if (pepifievoi oBtw vavra irapaaipovres hrjcaav. — S. GhBYS. in 
 Joan. Horn. li. 0pp. viii. 30. 
 
 "This farther only hare I to say, my lords, that like as St. Patil was 
 present and consenting to the death of the proto-martyr St. Stephen, and yet 
 they be now twain holy saints in heaven, .... so I verily trust we may 
 hereafter meet in heaven merrily together, to our everlasting salvation." — Last 
 Words of Sir T. More to Ms Judges. 
 
 The appointment of the Seven, partly because of their 
 zeal and power, and partly because o£ the greater freedom 
 secured for the Apostles, led to marked successes in 
 the progress o£ the Church. Not only was the number 
 of disciples in Jerusalem greatly multiplied, but even a 
 large number of the priests ^ became obedient to the faith. 
 Up to this time the acceptance of the Gospel, so far from 
 
 ' Of. John xii. 42. Commentators have resorted to extraordinary shifts to 
 get rid of this simple statement, which, as I have shown in the text, involves 
 no improbability. Some would adopt the wholly worthless v. 1. iovSaiav found 
 in a few cursive MSS. and the Philoxenian Syriac. Others accept Beza's 
 conjectural emendation, iroxis re ix^o^ <"«' Upiau (so. rives). Others, again, 
 follow Heinsius and Eisner in the suggestion that ix\os r&v hp4av means 
 "priests of the common order," "plebeian priests," what the Jews might 
 have called psn 'd» or " people-of -the-land priests,'' as distinguished from 
 the Thahmdi hachachdmtm, or "learned priests;" but there is no trace that 
 any such distinction existed, although it is in itself all but certain that 
 none of these converts came from the families of the lordly and supercilious 
 Boethusim, Kamhits, &c. But neither here nor in i. 15, ix^os ovondTav, 
 has tx?^os a contemptuous sense. 
 
136 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 involving any rupture with Judaism, was consistent with 
 a most scrupulous devotion to its observances. It must 
 be borne in mind that the priests in Jerusalem, and a few 
 other cities, were a multitudinous body,-' and that it was 
 only the narrow aristocratic clique of a few alien families 
 who were Sadducees in theology and Herodians in politics. 
 Many of the lower ranks of the priesthood were doubtless 
 Pharisees, and as the Pharisees were devoted to the 
 doctrine of the Eesurrection, there was nothing incon- 
 sistent with their traditions in admitting the Messiahship 
 of a Eisen Saviour. Such a belief would at this time, and, 
 indeed, long afterwards, have made little difference in their 
 general position, although if they were true believers it 
 would make a vast difference in their inward life. The 
 simplicity, the fervour, the unity, the spiritual gifts of 
 the little company of Gralilseans, would be likely to 
 attract the serious and thoughtful. They would be won 
 by these graces far more than by irresistible logic, or 
 by the appeals of powerful eloquence. The mission 
 of the Apostles at this time was, as has been well 
 observed, no mere apostolate of rhetoric, nor would they 
 for a moment pretend to be other than they were — 
 ilHterate men, untrained in the schools of technical 
 theology and rabbinic wisdom. Had they been other- 
 wise, the argument for the truth of Christianity, which 
 is derived from the extraordinary rapidity of its dissemi- 
 nation, would have lost half its force. The weapons 
 of the Apostolic warfare were not carnal. Converts 
 were won, not by learning or argument, but by the 
 power of a new testimony and the spirit of a new life. 
 
 Up to this period the name of Stephen has not occurred 
 in Christian history, and as the tradition that he had been 
 
 » 4,289 had returned with Ezra (u. 36—39). 
 
ST. STEPHEN. 137 
 
 one of tlie seventy disciples is valueless,^ we know nothing 
 of the circumstances of his conversion to Christianity. 
 His recognition, however, of the glorified figure, which 
 he saw in his ecstatic vision, as the figure of Him who 
 on earth had called Himself " the Son of Man," makes 
 it probahle that he was one of those who had enjoyed 
 the advantage of hearing the living Jesus, and of draw- 
 ing' from its very fountain-head the river of the water 
 of life.* We would fain know more of one who, in so 
 brief a space of time, played a part so nobly wise. But 
 it was with Stephen as it has been with myriads of others 
 whose names have been written in the Book of Life ; they 
 have been unknown among men, or known only during 
 one brief epoch, or for one great deed. For a moment, 
 but for a moment only, the First Martyr steps into the 
 fuU light of history. Our insight into his greatness is 
 derived almost solely from the record of a single speech 
 and a single day — ^the last speech he ever uttered — ^the 
 last day of his mortal life. 
 
 It was the faith of Stephen, together with his loving 
 energy and blameless sanctity which led to the choice of 
 him as one of the Seven. No sooner was he elected than 
 he became the most prominent of them all. The grace 
 which shone in his colleagues shone yet more brightly in 
 him,^ and he stood on a level with the Apostles in the 
 power of working wonders among the people. Many a 
 man, who would otherwise have died unknown, has re- 
 
 "• Epiphan. "Eaer. xl. p. 50. 
 
 ' That he was a Hellenist is not meTel7 a precarious inference from this 
 Ghreek form of his name, which may merely have been a rendering of the 
 Aramaic Kelil, but is implied by the narrative itself, and is rendered certain 
 by the character of his speech; but whether he was trained at Alexandria, 
 or was a Boman freedman (Flmnptre on Acts vi. 5), and what had brought 
 Tiirn to Jerusalem, we cannot tell. 
 
 ° xipiTos (m, A,B,D, &c.), not iriarius, is the troe reading in Acts yi. 8 
 
138 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 vealed to others his inherent greatness on being entrusted 
 with authority. The immense part played by Stephen 
 in the history of the Church was due to the develop- 
 ment of powers which might have remained latent but for 
 the duties laid on him by his new position. The distri- 
 bution of alms seems to have been a part only of the task 
 assigned him. Like Philip, he was an Evangelist as well 
 as a Deacon, and the speech which he delivered before 
 the' Sanhedrin, showing as it does the logical force and 
 concentrated fire of a great orator and a practised con- 
 troversialist, may explain the stir which was caused by 
 his preaching. 
 
 The scenes of that preaching were the Hellenistic 
 synagogues of Jerusalem. To an almoner in a city 
 where so many were poor, and to a Hellenist of unusual 
 eloquence, opportunities would constantly recur in which 
 he was not only permitted, but urged, to explain the 
 tenets of the new society. Hitherto that society was 
 in full communion with the Jewish Church. Stephen 
 alone was charged with utterances of a disloyal tendency 
 against the tenets of Pharisaism, and this is a proof 
 how different was his preaching from that of the Twelve, 
 and how much earlier he had arrived at the true appre- 
 ciation of the words of Jesus respecting the extent and 
 nature of His Kingdom. That which, in the mind of a 
 Peter, was stiU but a grain of mustard seed, sown in the 
 soil of Judaism, had already grown, in the soul of a 
 Stephen, into a mighty tree. The Twelve were still 
 lingering in the portals of the synagogue. For them 
 the new wine of the kingdom of heaven had not yet 
 burst the old wine-skins. As yet they were only re- 
 garded as the heads of a Jewish sect,^ and although 
 
 * Acts sdT. 5 ; sxviii, 22, <ilftvu. 
 
THE OHBISTIANS AUD THE PHAEISEES. 139 
 
 ttey believed that their faith would soon be the 
 faith of all the world, there is no trace that, up to this 
 time, they ever dreamed of the abrogation of Mosaism, 
 or the free admission of uncircumcised GentUes into a 
 full equality of spiritual privileges. A proselyte of 
 righteousness — one who, like Nicolas of Antioch, had 
 accepted the sign of circumcision — might, indeed, be 
 held worthy of honour ; but one who was only a " prose- 
 lyte of the gate," ^ one who held back from the seal of 
 the covenant made to Abraham, would not be regarded as 
 a full Christian any more than he would be regarded 
 as a full Jew. 
 
 Hence, up to this time, the Christians were looked 
 on with no disfavour by that Pharisaic party which re- 
 garded the Sadducees as intriguing apostates. They were 
 even inclined to make use of the Eesurrection which the 
 Christians proclaimed, as a convenient means of harassing 
 their rivals. Nor was it they who had been guilty of the 
 murder of Jesus. They had not, indeed, stirred one 
 finger for His deliverance, and- it is probable that many 
 of them — all those hypocrites of whom both Jesus and 
 John had spoken as a viper brood — ^had looked with 
 satisfaction on the crime by which their political oppo- 
 nents had silenced their common enemy. Yet they did 
 not fear that His blood would be brought on them, or that 
 the Apostles would ever hurl on them or their practices 
 His terrible denunciations. Though the Christians 
 had their private meetings on the first day of the 
 week, their special tenets, their sacramental institutions, 
 and their common meal, there was nothing reprehensible 
 in these observances, and there was something attractive 
 even to Pharisees in their faithful simplicity and enthu- 
 
 ^ The wims did not arise till later, bat is here adopted for conTenience' 
 
140 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 siastic comnmnism.^ In all respects they were " devout 
 according to the Law." They would have shrunk with 
 horror from any violation of the rules which separated 
 clean from unclean meats; they not only ohserved the 
 prescribed feasts of the Pentateuch and its single fast, 
 but even adopted the fasts which had been sanctioned 
 by the tradition of the oral law ; they had their chil- 
 dren duly circumcised j they approved and practised the 
 vows of the Nazarites ; they never omitted to be on 
 their knees in the Temple, or with their faces turned 
 towards it, at the three stated hours of prayer.^ It 
 needs but a glance at the symbolism of the Apocalypse 
 to see how dear to them were the names, the reminiscences, 
 the Levitical ceremonial, the Temple worship of their 
 Hebrew fellow-citizens. Not many years later, the " many 
 myriads of Jews who believed were all zealous of the Law," 
 and would have thought it a disgrace to do otherwise than 
 "to walk orderly."^ The position, therefore, which they 
 held was simply that of one synagogue ,more, in a city 
 which, according to the Eabbis, could already boast that 
 it possessed as many as 480. They might have been 
 called, and it is probable that they were called, by 
 way of geographical distinction, " the Synagogue of the 
 Nazarenes." 
 
 But this acceptance with the people could only be 
 temporary and deceptive. If, indeed, the early believers 
 
 1 The Jews -would have regarded them at that time as Chaherim, a body 
 of people associated, quite harmlessly, for a particular object. 
 
 ^ Called nnns), shacrith, at 9 ; rmza, minchah, at 3.30 j and vao, mearli 
 at dark (Acts ii. 1; iii. 1; x. 30). 
 
 5 Acts xxi. 20, 24. See for the facts in the pre-vious paragraphs, Acts x. 
 9, 14, 30; xiii. 2, 3; xviii. 18, 21; xx. 6, 16; xxii. 3; Rom. xiv. 5; Gal. 
 It. 10; t. 2; Phil. iii. 2; Rev. ii. 9; iii. 9; vii. 15 ; xi. 19, &o.; Reuss, TliSol. 
 Chret. i. 291, who quotes Sulpic. Sever, ii. 31, " Christum Deum sub legis 
 observatione credebant." 
 
JUD^O-OHRISTIAJSrS 141 
 
 had never advanced beyond this stand-point, Christianity 
 might have been regarded to the last as nothing more 
 than a phase of Pharisaism, heretical for- its acceptance 
 of a crucified Messiah, but worthy of honour for the 
 scrupulosity of its religious life. But had Christianity 
 never been more than this, then the olive branch would 
 have died with the oleaster on which it was engrafted. 
 It was as necessary for the Church as for the world 
 that this hollow semblance of unison between religions 
 which, in their distinctive differences, were essentially 
 antagonistic, should be - rudely dissipated. It was neces- 
 sary that all Christians, whether Jews or Grentiles, should 
 ^ee how impossible it was to put a new patch on an old 
 ga.rment. 
 
 This truth had been preached by Jesus to His Apostles,- 
 but, like many other of His words, it lay long dormant 
 in their minds. After some of His deepest utterances, in 
 full consciousness that He could not at once be understood, 
 He had said, " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." 
 And as they themselves frankly confess, the Apostles had not 
 always been among those " who had ears to hear." Plain 
 and reiterated as had been the prophecies which He had 
 addressed to them respecting His own crucifixion and 
 resurrection, the first of these events had plunged them 
 into despair and horror, the second had burst upon them 
 with a. shock of surprise. He who commanded the light 
 to shine out of darkness had, indeed, shined in their 
 hearts " to give the light of the knowledge of the glory 
 of God in the face of Jesus Christ ; " ^ but still they were 
 well aware that they had this treasure "in earthen vessels." 
 To attribute to them an equality of fendowments, or an 
 entire unanimity of opinion, is to contradict their plainest 
 
 » 2 Oor. iv. 6, 7. 
 
142 THE LIFE AOTD 'WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 statements. To deny tliat their knowledge gradually 
 widened is to ignore Grod's method of revelation, and to 
 set aside the evidence of facts. To the last they " knew 
 in part, and they prophesied in part." ^ Why was James 
 the Lord's brother so highly respected by the people as 
 tradition tells ns that he was ? Why was Paul regarded 
 by them with snch deadly hatred? Because St. Paul 
 recognised more fully than St. James the future universal 
 destiny of a Christianity separated from Judaic institu- 
 tions. The Crucifixion h^d, in fact, been the protest of 
 the Jew against an isopolity of faith. " Prom that 
 moment the fate of the nation was decided. Her religion 
 was to kill her. But when the Temple burst into flames, 
 that religion had already spread its wings and gone out 
 to conquer an entire world." ^ 
 
 Now, as might have been expected, and as was evi- 
 dently designed by their Divine Master, the last point on 
 which the Galilsean Apostles attained to clearness of view 
 and consistency of action was the fact that the Mosaic 
 law was to be superseded, even for the Jew, by a wider 
 revelation. It is probable that this truth, in all its fulness, 
 was never finally apprehended by all the Apostles. It is 
 doubtful whether, humanly speaking, it would ever have 
 been grasped by any of them if their powers of insight had 
 not been quickened, in Grod's appointed method, by the 
 fresh lessons which came to them through the intellect and 
 faith of men who had been brought up in larger views. 
 The obHteration of natural distinctions is no part of the 
 divine method. The inspiration of God never destroys 
 the individuality of those holy souls which it has made 
 into sons of Grod and prophets. There are, as St. Paul 
 so earnestly tried to impress upon the infant Churches, 
 
 1 1 Cor. siii. 9. ' Kuenen, JJeZ. oflsr, iii. 281. 
 
THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 143 
 
 diversities of gifts, diversities of ministrations, diversities 
 of operations, though it is the same Spirit, the same 
 Lord, the same God, who worketh all things in all.^ The 
 Hellenistic training of a Stephen and a Sanl prepared 
 them for the acceptance of lessons which nothing short 
 of an express miracle could have made immediately intel- 
 ligible to a Peter and a James. 
 
 Now the relation of the Law to the Gospel had been 
 exactly one of those subjects on which Jesus, in accord- 
 ance with a divine purpose, had spoken with a certain 
 reserve. His mission had been to found a kingdom, not 
 to promulgate a theology; He had died not to formu- 
 late a system, but to redeem a race. His work had been 
 not to construct the dogmas of formal creeds, but to 
 purify the soul of man, by placing him in immediate 
 relatibn to the Father in Heaven. It required many 
 years for Jewish converts to understand the meaning of 
 the saying that " He came not to destroy the Law but to 
 fulfil." Its meaning could indeed only become clear in the 
 light of other sayings of which they overlooked the force. 
 The Apostles had seen Him obedient to the Law; they had 
 seen Him worship in the Temple and the Synagogues, and 
 had accompanied Him in His journeys to the Feasts. He 
 had never told them in so many words that the glory of 
 the Law, Kke the light which lingered on the face of 
 Moses, was to be done away. They had failed to com- 
 prehend the ultimate tendency and significance of His 
 words and actions respecting the Sabbath,^ respecting 
 outward observances,^ respecting divorce,* respecting the 
 future universality of spiritual worship.^ They riemem- 
 bered, doubtless, what He had said about the permanence 
 of every yod and horn of a letter in the Law,® but 
 
 » 1 Cor. xii. 4—6. » Matt. ix. 13 j xii. 7. » John iv. 22. 
 
 » Markii. 27 j John v. 17. * Matt. xix. 3, 6, 8 ; v. 82. • Matt. v. 18. 
 
144 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 they had not remarked that the assertion of the pre- 
 eminence of moral over ceremonial duties is one unknown 
 to the Law itself. Nor had they seen that His ful- 
 filment of the Law had consisted in its spiritualisation ; 
 that He had not only extended to infinitude the range 
 of its obligations, but had derived their authority from 
 deeper principles, and surrounded their fulfilment with 
 diviner sanctions. Nor, again, had they observed how much 
 was involved in the emphatic quotation by Christ of thiat 
 passage of Hosea, " I will have mercy and not sacrifice."^ 
 They were not yet ripe for the conviction that to attach 
 primary importance to Mosaic regulations after they had 
 been admitted into the kingdom of Heaven, was to fix 
 their eyes upon a waning star whUe the dawn was 
 gradually broadening into boundless day. 
 
 About the early ministry of Stephen we are told com- 
 paratively little in the Acts, but its immense importance 
 has become more clear in the light of subsequent history. 
 It is probable that he himself can never have formed the 
 remotest conception of the vast results — results among 
 millions of Christians through centuries of progress — 
 which in God's Providenbe should arise from the first clear 
 statement of those truths which he was the first to 
 perceive. Had he done so he would have been stiU more 
 thankful for the ability with which he was inspired to 
 support them, and for the holy courage which prevented 
 him from quailing for an instant under the storm of 
 violence and hatred which his words awoke. 
 
 What it was which took him to the synagogues of 
 Jewish Hellenists we do not know. It may have been the 
 same missionary zeal which afterwards carried to so many 
 regions the young man of Tarsus who at this time was 
 
 » Matt. ix. 13 J ai.7. 
 
HELLENISTS AIJI) STEPHEN. 145 
 
 among his ablest opponents. All that we are told is that 
 " there arose some of the synagogue which is called the 
 synagogue of the Libertines and Cyrenians, and Alexan- 
 drians, and those of Cilicia and Asia disputing with 
 Stephen." The form of the sentence is so obscure that it 
 is impossible to tell whether we are meant to understand 
 that the opponents of Stephen were the members of one 
 synagogue which united these widely-scattered elements; of 
 jf^ye separate synagogues; of ^/iree synagogues — ^namely, that 
 of the Freedmen, that of the African, and that of the Asiatic 
 Hellenists-; or of two distinct synagogues, of which one 
 was frequented by the Hellenists of Eome, Greece, and 
 Alexandria ; the other by those of Cilicia and Proconsular 
 Asia. The number of synagogues in Jerusalem was (as I 
 have already mentioned) so large that there is no dif- 
 ficulty in believing that each of these bodies had their 
 own separate place of religious meeting,^ just as at this 
 day in Jerusalem there are separate synagogues for the 
 Spanish Sephardim, the Dutch Anshe hod, and the 
 Grerman and Polish Ashkenazim.^ The freedmen may 
 have been the descendants of those Jews whom 
 Pompey had sent captive to Italy, and Jews were to be 
 counted by myriads in Grreece, in Alexandria, and in the 
 cities of Asia. But to us the most interesting of all these 
 Greek-speaking Jews was Saul of Tarsus, who, beyond all 
 reasonable doubt, was a member of the synagogue of the 
 
 • The assertion of the Talmud (cf. Sanhedr. f. 58, 1) that there were 480- 
 synagogues in Jerusalem is indeed valueless, hecause the remarks of the 
 Rabbis about Jerusalem, Bethyr, and indeed Palestine generally, are mere' 
 hyperbole ; but, as Benan remarks (ies ApStres, p. 109), it does not seem 
 at all impossible to those who are familiar with the innumerable mosques of. 
 Mahomme5an cities. We are informed in the Talmud that each synagogue 
 had not only a school for the teaching of Scripture, but also for the teaching 
 of traditions {mmoh nio'^n rra, Megillah, f. 73, 4). 
 
 s See Frankl, Jews in the East, ii. 21, E. T. 
 
 K 
 
146 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 Cilicians,^ and who in that case must not only have 
 taken his part in the disputes which followed the ex- 
 hortations of the fervid deacon,** hut as a scholar of 
 Gamaliel and a zealous Pharisee, must have occupied a 
 prominent position as an uncompromising champion of 
 the traditions of the fathers. 
 
 Though the Saul of this period must have differed 
 widely from that Paul, the slave of Jesus Christ, whom 
 we know so well, yet the main features of his personahty 
 must have heen the same. He could not have failed to 
 recognise the moral heauty, the dauntless courage, the 
 burning passion latent in the tenderness of Stephen's 
 character. The white ashes of a religion which had 
 smouldered into formalism lay thickly scattered over his 
 own heart, but the fire of a genuine sincerity burned 
 helow. Trained as he had been for years in Eabbinic 
 minutiae, he had not yet so far grown old in a deaden- 
 ing system as to mistake the painted cere-cloths of the 
 mummy for the grace and flush of healthy life. While 
 he listened to St. Stephen, he must surely have felt the 
 ■ contrast between a dead theology and a living faith; 
 between a kindling inspiration and a barren exegesis; 
 'between a minute analysis of unimportant ceremonials 
 and a preaching that stirred the inmost depths of the 
 "troubled heart. Even the rage which is often intensified 
 by the unconscious rise of an irresistible conviction could 
 not wholly prevent him from perceiving that these 
 preachers of a gospel which he disdained as " an execrable 
 ■superstition, had found " in Christ " the secret of a light 
 and joy, and love and peace, compared with which his 
 own condition was that of one who was chaines^' indis* 
 Bolubly.to a corpse. 
 
 ' He may haTe been a Libertmus alsa 
 * Acts Ti. 9, trv^iiTovvTfs. 
 
ST. STEPHEN IN ARGUMENT, 147 
 
 We catch but a single glimpse of these furious con- 
 troversies. Their immediate effect was the signal triumph 
 of St. Stephen in argument. The Hellenists were unable 
 to withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he 
 spake. Disdainful Eabbinists were at once amazed and 
 disgusted to find that he with whom they now had to 
 deal was no rude provincial, no illiterate am ha-arets, no 
 humble hediot, like the fishermen and tax-gatherers of 
 Galilee ; but one who had been trained in the culture of 
 heathen cities as well as in the learning of Jewish com- 
 munities — a disputant who could meet them "with their 
 own weapons, and speak Grreek as fluently as themselves. 
 Steeped in centuries of prejudice, engrained with tradi- 
 tions of which the truth had never been questioned, 
 they must have imagined that they would win an easy 
 victory, and convince a man of intelligence how degrading 
 it was for him to accept a faith on which, from the full 
 height of their own ignorance, they complacently looked 
 down. How great must have been their discomfiture to 
 find that what they had now to face was not a mere 
 personal testimony which they could contemptuously set 
 aside, but arguments based on premisses which they them- 
 selves admitted, enforced by methods which they recog- 
 nised, and illustrated by a learning which they could not 
 surpass !• How bitter must have been their rage when they 
 , heard doctrines subversive of their most cherished prin- 
 ciples maintained with a wisdom which differed not only 
 in degree, but even in kind, from the loftiest attainments 
 of their foremost Eabbis — even of those whose merits had 
 been rewarded by the flattering titles of " Eooters of 
 Mountains " and " Grlories of the Law ! " 
 
 At first the only discussion likely to arise would be aa 
 to the Messiahship of Jesus, the meaning of His death, 
 the fact of His Resurrection. These would be points on 
 K 2 
 
148 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 which the ordinary Jew would have regarded argument as 
 superfluous condescension. To him the stumbling-block 
 of the Cross would have been insurmountable. In all 
 ages the Messianic hope had been prominent in the 
 minds of the most enlightened Jews, but during the 
 ExUe and the Eestoration it had become the central 
 faith of their religion. It was this belief which, more 
 than any other, kindled their patriotism, consoled their 
 sorrows, and inspired their obedience. If a Shammai 
 used to spend the whole week in meditating how he 
 coxild most rigidly observe the Sabbath — if the Pharisees 
 regarded it as the main function of their existence to 
 raise a hedge around the Law — the inspiring motive was 
 a belief that if only for one day Israel were entirely 
 faithful, the Messiah would come. And what a coming ! 
 How should the Prince of the House of David smite the 
 nations with the sword of his mouth ! How should He 
 break them in pieces like a potter's vessel ! How should 
 He exalt the children of Israel into kings of the earth, 
 and feed them with the flesh of Behemoth, and Leviathan, 
 and the bird Bar Juchne, and pour at their feet the 
 treasures of the sea ! And to say that Jesus of Nazareth 
 was the promised Messiah — to suppose that all the splendid 
 prophecies of patriarchs, and seers, and kings, from the 
 Divine Voice which spoke to Adam in Paradise, to the last 
 utterance of the Angel Malachi — all pointed to, aU centred 
 in. One who had been the carpenter of Nazareth, and 
 whom they had seen crucified between two brigands — 
 to say that their very Messiah had just been " hung"^ by 
 Gentile tyrants at the instance of their own priests ; — 
 this, to most of the hearers in the synagogue, would have 
 seemed wicked if it had not seemed too absurd. Was 
 there not one sufficient and decisive answer to it aU in the 
 
 "5^ 
 
A SUTTEEma MESSIAS. 149 
 
 one verse of the Law — " Cursed by God is he that hangeth 
 on a tree?"^ 
 
 Yet this was the thesis which such a man as Stephen 
 — no ignorant Gralilsean, but a learned Hellenist — ^under- 
 took to prove, and did prove with such power as to pro- 
 duce silence if not assent, and hatred if not conviction. 
 For with aU their adoration of the letter, the Eabbis and 
 Pharisees had but half read their Scriptures, or had read 
 them only to use as an engine of religious intolerance, 
 and to pick out the- views which most blended with their 
 personal preconceptions. They had laid it doTvn as a 
 principle of interpretation that the entire books of' the 
 Canon prophesied of nothing else but the days of the 
 Messiah. How, under these circumstances, they could 
 possibly miss the conception of a suffering as well as of a 
 triwmphant Messiah,^ might well amaze us, if there had not 
 been proof in all ages that men may entirely overlook the 
 statements and pervert the meaning of their own sacred 
 books, because, when they read those books, the veil of 
 obstinate prejudice is lying upon their hearts. But when 
 the view of ancient prophecy, which proved that it behoved 
 Christ thus to suffer and to enter into His glory,^ was 
 forcibly presented to them by the insight and eloquence 
 of one who was their equal in learning and their superior 
 in illumination, we can understand the difficulties to 
 
 * Dent. xxi. 23, xtKarripaufvos inh toS 0eoB. The later view of this, " He 
 that is hanged is an insult to God " arose from the fact that Jewish patriots in 
 the Jewish "War were crucified by scores. St. PanI, in quoting the verse, omits 
 the ivb 0eoD (Gal. iii. 13 ; and Lightfoot, p. 133). 
 
 ' Of the notion of a suffering Messiah, Ben Joseph, as distinguished from 
 the triumphant son of David (Bashi on Isa. xiiv. 18; Buccah, 52, 1, 2, 
 where reference is made to Zech. xii. 10, and Ps. ii., &c.; see Otho, Lex. Bab. 
 s. V. Messiah), there is no trace in Jewish literature till long afterwards. 
 St. Paul's witness from Moses and the Prophets — el raSnirhs i Xpttrrhs, Acts 
 xxvi. 23 — only woke a sneer from Agrippa II. 
 
 * Luke sxir. 26. 
 
150 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST, PAUL. 
 
 whicli they were reduced. How, for instance, could 
 they elude the force of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, to 
 which their Eabbis freely accorded a Messianic inter- 
 pretation? The Messianic application of what is there 
 said about the Servant of Jehovah, and the deep humi- 
 liation borne for the sake of others, is not only found 
 in the Targum of Jonathan and in many Eabbinic allu- 
 sions, down even to the Book Zohar, but seems to have 
 remained entirely undisputed until the mediaeval Eabbis 
 found themselves inconvenienced by it in their controver- 
 sies with Christians.-' Yet this was but an isolated pro- 
 phecy, and the Christians could refer to passage after 
 passage which, on the very principles of their adversaries, 
 not only justified them in accepting as the Christ One 
 whom the rulers of the Jews had crucified, but even 
 distinctly foreshadowed the mission of His Forerunner; 
 His ministry on the shores of Grennesareth ; His humble 
 entry into Jerusalem ; His rejection by His own people ; 
 the disbelief of His announcements ; the treachery of 
 one of His own followers; the mean price paid for His 
 blood; His death as a malefactor; even the bitter and 
 stupefying drinks that had been offered to Him; and 
 the lots cast upop. His clothes — no less than His victory 
 over the grave by Eesurrection, on the third day, from 
 the dead, and His final exaltation at the right hand of 
 Grod."^ How tremendous the cogency of such arguments 
 would be to the hearers of Stephen cannot be shown more 
 
 ' Proofs of this statement may be found in Dr. A. "Wiinsche's Die Leiden 
 des Messias, and seTeral quotations from his book may be found in' the 
 Speaker's Commentary, ad loc. 
 
 2 See Is. xL 3; Mark i 3j Mai. iii. 1; Matt. xi. 10 ; Is. ym. 14j ix. 1; 
 Matt. iv. 14 ; Is. Ixi. 1 ; Luke iy. 18 ; Pa. baviii. 2 ; Matt. xiii. 35 j Ps. cxviii.' 22 ; 
 Luke ii. 34 ; Acts iv. 11; xiii. 41; Ps. xli. 9; Zeeh. xi. 12 ; John xiii. 18 j 
 Matt. xxvi. 16; xxvii. 9—10; Zech. xii. 10; John xix. 37; Isa. liii. 9 ; Ps. xvi. 
 10 ; Matt. xii. 40 ; Acts ii. 27 ; Ps. ex. 1 ; Acts ii. 33 ; Heb, L 13, &e. (See 
 Davison On Prophecy, passim ; Eausrath, p. 112, seqq.) 
 
mSIGHT OF ST. STEPHEN. 151 
 
 strikingly tlian by the use made of them by St. Paul 
 after the conversion which they doubtless helped to bring 
 about. It must have been from St. Stephen that he heard 
 them first, and they became so convincing to him that he 
 constantly employs the same or analogous arguments in 
 his own reasonings with his unconverted countrymen.^ 
 
 It is clear that, in the course of argument, Stephen 
 was led to adduce some of those deep sayings as to the 
 purpose of the life of Christ which the keen insight of 
 hate had rendered more intelligible to the enemies of our 
 Lord than they had been in the first instance to His 
 friends. Many of those priests and Pharisees who had 
 been baptised into the Church of Chrisi with the notion 
 that their new belief was compatible with an unchanged 
 loyalty to Judaism, had shown less understanding of the 
 sayings of their Master, and less appreciation of the 
 grandeur of His mission, than the Sadducees whose hatred 
 had handed Him over to the secular arm. It did lie 
 within the natural interpretation of Christ's language 
 that the Law of Moses, which the Jews at once idolised 
 and evaded, was destined to be disannulled ; not, indeed, 
 those moral sanctions of it which were eternal in obli- 
 gation, but the complicated system wherein those moral 
 commandments were so deeply imbedded. The Jewish 
 race were right to reverence Moses as an instrument in 
 the hands of God to lay thfc deepest foundations of a 
 national life. As a Lawgiver whose Decalogue is so 
 comprehensive in its brevity as to transcend all- other 
 codes — as the sole Lawgiver who laid his prohibition 
 against the beginnings of evil, by daring to forbid an 
 evil thought — as one who established for his people a 
 monotheistic faith, a significant worship, and an unde- 
 
 1 Epk ii. 20; Bom. iz. 34, &e. 
 
152 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PATII4. 
 
 finable hope — he deserved the gratitude and reverence 
 of mankind. That this under-official of an obscure 
 sect of yesterday should dare to move his tongue 
 against that awful name, and prophesy the abolition of 
 institutions of which some had been delivered to their 
 fathers of old from the burning crags of Sinai, and 
 others had been handed down from the lips of the 
 mighty teacher through the long series of priests and 
 prophets, was to them something worse than folly and 
 presumption — it was a blasphemy and a crime ! 
 
 And how did he dare to speak one word against, or 
 hint one doubt as to the permanent glory of, the Temple? 
 The glowing descriptions of the Talmud respecting its 
 colossal size and royal splendour are but echoes of the 
 intense love which breathes throughout the Psalms. In 
 the heart of Saul any word which might sound Hke a 
 slight to " the place where God's honour dwelt " would 
 excite a peculiar indignation. When the conflagration 
 seized its roofs of cedar-wood and melted its golden tables, 
 every Jew in the city was fired with a rage which 
 made him fight with superhuman strength — 
 
 " Through, their torn veias reviving fury ran, 
 And life's last anger warmed the dying man." 
 
 Among those frenzied combatants was a body of Tarsian 
 youths who gladly devoted their lives to the rescue of 
 Jerusalem. What they felt at that supreme moment may 
 show us what such a zealot as Saul of Tarsus would feel, 
 when he heard one who called himself a Jew use language 
 which sounded like disparagement of " the glory of the 
 whole earth." 
 
 Foiled in argument, the Hellenists of the synagogues 
 adopted the usual resource of defeated controversiahsts 
 who have the upper hand. They appealed to violence for 
 
THE ARREST. 153 
 
 the suppression of reason. They first stirred up the 
 people — whose inflammable ignorance made them the 
 ready tools of any agitator — and through them aroused 
 the attention of the Jewish authorities. Their plot was 
 soon ripe. There was no need of the midnight secrecy 
 which had marked the arrest of Jesus. There was no 
 need to secure the services of the Captain of the Temple 
 to arrest Stephen at twilight, as he had arrested Peter 
 and John. There was no need even to suppress all 
 semblance of violence, lest the people should stone 
 them for their unauthorised interference. The circum- 
 stances of the day enabled them to assume unwonted 
 boldness, because they were at the moment enjoying a sort 
 of interregnum from Eoman authority. The approval of 
 the multitude had been alienated by the first rumour of 
 defective patriotism. When every rank of Jewish society 
 had been stirred to fury by false vritnesses whom these 
 Hellenists had suborned, they seized a favourable moment, 
 suddenly came upon Stephen,^ either while he was teach- 
 ing in a synagogue, or while he was transacting the 
 duties of an almoner, and led him away — apparently with- 
 out a moment's pause — into the presence of the assembled 
 Sanhedrin. Everything was ready ; everything seemed to 
 point to a foregone conclusion. The false witnesses were 
 at hand, and confronted their victim with the charge of 
 incessant harangues against "this Holy Place" — the 
 expression seems to show that the Sanhedrin were for this 
 time sitting in their famous "Hall of Squares," — and 
 against the Law.^ In support of this general accusation, 
 they testified that they had heard him say that Jesus — 
 " this Nazarene,"* as they indignantly add to distinguish 
 Him from others who bore that common name — "shall 
 
 ' Acts vi. 12, ivurriyrcs ; cf . xvii. 5. ' Acts vi. 13, oJ vaierai ^■i/iara Ka\uv. 
 ' Acts tI. 14, 'Iriirous, 6 Na^aipaTos ovtoi. 
 
154 THE LITE AND WOEK OF ST, PAUL. 
 
 destroy this place, and shall change the customs which 
 Moses handed 'doAvn to us." It is evident that these false 
 witnesses made some attempt to base their accusation 
 upon truth. There was good policy in this, as false 
 witnesses in aU ages have been cunning enough to see. 
 Half truths are often the most absolute of lies, because 
 
 " A lie wHck is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies ; 
 For a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, 
 But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight." 
 
 It is certain that if Stephen had not used the very 
 expressions with which they charged him, he had used 
 others not unlike them. It is his immortal glory to have 
 remembered the words of Jesus, and to have interpreted 
 them aright. Against the moral Law — the great Ten 
 Words of Sinai, or any of those precepts of exquisite 
 humanity and tenderness which lie scattered amid the 
 ceremonial observances — he is not even falsely accused 
 of having uttered a word. But against the permanent 
 validity of the ceremonial Law he may have spoken 
 with freedom ; for, as we have seen, its destined 
 abrogatio|n was involved in the very slight importance 
 which Jesus had attached to it. And for the Oral 
 Law it is probable that Stephen, whose training would 
 have rendered impossible any minute fulfilment of its 
 regulations, neither felt nor professed respect. The 
 expression used by the witnesses against him seems to 
 show that it was mainly, though not perhaps exclusively, 
 of this Oral Law that he had been thinking.' It was 
 not, perhaps, any doubt as to its authenticity which made 
 him teach that Jesus should change its customs, for in 
 those days the critical spirit was not sufficiently developed 
 
 ' Acts -vi. 14, tA (Bti t irapiSwKtv riiuv MatOo-^s. (Of. Jos. Antt, xiii. lOi § 6, 
 and 16, §2.) 
 
THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 155 
 
 to give rise to any challenge of a current assertion j but 
 he had foreseen the future nullity of these " traditions of 
 the fathers," partly. from their own inherent worthless- 
 ness, and partly because he may have heard, or had 
 repeated to him, the stern denunciation, which the worst of 
 these traditions had drawn from the lips of Christ Himself.^ 
 But though Stephen must have seen that the wit- 
 nesses were really false witnesses, because they mis- 
 represented the tone and the true significance of the 
 language which he had used -^ although, too, he was 
 conscious how dangerous was his position as one accused 
 of blasphemy against Moses, against the Temple, against 
 the traditions, and against Grod — it never occurred to him 
 to escape his danger by a technicality or a compromise. 
 To throw discredit even upon the Oral Law would 
 not be without danger in the presence of an assembly 
 whose members owed to its ' traditions no little of the 
 authority which they enjoyed.^ But' Stephen did not 
 at all intend ^o confine his argument to this narrow 
 range. Eather the conviction came upon him that now 
 was the time to speak out^thafc this was the destined 
 moment in which, even if need be to the death, he was 
 to bear witness to the inner meaning of the Kingdom 
 of his Lord. That conviction — an inspiration from on 
 high — gave unwonted grandeur and heavenliness to his 
 look, his words, his attitude. His whole bearing was 
 ennobled, his whole being was transfigured by a con- 
 sciousness which illuminated his very countenance. 
 It is probable that the unanimous tradition of the 
 Church is correct in representing him as youthful and 
 beautiful ; but now there was something about him 
 far more beautiful than youth or beauty could bestow. 
 
 1 Matt. XV. 2—6; Mark vii. 3, 5, 8, 9, la 
 
 s Maimon. Pref. to the Yad Sachazdkah; McCanl, Old Paths, p. 335,. 
 
156 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 In the spiritual light wliicli radiated from him he 
 seemed to be overshadowed by the Shechinah, which 
 had so long vanished from between the wings of the 
 Temple cherubim. While the witnesses had been delivering 
 their testimony, no one had observed the sudden bright- 
 ness which seemed to be stealing over him ; but when the 
 charge was finished, and every eye was turned from the 
 accusers to a fixed gaze on the accused,^ aU who were seated 
 in the Sanhedrin — and one of the number, in all proba- 
 bility, was Saul of Tarsus — " saw his face as it had been 
 the face of an angel." 
 
 In the sudden hush that followed, the voice of the 
 High Priest Jonathan was heard putting to the accused 
 the customary and formal question — 
 
 " Are these things so ? " '^ 
 
 In reply to that question began the speech which is 
 one of the earliest, as it is one of the most interesting, 
 documents of the Christian Church. Although it was 
 delivered before the Sanhedrin, there can be little doubt that 
 it was delivered in Greek, which, in the bilingual condition 
 of Palestine — and, indeed, of the civilised world in general 
 — at that time, would be perfectly understood by the 
 members of the Sanhedrin, and which was perhaps the 
 only language which Stephen could speak with fluency." 
 The quotations from the Old Testament follow the 
 
 ' Acts yi. 15, liTtvliravTes (Is a\nhi> iiravres. 
 
 ' St. Chrysostom sees in the apparent mildness of the question an indica- 
 tion that the High Priest and the Sanhedrin were awed by the supematviral 
 brightness of the martyr's look — ip^s is /neri ivtetxtlas v ipdrrins kuX oiS^r 
 Tfus ipopriKhv lx<"""^ ; (Homil. XT. in Act.). But the question appears to have 
 been a regular formula of interrogation. It was, in fact, the " Guilty or Not 
 Guilty P" of the Jewish Supreme Ooui-t. 
 
 5 Against this view are urged — (1) the unlikelihood that St. Stephen 
 would have pleaded in Greek before the Sanhedrin; (2) the use of the 
 Hebraism oupaKol in Acts vii. 56. But as to 1, if even Philo knew no Hebrew, 
 Stephen may have known none; and, 2, the word oirfmyoi points, to a spedal 
 Jewish belief, independent of langpiage. 
 
mPORTANCE OF HIS SPBEOK 157 
 
 Septuagint, even where it differs from tlie Hebrew, and 
 the individuality whicli characterises almost every sen- 
 tence of the speech forbids ns to look on it as a mere 
 conjectural paraphrase. There is no difficulty in accounting 
 for its preservation. Apart from the fact that two 
 secretaries were always present at the judicial pro- 
 ceedings of the Sanhedrin,^ there are words and utter- 
 ances which, at certain times, are branded indelibly upon 
 the memory of their hearers ; and since we can trace 
 the deep impression made by this speech on the mind of 
 St. Paul, we find little difficulty in adopting the conjecture 
 that its preservation was 'due to him. The Sagadoth 
 in which it abounds, the variations from historical 
 accuracy, the free citation of passages from the Old 
 Testament, the roughness of style, above all the con- 
 centrated force which makes it lend itself so readily to 
 differing interpretations, are characteristics which leave 
 on our minds no shadow of doubt that whoever may 
 have been the reporter, we have here at least an outline 
 of Stephen's speech. And this speech marked a crisis 
 in the annals of Christianity. It led to consequences that 
 changed the Church from a Judaic sect at Jerusalem, into 
 the Church of the Grentiles and of the world. It marks 
 the commencing severance of two institutions which had 
 not yet discovered that they were mutually irreconcilable. 
 Since the charge brought against St. Stephen was 
 partly false and partly true, it was his object to rebut 
 what was false, and justify himself against all blame for 
 what was true. Hence apology and demonstration are 
 subtly blended throughout his appeal, but the apology 
 is only secondary, and the demonstration is mainly 
 
 > See Jahn, Arctiaeol. Bibl. § 248. He quotes no authority, and I at firet 
 felt some doubt about the assertion, but I find it so stated in the Mshna, 
 Sanhedr. It. 2. 
 
158 THE LIFE A2fD WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 meant to rouse tlie dormant consciences of Ms hearers. 
 Charged with blasphemous words, he contents himself 
 with the incidental refutation of this charge by the 
 entire tenor of the language which he employs. After 
 his courteous request for attention, his very first words are 
 to speak of God under one of His most awful titles of 
 majesty, as the Grod of the Shechinah. On the history of 
 Moses he dwells with all the enthusiasm of patriotic 
 admiration. To the Temple he alludes with entire 
 reverence. Of Sinai aud the living oracles he usies 
 language as full of solemnity as the most devoted Eabbi 
 could desire. But while he thus shows how impossible it 
 must have been for him to have uttered the language of a 
 blasphemer, he is all the while aiming at the establish- 
 ment of facts far deeper than the proof of his own 
 innocence. The consummate art of his speech consists 
 in the circumstance that while he seems to be engaged in 
 a calm, historical review, to which any Jewish patriot might 
 listen with delight and pride, he is step by step leading up 
 to conclusions which told with irresistible force against 
 the opinions of his judges. While he only seems to be 
 reviewing the various migrations of Abraham, and the 
 chequered fortunes of the Patriarchs, he is really showing 
 that the covenants of God with His chosen people, 
 having been made in Ur and Haran and Egjrpt, were 
 aU parts of one progressive purpose, which was so little 
 dependent on ceremonials or places as to have been 
 anterior not only to the existence of the Tabernacle 
 and Temple, not only to the possession of the Holy 
 Land, but even to the rite of circumcision itself.^ 
 
 • What fruit the argument bore in the mind of St. Paul we may see 
 in the emphasis with which he dwells on "that faith of our father Abraham 
 which he had being yet uncircumcised " (Rom. iv. 12). How necessary it was 
 to point this out will be seen from the opinions of succeeding Rabbia 
 
ALLUSIVE PABALLBLS. 159 
 
 "WTiile sketcliing the career of Joseph, he is pointing 
 allusively to the similar rejection of a deliverer greater 
 than Joseph. While passing in review the triple periods 
 of forty years which made up the life of Moses, he is 
 again sketching the ministry of Christ, and silently 
 pointing to the fact that the Hehrew race had at every 
 stage been false alike to Moses and to God. This is 
 why he narrates the way in which, on the first appear- 
 ance of Moses to help his suffering countrymen, they 
 rudely spurned his interference; and how in spite of their 
 rejection he was chosen to lead them out of the house of 
 bondage. In defiance of this special commission — and it 
 is well worth notice how, in order to conciliate their 
 deeper attention,. this palmary point in his favour is not 
 triumphantly paraded, but quietly introduced as an 
 incident in his historic summary — Moses had himself 
 taught them to regard his own legislation as provisional, 
 by bidding them listen to a Prophet like unto himself 
 who should come hereafter. But the history of Moses, 
 whom they trusted, was fatal to their pretence of allegiance. 
 Even when he was on Sinai they had been disloyal to him, 
 and spoken of him as " this Moses," and as one who had 
 gone they knew not where.^ And, false to Moses, they had 
 been yet more false to Grod. The Levitical sacrifices had 
 been abandoned from the very time of their institution, 
 for sacrifices to the host of heaven; and the tabernacle of 
 Moloch, and the star of Eemphan,^ had been dearer to 
 
 "Abraham," says Rabbi — as " Juda the Holy," the compiler of the Mishna, is 
 called, Kir' lioxh" — " was not called perfect until he was circumcised, and by 
 the merit of circumcisjon a covenant was made with him respecting the giving 
 of the land" {JoreJi. Deah, 260, op. McCaul, Old Pailis, p. 451 ; Neda/rim, t. 
 31, 2). It is superfluous to add that the latter statement is a flat contradic- 
 tion of Gen. XV. 18. 
 
 1 Perhaps there is a passing allusion to the expression, " Jesus, this Naza- 
 rene," which they had just heard from the lips of the false witnesses. 
 
 • The LXX. reading for the Hebrew Chiim. 
 
160 THE LITE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 them fhan tlie Tabernacle of Witness and the Shechinah 
 of God. At last a Jesus — for, in order that he might 
 be heard to due purpose, Stephen suppresses the name of 
 that Jesus of whom his thoughts were fuU — led them and 
 their Tabernacle into the land of which he dispossessed the 
 Gentiles. That Tabernacle, after an obscure and dis- 
 honoured history, had passed away, and it may perhaps be 
 intimated that this was due to their indifference and neglect. 
 David — their own David — had indeed desired to replace it 
 by another, but the actual bmlding of the House was carried 
 out by the less faithful Solomon.-^ But even at the very 
 time the House was built it. had been implied in the. Prayer 
 of David, and in the dedication prayer of Solomon,^ that 
 " the Most High dweUeth not in temples made with 
 hands." And to guard against the dangerous super- 
 stition into which the reverence paid to material places 
 is apt to degenerate — to obviate the trust in lying 
 words which thought it sufficient to exclaim, " The Temple 
 of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the 
 Lord are these " — the great Prophet had cried, ia God's 
 name,' "Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool; 
 what house will ye build for me, saith the Lord, or what 
 is the place of my abiding ? Did not my hand make all 
 these things ? " The inference from this — that the day 
 must come, of which Jesus had prophesied to the woman 
 of Samaria, in which neither in Gerizim nor yet in Jeru- 
 salem should men worship the Father, constituted a per- 
 fect defence against the charge that anything which he had 
 said could be regarded as a blasphemy against the Temple. 
 Thus far he had fulfilled aU the objects of his speech, 
 
 ' It ninst remain doubtful whether any contrast is intended between tha 
 ffK^Koi^a (t. Snid, s.v.) designed by David, and the oTkos built by Solomon. 
 ' 1 Kings viii. 27; 1 Chron. xxix. 11 ; quoted by St. Paul, Acts xvii. 24. 
 ' Isa. Ixvi. 1, 2. 
 
REYIEW OF THE PAST. 161 
 
 'aiid had shown that injurious words had been as far as 
 possible from his thoughts. It had become clear also 
 from his summary o£ the national story that the principles 
 which he had advocated were in accordance with the 
 teaching of those past ages ; that the rejection of Christ 
 by the rulers of His nation was no argument against, His 
 claims; that the Temple could not have been meant to 
 be the object of an endless honour; lastly, that if he 
 had said that Jesus should change the customs which 
 Moses had delivered, Moses himself had indicated that 
 in God's due time his entire dispensation was destined 
 to pass away. And he had stated the grounds from 
 which these conclusions followed, rather than urged upon 
 them the inferences themselves. He had done this in 
 deference to their passions and prejudices, and in the 
 hope of bringing the truth gently into their hearts. He 
 might have continued the story through centuries of 
 weak or apostate kings, stained with the blood of 
 rejected prophets, down to the great retribution' of the 
 exile; and he might have shown how, after the exile, 
 the obsolete idolatry of gods of wood and stone had 
 only been superseded by the subtler and< more self- 
 complacent idolatry of formaHsm and letter-worship ; 
 how the Book had been honoured to the oblivion of the 
 truths which it enshrined ; how in the tithing of mint 
 and anise and cummin there had been a forgetfulness 
 of the weightier matters of the Law ; how the smoke of 
 dead sacrifices had been thought of more avail than deeds 
 of living mercy ; how circumcision and Sabbatism had 
 been elevated above faith and purity ; how the long series 
 of crimes against Grod's messengers had been consummated 
 in the murder of the Lord of glory. A truth which is 
 only suggested, often comes home to the heart with more 
 force than one which is put in words, and it may have 
 
 L 
 
162 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 been Hs original design to guide rather than to refute. 
 But if so, the faces of his audience showed that his 
 object had failed. They were listening with stolid self- 
 complacency to a narrative of which the significant 
 incidents only enabled them to glory over their fathers. 
 It was, I think, something in the aspect of his audience 
 ■ — some sudden conviction that to such invincible obsti- 
 nacy his words were addressed in vain — which made him 
 suddenly stop short in his review of history, and hurl 
 in their faces the gathered thunder of his wrath and scorn. 
 
 " Stiff-necked ! " he exclaimed, " and uncircumcised in 
 your heart and in your ears, ye are ever in conflict with 
 the Holy Spirit ; as your fathers, so ye ! Which of the 
 prophets did not your fathers persecute? and they killed 
 those who announced before respecting the coming of the 
 Just, of whom ye now proved yourselves betrayers and 
 murderers ; ye who received the Law at the ordinance of 
 angels,^ and kept it not ! " ^ 
 
 A denunciation so scathing and so fearless, from the 
 lips of a prisoner whose life depended on their will, might 
 well have startled them; and this strong burst of righteous 
 indignation against those whom he had addressed as 
 "brethren and fathers," can only be accounted for by 
 the long-pent feelings of one whose patience has been 
 exhausted. But he could hardly hav6 addressed them in 
 words more calculated to kindle their fury. The very 
 terms in which he characterised their bearing, being bor- 
 rowed from their own Law and Prophets, added force to 
 the previous epitome of their history ; ^ and to call them 
 
 1 Acts -rii. 52 ; leg. lyiveaee, A, B, 0, D, E. 
 
 ' Acts vii. 53, i\ABfTf t^k y6iiiov els 8ioT<X7ekr kyyiKav ; Gal. iii. 19, i yif^o' 
 SioToyeli 5i ayyiXav ; Deut. xxxiii. 2 ; LXX., iK Sf|iui> ouTOu Ikyyehjii juct' outoC ; 
 Ps. Ixvii. 18; Heb. ii. 2. In Ps. Ixviii. 12 they read, '3m')d, "angels," for 
 ■aVo, "kings." (Shahhaih, i. 88, 2.) 
 
 3 Deut. ix. 6, 13 ; X. 16 ; XXX. 6 ; Neh. ix. 16 ; Ezek. xUv. 7 ; Jar. ix. 26. 
 
OUTBURST OF DENUNCIATION. 163 
 
 ancircumcised in heart and ears was to reject with, scorn tlie 
 idle fancies that circumcision alone was enough, to save 
 them from God's wrath, and that uncircumcision was worse 
 than crime.^ To convict them of being the true sons of 
 their fathers, and to brand consciences, already' ulcerated 
 by a sense of guilt, with a murder worse than the worst 
 murder of the prophets, was not only to sweep away the 
 prestige of an authority which the people so blindly 
 accepted, but it was to arraign his very judges and turn 
 upon them the tables of accusation. And this he did, 
 not only in the matter of their crucifixion o£ the Messiah, 
 but also in the matter o£ disobedience to that Law or- 
 dained by angels of which they were at that very moment 
 professing to vindicate the sanctity and the permanence. 
 
 It would be difficult in the entire range of literature 
 to find a speech more skilful, more pregnant,' more con- 
 vincing; and it becomes truly astonishing when we 
 remember that it seems to have been delivered on the 
 spur of the moment.^ 
 
 ^ Babbi [Juda the Holy] said "that circmnoision is equivalent to aU the 
 Commandments which are in the Law" (Nedarim, f. 32, 1). 
 
 ' The impression which it made on the heart of St. Paul is nowhere 
 noticed by St. Luke, or by the Apostle himself; but the traces of that 
 impression are a series of coincidences which confirm the genuineness of the 
 speech. In his earliest recorded speech at Antioch he adopts the same historic 
 method so admirably suited to insinuate truth without shocking prejudice ; 
 he quotes the same texts in the same striking phraseology and application 
 (compare Acts vii. 48, 51, with Acts xvii. 24, Rom. ii. 29) ; alludes to the same 
 tradition (Acts -vii. 53, Gal. iii. 19) ; uses the same style of address (Acts vii. 
 2, xxii. !)•; and gives the same marked significance to the faith of Abraham 
 (Rom. iv. 9, Gal. iii. 7), and to God's dealings with him before the covenant 
 of circumcision (Acts vii. 5 — 8, Rom. iv. 10 — 19). Nor can we doubt that 
 2 Tim. iv. 16 was an echo of the last prayer of Stephen, breathed partly on his 
 own behalf. There are at least seven Hagadoth in the speech of Stephen — 
 Acts vii. 2 (call of Abraham) ; 4 (death of Terah) ; 14 (seventy-five souls) ; 16 
 (burial of Patriarchs at Shechem) ; 22 (Egyptian training of Moses) ; 23 (forty 
 years) ; 42 (desert idolatry) ; 63 (angels at Sinai). As for the slight instances 
 of (r(j>a\iia livniioviKhv in 6, 7, 14, 16, they are mere " obiter dicta, auotoris aliud 
 ftgentis." The attempt to square them rigidly with the Old Testament has led 
 
 L 2 
 
 %&t^mMm^'.. 
 
164 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 But tlie members of the SanteJclriii were roused to fury 
 by tbe undaunted audacity of Stephen's final invective. 
 The most excitable of "Western nations can hardly imagine 
 the raging passion which maddens a crowd of Eastern 
 fanatics.^ Barely able to continue the semblance of a 
 judicial procedure, they expressed the agony of hatred 
 which was sawing their hearts asunder, by outward 
 signs which are almost unknown to modern civilisation 
 — by that grinding and gnashing of the teeth only possible 
 to human beings in whom " the ape and the tiger " are 
 not yet quite dead. To reason with men whose passions 
 had thus degraded them to the level of wild beasts would 
 have been worse than useless. The flame of holy anger 
 in the breast of Stephen had died away as suddenly as 
 the lightning. It was a righteous anger; it was aimed 
 not at them but at their infatuation; it was intended not 
 to insult but to awaken.^ But he saw at a glance that 
 it had failed, and that all was now over. In one instant 
 his thoughts had passed away to that heaven from which 
 his inspiration had come. From those hateful faces, 
 rendered demoniac by evil passion, his earnest gaze was 
 turned upward and heavenward. There, in ecstacy of vision, 
 he saw the Shechinah — the Glory of God — and Jesus 
 " standing " as though to aid and receive him " at the right 
 hand of God." Transported beyond all thought of peril by 
 that divine epiphany, he exclaimed as though he wished 
 his enemies to share his vision : " Lo ! I behold the 
 heavens parted asunder,^ and the Son of Man standing at 
 
 to mueli dishonest exegesis. The speech of St. Stephen has been called " a 
 compendium of the Old Testament drawn np in fragments of the Septuagint" 
 (Greenfield, Apol. for the LXX., 103). " He had regard to the meaning, not 
 to the words " (Jerome). 
 
 > Acts TO. 54, StevpiovTo rats KapSiats airmv, Kai tPpvxov Toiis iS6i^as in' aMy. 
 
 ' " Non fratri irascitur qui peccato fratris irascitur " (Aug.). 
 
 ' Acts vii. 56, loq., Sirivoiyiidvovs, M, A, B, 0. 
 
RAGE OF THE SANHEDRIN'. 165 
 
 tlie right liand of God." At sucli a moment lie would 
 not pause to consider, lie would not even be able to 
 tjonsider, tbe words he spoke ; but whether it was that 
 he recalled the Messianic title by which Jesus had so 
 often described himself on earth, or that he remembered 
 that this title had been used by the Lord when He 
 had prophesied to this very Sanhedrin that hereafter 
 they should see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand 
 of power — certain it is that this is the only passage of 
 the New Testament Where Jesus is called the Son of 
 Man by lips other than His own.^ 
 
 But those high words were too much for the feeUngs 
 of his audience. Stopping their ears as though to shut out 
 a polluting blasphemy, they rose in a mass from both sides 
 of the semi-circular range in which they sat, and with one 
 wild yell^ rushed upon Stephen. There was no question 
 any longer of a legal decision. In their rage they took 
 the law into their own hands, and then and there dragged 
 him off to be stoned outside the city gate.^ 
 
 We can judge how fierce must have been the rage which 
 turned a solemn Sanhedrin into a mob of murderers. It 
 was true that they were at this moment under Sadducean 
 influence, and that this influence, as at the Trial of Christ, 
 was mainly wielded by the family of Hanan, who were the 
 most merciless members of that least merciful sect. If, 
 as there is reason to believe, the martyrdom took place 
 A.D. 37, it was most probably during the brief presidency 
 of the High Priest Jonathan, son of Hanan. Unhappy 
 family of the man whom Josephus pronounces to have 
 been so exceptionally blest! The hoary father, and his 
 son-in-law Caiaphas, imbrued their hands in the blood of 
 
 * See, however, Rev. i. 13 ; liv. 14. 
 
 ' Acts vii. 67, Kpi^avres <j>uv^ /ucyi^Ajr. 
 
 > See Excnrsns YL, " Capital Fnnisbmenta," 
 
166 THE LIFE AOT) WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 Jesus; Jonathan during his few months' term of office 
 was the Nasi of the Sanhedrin which murdered Stephen ; 
 Theophilus, another son, was the High Priest who, during 
 the utmost virulence of the first persecution gave Saul his 
 inquisitorial coromission to Damascus ; Matthias, another 
 son, must, from the date of his elevation, have heen one of 
 those leading Jews whom Herod Agrippa • tried to con- 
 ciliate by the murder of James the son of Zebedee ; and 
 another Hanan, the youngest son of the " viper brood " 
 brought about with illegal violence the murder of James 
 the brother of the Lord.^ Thus all these judicial murders 
 — so rare at this epoch — were aimed at the followers of 
 Jesus, and all of them directed or sanctioned by the 
 cunning, avaricious, unscrupulous members of a single 
 family of Sadducean priests.^ 
 
 Stephen, then, was hurried away to execution with a 
 total disregard of the ordinary observances. His thoughts 
 were evidently occupied with the sad scene of Calvary ; it 
 would come home to him with all the greater vividness 
 because he passed in all probability through that very gate 
 through which Jesus, four short years before, had borne 
 His cross. It was almost in the words of his Master' 
 that when the horrid butchery began— for the precautions 
 to render death speedy seem to have been neglected in 
 the blind rage of his murderers — he exclaimed, "Lord 
 Jesus receive my spirit."* And when bruised and bleed- 
 ing he was just able to drag himself to his knees it 
 
 ' Jos. Antt. xviii. 4, 3; 5, 3 ; six. 6, 2 ; xx. 9, 1. 
 
 2 Every epithet I have used is more than justified by what we know of 
 this family from the New Testament, from Josephus, and, above all, from the 
 Talmud. See Excursus YII., "The Power of the Sanhedrin to Inflict 
 Death." 
 
 ^ Luke xxiii. 34, 46. 
 
 * imKaK6vij.ivov means "calling on Jesus." There is no need for the 
 higenious conjecture of Bentley that m is lost by homoeoteleuton of the ON. 
 
DEATH or STEPHEN. 167 
 
 was again in the spirit of that Lord that he prayed 
 for his murderers, and even the cry of his anguish 
 rang forth in the forgiving utterance — showing how 
 little malice there had heen in the stern words he had 
 used before — " Lord, lay not to their charge this sin."^ 
 With that cry he passed from the wrath of men to the 
 peace of God. The historian ends the bloody tragedy 
 with one weighty and beautiful word, " He fell asleep."^ 
 
 To fulfil their dreadful task, the witnesses had taken 
 off their garments;* and they laid them "at the feet of 
 a young man whose name was Saul." 
 
 It is the first allusion in history to a name, destined 
 from that day forward to be memorable for ever in the 
 annals of the world. And how sad an allusion ! He 
 stands, not indeed actively engaged in the work of death ; 
 but keeping the clothes, consenting to the violence, of 
 those who, in this brutal manner, dimmed in blood the 
 light upon a face which had been radiant as that of an 
 angel with faith and love. 
 
 Stephen was dead, and it might well have seemed 
 that all the truth which was to be the glory and the 
 strength of Christianity had died with him. But the 
 
 1 TMs — ^not as in the received text — ^is the proper order of the words 
 (», A, B, 0, D). " Saevire videbatur Stephanus : lingua ferox, cor lene " 
 (Aug. 8erm. 315). " Si Stephanus non orasset ecclesia Paxdum non habuisset.'' 
 With the expression itself comp. Rev. xiv. 13. Perhaps in the word o-tVis 
 we may see an allusion to the Jewish notion that a man's sins actually fol- 
 lowed and stood by him in the world to come (1 Tim. v. 24 j Sotdh, f. 3, 2.). 
 
 =■ So in a beautiful epigram of the Anthology, we find the lines, hphv Stcok 
 KOifiurai • 8vfi(rK€ir /lii \eyi rohs St.ya9ois. It is the Neshikdh of the Jews (Deut. 
 xxxiv. 8). ■ That the solemn rhythmical epitrite 4icoifL'liev is not wholly uninten- 
 tional seems to be clear from the similar weighty 'amixOTwj with which, as 
 Bishop "Wordsworth points out, the Acts of the Apostles ends. St. Luke is 
 evidently fond of paronomasia, as well as St. Paul (cf. iear7)^til>Sriiraii SiTiiiacrBrivai, 
 Acts V. 41). This is the third recorded death in the Christian commimity: 
 the first had been a suicide, the second a judgment, the third a nmrtyrdom. 
 
 ' This custom is not alluded to in the Mishna or Gemara. 
 
168 THE LIFE AND "WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 deliverance of tlie Grentiles, and their free redemption 
 by the blood of Christ, were truths too glorious to be 
 quenched. The truth may be suppressed for a time, even 
 for a long time, but it always starts up again from its 
 apparent grave. Fra Dolcino was torn to pieces, and 
 Savonarola and Huss were burnt, but the Reformation 
 was not prevented. Stephen sank in his blood, but his 
 place was taken by the young man who stood there to 
 incite his murderers. Four years after Jesus had died 
 upon the cross of infamy, Stephen was stoned for being - 
 His disciple and His worshipper; thirty years after the 
 death of Stephen, his deadliest opponent died also for the 
 same holy faith. 
 
mok Mi. 
 
 THE CONVERSION. 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SAUIi THE PERSECUTOB.. 
 
 irorl xiyrpov S4 toi \aicTi(eiiey 
 
 Te\e0ei oXlaBijpos ol/ios. — PlND. Pyth. ii. 173. 
 
 " At a young ifiaii's feet." The expression is vague, but 
 tliere is good reason to believe tbjit Saul was now not less 
 than thirty years old.^ The reverence for age, strong 
 among all Orientals, was specially strong among the 
 Jews, and they never entrusted authority to those who 
 had not attained to full years of discretion. We may 
 regard it as certain that even a scholar of Gramaliel, so 
 fuU of genius and of zeal as Saul, would not have been 
 appointed a commissioner of the Sanhedrin to carry out a 
 responsible inquisition earlier than the age of thirty; and 
 if we attach a literal meaning to the expression, " When 
 they were being condemned to death, I gave a vote 
 against them,"^ this implies that Saul was a member 
 of the Sanhedrin. If so, he was at this time, by the 
 very condition of that dignity, a married man.* 
 
 ^ Josephns nses veavlas of Agrippa I. when he must have been at least 
 forty {Antt. xviii. 6, 7 ; v. gwpra, p. 13). 
 
 ' Acts xxvi. 10, hvaipoviievuv re avruv kot^<'«7KO ^li^ov. 
 
 ' Selden, Be Synedr. ii. 7, 7. In the Mishna the only qnalifications men- 
 tioned for membership of the Sanhedrin are that a man mast not be a dicer, 
 usurer, pigeon-flyer, or dealer in the produce of the Sabbatical year (Scmhedr. 
 
170 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 But if the regulation that a Sanhedrist must be a married 
 man was intended to secure the spirit of gentleness/ the 
 rule had failed of its purpose in the case of Said. In the 
 terrible persecution of the Christians which ensued — a per- 
 secution far more severe than the former attacks of the 
 Sadducees on the Apostles— he was the heart and soul of 
 the endeavour to stamp out the Christian faith. Not 
 content with the flagging fanaticism of the Sanhedrin, 
 he was at once the prime mover and the chief executor 
 of religious vengeance. The charge which had cost 
 St. Stephen his life must have been partially valid against 
 others of the Hellenistic Christians, and altho.ugh their 
 views might be more liberal than those of the Galilsean 
 disciples, yet the bonds of affection between the two 
 branches of the Church were still so close that the fate 
 of one section could not be dissevered from that of the 
 other. The Jews were not natm-ally fond of persecution. 
 The Sanhedrin of this period had incurred the charge 
 of disgraceful laxity. The Sicarii were not suppressed; 
 the red heifer was slain no longer;^ the ordeal of the 
 bitter water had been done away, because the crime of 
 adultery had greatly increased.' Eabbi Joshua Ben Korcha, 
 when R. EUeser had arrested some thieves, reproached him 
 
 iii. 3) ; but in the Gemara, and in later Jewish writers, we find that, besides 
 the qualification mentioned in Exod. xviii. 21, and Deut. i. 13-16, a candidate 
 must be free from every physical blemish, stainless in character, learned in 
 science, acquainted with more than one language, and with a family of his 
 own, because such were supposed to be less inclined to cruelty, and more 
 likely to sympathise with domestic affections, (iforajoife, i. 4; Sanhedr.t 
 17, 1, 36, 6.; Menachoth, f. 65, 1 ; Maimon. Sanhecb: ii. ; Otho, Lex Bahb. s. t.) 
 "Whatever may be thought of the other qualifications, it is probable that this 
 one, at any rate, was insisted on, and it adds force to our impression that 
 St. Paul had once been a married man (1 Cor. vii. 8 ; v. mpra, p. 79, sq. 
 See Ewald, Sendschr. d. Ap. Paul, p. 161; Gesch. d. Apost. ZeitaU., p. 371.) 
 
 ' See Surenhus. Mishna, iv. Praef. ^ Sotah, f . 47, 1. 
 
 2 Maimon. in Sotah, c. 3. They quoted Hos. iv. 14 in favour of this 
 abolition of Num. v. 18 ; cf. Matt. xii. 39; xvi 4. 
 
THE SANHBDEIN. 171 
 
 with the words, " How long will you hand over the people 
 of Grod to destruction ? Leave the thorns to be plucked 
 up by the Lord of the vineyard."^ But to the seducer 
 {mesltli), the blasphemer {megadeph), and the idolater, there 
 was neither leniency nor compassion.^ By the unanimous 
 testimony of the Jews themselves, Christians could not be 
 charged with the crime of idolatry ;* but it was easy to 
 bring them under the penalty of stoning, which was 
 attached to the former crimes. The minor punishments 
 of flagellation, and excommunication seem to have been in 
 the power, not only of the Sanhedrin, but even of each 
 local synagogue. Whatever may have been the legal 
 powers of, these bodies, whatever licences the temporary 
 relaxation of Roman supervision may have permitted,* 
 they were used and abused to the utmost by the j^outhful 
 zealot. The wisdom of the toleration which Gamaliel him- 
 self had recommended appears in the fact that the great 
 persecution, which broke up the Church at Jerusalem, was 
 in every way valuable to the new religion. It dissipated 
 the Judaism which would have endangered the spread of 
 Christianity, and showed that the disciples had a loftier 
 mission than to dwindle down into a Galilsean synagogue. 
 The sacred fire, which might have burnt low on the 
 hearth of the upper chamber at Jerusalem, was kindled 
 into fresh heat and splendour when its brands were 
 scattered over all Judaea and Samaria, and uncircumcised 
 Gentiles were admitted by baptism into the fold of Christ. 
 The solemn burial of Stephen by holy men — ^whether 
 Hellenist Christians or Jewish proselytes — ^the beating of 
 
 1 BaVha Mdzia, f . 82, 2 ; Otho, Lex Bdbh., a. v. Synedrium. 
 
 a Deut. xiii. 8, 9 ; Sanhed/r. f. 29, 1 ; 32, 3. _ _ 
 
 ' There is not one word about the Christians in the tract, AbhSda Za/ra, 
 or on " alien worship." 
 
 < Marcellus, who was at this time an ad interim governor, held the rank, 
 not of Procui-ator, fryf/i^y, hut only of imii.eMri\s (Jos. Antt. xviii. 4, § 2). 
 
172 THE LIFE AND ■WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 the breas-fcfthe wringing of the hands with which they 
 lamented him,^ produced no change in the purpose of Saul. 
 The sight of that dreadful execution, the dying agonies 
 and crushed remains of one who had stood before the 
 Sanhedrin like an angel in the beauty of holiness, could 
 hardly have failed to produce an impression on a heart so 
 naturally tender. But if it was a torture to witness the 
 agony of others, and to be the chief agent in its inflic- 
 tion, then that very torture became a more meritorious 
 service for the Law. If his own blameless scrupulosity 
 in all that affected legal righteousness was beginning 
 to be secretly tainted with heretical uncertainties, he 
 would feel it all the more incumbent on him to wash" 
 away those doubts in blood. Like Cardinal Pole, when 
 Paul IV. began to impugn' his orthodoxy, he must 
 have felt himself half driven to persecution, in order to 
 prove his soundness in the faith. 
 
 The part which he played at this time in the horrid 
 work of persecution has, I fear, been always underrated. 
 It is only when we collect the separate passages — they 
 are no less than eight in number — in which allusion 
 is made to this sad period — it is only when we weigh 
 the terrible significance of the expressions used — ^that 
 we feel the load of remorse which must have lain upon 
 him, and the taunts to which he was liable from malig- 
 nant enemies. He " made havoc of"' — literally, " he was 
 ravaging" — the Church.^ No stronger metaphor could well 
 have been used. It occurs nowhere else in the New Testa- 
 ment, but in the Septuagint, and in classical Greek, is 
 applied to the wild boars which uproot a vineyard.' Not 
 
 ' Acts Tiii. 2, Kojrerbs fifyas. The word is found in the LXX., Gen. 1. 10, 
 &e., hut here alone in the New Testament. 
 ' Acts viii. 3, iKunaivero TJ|</ iKKAiifflav. 
 
 " Ps, Ixxix. 14; Callim. Synrn m Bian. 156. eritt fyy'* <^« *«"■* 
 
 Av/ialvovrcUt 
 
SAUL AN INQinSITOE. 173 
 
 content with tlie visitation of tlie synagogues, te got 
 authority for an inquisitorial visit from house to house, 
 and even from the sacred retirement of the Christian 
 home he dragged not only men, but women, to judgment 
 and to prison.^ So thorough was his search, and so deadly 
 were its . effects, that, in referring to it, the Christians of 
 Damascus can only speak of Saul as " he that devastated 
 in Jerusalem them that call on this name,"^ using the 
 strong word which is strictly applicable to an invad- 
 ing army which scathes a conquered country with fire 
 and sword. So much St. Luke tells us, in giving a 
 reason for the total scattering of the Church, and the 
 subsequent blessings which sprang from their preaching 
 the Word in wider ■ districts. The Apostles, he adds, 
 remained. What was the special reason for this we do jiot 
 ]^now ; but as the Lord's direct permission to the seventy 
 to fly before persecution' would have sanctioned their 
 consulting their own safety, it may have been because 
 Jesus had bidden them stay in Jerusalem till the end 
 of twelve years.* If, as St. Chrysostom imagines, they 
 stayed to support the courage of others, how was it 
 that the shepherds escaped while the flock was being 
 destroyed ? Or are we to infer that the main fmy of the 
 persecution fell upon those Hellenists who shared the 
 views of the first martyr, and that the Apostles were 
 saved from molestation by the blameless Mosaism of which 
 one of the leading brethren — no less a person than James, 
 the Lord's brother — was so conspicuous an example ? Be 
 
 * These hostile measures are summed up in the Sffo kokA iiroi-nae roTs oyfois 
 of Ananias, who says that the rumour had reached him from many sources 
 (Acts ix. 13). 
 
 ^ Acts ix. 21, 6 TropP7i<rat. 
 
 3 Matt. X. 23. 
 
 •• A brief visit to Samaria " to confirm the churches" (Acts Tiii. 14) would 
 not militate against this command. 
 
174, THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 tTiat as it may, at any rate ttey did not fall victims 
 to tlie rage wHcli was so fatal to many of tlieir coni- 
 panions. 
 
 In two o£ his speeches and four of his letters does 
 St. Paul revert to this .crime of an erring obstinacy. Twice 
 to the Galatians does he use the same strong metaphor 
 which was applied to his conduct hy the Damascene 
 believers.^ He tells the Corinthians^ that he was "the 
 least of the Apostles, not meet to be called an Apostle, 
 because he persecuted the Church of God." He reminds 
 the Philippians* that his old Hebraic zeal as a Pharisee 
 had shown itself by his " persecuting the Church." 
 And even when the shadows of a troubled old age were 
 beginning to close around him, keen in the sense that he 
 was utterly forgiven through Him who " came into the 
 world to save sinners, of whom I am chief," he cannot 
 forget the bitter thought that, though in ignorance, he 
 had once been " a blasphemer, and persecutor, and inju- 
 rious."* And when he is speaking to those who knew 
 the worst — in his speech to the raging mob of Jeru- 
 salem, as he stood on the steps of the Tower of 
 Antonia — he adds one fact more which casts a lurid 
 light on the annals of the persecution. He shows 
 there that the blood of Stephen was not the only blood 
 ithat had -been shed — not the only blood of which the 
 stains had incarnadined his conscience. He tells the mob 
 ;not only of the binding and imprisonment of women as 
 well as men, but also that he "persecuted this way 
 ■unto the death." ^ Lastly, in his speech at Caesarea, 
 'he adds what is perhaps the darkest touch of all, for he 
 says that, armed with the High Priest's authority, he 
 
 1 Gal. i. 13, where he also says that he persecuted them beyond measure 
 /(koA' iirep^oXiv) ; and i. 23. 
 
 -*il Cor. XT. 9. 8 Phil. iii. 6. * 1 Tim. i. 13. » Acts xxii. 4. 
 
COMPELLING TO BLASPBEMB. 175 
 
 not only fulfilled xmwittmgly the prophecy of Christ^ by 
 scourging the Christians "often" and "in every syna- 
 gogue," hut that, "uihen, if came to a question of death, he 
 gave his vote against them, and that he did his best to 
 compel them to blaspheme? I say " did his best," because 
 the tense he uses implies effort, but not necessarily success. 
 Pliny, in a passage of his famous letter to Trajan firom 
 Bithynia,* says that, in questioning those who, in anony- 
 mous letters, were accused of being " Christians," he 
 thought it sufficient to test them by making them ofEer 
 wine and incense to the statues of the gods and the bust 
 of the emperor, and to blaspheme the name of Christ; 
 and, if they were willing to do this, he dismissed them 
 without further inquiry, because he had been informed 
 that to no one of these things coidd a genuine Christian 
 ever be impelled. 
 
 We do not know that in all the sufferings of the 
 Apostle any attempt was ever made to compel him to 
 blaspheme. With all the other persecutions which he 
 made the Christian suffer he became in his future life 
 too sadly familiar. To the last dregs hi lonely and 
 nnpitied martyrdom he drank the bitter cup of merciless 
 persecution. Five times — ^in days when he was no longer 
 the haughty Babbi, the self-righteous Pharisee, the fierce 
 legate of the Sanhedrin armed with unlimited authoriiy 
 for the suppression of heresy, but was himself the scorned, 
 
 * Matt. X. 17; Murk sHL 9. 
 
 * Acts XTfi 11, ^r&rttnior fihwr^tif^a. There is a posEilnHty that in the 
 txr* Smirm of the preyions passage, and tiie mr^reycB if>q^a» of this, St. Paul 
 may aUnde to his own endeaTonr (cf . GiaL tL 12) to haTO them eqaitaOy 
 punished, without implying- that the Tote was earned. I have translated 
 the irmpoapLfrttr SO as to admit of this meaning, which, perhqps, aeqoires a 
 shade of additional probability from Heb. siL 4, " Te haye not yet resisted 
 unto blood," if that E^sQe was specially addressed to Palestinian Jews. 
 
 * Plin. JEp. X. 97 . ... "praeterea maledieere Christo; quorum wOtQ 
 eogi posse diamtur qni simt rerera ChristianL'' 
 
176 THE LIFE Am) WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 hunted, hated, half-starved missionary of that Which 
 was branded as an apostate sect — five times, from the 
 authority of some ruler of the synagogue, did he 
 receive forty stripes save one. He, too, was stoned, and 
 betrayed, and many times imprisoned, and had the vote 
 of death recorded against him ; and in all th^s he recog- 
 nised the just and merciful flame that purged away the 
 dross of a once misguided soul — the light affliction which 
 he had deserved, but which was not comparable to the far 
 more eternal weight of glory. In all this he may have 
 even rejoiced that he was bearing for Christ's sake that 
 which he had made others bear, and passing through the 
 same furnace which he had once heated sevenfold for 
 them. But I doubt whether any one of these suiFerings, 
 or all of them put together, ever wrung his soul with the 
 same degree of anguish as that which lay in the thought 
 that he had used all the force of his character and all 
 the tjrranny of his intolerance to break the bruised reed 
 and to quench the smoking flax — that he had endeavoured, 
 by the infamous power of terror and anguish, to compel 
 some gejitle heart to blaspheme its Lord. 
 
 The great persecution with which St. Paul was thus 
 identified — and which, from these frequent allusions, as 
 well as from the intensity of the language employed, 
 seems to me to have been more terrible than is usually 
 admitted — did not spend its fury for some months. 
 In Jerusalem it was entirely successful. There were 
 no more preachings or wonders in Solomon's Porch; no 
 ■more throngs that gathered in- the streets to wait the 
 rpassing shadow of Peter and John ; no more assembled 
 -multitudes in the house of Mary, the mother of St. 
 Mark. If the Christians met, they met in mournful 
 •secrecy and diminished numbers, and the Love-feasts, 
 if held at all, must have been held as in the early days 
 
SAUL'S FURT. 177 
 
 before the Ascension, with, doors closed, for fear of tlie 
 Jews. Some of tlie Ckristians had suffered cruelly for 
 their religion ; the faithless members of the Church 
 had doubtless apostatised; the majority had fled at once 
 before th.e storm.^ 
 
 It is, perhaps, to indicate tbe continuance of this 
 active hostility that St. Luke here inserts the narrative 
 of Philip's preaching as a fitting prelude to the work 
 of the Apostle of the Grentiles. At this narrative we 
 shall glance hereafter ; but now we must follow the career 
 of Saul the Inquisitor, and see the marvellous event which, 
 by one Hghtning flash, made him " a fusile Apostle " — 
 which in one day transformed Saul the persecutor into 
 Paul the slave of Jesus Christ. 
 
 His work in Jerusalem was over. The brethren who re- 
 mained had either eluded his search.- warrant, or been rescued 
 from his power. But the young zealot was not the man 
 to do anything by halves. If he had smitten one head of 
 the hydra,^ it had grown up in new places. If he had 
 torn up the heresy by the roots from the Holy City, the 
 winged seeds had aligbted on other fertile ground, and 
 the rank weed was still luxuriant elsewbere ; so that, in 
 his outrageous madness — ^it is his own expression^ — he 
 began to pursue tbem even to foreign cities. Damascus, 
 he had heard, was now the' worst nest of this hateful de- 
 lusion, and fortunately in that city he could find scope for 
 action ; for the vast multitude of Jews which it contained 
 acknowledged allegiance to the Sanhedrin. To the High 
 Priest, tberefore, he went — unsated by all his previous 
 cruelties, and in a frame of mind so hot with rage that 
 
 * This is implied ia the iv ixilvri rf viiiptf, and in the aorist Sna-itdpritrav of 
 Acts viii. 1. 
 
 ' Domitian and Maximin struck medals of Hercules and the Hydra mth 
 the inscription " Deleta religione Christiana quae orbem turbabat." 
 
 ' Acts xxvi. 11, irfpuraus i/i/iaivSiuvos oiroJi. 
 
178 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATJL. 
 
 again it can only be described by tbe unparaUeled pbrase 
 tbat lie was " breatbing threats and slaughter against tbe 
 disciples of the Lord."^ The High Priest— in all proba- 
 bility TheophHus, who was promoted by Vitellius at the 
 Pentecost of A.D. 37^ — was a Sadducee, and a son of the 
 hated house of Hanan. Yet it was with Saul, and not with 
 Theophilus, that the demand originated, to pursue the 
 heresy to Damascus.* Not sorry to find so thorough an 
 instrument in one who belonged to a different school 
 from his own — not sorry that the guilty responsibility 
 for " this man's blood " should be shared by Sadducees 
 with the followers of HUlel— Theophilus gave the 
 letters which authorised Saul to set up his court at 
 Damascus, and to bring from thence in chains all whom 
 he could find, both men and women, to await such mercy 
 as Stephen's murder might lead them to hope for at the 
 hands of the supreme tribunal.* In ordinary times — 
 when that Jewish autonomy, which always meant Jewish 
 intolerance, was repressed within stern limits by the 
 Eoman government — it would have been impossible to 
 carry out so cruel a commission. This might have been 
 urged as an insuperable difficulty if an incidental ex- 
 pression in 2 Cor. xi. 32 had not furnished a clue in 
 explanation of the circumstances. From this it appears 
 
 * Acts ix. 1, ifiirveuv &,Tr€i\TJs leal ^6yov^ 
 ^ Jos. Antt. xviii. 5, § 3. 
 
 s Acts ix. 2, " If he should find any of the way." The word XpurTiavuriiis 
 was invented later {infra, p. 297). The Jewish writers similarly speak of the 
 " derek ha-Notserlm," or " way of the Nazarenes." 
 
 * The repeated allusions to the punishment of women shows not only the 
 keenness of the search, hut also tlie large part played by Christian women 
 in the spread of that religion which first elevated their condition from the 
 degradation of the harem and the narrowness of the gynaeceum. These 
 women-martyrs of the great persecution were the true predecessors of those 
 Saints Catherine, and Barbara, and Lucia, and Agnes, and Dorothea, and 
 CneciUa, and Felicitas, who leave the light of their names on the annals of 
 Christian heroism. 
 
HARETH AT DAMASCUS. 179 
 
 that at this time the city was more or less in the hands 
 of Aretas or Hareth, the powerful Emir of Petra.'^ 
 Now there are notices in the Talmud which prove 
 that Hareth stood in friendly relations to the Jewish 
 High Priest,^ and we can see how many circumstances 
 thus concurred to create for Saul an exceptional oppor- 
 tunity to bring the Christians of Damascus under the 
 authority of the Sanhedrin. Never agaia might he find 
 so favourable an opportunity of eradicating the heresy of 
 these hated Nazarenes. 
 
 1 See Excnrsus VIII. -. " Damascus nnder Hareth." 
 
 ° A story is told that on one occasion the High Priest Simeon Ben 
 Kamhith was incapacitated from performing the duties of the Day of 
 Atonement, because, whUo familiarly talking with Hareth on the previous 
 evening, a di^op of the Emir's saliva had fallen on the High Priest's dress 
 (of. Niddah, f. 33, 2). 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 ' THE CONVERSION OF • SAUL. 
 
 , ■ • KOTt\/i09i;i» Svli ToO XpuTTOv 'ijjiroC. — ^Phil liL 12> 
 
 " Opfert freudig aus was ihr besessen 
 Was ihr einst gewesen, was ihr seyd ; 
 TJnd in einem seligen Vergessen 
 
 Schwinde die Vergangenheit." — Schilleb. 
 
 Armed with his credentials Saul started from Jerusaleua 
 for his journey of nearly 150 miles. That journey would 
 probably be performed exactly as it is now performed with 
 horses and mules, which are indispensable to the traveller 
 along those rough, bad roads, and up and down those 
 steep and fatiguing hills. Saul, it must be remembered, 
 was travelling in a manner very different from that of our 
 Lord and His humble followers. They who, in preaching 
 the Grospel to the poor, assumed no higher earthly dignity 
 than that of the carpenter of Nazareth and the fishermen 
 of Galilee, would go on foot with staff and scrip from 
 village to village, like the other "people of the land" whom 
 long-robed Scribes despised. Saul was in a very different 
 position, and the little retinue which was assigned him 
 would treat him with all the deference due to a Pharisee 
 and a Eabbi — a legate a latere of Theophilus, the powerful 
 High Priest. 
 
 But, however performed, the journey could not occupy 
 less than a week, and even the fiery zeal of the persecutor 
 would scarcely enable him to get rid of the habitual 
 leisureliness of Eastern travelling. And thus, as they 
 
A WEEE: op MUSESTG. 181 
 
 made their way along the difficult and narrow roads, Saul 
 would be doomed to a week of necessary reflection. 
 Hitherto, ever since those hot disputes in the synagogues 
 of Cilician Hellenists, he had heen living in a whirl of 
 business which could have left him but little time for 
 quiet thought. That active inquisition, those domiciliary 
 visits, those incessant trials, that perpetual presiding over 
 the scourgings, imprisonments, perhaps even actual stonings 
 of men and women, into which he had been plunged, 
 must have absorbed his whole energies, and left him no 
 inclination to face the difficult questions, or to lay the 
 secret misgivings, which had begun to rise in his 
 miild.-^ Pride — the. pride of system, the pride of nature, 
 the rank pride of the self-styled theologian, the exclusive 
 national Pharisaic pride in which he had been trained — 
 forbade him to examine seriously whether he might not 
 after all be in the wrong. Without humiKty there can 
 be no sincerity ; without sincerity, no attainment of the 
 truth. Saul felt that he could not and would not let 
 himself be convinced ; he could not and would not admit 
 that much of the learning of his thirty years of life 
 was a mass of worthless cobwebs, and that all the 
 
 ' See Rom. vii. 8, 9, 10. TMs pictnre of St. Paul's mental condition is no 
 mere imaginative touch ; from all such, both in this work and in my Life of Christ, 
 I have studiously abstained. It springs as a direct and inevitable conclusion 
 from his own epistles and the reproof of Jesus, " It is hard for thee to kick 
 against the goads." These words, following the " Why persecutest thou me ? " 
 imply, with inimitable brevity, " Seest thou not that lam the pursuer and thou 
 the pursued ? " What were those goads P There were no conceivable goads for 
 him to resist, except those which were wielded by his own conscience. The 
 stings of conscience, the anguish of a constant misgiving, inflicted wounds 
 which should have told him long brfore that he was advancing in a wrong 
 path. They were analogous to the warnings, both inward and outward, which 
 "forbade the madness" of the Mesopotamian sorcerer. Balaam, too, was 
 taught by experience how terrible a thing it is "to kick against the pricks." 
 The resisted inward struggles of St. Paul are also implied in the " calling" 
 of Gal. i. 15, preceding the "revelation." (See Monod, Ciru[ Discours, p. 168; 
 Stier, Beden d. A^ost. u. 299; Do Pressensfe, Trois Prem. Biedes, i. 434.) 
 
182 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 righteousness -with. wHcli lie had striven to hasten the 
 coming of the Messiah was as filthy rags. He could not 
 and would not admit the possibility that people like 
 Peter and Stephen could be right, while people Hke 
 himself and the Sanhedrin could be mistaken ; or that 
 the Messiah could be a Nazarene who had been crucified 
 as a malefactor; or that after looking for Him so 
 many generations, and making their whole religious life 
 turn on His expected Advent, Israel should have been 
 found sleeping, and have murdered Him when at last 
 He came. If haunting doubts could for a moment 
 thrust then^selyes into his thoughts, the vehement self- 
 assertion of contempt would sweep them out, and they 
 would be expiated by fresh zeal against the seductive 
 glamour of the heresy which thus dared to insinuate itself 
 like a serpent into the very hearts of its avengers. What 
 could it be but diabolic influence which made the words 
 and the arguments of these blasphemers of the Law and 
 the Temple fasten involuntarily upon his mind and 
 memory ? Never would he too be seduced into the posi- 
 tion of a mesith! Never would he degrade himself to 
 the ignorant level of people who knew not the Law and 
 were accursed ! 
 
 But the ghosts of these obstinate questionings would 
 not always be so laid. As long as he had work to do he 
 could crush by passion and energy such obtruding fancies. 
 But when his work was done — when there were in Jeru- 
 salem no more Hellenists to persecute — when even the 
 Gahlaeans had fled or been silenced, or been slain — ^then 
 such doubts would again thicken round him, and he would 
 hear the approach of them Kke the sound of a stealthy 
 footfall on the turf. "Was it not this that kindled his 
 excessive madness — this that made him still breathe out 
 threats and blood ? Was not this a part of the motive 
 
GOADS OF MISGIVma. 183 
 
 which had driYen him to the wily Sadducee with the 
 demand for a fresh commission? Would not this work 
 for the Law protect him from the perplexing complica- 
 tions of a win that plunged and struggled to resist the 
 agonising goad- thrusts of a ruinous misgiving ? 
 
 But now that he was journeying day after day towards 
 Damascus, how could he save himself from his own 
 thoughts? He could not converse with the attendants 
 who were to execute his decisions. They were mere suh- 
 ordinates — mere apparitors of the Sanhedrin — memhers, 
 perhaps/ of the Temple guard — ignorant Levites, whose 
 function it would he to drag with them on his return the 
 miserable gang of trembling heretics. We may be sure 
 that the vacuity of thought in which most men Hve was 
 for Saul a thing impossible. He could not help medi- 
 tating as the sages bade the religious Jew to meditate, 
 on- the precepts and promises of his own Law. For the 
 first time perhaps since he had encountered Stephen he 
 had the uninterrupted leisure to face the whole question 
 calmly and seriously, in the solitude of thoughts which 
 could no longer be sophisticated by the applause of Phari- 
 saic partisans. He was forced to go up into the dark 
 tribunal of his own conscience and set himself before 
 himself. More terrible by far was the solemnity, more 
 impartial the judgment of that stern session, than those 
 either of the Jewish Sanhedrin, or of that other 
 Areopagus in which he would one day stand. If there be 
 in the character any seriousness at all ; if the cancer of 
 conceit or vice have not eaten out aU of the heart that 
 is not frivolous and base, then how many a man's intel- 
 lectual conclusions, how many a man's moral life has been 
 completely changed — and for how many would they not at 
 this moment be completely changed — ^by the necessity for 
 serious reflection during a few days of linbroken leisure ? 
 
184 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 And so we may be quite sure tliat day after day, as lie 
 rode on under the morning sunligM or the "bright stars of 
 an Eastern night, ^e thoughts of Saul would be over- 
 whelmingly engaged. They would wander back over the 
 past ; they would glance sadly at the future. Those were 
 happy years in Tarsus; happy walks in childhood beside 
 "the silver Cydnus ;" happy hours in the school of Gamaliel, 
 where there first dawned upon his soul the glories of Moses 
 and Solomon, of the Law and the Temple, of the Priest- 
 hood and the chosen race. Those were golden days 
 when he listened to the promised triumphs of the Messiah, 
 and was told how near was that day when the Holy 
 Land should be exalted as the Lady of kingdoms, and 
 the vaunted strength of Eome, which now lay so heavy 
 on his subjugated people, be shattered like a potsherd! 
 But had not something of the splendour faded from these 
 more youthful dreams? What had the righteousness of 
 the Law done for him ? He had lived, as far as men 
 were concerned, an honourable life. He had been ex- 
 ceedingly zealous, exceedingly blameless in the traditions 
 of the fathers ; but what inward joy had he derived from 
 them? — what enlightenment? — what deliverance from 
 that law of his members, which, do what he would, still 
 worked fatally against the law in his mind? His sins of 
 pride and passion, and frailty — would not a jealous God 
 avenge them ? Was there any exemption at aU from the 
 Law's curse of "death?" Was there any deliverance at 
 all from this ceaseless trouble of a nature dissatisfied with 
 itself, and therefore wavering like a wave of the troubled sea? 
 
 Would the deliverance be secured by the coming of the 
 Messiah ? That advent for the nation would be triumph 
 and victory ; would it be for the individual also, peace of 
 conscience, justification, release from heavy bondage, for- 
 giveness of past sins, strength in present weakness ? 
 
THE FORGIYENESS OF SINS. 185 
 
 And then it must have flashed across him that these 
 Nazarenes, at any rate, whom he had heen hunting and 
 slaying, said that it would. For them the Messiah had 
 come, and certainly they had found peace. It was true 
 that their Messiah was despised and rejected; but was 
 not that the very thing which had been said of the 
 Servant of Jehovah in that prophecy to which they 
 always appealed, and which also said that which his 
 troubled conscience needed most : — 
 
 " Surely He hath borne our griefs and cajrried our 
 sorrows : yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of Grod, 
 and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, 
 He was bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement of our 
 peace was upon Him ; and with His stripes we are healed. 
 All we like sheep have gone astray ; we have turned every 
 one to his own way ; and the Lord hath laid on Him the 
 iniquity of us all."^ 
 
 This passage certainly gave a very different aspect 
 to the conception of the Messiah from any which 
 he had been taught to contemplate. Yet the Eabbis 
 had said that alli prophecies were Messianic. Jesus 
 had been crucified. A crucified Messiah was a horri- 
 ble thought; but was it worse than a Messiah who 
 should be a leper ? Yet here the ideal servant of 
 Jehovah was called a lepeK^ And if His physical con- 
 dition turned out to be meaner than Israel had always 
 expected, yet surely the moral conception, the spiritual 
 conception, as he had heard it from these hated Galilseans, . 
 was infinitely lovelier ! They spoke — and oh, undeniably 
 those were blessed words ! — of a Messiah through whom; 
 fchey obtained forgiveness of sins. 
 
 If this were true, what infinite comfort it brought!' 
 
 • Isa. liii. 4—6. 
 Isa. lii. 14, liiL 4, "stricken " Heb., c£. Lev, xiii. 13, Sanhei:. £. 98; 
 
186 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 how it ended tte hopelessness of the weary struggle ! 
 The Law, indeed, promised life to perfect obedience.^ But 
 who ever had attained, who could attain, to that perfect 
 obedience?^ Did he see it in the GrentUe world, who, 
 though they had not the Law of Moses, had their own law 
 of nature ? Did he see it in the Jewish world ? — alas, 
 what a depth of disappointment was involved in the very 
 question ! Was Hanan, was Caiaphas, was TheophUus, 
 was Ishmael Ben Phahi a specimen of the righteousness of 
 the Law ? And if, as was too true, Israel had not attained 
 — if he himself had not attained — to the law of righteous- 
 ness, what hope was there ?* Oh, the blessedness of him 
 whose unrighteousness was forgiven, whose sin was 
 covered ! Oh, the blessedness of him to whom the Lord 
 would not impute sin ! Oh, to have the infinite God who 
 seemed so far away brought near, and to see His face not 
 darkened by the cloud, not glaring through the pillar of 
 fire, but as a man seeth the face of his friend ! Oh that a 
 Man were a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from 
 the tempest, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary 
 land !* 
 
 And so, again and again, he would realise with a sense 
 of remorse that he was yearning for, that he was gliding 
 into, the very doctrines which he was persecuting to the 
 death. For to these Nazarenes their Son of Man was 
 indeed the image of the Invisible God. Could he be 
 right in thus striving to stamp out a faith so pure, so 
 
 ' Lev. xviii. 5 ; Gal. iii. 12. 
 
 * Rom. X. 5. 
 
 ' Rom. is. 31. Wien Rabbi Eleazar was sick, and AMblia rejoiced because 
 he feared that Eleazar had been receiidng his good things in this life, " AMbha," 
 exclaimed the sufEerer, "is there anything in the whole Law which I have 
 failed to fulfil ? " " Rabbi," replied Akibha, " thou hast taught me • There is 
 not a just man upon earth that doeth good, and sinneth not.' " Ecdes. vii. 20. 
 (8anhed/r., i. 101, 1.) 
 
 * lea. sxxii. 2. 
 
GOADS OF MISGIVING. 187 
 
 ennobKng ? For, whetlier it was heresy or not, ttat it 
 was pure and ennobling lie could not fail to acknow- 
 ledge. That face of Stephen which he had seen 
 bathed as with a light from heaven until it had been 
 dimmed in blood, must have haunted him then, as 
 we know it did for long years afterwards. Would 
 the Mosaic law have inspired so heavenly an enthusiasm ? 
 would it have breathed into the sufferers so infinite a 
 serenity, so bright a hope ? And where in aU the Holy 
 Pentateuch could he find utterances so tender, lessons so 
 divine, love so unspeakable, motives which so mastered 
 and entranced the soul, as these had found in the words 
 and in the love of their Lord? Those beatitudes 
 which he had heard them speak of, the deeds of 
 healing tenderness which so many attested, the parables 
 so full of divine illumination — the moral and spiritual 
 truths of a Teacher who, though His nation had cruci- 
 fied Him, had spoken as never man spake — oh. Who 
 was this who had inspired simple fishermen and ignorant 
 publicans with a wisdom unattainable by a HiUel or a 
 Gamaliel? Who was this to whom His followers turned 
 their last gaze and uttered their last prayer in death ; who 
 seemed to breathe upon them frOm the parted heavens a 
 glory as of the Shechinah, a peace that passed all. under- 
 standing ? Who was this who, as they declared, had risen 
 from the dead ; whose body certainly had vanished from 
 the rock-hewn sepulchre in which it had been laid; 
 whom these good Galilaeans-v these men who would 
 rather die than lie — witnessed that they had seen, that 
 they had heard, that He had appeared- to them in 
 the garden, in the upper chamber, on the public road, 
 to four of them upon the misty lake, to more than 
 five hundred of them at once upon the Galilsean hill? 
 Could that have been a right path which led him to 
 
188 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 persecute tliese ? could it be God's will wHcli tad driven 
 him so fiercely along a road that was stained in blood? 
 could lie be required to pass tbrougb those scenes of horror 
 in which he had haled the wife and the mother to prison, 
 
 ihhon% 
 
 ENGLISH WILES. 
 i p Q 1,0 ^0 
 
 7}/pti.Etr}linf;r<i,!y 
 
 MAP SHOWING THE ROADS PEOM JERUSALEM TO DAMASCUS. 
 
 and seen the coarse menials of the synagogue remorselessly 
 scourge men whose whole life was love and humility and 
 holiness? Had he after aU been mistaking pride for 
 faithfulness, and rage for zeal? Had he been murdering 
 the saints that were upon the earth, and them that ex- 
 celled in virtue? Was Gamaliel right in suggesting the 
 
NEAR DAMASCUS. 189 
 
 possibility that in meddling witli tliese men they might 
 haply be fighting against Grod ? 
 
 So day by day, his mind fiUed more and more with 
 distracting doubts, his imagination haunted by sights of 
 cruelty which, in spite of all zeal, harrowed up his soul, 
 he journeyed on the road to Damascus. Under ordinary 
 circumstances he might have felt an interest in the 
 towns and scenes through which he passed — in Bethel 
 and Shiloh — ^in the soft green fields that lie around the 
 base of Mount Grerizim — in Jacob's tomb and Jacob's well 
 — ^ia Bethshean, with its memories of the miserable end of 
 that old king of his tribe whose name he bore — ia the 
 blue glimpses of the Lake of Galilee with its number- 
 less memorials of that Prophet of Nazareth whose 
 followers he was trying to destroy. But during these 
 days, if I judge rightly, his one desire was to press on, 
 and by vehement action to get rid of painful thought. 
 
 And now the journey was nearly over. Hermon had 
 long been gleaming before them, and the chain of Anti- 
 libanus. They had been tra,versing a bare, bleak, glaring, 
 undulating plain, and had reached the village of Kaukab, 
 or "the Star." At that point a vision of surpassing 
 beauty bursts upon the eye of the weary traveller. Thanks 
 to the " golden Abana " and the winding Pharpar, which 
 flow on either side of the ridge, the wilderness blossoms 
 Hke the rose. Instead of brown and stony wastes, we 
 begin to pass under the flickering shadows of ancient 
 olive-trees. Below, out .of a soft sea of verdure — amid 
 masses of the foliage of walnuts and pomegranates and 
 palms, steeped in the rich haze of sunshine — rise the white 
 terraced roofs and glittering cupolas of the immemorial 
 city of which the beauty has been compared in every age 
 to the beauty of a Paradise of God. There amid its 
 gardens of rose, and groves of delicious fruit, with the 
 
190 TKE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 gleam of waters that flowed tlirough it, flooded with the 
 gold of breathless morn, lay the eye of the East.^ To that 
 land' of streams, to that city of fountaias, to that 
 Paradise of Grod, Saul was hastening — not on messages of 
 mercy, not 'to add to the happiness and beauty of the 
 world — ^but to scourge and to slay and to imprison, 
 those perhaps of all its inhabitants who were the 
 meekest, the gentlest, the most pure of heart. And 
 Saul, with all his tenacity of purpose, was a man of 
 almost emotional tenderness of character.^ Though zeal 
 and passion might hurry him into acts of cruelty, they 
 could not crush within him the instincts of sympathy, and 
 the horror of suffering and blood. Can we doubt that at 
 the sight of the lovely glittering city — like (if I may 
 again quote the Eastern metaphor) " a handful of pearls 
 in its goblet of emerald " — he felt one more terrible recoil 
 from his unhallowed task, one yet fiercer thrust from the 
 wounding goad of a reproachful conscience ? 
 
 It was high noon — and in a Syrian noon the sun shines 
 fiercely overhead in an intolerable blaze of boundless light ; 
 ■ — the cloudless sky glows like molten brass ; the white 
 earth under the feet glares like iron in the furnace ; the 
 whole air, as we breathe it, seems to quiver as though it 
 were pervaded with subtle flames. That Saul and his 
 comrades should at such a moment have still been pressing 
 forward on, their journey would seem to argue a troubled 
 impatience, an impassioned haste. GreneraUy at that time 
 of day the traveller wiU be resting in his khan, or lying 
 under the shelter of his tent. But it was Saul who 
 would regulate the movements of his little company ; and 
 Saul was pressing on. 
 
 Then suddenly all was ended — ^the eager haste, the 
 
 ' See Porter's Syria, p. 435. 
 
 ' See Adolpbe Monod's sermon, Les Larmes de St. Faul. 
 
AERESTED. 191 
 
 agonising struggle, the deadly mission, the mad infatua- 
 tion, the feverish desire to quench douht in persecution. 
 Eound them suddenly from heaven there lightened a great 
 light. ^ It was not Saul alone who was conscious of it. It 
 seemed as though the whole atmosphere had caught fire, 
 and they were suddenly wrapped in sheets of blinding 
 splendour. It might be imagined that nothing can 
 outdazzle the glare of a Syrian sun at noon j but this light 
 was more vivid than its brightness, more penetrating than 
 its flame. And with the light came to those who 
 journeyed with Saul an awful but unintelHgible sound. As 
 though by some universal flash from heaven, they were 
 all struck to earth together, and when the others had 
 arisen and had partially recovered from their terror, 
 Saul was stiU prostrate there. They were conscious that 
 something awful had happened. Had we been able to 
 ask them what it was, it is more than doubtful whether 
 they could have said. Had it been suggested to them that 
 it was some overwhelmingly sudden burst of thunder, some 
 inexpressibly vivid gleam of electric flame — some blinding, 
 suffocating, maddening breath of the sirocco — some rare 
 phenomenon unexperienced before or since — they might 
 not have known. The vision was not for them. They 
 saw the light above the noonday — they heard, and heard 
 with terror, the unknown sound which shattered the dead 
 hush of noon; but they were not converted by this 
 epiphany. To the Jew the whole earth was fuU of God's 
 visible ministrants. The winds were His spirits, the 
 flaming hies His messengers* the thunder was the voice 
 of the Lord shaking the cedars, yea, shaking the cedars 
 of Libanus. The bath-hol might come to him in sounds 
 
 1 Acts ix. 3, -KifiiiaTfai/iv, "lightened round." The word is again used 
 in sxii. 6, but is not found in the LXX., and is unknown to classical 
 Greek. 
 
192 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 wMcli none but lie could understand : others miglit say 
 it thundered when to him an angel spake.^ 
 
 But that which happened was not meant for those 
 who journeyed with Saul : ^ it was meant for him ; and 
 of that which he saw and which he heard he confessedly 
 could be the only witness. They could only say that a 
 light had shone from heaven, but to Saul it was a hght 
 from Him who is the light of the City of Grod — a ray 
 from the light which no man can approach unto.' 
 
 And about that which he saw and heard he never 
 wavered. It was the secret of his inmost being ; it was 
 the most unalterable conviction of his soulj it was the 
 very crisis and most intense moment of his life. Others 
 might hint at explanations or whisper doubt : * Saul knew. 
 At that instant God had shown him" His secret and His 
 covenant. Grod had found himj had flung him to the 
 ground in the career of victorious outrage, to lead him 
 henceforth in triumph, a willing spectacle to angels and to 
 men.® God had spoken to him, had struck him into dark- 
 ness out of the noonday, only that He might kindle a noon 
 in the midnight of his heart. From that moment Saul 
 was converted. A change total, utter, final had passed 
 over him, had transformed him. God had called him, had 
 
 1 John xii. 29. 
 
 'Acts ix. 7, fio-T^Keitroi/ liiiSeva $eaipoviiTes. Of. Dan. X. 7, " I Daniel alone saw 
 the -vision ; for the men that were with me saw not the vision ; but a great 
 qualdng fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves." So in Shemoth 
 Bdbha, sect. 2, f . 104, 3, it is said that others were with Moses, but that he alone 
 saw the burning bush (Exod. iii. 2). Similarly Hashi, at the beginning of his 
 commentary on Leviticus, says that when God called Moses the voice was 
 heard by him alone. 
 
 3 1 Tim. vi. 14—16 ; 2 Cor. xii. 1. 
 
 * We trace a sort of hesitating sneer in the Clementine Homilies, xvii. IS^ 
 " He who believes a vision .... may indeed be deceived by an evil demon, 
 .... which really is nothing, and if he asks who it is that appears " (with an 
 allusion to tIs il, Kupie, ix. 5), " it can answer what it will j "—■with very much 
 more to the same efEeot. 
 
 » 2 Cor. ii. 14 
 
PAUL AN EYEWITNESS OE CHRIST. 193 
 
 revealed His Son in tim/ liad given Mm grace and power 
 to become an Apostle to tlie Gentiles, had sent him forth 
 to preach the faith which he had once destroyed, had 
 shone in his heart to give " the light of the knowledge of 
 the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." " 
 
 And the means of this mighty change all lay in this 
 one fact: — at that awful moment he had seen the Lord 
 Jesus Christ? To him the persecutor — to him as to the 
 abo;rtive-born of the Apostolic family* — the risen, the 
 glorified Jesus had appeared: He had " been apprehended 
 by Christ." On that appearance all his faith was 
 founded; on that pledge of resurrection — of immor- 
 tality to himself, and to the dead who die in Christ, — 
 all his hopes were anchored.® If that belief were un- 
 substantial, then all his life and all his labours were a 
 delusion and a snare — he was a wretch more to be pitied 
 than the wretchedest of the children of the wqrld. But if 
 an angel from heaven preached a different doctrine -it was 
 false, for he had been taught by the revelation of Jesus 
 Christ, and if this hope were vain, then to him 
 
 " The pillared firmament was rottenness, 
 And earth's base built on stubble." 
 
 The strength of this conviction became the leading 
 force- in Paul's future life. He teUs us that when the 
 blaze of glory lightened round him he was struck to the 
 earth, and there he remained tiU the voice bade him rise, . 
 and when he rose his eyes were blinded ; — ^he opened them> 
 on darkness. Had he been asked about the long con- 
 troversies which have arisen in modern days, as to whether' 
 the appearance of the Eisen Christ to him was objective ■ 
 or subjective, I am far from sure that he would even have 
 
 » Acts Edi. 21 ; ssm. 17, 18 ; Gal. i. 15, 16. 
 « 2 Cor. iv. 6. * 1 Cor. xv. 8. 
 
 * 1 Oor. ix. 1; xv. 8; v. mpra, -p.^Sseq. ' 1 Cor. xv. 10—29.- 
 
 N 
 
194 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 understood them.^ He uses indeed of ttis very event the 
 term " vision." " I was not disobedient," lie says to King 
 Agrippa, " to the heavenly vision." ^ But the word used 
 for vision means " a waking vision," and in what conceiv- 
 able respect could St. Paul have been more overpoweringly 
 convinced that he had in very truth seen, and heard, and 
 received a revelation and a mission from the Eisen Christ ? 
 Is the essential miracle rendered less miraculous by a 
 questioning of that objectivity to which the language 
 seems decidedly to point ? Are the eye and the ear the 
 only organs by which definite certainties can be , conveyed 
 to the human soul? are not rather these organs the 
 poorest, the weakest, the most likely to be deceived? 
 To the eyes of St'. Paul's companions, Grod spoke" by* 
 the blinding light; to their ears by the awful sound; 
 but to the soul of His chosen servant He was visible 
 indeed in the excellent glory, and He spoke in the 
 Hebrew tongue ; but whether the vision and the voice 
 came through the duU organs of sense or in presen- 
 tations infinitely more intense, more vivid, more real, 
 more unutterably convincing to the spirit by which only 
 things spiritual are discerned — this is a question to which 
 those only wiU attach importance to ,whom the soul is 
 
 1 See 2 Cor. xi'i. 1. 
 
 ' Acts xxvi'. 19. Tp ovpavlif oirrao-fif. When Zacharias came out of the 
 Temple speechless, the people recognised that he had seen an oirroir/o (Luke i. 
 22). The women returning from the tomb say they have seen an oirroirta 
 ayy4\uv (Luke xxiT. 23). The word, then, is peculiar to Luke and the Acts, as 
 are so many words. It is, however, the word used in the. passage of the 
 Corinthians just quoted, and the oTrrao-io there leaves him no certainty as to 
 whether it was corporeal or spiritual. The LXX. use it (Dan. ix. 23, &c.) 
 to render Jim-jd, which is used of a night vision in Gen. xlvi. 2. Phavorinus 
 distinctly says that gpa/io, whether by day or by night, is distinct from 
 Miryiop " dream," and it seems as if St. Luke, at any rate, meant by bwratria 
 something more objective than he meant by Hpafia (Acts ix. 10—12; xi. 5; 
 xii. 9 ; xvi. 9 ; xviii. 9) or ^itffTiwrij (Acts xi. 5 ; xxii. 17). "Opoo-is, in the ET. T., 
 only occurs in Kev, iv. 3; ix. 17 ; and in a quotation, Acts ii. 17. 
 
THE CONVERSION OF SAUL. 195 
 
 nothing but tlie material organism — who know of no 
 indubitable channels of intercourse between man and bis 
 Maker save those that come clogged with the imperfections 
 of mortal sense — and who cannot imagine anything real 
 except that which they can grasp with both hands. One 
 fact remains upon any hypothesis — and that is, that the 
 conversion of St. Paul was in the highest sense of 
 the word a miracle, and one of which the spiritual 
 consequences have affected every subsequent age of the 
 history of mankind.-"- 
 
 For though there may be trivial variations, obviously 
 reconcilable, and absolutely unimportant, in the thrice- 
 repeated accounts of this event, yet in the narration of 
 the main fact there is no shadow of variation, and no 
 possibility of doubt.^ And the main fact as St. Paul 
 always related and referred to it Was this — ^that, after 
 several days' journey, when they were now near Damascus, 
 some awful incident which impressed them all alike as an 
 infolding fire and a supernatural sound arrested their 
 progress, and in that light, as he lay prostrate on the earth, 
 
 * At sncli moments the spirit only lives, and the ^vxh, the aninml life, is 
 hardly adequate as an ipjavov XriirTiKhy to apprehend such revelations. See 
 Augustine, Be Genesi ad Liit. xii. 3. " La chose essentielle est que nous ne 
 perdions pas de vue le grand principe dvang^lique d'un contact direct de 
 I'esprit de Dieu avee celui de I'homme, contact qui ^chappe h I'analyse du 
 raisonnement . . . . Le mysticisme evangelique en revelant au sens chr6tien 
 un monde de miracles incessants, lui epargne la peine de se prdoccnper du 
 petit nombre de ceux qu' analysent contradictoirement le rationalisme critique 
 et le rationalisme orthodoxe" (Reuss, Hist. Apostolique, p. 114). "Christ 
 stood before me," said St. Teresa. " I saw Kim with the mfes of the soul more 
 distinctly than I could have seen Him with the eyes of the body" (Vida, 
 Vii. 11). 
 
 ^ It is superfluous to repeat the reconciliation of these small apparent con- 
 tradictions, because they are all reconciled and accounted for in the narrative 
 of the text. Had they been of the smallest importance, had they been such 
 as one moment of common sense could fail to solve, a -vrriter so careful as 
 St. Luke -would not have left them side by side. 
 
 N 2 
 
196 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 Saul saw a mortal stape ^ and heard a human voice saying 
 to him, " ShaM, ShaM "—for it is remarkable how the 
 vividness of that impression is incidentally preserved in 
 each form of the narrative^ — " why persecutest thou Me ? 
 It is hard for thee to kick against the goads."' But at 
 that awful moment Saul did not recognise the speaker,, 
 whom on earth he had never seen. "Who art Thou, 
 Lord ? " he said. And He — " I am Jesus of Nazareth 
 whom thou persecutest." 
 
 " Jesus of Nazareth !" Why. did the glorified speaker 
 here adopt the name of his obscurity on earth ? Why, as 
 St. Ohrysostom asks, did He not say, " I am the Son of 
 Grod ; the Word that was in the beginning ; He that sitteth 
 at the right hand of the Father; He who is in the form of 
 Grod "; He who stretched out the heaven ; He who made 
 the earth; He who levelled the sea; He who created 
 the angels ; He who is everywhere and filleth all things ; 
 
 1 This, though not in the Acts asserted in so many words in the direct 
 narrative, seems to be most obvionsly implied in the &<peTiv aoi of xxvi. 16, in 
 the contrast of the ^uTjSeVo ecwpoCvTcj of ix. 7, in the 'Vitaovs i o4>9ih <roi Iv xp 
 dS^ of ver. 17, in the ttSs iv t^ 48ij! ciSiy i-hv xipiov of verse 27, and in the already 
 quoted references (1 Cor. ix. 1 ; xv. 8). The remark of Ohrysostom,"" koI |uV 
 oliK li<pS7i aWi Stk irpayiiiTav &<p6ri, is meant to be perfectly sincere and honest, 
 but when compared with the above passage, seems to show less than the great 
 orator's usual ( are and discrimination. 
 
 2 Elsewhere he is always called SavXos, but here 'Saoix. 
 
 ^ This addition is genuine in Acts xxvi. 14 ; and 6 Nofaipoios certainly in 
 xxii. 8. Of the many illustrations quoted by Wetstein, and copied from > 
 him by subsequent commentators, the ' most apposite and interesting are 
 Maah. Agam. 1633, Prom. 323, Eur. Bacch. 791, Ter. Phorm. i. 22, 7. It 
 is, however, remarkable that though ox-goads were commonly used in the 
 East, not one single Eastern or Semitic parallel can be adduced. The 
 reference to Deut. xxxii. 16 is wholly beside the mark, though goads are 
 alluded to in Judg. iii. 31 ; Ecclus. xxxviii. 25. St. Paul would have been 
 naturally familiar with the common Greek proverbs, and those only wiU. be 
 startled that a Greek proverb should be addressed to him by his glorified Lord, 
 who can never be brought to understand the simple principle that Inspiration 
 must always speak (as even the Rabbis saw) "in the tongue of the sons 
 of men." 
 
 4 i 
 
THE RISEN CHEIST. 197 
 
 He who was pre-existent and was begotten ? " Wliy did 
 He not utter those awful titles, but, " I am Jesus of 
 Nazareth whom thou perseCutest" — from the- earthly- 
 city, from the earthly home ? Because His persecutor 
 knew Him not; for had he known Him he would 
 not have persecuted Him. He knew not that He 
 had been begotten of the Father, but that He was 
 from Nazareth he knew. Had He then said to him, 
 " I am the Son of Grod, the Word that was in the 
 beginning. He who made the heaven," Saul might 
 have said, " That is not He whom I am persecuting." 
 Had He uttered to him those vast, and bright, and lofty 
 titles, Saul might have said, " This is not the crucified." 
 But that he may know that he is persecuting Him who 
 was made fiesh,^ who took the form of a servant, who died, 
 who was buried, naming Himself from the earthly place. 
 He says, " I am Jesus of Nazareth whom thou perse- 
 cutest." This, then, was the Messiah whom he had hated 
 and despised — this was He who had been the Heavenly 
 Shepherd of his soul ; — He who to guide back his 
 wandering footsteps into the straight furrow had held in 
 His hand that unseen goad against which, like some 
 stubborn ox, he had struggled and kicked in vain. 
 
 And when the Voice of that speaker from out of the 
 unapproachable brightness had, as it were, smitten him to 
 the very earth with remorse by the sense of this awful 
 truth, — " But rise," it continued, " and stand upon thy feet, 
 and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou 
 must do." 
 
 This is the form in which the words are, with trivial 
 differences, given in St. Luke's narrative, and in St. Paul's 
 speech from the steps of Antonia. In his speech before 
 
 ' GhryBostom. adds, rhy /i^t' airoi cvyayaffTpafevra, but tbis I believe to be a 
 oiistaike. 
 
198 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATJi. 
 
 Agrippa, it miglit seem as if more had been spoken tlien . 
 But in this instance again it may be doubted whether, 
 after the first appalling question, " ShaM, ShaM, why 
 persecutest thou Me?" which remained branded so vividly 
 upon his heart, Paul could himself have said how much 
 of the revelation which henceforth transfigured his life 
 was derived from the actual moment when he lay blinded 
 and trembling on the ground, and how much from the 
 subsequent hours of deep external darkness and bright- 
 ening inward light. In the annals of human lives, there 
 have been other spiritual crises analogous to this in. their 
 startling suddenness, in their absolute finality. To many 
 the resurrection from the death of sin is a slow and life- 
 long process; but others pass with one thrill of conviction, 
 with one spasm of energy, from death to life, from the 
 power of Satan unto Grod. Such moments crowd eternity 
 into an hour, and stretch an hour into eternity. 
 
 " At such high, hours 
 Of inspiration from the Living God 
 Thought is not" 
 
 When God's awful warnings bum before the soul ia 
 letters of flame, it can read them indeed, and know 
 their meaning to the very uttermost, but it does not 
 know, and it does not care, whether it was Perez or 
 tJpharsin that was written on the wall. The utterances 
 of the Eternal Sibyl are inscribed on records scattered and 
 multitudinous as are the forest leaves. As the anatomist 
 may dissect every joint and lay bare every nerve of the 
 organism, yet be infinitely distant from any discovery of 
 the principle of life, so the critic and grammarian may 
 decipher the dim syllables and wrangle about the disputed 
 discrepancies, but it is not theirs to interpret. If we 
 would in truth understand such spiritual experiences, the 
 
THE CONVERSION OF SAUL. 199 
 
 records of tliem must be read by a ligbt tbat never was on 
 land or sea. 
 
 Saul rose another man : be bad fallen in deatb, be rose 
 in Hfe : be bad fallen in tbe midst of tbings temporal, be 
 rose in awful consciousness of tbe tbings eternal : be bad 
 fallen a proud, intolerant, persecuting Jew; be rose a 
 bumble, broken-bearted, penitent Cbristian. In tbat 
 moment a new element bad been added to bis being. 
 Hencefortb — to use bis own deep and dominant ex- 
 pression — be was " in Christ." God bad found bim ; 
 Jesus bad spoken to bim, and in one flash changed him 
 from a raging Pharisee into a true disciple — from the 
 murderer of tbe saints into tbe Apostle of the Grehtiles. 
 It was a new birth, a new creation. As we read the 
 story of it, if we have one touch of reverence within our 
 souls, shall we not take off our shoes from off our feet, 
 for tbe place whereon we stand is holy ground ? 
 
 Saul rose, and all was dark. Tbe dazzling vision had 
 passed away, and with it also tbe glittering city, the 
 fragrant gardens, tbe burning noon. Amazed and 
 startled, bis attendants took him by tbe hand and led 
 bim to Damascus. He bad meant to enter the city in all 
 the importance of a Commissioner from the Sanbedrin, to 
 be received with distinction, not only as himself a great 
 "pupil of tbe wise," but even as the representative of all 
 authority which tbe Jews held most sacred. And he had 
 meant to leave tbe city, perhaps, amid multitudes of bis 
 applauding countrymen, accompanied by a captive traiu of 
 be knew not bow many dejected Nazarenes. How different 
 were his actual entrance and bis actual exit ! He is led 
 through tbe city gate, stricken, dejected, trembling, 
 no longer breathing threats and slaughter, but longing 
 only to be the learner and the suppliant, and the lowest 
 brother among those whom be bad intended to destroy. 
 
200 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST, PAUL. 
 
 He was ignominiously let out of tlie city, alone, in im- 
 minent peril of arrest or assassination, through, a window, 
 in a basket, down the waU. 
 
 They led him to the house of Judas, in that long 
 street which leads through the city and is still called 
 Straight; and there, in remorse, in blindness, in bodily 
 suffering, in mental agitation, unable or unwilling to eat 
 or drink, the glare of that revealing light ever before his 
 darkened eyes, the sound of that reproachful voice ever in 
 his ringing ears. Said lay for three days. . None can ever 
 teU what things ia those three days passed through his 
 soul ; what revelations of the past, what lessons for the 
 present, what guidance fot the future. His old life, his 
 old self, had been torn up by the very roots, and though 
 now he was a new creature, the crisis can never pass 
 over any one without agonies and energies — without earth- 
 quake and eclipse. At last the tumult of his being found 
 relief in prayer ; and, ia a vision full of peace, he saw one 
 of those brethren for a visit from whom he seems hitherto 
 to have yearned in vain, come to him and heal him. This 
 brother was Ananias, a Christian, but a Christian held in 
 respect by aU the Jews, and therefore a fit envoy to come 
 among the Pharisaic adherents by whom we cannot but 
 suppose that Saul was still surrounded. It was not with- 
 out shrinking that Ananias had been led to make this 
 visit. He had heard of Saul's ravages at Jerusalem, and 
 his fierce designs against the brethren at Damascus; 
 nay, even of the letters of authority from the High 
 Priest which were still in his hand. He had heard, 
 too, of what had befallen him on the way, but it had 
 not wholly conquered his not unnatural distrust. A 
 divine injunction aided the charity of one who, as a 
 Christian, felt the duty of believing all things, and 
 hoping all things. The Lord, appearing to him in a 
 
ANANIAS. 201 
 
 dream, told him that tte zeal whicli had hiimed so 
 fiercely in the cause of Sadducees should henceforth he 
 a fiery angel of the Cross, — ^that this pitiless persecutor 
 should he a chosen vessel to carry the name of Christ 
 hefore Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. " For 
 I vnQ. show him," said the vision, " how much he 
 must suffer for My name."^ The good Ananias, hesi- 
 tated no longer. He entered into the house of Judas, 
 and while his very presence seemed to breathe peace, he 
 addressed the sufferer by the dear title of brother, and 
 laying his hands upon the clouded eyes, hade him rise, 
 and see, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. " Be bap- 
 tised," he added, " and wash away thy sins, caDing on the 
 name of the Lord." The words of blessing and trust were 
 to the troubled nerves and aching heart of the sufferer 
 a heahng in themselves. Immediately " there fell from 
 his «yes as it had been scales."* He rose, and saw, 
 and took food and was strengthened, and received from 
 the hands of his humble brother that sacrament by 
 which he was admitted into the full privileges of 
 the new faith. He became a member of the Church of 
 Christ, the extirpation of which had been for months 
 the most passionate desire and the most active purpose 
 of his life. 
 
 Fruitful indeed must have been the conversation which 
 he held with Ananias, and doubtless with other brethren, 
 IB the delicious cahn that followed this heart-shaking 
 moment of conviction. In those days Ananias must more 
 and more have confirmed, him in the high destiny which 
 the voice of revelation had also marked out to himself. 
 What became of his commission; what he did with the 
 
 ^ ** Fortia agere Bomaniim est ; f wtia pati Ghrisiiaimm " (Com. ii Lap.}. 
 * There is a remarkable' paiallei in Tob. xL 1% nl iKerla9ii imh tw Kij>9ia 
 
202 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 High Priest's letters; how Ms subordinates demeaned 
 themselves ; what alarming reports they took bact to 
 Jerusalem ; with wbat eyes he was regarded by the Judaic 
 synagogues of Damascus, — we do not know; but we do 
 know that in those days, whether they were few or many, 
 it became more and more clear to him that " God had 
 chosen him to know His will, and see that Just One, and 
 hear the voice of His mouth, and be His witness unto all 
 men of what he had seen and heard." ^ 
 
 And here let me pause to say that it is impossible to 
 exaggerate the importance of St. Paul's conversion as one 
 of the evidences of Christianity. That he should have 
 passed, by one flash of conviction, not only from darkness 
 to light, but from one direction of life to the very 
 opposite, is not only characteristic of the man, but evi- 
 dential of the power and significance of Christianity. 
 That the same man who, just before, was persecuting 
 Christianity with the most violent hatred, should come 
 all at once to believe in Him whose followers he had 
 been seeking to destroy, and that in this faith he 
 should become a " new creature " — what is this but 
 a victory which Christianity owed to nothing but the 
 speU of its own inherent power? Of all who have 
 been converted to the faith of Christ, there is not one 
 in whose case the Christian principle broke so imme- 
 diately through everything, opposed to it, and asserted 
 so absolutely its triumphant superiority. Henceforth 
 to Paul Christianity was summed up in the one word 
 Christ. And to what does he testify respecting Jesus? 
 To almost every single primarily important fact respecting 
 His Incarnation, Life, Sufferings, Betrayal, Last Supper, 
 Trial, Crucifixion, Eesurrection, Ascension, and Heavenly 
 
 i Acts xxii. 14 15, 
 
THE POWER OP OO'NYICTIGlir. 203 
 
 Exaltation.^ We complain ttat nearly two thousand years 
 liave passed away, and that tlie brightness of historical 
 events is apt to fade, and even their very outline to be 
 obliterated, as they sink into the " dark backward and 
 abysm of time." Well, but are we more keen-sighted, 
 more hostile, more eager to disprove the evidence, than 
 the consummate legalist, the admired rabbi, the com- 
 missioner of the Sanhedrin, the leading intellect in the 
 schools — learned as Hillel, patriotic as Judas of Graulon, 
 burning with zeal for the Law as intense as that 
 of Shammai ? He was not separated from the events, 
 as we are, by centuries of time. He was not liable 
 to be blinded, as we are, by the dazzling glamour of 
 a victorious Christendom. He had mingled daily with 
 men who had watched from Bethlehem to Golgotha the 
 life of the Crucified, — not only with His simple-hearted 
 followers, but with His learned and powerful enemies. 
 He had talked with the priesjfcs who had consigned Him 
 to the cross ; he had put to death the followers who had 
 wept beside His tomb. He had to face the unutterable 
 horror which, to any orthodox Jew, was involved in the 
 thought of a Messiah who " had hung upon a tree." He 
 had heard again and again the proofs which satisfied an 
 Annas and a Gamaliel that Jesus was a deceiver of the 
 , people.^ The events on which the Apostles relied, in proof 
 of His divinity, Jiad taken place in the full blaze of con- 
 temporary knowledge. He had not to deal with uncer- 
 tainties of criticism or assaults on authenticity. He could 
 question, not ancient documents, but living men ; he could 
 analyse, not fragmentary records, but existing evidence. 
 
 ^ See, among other passages, Rom. viii. 3, 11 ; 1 Tim. iii. 16 ; Rom. ix. 5 ; 
 2 Cor. i. 5 ; Col. L 20; 1 Oor. i. 23; ii. 2 ; v. 7; x. 16; Gal. vi. 19; Epl. 
 ii. 13; Rom. V. 6; vi. 4, 9; viii. 11; xiv. 15; xr. 3; 1 Oor. xv. jpassmj 
 Rom. X..6 ; Col. iii. 1 ; Eph. ii. 6 ; 1 Tim. iii. 16, &o. 
 
 » John Tii. 12, 47j ix. 16 j x. 20. 
 
•MM 
 
 WC 
 
 204 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 He had thousands of means close at liand whereby to test 
 the reality or unreality of the Eesurrection in which, up 
 to this time, he had so passionately and contemptuously 
 disbelieved. In accepting this half-crushed and whoUy 
 execrated faith he had everything in the world to lose — 
 he had nothing conceivable to gain ; and yet, in spite of 
 aU — overwhelmed by a conviction which he felt to be 
 irresistible — Saul, the Pharisee, became a witness of the 
 Resurrection, a preacher of the Cross. 
 
CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 THE RETIREMENT OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 " Thoa ekali have joy in sadness soon, 
 The pure calm hope be thine, 
 That brightens like the eastern moon 
 When day's mid lights decline." — Kehle. 
 
 Saul was now a " Nazarene," but many a year of thouglit 
 and training had to elapse before he was prepared for the 
 great mission of his life. 
 
 If, indeed, the Acts of the Apostles were our only 
 source of information respecting him, we should have 
 been compelled to suppose that he instantly plunged into 
 the work of teaching. " He was with the disciples in 
 Damascus certain days," says St. Luke ; " and immediately 
 in .the synagogues he began to preach Jesus, that He is 
 the Son of God ; " ^ and he proceeds to narrate the amaze- 
 ment of the Jews, the growing power of Saul's demon- 
 strations, and, after an indefinite period had elapsed, the 
 plot of the Jews against him, and his escape from 
 Damascus. 
 
 But St. Luke neither gives, nor professes to give, a 
 cotoplete biography. During the time that he was the 
 companion of the Apostle his details, indeed, are numerous 
 and exact ; but if even in this later part of his career he 
 never mentions Titus, or once alludes to the fact that St. 
 Paul wrote a single epistle, we cannot be surprised that 
 his noticfes of the Apostle's earlier career are fragmentary, 
 
 >.Acts ix. 19, 20. 
 
206 THE LIFE AND WORK DP ST. PAUL. 
 
 either because he knew no more, or Ijecause, in his brief 
 space, he suppresses all circumstances that did not bear on 
 his immediate purpose. 
 
 Accordingly, if we turn to the biographic retrospect 
 in the Epistle to the Galatians, in which St. Paul refers to 
 this period to prove the independence of his apostolate, we 
 find that in the Acts the events of three years have been 
 compressed into as many verses, and that, instead of 
 immediately beginning to preach at Damascus, he imme- 
 diately retired into Arabia.'- For "when," he says, "He 
 who separated me from my mother's womb, and called 
 me by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, 
 that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, imme- 
 diately I did not communicate with flesh and blood, nor 
 went I up to Jerusalem to those who were Apostles 
 before me, but I went away into Arabia, and again I 
 returned to Damascus." 
 
 ' I understand the ebeias of Gal. i. 16 as immediately succeeding St, 
 Paul's conversion ; the tbeius of Acts ix. 20 as immediately succeeding his 
 return to Damascus. . The retirement into Arabia must be interpreted as a 
 lacuna either at the middle of Acts ix. 19, or at the end of that versa, or 
 after verse 21. The reasons why I unhesitatingly assume the first of these 
 alternatives are given in the text. There is nothing to bo said for supposing 
 with Kuinoel and Olshausen that it was subsequent to the escape from 
 Damascus, which seems directly to contradict, or at any rate to render super- 
 fluous, the TrdMv of Gal. i. 17. We may be quite sure that St. Paul did not 
 talk promiscuously about this period of his life. No man, even with familiar 
 friends, will make the most solemn crises of his life a subject of common 
 conversation; and Paul was by no means a man to wear his heart upon his 
 sleeve. How many hundreds who read this passage will by a moment's 
 thought become aware that apart from written memoranda, and possibly 
 even with their aid, there is no one living who could write his own 
 biography with any approach to acom-acy P What reason is there for sup- 
 posing that it would have been otherwise with St. Paul ? What reason is 
 there for the supposition that he entrusted St. Luke with all the important 
 facts which had occurred to him, when we see that what St. Luke was able 
 to record about him neither portrayed one-fourth of his character nor pre- 
 served a memorial of one tithe of his sufEerings ? And it is to be observed 
 that in Acts xxii. 16, 17, where it had no bearing on his immediate subjeoti 
 St. Paul himself omits aU I'eference to this retirement into Arabia. 
 
NEED FOE RETIREMENT, 207 
 
 No one, I think; wlio reads this passage attentively 
 can deny that it gives the impression of an intentional re- 
 tirement from human intercourse. A multitude of writers 
 have assumed that St. Paul first preached at Damascus, 
 then retired to Arabia, and then returned, with increased 
 zeal and power, to preach in Damascus once more. Not 
 only is St. Paul's own language unfavourable to such a 
 view, but it seems to exclude it. What would aU psycho- 
 logical considerations lead us to think likely in the case 
 of one circumstanced as Saul of Tarsus was after his 
 sudden and strange conversion ? The least likely course 
 — the one which would place him at the greatest dis- 
 tance from all deep and earnest spirits who have passed 
 through a similar crisis — would be for him to have 
 plunged at once into the arena of controversy, and to 
 have passed, without pause or breathing-space, from the 
 position of a leading persecutor into that of a prominent 
 champion. In the case of men of shallow nature, or 
 superficial convictions, such a proceeding is possible ; but 
 we cannot imagine it of St. Paul. It is not thus with 
 souls which have been arrested in mid-career by the heart- 
 searching voice of God. Just as an eagle which has been 
 drenched and battered by some fierce storm will alight to 
 plume its ruffled wings, so when a great soul has " passed 
 through fire and through water " it needs some safe and 
 quiet place in which to rest. The lifelong convictions of 
 any man may be reversed in an instant, and that sudden 
 reversion often causes a marvellous change ; but it is never 
 in an instant that the whole nature and character of a 
 man are transformed from what they were before. It is 
 difficult to conceive of any change more total, any rift of 
 difference more deep, than that which separated Saul the 
 persecutor from Paul the Apostle ; and we are sure that — 
 like Moses, like Elijah, like our Lord Himself, like almost 
 
208 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 every great soul in ancient or modem times to whom has 
 been entrusted the task of swaying the destinies by mould- 
 ing the convictions of mankind — like Sakya Mouni, like 
 Mahomet in the cave of Hira, like St. Francis of Assisi 
 in his sickness, like Luther in the monastery of Erfurdt — 
 he would need a quiet period in which to elaborate his 
 thoughts, to stiU the tumult of his emotions, to com- 
 mune in secrecy and in silence with his own soul. It 
 was necessary for him to understand the Scriptures; to 
 co-ordinate his old with his new beliefs. It is hardly 
 too much to say that if Saul — ignorant as yet of many 
 essential truths of Christianity, alien as yet from the ex- 
 perience of its deepest power — had bfegun at once to argue 
 Avith and to preach to others, he could hardly have done the 
 work he did. To suppose that the truths of which after- 
 wards he became the appointed teacher were all revealed 
 to him as by one flash of light in all their fulness, is to 
 suppose that which is alien to Grod's dealings with the 
 human soul, and which utterly contradicts the phenomena 
 of that long series of Epistles in which we watch the 
 progress of his thoughts. Even on grounds of historic 
 probability, it seems unlikely that Saul should at once 
 have been able to substitute a propaganda for an inqui- 
 sition. Under such circumstances it would have been 
 difiicult for the brethren to trust, and still more difficult 
 for the Jews to tolerate him. The latter would have 
 treated him as a shameless renegade,^ the former would 
 have mistrusted him as a secret spy. 
 
 We might, perhaps, have expected that Saul would 
 have stayed quietly among the Christians at Damascus, 
 mingling unobtrusively in their meetings, listening to 
 them, learning of them, taking at their love-feasts the 
 
 ' They would have called him a "loio, one who had abandoned his leligiona 
 convictions. 
 
ST. PAUL'S INDEPENDENCE. 209 
 
 humblest place. We can hardly suppose that he cherished, 
 in these first days of his Christian career, the developed 
 purpose of preaching an independent Gospel. Assailed, as 
 he subsequently was, on all sides, but thwarted most of all 
 by the espionage of false brethren, and the calumnies of 
 those who desired to throw doubt on his inspired authority, 
 it was indeed a providential circumstance that the events 
 which followed his conversion were such as to separate 
 him as far as possible from the appearance of discipleship 
 to human instructors. As a Pharisee he had sat at the feet 
 of Gamaliel ; as a Christian he called no man his master. 
 He asserts, with reiterated earnestness, that his teaching 
 as weU as his authority, " his Gospel " no less than his 
 Apostleship, had been received immediately from God. 
 Indeed, the main object of that intensely interesting and 
 characteristic narrative which occupies the two first chap- 
 ters of the Epistle to the Galatians is to estabhsh the 
 declaration which he felt it necessary to make so strongly, 
 that "the Gospel preached by him was not a human 
 gospel, and that he did not even receive it from any 
 human being, nor was he taught it, but through revela- 
 tion of Jesus Christ."^ Had he not been able to assure 
 his converts of this — had he not been able to appeal' 
 to visions and revelations of the Lord — he might have 
 furnished another instance of one whose opinions have been 
 crushed and silenced by the empty authority of names. 
 It was from no personal feeling of emulation — a feeling 
 of which a soul so passionately in earnest as his is pro- 
 foundly incapable— but it was from the duty of ensuring 
 attention to the truths he preached that he felt it ta be 
 so necessary to convince the churches which he had 
 founded how deep would be their foUy if they allowed 
 
 1 Gal. i. 11, 12. 
 
210 THE LIFE AND "WORK OP ST, PAUL. 
 
 themselves to be seduced from the liberty of his Gospel 
 by the retrograde mission of the evangelists of bondage. 
 It was indispensable for the dissemination of the truth * 
 that he should be listened to as an Apostle " neither of 
 man, nor by any man, but by Jesus Christ, and Grod, who 
 raised Him from the dead." Had his Apoatleship 
 emanated from (aTro) the Twelve, or been conferred on 
 him by the consecrating act of (8*^) any one of them,-^ then 
 they might be supposed to have a certain superior com- 
 mission, a certain coercive power. If, as far as he was 
 concerned, they had no such power, it was because he 
 had received his commission directly from his Lord. And 
 to this independence of knowledge he often refers. He 
 tells the Thessalonians, ''by the Word of the Lord,"" 
 that those who were still alive at the Second Advent 
 should not be beforehand with — should gain no advantage 
 or priority over — those that slept. He tells thfe Ephe- 
 sians^ that it was by revelation that Grod " made known ' 
 to him the mystery which in other generations was not 
 made known to the sons of men — namely, that the Gren- 
 tiles are co-heirs and co-members and co-partakers* of the 
 promise in Christ Jesus, through the Grospel of which he 
 became a minister according to the gift of the grace of 
 Grod, which was given him according to the mighty work- 
 ing of His power." He tells the Colossians® that he 
 ibecame a minister of the Church " in accordance with the 
 stewardship of Grod given to him for them, that he might 
 'fully preach the Word of God, the mystery hidden from the 
 ages and the generations." From these and from other 
 passages it seems clear that what St. Paul meant to repre- 
 sent as special subjects of the revelation which he had 
 
 ' Gal. i. 1, o&K Air" Mpdirav oiSh Si' Mp^irov. 
 
 * 1 Thess. It. 15, iv hiyv Kupfou. * Eph. iii. 3—6. 
 
 ■"* <rvyK\Tipovina Ktt\ aiaawita Koi (rv/jL/iiTOXa * OoL i. 25. 
 
ST. PAUL'S GOSPEL. 211 
 
 received were partly distinct views of wtat rule ouglit to 
 be followed by Cbristians in special instances, partly great 
 facts about tbe resurrection,^ partly tbe direct vision of a 
 Saviour not only risen from tbe dead, but exalted at tbe 
 rigbt band of God ; but especially tbe central and peculiar 
 fact of bis teacbing " tbe mystery of Cbrist " — tbe trutb 
 once secret, but .now revealed — ^tbe deliverance wbicb He 
 bad wrougbt, tbe justification by faitb wbicb He bad 
 rendered possible, and, most of all, tbe free ofier of tbis 
 great salvation to tbe Gentiles, witbout tbe necessity of 
 tbeir iacurring tbe yoke of bondage, wbicb even tbe Jew 
 bad found to be beavier tban be could bear.^ 
 
 It can bardly, tberefore, be doubted tbat after bis re- 
 covery from tbe sbock of conviction witb wbicb bis soul 
 must long bave continued to tremble, Paul only spent a 
 few quiet days witb Ananias, and any otber bretbren wbo 
 would bold out to bun tbe rigbt band of friendsbip. He 
 migbt talk witb tbem of tbe life wbicb Jesus bad lived 
 on eartb. He migbt bear from tbem tbose reminiscences 
 of tbe 
 
 " Sinless years 
 WMct breathed beneath, the Syrian blu^" 
 
 of wbicb tbe most precious were afterwards recorded by 
 tbe four Evangelists. In listening to tbese be would 
 bave been fed witb "tbe spiritual guileless milk."* Noi 
 can we doubt tbat in tbose days more tban ever be 
 would refrain bis soul and keep it low — tbat bis soul was 
 even as a weaned cbUd. But of tbe mystery wbicb be 
 was afterwards to preacb — of tbat wbicb empbatically be 
 called " bis Gospel "* — neitber Ananias (wbo was bimseU 
 
 > See 1 Cor. xt. 22; 1 Thess. iv. 15. 
 
 » See OoL iv. 3 ; Bph. iii. 3; vi. 19; Eom. xvi. 25. 
 
 ^ 1 Pet. ii. 2, rh \07iKby SSoXoi' yi\a. 
 
 * 1 Cor. ix. 17 ; Gal. ii. 2, 7 ; 2 Thess. ii. 14; 2 TSm. ii. 8. 
 
 o 2 
 
212 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 a rigid Jew), nor any of tlie disciples, could teU him 
 anything. That was tanght him by Grod alone. It 
 came to him by the illuminating power of the Spirit 
 of Christ, in revelations which accompanied each step 
 in that Divine process of education which constituted 
 his life. 
 
 But he could not in any case have stayed long in 
 Damascus. His position there was for the present un- 
 tenable. Alike the terror with which his arrival must 
 have been expected by the brethren, and the expectation 
 which it had aroused among the Jews, would make him 
 the centre of hatred and suspicion, of rumour and curiosity. 
 He m^y even have been in danger of arrest by thevery 
 subordinates to whom his sudden change of purpose must 
 have seemed to delegate his commission. But a stronger 
 motive for retirement than all this would be the yearning 
 for solitude ; the intense desire, and even the overpowering 
 necessity, to be for a time alone with Grod. He was a 
 stricken deer, and was impelled as by a strong instinct to 
 leave the herd. In solitude a man may trace to their 
 hidden source the fatal errors of the past ; he may pray 
 for that light from heaven — no longer flaming with more 
 than noonday fierceness, but shining quietly in dark places 
 — which shall enable him to understand the many mysteries 
 of Hfe ; he may wait the healing of his deep wounds by 
 the same tender hand that in mercy has inflicted them ; 
 he may 
 
 " Sit on the desert stone 
 Like Elijah at Horeb's cave alone ; 
 And a gentle voice comes tlirough the ■wild, 
 Like a father consoling his fretful child, ' 
 ^ihat banishes bitterness, wr^h, and fear, 
 Saying, 'Man is distant, but God is neab.'" 
 
 And so Saul weiit to Arabia — a word which must, I think, 
 
SAUL m ARABIA. 213 
 
 be Tinderstood in its popular and primary sense to mean 
 the Sinaitic peninsula.^ 
 
 He wlio had been a persecutor in honour of Moses, 
 would henceforth be himself represented as a renegade 
 from Moses. The most zealous of the living servants 
 of Mosaism was to be the man who should prove 
 most convincingly that Mosaism was to vanish away. 
 Was it not natural, then, that he should long to 
 visit the holy ground where the bush had glowed in 
 unconsuming fire, and the granite crags had trembled 
 at the voice which uttered the fiery law? Would 
 the shadow of good things look so much of a shadow 
 if he visited the very spot where the great Lawgiver 
 and the great Prophet had held high communings 
 with God ? Could he indeed be sure that he had come 
 unto the Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living 
 God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to Jesus the Mediator 
 of a new covenant, until he had visited the mount 
 that might be touched and that burned with fire, where 
 amid blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the 
 sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, Moses himself 
 had exceedingly feared and quaked ? 
 
 How long he stayed, we do not know. It has usually 
 been assumed that his stay was brief ; to me it seems far 
 more probable that it occupied no small portion of those 
 "three years "^ which he tells us elapsed before he visited 
 Jerusalem. - Few have doubted that those " three years " 
 are to be dated from his conversion. It seems clear that 
 after his conversion he stayed but a few days {vH-^pai rwes) 
 with the disciples ; that then — at the earliest practicable 
 moment — he retired into Arabia ; that after his return he 
 began to preach, and that this ministry in Damascus was 
 
 > See Excursus IX., "Saul in Arabia." " Gal. i 18. 
 
214 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 interrupted after a certain period {vf^ipai kavai) by the 
 conspiracy of tlie Jews. The latter expression is trans- 
 lated " many days " in tlie Acts ; but tbougb the con- 
 tinuance of bis preacbing may bave occupied days wbicb 
 in comparison witb bis first brief stay migbt bave been 
 called " many," tbe pbrase itself is so vague tbat it migbt 
 be used of almost any period from a fortnight to tbree 
 years.-^ As to tbe general correctness of tbis conclusion I 
 can feel no doubt ; tbe only point wbicb must always 
 remain dubious is wbetber tbe pbrase " tbree years " 
 means tbree complete years, or wbetber it means one 
 full year, and a part, however short, of two other 
 years. From the chronology of St. Paul's life we can 
 attain no certainty on this point, though such lights as we 
 bave are slightly in favour of tbe longer rather than of 
 tbe shorter period. 
 
 Very much depends upon the question whether 
 physical infirmity, and prostration of health, were in 
 part tbe cause of this retirement and inactivity. And. 
 here again we are on uncertain ground, because tbis at 
 once opens the often discussed problem as to the nature of 
 tbe affliction to wbicb St. Paul so pathetically aUudes as 
 his " stake in tbe flesh." I am led to touch upon that 
 question here, because I believe tbat this dreadful affliction, 
 whatever it may bave been, bad its origin at tbis very 
 time.^ Tbe melancholy through which, like a fire at 
 midnight, bis enthusiasm burns its way — the deep des- 
 pondency which sounds like an undertone even amid 
 the bursts of exultation which triumph over it, seem 
 
 ' It actually is used of three years in 1 Kings ii. 38. 
 
 ^ There is nothing to exclude this in the iSiSv A"" of 2 Oor. xii. 7. The 
 aiHiction might not have arrived at its full mtensity till that period, which 
 was some years after his conversion, about A.D, 4S, when St. Paul was at 
 An^tioch or Jerusalem or Tarsus. 
 
THE STAKE IN THE FLESH. 215 
 
 to me to have been in no small measure due to tMs. 
 It gave to St. Paul that painful seK-consciousness whicli 
 is in itseK a daily trial to any man who, in spite of an 
 innate love for retirement, is thrust against his will into 
 publicity and conflict. It seems to break the wings of his 
 spirit, so that sometimes he drops as j,t were quite 
 suddenly to the earth, checked and beaten down in the 
 very midst of his loftiest and strongest flights. 
 
 ■ iNo one can even cursorily read St. Paul's Epistles 
 without observing that he was aware of something in his 
 a,spect or his personality which distressed him with an 
 agony of humiliation — something which seems to force 
 him, agaiust every natural instinct of his disposition, into 
 language which sounds to himself like a boastfulness 
 which was abhorrent to him, but which he finds to be more 
 necessary to himself than to other men. It is as though 
 he felt that his appearance was against him. Whenever 
 he has ceased to be carried away by the current of some 
 powerful argument, whenever his sorrow at the insidious 
 encroachment of errors against which he had flung the 
 whole force of his character has spent itself in words of 
 immeasurable indignation — whenever he drops the high 
 language of apostolical authority and inspired conviction — 
 we hear a sort of wailing, pleading, appealing tone in his 
 personal addresses to his converts, which would be almost 
 impossible in one whose pride of personal manhood had 
 not been "abashed by some external defects, to which he 
 might indeed appeal as marks at once of the service and 
 the protection of his Saviour, but which made him less 
 able to cope face to face with the insults of opponents 
 or the ingratitude of friends. His language leaves on 
 us the impression of one who was acutely sensitive, 
 and whose sensitiveness of temperament has been 
 aggravated by a meanness of presence which is indeed 
 
216 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 forgotten by the friends who know Hnij but wMcb 
 raises in strangers a prejudice not always overcome 
 Many, indeed, of tbe brethren in the little churches, 
 which he founded, had so "grappled him to their souls 
 with hooks of steel," that he could speak in letter 
 after letter of their abounding love and tenderness and 
 gratitude towards him^ — that he can caU them "my little 
 children " — that he can assume their intense desire to see 
 him, and can grant that desire as an express favour to 
 them;^ and that he is even forced to soothe those jealousies 
 of affection which were caused by his acceptance of aid 
 from one church which he would not accept from others. 
 But he is also well aware that he is hated with a perfect 
 virulence of hatred, and (which is much more wounding 
 to such a spirit) that with this hatred there is a large 
 mixture of unjust contempt. From this contempt even 
 of the contemptible, from this hatred even of the hate- 
 ful he could not but shrink, though he knew that it is 
 often the penalty with which the world rewards service, 
 and the tribute which virtue receives from vice. 
 
 It is this which explains the whole style and character 
 of his Epistles.^ The charges which his enemies made 
 against him have their foundation in facts about his 
 method and address, which made those charges aU the 
 more dangerous and the more stinging by giving them 
 a certain plausibility. They were, in fact, yet another 
 instance of those half-truths which are the worst of lies. 
 Thus — adopting the taunts of his adversaries, as he often 
 does — he says that he is in presence " humble " among 
 them,* and " rude in speech,"' and he quotes their own 
 reproach that " his bodily presence was weak, and his 
 
 ' PhU. passim. 2 2 Oor. i. 15, 23. 
 
 3 See Excursus X., "The Style of St. Paulas illustrative of Ms Character." 
 
 * 2 Oor. X. 1, 2. '2 Cor. xi. 6, iSie^Tjjs h \iy<i,. 
 
CHARGES AGAINST ST. PAUL. 217 
 
 speecli contemptible."^ Being confessedly one wlio strove 
 for peace and unity, who endeavoured to meet all men 
 haK-way, who was ready to be all things to all men 
 if by any means he might save some, he has more than 
 once to vindicate his character from those charges of in- 
 sincerity,' craftiness, dishonesty, guile, man-pleasing and 
 flattery,^ which are, perhaps, summed up in the general 
 depreciation which he so indignantly rebuts that "he 
 walked according to the flesh," * or in other words that his 
 motives were not spiritual, but low and selfish. He has, 
 too, to defend himself from the insinuation that his self- 
 abasements had been needless and excessive;* that even 
 his apparent self-denials had only been assumed as a cloak 
 for ulterior views;* and that his intercourse was so 
 marked by levity of purpose, that there was no trust- 
 ing to his promises.® Now how came St. Paul to be 
 made the butt for such calumnies as these? Chiefly, no 
 doubt, because he was, most sorely against his will, the 
 leader of a party, and because there are in all ages 
 souls which delight in lies — men "whose throat is an 
 open sepulchre, and the poison of asps is under their lips ;" 
 but partly, also, because he regarded tact, concession, 
 conciliatoriness, as Divine weapons which God had per- 
 mitted him to use against powerful obstacles; and 
 partly because it was easy to satirise and misrepresent a 
 depression of spirits, a humility of demeanour, which were 
 either the direct results of some bodily affliction, or which 
 the consciousness of this affliction had rendered habitual. 
 We feel at once that this would be natural to the bowed 
 and weak figure which Albrecht Diirer has represented; 
 but that it would be impossible to the imposing orator 
 
 • 2 Cor. X. 10. *2 Oor. xi. 7. 
 
 - 2 Oor. ii. 17, iv. 2 ; 1 Thess. ii, 3—5. ' 2 Cor. xii. 16. 
 »2 0or.x.2, • 2 Cor. i. 17. 
 
218 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 whom Eaphael has placed on the steps of the Areo« 
 pagus.^ 
 
 And to this he constantly refers. There is hardly a 
 letter in which he does not allude to his mental trials, his 
 physical sulEerings, his persecutions, his infirmities. He 
 teUs the Corinthians that his intercourse with them had 
 been characterised by physical weakness, fear, and much 
 trembling.^ He reminds the Galatians that he had 
 preached among them ia consequence of an attack of 
 severe sickness.^ He speaks of the inexorable burden of 
 life, and its unceasing moan.* The trouble, the perplexity, 
 the persecution, the prostrations/ which were invariable 
 conditions of his Hfe, seem to hitn like a perpetual carry- 
 ing about with him in his body of the inortification — 
 the putting to death — of Christ;^ a perpetual betrayal 
 to death for Christ's sake — a perpetual exhibition of the 
 energy of death in his outward life.® He died daily, he 
 was in deaths oft ; '' he was being killed aU the day long.* 
 
 And this, too — as well as the fact that he seems to 
 write in Grreek and think in Syriac — is the key to the pecu- 
 liarities of St. Paul's language. The feeling that he was 
 inadequate for the mighty task which Grod had specially 
 entrusted to him ; the dread lest his personal insignificance 
 should lead any of his hearers at once to reject a doctrine 
 announced by a weak, sufiering, distressed, overburdened 
 man, who, though an ambassador of Christ, bore in his 
 own aspect so few of the credentials of an embassy ; the 
 knowledge that the fiery spirit which " o'erinformed its 
 tenement of clay " was held, like the light of Grideon's 
 
 > Hansrath, p. 51. » 1 Cor. ii. 3. » Gal. iv. 13. 
 
 * 2 Cor. V. 4, qX 6vTes 4v t^ ffK-livet tTTevd^oft-ey 0apoift,epoi. 
 
 ' 2 Cor. IT. 8 — 10, 6\i^6ixcvoi . . . airopoinevoi . . . SiaiKti/iccoi . . . Kara- 
 BaWofievQi . . . trdfrore t^v viKptofftv rov *lti(Xov iv t^j iri&fiaTi vepitpipovm, 
 ' Id. 11, 4cl yh.p fi/jiets oi (uvres, els Bdvarov irapaStSS/iiBa. 
 ' 2 Cor. xi. 23; 1 Cor. xv. 31. » Eom. viji. 36. 
 
ST. PAUL'S STYLE. 219 
 
 pitcliers, in a fragile and earthen vessel,^ seems to be so 
 constantly and so oppressively present with him, as to 
 make all words too weak for the weight of meaning they 
 have to bear. Hence his language, in many passages, 
 bears the traces of almost morbid excitability in its 
 passionate alternations of humility with assertions of the 
 real greatness of his labours,^ and of scorn and indignation 
 against fickle weaklings and intriguing calumniators with 
 an intense and yearning love.' Sometimes his heart beats 
 with such quick emotion, his thoughts rush with such 
 confused impetuosity, that in anakoluthon after anako- 
 luthon, and parenthesis after parenthesis, the whole 
 meaning becomes uncertain.* His feehng is so intense 
 that his very words catch a life of their own — they 
 become "living creatures with hands and feet." ^ Some- 
 times he is almost contemptuous in his assertion of 
 the rectitude which makes him indifEerent to vulgar 
 criticism,® and keenly bitter in the sarcasm of his selE- 
 depr^ciation.' In one or two iastances an enemy might 
 almost apply the word " brutal " to the language in which 
 he ridicules, or denounces, or unmasks the impugners of 
 his gospel;^ in one or two passages he speaks with a 
 tinge of irony, almost of irritation, about those " accounted 
 to be pillars " — ^the " out-and-out Apostles," who even if 
 they were Apostles ten times over added nothing to him -.' 
 — ^but the storm of passion dies away in a moment; he 
 is sorry even for the most necessary and justly-deserved 
 
 • 2 Oor. iv. 7. * 1 Cor. xv. 10. * Gal. and 2 Oor. passim. 
 
 • Gal. iv. 12. » Gal. iv. 14 ; 1 Oor. iv. 13; Phil. iii. 8. 
 
 • 1 Cor. iv. 3. ^ 1 Oor. iv. 10 ; x. 15 ; 2 Cor. xi. 16—19 ; xii. 11, 
 8 Gal. iii. 1 ; iv. 17 (in the Greek). 
 
 • Gal. ii. 6, tSv SoKoivrav flvai ft, — ivotol iroTt ^ffay oiBev /toi iia(j>epei ; 
 9, 01 SoKOvvres ffriXoi fhai; 11, KaTeyvutr/iivos ?iv. 1 Cor. XV. 9; 2 Oor. xi. 5 
 rSiv imtpKiav ii,Troar6\av. 2 Oor. xii. 11, ovSlv iirripn<"i tSv iirep\lta> tarotrrSAuy fi 
 Kcii ovSeV et/u. 
 
220 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 severity, and all ends in expressions of tenderness and, as 
 it were, with a burst of tears.^ 
 
 Now it is true that we recognise in Saul of Tarsus 
 the restlessness, the vehemence, the impetuous eagerness 
 which we see in Paul the Apostle ; but it is hard to 
 imagine in Saul of Tarsus the netvous shrinking, the 
 tremulous sensibility, the profound distrust of his own 
 gifts and powers apart from Divine grace, which are so 
 repeatedly manifest in the language of Paul, the fettered 
 captive of Jesus Christ. It is hard to imagine that 
 such a man as the Apostle became could ever have been 
 the furious inquisitor, the intruder even into the sacred 
 retirement of peaceful homes, the eager candidate for 
 power to suppress a heresy even in distant cities, which 
 Saul was before the vision on the way to Damascus. 
 It is a matter of common experience that some physical 
 humiliation, especially if it take the form of terrible dis- 
 figurement, often acts in this very way upon human 
 character.^ It makes the bold shrink ; it makes the 
 arrogant humble; it makes the self-confident timid; it 
 makes those who once loved publicity long to hide them- 
 
 ' GaL iv. 19 ; 2 Cor. ii. 4 ; E/om. ix. 1 — 3. As bearing on tMs snbject, 
 every one will read mth interest the verses of Dr. Newman— 
 
 "I dreamed that with a passionate complaint 
 I -wished me bom amid Grod's deeds of might. 
 And envied those who had the presence bright 
 Of gifted prophet or strong-hearted saint, 
 Whom my heart loves, and fancy strives to paint. 
 I turned, when straight a stranger met my sight, 
 Came as my guest, and did awhile unite 
 His lot with mine, and lived without restraint. 
 Courteous he was, and grave ; so meek in mien, 
 It seemed untrue, or told a purpose weak ; 
 Tet, in the maod, anUd he mth aptness speak 
 Or with stem force, or show of feeling keen. 
 Marking deep craft, methought, and hidden pride; 
 Then came a voice, ' St. Paul is at thy side 1' " 
 
 » The mev of 2 Cor. xii. 7, shows that the " stake in the flesh" was 
 nothing congeuitaL 
 
EFFECTS OF INFIEMITT. 221 
 
 selves from the crowd ; it turns every thought of the 
 heart from trust in self to humblest submission to the will 
 of Grod. Even a dangerous illness is sometimes sufficient 
 to produce results like these ; but when the illness leaves 
 its physical marks for life upon the frame, its effects are 
 intensified ; it changes a mirthful reveller, like Francis of 
 Assisi, into a squaHd ascetic ; a favourite of society, like 
 Francis Xavier, into a toitsome missionary ; a gay soldier, 
 like Ignatius Loyola, into a rigid devotee. 
 
 What was the nature of this stake in the flesh, we 
 shall examine fully in a separate essay j^ but that, what- 
 ever it may have been, it came to St. Paul as a direct 
 consequence of visions and revelations, and as a direct 
 counteraction to the inflation and seH-importance which 
 such exceptional insight might otherwise have caused to 
 such a character as his, he has himself informed us. We 
 are, therefore, naturally led to suppose that ihe^rst impale- 
 ment of his health by this wounding spHnter accompanied, 
 or resulted from, that greatest of all his revelations, 
 the appearance to him of the risen Christ as he was 
 travelling at noonday nigh unto Damascus. If so, we 
 see yet another reason for a retirement from all exertion 
 and publicity, which was as necessary for his body as for 
 his soul. 
 
 * Bee Excnrsns X., " St. Faol's ' Stake in the Flesh.' " 
 
CHAPTEE Xn. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF A LONG MARTTEDOM. 
 
 " Be bold as a leopard, swift as an eagle, bounding as a stag, brave as a 
 lion, to do the will of thy Father which is in heaven." — ^Pbsachim, f. 112, 2. 
 
 Calmed by retirement, confirmed, it may be, by fresh 
 revelations of the will of Grod, clearer in his conceptions 
 of truth and duty, Saul returned to Damascus. We need 
 look for no further motives of his return than such as 
 rose from the conviction that he was now sufficiently pre- 
 pared to do the work to which Christ had called him. 
 
 He did not at once begin his mission to the Gentiles. 
 " To the Jew first " was the understood rule of the Apos- 
 tolic teaching,-^ and had been involved in the directions 
 given by Christ Himself.^ Moreover, the Gentiles were 
 so unfamiliar with the institution of preaching, their whole 
 idea of worship was so alien from every form of doctrinal 
 or moral exhortation, that to begin by preaching to them 
 was almost impossible. It was through the Jews that 
 the Gentiles were most easily reached. The proselytes, 
 numerous in every city, were specially numerous at Da- 
 mascus, and by their agency it was certain that every 
 truth propounded in the Jewish synagogue would, even 
 if only by the agency of female proselytes, be rapidly 
 communicated to the Gentile agora. 
 
 It was, therefore, to the synagogues that Saul natu- 
 
 > Eom. i 16 ! Acts iii. 26 ; xiii. 38, 39, 46 ; John iv. 22. 
 ' liake xxiv. 47 ; cf . Isa. ii. 2, 3 ; xHx. 6 ; Mic. iv. 2. 
 
SAUL AT DAMASCUS. 223 
 
 rally resorted, and there tliat lie first began to deliver Ms 
 message. Since tlie Christians were still in communion 
 with the synagogue and the Temple — since their leader, 
 Ananias, was so devout according to the law as to have 
 won the willing testimony of all the Jews who lived in 
 Damascus i^ — ^no obstacle would be placed in the way of the 
 youthful Eabbi ; and as he had been a scholar in the most 
 eminent of Jewish schools, his earliest appearances on the 
 arena of controversy would be awaited with attention and 
 curiosity. We have no reason to suppose that the animosity 
 against the Nazarenes, which Saul himself had kept alive 
 in Jerusalem, had as yet penetrated to Damascus. News is 
 slow to travel in Eastern countries, and those instantaneous 
 waves of opinion which flood our modern civilisation 
 were Uiuknown to ancient times. In the capital of' Syria, 
 Jews and Christians were still living together in mutual 
 toleration, if not in mutual esteem. They had been 
 thus living in Jerusalem until the spark of hatred had 
 been struck out by the collision of the Hellenists of the 
 liberal with those of the narrow school' — the Christian 
 Hellenists of the Hagadoth with the Jewish Hellenists of 
 the Halacha. To Saul, if not solely, yet in great measure, 
 this collision had been due ; and Saul had been on his way 
 to stir up the same wrath and strife in Damascus, when 
 he had been resistlessly arrested^ on his unhallowed mission 
 by the vision and the reproach of his ascended Lord. 
 
 But the authority, and the letters, had been entrusted 
 to him alone, and none but a few hot zealots really desired 
 that pious and respectable persons like Ananias — children 
 of Abraham, servants of Moses — should be dragged, with 
 a halter round their necks, from peaceful homes, scourged 
 by the people with whom they had lived without any 
 
 \ ^(jts xxii. 12. * Phil. iii. 12, KOfreKii^iiiv M> toS 'Xfurrov 'Iijo'dw 
 
224 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 serious disagreement, and haled to Jerusalem by fanatics 
 who would do their best to procure against them the fatal 
 vote which might consign them to the revolting horrors 
 of an almost obsolete execution. 
 
 So that each Euler of a Synagogue over whom Saul 
 might have been domineering with all the pride of superior 
 learning, and aU the intemperance of flaming zeal, might 
 be glad enough to see and hear a man who could no longer 
 hold in terror over him the commission of the Sanhedrin, 
 and who had now rendered himself liable to the very penal- 
 ties which, not long before, he had been so eager to inflict. 
 
 And had Saul proved to be but an ordinary disputant, 
 the pliacidity of Jewish self-esteem would not have been 
 disturbed, nor would he have ruffled the sluggish stream of 
 legal self-satisfaction. He did not speak of circumcision 
 as superfluous ; he said nothing about the evanescence of 
 the Temple serAn.ce, or the substitution for it of a more 
 spiritual worship. He did not breathe a word about turn- 
 ing to the Gentiles. The subject of his preaching was 
 that "Jesus is the Son of God."^ At first this preaching 
 excited no special indignation. The worshippers in the 
 synagogue only felt a keen astonishment^ that this was 
 the man who had ravaged in Jerusalem those who called 
 on "this name,"^ and who had come to Damascus for 
 the express purpose of leading them bound to the High 
 Priest. But^ when once self-love is seriously wounded, 
 toleration rarely survives. This was the case with the 
 Jews of Damascus. They very soon discovered that 
 it was no mere Ananias with whom they had to deal. 
 It was, throughout hfe, Paul's unhappy fate to kindle 
 the most virulent animosities, because, though concilia- 
 tory and courteous by temperament, he yet carried into 
 
 * 'I'qaow, not Xpio-Ti)/, is here the true reading (k, A, B, 0, E). 
 
 * Acts ix. 21, iliareano. ' F. mpra, p. 108. 
 
SAUL m THE STNAGQGtTES. 225 
 
 • 
 his arguments that intensity and forthrightness which 
 
 awaken dormant opposition. A languid controversialist 
 will always meet with a languid tolerance. But any con- 
 troversialist whose honest belief in his own doctrines makes 
 him terribly in earnest, may coxmt on a life embittered by 
 the anger of those on whom he has forced the disagree- 
 able task of re-considering their own assumptions. No one 
 likes to be suddenly awakened. The Jews were indignant 
 with one who disturbed the deep slumber of decided 
 opinions. Their accredited teachers did not like to be 
 deposed from the papacy of infallible ignorance. They 
 began at Damascus to feel towards Saul that fierce de- 
 testation which dogged him thenceforward to the last day 
 of his life. Out of their own Scriptures, by their own 
 methods of exegesis, in their own style of dialectics, by 
 the interpretation of prophecies of which they did not 
 dispute the validity, he simply confounded them. He 
 could now apply the very same principles which in the 
 mouth of Stephen he had found it impossible to resist. 
 The result was an unanswerable proof that the last <Bon 
 of God's earthly dispensations had now dawned, that old 
 things had passed away, and all things had become new. 
 
 If arguments are such as cannot be refuted, and yet if 
 those who hear them will not yield to them, they inevit- 
 ably excite a bitter rage. It was so with the Jews. 
 Some time had now elapsed since Saul's return from 
 Arabia,^ and they saw no immediate chance of getting 
 rid of this djuagerous intruder. They therefore took 
 refuge in what St. Chrysostom calls "the syllogism of 
 violence." They might at least plead the excuse — and 
 how bitter was the remorse which such a plea would excite 
 in Saul's own conscience — ^that they were only treating him 
 
 ^ Acts ix. 23, rififax laaviL. 
 
226 THE LIFE 'AND "WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 in the way in wHcL. he himself had treated all who held 
 the same opinions. Even-handed justice was thus com- 
 mending to his own lips the ingredients of that poisoned 
 chaHce of intolerance which he had forced on others, 
 It is a far from improbable conjecture that it was at this 
 early period that the Apostle endured one, and perhaps 
 more than one, of those five Jewish scourgings which he 
 , tells the Corinthians that he had suffered at the hands of 
 the Jews. For it is hardly likely that they would resort 
 at once to the strongest measures, and the scourgings 
 might be taken as a reminder that worse was yet to 
 come. Indeed, there are few more striking proofs of the 
 severity of that life which the Apostle so cheerfully — • 
 nay, even so joyfully — endured, than the fact that in his 
 actual biography not one of these five inflictions, terrible 
 as we know that they must have been, is so much as 
 mentioned, and that in his Epistles they are only recorded, 
 among trials yet more insupportable, in a passing and 
 casual allusion.-' 
 
 But we know from the example of the Apostles at 
 Jerusalem that no such pain or danger would have put a 
 stop to his ministry. Like them, he would have seen an 
 honour in such disgrace. At last, exasperated beyond all 
 endurance at one whom they hated as a renegade, and 
 whom they could not even enjoy the luxury of despising 
 as a heretic, they made a secret plot to kill him.^ .The 
 conspiracy was made known to Saul, and he was on his 
 guard against it. The Jews then took stronger and more 
 open measures. They watched the gates night and day to 
 prevent the possibility of his escape. In this they were 
 assisted by the Ethnarch who supplied them with the 
 
 1 See Excursus XL, " On Jewish Scourgings." 
 
 ^ These secret plots were fearfully life in these days of the Sicarii (Jos. 
 Antt. XX. 8, § 5). ; 
 
THE NIGHT ESOIPB. 227 
 
 means of doing it. This Etiinarch was either the Arab 
 viceroy of Hareth, or the chief official of the Jews them- 
 selves,^ who well might possess this authority under a 
 friendly prince. 
 
 There was thus an imminent danger that Saul would 
 be cut off at the very beginning of his career. But this 
 was not to be. The disciples "took Saul"^ — another of 
 the expressions which would tend to show that he was ex- 
 ceptionally in need of help — and putting him in a. large 
 rope basket,^ let him down through the window of a house 
 which abutted on the wall.* It may be that they chose 
 a favourable moment when the patrol had passed, and had 
 not yet turned round again. At any rate, the escape was 
 full of ignominy ; and it may have been this humiliation; 
 or else the fact of its being among the earliest perils which 
 he had undergone, that fixed it so indelibly on the memory 
 of St. Paul. Nearly twenty years afterwards he mentions 
 it to the Corinthians with special emphasis, after agonies 
 and" hair-breadth escapes which to us would have seemed 
 far more formidable.® 
 
 Here, then, closed in shame and danger the first pag'e 
 in this chequered and sad career. How he made his way 
 to Jerusalem must be left to conjecture. Doubtless, as 
 he stole through the dark night alone — above all, as he 
 passed the very spot where Christ had taken hold of him, 
 
 * 2 Cor. xi. 32, i iBvipxVS i<ppoiit(Cr)\v iriUv ; Acts ix. 24, ol 'louSaToi vapeT'lipovi/ 
 Tcks Ttixas. Bthnarch, as well as Alabaroh, was a title of Jewish goTernors in 
 heathen cities. 
 
 ^ Acts ix. 25. The reading ol /joflijTal airoS, though well attested, can 
 hardly be correct. 
 
 s On irirvpls see my Life of Christ, i. 403, 480. In 2 Cor. xi. 33 it is called 
 rapydvri, which is defined hy Hesych. as vxiy/ta ti ix o-xoiyfou. 
 
 •• Such windows are still to he seen at Damascus. For similar escapes, see 
 Josh. ii. 15 ; 1 Sam. xix. 12. 
 
 s 2 Cor. xi. 32. St. Paul's conversion was about A.D. 37. The Second 
 Epistle to the Corinthians was written A.D. 57, or early in A.D. 58. 
 
 P 2 
 
228 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST, PAUL. 
 
 and into one moment of his life had been crowded a 
 whole eternity — his heart would be full of thoughts too 
 deep for words. It has been supposed, from the expression 
 of which he makes use in his speech to Agrippa, that he 
 may have preached in many synagogues on the days which 
 were occupied on his journey to Jerusalem.^ But this 
 seems inconsistent with his own statement that he was 
 " unknown by face to the churches of Judsea which were 
 in Christ."^ It is not, however, unlikely that he may 
 sometimes have availed himself of the guest-chambers 
 which were attached to Jewish synagogues ; and if such 
 was the case, he might have taught the first truths of the 
 Grospel to the Jews without being thrown into close contact 
 vsdth Christian communities. 
 
 In any case, his journey could not have been much 
 prolonged, for he teUs us that it was Ms express object to 
 visit Peter, whose recognition must have been" invaluable 
 to him, apart from the help and insight which he could 
 not but derive from conversing with one who had long 
 lived in such intimate friendship with the Lord. 
 
 > Acts sxvi. 20. * GaL L 22. 
 
CHAPTER Xin. 
 
 haul's reception at JERUSALEM. 
 
 " Co^temus ipsum Paulum, licet caelesti voce prostratnm et instrnotuin, 
 ad hominem tamen missiim esse, ut sacramenta perciperet." — AlTG. De 
 J)octr. Christ., Prol. 
 
 To re-visit Jerusalem must liave cost the future Apostle 
 no slight effort. How deep must have been his remorse 
 as he neared the spot where he had seen the corpse of 
 Stephen lying crushed under the stones ! With what 
 awful interest must he now have looked on the scene of 
 the Crucifixion, and the spot where He who was now risen 
 and glorified had lain in the garden-tomb ! How dreadful 
 must have been the revulsion of feeling which rose from 
 the utter change of his present relations towards the 
 priests whose, belief he had abandoned, and the Christians 
 whose Grospel he had embraced ! He had left Jerusalem 
 a Eabbi, a Pharisee, a fanatic defender of the Oral Law ; 
 he was entering it as one who utterly distrusted the value 
 of legal righteousness, who wholly despised the beggarly 
 elements of tradition. The proud man had become unspeak- 
 ably humble ; the savage persecutor imspeakably tender ; 
 the self-satisfied Eabbi had abandoned, in one moment his 
 pride of nationality, his exclusive scorn, his Pharisaic pre- 
 eminence, to take in exchange for them the beatitude of 
 unjust persecution, and to become the suffering preacher- 
 of an execrated faith. What had he to expect from Theo- 
 philus, whose letters he had perhaps destroyed ? from^ the 
 Sanhedrists, whose zeal he had fired ? from his old fellow- 
 
230 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 pupils in the lecture-room of Gamaliel, wlio had ,seen in 
 Saul of Tarsus one who in learning was the glory of the 
 school of Hniel, and in zeal the rival of the school of 
 Shammai ? How would he be treated by these friends of 
 his youth, by these teachers and companions of his life, 
 now that proclaiming his system, his learning, his convic- 
 tions, his whole life — and therefore theirs no less than his 
 — to have been irremediably wrong, he had become an 
 open adherent of the little Church which he once ravaged 
 and destroyed ? 
 
 But amid the natural shrinking with which he could 
 not but anticipate an encounter so full of trial, he would 
 doubtless console himself with the thought that he would 
 find a brother's welcome among those sweet and gentle 
 spirits whose faith he had witnessed, whose love for each 
 other he had envied while he hated. How exquisite 
 would be the pleasure .of sharing that peace which he had 
 tried to shatter ; of urging on others those arguments 
 which had been bringing conviction to his own mind even 
 while he was most passionately resisting them ; of hearing 
 again and again from holy and gentle lips the words 
 of Him whom he had once blasphemed ! Saul might 
 well have thought that the love, the nobleness, the 
 enthusiasm of his new brethren would more than com- 
 pensate for the influence and admiration which he had 
 voluntarily forfeited ; and that to pluck with them the fair 
 fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle- 
 ness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance — would be a 
 bliss for which he might cheerfully abandon the whole 
 world beside. No wonder that " he assayed to join himself 
 to the disciples."^ His knowledge of human nature might 
 indeed have warned him that " confidence is a plant of slow 
 
 > Acts ix. 26. 
 
EECEIVED WITH SUSPICION. 231 
 
 growth" — that such a reception as he yearned for was 
 hardly possible. It may be that he counted too much 
 on the change wrought in human dispositions by the 
 grace of God. The old Adam is oftentimes too strong for 
 young Melancthon. 
 
 For, alas ! a new trial awaited him. Peter, indeed, whom 
 he had expressly come to see; at once received him with 
 the large generosity of that impulsive heart, and being a 
 married man, offered him hospitality without grudging.^ 
 But at first that was all. It speaks no little for the great- 
 ness and goodness of Peter — it is quite in accordance with 
 that natural nobleness which we should expect to find in one 
 whom Jesus Himself had loved and blessed — that he was 
 the earhest among the brethren to rise above the influence 
 of suspicion. He was at this time the leader of the Church 
 in Jerusalem. As such he had not been among those who 
 fled before the storm. He must have known that it was 
 at the feet of this young Pharisee that the garments of 
 Stephen's murderers had been laid. He must have feared 
 him, perhaps even have hidden himself from him, when he 
 forced his way into Christian homes. Nay, more, the 
 heart of Peter must have sorely ached when he saw 
 his httle congregation slain, scattered, destroyed, and the 
 .coenobitic community, the faith of which had been so 
 bright, the enthusiasm so contagious, the common love 
 so tender and so pure, rudely bj-oken up by the pitiless 
 persecution of a Pupil of the Schools. Yet, with the 
 unquestioning trustfulness of a sunny nature — with that 
 spiritual insight into character by which a Divine charity 
 not only perceives real worth, but even creates worthi- 
 ness where it did not before exist — Peter opens his door to 
 one whom a meaner man might well have excluded as still 
 too possibly a wolf amid the fold, 
 
 » GaL i. 18. 
 
232 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 But of the other leaders of the Church — ^if there were 
 any at that time in Jerusalem — not one came near the new 
 convert, not one so much as spoke to him. He was met 
 on every side by cold, distrustful looks. At one stroke he 
 had lost all his old friends ; it seemed to he too likely that 
 he would gain no new ones in their place. The brethren 
 regarded him with terror and mistrust ; they did not 
 believe that he was a disciple at all.-' The facts which 
 accompanied his alleged conversion they may indeed have 
 heard of ; but they had occurred three years before. The 
 news of his recent preaching and recent peril in Damascus 
 was not likely to have reached them ; but even if it had, 
 it would have seemed so strange that they might be 
 pardoned for looking with doubt on the persecutor turned 
 brother — for even fearing that the asserted conversion 
 might only be a ruse to enable Saul to learn their secrets, 
 and so entrap them to their final ruin. And thus at 
 first his interQourse with the brethren in the Church of 
 Jerusalem was almost confined to his reception in the 
 house of Peter. " Other of the Apostles saw I none," 
 he writes to the Gralatians, " save James the Lord's 
 brother." But though he saw James, Paul seems to 
 have had but little communion with him. All that we 
 know of the first Bishop of Jerusalem shows us the 
 immense dissimilarity, the almost antipathetic pecu- 
 liarities which separated, the characters of the two men. 
 Even with the Lord Himself, if we may follow the 
 plain language of the Gospels,^ the eldest of His brethren 
 .seems, during His life on earth, to have had but little 
 communion. He accepted indeed His Messianic claims, 
 but he accepted them in the Judaic sense, and was 
 
 ' Acts ix. 26, ^TTtipoTo KoSXaaiwi rots naBrircus (the imperfect marks an nnsac> 
 cessiul eicort) koI irdi/res i(fto0ovi/ro avrhy, /atj -KiaTevoyrfs cfri ftrrtv jUa09}T^S. 
 '^ Matt. xii. 46 ; Mark iii. 31 ; Luke viii. 19 ; Jolia vii. 5. 
 
JAMES THE JUST. 233 
 
 displeased at that in His life whicli was most unmis- 
 takably Divine. If he be rightly represented by tradi- 
 tion as a Legalist, a Nazarite, almost an Essene, spending 
 his whole life in prayer in the Temple, it was his obedience 
 to Mosaism — scarcely modified in any external particular 
 by his conversion to Christianity— which had gained for 
 him even from the Jews the surname of " the Just." If, 
 as seems almost demonstrable, he be the author of the 
 Epistle which bears his name, we see how slight was the 
 extent to which his spiritual life had been penetrated by 
 those special aspects of the one great truth which were to 
 Paul the very breath and life of Christianity. In that 
 Epistle we find a stem and noble morality which raises it 
 infinitely above the reproach of being "a, mere Epistle of 
 straw ;"^ but we nevertheless do hot find one direct word 
 about the Incarnation, or the Crucifixion, or the Atone- 
 . ment, or Justification by Faith, or Sanctification by the 
 Spirit, or the Eesurrection of the Dead. The notion that 
 it was written to counteract either the teaching of St. 
 Paul, or the dangerous consequences which might some- 
 times be deduced from that teaching, is indeed most 
 extremely questionable ; and all that we can say of that 
 supposition is, that it is not quite so monstrous a chimera 
 as that which has been invented by the German theologians, 
 who see St. Paul and his followers indignantly though 
 covertly denounced in the Balaam and Jezebel of the 
 Churches of Pergamos and Thyatira,^ and the Nicolaitans 
 of the Church of Ephesus,^ and the "synagogue of Satan, 
 which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie," of the 
 Church of Philadelphia.* And yet no one can read the 
 Epistle of James side by side with any Epistle of St. Paul's 
 
 ' " Bin reoht strohem Epistel, denn sie dooh kein evangeliseh Art an iln 
 hat" (Luther, Praef. N. T., 1522) ; hut he afterwards modified his opinion. 
 ' Rev. ii. 20. ' Eev. ii. 6. * Bev, iii. 9. 
 
234 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 without perceiving how wide were the differences between 
 the two Apostles. St. James was a man eminently in-- 
 flexible; St. Paul knew indeed how to yield, but then 
 the very points which he was least inclined to yield 
 were those which most commanded the sympathy of 
 James. What we know of Peter is exactly in accordance 
 with the kind readiness with which' he received the sus- 
 pected and friendless Hellenist. What we know of James 
 would have led us a priori to assume that his relations 
 with Paul would never get beyond the formal character 
 which they wear in the Acts of the Apostles, and still 
 more in the Epistle to the Galatians. But let it not be 
 assumed that because there was little apparent sympathy 
 and co-operation between St. Paul and St. James, and 
 because they dwell on apparently opposite aspects of the 
 truth, we should for one moment be justified in disparag- 
 ing either the one or the other. The divergences which 
 seem to arise from the analysis of truth by individual 
 minds are merged in the catholicity of a wider syn- 
 thesis. When St. Paul teaches that we are "justified by 
 faith," he is teaching a truth infinitely precious ; and St. 
 James is also teaching a precious truth when, with a dif- 
 ferent shade of meaning in both words, he says that " by 
 works a man is justified."^ The truths which these two 
 great Apostles were commissioned to teach were comple- 
 mentary and supplementary, but not contradictory of each 
 other. Of both aspects of truth we are the inheritors. If 
 it be true that they did not cordially sympathise with each 
 other in their life-time, the loss was theirs ; but, even in 
 that case, they were not the first instances in the Church 
 of God — nor will they be the last — in which two good 
 men,' through the narrowness of one or the vehemence 
 
 ' James ii. 24. It is hardly a paradox to say that St. James meant by 
 " faith " something analogous to what St. Paul meant by works. 
 
ST. BARNABAS. 235 
 
 of the other, have been too much heset hy the spirit of 
 human infirmity to be able, in all perfectness, to keep 
 the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. 
 
 The man who. saved the new convert from this humi- 
 hating isolation — an isolation which must at that moment 
 have been doubly painful — was the wise and generous 
 Joseph. He has already been mentioned in the Acts as 
 •a Levite of Cyprus who, in spite of the prejudices of his 
 rank, had been among the earliest to join the new cota- 
 munity, and to sanction its happy communism by the sale 
 of his own possessions. The dignity and sweetness of his 
 character, no less than the sacrifices which he had made, 
 gave him a deservedly high position among the perse- 
 cuted brethren J and the power with which he preached 
 the faith had won for him the surname of Barnabas, or 
 "the son of exhortation."^ His intimate relations with 
 Paul in after-days, his journey all the way to Tarsus 
 from Antioch to invite his assistance; and the unity 
 of their purposes until the sad quarrel finally separated 
 them, would alone render it probable that they had 
 known each other at that earlier period of life during 
 which, for the most part, the closest intimacies are formed. 
 Tradition asserts that Joseph had been a scholar of 
 Gramaliel, and the same feeling which led him to join 
 a school of which one peculiarity was its permission 
 •of Greek learning, might have led him yet earlier to 
 take a few hours' sail from Cyprus to see what could 
 be learnt in the University of Tarsus. If so, he would 
 naturally have come into contact with the family of Saul, 
 and the friendship thus commenced would be continued 
 
 1 nNl33 % " son of prophecy." That he had heen one of the Seventy is 
 probably a mere guess. (Buseb. E. E. i. 12 ; Clem. Alex. Strom, ii. 176.) 
 " napdK\v<ris late patet ; ubi desides excitat est hortaUo, nbi tristitiae medetur 
 est solatium" (Bengel). 
 
236 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 at Jerusalem. It had been broken by tbe conversion of 
 Barnabas, it was now renewed by the conversion of Saul. 
 
 Perhaps also it was to this friendship that Saul 
 owed his admission as a guest into Peter's house. There 
 was a close link of union between Barnabas and Peter in 
 the person of Mark, who was the cousin^ of Barnabas, 
 and whom Peter loved so tenderly that he calls him his 
 son. The very house in which Peter lived may have been 
 the house of Mary, the mother of Mark. It is hardly 
 probable that the poor fisherman of Galilee possessed any 
 dwelling of his own in the Holy City. At any rate, 
 Peter goes to this house immediately after his liberation 
 from prison, and if Peter lived in it, the relation of 
 Barnabas to its owner would have given him some claim 
 to ask that Saul should share its hospitality. Generous 
 as Peter was, it would have required an almost super- 
 human amount of confidence to receive at once under 
 his roof a man who had tried by the utmost violence to 
 extirpate the very fibres of the Church. But if one so 
 highly honoured as Barnabas was ready to vouch for him, . 
 Peter was not the man to stand coldly aloof. Thus it 
 happened that Saul's earliest introduction to the families 
 of those whom he had scattered would be made under the 
 high auspices of the greatest of the Twelve. 
 
 The imaginatjion tries in vain to penetrate the veil 
 of two thousand years which hangs between us and the* 
 intercourse of the two Apostles. Barnabas, we may, be 
 sure, must have been often present in the little circle, 
 and must have held many an earnest conversation with 
 his former friend. Maiy, the mother of Mark, would 
 have something to tell.^ Mark may have been an eye- 
 
 ' Col. IT. 10. 
 
 ^ St. John and other Apostles were probably absent, partly perhaps as a 
 consequence of the very persecution in which Paul had been the prime mover. 
 
SAUL AT JERUSALEM. 237 
 
 witness of more than one pathetic scene. But how 
 boundless would be the wealth of spiritual wisdom 
 which Peter must have unfolded ! Is it not certain 
 that from those lips St. Paul must have heard about 
 the Divine brightness of the dawning ministry of Jesus 
 during the Gralilsean year — about the raising of Jairus' 
 daughter, and the Transfiguration on Hermon, and the 
 discourse in the synagogue of Capernaum, and the awful 
 scenes which had occurred on the day of the Crucifixion? 
 And is it not natural to suppose that such a hearer — 
 a hearer of exceptional cultui-e, and enlightened to an 
 extraordinary degree by the Holy Spirit of God — would 
 grasp many of the words of the Lord with a firmness 
 of grasp, and see into the very inmost heart of their 
 significance with a keenness of insight, from which his 
 informant might, in his turn, be glad to learn ? 
 
 It must be a dull imagination that does not desire to 
 linger for a moment on the few days during which two 
 such men were inmates together of one obscure house 
 in the city of Jerusa,lem. But however fruitful their 
 intercourse, it did not at once , secure to the new disciple 
 a footing among the brethren whose poverty and perse- 
 cutions he came to share. Then it was that Barnabas 
 came forward, and saved Saul for the work of the 
 Church. The same discrimination of character, the same 
 charity of insight which afterwards made him prove 
 Mark to be a worthy comrade of their second mission, in 
 spite of his first defection, now made him vouch unhesi- 
 tatingly for the sincerity of Saul. Taking him by the 
 hand, he led him into the presence of the Apostles — the 
 term being here used for Peter,^ and James the Lord's 
 
 * Acts ix. 27 ; Gal. i. 19. The true reading in Gal. i. 18 seems to be 
 "Kephas " (n, A, B, and the most important versions) ; as also in iL 9, 11, 14. 
 This Hebrew form of the name also occurs in 1 Oor. ix. 6. Although else- 
 
238 THE LIJ'E AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 brother,^ and the elders of tlie assembled cburch — and there 
 narrated to them the circumstances, which either they had 
 never heard, or of the truth of which they had not yet 
 been convinced. He told them of the vision on the road 
 to Damascus, and of the fearlessness with which Saul had 
 vindicated his sincerity in the very city to which he had 
 come as an enemy. The words of Barnabas carried weight, 
 and his confidence was contagious. Saul was admitted 
 among the Christians on a footing of friendship, "going 
 m and out among them." To the generosity and clear- 
 sightedness of Joseph of Cyprus, on this and on a later 
 occasion, the Apostle owed a vast debt of gratitude. 
 Next only to the man who achieves the greatest and 
 most blessed deeds is he who, perhaps himself wholly 
 incapable of such high work, is yet the first to help and 
 encourage the genius of others. We often do more good 
 by our sympathy than by our labours, and render to the 
 world a more lasting service by absence of jealousy, and 
 recognition of merit, than we could ever render by the 
 straining efforts of personal ambition. 
 
 No sooner was Saul recognised as a brother, than he 
 renewed the ministry which he had begun at Damascus. 
 It is, however, remarkable that he did not venture to 
 preach to the Hebrew Christians. He sought the syna- 
 gogues of the Hellenists in which the voice of Stephen 
 had first been heard, and disputed with an energy not 
 
 where (e.g., ii. 7, 8) St. Paul uses "Peter" indifferently -with Cephas, as is 
 there shown by the unanimity of the MSS., it seems clear that St. Paul's con- 
 ception of St. Peter was one which far more identified him with the Judaic 
 Church than with the Church in general. In the eyes of St. Paul, Simon 
 was specially the Apostle of the Oiroumcision. 
 
 ' Gal. i. ] 9, erepav Si run li.T0irr6\av oiic fiSov el fi)) 'idKufiov . . . It is impos- 
 sible from the form of the words to tell whether James is here regarded as in 
 the strictest sense an Apostle or not. The addition of " the Lord's brother " 
 — rh <renyo\6yriii.a, as Chrysostom calls it — distinguishes him from James tha 
 brotlior of John, and from James the Less, the son of Alphasus, 
 
SAUL AT JERUSALEM. 239 
 
 inferior to his. It was incumbent on liim, though, it 
 was a duty which required no little courage, that his 
 voice should be uplifted in the name of the Lord Jesus 
 in the places where it had been heard of old in blasphemy 
 against Him. But this very circumstance increased his 
 danger. His preaching was again cut short by a conspi- 
 racy to murder him.^ ' 
 
 It was useless to continue in a place where to stay was 
 certain death. The little Galilsean community got informa- 
 tion of the plot. To do the Jews justice, they showed 
 little skill in keeping the secret of these deadly combi- 
 nations. It was natural that the Church should not only 
 desire to save Saul's life, but also to avoid the danger of 
 a fresh outbreak. Yet it was not without a struggle, 
 and a distinct intimation that such was the will of God, 
 that Saul yielded to the solicitations of his brethren. 
 How deeply he felt this compulsory flight, may be seen 
 in the bitterness with which he alludes to it^ even 
 after the lapse of many years. He had scarcely been 
 a fortnight in Jerusalem when the intensity of his 
 prayers and emotions ended in a trance,* during which 
 he again saw the Divine figure and heard the Divine 
 voice which had arrested his mad progress towards the 
 gates of Damascus. "Make instant haste, and depart 
 in speed from Jerusalem," said Jesus to him ; " for they 
 will not receive thy testimony concerning Me." But to 
 Saul it seemed incredible that his testimony could be 
 resisted. If the vision of the risen Christ by which 
 he had been conve;."ted was an argument which, from the 
 
 * Acts ix. 29, iitexflpovv alnhv iveXeo'. We know of at least ten such perils 
 of assassination in the life of St. Paul. 
 
 = 1 Thess. ii. 15, " who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, 
 and drove its out '•' (Ji/ias iKhuiiyrtiy), 
 
 > Acts xxii 17. 
 
240 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST, PAUL. 
 
 nature of the case, could not, alone, be convincing to 
 others, yet it seemed to Saul that, knowing what they 
 did know of his intellectual power, and contrasting his 
 present earnestness with his former persecution, they 
 could not but listen to such a teacher as himself. He 
 longed also to undo, so far as in him lay, the misery and 
 mischief of the past havoc he had wrought. But how- 
 ever deep may have been his yearnings, however ardent 
 his hopes, the answer came brief and peremptory, "Go! 
 for I will send thee forth afar to the Gentiles. "^ 
 
 All reluctance was now at an end ; and we can see 
 what at the time must have been utterly dark and 
 mysterious to St. Paul, — that the coldness with which he 
 was received at Jerusalem, and the half-apparent desire 
 to precipitate his departure — events so alien to his own 
 plans and wishes, that he pleads even against the Divine 
 voice which enforced the indications of circumstance — 
 were part of a deep providential design. Years afterward, 
 when St. Paul " stood pilloried on infamy's high stage," he 
 was able with one of his strongest asseverations to appeal 
 to the brevity of his stay in Jerusalem, and the paucity 
 of those with whom he had any intercourse, in proof 
 that it was not from the Church of Jerusalem that he 
 had received his commission, and not to the Apostles at 
 Jerusalem that he owed his allegiance. But though at 
 present all this was unforeseen by him, he yielded to the 
 suggestions of his brethren, and scarcely a fortnight after 
 his arrival they — not, perhaps, wholly sorry to part with 
 
 ' Acts xxii. 17 — 21. The omission of this -vision' in the direct narrative of 
 Acts ix. is a proof that silence as to this or that occurrence in the brief narra- 
 tive of St. Luke must not be taken as a proof that he was unaware of the 
 event which he omits. We may also note, in this passage, the first appearance 
 of the interesting word fiiprus. Here doubtless it has its primary sense of 
 " witness ; " but it contains the germ of its later sense of one who testified to 
 Christ by voluntary death. 
 
SAUL LEAVES JERUSALEM. 241 
 
 one wliose presence was a source of many embarrassments 
 — conducted Mm to'the coast town of Csesarea Stratonis^ 
 to start him on his way to his native Tarsus. Of his 
 movements on this occasion we hear no more in the 
 Acts of the Apostles ; but in the Epistle to the Galatians 
 he says that he came into the regions of Syria, and Oilicia, 
 but remained a complete stranger to the churches of 
 Judaea that were in Christ, all that they had heard of 
 him being the rumours that their former persecutor was 
 now an evangelist of the faith of which he was once a 
 destroyer; news which gave them occasion to glorify God 
 in him.'' 
 
 Since we next find him at Tarsus, it might have been 
 supposed that he sailed there direct, and there remained. 
 The expression, however, that "he came into the regions 
 of Syria and Oilicia," seems to imply that this was not 
 the case.' Syria and Oilicia were at this time politically 
 separated, and there is room for the conjecture that the 
 ship in which the Apostle sailed was destined, not for 
 Tarsus, but for Tyre, or Sidon, or Seleucia, the port of 
 Antioch. The existence of friends and disciples of Saul in 
 the Phoenician towns, and the churches of Syria as well as 
 
 ' That he was not sent to Caesarea FMlvppi is almost too obvious to need 
 argument. Neither xariiyayoi', which means a going downwards-^.e., to the 
 coast — ^nor ifojreoTeiXoi', would at all suit the long journey northwards to 
 Csesarea Philippi; nor is it probable that Saul would go to Tarsus by land, 
 travelling in the direction of the dangerous Damascus, when he cotdd go 
 so much more easily by sea. It is a more iuteresting inquiry whether, as 
 has been suggested, these words Kar-liyayov and IjjwfcVTeiXoi', imply a more 
 than ordinary amount of passivity in the movements of Paul ; and whether 
 in this case the passiveness was due to the attacks of illness which were the 
 sequel of his late vision. 
 
 ' Gral. i. 21 — 24!, ij/iV iyyooifievoi . . . lucoioDTts ^ata/ . . . tiiayyeKlieTtu 
 • . . iv6j>9tu 
 
 • Gal. i. 21. The expression is not indeed decisive, since Oilicia might 
 easily be regarded as a mere definitive addition to describe the part of Syria 
 to which he went. (Ewald, Geseh. d. Ajaost. ZeitaU., p. 439.) 
 
242 THE LITE AND WORK OP' ST. PAUL. 
 
 Cilicia,^ point, though only with dim uncertainty, to the 
 ])ORsibility that he performed part of his journey to Tarsus 
 by land, and preached on the way. There is even nothing 
 impossible in Mr. Lewin's suggestion'' that his course may 
 have been determined by one of those three shipwrecks 
 which he mentions that he had undergone. But the occa- 
 sions and circumstances of the three shipwrecks must be 
 left to the merest conjecture. They occurred during the 
 period when St. Luke was not a companion of St, Paul, 
 and he has thought it sufficient to give from his own 
 journal the graphic narrative of that later catastrophe of 
 which he shared the perils. The active ministry in Syria 
 and Cilicia may have occupied the period between Saul's 
 departure in the direction of Tarsus, and his summons to 
 fresh fields of labour in the Syrian Antioch. During this 
 time he may have won over to the faith some of the 
 members of his own family, and may have enjoyed the 
 society of others who were in Christ before him. But aU 
 is uncertain, nor can we with the least confidence restore 
 the probabilities of a period of which even the traditions 
 have for centuries been obliterated. The stay of Saul at 
 Tarsus was on any supposition a period mainly of waiting 
 and of preparation, of which the records had no large 
 significance in the history of the Christian faith. The 
 fields in which he was to reap were whitening for the 
 harvest ; the arms of the reaper were being strengfthened, 
 and his heart prepared. 
 
 ^ Acta zxL 2j zxviL 3; XV. 23, 4L * £U. PoK^ i. 77. 
 
CHAPTER XrV. 
 
 OAITTS AND THE JEWS. PEACE 01? THE CHURCH. 
 
 " Reliqna ut de monstro narranda sunt." — Suet. Calig. 
 
 Immediately after the hasty flight of Saul from Jerusalem, 
 St. Luke adds,^ " Then had the church rest throughout the 
 whole of Judaea, and Galilee, and Samaria, being built up, 
 and walking in the fear of the Lord j and by the exhorta- 
 tion of the Holy Spirit was multiplied." At first sight it 
 might almost seem as though this internal peace, which 
 produced such happy growth, was connected in the 
 writer's loind with the absence of one whose conversion 
 stirred up to madness the prominent opponents of the 
 Church. It may be, however, that the turn of his 
 expression is simply meant to resume the broken thread of 
 his narrative. The absence of molestation, which caused 
 the prosperity of the faith, is sufficiently accoxmted for 
 by the events which were now happening in the Pagan 
 world. The pause in the recorded career of the Apostle 
 enables us also to pause and survey some of the conflicting 
 conditions of Jewish and Gentile life as they were illus- 
 trated at this time by prominent events. It need hardly 
 be said that such a survey has an immediate bearing on 
 the conditions of the Days after Christ, and on the work 
 of His great Apostle. 
 
 A multitude of concurrent arguments tend to show 
 
 » Acts be 31, 4 M^ o!" ^«KXT|<r{o (K, A, B, 0, and the chief versions). I 
 follow what seems to me to be the hest ponctuation of the Terse. 
 
 <l2 
 
244 TKB LIFE AJND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 that Saul was converted early in A.D. 37, and this brief stay 
 at Jerusalem must therefore have occurred in the year 39. 
 Now in the March of A.D. 87 Tiberius died, and Grains — 
 whose nickname of Caligula, or " Bootling," given him in 
 his infancy by the soldiers of his father Germanicus, has 
 been allowed to displace his true name — succeeded to the 
 Lordship of the world. Grim as had been the despotism of 
 Tiberius, he extended to the religion of the Jews that con- 
 temptuous toleration which was. the recognised principle of 
 Roman policy. When Pilate had kindled their fanaticism 
 by hanging the gUt shields in his palace at Jerusalem,^ 
 Tiberius, on an appeal being made to him, reprimanded 
 the oflSciousness of his Procurator, and ordered him to 
 remove the shields to Csesarea. It is true that he allowed 
 four thousand Jews to be deported from Rome to Sar- 
 dinia, and punished with remorseless severity those who, 
 from dread of violating the Mosaic law, refused to take 
 military service.^ This severity was not, however, due tp 
 any enmity against the race, but only to his indignation 
 against the designing hypocrisy which, under pretence of 
 proselytising, had won the adhesion of Fulvia, a noble 
 Eoman lady, to the Jewish religion ; and to the detestable 
 rascality with which her teacher and his companions had 
 embezzled the presents of gold and purple which she had 
 entrusted to them as an offering for the Temple at Jeru- 
 salem. Even this did not prevent him from protecting 
 the Jews as far as he could in their own country; and 
 when Vitellius, the Legate of Syria, had decided that there 
 was j)rimd facie cause for the complaints which had been 
 raised against the Procui-ator in all three divisions of his 
 district, it is probable that Pilate, who was sent to Eome 
 .to answer for his misdemeanours, would have received 
 
 » Life of Christ, ii. 362. » Jos. AnU. xviu. 3 -5 ; Suet. Tib. xxxvi. 
 
GAUrS AND THE JEWS. 245 
 
 strict justice from the aged Emperor. But before Pilate 
 arrived, Tiberius bad ended bis long life of disappointment, 
 crime, and gloom, 
 
 Tbe accession of Gains was bailed by tbe wbole Eoman 
 world witb a burst of rapture,^ and tbere were none to 
 wbom it seemed more likely to introduce a golden era of 
 prosperity tban to tbft Jews. For if tbe young Emperor 
 bad any living friend, it was Herod Agrippa. Tbat 
 prince, if be could command but little affection as a 
 grandson of Herod tbe Great, bad yet a claim to Jewish 
 loyalty as a son of tbe murdered Aristobulus, a grandson 
 of tbe murdered Mariamne, and therefore a direct lineal 
 descendant of tbat great line of Asmonsean princes whose 
 names recalled the last glories of Jewish independence. 
 Accordingly, when tbe news reached Jerusalem tbat 
 Tiberius at last was dead, the Jews heaved a sigh of relief, 
 and not only took witb perfect readiness the oath of 
 allegiance to Gains, which was administered by Vitellius to 
 the myriads who bad thronged to the Eeast of Pentecost, 
 but offered- speedy and willing holocausts for the prosperity 
 of that reign which was to bring them a deeper misery, 
 and a more absolute humiliation, than any which bad been 
 inflicted on them during the previous dominion of Eome.^ 
 
 Gains lost no time in publicly displaying bis regard for 
 the Herodian prince, who, witb remarkable insight, had 
 courted his friendship, not only before his accession was 
 certain, but even in spite of the distinct recommendation 
 of tbe former Emperor.' 
 
 1 Snet. Calig. 13, 14. 
 
 2 Compare for this entire narrative Suet. Caligula; PLilo, Leg. ad Gaivtm, 
 and m Flaeaum; Jos. Antt. xviii. 9; B. J. ii. 10 j Die Cass. lix. 8, aeq.; 
 Grata, iii. 270—277 ; Jahn, Sehr. Commonwealth, 174. 
 
 ' The adventures of Herod Agrippa I. form one of the ntunerous 
 romances which give us so clear a glimpse of the state of society during the 
 early Empire. Sent to Home hy his grandfather, he had breathed from early 
 
246 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAtJL. 
 
 One day, wlule riding in the same carriage as Gaius, 
 Agrippa was imprudent enough to express his wish for the 
 time when Tiberius would bequeath the Empire to a 
 worthier successor. Such a remark might easily be con- 
 strued into a crime of high treason, or laesa majestas. In 
 a court which abounded with spies, and in which few 
 dared to express above a whisper their real thoughts, it 
 was natural that the obsequious slave who drove the 
 chariot should seek an audience from Tiberius to com- 
 municate what he had heard ; and when by the influejice 
 of Agrippa himself he had gained this opportunity, his 
 report made the old Emperor so indignant, that he ordered 
 the Jewish prince to be instantly arrested. Clothed as he 
 was in royal purple, Agrippa was seized, put in chains, and 
 taken t)ff to a prison, in which he languished for the six 
 reinaining months of the life of Tiberius. Almost the 
 first thought of Gaius on his accession was to relieve the 
 friend who had paid him such assiduous court before his 
 fortunes were revealed. Agrippa was at once released from 
 custody. A few days after, Gaius sent for him, put a 
 diadem on his head, conferred on him the tetrarchies of 
 Herod Philip, and of Lysanias, and presented him with 
 a golden chain of equal weight with the iron one with 
 which he had been bound. 
 
 Now, although Agrippa was a mere unprincipled 
 adventurer, yet he had the one redeeming feature of 
 .respect for the external • religion of his race. The 
 Edomite admixture in his blood had not quite effaced 
 the more generous instincts of an Asmonsean prince, 
 
 ■youth the perfumed and intoxicating atmosphere of the Imperial court as a 
 ■ companion of Drusus, the son of Tiberius. On the death of Drusus he was 
 excluded from Court, and was brought to the verge of suicide by the indigence ■ 
 which followed a course of extravagance. Saved from his purpose by his 
 wife Cypros, he went through a series of debts, disgraces, and escapades, until 
 "he was once more admitted to favour by Tiberius at Capreae. 
 
AGRIPPA AT ALEXANDRIA. 247 
 
 nor had the sty of Capreae altogether made him forget 
 that he drew his line from the Priest of Modin. The 
 Jews might well have expected that, under an Emperor 
 with whom their prince was a hosom friend, their interests 
 would he more secure than they had been even under a 
 magnanimous Julius and a liberal Augustus. Their hopes 
 were doomed to the bitterest disappointment ; nor did any 
 reign plunge them into more dreadful disasters than the 
 reign of Agrippa's friend. 
 
 In August, A.D. 38, Agrippa arrived at Alexandria on 
 his way to his new kingdom. His arrival was so entirely 
 free from ostentation — for, indeed, Alexandria, where his 
 antecedents were not unknown, was the last city in which 
 he would have wished to air his brand-new royalty — that 
 though he came in sight of the Pharos about twilight, 
 he ordered the captain to stay in the offing tiU dark, that 
 he might land unnoticed.^ But the presence in the city 
 of one who was at once a Jew, a king, an Idumsean, a 
 Herod, and a favourite of Caesar, would not be likely to 
 remain long a secret ; and i£ it was some matter of exulta- 
 tion to the Jews, it exasperated beyond all bounds the envy 
 of the Egyptians. Maccus, the Governor of Alexandria, 
 chose to regard Agrippa's visit as an intentional insuK 
 to himself, and by the abuse which he heaped in secret 
 upon the Jewish prince, encouraged the insults in which 
 the mob of Alexandria were only too ready to indulge. 
 Unpopular everywhere, the Jews were regarded in Alex- 
 andria with special hatred. Their wealth, their numbers, 
 their usuries, their exclusiveness, the immunities which 
 the two first Caesars had granted them,^fiUed the worthless 
 
 ' Derenljourg is therefore mistaken (p. 222) that Agrippa " se donna la 
 puerile satisfaction d'etaler son luxe royal dans I'endroit oA nagu^re U avait 
 traine nne si honteuse mis&re." 
 
 * Joa. Antt. xiv. 7,2 ; xix. 5, 2, and xiv. 10, passim (Decrees of Jnlins). 
 
248 THE LITE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 populace of a hybrid city with fiiry and loathing. A 
 Jewish Mfiff was to them a conception at once ludicroua 
 and offensive. Every street rang with lampoons against 
 him, every theatre and pnppet-show echoed with ribald 
 farces composed in his insult. At last the wanton mob 
 seized on a poor naked idiot named Carabbas, who had 
 long been the butt of mischievous boys, and carrying 
 him off to the Grymnasium, clothed him in a door-mat, by 
 way of tallith, flattened a papyrus leaf as his diadem, gave 
 him a stalk of papyrus for a sceptre, and surrounding him 
 with a mimic body-guard of youths armed with sticks, 
 proceeded to bow the knee before him, and consult him on 
 state affairs. They ended the derisive pageant by loud 
 shouts of Maris / Maris/ the Syriac word ^F'^'Lord." 
 
 Encouraged by impunity and the coimii(^ance of the 
 Prsefect, they then bribed him to acquiesce in ipore serious 
 outrages. First they raised a cry to erect images of Gains 
 in the synagogues, hoping thereby to provoke the Jews 
 into a resistance which might be interpreted as treason. 
 This was to set an example which might be fatal to the 
 Jews, not only in Egypt, but in all other countries. Irri- 
 tated, perhaps, by the determined attitude of the Jews, 
 Flaccus, in spite of the privileges which had long been 
 secured to them by law and charter, published an edict in 
 which he called them " foreigners and aliens," and drove 
 them all into a part of a single quarter of the city in 
 which it was impossible for them to live. The mob then 
 proceeded to break open and plunder the shops of the 
 deserted quarter, blockaded the Jews in their narrow pre^ 
 cincts, beat and murdered all who jn the pangs of hunger 
 ventured to leave it, and burnt whole families alive, some- 
 times with green fuel, which added terribly to their 
 tortures. Flaccus, for his part, arrested thirty-eight lead- 
 .ing members of their Council, and after having stripped 
 
END or FLAOOUS. 249 
 
 ttem of all their possessions, had them beaten, not with 
 rods by the lictors, but with scourges by the lowest 
 executioners, with such severity that some of them died 
 in consequence. Their houses were rifled, in the hope 
 of finding arms ; but though nothing whatever was found, 
 except common table-knives, men and women were dragged 
 into the theatre, commanded to eat swine's flesh, and 
 tortured if they refused.^ 
 
 But neither these attempts to win popularity among 
 the Gentile inhabitants by letting loose their rage 
 against their Jewish neighbours, nor his ostentatious 
 public loyalty and folsome private flatteries saved 
 riaccus from the fate which he deserved. These pro- 
 ceedings had barely been going on for two months, when 
 Grains sent a centurion with a party of soldiers, who, 
 landing after dark, proceeded at once to the house of 
 Stephanion, a freed-man of Tiberius, with whom Flaccus 
 happened to be dining, arrested him without difficulty, 
 and brought him to Eome. Here he found that two 
 low demagogues, Isidorus and Lampo, who had hitherto 
 been among his parasites, and who had constantly 
 fomented his hatred of the Jews, were now his chief 
 accusers. He was foimd guilty. His property was con- 
 fiscated, and he was banished, first to the miserable rock 
 of Gryara, in the .^gean, and then to Andros. In one 
 of those sleepless nights which were at once a symptom 
 and an aggravation of his madness. Gains, meditating on 
 the speech of an exile whom he had restored, that during 
 his banishment he used to pray for the death of Tiberius, 
 determined to put an end to the crowd of distinguished 
 criminals which imperial tyranny had collected on the 
 barren islets of the Mediterranean. Macctis was among 
 
 * There soem to be distinct allusions to these troubles in 3 Mace, (passim). 
 
250 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTIi. 
 
 the earliest victims, and Pliilo narrates with, too gloating 
 a vindictiveness the horrible manner in which, he was 
 hewn to pieces in a ditch by the despot's emissaries.^ 
 
 Grains had begun his reign with moderation, but the 
 sudden change from the enforced simplicity of his tute- 
 lage to the boundless luxuries and lusts of his autocracy 
 — the sudden plunge into all things which, as Philo" 
 says, "destroy both soul and body and all the bonds 
 which unite and strengthen the two" — ^brought on the 
 iQness which altered the entire organism of his brain. 
 Up to that time he had been a vile and cruel man ; 
 thenceforth he was a mad and sanguinary monster. It 
 was after this illness, and the immediately subsequent 
 murders of Tiberius Gremellus, Macro, and Marcus 
 Silanus, which delivered him from all apprehension of 
 rivalry or restraint, that he began most violently to 
 assert his godhead. His predecessors would have re- 
 garded it as far less impious to allow themselves or their 
 fortunes to be regarded as divine, than to arrogate to 
 themselves the actual style and attributes of existing 
 deities.^ But disdaining aU mere demi-gods hke Tfo- 
 phonius and Amphiaraus, Grains began to appear in public, 
 first in the guise of Hercules, or Bacchus, or one of the 
 Dioscuri, and then as Apollo, or Mars, or Mercury, or 
 even Yenus (!), and demanded that choruses should be 
 sung in his honour under these attributes ; and, lastly, he 
 did not hesitate to assert his perfect equality with Jupiter 
 
 ' It is not impossible tliat Herod Antipas may hare perished in conse- 
 quence of this same order of Gains.' It is true that Suetonius {Calig.28) only 
 says, " Misit circum insMZos qui omnes (exsules) trucidarent ; " butthecottse 
 would apply as much to all political exiles, and Dion (lix. 18) distinctly says 
 that he put Autipas to death (KareVifialE). The trial of Antipas took place at 
 Pnteoli shortly before the Fhilonian embassy, A.D. 39. 
 
 » Be Leg. 2. 
 
 ^ See Excursus XII., " Apotheosis of Koman Emperors." 
 
MADNESS OP GAIUS. 251 
 
 himself. The majority of the Eomans, partly out of abject 
 terror, partly out of contemptuous indifference, would feel 
 little difficulty in humouring these vagaries; hut the 
 Jews, to their eternal honour, refused at all costs to 
 sanction this frightful concession of divine honours to the 
 basest of mankind. As there were plenty of parasites 
 in the Court of Grains who would lose no opportunity 
 of indulging their spite against the Jews, an ingrained 
 hatred of the whole nation soon took possession of his 
 mind. The Alexandrians were not slow to avail them- 
 selves of this antipathy. They were well aware that the 
 most acceptable flattery to the Emperor, and the most 
 overwhelming insult to the Jews, was to erect images of 
 Gains in Jewish synagogues, and they not only did this, 
 but even in the superb and celebrated Chief Synagogue of 
 Alexandria' they erected a bronze statue in an old gilt 
 quadriga which had once been dedicated to Cleopatra. 
 
 Of all these proceedings Grains was kept informed, 
 partly by his delighted study of Alexandrian nbwspapers, 
 which Philo says that he preferred to all other literature, 
 and partly by the incessant insults against the Jews 
 distilled into his ears by Egyptian buffoons like the in- 
 famous Helicon." 
 
 The sufferings of the Jews in Alexandria at last 
 became so frightful that they despatched the venerable 
 Philo ,with four others on an embassy to the insane youth 
 whom they refused to adore. Philo has left us an account 
 of this embassy, which, though written with his usual 
 rhetorical diffuseness, is intensely interesting as a record of 
 the times. It opens for us a little window into the daily 
 life of the Imperial Court at Eome within ten years of 
 the death of Christ. 
 
 • The Diaplenston. * Philo, Leg. John xxv. 
 
252 THE LIEE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 The first interview of the ambassadors with. Gaius took 
 place while he was walking in his mother's garden on the 
 banks of the Tiber, and the apparent graciousness of his 
 reception deceived all of them except Philo himself. 
 After having been kept waiting for some time, the Jews 
 were ordered to foUow him to Puteoli, and there it was 
 that a man with disordered aspect and bloodshot eyes 
 rushed up to them, and with a frame that shivered with 
 agony and in a voice broken with sobs, barely succeeded 
 in giving utterance to the horrible intelligence that 
 Gaius had asserted his intention of erecting a golden 
 colossus of himself with the attributes of Jupiter in the 
 Holy of Holies at Jerusalem. After giving way to their 
 terror and agitation, the ambassadors asked the cause of 
 this diabolical sacrilege, and were informed that it was 
 due to the advice of " that scorpion-Hke slave," Helicon, 
 who with " a poisonous Ascalonite " named Apelles — a 
 low tragic actor — had made the suggestion during the fit 
 of rage with which Gaius heard that the Jews of Janinia 
 had torn down a trumpery altar which the Gentiles of the 
 city had erected to his deity with no other intention than 
 that of wounding and insulting them. 
 
 So far from this being a transient or idle threat, 
 Gaius wrote to Petronius, the Legate of Syria, and ordered 
 him to carry it out with every precaution and by main 
 force; and though the legate was well aware of the 
 perilous nature of the undertaking, he had been obliged 
 to furnish the necessary materials for the statue to the 
 artists of Sidon. 
 
 No sooner had the miserable Jews heard of this 
 threatened abomination of desolation, than they yielded 
 themselves to such a passion of horror as made them 
 forget every other interest. It was no time to be per- 
 secuting Christians when the most precious heritage of 
 
ANGUISH or THE JEWS. 253 
 
 liheii' religion was at stake. Flockiag to Phcenicia in 
 myriads, until they occupied tlie whole country like a 
 cloud, they divided themselves into six companies of old 
 men, youths, hoys, aged women, matrons, and virgins, 
 and rent the air with their howls and supplications, as 
 they lay prostrate on the earth and scattered the dust in 
 handfuls upon their heads. Petronius, a sensible and 
 honourable man, was moved by their abject misery, and 
 with the object of gaining time, ordered the Sidonian 
 artists to make their statue very perfect, intimating not 
 very, obscurely that he wished them to be as long over it 
 as possible. Meanwhile, in order to test the Jews, he 
 went from Acre to Tiberias, and there the same scenes 
 were repeated. For forty days, neglecting the sowing of 
 their fields, they lay prostrate on the ground, and when 
 the legate asked them whether they meant to make war 
 against Caesar, they said. No, but they were ready to die 
 rather than see their temple desecrated, and in proof of 
 their sincerity stretched out their throats. Seeing the 
 obstinacy of their resolution, besieged by the entreaties of 
 Aristobulus and Helcias the elder, afraid, too, that a 
 famine would be caused by the neglect of tillage, Petro- 
 nius, though at the risk of his own life, promised the 
 Jews that he would write and intercede for them, if they 
 would separate peaceably and attend to their husbandry. 
 It was accepted by both Jews and Gentiles as a sign of 
 the special blessing of God on this brave and humane 
 decision, that no sooner had Petronius finished his speech 
 than, after long drought, the sky grew black with clouds, 
 and there was an abundant rain. He kept his word. 
 He wrote a letter to Gaius, telling him that if the 
 aifair of the statue were pressed, the Jews would 
 neglect their harvest and there would be great danger 
 lest he should find the whole country in a state of 
 
254 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 staivation, whicli miglit be even dangerous for himself 
 and Ms suite, if lie carried out his intended visit. 
 
 Meanwhile, in entire ignorance of all that had taken 
 place, Agrippa had arrived at Eome, and he at once read 
 in the countenance of the Emperor that something had 
 gone wrong. On hearing what it was, he fell down in a 
 fit, and lay for some time in a deep stupor. By the exer- 
 tion of his whole influence with Gains, he only succeeded 
 in procuring a temporary suspension of the design ; and 
 it was not long before the Emperor announced the inten- 
 tion of taking with him from Rome a colossus of gilded 
 bronze — ^in order to cut off all excuse for delay — and of 
 personally superintending its erection in. the Temple, which 
 would henceforth be regarded as dedicated to " the new 
 Jupiter, the illustrious Grains." Even during his brief 
 period of indecision he was so angry with Petronius for 
 the humanity that he had shown that he wrote him a 
 letter commanding him to commit suicide if he did not 
 want to die by the hands of the executioner. 
 
 These events, and the celebrated embassy of Philo to 
 Gains, of which he has left us so painfully graphic a 
 description, probably took place in the August of the 
 year 40. In the January of the following year the 
 avenging sword of the brave tribune Cassius Chserea rid 
 the world of the intolerable despot.^ The vessel which had 
 carried to Petronius the command to commit suicide, was 
 fortunately delayed by stormy weather, and only arrived 
 twenty-seven days after intelligence had been received that 
 the tyrant was dead. From Claudius — who owed his 
 throne entirely to the subtle intrigues of Agrippa — the 
 
 * The Jews believed that a Bath K61 from the Holy of Holies had annonnced 
 his death to the High Priest (Simon the Just), and the amurersary was for- 
 bidden to be ever obserred as a fast day (MegUlath Taanith, § 26 ; Sotah, 
 £, 33, 1 i Derenbonrg, Palest,, p. 207). ' 
 
CLAUDIUS AND THE JEWS. 855 
 
 Jews received both, kindness and consideration. Petronins 
 was ordered thenceforth to suppress and punish all attempts 
 to insult ttem^ in the quiet exercise of their religious 
 daties j and Claudius utterly forbad that prayers should be 
 addressed or sacrifices offered to himself.' 
 
 ' See the decree of Glaudins against the iuhabitantB o£ Dor, 'vrho had set 
 ap his statue in a Jetrish synagoguB. 
 ' Dion,lz.5. 
 
Sook W* 
 
 THE EECOGNITION OF THE GENTILES. 
 OHAPTEE XV. 
 
 THE SAMARITANS — THE EUNUCH — THE CENTURION. 
 
 " Whenever I look at Peter, my very heart leaps for joy. If I could paint 
 a portrait of Peter I would paint upon every hair of his head 'I believe in the 
 forgiveness of sins.' " — Ltjthbe. 
 
 " Quel Padre vetusto 
 Di santa chiesa, a cni Oristo le chiavi 
 Bacommando di questo fior venusto." 
 
 Dante, Paradiso, xxsii 124 
 
 " Blessed is the eunuch, which with his hands hath wrought no iniquity, nor 
 imaged wicked things against God : for unto him shall be given the special 
 gift of faith, and an inheritance in the temple of the Lord more acceptable 
 to his mind. For glorious is the fruit of good labours : and the root of wisdom 
 shall never fall away." — WiSD. iii. 14, 15. 
 
 The peace, the progress, the edification, the holiness of the 
 Church, were caused, no douht, by that rest from persecu- 
 tion which seems to have been due to the absorption of the 
 Jews in the desire to avert the outrageous sacrilege of 
 Gaius. And yet we cannot but ask with surprise whether 
 the Christians looked on with indifierence at the awful 
 insult which was being aimed at their national religion. 
 It would mark a state of opinion very different from what 
 we should imagine if they had learnt to regard the un- 
 sullied sanctity of Jehovah's Temple as a thing in which 
 they had no longer any immediate concern. Can we for 
 one moment suppose that James the Lord's brother, or 
 
JEWS AJSTD CHRISTIANS. 257 
 
 Simon the Zealot, were content to enjoy their freedom from 
 molestation, without caring to take part in the despairing 
 efforts of their people to move the compassion of the 
 Legate pf Syria? Is it conceivable that they would have 
 stayed quietly at home while the other Jews in tens of 
 thousands were streaming to his headquarters at Caesarea, 
 or flinging the dust upon their heads as they lay prostrate 
 before him at Tiberias ? Or was it their own personal 
 peril which kept them from mingling among masses of 
 fanatics who indignantly rejected their co-operation ? "Were 
 they forced to confine their energies to the teaching of the 
 infant churches of Palestine because they were not even 
 allowed to participate in the hopes and fears of their 
 compatriots ? We may fairly assume that the Jewish 
 Christians abhorred the purposed sacrilege; but if the 
 schools of Hillel and Shammai, and the cliques of 
 Hanan and Herod, hated them only one degree less than 
 they hated the minions of Grains, it is evident that there 
 could have been nothing for the Apostles to do but to 
 rejoice over their immediate immunity from danger, and 
 to employ the rest thus granted them for the spread of 
 the Kingdom of Grod. The kings of the earth might rage, 
 and the princes imagine vain things, but i/tei/, at least, 
 could kiss the Son,^ and win the blessing of those who 
 trusted in the Lord. It was the darkest midnight of the 
 world's history, but the Groshen of Christ's Church was 
 brightening more and more with the silver dawn. 
 
 To this outward peace and inward development was • 
 due an event which must continue to have the most 
 memorable importance to the end of time — the admissions 
 of Gentiles, as Grentiles, into the Church of Christ. This 
 
 * Ps. ii. 12, ii'ip'*?, either " kiss the Son," or " worship purely," WMch 
 rendering is right has been a disputed point ever since Jerome's dM^ (Achi. 
 Ruff. i.). See Perowne, Psalms, i. 116. 
 
 K 
 
258 THE LIPB AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 great event must have seemed inevitable to men like 
 St. Stephen, whose training as Hellenists had emancipated 
 them from the crude spirit of Jewish isolation. But the 
 experience of all history shows how difficult it is for the 
 mind to shake itself free froin views which have become 
 rather instinctive than volitional ; and though Jesus had 
 uttered words which could only have one logical explana- 
 tion, the older, disciples, even the Apostles themselves, 
 had not yet learnt their full significance. The revelation 
 of Grod in Christ had been a beam in the darkness. 
 To pour suddenly upon the midnight a fuU flood of 
 spiritual illumination would have been alien to the 
 method of Grod's dealings with our race. The dayspring 
 had risen, but many a long year was to elapse before it 
 broadened into the boundless noon. 
 
 But the time had now fully come in which those other 
 sheep of which Jesus had spoken — ^the other sheep which 
 were not of this fold ^ — must be brought to hear His voice. 
 Indirectly, as well as directly, the result was due to St. 
 Paul in a degree immeasurably greater than to any other 
 man. To St. Peter, indeed, as a reward for his great con- 
 fession, had been entrusted the keys of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven; and, in accordance with this high metaphor, 
 to him was permitted the honour of opening to the 
 Gentiles the doors of the Christian Church. And that 
 this was so ordained is a subject for deep thankfulness. 
 The struggle of St. Paul against the hostility of Judaism 
 from without, and the leaven of Judaism from withia, 
 was severe and lifelong, and even at his death faith alone 
 could have enabled him to see that it had not been ia 
 vain. But the glorious effiort of his life must have been 
 fruitless had not the principle at stake been publicly 
 
 ^ John X. 16. In this verse it is a pity that the English Tersion makes no 
 distinction between ai\ii, " fold," and vol/iyii, " flock." 
 
ADMISSION OF THE GENTILES. 259 
 
 conceded — conceded in direct obedience to sanctions 
 wticli none ventured to dispute — by tbe most eminent 
 and most authoritative of the Twelve. And yet, though 
 St. Peter was thus set apart by Divine »foresight to 
 take the initiative, it was to one whom even the 
 Twelve formally recognised as the Apostle of the 
 TJncircumcision, that the world owes under Grod the 
 development of Christian faith into a Christian theology, 
 and the emancipation of Christianity from those Judaic 
 ■ limitations which would have been fatal to its universal 
 acceptance.^ To us, indeed, it is obvious that " it would 
 have been impossible for the Grentiles to adopt the bye- 
 laws of a Grhetto." If the followers of Christ had 
 refused them the right-hand of fellowship on any other 
 conditions, then the world would have gone its own way, 
 and Mammon and Belial and Beelzebub would have 
 rejoiced in the undisturbed corruption of a Paganism 
 which was sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss of 
 shame. 
 
 And as this deliverance of the Grentiles was due 
 directly to the letters and labours of St. Paul, so the first 
 beginnings of it rose indirectly from the consequences of 
 the persecutions of which he had been the most fiery 
 agent. The Eavager of the Faith was unconsciously 
 proving himself its most powerful propagator. When he 
 was making havoc of the Church, its members, who were 
 thus scattered abroad, went everywhere preaching the 
 word. To the liberal Hellenists this was a golden 
 opportunity, and Philip, who had been a fellow-worker 
 with Stephen, gladly seized it to preach the Grospel to the 
 hated Samaritans. The eye of Jesus had already gazed 
 in that country on fields whitening to the harvests, and 
 
 » Iinmer, Newt. Theol. 206. 
 B 2 
 
260 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 the zeal of Philip, aided by high spiritual gifts, not 
 only won a multitude of converts, but even arrested 
 the influence of a powerful goes, or sorcerer, named 
 Simon.^ Justin Martyr calls him Simon of Gritton, and 
 he has been generally identified with Simon Magus, 
 the first heresiarch,® and with Simon the Cyprian, 
 whom Felix employed to entrap the wandering affec- 
 tions of the Queen DrusUJa. This man, though, as after- 
 wards appeared, with the most interested and unworthy 
 motives, went so far as to receive baptism; and the 
 progress of the faith among his former dupes was so 
 remarkable as to require the immediate presence of the 
 Apostles. St. Peter and St. John went from Jerusalem 
 to confirm the converts, and their presence resulted not 
 only in the public discomfiture of Simon,^ but also in- that 
 outpouring of special manifestations which accompanied 
 the gift of the promised Comforter. 
 
 But Philip had the honour of achieving yet another 
 great conversion, destined to prove yet more decisively 
 that the day was at hand when the rules of Judaism were 
 to be regarded as obsolete.- Guided by divine impressions 
 
 1 As I have no space to give an acconnt of the strange career and opinions 
 of this " hero of the Romance of Heresy,'' as given in the Pseudo-Clementina 
 Somilies and Recognitions, I must content myself by referring to Hippolyt. 
 Philosoph.f'p. 161 seq.; Iron. Saer. i. 23; Neander, Oh. Hist. i. 454; Plants 
 ing, 51 — 64 ; Gieseler, Eccl.Sist. i. 49 ; Mansel, Chuostic Heresies, 91 — 94; De 
 Pressens^, i. 396 seq. The stories about him are fabulous (Arnob. AdA). Gent., 
 11, 12), and the supposed statue to him (Just. Mart. Apol. i. 26, 56 ; Iren. 
 Adv. Haer. i. 23; Tert. Apol. 13) is believed, from a tablet found in 1574 on 
 the Insula Tiberina, to have beep a statue to the Sabine God Semo 8aniyus 
 (Baronius, m arm. 44 ; Burton, Bampt. Lect. 375). A typical impostor of 
 this epoch was Alexander of Abonoteiohos (see Lncian, Pseudo-mantis, 10 — 51, 
 and on the general prevalence of magic and theurgy, DoUinger, Judenth. u. 
 Heidenth. viii. 2, § 7). 
 
 s niffns alp4(reus eiper^s (Cyril. Iren. ad/o.HcBT. i. 27; u.jpraef.). "Gitton" 
 may very likely be a confusion with Citium, whence " Chittim," &o. 
 
 8 From his endeavour to obtain spiritual functions by a bribe is deriT«dthe 
 word simony. 
 
THE EUNTJOH. 261 
 
 and angel voices he had turned his steps southward along 
 the desert road which leads from EleutheropoHs to Gaza/ 
 and there had encountered the retinue of a wealthy 
 Ethiopian eunuch, who held the high position of treasurer 
 to the Kandake of Meroe.^ There seems to be some reason 
 for believing that this region had been to a certain extent 
 converted to Judaism by Jews who penetrated into it from 
 Egypt in the days of Psammetichus, whose descendants 
 still exist under the name of Falasyan.^ The eunuch, in 
 pious fulfilment of the duties of a Proselyte of the Gate — 
 and his very condition rendered more than this impossible 
 — ^had gone up to Jerusalem to worship, and not improbably 
 to be present at one of the great yearly festivals. As he 
 rode in his chariot at the head of his retinue he occupied 
 his time, in accordance with the rules of the Eabbis, in 
 studying the Scriptures, and he happened at the moment 
 to be reading aloud in the LXX. version* the prophecy 
 of Isaiah, "He was led as a sheep to slaughter, and 
 as a lamb before his shearer is dumb, so he openeth 
 not his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was 
 taken away, and his generation who shall declare? for 
 his life is being taken from the earth."® Philip asked 
 
 ^ The oStii iffrh ifitnos of viii. 26 probably refers to the road. Gaza was 
 not destroyed till A.D. 65 (Robinson, BM. Bes. ii. 640). Lange's notion 
 (Apost. Zeit. ii. 109) that lipi)nois means " a moral desert " is ovi of the question. 
 Although paronfimasia is so frequent a figure in the N. T., yet I cannot think 
 that there is anything intentional in the lU rdfav of 26, and the ttjs yiins of 27. 
 
 ^ The title of the Queen of Meroe (Pliny, E.N. vi. 35 ; Dio Cass. liv. 5). 
 (For the " treasure" of Ethiopia see Isa. xlv. 14). Ethiopian tradition gives 
 the eunuch the name of Indich. On the relation of the Jews with Ethiopia 
 see Zeph. iii. 10; Ps. Ixviii. 31 5 and for another faithful Ethiopian eunuch, 
 also a "king's servant" (Ebed-melech), Jer. xxxviii. 7; xxxix. 16. - 
 
 ' Benan, Les Apdtres, p. 158. 
 
 * Isa. liii. 7, 8. The quotation in Acts viii. 33 is from the LXX. "We 
 might have supposed that the eunuch was reading the ancient Ethiopic version 
 founded on the LXX. ; but in that case Philip would not have understood him. 
 
 ' This passage differs in several respects from our Hebrew text. 
 
262 THE LJFB AM) "WOEK OE ST. PAUL. 
 
 liim whether he understood what he was reading ? The 
 eunuch confessed that it was all dark to him, and after 
 having courteously invited Philip to take a seat in 
 his chariot, asked who it was to whom the prophet 
 was referring. Philip was thus enahled to unfold the 
 Christian interpretation of the great scheme of prophecy, 
 and so completely did he command the assent of his 
 listener, that on their reaching a spring of water — ^possibly 
 that at Bethsoron, not far from Hebron^ — the eunuch 
 asked to be baptised. The request was addressed to a 
 large-hearted Hellenist, and was instantly granted, though 
 there were reasons which might have made a James or a 
 Simon hesitate. But in spite of the prohibition of 
 Deuteronomy,^ Philip saw that the Christian Church was 
 to be an infinitely wider and more spiritual communion 
 than that which had been formed by the Mosaic ritual. 
 Eecalling, perhaps, the magnificent prediction of Isaiah,' 
 which seemed to rise above the Levitical prohibition — 
 recalling, perhaps, also some of the tender words and 
 promises of his Master, Christ — he instantly stepped 
 down with the eunuch into the water. Without any 
 recorded confession of creed or faith — for that which is 
 introduced into Acts viii. 37 is one of the early instances 
 of interpolation* — ^he administered to one who was not 
 only (as is probable) a Grentile by birth, but a eunuch 
 
 ^ Josh. XV. 58 ; Neh. iii. 16 j Jer. Ep. ciii. The spring is called Ain edh- 
 Bhirweh. But Dr. Robinson fixes the site near TeU el-Hasy {Bibl. Bes. iL 
 641). The tradition which fixes it at Ain Hauiyeh, near Jerusalem, is much 
 later. 
 
 ^ Deut. xxiii. 1. As for the nationality of the Ethiopian it must be borne 
 in mind that even Moses himself had once married an Ethiojoan wife (Numb, 
 lii. 1). 
 
 ' Isa. M. 3, 8. 
 
 ^ It is not found in k, A, B, C, G, H, and the phrase i-hv 'lijiroCv Xpun6v is 
 unknown to St. Luke. It is moreover obvious that while there was to some a 
 strong temptation to insert something of the kind, there was no conceivable 
 reason to omit it if it had been genuine. 
 
PHILIP'S WORK. 263 
 
 bj condition, tlio rite of baptism. The law of Deuteronomy- 
 forbade him to become a member of the Jewish Church, 
 but Philip admitted him iuto that Christian communion^ 
 in which there is neither Jew nor Grreek, neither male nor 
 female, neither bond nor free.^ 
 
 The subsequent work of Philip in the towns of 
 Philistia and the sea- coast, as well as during his long 
 subsequent residence at Csesarea^ was doubtless fruitful, 
 but for Christian history the main significance of his life 
 lay in his successful mission to detested Samaritans, and in 
 that bold baptism of the mutilated alien. Deacon though 
 he was, he had not shrunk from putting into effect the 
 divine intimations which foreshadowed the ultimate 
 obliteration of exclusive privileges. We cannot doubt 
 that it was the fearless initiative of Philip which helped 
 to shape the convictions of St. Peter, just as it was the 
 avowed act of St. Peter which involved a logical con- 
 cession of all those truths that were dearest to the heart 
 of St. Paul. 
 
 In the peaceful visitation of the communities which 
 the undisturbed prosperity of the new faith rendered 
 both "possible and desirable, Peter had journeyed west- 
 ward, and, encouraged by the many conversions caused 
 by the healing of ^neas and the raising of Tabitha, 
 he had fixed his home at Joppa, in order to strengthen 
 
 * The significance of the act on those grounds is probably the main if not 
 the sole reason for its narration ; and if elimSx" ^*d merely meant " chamber- 
 lain," there would hare been no reason to add the word Swiffrris in v. 27. 
 Dr. Plumptre (Neto Testament Commentary, in loc.) adduces the interesting 
 parallel furnished by the first decree of the first (Ecumenical Council (Cone. 
 Nic. Can. 1). 
 
 ' Gal. iii. 28. In Iren. Saer. iii, 12 ; Euseb. S. E. ii. 1, he is said to have 
 evangelised his own country. 
 
 „ ' Acts'xxi. 8, 9. Observe the undesigned coincidence in his welcome 
 of the Apostle of the Gentiles. At this point he disappears from Christian 
 history. The Philip who died at Hierapolis (Euseb. H. E. iii. 31) is probably 
 Philip the Apostle. 
 
264 THE LITB AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 the young but flouriskmg' cturclies on the plain of 
 Sharon. That he Ipdged in the house of Simon, a 
 tanner, is merely mentioned as one of those incidental 
 circumstances which are never wanting in the narratives 
 of writers familiar with the events which they describe. 
 But we may now see in it a remarkable significance. It 
 shows on the one hand how humble must have been the 
 circumstances of even the chief est of the Apostles, since 
 nothing but poverty could have induced the choice of 
 such a residence. But it shows further that Peter had 
 already abandoned Eabbinic scrupulosities, for we can 
 scarcely imagine that he would have found it impossible 
 to procure another home,^ and at the house of a tanner 
 no strict and uncompromising follower of the Oral Law 
 could have been induced to dwell. The daily contact 
 with the hides and carcases of various animals necessi- 
 tated by this trade, and the materials which it requires, 
 rendered it impure and disgusting in the eyes of aU rigid 
 legalists. If a tanner married without mentioning his 
 trade, his wife was permitted to get a divorce.^ The law 
 of levirate marriage might be set aside if the brother-in- 
 law of the childless widow was a tanner. A tanner's yard 
 must be at least fifty cubits distant from any town,^ and 
 it must be even further off, said Eabbi AMbha, if built to 
 the west of a town, from which quarter the efiluvium is 
 more easily blown. Now, a trade that is looked on with 
 disgust tends to lower the self-respect of all who under- 
 take it, and although Simon's yard may not have been 
 
 ' Lydda and Joppa were thoroughly Judaic (Jos. B. J. ii. 19, § 1). 
 
 ' Ketuhhoth, f . 77, 1. 
 
 ' Bdbha Bathra, t 25, 1, 16, 2 (where the remari is attributed to Bar 
 Kappara). "No trade," says Rabbi, "wUl erer pass away from the earth; 
 but happy be he whose parents belong to' a respectable trade .... The 
 world cannot exist without tanners, .... but woe unto him who is a 
 tanner " {Eiddushin, f . 82, 2). 
 
CHEIST AND THE lAW. 265 
 
 contiguous to his house, yet the choice of his house as a 
 residence not only proves how modest were the only re- 
 sources which Peter could command, but also that he had 
 learnt to rise superior to prejudice, and to recognise the 
 dignity of honest labour in even the humblest trade. 
 
 It is certain that two problems of vast importance 
 must constantly have been present to the mind of Peter 
 at this time : namely, the relation of the Church to the 
 Gentiles, and the relation alike of Jewish and Grentile 
 Christians to the Mosaic, or perhaps it would be more 
 accurate to say — though the distinction was not then 
 realised — ^to the Levitical law. In the tanner's house at 
 Joppa these difficulties were to meet with their divine 
 and final solution. 
 
 They were problems extremely perplexing. As regards 
 the first question, if the Grentiles were now to be admitted 
 to the possession of full and equal privileges, then had 
 Grod cast ofE His people ? had the olden promises failed ? 
 As regards the second question, was not the Law divine ? 
 had it not been delivered amid the terrors of Sinai ? Could 
 it have been enforced on one nation if it had not been 
 intended for all? Had not Jesus himself been obedient 
 to the commandments ? If a distinction were to be drawn 
 between commandments ceremonial and moral, where 
 were the traces of any distinction in the legislation itself, 
 or in the words of ChJrist ? Had He not bidden the leper 
 go show himseK to the priest, and offer for his cleansing 
 such things as Moses has commanded for a testimony 
 unto them ?^ Had He not said, " Think not that I am 
 come to destroy the Law and the Prophets; I am not 
 come to destroy, but to jTdfl? "^ Had He not even said. 
 Till heaven and earth shall pass away, one jot or 
 
 > Matt. Tm.4; Mark L 44 * Matt. t. 17. 
 
 « 
 
266 THE LIFE AND 'WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 one tittle shall in no wise pass from tlie law till all be 
 fulfilled? "1 
 
 These perplexing scruples had yet to wait for their 
 remoYal, until, by the experience of missionary labour, 
 God had ripened into its richest maturity the inspired 
 genius of Saul of Tarsus. At that period it is probable 
 that no living man could have accurately defined the future 
 relations between Jew and Grentile, or met the difficulties 
 which rose from these considerations. St. Stephen, who 
 might have enlightened the minds of the Apostles on these 
 great subjects, had passed away. St. Paul -was still a 
 suspected novice. The day when, in the great Epistles to 
 the Galatians and the Eomans, such problems should be 
 fully solved, was still far distant. There is no hurry in 
 the designs of God. It is only when the servitude is at 
 its worst that Moses is called forth. It is only when the 
 perplexity is deepest that Saul enters the arena of contro- 
 versy. It was only in the fulness of time that Christ 
 was born. 
 
 But even at this period St. Peter — especially when he 
 had left Jerusalem — must have been forced to see that 
 the objections of the orthodox Jew to the equal par- 
 ticipation of the Gentiles in Gospel privileges could be 
 met by counter objections of serious importance ; and 
 that the arguments of Hebraists as to the eternal validity 
 of the Mosaic system were being confronted by the logic 
 of facts with opposing arguments which could not long 
 be set aside. 
 
 For if Christ had said that He came to fulfil the Law, 
 had He not also said many things which showed that 
 those words had a deeper meaning than the jarimd fade 
 application which might be attached to them ? Had He 
 
 • JMatt. V. 18 ; Luke sri. 17. 
 
CHRIST AND THE LAW. 267 
 
 not six times vindicated for the Sabbath a larger freedom 
 than the scribes admitted P"^ Had He not poured some- 
 thing like contempt on needless ceremonial ablutions ?^ 
 Had He not Himself abstained from going up thrice 
 yearly to Jerusalem to the three great festivals ? Had 
 He not often quoted with approval the words of Hoshea : 
 "I will have mercy and not sacrifice?"^ Had He not 
 repeatedly said that all the Law and the Prophets hang 
 on two broad and simple commandments ? * Had He not, 
 both by word and action, showed His light estimation of 
 mere ceremonial defilement, to which the Law attached a 
 deep importance?^ Had He not refused to sanction the 
 stoning of an adulteress ? Had He not even gone so far 
 as to say that Moses had conceded some things, which 
 were in themselves undesirable, only because of the hard- 
 ness of J ewish hearts ? Had He not said, " The Law and 
 the Prophets were until John ? " ^ 
 
 And, besides all this, was it not clear that He meant 
 His Church to be an Universal Church ? Was not this 
 universality of the ofiered message of mercy and adop- 
 tion clearly indicated in the language of the Old Tes- 
 tament? Had not the Prophets again and again implied 
 the ultimate calling of the Gentiles ?''' But if the Gentiles 
 were to be admitted into the number of saints and brethren; 
 if, as Jesus Himself had prophesied, there was to be at last 
 one flock and one Shepherd,^ how could this be if the 
 Mosaic Law was to be considered as of permanent and 
 universal validity? Was it not certain that the Gen- 
 tiles, as a body, never would accept the whole system 
 
 ' Luke xiv. 1 — 6; John t. 10; Mark ii. 23; Matt. xii. 10; John ix. 14; 
 Luke xiJi. 14; xvi. 16. (See JAfe of Christ, ii. 114.) 
 » Matt. XV. 20. 
 » Mark xii. 33; Matt. ix. 13; xii. 7. • Matt. xix. 8 • Mark x. 5—9. 
 
 * Matt. xxii. 40. ' See Rom. xv. 9, 10, 11. 
 
 * Matt. XT. 17 ; Mark yii. 19. ' John x. 16, irof/ivij. 
 
268 THE LIFE AND WOKK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 of Mosaism, and never would accept, above all, the crucial 
 ordinance of circumcision? Would not such a demand 
 upon them be a certain way of insuring the refusal of 
 the Gospel message ? Or, if they did embrace it, was it 
 conceivable that the Gentiles were never to be anything 
 but mere Proselytes of the Gate, thrust as it were outside 
 the portals of the True Spiritual Temple? If so, were not 
 the most primary conceptions of Christianity cut away at 
 the very roots ? were not its most beautiful and essential 
 institutions rendered impossible ? How could there be 
 love-feasts, how could there be celebrations of the Lord's 
 Supper, how could there be the beautiful spectacle of 
 Christian love and Christian unity, if the Church was to 
 be composed, not of members joined together in equal 
 brotherhood, but of a proletariate of tolerated Gentiles, 
 excluded even from the privilege of eating with an aris- 
 tocracy of superior Jews ? Dim and dwarfed and maimed 
 did such an ideal look beside the grand conception of the 
 redeemed nations of the world coming to Sion, singing, 
 and with everlasting joy upon their heads ! 
 
 And behind all these uncertainties towered a yet vaster 
 and more eternal question. Christ had died to take away 
 the sins of the world ; what need, then, could there be of 
 sacrifices ? What significance could there be any more in 
 the shadow, when the substance had been granted?^ 
 Where was the meaning of types, after they had been ful- 
 filled in the glorious Antitype ? What use was left for the 
 lamp of the Tabernacle when the Sun of Righteousness 
 had risen with healing in His wings ? 
 
 Such thoughts, such problems, such perplexities, press- 
 ing for a decided principle which should guide men in 
 their course of action amid daily multiplying difficulties, 
 
 » 1 Oor. xiii. 10 j Ool. u. 17 j Heb. x. L 
 
TKE ISSUE AT STAKE. 269 
 
 niTist InevitaHy have occupied, at this period, the thoughts 
 of many of the brethren. In the heart of Peter they 
 must have assumed yet more momentous proportions, 
 because on him in many respects the initiative would 
 depend.^ The. destinies of the world during centuries of 
 history — the question whether, ere that brief aeon closed, 
 the inestimable benefits of the Life and Death of Christ 
 should be confined to the sectaries of an obsolete covenant 
 and a perishing nationality, or extended freely to all the 
 races of mankind — the question whether weary genera- 
 tions should be forced to accept the peculiarities of a 
 Semitic tribe, or else look for no other refuge than 
 the shrines of Isis or the Stoa of Athens — all depended^ 
 humanly speaking, on the line which should be taken 
 by one who claimed no higher earthly intelligence than 
 that of a Jewish fisherman. But Grod always chooses His 
 own fitting instruments. In the decision of momentous 
 questions, rectitude of heart is a far surer guarantee of 
 wisdom than power of intellect. When the unselfish 
 purpose is ready to obey, the supernatural illumination 
 is never wanting. When we desire only to do what is 
 right, it is never long before we hear the voice behind 
 us saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it," however 
 much we might be otherwise inclined to turn aside to the 
 right hand or to the left. 
 
 With such uncertainties in his heart, but also with 
 such desire to be guided aright, one day at noon Peter 
 mounted to the flat roof of the tanner's house for his 
 mid-day prayer.^ It is far from impossible that the 
 house may have been on the very spot with the one 
 with which it has long been identified. It is at the 
 
 > « Lo maggior Padre di famiglia " (Dante, PoratZ.-xxxii. 136). 
 ' Matt. X. 27 ; xxiv. 17 ; Luke xvii. 31. House-tops in old days had been the 
 common scenes of idol-worship (Jer. xix. 13; Zeph.i 6, &o.). 
 
270 THE LITE AKD WORK OP ST. PAUL, 
 
 soutli-west comer of tte little iown, and tlie spring in the 
 courtyard would have been useful to the tanner if he 
 carried on his trade in the place where he lived. A fig- 
 tree now overshadows it, and there may have been one 
 even then to protect the Apostle from the Syrian sun. In 
 any case his eyes must have looked on identically the 
 same scene which we may now witness from that spot; a 
 small Oriental town with the outline of its flat roofs and 
 low square houses relieved by trees and gardens ; a line 
 of low dunes and sandy shore ; a sea stretching far 
 away to the Isles of the Gentiles — a golden mirror burn- 
 ing under the rays of the Eastern noon in unbroken light, 
 except where it is rippled by the wings of the sea-birds 
 which congregate on the slippery rocks beneath the town, 
 or where its lazy swell breaks over the line of reef which 
 legend has connected with the story of Andromeda. It is 
 a meeting-point of the East and West. Behind us He 
 Philistia and the Holy Land. Beyond the Jordan, and 
 beyond the purple hills which form the eastern ramparts 
 of its valley, and far away beyond the Euphrates, were the 
 countries of those immemorial and colossal despotisms — 
 the giant forms of empires which had passed long ago 
 " on their way to ruin : " before us — a highway for the 
 nations — are the inland waters of the sea whose shores 
 during long ages of history have been the scene of all 
 that is best and greatest in the progress of mankind. As 
 he gazed dreamily on sea and town did Peter think of that 
 old prophet who, eight centuries before, had been sent by 
 God from that very port to preach repentance to one of 
 those mighty kingdoms of the perishing GentUes, and 
 whom in strange ways God had taught?^ 
 
 It was high noon, and whUe he prayed and meditated, 
 
 > Jonah i 3. 
 
THE VISION. 271 
 
 the Apostle, who all his Hfe had been familiar with the 
 scanty fare of poverty, became very hungry. But the mid- 
 day meal was not yet ready, and, while he waited, his 
 hunger, his uncertainties, his prayers for guidance, were 
 all moulded by the providence of Grod, to the fulfilment 
 of His own high ends. There is something inimitably 
 natural in the way in which truths of transcendent 
 importance were brought home to the seeker's thoughts 
 amid the fantastic crudities of mental imagery. The 
 narrative bears upon the face of it the marks of authen- 
 ticity, and we feel instinctively that it is the closest 
 possible reflection of the form in which divine guidance 
 came to the honest and impetuous Apostle as, in the 
 hungry pause which followed his mid-day supplications, 
 he half-dozed, half meditated on the hot flat roof under the 
 blazing sky, with his gaze towards the West and towards 
 the future, over the blazing sea. 
 
 A sort of trance came over him.-^ 
 
 The heaven seemed to open. Instead of the burning 
 radiance of sky and sea there shone before him something 
 like a great linen sheet,^ which was being let down to him 
 from heaven to earth by ropes which held it at the four 
 corners.' In its vast capacity, as in the hollow of some great 
 ark, he saw all the four-footed beasts, and reptiles of the 
 earth, and fowls of the air,* while a voice said to him, 
 "Bise, Petpr, slay and eat." But even in his hunger, kindled 
 yet more keenly by the sight of food, Peter did not forget 
 
 • Acts X. 10, iycjiero ^ir' oftTbi/ ^KiTTBcris («, A, B, 0, E, &C.). 
 
 ' oe6ii7i (cf. John xix. 40). 
 
 ' This seems to be implied in the ipx"" (see Enr. Hippol. 762, and Wetst. 
 ad .he.). But SeSe^eVoc koI are wanting in «, A, B, E. The Yulgate has 
 " quatuor initiis submitti de caelo." 
 
 ■• Acts X. 12, vivTa rk, " all the," not " aU kinds of," which would be wavTota. 
 Augustine uses the comparison of the ark (c. Faust, sii, 15} ; omit kcH rh Bripla 
 (,A,B, &C,). 
 
272 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL, 
 
 the habits of his training. Among these animals and 
 creeping things were swine, and camels, and rabbits, and 
 creatures which did not chew the cud or divide the hoof — 
 all of which had been distinctly forbidden by the Law 
 as articles of food. Better die of hunger than violate 
 the rules of the Kashar, and eat such things, the very 
 thought of which caused a shudder to a Jew.^ It 
 seemed strange to Peter that a voice from heaven 
 should bid him, without exception or distinction, to 
 slay and eat creatures among which the unclean were 
 thus mingled with the clean ; — nay, the very presence 
 of the unclean among them seemed to defile the entire 
 sheet.^ Brief as is the narrative of this trance in which 
 bodily sensations assuming the grotesque form of objective 
 images became a medium of spiritual illumination,^ it is 
 clearly implied that though pure and impure animals were 
 freely mingled in the great white sheet, it was mainly on 
 the latter that the glance of Peter fell, just as it was 
 with " sinners " of the Grentiles, and their admission to the 
 privileges of brotherhood, that his thoughts must have 
 been mainly occupied. Accordingly, with that simple and 
 audacious self-confidence which in his character was so 
 singularly mingled with fits of timidity and depression, he 
 boldly corrects the Voice which orders him, and reminds 
 
 ' On the Kashar, see vnfra, p. 434. The example of Daniel (i. 8 — 16) 
 made the Jews more particular. Josephus (yit. 3) tells us that some priests 
 imprisoned at Home lived only on figs and nuts. 
 
 V ^ In the Talmud (Sanhedr. t. 59, col. 2) there is a curious story about 
 unclean animals supematurally represented to R. Shimon Ben Chalaphtiia, who 
 slays them for food. This leads to the remark, " Nothing unclean comes down 
 from heaven." Have we here an oblique argument against the significance of 
 St. Peter's vision P R. Ishmael said that the care of Israel to avoid creeping 
 things would alone have been a reason why God saved them from Egypt 
 (Babha Metzia, f. 61, 2). Yet every Sanhedrist must be ingenious enough to 
 prove that a creeping thing is clean (Sanhedrin, f. 17, 1). 
 
 ^ See some excellent remarks of Neander, Planting, i. 73. . 
 
MEANING OF THE YISION. 273 
 
 the Divine Interlocutor tliat lie must, so to speak, have 
 made an oversight.^ 
 
 " By no means, Lord ! " — and the reader will imme- 
 diately recall the scene of the Gospel, in which St. Peter, 
 emboldened by Christ's words of praise, took Him and 
 began to rebuke Him, saying, "Be it far from Thee, 
 Lord," — " for," he added, with a touch of genuine Judaic 
 pride, " I never ate anything profane or unclean." And 
 the Voice spake a second time : " What God cleansed, 
 'profane' not thou ; " or, in the less energetic periphrasis 
 of our Version, " What God hath cleansed, that call not 
 thou common." This was done thrice, and then the vision 
 vanished. The sheet was suddenly drawn up into heaven. 
 The trance was over. Peter was alone with his own 
 thoughts ; all was hushed ; there came ho murmur more 
 from the blazing heaven; at his feet rolled silently the 
 blazing sea. 
 
 What did it mean ? St. Peter's hunger was absorbed 
 in the perplexity of interpreting the strange symbdls by 
 which he felt at once that the Holy Spirit was guiding 
 him to truth — ^to truth on which he must act, however 
 momentous were the issues, however painful the immediate 
 results. Was that great linen sheet in its whiteness the 
 
 * Of. Jolin xiii. 8. Increased familiarity with Jewish writings invariably 
 deepens our conviction that in the New Testament we are dealing with truthful 
 records. Knowing as we do the reverence of the Jews for divine intimations, we 
 might well have supposed that not even in a trance would Peter have raised 
 objections to the mandate of the Bath Kol. And yet we find exactly the same 
 thing in Scripture (1 Kings xix. 14 ; Jonah iv. 1, 9; Jer. i. 6), in the previous 
 accounts of Peter himself (Matt. xvi. 22) ; of St. Paul (Acts xxii. 19) ; and 
 in the Talmudic writings. Pew stories of the Talmud convey a more un- 
 shaken conviction of the indefeasible obligatoriness of the Law than that of 
 the resistance even to a voice from heaven by the assembled Rabbis, in 
 Bdbha Meizia, f. 59, 2 (I have quoted it in the Ea^ositor, 1877). It not 
 only illustrates the point immediately before us, but also shows more clearly 
 than anything else could do the overwhelming forces against which St. Paul 
 had to fight his way. 
 S 
 
274 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST, PAUL. 
 
 image of a world washed white,^ and were its four comers 
 a sign that they who dwelt therein were to be gathered 
 from the east and from the west, from the north and from 
 the south ; and were all the animals and creeping things, 
 clean and unclean, the image of all the races which 
 inhabit it? And if so, was the permission — nay, the 
 command — to eat of the unclean no less than of the clean 
 an indication that the Levitical Law was now " ready 
 to vanish away ; " ^ and that with it must vanish away, 
 no less inevitably, that horror of any communion with 
 Gentile races which rested mainly upon its provisions? 
 What else could be meant by a command which directly 
 contradicted the command of Moses ? ' Was it really 
 meant that all things were to become new? that even 
 these unclean things were to be regarded as let down 
 from heaven? and that in this new world, this pure 
 world, Grentiles were no longer to be called " dogs," but 
 Jew and Grentile. were to meet on a footing of perfect 
 equality, cleansed alike by the blood of Christ ? 
 
 Nor is the connexion between the symbol and the 
 thing signified quite so distant and arbitrary as has been 
 generally supposed. The distinction between clean and 
 unclean meats was one of the insuperable barriers between 
 the Gentile and the Jew — a barrier which prevented all 
 intercourse between them, because it rendered it im- 
 ipossible for them to meet at the same table or in social 
 life. In the society of a Gentile, a Jew was liable at 
 any moment to those ceremonial defilements which 
 iinvolved all kinds of seclusion and inconvenience ; and 
 not only so, but it was mainly by partaking of unclean 
 food that the Gentiles became themselves so unclean 
 dn the eyes of the Jews. It is hardly possible to put 
 
 1 So (Ecmnenias. * Heb. Tiii. iS. • Lev. xi. 7 ; Dent. xiv. 8. 
 
CLEAN AND TJNOLEAN. 275 
 
 into words tlie intensity of horror and revolt with 
 which the Jew regarded swine.^ They were to him the 
 very ideal and quintessence of all that must be looked 
 upon with an energetic concentration of disgust. He 
 would not even mention a pig by name, but spoie of it 
 as dabhar acMer^ or " the other thing." When, in the 
 days of Hyrcanus, a pig had been' surreptitiously put into 
 a box and drawn up the walls of Jerusalem, the Jews 
 declared that a shudder of earthquake had run through 
 four hundred parasangs of the Holy Land.^ Tet this 
 filthy and atrocious creature, which could hardly even be 
 thought of without pollution, was not only the chief 
 delicacy at Gentile banquets,* but was, in one form or 
 other, one of the commonest articles of Grentile consimip- 
 tion. How could a Jew touch or speak to a human being 
 who of deliberate choice had banqueted on swine's flesh, 
 and who might on that very day have partaken of the 
 abomination ? The cleansing of all articles of food in- 
 volved far more immediately than has yet been noticed 
 the acceptance of Grentiles on equal footing to equal 
 privileges. 
 
 And doubtless, as such thoughts passed through the 
 soul of Peter, he remembered also that remarkable 
 " parable " of Jesus of which he and his brother disciples 
 had once asked the explanation. Jesus in a few words, 
 but with both of the emphatic formulae which He adopted 
 to call special attention to any utterance of more than ordi- 
 nary depth and solemnity — "Hearken unto me, every one of 
 you, and understand ;" If any man hath ears to hear, let him. 
 
 ' Isa. Ixv. 4; kvi. 3 ; 2 Mace. vi. 18, 19 ; Jos. 0. 4P- u- 14. Tlie abhorrence 
 was shared by many Eastern nations (ffdi. ii. 47; Pliny, B.. N. viii. 52; 
 Koran). This was partly due to its filthy habits (2 Pet. ii. 221. 
 
 » Jer. Beraehoth, iv. 1 ; Derenbourg, Palest. 114 ; Gratz. iii. 480. (The 
 story is also told in Babha Kama, f. 82, 2 ; Menachoth, f . 64, 2 j Botah, i. 49, 2.) 
 
 » Svmien,, in Plant. Cv/rc. ii. 3, 44; Pers. i. 53; Plin. S. N. xi. 37. 
 
 s 2 
 
276 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 hear""^ — hafl said, " There is nothing from without a man 
 entering into him which can defile him." "What He had 
 proceeded to say — ^that what truly defiiles a man iS that 
 which comes outof him — ^was easy enough to understand, and 
 was a truth of deep meaning ; but so difficult had it been 
 to grasp the first half of the clause, that they had asked 
 Him to explain a " parable " which seemed to be in direct 
 contradiction to the Mosaic Law. Expressing His as- 
 tonishment at their want of insight. He had shown them 
 that what entered into a man from without did but become 
 a part of his material organism, entering, "not into the 
 heart, but into the belly, and so passing into the draught." 
 This, He said — as now for the first time, perhaps, 
 flashed with full conviction into the mind of Peter — 
 MAKING ALL MEATS PURE ; '^ — as he proceeded afterwards to 
 develop those weighty truths about the inward character 
 of all real pollution, and the genesis of all crime from evil 
 thoughts, which convey so solemn a warning. To me it 
 seems that it was the trance and vision of Joppa which 
 first made Peter realise the true meaning of Christ in one 
 of those few distinct utterances in which he had intimated 
 the coming annulment of the Mosaic Law. It is, doubtless, 
 due to the fact that St. Peter, as the informant of St. Mark 
 in writing his Grospel, and the sole ultimate authority for 
 this vision in the Acts, is the source of both narratives, 
 
 » Mark -rii. 14, 16. 
 
 ' Mark vii. 19. This interpretation, due originally to the early Fathers- 
 being found in Chrysostom, 'Rom,, in Matt. li. p. 526, and Gregory Thauma^ 
 turgus — was revived, forty years ago, by the Eev. F. Field, in a note of his 
 edition of St. Chrysostom's Homilies (iii. 112). (See Ea^ositor for 1876, where 
 I have examined the passage at length.) Here, however, it lay unnoticed, till 
 it gained, quite recently, the attention which it deserved. The true reading 
 is certainly KoBapl^av, not the KaSapt^ov of our edition — a reading due, in all 
 probability, to the impossibility of making xaBaplCav agree with lupeSpwua. The 
 loss of the true interpretation has been very serious. Now, however, it is 
 happily revived. It has a more direct bearing than any other on the main 
 .^practical difficulty of the Apostolic age. 
 
THE MBSSENGERS. 277 
 
 that we owe the hitherto unnoticed circumstance that the 
 two verbs " cleanse" and "profane" — both in a peculiarly- 
 pregnant sense — are the two most prominent words in the 
 narrative of both events. 
 
 While Peter thus pondered — perplexed, indeed, but 
 with a new light dawning in his soul — the circumstance 
 occurred which gave to his vision its full significance. 
 Trained, like aU Jews, in unquestioning belief of a daily 
 Providence exercised over the minutest no less than over 
 the greatest events of life, Peter would have been exactly 
 in the mood which was prepared to accept any further 
 indication of Grod's wiU from whatever source it came. 
 The recognised source of such guidance at this epoch 
 was the utterance of voices apparently accidental which 
 the Jews reckoned as their sole remaining kind of inspired 
 teaching, and to which they gave the name of Bath Kol} 
 The first words heard by Peter after his singular trance 
 were in the voices of Grentiles. In the courtyard below 
 him were three Grentiles, of whom one was in the garb of 
 a soldier. Having asked their way to the house of Simon 
 the Tanner, they were now inquiring whether a certain 
 Simon, who bore the surname of Peter, was lodging there. 
 Instantly there shot through his mind a gleam of heavenly 
 light. He saw the divine connexion between the vision 
 of his trance and the inquiry of these Grentiles, and a 
 Voice within him warned him that these men had come 
 in accordance with an express intimation of God's will, 
 and that he was to go with them without question or 
 hesitation. He instantly obeyed. He descended from the 
 roof, told the messengers he was the person whom they 
 were seeking, and asked their business. They were the 
 bearers of a strange message. " Cornelius," they said, " a 
 
 » lAfe of Christ. 1 118. 
 
278 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL, 
 
 centurion, a just man, and a worshipper of God, to whose 
 virtues the entire Jewish nation bore testimony, had 
 received an angelic intimation to send for him, and hear 
 his instructions. Peter at once offered them the free and 
 simple hospitality of the East ; and as it was too hot and 
 they were too tired to start at once on their homeward 
 journey, they rested there until the following morning. 
 Further conversation would have made Peter aware that 
 Cornelius was a centurion of the Italian band;^ that not 
 only he, but all his house, "feared Grod;" that the gene- 
 rosity of his almsgiving and the earnestness of his prayers 
 were widely known ; and that the intimation to send for 
 Peter had been given to him while he was fasting on the 
 previous day at three o'clock. He had acted upon it so 
 immediately that, iu spite of the heat and the distance of 
 thirty mUes along shore and plain, his messengers had 
 arrived at Joppa by the following noon. 
 
 The next morning they all started on the journey 
 which was to involve such momentous issues. How deeply 
 alive St. Peter himself was to the consequences which 
 inight ensue from his act is significantly shown by his 
 inviting no fewer than six of the brethren at Joppa to 
 accompany him, and to be witnesses of aU that should 
 take place.^ 
 
 The journey — since Orientals are leisurely in their 
 movements, and they could only travel during the cool 
 hours — occupied two days. Thus it was not until the 
 fourth day after the vision of Cornelius that, for the first 
 time during two thousand years, the Jew and the Grentile 
 met on the broad grounds of perfect religious equality 
 
 ' The Italian cohort yras prohably one composed of " Velones," Italian 
 volunteers. " Cohors militnm voluntaria, quae est in Syria " (Gmter, 
 Inscr. i. 434; Akerman, Nvm,. Illuatr.Si). It would be specially required 
 at Csesarea. 
 
 * Compare Acts x. 23 with sd. 12. 
 
PETER AND CORNELIUS. 279 
 
 before God their Father. Struck with the sacredness 
 of the occasion — struck, too, it may be, by something 
 in the appearance of the chief of the Apostles — Cornelius, 
 who had risen to meet Peter on the threshold, prostrated 
 himself at his feet,^ as we are told that, three hundred 
 years before, Alexander the Great had done at the 
 leet of the High Priest Jaddua,^ and, six hundred years 
 afterwards, Edwin of Deira did at the feet of Paulinus.^ 
 Instantly Peter raised the pious soldier, and, to the 
 amazement doubtless of the brethren who accompanied 
 him, perhaps even to his own astonishment, violated all 
 the traditions of a lifetime, as well as the national 
 customs of many centuries, by walking side by side 
 with him in free conversation into the presence of his 
 assembled Gentile relatives. This he did, not from the 
 forgetfulness of an enthusiastic moment, but with the 
 avowal that he was doing that which had been hitherto 
 regarded as irreligious,* but doing it in accordance with a 
 divine revelation. Cornelius then related the causes 
 which had led him to send for Peter, and the Apostle 
 began his solemn address to them with the memorable 
 statement that now he perceived with undoubted cer- 
 tainty that "God is no respecter of persons, but in 
 
 EVERT NATION HE THAT FEARETH HiM AND WORKETH 
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS IS ACCEPTABLE TO HiM."' Never Were 
 
 1 D and the Syr. have the pragmatic addition, " And when Peter drew 
 near to Csesarea, one of the slaves running forward gave notice that he had 
 arrived; and Cornelius springing forth, and meeting him, falling at his feet, 
 worshipped him." 
 
 ' See Jos. Anti. xi. 8, § 5. 
 
 » The story is told in Bede, Eccl. Hist. Angl. ii. 12. 
 
 * Acts X, 28, ifle/nTov; cf. John xviii. 28. Lightf. Hor. Sebr. ad. 
 Matt, iviii. 17. > 
 
 ' St. Peter's words are" the most categorical contradiction of the Rabbinic 
 comments on Prov. xiv. 34, which asserted that any righteous acts done by 
 the Gentiles were sin to them. Such was the thesis maintained even by 
 
280 THE LIFE AITO 'WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 words more noble uttered. But we must not interpret 
 them to mean the same proposition as that which is so 
 emphatically repudiated by the English Eeformers, " That 
 every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he 
 professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life ac- 
 cording to that law and the light of Nature." Had this 
 been the meaning of the Apostle — a meaning which it 
 would be an immense anachronism to attribute to him — 
 it would have been needless for him to preach to Cor- 
 nelius, as he proceeded to do, the leading doctrines of the 
 Christian faith ; it would have been sufficient for him to 
 bid Coraelius continue in prayer and charity without un- 
 folding to him " only the name of Jesus Christ whereby 
 men must be saved." The indifference of nationality was 
 the thought in Peter's mind; not by any means the 
 indifference of religions. AU who, to the utpaost of the 
 opportunities vouchsafed to them, fear and love Grod with 
 sincerity of heart, shall be saved by Christ's redemption; 
 some of them — many of them — wlU He lead to a know- 
 ledge of Him in this life ; all of them shall see Him and 
 know Him in the life to come.^ 
 
 Accordingly Peter proceeded to recall to these Gentiles 
 all that they had heard^ of the preaching of peace by 
 Jesus Christ the Lord of all ; of His life and ministry 
 after the baptism of John ; how God anointed Him 
 with the Holy Spirit and with power; how He went 
 about doing good, and healing all who were under the 
 tyranny of the devil ; and then of the Crucifixion and 
 Eesurrection from the dead, of which the disciples were 
 the appointed witnesses, commissioned by the Voice of 
 
 jjilleliies like Gamaliel II. and B. Eliezer of Modin, Bdbha Bathira, f. 10, 2 
 (v. infra, ii., pp. 135, 176.) 
 
 1 Of. Rom. ii. 6, 10, 14, 16. 
 
 ' Acts X. 36. To understand rbv \iyov here in the Johannine sense 
 seems to me utterly uncritical. 
 
CORNELIUS. 281 
 
 their risen Lord to testify tliat He is the destined Judge 
 of quick and dead. And while Peter was proceeding to 
 show from the Prophets that all who believed on Him 
 should through His name receive remission of sins, 
 suddenly on these unbaptised Gentiles no less than on 
 the Jews who were present, fell that inspired emotion 
 of superhuman utterance which was the signature of 
 Pentecost. "The Holy Grhost fell upon them." The six 
 brethren who had accompanied Peter from Joppa might 
 , well be amazed. Here were men unbaptised, uncircum- 
 cised, unclean — men who had been idolators, dogs of the 
 Grentiles, eaters of the unclean beast, whose touch in- 
 volved ceremonial pollution — speaking and praising God 
 in the utterances which could only come from hearts 
 stirred by divine influence to their most secret depth. 
 • With bold readiness Peter seized the favourable moment. 
 The spectacle which he had Avitnessed raised him above 
 ignoble prejudices, and the rising tide of conviction swept 
 away the dogmas and habits of his earlier years. Appeal- 
 ing to this proof of the spiritual equality of the Gentile 
 with the Jew, he asked "whether any one could forbid 
 water fdr their baptism?" No one cared to dispute the 
 cogency of this proof that it was God's wiU to admit 
 Cornelius and his friends to the privileges of Christian 
 brotherhood. Peter not only commanded them to be 
 baptised in the name of the Lord, but even freely 
 accepted their invitation " to tarry with them certain 
 days." 
 
 The news of a revolution so astounding was not long 
 in reaching Jerusalem, and when Peter returned to, the 
 Holy City he was met by the sterner zealots who had . 
 joined Christianity, by those of whom we shall henceforth 
 hear so often as " those of the circumcision," with the 
 fierce indignant murmur, " Thou wentest into the house of 
 
282 THE LITE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 men uncircumcised, and didst mat with them!" To 
 associate witli them, to enter their houses, was not that 
 pollution enough? to touch in familiar intercourse men 
 who had never received the seal of the covenant, to be in 
 daily contact with people who might, no one knew how 
 recently, have had " broth of abominable things in their 
 vessels " — was not this sufficiently horrible? But "to eat 
 with them" — to eat food prepared by Gentiles — ^to taste 
 meat which had been illegally killed by Gentile hands — 
 to neglect the rules of the Kashar — to take food from 
 dishes which any sort of unclean insect or animal, nay 
 even "the other thing," might have defiled — was it to 
 be thought of without a shudder ?^ 
 
 Thus Peter was met at Jerusalem by something very like 
 an impeachment, but he confronted the storm with perfect 
 courage.^ What he had done he had not done arbitrarily, • 
 but step by step under direct divine guidance. He de- 
 tailed to them his vision on the roof at Joppa, and the 
 angehc appearance which had suggested the message of 
 Cornelius. Finally he appealed to the outpouring of the 
 Holy Spirit, which had been manifested in these Gentiles 
 by the very same signs as in themselves. Was not this 
 the promised baptism with the Holy Ghost? was it not 
 a proof that God accepted these Gentiles no less fully 
 than He accepted them? "What was I that I could 
 withstand God?" 
 
 The bold defence silenced for a time the adversaries of 
 
 ' " He who eats with an uncircumcised person, eats, as it were, with a 
 dog ; he who touches him, touches, as it were, a dead body; and he who 
 bathes in the same place with him, bathes, as it were, with a leper " {Pvrhe 
 Babbi Eliezer, 29). 
 
 ' To this day orthodox Jews submit to any inconvenience rather than 
 touch meat killed by a Gentile butcher (McCaul, Old Paihs, 397, sq.). This 
 leads sometimes not only to a monopoly, but even to a downright tyranny on 
 the part of the butcher who has the kadima (Frankl, Jews in the East, ii.). 
 
 ' Acts xi. 2, iicKpivovro itphs avriv j cf . Jud> 9. 
 
A EELUCTANT CONDONATION. 283 
 
 wliat ttey regarded as an unscriptural and disloyal inno- 
 vation. They could not dispute facts authenticated by 
 the direct testimony of their six brethren, — ^whom Peter, 
 conscious of the seriousness of the crisis, had very 
 prudently brought with him from Joppa, — ^nor could 
 they deny the apparent approval of heaven. The feeling 
 of the majority vras in favour of astonished but grate- 
 ful acquiescence. Subsequent events prove only too 
 plainly that there was at any rate a displeased minority, 
 who were quite unprepared to sacrifice their monopoly of 
 precedence in the equal kingdom of Grod. Even in the 
 language of the others^ we seem to catch a faint echo 
 of reluctance and surprise. Nor would they admit any 
 general principle. The only point which they conceded 
 was — not that the Gentiles were to be admitted, without 
 circumcision, to fall communion, still less that Jews 
 would be generally justified in eating with them, as 
 Peter had done — ^but only that " Grod had, it seemed, to 
 the Gentiles also granted repentance unto life." 
 
 Meanwhile, and, so far as we are aware, in entire inde- 
 pendence of these initial movements, the Church had been 
 undergoing a new and vast development in Syria, which 
 transferred the position of the metropolis of Christianity 
 from Jerusalem to Antioch, as completely as it was to be 
 afterwards transferred from Antioch to Eome. 
 
 > Acta xi. 18, KfiaYe Kot Tois idytgir. 
 
ISook W* 
 
 ANTIOCH. 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE SECOND CAPITAI, OF CHRISTIANITT. 
 
 " QuoB, per flagitia mvisos, Tulgus Christicmoa appellabat,"— Tac. Atm, 
 zv. 44. 
 
 XpurriavSs eliil. — Ma/rt. Polyc. iii, 
 
 Hxapurrov/iev (roi 8ti rh uvofia rov XpurroS <roi» iiriKfK\riT(u iip fiiias, Kal ffol 
 TpoiT<flceii^/ie8a- — ClEM. KoM. 
 
 OliK airhi P\iw<piriiwv(ri rh Ka\iiv ivo/ia rh lviic\riB4y l(j>' ifias ; — JaS. il. 7. 
 
 El 6veiSl(e(T$e iv 6v6/iaTt XpiffTov, iiiucipioi, — 1 PeT. iv. 14. 
 
 " Nomen . . . quod sicut uuguentum dLSasum longe lateqae redolet."— , 
 Gal. Tyr. iv. 9. 
 
 " Oditur ergo in hominibus iunocuis etiam nomen innocuum." — Teet. 
 A$ol. 3. 
 
 The overruling Providence of God is so clearly marked in 
 tlie progress of tnman events that the Christian hardly 
 needs any further proof that " there is a hand that 
 guides." In the events of his own little life the per- 
 spective of God's dealings is often hidden from him, hut 
 when he watches the story of nations and of religions he 
 can clearly trace the divine purposes, and see the lessons 
 which God's hand has written on every page of history. 
 What seems to he utter ruin is often complete salvation ; 
 what was regarded as cruel disaster constantly turns out 
 to he essential hlessing. 
 
 It was so with the persecution which ensued on the 
 death of Stephen. Had it heen less inquisitorial, it would 
 
PEEAOHING TO GENTILES. 285 
 
 not have accomplisted its destined purpose. The San] 
 who laid in ruins the Church of Jerusalem was uncon- 
 sciously deepening the foundations of circumstance on 
 which hereafter — ^the same and not the same — he should 
 rear the superstructure of the Church of God. Saul the 
 persecutor was doing, by opposite means, the same work 
 as Paul the Apostle. 
 
 For when the members of the infant Church fled 
 terror-stricken from the Holy City, they carried with 
 them far and wide the good tidings of. the Jerusalem 
 above. At first, as was natural, they spoke to Jews 
 alone. It would be long before they would hear how 
 Philip had evangelised Samaria, and how, by his baptism 
 of the eunuch, he had admitted into the Church of, Christ 
 one whom Moses had excluded from the congregation of 
 Israel. The baptism of the pious soldier had taken place 
 still later, and the knowledge of it could not at once 
 reach the scattered Christians. In Phoenicia, therefore, 
 and in Cyprus their preaching was confined at first 
 within the limits of Judaism ; nor was it until the wan- 
 dering Hellenists had reached Antioch that they boldly 
 ventured to pbeacm to the gentiles} Whether these 
 
 1 Acts si. 20. There can be no doubt that "EAXjjyos , and not 'EXA.tjvio-Tii 
 (which is accepted by our version, and rendered " Grecians") is the true read- 
 ing. (1) External evidence in favour of 'l.KMvas is indeed defective, since it is 
 only found in A (which also has "EWtjcoj, 'even in is. 29, where 'E.WrivKniis 
 is the only ^possible reading) and D. « has eiiayytXiarhs, which has been 
 altered into "tKx-nvas ; but both » and B read koI before i\d\oiir, which indi- 
 cates a new and important statement. Some of the most important versions 
 are valueless as evidence of reading in this instance, because they have no 
 specific word by which to distinguish 'EXXijKitrTal and "EWnves. (Ecumenius 
 and Theophylact read 'Exatjwo-tAs, and- so does Chrysostom in his text, but in 
 his commentary he accepts "EAATjrai, as does Eusebius. But (2) i£ we turn 
 to internal evidence it is clear that "Greeks," not "Grecians"— ^.e., Gentiles, 
 not Greek-speaking Jews— is the only admissible reading j for (i.) Hellenists 
 were, of course, Jews, and as it is perfectly certain that the'IouSa^.s of 
 the previous verse cannot mean only Hebraists, this verse 20 would add 
 nothing whatever to the narrative if " Hellenists " were the right reading. 
 
286 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 Gentiles were such only as had already embraced the 
 "Noacbian dispensation," or whether they included 
 others who had in no sense become adherents of the 
 synagogue, we are not told. Greek proselytes were at 
 this period common in every considerable city of the 
 Empire,^ and it is reasonable to suppose that they fur- 
 nished a majority, at any rate, of the new converts. 
 However this may have been, the work of these nameless 
 Evangelists was eminently successful. It received the seal 
 of God's blessing, and a large multitude of Greeks turned 
 to the Lord. The fact, so much obscured by the wrong 
 reading followed by our English Version, is nothing less 
 than the beginning, on a large scale, of the conversion of 
 the Gentiles. It is one of the. great moments in" the 
 ascensive work begun by Stephen, advanced by Philip, 
 authorised by Peter, and finally culminating in the life, 
 mission, and Epistles of St. Paul. 
 
 When the news reached Jerusalem, it excited great 
 attention, and the members of the Church determined to 
 despatch one of their number to watch what was going on. 
 
 (ii.) The statement comes as the sequel and crowning pomt of narratives, of 
 which it has been the express object to describe the admission of Gentiles into 
 the Church. The reading " Hellenists " obscures the verse on which the entire 
 narrative of the Acts hinges, (iii.) The conversion of a number of Hellenists 
 at Antioch would have excited no special notice, and required no special 
 mission of inquiry, seeing that the existing Church at Jerusalem itself con- 
 sisted largely of Hellenists. The entire context, therefore, conclusively proves 
 that "EXAnvos is the right reading, and it has accordingly been received into 
 the text, in spite of the external evidence against it, by all the best editors 
 — Griesbach, Lachmann, Scholz, Tischendorf, Meyer, Alford, &c. The reason 
 for the corruption of the text seems to have been an assumption that this 
 narrative is retrospective, and that to suppose the admission of Grentiles into 
 the faith before Peter had opened to them the doors of the kingdom would 
 be to derogate from his authority. But this preaching at Antioch may have 
 been subsequent to the conversion of Cornelius ; and it was, in any case, the 
 authority of Peter which for the majority of the Ohnrch incontroverUbly 
 settled the claim of the Gentiles. 
 
 * See Acts xiv. 1 ; xviii. 4j John xii. 20. 
 
BARNABAS AT ANTIOOH. 287 
 
 Their choice of an emissary showed that as yet the 
 counsels of the party of moderation prevailed, for they 
 despatched the large-hearted and conciliatory Barnabas. 
 His Levitical descent, and the sacrifice which he had made 
 of his property to the com,mon fand, combined with his 
 sympathetic spirit and liberal culture to give him a natural 
 authority, which he had always used on the side of charity 
 and wisdom. 
 
 The arrival of such a man was an especial blessing. 
 This new church, which was so largely composed of 
 Gentiles, was destined to be a fresh starting-point in the 
 career of Christianity. Barnabas saw the grace of God at 
 work, and rejoiced at it, and justified his happy title of 
 "the son of exhortation," by exhorting the believers to 
 cleave to the Lord with purpose of heart. His ministry 
 won over converts in still larger numbers, fbr, as Luke 
 adds with emphatic commendation, " he was a good man, 
 and full of the Holy Ghost and faith." 
 
 The work multiplied in his hands, and needed so much 
 wisdom, knowledge, and energy, that he soon felt the need 
 of a colleague. Doubtless, had he desired it, he could 
 have secured the co-operation of one of the Apostles, or 
 of their trusted adherents. Bat Barnabas instinctively 
 perceived that a fresher point of view, a clearer insight, 
 a wider culture, a more complete immunity from pre- 
 judices were needed for so large and delicate a task. 
 Himself a Grecian, and now called upon to minister 
 not only to Grecians but to Greeks, he longed for the 
 aid of one who would maintain the cause of truth and 
 liberality with superior ability and more unflinching con- 
 viction. There was but one man who in any degree 
 met his requirements — it was the delegate of the San- 
 hedrin, the zealot of the Pharisees, the once persecuting 
 Saul of Tarsus. Since his escape from Jerusalem, Saul had 
 
288 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 been more or less unnoticed hj the leading Apostles. "We 
 lose sight of him at Csesarea, apparently starting on his 
 way to Tarsus, and all that Barnabas now knew about 
 him was that he was living quietly at home, waiting 
 the Lord's call. Accordingly he set out, to seek for 
 him, and the turn of expression seems to imply that it 
 was not without difficulty that he found him. Paul 
 readily accepted the invitation to leave his seclusion, 
 and join his friend in this new work in the great capital 
 of Syria. Thus, twice over, did Barnabas save Saul for 
 the work of Christianity. To his self-effacing nobleness 
 is due the honour of recognising, before they had yet 
 been revealed to others, the fiery vigour, the indomitable 
 energy, the splendid courage, the illuminated and illumi- 
 nating intellect, which were destined to spend themselves 
 in the high endeavour to ennoble and evangelise the 
 world. 
 
 No place could have been more suitable than Antioch 
 for the initial stage of such a ministry. The queen of the 
 East, the third metropolis of the world, the residence of the 
 imperial Legate of Syria, this vast city of perhaps 500,000 
 souls must not be judged of by the diminished, shrunken, 
 and earthquake-shattered Antakieh of to-day.^ It was no 
 mere Oriental town, with low flat roofs and dingy narrow 
 streets, but a Greek capital enriched and enlarged by 
 Eoman munificence. It is situated iat the point of junction 
 between the chains of Lebanon and Taurus. Its natural 
 position on the northern slope of Mount Silpius, with a 
 navigable river, the broad, historic Orontes, flowing at its 
 feet, was at once commanding and beautiful. The vdndings 
 of the river enriched the whole well- wooded plain, and as 
 the city was but sixteen miles from the shore, the sea- 
 
 ' It is now a fifth-rate Turkish town of 6,000 inhabitants. (Porter's' 
 Syria, p. 568.) 
 
 M .4 
 
ANTIOOH. 289 
 
 breezes gave it health and coolness. These natural advan- 
 tages had been largely increased by the lavish genius of 
 anciient art. Built by the Seleucidse ^ as the royal residence 
 o£ their dynasty, its wide circuit of many mUes was sur- 
 rounded by walls of astonishing height and thickness, 
 which had been carried across raviaes and over mountain 
 summits with such daring magnificence of conception as 
 to give the city the aspect of being defended by its own 
 encircling mountains, as though those gigantic bulwarks 
 were but its natural walls. The palace of the kings of 
 Syria was on an island formed by an artificial channel of 
 the river. Through the entire length of the city, from the 
 Grolden or Daphne gate on the west, ran for nearly five 
 miles a fine corso adorned with trees, colonnades, and 
 statues. Originally constructed by Seleucus Nicator, it 
 had been continued by Herod the Great, who, at once to 
 gratify his passion for architecture, and to reward the 
 people of Antioch for their good-will toward the Jews, had 
 paved it for two miles and a half with blocks of white 
 marble.^ Broad bridges spanned the river and its various 
 affluents; baths, aqueducts, basilicas, villas, theatres, 
 clustered on the level plain, and, overshadowed by 
 picturesque and rugged eminences, gave the city a 
 splendour worthy of its fame as only inferior in grandeur 
 to Alexandria and Eome. Mingled with this splendour 
 were innumerable signs of luxury and comfort. Under 
 the spreading plane-trees that shaded the banks of the 
 river, and among gardens brightened with masses of . 
 flowers, sparkled amid groves of laurel and myrtlfe the 
 gay villas of the wealthier inhabitants, bright with Greek 
 frescoes, and adorned with every refinement which Eoman 
 wealth had borrowed from Ionian luxury. Art had lent 
 
 1 B.C. 301, Apr. 23. ' Jos, AnU:xn. 5, § 3. 
 
290 THE LIFE AUB WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 its aid to enhance tlie beauties of nature, and one colossal 
 crag of Mount Silpius, wHcli overlooked the city, had 
 been carved into human semblance by the skill of Leios. In 
 the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, a pestilence had ravaged 
 the kingdom, and to appease the anger of the gods, the 
 kiag had ordered the sculptor to hew the mountaiu-mass 
 into one vast statue. The huge grim face, under the rocky 
 semblance of a crown, stared over the Forum of the city, 
 and was known to the Antiochenes as the Charoniumj 
 being supposed to represent the head of 
 
 " That grim ferryman which poets write of," ■ 
 
 who conveyed the souls of the dead in his dim-gleaniing 
 boat across the waters of the Styx. 
 
 It was natural that such a city should attract a vast 
 mtdtitude of inhabitants, and those inhabitants were of 
 very various nationalities. The basis of the population was 
 composed of native Syrians, represented to this day by the 
 Maronites;^ but the Syrian kings had invited many 
 colonists to people their Presidence, and the most important 
 of these were Grreeks and Jews. To these, after the con- 
 quest of Syria by Pompey, had been added a garrison of 
 Eomans.^ The court of the Legate of Syria, surrounded 
 as it was by military pomp, attracted into its glittering 
 circle, not only a multitude of rapacious and domineering 
 officials, but also that large retinue of flatterers, slaves, 
 artists, literary companions, and general hangers-on, whose 
 ■ presence was deemed essential to the state of an imperial 
 viceroy. The autonomy of the city, and its consequent 
 freedom from the property tax, made it a pleasant place of 
 abode to many others. The soft, yielding, and voluptuous 
 
 ' Renan, Les Apotres, p. 228. 
 
 ' Syria was made a Roman province B.C. 64 M. ^mil. Scaurus went 
 there as Quaestor pro Praetore. B.C. 62. 
 
A HETEROGENEOUS CITY. 291 
 
 Syrians, the cunning, versatile, and degraded Greeks, added 
 their special contributions to the general corruption engen- 
 dered hy an enervating climate and a frivolous society. 
 Side by side with these — governed, as at Alexandria, by 
 their own Archon and their own mimic Sanhedrin, but 
 owning allegiance to the central government at Jerusalem 
 —lived an immense colony of Jews. Libanius could 
 affirm from personal experience that he who sat in the 
 agora of Antioch might study the customs of the world. 
 Cities liable to the influx of heterogeneous races are 
 rarely otherwise than immoral and debased. Even Eome, 
 in the decadence of its Csesarism, could groan to think of 
 the dregs of degradation — the quacks, and pandars, and 
 musicians, and dancing-girls — poured into the Tiber by 
 the Syrian Orontes. Her satirists spoke of this infusion 
 of Orientalism as adding a fresh miasma even to the 
 corruption which the ebbing tide of glory had left upon 
 the naked sands of Grecian Hfe.^ 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. The mud and 
 silt of the combining streams pollute any clearness or 
 sweetness they may previously have enjoyed. If the 
 Jews had been less exclusive, less haughtily indifferent 
 to the mo;ral good of any but themselves, - they might 
 have checked the tide of immorality. But their dis- 
 dainfal isolation, either prevented them from making any 
 efforts to ameliorate the condition of their feUow-citizens, 
 or rendered their efforts nugatory. Their synagogues — 
 
 1 " Jam pridem Syrus in Tiberim deflnxit Orontes 
 Et linguam, et mores, et cum tibicine chordas 
 Obliquas, neenon gentilia tympana secum 
 Vexit, et ad circum jussas prostare puellas." 
 
 Jut. Sat. iii. 62—66 
 
 T 2 
 
292 THE LIFE A^D WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 one, at least, of wMcli was a btiildiiig of some pre« 
 tensions, adorned with, brazen spoils wHcli had once 
 belonged to the Temple of Jerasalem,^ and bad been 
 resigned by Antiocbus Epipbanes, in a fit of remorse, 
 to tbe Jews of Antiocb — rose in considerable numbers 
 among tbe radiant temples of tbe gods of Hellas. But 
 tbe spirit of tbose wbo worshipped in them rendered 
 them an ineffectual witness ; and tbe Jews, absorbed in the 
 conviction that they were tbe sole favourites of Jehovah, 
 passed with a scowl of contempt, or " spat, devoutly brutal, 
 in tbe face" of the many statues which no classic beauty 
 could redeem from tbe disgrace of being " dulnb idols." 
 There were doubtless, indeed, other proselytes besides 
 Nicolas and Luke; but those proselytes, whether few or 
 many in number, bad, up to this period, exercised no 
 appreciable influence on tbe gay and guilty city. And 
 if tbe best Jews despised all attempts at active propa- 
 gandism, there were sure to be many lewd and wicked 
 Jews who furthered their own iaterests by a propaganda 
 of iniquity. If the Jewish nationality has produced some 
 of tbe best and greatest, it has also produced some of the 
 basest and vilest of mankind. Tbe Jews at Antiocb were 
 of just tbe same mixed character as the Jews at 
 Alexandria, or Eome, or Paris, or London; and we may 
 be quite sure that there must have been many among 
 them wbo, instead of witnessing for Jehovah, would only 
 add a tinge of original wickedness to the seething mass of 
 atheism, idolatry, and polluted life. 
 
 And thus for tbe great mass of the population in 
 Antiocb there was nothing that could be truly called a 
 religion to serve as a barrier against tbe ever-rising flood 
 of Eoman sensuality and Grrseco-Syrian suppleness, 
 
 » Jos. B. / TiL 3, § 3. 
 
SUPERSTITION AlTD ATHEISM. 293 
 
 What religion there was took the form of the crudest 
 nature-worship, or the most imhecile superstition. A few 
 years before the foundation of a Christian Church at 
 Antioch, in the -year 37, there had occurred one of those 
 terrible earthquakes to which, in all ages, the city had 
 been liable.^ It might have seemed at first sight in- 
 credible that an intellectual and literary city like Antioch 
 — a city of wits and philosophers, of casuists and rheto- 
 ricians, of poets and satirists — should at once have 
 become the dupes of a wretched quack named Debborius, 
 who professed to avert such terrors by talismans as 
 ludicrous as the famous earthquake-pills which so often 
 point an allusion in modern literature. Tet there is in 
 reality nothing strange in such apparent contrasts. History 
 more than once has • shown that the border-lands of 
 Atheism reach to the confines of strange credulity.^ 
 
 ' Our authorities for the description and condition of Antioch are nn- 
 nsually rich. The chief are Josephus, B. J. vii. '3, § 3; Antt. xii. 3, § 1 
 xvi. 5, § 3; c. Ap. ii. 4; 1 Mace. iii. 37; xi. 13; 2 Mace. iv. 7—9, 33; v. 21 
 xi. 36; PhUostr. Vit. Apollon. iii. 58; Libanins, Antioch. pp. 355, 356 
 Chrysost. Horml. ad Pop. Antioch. vii., in Matth., et passim; Julian. Miso- 
 pogon; Pliny, £■. JT.v. 18; and, above all, the Chronographia of John of 
 Antioch, better known by his Syriao surname of Malala, or the Orator. 
 0. 0. MflEer, in his Antiquitates Antiochenae (Gbtt. 1830), has diligently 
 examined all these and other authorities. Some accounts of modern Antioch, 
 by travellers who have visited it, may be found ia Pocock's Bescript. of the 
 East, ii. 192 ; Chesney, Euphrates Expedition, i. 425, seqq. ; Ritter, Palast. 
 u. Syria, iv. 2. Its hopeless decline dates from 1268, when it was reconquered 
 by the Mohammedans. 
 
 ' The state of the city has been described by a master-hand. "It was," 
 says M. Renan — rendered still more graphic in his description by familiarity 
 with modern Paris — " an unheard-of coUeotion of jugglers, charlatans, pan- 
 • tomimists, magicians, thaumaturgists, sorcerers, and priestly impostors ; a 
 city of races, of games, of dances, of processions, of festivals, of bacchanalia, 
 of unchecked luxury ; all the extravagances of the East, the most unhealthy 
 superstitions, the fanaticism of orgies. In turns servile and ungrateful, 
 worthless and insolent, the Antiochenes were the finished model of those 
 crowds devoted to Osesarism, without country, without nationality, without 
 family honour, without a name to preserve. The great Oorso which traversed 
 the city was like a theatre, ia which all day long rolled the waves of a 
 
294 THE Lini! AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 Into this city of Pagan pleasure — into tlie midst of a 
 population pauperised by public jdoles, and polluted by tbe 
 indulgences wbicb tbey procured — among tbe intrigues 
 and ignominies of some of tbe lowest of tbe buman race 
 at one of tbe lowest periods of buman bistory^ — passed tbe 
 eager spirit of Saul of Tarsus. On bis way, five miles from 
 tbe city, be must bave seen upon tbe river-bank at least tbe 
 fringe of laurels, cypresses, and myrtles tbat marked 
 
 " that sweet grove 
 
 Of Daphne by Orontes,'" 
 
 and caugbt sigbt, perbaps, of its colossal statue of Apollo,* 
 reared by Seleucus Nicator. But it was sweet no longer, 
 except in its natural and ineffaceable beauty, and it is 
 certain tbat a faitbful Jew would not willingly bave en- 
 tered its polluted preciucts . Tbose precincts, being endowed 
 witb tbe rigbt of asylum, were, like all tbe asylums of an- 
 cient and modern days, far more a protection to outrageous 
 villany tban to persecuted innocence ; * and tbose um- 
 
 popnlation empty, frivolous, fickle, turbulent, sometimes witty, absorbed in 
 songs, parodies, pleasantries, and impertinences of every description. It was," 
 he continues, after describing certain dances and swimming-races, which, if we 
 would understand the depravity of Gentile morals we are forced to mention' 
 "like an intoxication, a dream of Sardanapalus, in which all pleasures, all 
 debaucheries, unfolded themselves in strange confusion, without excluding 
 certain delicacies and refinements" {Les ApStres, p. 221). The Orontes never 
 flowed with fouler mud than when there began to spring up upon its banks 
 the sweet fountain of the river of the water of life. 
 
 ' Ausonius says of Antioch and Alexandria, 
 " Turbida vulgo 
 TJtraque et amentis populi malesana tumuttn " {Ordo Nob. Urh. iii.). 
 
 ° See the celebrated passage in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. xxiii. 
 
 ^ lHow Beit-al-Ma'a — a secluded glen. A few dilapidated mills mark a spot 
 where the shrine of Apollo once gleamed with gold and gems. When Julian 
 the Apostate paid it a solemn visit, he found there a solitary goose ! The Bab 
 Bolos, or " Gate of Paul," is on the Aleppo road. The town stUl bears a bad 
 name for licentiousness, and only contains a few hundred Ohrisidans. (See 
 Game's Syria, i. 5, &c.) 
 
 < 2 Mace. iv. 33. 
 
THE STREET SINGON. 295 
 
 brageous groves were tlie dark haunts of every foulness. 
 For their scenic loveliness, their rich foliage, their fragrant 
 herbage, their perennial fountains, the fiery-hearted con- 
 vert had little taste. He could only have recalled with 
 a sense of disgust how that grove had given its title to 
 a proverb which expressed the superfluity of naughtiness,^ 
 and how its evil haunts had flung away the one rare chance 
 of sheltering virtue from persecution, when the good Onias 
 was tempted from it to be murdered by the governor of 
 its protecting city.® 
 
 Such was the place where, in the street Singon, Saul 
 began to preach. He may have entered it by the gate 
 which was afterwards called the Grate of the Cherubim, 
 because twenty-seven years later ^ it was surmounted 
 by those colossal gilded ornaments which Titus had 
 taken from the Temple of Jerusalem. It was a popu- 
 lous quarter, in close proximity to the Senate House, 
 the Forum, and the Amphitheatre ; and every time 
 that during his sermon he raised his eyes to the lower 
 crags of Mount Silpius, he would be confronted by the 
 stern visage and rocky crown of the choleric ferryman 
 of Hades. But the soil was prepared for his teaching. 
 It is darkest just before the dawn. When mankind has 
 sunk into hopeless scepticism, the help of Grod is often 
 very nigh at hand. " Bitter with weariness, and sick 
 with sin," there were many at any rate, even among the 
 giddy and voluptuous Antiochenes, who, in despair of alL 
 sweetness and nobleness, were ready to hail with rapture 
 the preaching of a new faith which promised forgiveness 
 for the past, and brought ennoblement to the present. 
 The work grew and prospered, and for a whole year the • 
 Apostles laboured in brotherly union and amid constant 
 
 « "Daplinici mores." ' Jos. Antt. xii. 5, § L * AJX 70i 
 
296 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 encouragement. Tlie success of tlieir labours was most 
 decisively marked by tlie coinage o£ a new word, destined 
 to a glorious immortality ; — tlie disciples were first caUed 
 Christians at Antioch. 
 
 It is always interesting to notice the rise of a new 
 and memorable word, but not a few of those which have 
 met with universal acceptance have started into acci- 
 dental life. It is not so vnth the word " Christian." 
 It indicates a decisive epoch, and was the coinage 
 rather of a society than of any single man. More, 
 perhaps, than any word which was ever invented, it 
 marks, if I may use the expression, the , watershed of aU 
 human history. It signalises the emergence of a true 
 faith among the Grentiles, and the separation of that faith 
 from the tenets of the Jews. All former ages, nations, 
 and religions contribute to it. The conception which 
 lies at the base of it is Semitic, and sums up cen- 
 turies of expectation and of prophecy in the historic 
 person of One who was anointed to be for all mankind 
 a Prophef, Priest, and King. But this Hebrew concep- 
 tion is translated by a Greek word, showing that the 
 great religious thoughts of which hitherto the Jewish 
 race had been the appointed guardians, were henceforth 
 I to be the common glory of mankind, and were, therefore, 
 to be expressed in a language which enshrined the world's 
 most perfect litera,ture, and which had been imposed on 
 all civilised countries by the nation which had played 
 by far the most splendid part in the secular annals of 
 the past. And this Greek rendering of a Hebrew idea 
 was stamped with a Roman form by receiving a Latin 
 termination,^ as though to foreshadow that the new name 
 
 ' The Greet adjective from Xpurrhs would have been XpitrreTos. H is true 
 that vhs and icbs are Greek terminations, but anus is mainly Roman, and 
 there can be little doubt that it is due — ^not to the Doric dialect !— but to the 
 
THE NAME '.'CHRISTIAN'." 297 
 
 sliould be coextensive with tlie vast, dominion wMcb 
 swayed tlie present destinies of the world. And if the 
 word was thus pregnant with all the deepest and 
 mightiest associations of the past and of the present, 
 how divine was to be its future history ! Henceforth 
 it was needed to describe the peculiarity, to indicate the 
 essence, of all that was morally the greatest and ideally 
 the most lovely in the condition of mankind. From the 
 day when the roar of the wild beast in the Amphitheatre 
 was interrupted by the proud utterance, • Christianus mm — 
 from the days when the martyrs, like " a host of Scsevolas," 
 upheld their courage by this name as they bathed their 
 hands without a shudder in the bickering fire — the idea 
 ,of aU patience, of all heroic constp,ncy, of all missionary 
 enterprise, of all philanthropic effort, of all cheerful self- 
 sacrifice for the common benefit of mankind is in that 
 name. How little thought the canaille of Antioch, who 
 first hit on what was to them a convenient nickname, 
 that thenceforward their whole city should be chiefly 
 famous for its " Christian " associations ; that the fame of 
 Seleucus Nicator and Antiochus Epiphanes should be 
 lost in that of Ignatius and Chrysostom; and that 
 long- after the power of the imperial legates had been as 
 utterly crumbled into the dust of oblivion as the ght- 
 tering palace of the Seleucidae in which they dwelt, the 
 world wotdd linger with unwearied interest on every 
 detail of the life of the obscure Cypriot, and the afflicted 
 Tarsian, whose preaching only evoked their wit and 
 laughter ! How much less could they have conceived it 
 
 prevalence of Roman terminology at Antioch, even if it be admitted that the 
 spread of the Empire had by this time made anus a familiar termination 
 throughout the Bast (cf. Mariani, Pompeiani, &c.). " Christianity " (Xpio-- 
 TtoKiffjubs) first occurs in Ignatius {ad Philad. 6), as was natural in a Bishop 
 of Antioch ; and probably " Catholic " (Ignat. ad Smyrn. 8) was invented ia 
 the same city {id. 78). See Bingham, Antt. II. i. § 4. 
 
298 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 possible ttat thenceforward all the greatest art, aU the 
 greatest literature, all the greatest government, all the 
 greatest philosophy, all the greatest eloquence, all the 
 greatest science, all the greatest colonisation — and more 
 even than this — all of what is best, truest, purest, and 
 loveliest in the possible achievements of man, should be 
 capable of no designation so distinctive as that furnished by 
 the connotation of what was intended for an impertinent 
 sobriquet ! The secret of the wisdom of the Greek, and the 
 fervour of the Latin fathers, and the eloquence of both, 
 is in that word ; and the isolation of the hermits, and 
 the devotion of the monks, and the seK-denial of the 
 missionaries, and the learning of the schoolmen, and the 
 grand designs of the Catholic statesmen, and the chi- 
 valry of the knights, and the courage of the reformers, 
 and the love of the philanthropists, and the sweetness 
 and purity of northern homes, and everything of divine 
 and noble which marks — from the squalor of its cata- 
 combs to the splendour of its cathedrals — the story 
 of the Christian Church. And why does all this lie 
 involved in this one word? Because it is the stand- 
 ing witness that the world's Faith is centred not in 
 formulae, but in historic realities — not in a dead system, 
 but in the living Person of its Lord. An ironic in- 
 scription on the Cross , of Christ had been written in letters 
 of Greek, of Latin, and of Hebrew ; and that Cross, im- 
 plement as it was of shame and torture, became the symbol 
 of the national ruin of the Jew, of the willing allegiance 
 of the Greeks and Eomans, of the dearest hopes and 
 intensest gratitude of the world of civilisation. An 
 hybrid and insulting designation was invented in the 
 frivolous streets of Antioch, and around it clustered 
 for ever the deepest faith and the purest glory of man- 
 kind. 
 
THE NAME « CHE.ISTIAN.'' 299 
 
 I have assumed that the name was given hy Gentiles, 
 and given more or less in spoi-t. It could not have been 
 given by the Jews, who preferred the scornful name of 
 "Gralilsean,"^ and who would not in any case have dragged 
 through the mire of apostasy — for so it would have .seemed 
 to them — ^the word in which centred their most cherished 
 hopes. INor was it in all probability a term invented by 
 the Christians themselves. In the New Testament, as is 
 well known, it occurs but thrice ; once in the historical 
 notice of its origin, and only in two other places as 
 a name used by enemies. It was employed by Agrippa 
 the Second in his half -sneering, half -complimentary 
 interpellation to St. Paul ; ^ and it is used by St. Peter 
 as the name of a charge under which the brethren 
 were likely to be persecuted and impeached.^ But 
 during the life-time of the Apostles it does not seem 
 to have acquired any currency among the Christians 
 themselves,* and they preferred those vague and loving 
 appellations of " the brethren," ^ " the disciples," " " the 
 benevers,"7 "the saints," » "the Church of Christ," » 
 "those of the way,"^» "the elect,"" "the faithful," ^^ 
 which had been sweetened to them by so much tender 
 and hallowed intercourse during so many heavy trials 
 and persecutions. Afterwards, indeed, when the name 
 Christian had acquired a charm so potent that the 
 very sound of it was formidable, Julian tried to forbid 
 
 ' Or, IsTazarene. Acts rriv. 5 (cf. Johni. 46 ; Luke xiii. 2). Cyril, Gatech. x. 
 ' Acts xxvi. 28. This (which was twenty years later) is the first subsequent 
 allusion to the name. Epiphanius (Saer. 29, n. 4) says that an earlier namfi 
 •for Christian was 'Ua-fralot. ' 1 Pet. iv. 16. 
 
 * The aUusion to it in Jas. ii. 7 is, to say the least, dubious. 
 » Acts XV. 1 ; 1 Cor. vii. 12. « Acts ix. 26 ; xi. 29. 
 
 ' Acts V. 14. « Rom. -dii. 27 ; xv. 25. » Eph. v. 25. 
 
 w Acts xix. 9, 23. Compare the name Methodist. " 2 Tim. ii. 10, &c. 
 " Eph. i. 1, &c. Later names like jaiscicuK, &i5., had some vogue also. 
 
300 THE LIFE A2SD WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 its use hj edict,' and to substitute for it the more ignomi- 
 nious term of " Nazarene," wHcli is still universal in the 
 East. A tradition naturally sprang up that the name had 
 been invented by Evodius, the first Bishop of Antioch, 
 and even adopted at a general synod.^ But what makes 
 it nearly certain that this is an error, is that up to this 
 time " Christ " was not used, or at any rate was barely 
 begiuning to be used, as a proper name ; and the currency 
 of a designation which marked adherence to Jesus, as 
 though Christ were His name and not His title, seems 
 to be due only to the ignorance and carelessness of Gen- 
 tiles, who without further inquiry caught up the first pro- 
 minent word with which Christian preaching had made 
 them familiar.^ And even this word, in the prevalent 
 itacism, was often corrupted into the shape Chrestiani, as 
 though it came from the Greek Chrhtos, " excellent," and 
 not from Ghristos, " anointed."* The latter term — arising 
 from customs and conceptions which up to this time were 
 almost exclusively Judaic — would convey little or no 
 meaning to Greek or Roman ears. We may therefore 
 regard it as certain that the most famous of all noble 
 words was invented by the wit for which the Antiochenes 
 
 ' Greg. Naz. Orat. iii. 81; Julian, I^p. vii., ix.; Gibbon, t. 312, ed. 
 MUman ; Kenan, Les Apotres, 235. 
 
 2 Suid. ii. 3930 a, ed. Gaisford; Malala, Chronogr. 10,. p. 318, ed. Mill 
 Dr. Plumptre (Paul in Asia, 74) conjectures that Evodius and Ignatius 
 may hare been contemporary presbyter-episcopi of the Judaic and Hellenist 
 communities at Antioch. Babylas the martyr and Paul of Samosata, the here- 
 siarchs, were both Bishops of Antioch, as was Meletius, ■who baptised St, 
 Chrysostom. 
 
 ' " Christus non proprium nomen est, sed nuncnpatio potestatia et regni " 
 (Lact. Di/D. Instt. iv. 7 ; see Life of Christ, i. 287, n.). The name " Christian" 
 expressed contemptuous indifference, not definite hatred. Tacitus uses it with 
 dislike — " quos vulgus Christianos appeUabat " {Ann. xv. 44). 
 
 '' In 1 Pet. ii. 3, some have seen a sort of allusion to " the Lord " being both 
 Xpiaros and j(PV<rris, just as there seems to be a play on Jotoi and 'iria-ovs in 
 Acts ix. 34; X. 38. 
 
OHRESTIANI. 301 
 
 were famous in antiqiiity, and whicli often displayed itself 
 ia tappy appellations.^ But whatever may Lave been the 
 spirit in which the name was given, the disciples would 
 not be long in welcoming so convenient a term. Bestowed 
 as a stigma, they accepted it as a distinction. They who 
 afterwards gloried in the contemptuous reproaches which 
 branded them as sarmenticii and semawii,^ from the fagots 
 to which they were tied and the stakes to which they were 
 bound, would not be likely to blu«h at a name which was 
 indeed their robe of victory, their triumphal chariot.^ 
 They gloried iu it aU the more because even the ignorant 
 mispronunciations of it which I have just mentioned were 
 a happy nomen et omen. If the Greeks and Romans spoke 
 correctly of Christus, they gave unwiUiug testimony to the 
 Universal King ; if they ignorantly said Chrestus, they 
 bore witness to the Sinless One. If they said Cliristiani, 
 they showed that the new Faith centred not in a dogma, 
 but in a Person ; i£ they said Chrestiani, they used a 
 word which spoke of sweetness and kindliness.* And 
 beyond aU this, to the Christians themselves the name 
 was all the dearer because it constantly reminded them 
 that they too were G-od's anointed ones — a holy genera- 
 tion, a royal priesthood ; that they had an unction from 
 
 1 See Julian, Misopogon (an answer to their insults about his beard); 
 Zosim, m. 11 ; Prooop. B. P. ii. 8. yf\olats re Kal 4To|(if iKafus ^x""^"'. 
 Philostr. Vii. Apollon. iii. 16 ; Conyb. and Hows. i. 130. 
 
 " Tert. Apol. 50. 
 
 ' 1 Pet. iv. 16, ei B4 &s XpuTTtavis, nh fuffxuviaeu, Sojaferw Si rbv Belv M rif 
 ovitiari (A, B, &c., not /f6p« as in E. V.) roiTif. The mere name became a 
 crime. ^i^Koviri roifvy iinus obK hSiKovs thai KaTa\ap6ms i\\' airf ii.6vtf t$ 
 Xptarmvoiis elmi rhv filov aSuteiv imohaiifiivovres. «. t. \. Clem. Alex. Strom, iv. 
 
 11, § 81. 
 
 ,* "Sed qnnm et perperam Chrestiani nnncupamnr a vobis (nam neo 
 nominis certa est notitia penes vos) de suamtate et betdgmtate compositum 
 est " (Tert. Apol. 3). Of «'s XpurThv irtiriffTtuiciJTer xP''l<"'oi « eiVi kcH \4yomM 
 
 (Clem. Alex. Strom, ii. 4, § 18). See Just. Mart. Apol. 2. 
 
302 THE LIFE AOT) "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 tlie Holy One wliicli brougM all trutli to their remem- 
 brance.^ 
 
 Tlie name marks a most important advance in tlie 
 progress of tlie Faitli. Hitherto, the Christians had 
 been solely looked upon as the obscure sectarians of 
 Judaism. The Greeks in their frivolity, the Eomans in 
 their superficial disdain for all " execrable " and " foreign 
 superstitions," never troubled themselves to learn the 
 difference which divided the Jew from the Christian, 
 but idly attributed the internal disturbances which 
 seemed to be agitating the peace of these detested 
 fanaticisms to the instigations of some unknown person 
 named Chrestus.^ But meanwhile, here at Antioch, the 
 inhabitants of the third city in the Empire had seen 
 that there was between the two systems an irreconcilable 
 divergence, and had brought that fact prominently home 
 to the minds of the Christians themselves by imposing on 
 them a designation which seized upon, and stereotyped for 
 ever, the very central belief which separated them from 
 the religion in which they had been born and bred. 
 
 The necessity for such a name marks clearly the 
 success which attended the mission vrorkof these early 
 
 ' TMs was a beautiful after-thougM. roirov tviK^v KaKoi/ieSa Xpttmm/ol irt 
 Xpti/ieSa e\cuov @eoS. (Theoph. ad Autol. i. 12 ; Tert. Apol. 3.) Compare the 
 German Christen (Jar. Taylor, Disc, of Confirm., § 3). There are similar 
 allusiouB in Ambr. De Obit. Valent., and Jerome on Ps. ct. 15 (" STolite tangere 
 Christos meos"). See Pearson on the Creed, Art. ii. 
 
 2 Even in Bpictetus (Dissert, iv. 7, 6) and Marcus Aorelius (xi. 3), Renan 
 (Les ApStres, 232) thinks that " Christians " means sicarii. This seems to 
 me very doubtful. Snlpicius Severus (ii. 30) preserves a phrase in which 
 Tacitus says of Christianity and Judaism, "Has superstitiones, licet con 
 trarias sibi, 'usdem tamen auctoribus profeotas.' Christianos a Jndaeis 
 enstitisse " (Bermays, Ueber die Chronih Snip. Sev., p. 67). See Spartianus, 
 Sept. Sever. 16 ; Ca/racalla, 1 ; Lampridiusi Alex. Sev. 22—45, 51. Vopiseus, 
 Saturn. 8. The confusion was most unfortunate, and peaceful Christians were 
 constantly persecuted while turbulent Jews were protected, (Tert. Ajpol. 2, 
 Ad Nai. i, 3 ; Justin, Apol, i. 4 — 7, n.) 
 
JOT OF THE GOSPEL. 303 
 
 Evangelists. They could not liave tilled a soil wMcli was 
 more likely to he fruitful. With wliat a burst of joy must 
 the more large-hearted even of the Jews have hailed the 
 proclamation of a Gospel which made them no longer a 
 hated colony living at drawn daggers with the heathen 
 life that surrounded them ! How ardently must the 
 Gentile whose heart had once been touched, whose eyes 
 had once been enlightened, have exulted in the divine 
 illumination, the illimitable hope ! How must his heart 
 have been stirred by the emotions which marked the 
 outpouxing of the Spirit and accompanied the grace of 
 baptism ! How with the new life tingling through the 
 dry bones of the valley of vision must he have turned 
 away — ^with abhorrence for his former self, and a divine 
 pity for his former corapanions — from the poisoned 
 grapes of Heathendom, to pluck the fair fruits which grow 
 upon the Tree of Life in the Paradise of God ! How, 
 in one word, must his heart have thrilled, his soul have 
 dilated, at high words like these : — " Such things were 
 some of yon; but ye washed yourselves, but ye are 
 sanctified, bnt ye are justified, by the name of the Lord 
 JesuSj, and by the Spirit of our God."^ 
 
 * 1 Cor. 71. 11. Tavri rtyes ?t6 iw' ImfXoiirairBt, «.t.A. 
 
CHAPTEE XVn. 
 
 A MAETTRDOM AND A RETRIBUTld'w. 
 
 " great Apostle ! rightly now 
 
 Thou readest all thy Saviour meant, 
 "What time His grave yet gentle brow 
 
 In sweet reproof on thee was bent." — ^Keele. 
 
 Thus it was ttat at Antiocli tlie Cliurcli of Clirist was 
 enlarged, and the "views of its members indefinitely 
 widened. For a wliole year — and it may well have been 
 tbe bappiest year in tbe life of Saul — be worked bare witb 
 bis beloved companion. Tbe calm and conciliatory tact of 
 Barnabas tempered and was inspirited by tbe .fervour 
 of Saul. Eacb contributed bis own bigb gifts to clear 
 away tbe myriad obstacles wbicb still impeded tbe free 
 flow of tbe river of God's grace. In tbe glory and deligbt 
 of a ministry so ricbly successful, it is far from impossible 
 tbat Saul may bave enjoyed tbat rapturous revelation 
 wbicb be describes in tbe Epistle to tbe Corintbians, 
 during wbicb be was caugbt up into Paradise as far as tbe 
 tbird beaven,^ and beard unspeakable words wbicb man 
 neitber could nor ougbt to utter. It was one of tbose 
 ecstasies wbicb tbe Jews tbemselves regarded as tbe bigbest 
 form of revelation — one of tbose moments of inspiration 
 in wbicb tbe soul, like Moses on Sinai, sees Grod face to 
 
 1 The " third heaven " is called " Zevul " by Rashi (of. Chagigah, f . 12, 2). 
 In such visions the soul "hath no eyes to see, nor ears to hear, yet sees 
 and hears, and is all eye, all ear." St. Teresa, in describing her visions as 
 mdescrihdble, says, " The restless little butterfly of the memory has its wings 
 burnt now, and it cannot fly." (FwJa, xviii. 18.) 
 
ALMS FOR JEETJSALEM. 305 
 
 face and does not die. St. Panl, it must be remembered, 
 had a work to perform wbicb required more absolute self- 
 sacrifice, more unwave^ng faitb, more undaunted courage, 
 more unclouded insigbt, more glorious superiority to im- 
 memorial prejudices, tban any man wbo ever lived. It 
 needed moments like tbis to sustain tbe nameless agonies, 
 to kindle tbe inspiring flame of sucb a life. Tbe ligbt 
 upon tbe countenance of Moses migbt die away, like tbe 
 radiance of a mountain peak wbicb bas caugbt tbe colour 
 of tbe dawn, but tbe glow in tbe beart of Paul could never 
 fade. Tbe utterance of tbe unspeakable words migbt 
 cease to vibrate in tbe soul, but no after-influence cotdd 
 obliterate tbe impression of tbe eternal message. Amid 
 seas and storms, amid agonies and energies, even wben 
 aU eartbly bopes bad ceased, we may be sure tbat tbe 
 voice of God stiU rang in bis beart, tbe vision of God was 
 still brigbt before bis spiritual eye. 
 
 Tbe only recorded iacident of tbis year of service is 
 tbe visit of certain brethren from Jerusalem, of wbom 
 one, named Agabus, prophesied the near occurrence of a 
 general famiae. The warning note which bis sounded 
 was not in vain. It quickened tbe sympathies of tbe 
 Christians at Antioch, and enabled tbe earliest of the 
 Gentile Churches to give expression to their reverence 
 for those venerable sufferers in tbe Mother Church of 
 Jerusalem who " bad seen and beard, and whose bands 
 had bandied the Word, of Life."^ A contribution was 
 made for tbe brethren of Judaea. Tbe inhabitants of 
 tbat country, and more especially of the Holy City, 
 have been accustomed in all ages, as they are in tbis, to 
 rely largely on tbe chaluha^ or alms, which are willingly 
 
 > 1 John i. 1. 
 
 ' According to Dr. Prankl (Jews m the East, ii. 31) a sum of 818,000 
 piastres finds its way annually to Jerusalem, for a Jewish population of some' 
 5,700 souls. It is distributed partly as ehaluka — i,e., at so much per head. 
 
306 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 contributed to their poverty by Jews living in other 
 countries. The vast sums collected for the Temple 
 tribute flowed into the bursting coffers of the Beni 
 Hanan — much as they now do, though in dwindled rills, 
 into those of a few of the leading Ashkenazim and 
 Jnsche hod. But there would be little chance that any 
 of these treasures would help to alleviate the hunger of 
 the struggling disciples. Priests who starved their own 
 coadjutors^ would hardly be inclined to subsidise their 
 impoverished opponents. The Gentiles, who had been 
 blessed by the spiritual wealth of Jewish Christians, 
 cheerfully returned the benefit by subscribing to the 
 supply of their temporal needs.® The sums thus gathered 
 were entrusted by the Church to Barnabas and Saul. 
 
 The exact month in which these two messengers of 
 mei'cy arrived to assist their famine-stricken brethren 
 cannot be ascertained, but there can be but little doubt 
 that it was in the year 44. On their arrival they found 
 the Church ia strange distress from a new persecution. 
 It is not impossible that the fury of the onslaught may 
 once more have scattered the chief Apostles, for we hear 
 nothing of any intercourse between them and the two 
 great leaders of the Church of Antioch. Indeed, it is 
 said that the alms were handed over, not to the Apostles, 
 but to the Elders. It is true that Elders may iaclude 
 Apostles, but the rapid and purely monetary character of 
 the visit, and the complete silence as to further details, 
 seem to imply that this was not the case. 
 
 The Church of Antioch was not the sole contributor 
 to the distresses ■ of Jerusalem. If they helped their 
 Christian brethren, the Jews found benefactors ia the 
 
 without distinction of age or sex — ^and partly as hadima, according to the 
 I rank of the recipient. 
 
 1 Derenbourg, p. 232 seq. » Eom. xt. 26, 27. 
 
HELENA OP ADIABENB. 807 
 
 members of an interesting household, the royal family of 
 Adiabene, whose history is much mingled at this time 
 with that of Judaea, and sheds instructive light on the 
 annals of early Christianity. 
 
 Adiahene, once a province of Assyria, now forms 
 part of the modern Kurdistan. Monohazus, the king of 
 this district, had married his sister Helena, and by 
 that marriage had two sons, of whom the younger, 
 Izates, was the favourite of his parents.^ To save 
 him from the jealousy of his bther brothers, the Ving 
 and queen sent him to the court of Abennerig, king 
 of the Charax-Spasini, who gave him his daughter in 
 marriage. While he was living in this sort of honour- 
 able exile, a Jewish merchant, named Hananiah, managed 
 to find admission into the haj%m of Abennerig, and to 
 convert some of his wives to the Jevvish faith. In this 
 way he was introduced to Izates, of whom he also made a 
 proselyte. Izates was recalled by his father before his 
 death, and endowed with the princedom of Charrae ; and 
 when Monohazus died, Helena summoned the leading men 
 of Adiabene, and informed them that Izates had been 
 appointed successor to the crown. These satraps accepted 
 the decision, but advised Helena to make her elder son, 
 Monohazus, a temporary sovereign until the arrival of his 
 brother, and to put the other brothers in bonds prepara- 
 tory to their assassination in accordance with the common 
 &8hion of Oriental despotism.* Izates, however, on his 
 arrival, was cheerfully acknowledged by his elder brother, 
 and set all his other brothers firee, though he sent them 
 as hostages to Rome and various neighbouring courts. 
 
 ' Josephns (AntL xx. 2, § 1) attribntes this pardality to a prophetio 
 dream. 
 
 * Hence we are told that " ' King ' Hnmbai made golden handles for the 
 Teasels used in the Temple on the Day of Atonement " (Fomo, 37 a). 
 
 v2 
 
308 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUIi. 
 
 I stalls subsequently relate tlie very remarkable circum- 
 stances wMcli led to his circumcision/ At present I need 
 only mention that his reign was long and prosperous, 
 and that he was able to render such important services 
 to Artabanus, the nineteenth Arsacid, that he received 
 from him the kingdom of Nisibis, as well as the right to 
 wear the peak of his tiara upright, and to sleep in a golden 
 bed — privileges usually reserved for the kings of Persia. 
 Even before these events, Helena had been so much 
 struck with the prosperity and piety of her son, that she 
 too had embraced Judaism, and at this very period 
 was living in Jerusalem. Being extremely wealthy, 
 and a profound admirer of Jewish institutions, she took 
 energetic measures to alleviate the severity of the 
 famine ; and by importing large quantities of com from 
 Alexandria, and of dried figs from Cyprus, she was 
 happily able to save many Hves. Her royal bounty 
 was largely aided by the liberality of Izates,^ whose con- 
 tributions continued to be of service to the Jews long 
 after the arrival of Saul and Barnabas with the alms 
 which they had brought from Antioch for their suffering 
 brethren. 
 
 It is clear that they arrived shortly before the Pass- 
 over, or towards the end of March; for St. Luke fixes 
 their visit about the time of Herod's persecution, which 
 began just before, and would, but for Grod's Providence, 
 have been consummated just after, that great feast. 
 Indeed, it was a priori probable that the Apostles would 
 time their visit by the feast, both from a natural desire 
 to be present at these great annual celebrations, and 
 
 1 Infra, ii., p. 136. 
 
 ' Oros. vii. 6; Jos. Antt. xx. 2, § 5. Helena is also said to have given to 
 the Temple a golden candlestick, and a golden tablet inscribed with the 
 " trial of jealousy " (Fomo, 37 a). 
 
HEROD AGEIPPA L 309 
 
 also because that was the very time at whicli the vast 
 concourse of visitors would render their aid most timely 
 and indispensahle. 
 
 They arrived, therefore, at a period of extreme peril 
 to the little Church at Jerusalem, which had now enjoyed 
 some five years of unoroken peace. ^ 
 
 Herod Agrippa I., of whom we have already had some 
 glimpses, was one of those singular characters who com- 
 bine external devotion with moral laxity. I have else- 
 where told the strange story of the part which on one 
 memorable day he played in Eoman history,^ and how 
 his supple address and determination saved Eome from a 
 revolution and placed the uncouth Claudius on his nephew's 
 throne. Claudius, who with all his pedantic and uxorious 
 eccentricity was not devoid either of kindness or recti- 
 tude, was not slow to recognise that he owed to the Jewish 
 prince both his life and his empire. It was probably due, 
 in part at least, to the influence of Agrippa that shortly 
 after his accession he abolished the law of " Impiety " 
 on which Gains had so vehemently insisted,^ and which 
 attached the severest penalties to any neglect of the 
 imperial cult. But the further extension of the power 
 of Agrippa was fraught with disastrous consequences to 
 the Church of Christ. For the Jews were restored to 
 the fullest privileges which they had ever enjoyed, and 
 Agrippa set sail for Palestine in the flood-tide of imperial 
 favour and with the splendid additions of Judsea and 
 Samaria, Abilene, a,nd the district of Lebanon* to Herod 
 Philip's tetrarchy of Trachonitis, which he had received 
 at the accession of Grains.* 
 
 > Caligula's order to place Ms statue in the Temple was g^ven in A.D. 39, 
 Herod Agrippa died in A.D. 4A, 
 
 s Seekers after God, p. 76, * Dion. k. 3, 5. > 
 
 * Jos. AnU. xix. 5, §§ 2, 3. * Id. rvilL 6, § 10. 
 
310 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 It is natural that a prince of Asmonsean blood/ who 
 thus found himself in possession of a dominion as exten- 
 sive as that of his grandfather Herod the Great, should 
 try to win the favour of the people whom he was sent to 
 govern. Apart from the subtle policy of facing both 
 ways so as to please the Jews while he dazzled the 
 Eomans, and to enjoy his life in the midst of Gentile 
 luxuries while he affected the reputation of a devoted 
 Pharisee, Agrippa seems to have been sincere in his desire 
 to be — at any rate at Jerusalem — an observer of the 
 Mosaic Law. St. Luke, though his allusions to him are 
 so brief and incidental, shows remarkable fidelity to his- 
 toric facts in presenting him to us in both these aspects. 
 In carrying out his policy, Agrippa paid studious court 
 to the Jews, and especially to the Pharisees. He omitted 
 nothing which could win their confidence or flatter their 
 pride, and his wife, Oypros,^ seems also to have been as 
 
 ' Agrippa I. was the grandson of Herod the Great and Mariamne. 
 Mariamne was the granddaughter of Hyrcanus II., who was a grandson of 
 Hyrcanus I., who was a son of Simon, the elder brother of Judas Maccabseus. 
 Some of the Rabbis were, however, anxious to deny any drop of Asmoneean 
 blood to the Herodian family. They relate that Herod the Great had been a 
 slave to one bf the Asmonseans, and one day heard a Bath Kol saying, " Every 
 slave that now rebels wiU succeed." Accordingly, he murdered aU the 
 family, except one young maiden, whom he reserved for marriage. But she 
 mounted to the roof, cried out that " any one who asserted himself to be 
 of the Asmon8ean house henceforth would be a slave, for that she alone of 
 that house was left ; " and ilinging herseK down was killed. Some say that 
 for seven years Herod preserved her body in honey, to make people believe 
 that he was married to an Asmonaaan princess. Angry with the Rabbis, who 
 insisted on Deut. xvii. 15, he killed them all, except Babha Ben Buta (whom 
 he blinded by binding up his eyes with the skin of a hedgehog), that he 
 might have one counsellor left. Having disguised himself, and tried in 
 vain to tempt Babha Ben Buta to say something evil of him, he revealed 
 himself, and asked what he ought to do by way of expiation. The bUud man 
 answered, " Thou hast extinguished the light of the world (see Matt. v. 14) ; 
 rekindle it by building the Temple " (Babha Bathra, f . 3, 2, seqq.). 
 
 ^ Oypros was the name of the wife of Antipater and mother of Herod 
 the Great. She was descended from a Nabathean family ; her name, which 
 is probably connected with ib3, {kenna), was borne by several Herodian 
 princesses (Derenbourg, Palest., p. 210). 
 
CHARACTER OF AGRlPPA L 311 
 
 lancli attached to the party as her kinswoman, Salome, 
 sister of Herod the Grreat.^ 
 
 It is clear that such a king — a king who wished 
 to foster the sense of Jewish nationality,^ to satisfy the 
 Sadducees, to be supported by the Pharisees, and to be 
 popular with the multitude — could not have lived long 
 ia Jerusalem, which was his usual place of residence,^ 
 without hearing many complaints about the Christians. 
 At this time they had become equally distasteful to every 
 section of the Jews, being regarded not only as fanatics, 
 but as apostates, some of whom sat loosely to the covenant 
 which God had made with their fathers. To extirpate 
 the Christians would, as Agrippa was well aware, be 
 the cheapest possible way to win general popularity. It 
 was accordingly about the very time of the visit of the 
 two Apostles to the Passover, as delegates from Antioch, 
 that " he laid hands on certain of the Church to injure 
 them; and he slew James, the brother of John, with 
 the sword; and seeing that it was pleasing to the 
 Jews, proceeded to arrest Peter also."* Thus in a single 
 touch does St. Luke strike the keynote of Agrippa's policy, 
 which was an unscrupulous desire for such popularity 
 as could be earned by identifying himself with Jewish 
 prejudices. In the High Priests of the day he would find 
 willing coadjutors. The priest for the time being was 
 probably Elionseus, whom Josephus calls a son of "Kanthera, 
 but whom the Talmud calls a son of Caiaphas.* If so, he 
 would have been animated with an hereditary fury against 
 the followers of Christ, and would have been an eager 
 instrument in the hands of Herod. When such allies were 
 
 ' See Excursus XIU, "Herod Agrippa I. in the Talmud and in Secular 
 History." 
 
 * Jos. Antt. zx. 1, § 1. 
 
 » Id. xix. 7, § 3. * Acte xii. 1—3. 
 
 * Jos, B. J. xix. 8, § 1, Para, iii 6; Ben HaTckdi/ph; Derenbourg, p. 215. 
 
312 ■ THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST, PAUL. 
 
 in unison, and Agrippa in the very plenitude of his power, 
 it was easy to strike a deadly blow at the Nazarenes. 
 It was 'uo bold Hellenist who was now singled out as a 
 victim, no spirited opponent of Jewish exclusiveness. 
 James, as the elder brother of the beloved disciple, perhaps 
 as a kinsman of Christ Himself, as one of the earliest and 
 one of the most favoured Apostles, as one not only of the 
 Twelve, but of the Three, as the son of a father" appa- 
 rently of higher social position than the rest of the little 
 baud, seems to have had a sort of precedence at Jerusalem ; 
 and for this reason alone — not, so far as we are aware, 
 from being personally obnoxious — he was so suddenly 
 seized and martyred that no single detail or circumstance 
 of his martyrdom has been preserved. Two words ^ are all 
 the space devoted to recount the death of the first Apostle 
 by the historian who had narrated at such length the 
 martyrdom of Stephen. It may be merely due to a sense 
 of inadequacy in this brief record that Christian tradition 
 told how the constancy and the harangues of James con- 
 verted his accuser, and caused him to become a voluntary 
 sharer of his death.^ But perhaps we are meant to see a 
 spiritual fitness in this lonely and unrecorded end of the 
 son of Thunder. He had stood by Jesus at the bedside 
 of the daughter of Jairus, and on the holy mount, and in 
 the agony of the garden ; had once wished to call down 
 fire from heaven on those who treated his Lord with 
 incivility; had helped to urge the claim that he might 
 sit in closest proximity to His throne df judgment. 
 There is a deep lesson in the circumstance that he should, 
 meekly and silently, in utter self -renouncement, with no 
 
 * Acts xii. 2, i(/ei\6 . . . (Uoxafp?. 
 
 2 Clem. Alex. wp. Euseb. R. E. ii. 9. The Apostle, it is said, looked at 
 him for a little time, and then kissed him, with the words, " Peace be with 
 you," just before they both were killed. , 
 
DELIVERANCE OF PETER. 313 
 
 visible consolation, with no elaborate eulogy, amid no 
 pomp of circumstance, with not even a recorded burial, 
 perish, first of the faithful few who had forsaken all to 
 foUow Christ, and so be the first to fulfil the warning 
 prophecy that he should drink of His bitter cup, and be 
 baptised with His fiery baptism. 
 
 It was before the Passover that James had been 
 doomed to feel the tyrant's sword. The universal ap- 
 probation of the fact by the Jews— an approbation which 
 would be all the more conspicuous from the presence of 
 the vast throngs who came to Jerusalem to celebrate the 
 Passover — stimulated the king, to whom no incense was so 
 sweet as the voice of popular applause, to inflict a blow 
 yet more terrible by seiziag the most prominent of all the 
 Apostles. Peter was accordingly ai^'ested, and since there 
 was no time to finish his trial before the Passover, and the 
 Jews were not inclined to inflict death by their own act 
 during the Feast, he was kept in prison tiU the seven 
 sacred days had elapsed that he might then be put to 
 death with the most ostentatious publicity.^ Day after 
 day the Apostle remained in close custody, boimd by 
 either arm to two soldiers, and guarded by two others. 
 Aware how irreparable would be the loss of one so brave, 
 so true, so gifted vnth spiritual fervour and wisdom, the 
 Christians of Jerusalem poured out their hearts and souls 
 in prayer for his deliverance. But it seemed as if aU 
 would be in vain. The last night of the Feast had come ; 
 the dawn of the morning would see Peter brought forth 
 to the mockery of trial, and the certainty of death. It 
 seemed as if the day had already come when, as his Lord 
 had told him, another should gird him, and carry him 
 whither he would not. But in that last extremiiy God 
 had not forsaken His Apostle or His Church. On that 
 
 ^ Acts ziL 4, auxCyem 
 
314 THE LIFE AND WORK Or ST. PAUL. 
 
 last nigM, by a divine deliverance, so sudden, mysterious, 
 and bewildering, tbat to Peter, until be woke to the sober 
 certainty of bis rescue, it seemed like a vision,^ tbe great 
 Apostle was snatcbed from bis persecutors. After briefly 
 narrating tbe circumstances of bis deliverance to tbe 
 brethren assembled in tbe bouse of Mary, tbe mother of 
 John Mark the Evangelist, he entrusted them with the 
 duty of bearing the same message to James, the Lord's 
 brother, and to the other Christians who were not present, 
 and withdrew for a time to safe retirement, while Herod 
 was left to wreak bis impotent vengeance on the uncon- 
 scious quaternion of soldiers. 
 
 It might well seem as though the blood of martyrdom 
 brought its own retribution on tbe beads of those who 
 cause it to be spilt.. Tye have seen Agrippa in the insolent 
 plenitude of bis tyranny ; the next scene exhibits him in 
 the horrible anguish of his end. It was at the beginning 
 of AprU, A.D. 44, that be bad slain James and arrested 
 Peter ; it was probably tbe very same month which ended 
 his brief and guilty splendour, and cut him ofE in the 
 flower of bis life. 
 
 Versatile and cosmopolitan as was natural in an adven- 
 turer whose youth and manhood bad experienced every 
 variety of fortune, Agrippa could play tbe heathen at 
 Csesarea with as much zeal as he could play the Pharisee 
 at Jerusalem. Tbe ordinary herd ^f Eabbis and bierarchs 
 had winked at this phase of bis royalty, and bad managed 
 to disintegrate in their imaginations the" Herod who offered 
 holocausts in tbe Temple, from the Herod who presided in 
 amphitheatres at Berytus ; the Herod who wept, because he 
 was only half a Jew, in the Temple at tbe Passover, and 
 the Herod who presided at Pagan spectacles at Csesarean 
 
 ^ Acts xii. 9. 
 
A FESTIVAL AT OiESAEBA. 316 
 
 jubilees.^ One bold Pharisee — Simon by name — did 
 indeed venture for a time to display tbe, courage of his 
 opinions. During an absence of Agrippa from Jeru- 
 salem, he summoned an assembly and declared the king's 
 actions to be so illegal that, on this ground, as well 
 as on the ground of his Idumsean origin, he ought to 
 be excluded from the Temple. As it was not Agrippa's 
 object to break with the Pharisees, he merely sent for 
 Simon to Csesarea, made him sit by his side in the 
 theatre, and then asked him gently "whether he saw 
 anything there which contradicted the law of Moses?" 
 Simon either was or pretended to be convinced that there 
 was no overt infraction of Mosaic regulations, and after 
 begging the king's pardon was dismissed with a small 
 present. 
 
 It was in that same theatre that Agrippa met his end. 
 Severe troubles had arisen in the relations between Judaea 
 and the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon, and since 
 that maritime strip of coast depends entirely for* its sub- 
 sistence on the harvests of Palestine, it was of the ex- 
 tremest importance to the inhabitants of the merchant 
 cities that they should keep on good terms with the little 
 autocrat.^ The pressure of the famine, which would fall 
 -on them with peculiar severity, made them still more 
 anxious to bring about a reconciliation, and the visit of 
 Agrippa to Csesarea on a joyful occasion furnished them 
 with the requisite opportunity. 
 
 That occasion was the news that Claudius had re- 
 turned in safety from his expedition to Britain, and had 
 been welcomed at Eome with an outburst of flattery, in 
 which the interested princelings of the provinces thought 
 
 1 Jos. Antt. XIX. 7, § 4. 
 
 » Of. 1 Kings T. 9 J Ezek. xivii. 17 ; Ezra iiL 7. 
 
316 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 it politic to bear tteir part.^ Agrippa was always glad 
 of any excuse whicli enabled him to indulge bis passion 
 for gladiatorial exhibitions and the cruel vanities of 
 Eoman dissipation. Accordingly he hui-ried to Cfesarea, 
 which was the Roman capital of Palestine, and ordered 
 every preparation to be made for a splendid festival. To 
 this town came the deputies of Tyre and Sidon, taking 
 care to secure a friend at court in the person of Blastus, 
 the king's groom of the bedchamber.*^ 
 
 It was on the second morning of the festival, at the 
 early dawn of a bui-ning day in the Syrian spring, that 
 Agrippa gave audience to the Phoenician embassy. It 
 was exactly* the time and place and occasion in which 
 he would be glad to display his magnificence and 
 wealth. Accordingly he entered the theatre with his 
 royal retinue in an entire robe of tissued silver, and 
 taking his seat on the bema, made to the Tyrians and 
 Sidonians a set harangue. As he sat there the sun blazed 
 on his glittering robe, and seemed to wrap him in a 
 sheet of splendour. The theatre was thronged with his 
 creatures, his subjects, the idle mob whose amusement 
 he was supplying with profuse liberality, and the people 
 whose prosperity depended on his royal favour. Here and 
 there among the crowd a voice began to be heard shouting 
 that it was a god who was speaking to them,* a god 
 whose radiant epiphany was manifested before their eyes. 
 In the prime of life, and of the manly beauty for which 
 his race was remarkable^ at the zenith of his power, in the 
 seventh year of his reign, in the plenitude of his wealth,* 
 
 1 Dion. k. 23 ; Suet. Claud. 17; PhUo, Leg. 46. See Lowin, Fasti Saeri, 
 §§ 1668, 1674 ; and contra Wieseler, Chron. d. Aposi. Zeit. 130. 
 
 ' ^irl To5 KoiTuvos, cuhicularius, praefectus cubiculi. 
 
 ° See Jos. Antt. xii. 8, § 2, which closely confirms the narrative of Acts xii. 
 
 * His revenue is stated to have been 12,000,000 of drachmse, or more than 
 £425,000, a year. 
 
DEATH or AGRIPPA I. 317 
 
 an autocrat by his own position, and an autocrat rendered 
 all but irresistible by the support of the strange being 
 whom his supple address had saved from the dagger to 
 seat him on the imperial throne — surrounded, too, at this 
 moment by flatterers and parasites, and seated in the very 
 midst of the stately buildings which Jews and Grentiles 
 alike knew to have been conferred upon the city by the 
 architectural extravagance of his race — ^the feeble intel- 
 lect of Agrippa was turned by this intoxicating incense. 
 He thought himself to be the god whom they declared. 
 Why should not Jie accept the apotheosis so abjectly 
 obtruded on a Caligula or a Claudius ? He accepted the 
 blasphemous adulation, which, as a. King of the Jews, 
 he ought to have rejected with indignant horror. At 
 that very moment his doom was sealed. It was a fresh 
 instance of that irony of heaven which often seems to 
 place men in positions of superlative gorgeousness at the 
 very moment when th^ fiat is uttered which consigns 
 them to the most pitiable and irrecoverable faU.^ 
 
 There was no visible intervention. No awful voice 
 sounded in the ears of the trembling listeners. No awful 
 hand wrote fiery letters upon the wall. St. Luke says 
 merely that the angel of God smote him. Josephus 
 introduces the grotesque incident of an owl seated above 
 him on one of the cords which ran across the theatre, 
 which Agrippa saw, and recognised in it the predicted 
 omen of impending death.^ Whether he saw an owl oi; 
 not, he was carried from the theatre to his palace a 
 stricken man — stricken by the hand of God. In five 
 days from that time — five days of internal anguish and 
 
 * See Bishop Thirlwall's "Egmy on the Irony of Sophocles. 
 
 * He says that an owl was sitting on a tree on the day of Agrippa's arrest 
 at Oapreae, and that a German soothsayer had foretold that he should become 
 a king, but should be near his death when he saw that owl again. See also 
 Enseb. E. E. ii. 10, who substitutes the angel for the owL 
 
318 THE LIPB AND WORK OP ST, PAUL, 
 
 vain despair/ in the fifty-fourth year of his age, and 
 the fourth of his reign over the entire dominion of his 
 grandfather — Agrippa died. And whatever may be the 
 extent to which he had won the goodwill of the Jews 
 hy his lavish benefactions, the Grentiles hated him all the 
 more because he was not only a Jew but an apostate, 
 A consistent Jew they could in some measure tolerate, 
 even while they hated him; but for these hybrid rene- 
 gades they always express an unmitigated contempt. The 
 news of Agrippa's death was received by the popula- 
 tion, and especially by the soldiers, both at Csesarea and 
 Sebaste with feastings, carousals, and every indication 
 of indecent joy, Not content with ci'owning themselves 
 with garlands, and pouring libations to the ferryman of 
 the Styx, they tore down from the palace the statues 
 of Agrippa's daughters, and subjected them to the most 
 infamous indignities. The foolish inertness of Claudius 
 left the insult unpunished, and these violent and dissolute 
 soldiers contributed in no small degree to the evils which 
 not many years afterwards burst over Judaea with a storm 
 of fire and sword,® 
 
 Of these scenes Saul and Barnabas may have been 
 
 ' Jos. Antt. xix. 8, § 2, yaffrphs iXySifiuia SiepyaaBeis ; Acts xii. 23, (TkoiKtiicS- 
 Pporros aTtieavev. Whether there be any disease which can strictly be 
 described as the phthiriaais, morbus pedicularis, is, as I have mentioned in 
 my Life of Christ, i. 47, more than doubtful. The death of Herod Agrippa, 
 like that of his grandfather, has been so called, but not by the sacred his- 
 torians. It is, however, an historic fact that many cruel tyrants have died 
 of ulcerous maladies, which the popular rumour described much as Lactan- 
 tius describes them in his tract De Mortihus persecutorum. Instances are 
 Pheretima (Herod, iv. 205, eiXeW i^e^ea-ev, where the retributive appropriate- 
 ness of the disease is first pointed out); Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Mace. v. 9); 
 Herod the Great (Jos. Antt.xxii. 6, § S, B. J. i. 33, §§ 8, 9) ; Maximius Galerius 
 (Euseb. n. E. viii. 16); Maximin {id, ix. 10, 11; Lact. De Mori, jpersec, 
 xxxiii.); Claudius Lucius Herminianus (Tertull. ai? Scap. iii, cum vivus ver- 
 mibns ebulliisset " Nemo sciat " dicebat, "ne gaudeant Christiaui ") ; Duke 
 o£ Alva, &c. 
 
 a Jos. Antt. xix. 9, § 2, 
 
DEATH OF AGRIPPA I. 319 
 
 eye-witnesses on their return journey from Jerusalem to 
 Antioch. The order of events in St. Luke may indeed 
 be guided by the convenience of narrating consecutively 
 all that he had to say about Herod Agrippa, and above 
 all of showing how the sudden onslaught on the Church, 
 which seemed to threaten it with nothing short of ex- 
 termination, was checked by the deliverance of Peter, 
 and arrested by the retribution of Grod. This would 
 be the more natural if, as there seems to be good reason 
 to believe, the ghastly death of Herod took place in the 
 very same month in which, by shedding the blood of 
 the 1 innocent in mere pursuit of popularity, he had 
 consummated his crimes.^ If Saul and Barnabas were 
 at Jerusalem during Peter's imprisonment, they may have 
 been present at the prayer meeting at the house of Mary, 
 the mother of Mark, and the kinswoman of Barnabas. 
 If so we can at once accoiint for the vivid minuteness of 
 the details furnished to St. Luke respecting the events of 
 that memorable time.* 
 
 In any case, they must have heard the death of 
 Agrippa discussed a thousand times, and must have 
 recognised in it a fresh proof of the immediate governance 
 of Grod. But this was to them a truth of the most 
 elementary character. Their alleged indifference to public 
 
 * Saul and Barnabas seem to liave started from Antioch Tvith the intention 
 of arriving at Jerusalem for the PadsoTer of April 1, A.D. 44. The martyrdom 
 of James immediately preceded the Passover, and the imprisonment of Peter 
 took place during the Pasehal week (Acts xii. 3—6). It was immediately 
 afterwards that Herod started for Csesarea ; and if the object of his visit was 
 to celebrate the return of Claudius from Britain, it must have been in this 
 very month. For Claudius returned early in A.D. 44, and it would take some 
 little time for the news to reach Jerusalem. Further, Josephus says that 
 Agrippa reigned seven years {Antt. xix. 8, § 2), and as he was appointed in 
 April, A.D. 37, these seven years would end in April, A.D. 44. See the 
 qncdtion fuUy examined in Lewin, Fasti Saeri, p. 280. 
 
 2 In D is mentioned even the number of steps from Peter's prison to the 
 street. 
 
320 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 questions simply arose from tlieir absorption in other 
 interests. Their minds were full of deeper concerns 
 than the pride and fall of kings ; and their visit to Jeru- 
 salem was so purely an episode in the work of St. Paul 
 that in the Epistle to the Galatians he passes it over 
 without a single allusion.^ There is nothing surprising 
 in the omission. It is the object of the Apostle to show 
 his absolute independence of the Twelve. This second 
 visit to Jerusalem had, therefore, no bearing on the 
 subject with which he was dealing. More than eleven 
 years had already elapsed since the Crucifixion, and a very 
 ancient tradition says that twelve years (which to the 
 Jews would mean anything above eleven years) was the 
 period fixed by our Lord for the stay of the Apostles 
 in the Holy City.^ Even if we attach no importance 
 to the tradition, it is certain that it approximates to 
 known facts, and we may therefore assume that, about 
 this time, the Apostles began to be scattered in various 
 directions. St. Paul passes over this eleemosynary visit, 
 either because in this connexion it did not occur to his 
 memory, or because the mention of it was whoUy unim- 
 portant for his purpose. 
 
 Tet there was one circumstance of this visit which was 
 fraught with future consequences full of sadness to both 
 the Apostles. Barnabas, as we have seen, was nearly 
 related to John Mark, son^ of that Mary in whose house 
 was the upper room. It would be most natural that he, 
 and therefore that Saul, should, during their short visit, 
 be guests in Mary's house, and the enthusiasm of her son 
 may well have been kindled by the glowing spirit of his 
 
 » Gal. ii. 1. 
 
 2 See Apollon. op. Euseb. B. E. v. 18; Clem. Alex. Bivom. -ri. p. 762, ed. 
 Potter. 
 
 ' Col. iv. 10, j i.v^ios means " couBin," not " sister's son," wMch would be 
 
ST. MARK. 321 
 
 cousin and tlie yet more fiery ardour of his great com- 
 panion. The danger of farther persecution seemed to he 
 over, hut Peter, Mark's close friend and teacher, was no 
 longer in Jerusalem, and, in spite of any natural anxieties 
 which the prevalent famine may have caused, the Christian 
 mother consented to part with her son, and he left Jeru- 
 salem in the company of the Apostle of the Grentiles. 
 
CHAPTEE XYin. 
 
 JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM. 
 
 " Whoso breaketh a hedge [applied by the Rabbis to their Seyyag la Thorah, 
 or 'hedge for the Law'], a serpent shall bite him." — EcCLBS. x. 8. 
 
 "•Gods of Hellas! Gods pf Hellas!* 
 Said the old Hellenic tongae ; 
 Said the hero-oaths, as well as 
 Poets' songs the sweetest sung I 
 ' Have ye grown deaf in a day ? 
 Can ye speak not yea or nay — 
 
 Since Pan is dead P ' " — E. Baeebtt BEOWNUfO. 
 "Die Gotter sauken vom Himmelsthron 
 Es stiirtzten die Herrlichen Saiilen, 
 Und geboren wiirde der Jnug^rau Sohn 
 
 Die Gebrechen der Erde zu heUen ; 
 Verbaunt war der Sinne fliichtige Lust 
 TJnd der Mensoh giiffi dehkend in seine Brnst." 
 
 SCHILLEB. 
 
 When Barnabas and Saul returned to Antiocli they found 
 the Church, still animated by the spirit of happy activity. 
 It was evidently destined to eclipse the importance of 
 the Holy City as a centre and stronghold of the Faith. 
 In the Church of Jerusalem there were many sources of 
 weakness which were wanting at Antioch. It was ham- 
 pered by depressing poverty. It had to bear the brunt 
 of the earliest persecutions. Its lot was cast in the very 
 furnace of Jewish hatred ; and yet the views of its most 
 influential elders were so much identified with their old 
 Judaic training that they would naturally feel less interest 
 in any attempt to proselytise the Gentiles. 
 
 At Antioch all was different. There the prejudices of 
 the Jews wore an aspect more extravagant, and the claims 
 of the GentHes assumed a more overwhelming importance. 
 
THE CHURCH IN ANTIOOH. 323 
 
 At Jerusalem tlie Cliristians liad "been at the mercy of a 
 petty Jewisli despot. At Antiocli tlie Jews were forced 
 to meet th,e Cliristians on terms of perfect equality, under 
 tlie impartial rule of Eoman law.'^ 
 
 Of tlie constitution of tlie early Churcli at Antioch 
 notliing is said, but we are told of a little group of 
 prophets and teachers^ who occupied a prominent position 
 in their religious services. These were Barnabas, Simeon 
 (sumamed, for distinction's sake, Niger, and possibly, 
 therefore, like Lucius, a native of Cyrene), Manaen, and 
 Saul. Of Simeon and Lucius nothing whatever is known, 
 since the suggestion that Lucius may be the same person 
 as Luke the Evangelist is too foundationless to deserve a 
 refutation. Of Manaen, or, to give him his proper Jewish 
 name, Menahem, we are told the interesting circumstance 
 that he was the foster-brother of Herod Antipas. It 
 has, therefore, been conjectured that he may have been 
 a son of the Essene who lent to Herod the Great the 
 influence of his high authority,^ and who, when Herod 
 was a boy at school, had patted him oil the back and told 
 him he should one day be king.* If so, Menahem must 
 have been one of the few early converts who came from 
 
 1 " Eruditissimis hominibusl iberalissimisque studiis affluens" (Oie. JPro 
 Archid, iii.). 
 
 2 The accurate distinction between "prophets" and " teachers " isnowhere 
 laid down, but it is clear that in the Apostolic age it was well understood (1 Cor. 
 xii. 28 ; Bph. iv. 11). But the question naturally arises whether it is meant 
 that Barnabas and Saul were " prophets " or " teachers "—or whether they were 
 both. The latter, perhaps, is the correct view. The prophet stood higher than 
 the teacher, was more immediately inspired, spoke with a loftier authority ; but 
 the teacher, whose functions were of a gentler and humbler nature, might, at 
 great moments, and under strong influences, rise to the power of prophecy, 
 whUe the prophet also might on ordinary occasions fulfil the functions of a 
 teacher. (See Neander, Planting, p. 133, seqq.) 
 
 ' Jos. Antt. XV. 10, § 6. 
 
 * Incidents of this kind are also told of Galba (Tae. Ann. vi. 20 ; Suet. 
 Qda. 4 ; Jos. Anit. xviii. 6, § 9) j of Henry YII. ; and of Louis Philippe. 
 
 V 2 
 
324 THE LIFE AOT) WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 wealtty positions ; but ttere is notliing to prove that he 
 was thus connected with the celebrated Essene, and in 
 any case he can hardly have been his son.^ 
 
 It was during a period of special service, accom- 
 panied by fasting, that the Holy Spirit brought home to 
 their souls the strong conviction of the new work which 
 lay before the Church, and of the special commission of 
 Barnabas and Saul.^ The language in which this Divine 
 intimation is expressed seems to imply a sudden conviction 
 following upon anxious deliberation ; and that special 
 prayer and fasting^ had been undertaken by these prophets 
 and teachers in order that they might receive guidance to 
 decide about a course which had been already indicated to 
 the two Apostles. 
 
 St. Paul, indeed, must long have yearned for the 
 day in which the Lord should see fit to carry out His 
 own promise " to send him far hence to the Grentiles."* 
 The more deeply he thought over his predicted mission, 
 the more would he realise that it had been pre- 
 destined ill the coimcils of God, Gentiles worshipped 
 idols, but so had their own fathers done when they 
 dwelt beyond Euphrates. Jewish Rabbis had admitted 
 that, after all, Abraham himself was but the earhest 
 
 1 Because Manaen, the Essene, must have attained middle age when Herod 
 the Great was a boy, and since we hare now reached A.D . 45, this Manaen could 
 only have been bom when the other was in extreme old age. 
 
 ' Acts xiii. 2, 'A<popl(raT( Sii, " Come, set apart at once." The meaning of 
 the KeiToupyoiyrav (hence our word " liturgy ") is probably general. Chrysos- 
 tom explains it by KijpvTTivTinv. For other iQstances of the word, see Luke 
 i. 23; Eom. xv. 16; v2 Oor. ix. 12; PhU. ii. 30. The S irpoa-KeKXnJiai avrobs 
 implies, of course, that Barnabas and Saul had already received a summons 
 to the work (of. Acts ix. 15 ; xxii. 21 ; Rom. i. 1 ; Gal. i. 1). Hooker thinks 
 that Paul was made an Apostle because James could nrit leave Jerusalem; 
 iind Barnabas to supply the place of James, the brother of Joha {Ecol. Pol. 
 vii. 4, 2). 
 
 3 On fasting in Embe^ weeks, see Bingham, xzL, oh. 2. 
 
 * Acts ix. 15, 16. 
 
THE GENTILES, 325 
 
 of the proselytes.^ If, as legend told, Terali liad been 
 a maker of idols, and if Abraham bad received bis first 
 call, as Stepben had said, while yet Hving in Ur of the 
 Chaldees, why should not thousands of the heathen be 
 yet numbered among the elect of Grod? Had not God 
 made of one blood all the nations upon earth? Had 
 not the aged Simeon prophesied that the infant Jesus 
 should be a light to lighten the Gentiles, no less than the 
 glory of His people Israel ? And were there not to be 
 reckoned among His human ancestors Eahab, the harlot 
 of Jericho, and Euth, the loving woman of the accursed 
 race of Moab ? Had not Hadassah been a sultana in the 
 seraglio of Xerxes? Had not Moses himself married a 
 woman of Ethiopia ?^ And among the great doctors of re- 
 cent days was it not asserted that Shammai was descended 
 from Haman, the Amalekite ? * And, however necessary 
 had been the active hostility to mixed marriages, and all 
 other close intercourse with tbe heathen in the reforming 
 period of Ezra and Nehemiah, had not Zepbaniah declared 
 in the voice of prophecy that " men should worship Jehovah 
 every onp from his place, even all the isles of the heathen ?"* 
 Nay, did no deeper significance than was suggested in the 
 vulgar exegesis lie in the ancient promise to Abraham, that 
 " in him all families of the earth should be blessed ? " * 
 Did the prophecy that all the ends of the earth should see 
 the salvation of our God -^merely mean that they should 
 
 1 JoskxxiT. 2. The apologue of the gazelle feeding among a flock of sheep, 
 found in the Talmud, and attributed to Hillel, beautifully expresses the tole- 
 ration of the wiser and more enlightened Rabbis; but the proselytism contem- 
 plated is, of course, that purchased by absolute conformity to Jewish precepts. 
 
 2 The Rabbis, to get over this startling fact, interpreted Koosith ("Ethio- 
 pian woman ") by Gematria, and made it mean " fair of face ;" since Koosith 
 = '736=the Hebrew words for " fair of eyes." 
 
 s Similarly it was said that AMbha descended from Sisera. 
 * Zeph. ii. 11. • Gen. xii. 3; Gal. iii. 14 
 
 « Isa. Iii 10. 
 
326 THE LIFE AJSTD WORK OF ST. PATJL. 
 
 see it as excluded aliens, or as wanderers doomed to perist ? 
 If the Gentiles were to come to the light of Zion, and kings 
 to the brightness of her dawn — if the isles were to wait 
 for God, and the ships of Tarshish ^ — did this merely 
 mean that the nations were but to be distant admirers 
 and tolerated servants, admitted only to the exoteric doc- 
 trines and the less peculiar blessings, and tolerated only 
 as dubious worshippers in the Temple's outmost courts ? 
 "Would not this be to them a blessing Hke the blessing of 
 Esau, which was almost like a curse, that their dwelling 
 should be away from the fatness of the earth, and away 
 from the dew of blessing from above ?^ Or, after all, if 
 such reasonings were inconclusive — if, however conclusive, 
 they were stUl inadequate to break down that barrier of 
 prejudice which was an obstacle more difficult to surmount 
 than the middle wall of partition — was any argument 
 needful, when they had heard so recently the command 
 of their Lord that they were to ffo into all the world and 
 preach the Gospel to every creature,^ and the prophecy that 
 they should be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the 
 earth ? * 
 
 Such convictions may have been in the heart of Paul 
 long before he could persuade others to join in giving 
 effect to them. It is matter of daily experience that the 
 amount of reasoning which ought to be sufficient to pro-, 
 duce immediate action is often insufficient to procure even 
 a languid assent. But the purpose of the Apostle was 
 happily aided by the open-hearted candour of Barnabas, 
 the intellectual freshness of the Church of Antioch, and the 
 immense effect produced by the example of Peter, who 
 
 1 Isa. ix. 3, 9. 
 
 ' Gen. xxvii. 39, ^ Behold, without the fatness of the earth shall be thy 
 clwelling, and without the dew of heaven from above " (v. Kalisch, m Zoc). 
 8 Mark xvi. 16. « Acts i. 8. 
 
DIFMOITLTIBS OF THE MISSION. 327 
 
 had won even from the Church of Jerusalem a reluctant 
 acquiescence in the baptism of Cornelius. 
 
 And apart from the all but ineradicable dislike towards 
 the heathen which must have existed in the minds of Jews 
 and Jewish Christians, as a legacy of six centuries of in- 
 tolerance — even supposing this dislike to be removed from 
 within — ^yet the attempt to win over to the new faith the 
 vast opposing forces of Judaism and heathenism without 
 the fold might well have seemed fantastic and impos- 
 sible. Could any but those whose hearts were lit with a 
 zeal which consumed every difficulty, and dilated with 
 a faith to which it seemed easy to remove mountains, 
 listen without a smile to the proposal of evangelising 
 the world which was then being advanced by two 
 poor Jews — -Jews who, as Jews by birth, were objects 
 of scorn to the Grentiles, and as Jews who sat loose 
 to what had come to be regarded as the essence of 
 Judaism, were objects of detestation to Jews them- 
 selves ? Is it possible to imagine two emissaries less 
 likely to preach with acceptance " to the Jew first, and 
 afterwards to the Greek ? " And if the acceptance of 
 such a mission required nothing short of the religious 
 genius and ardent faith of Paul, surely nothing short 
 of the immediate aid of the Holy Spirit of Grod could 
 have given to that mission so grand and eternal a 
 success. 
 
 For even had the mission been to the Jews exclusively, 
 the difficulties which it presented might well have 
 seemed insuperable. It must utterly fail unless the 
 Jew could be persuaded of two things, of which one 
 would be most abhorrent to his pride, the other most 
 opposed to his convictions, and both most alien to his 
 deepest prejudices. To become a Christian he would 
 be forced to admit that all his cherished conceptions 
 
328 TKE LIFE AOT) WORK OP ST. PATTL. 
 
 of the Messiah had heen carnal and erroneous, and that 
 when, after awaiting His advent for twenty centuries, that 
 Lord had come suddenly to His Temple, the Jews had not 
 only rejected but actually crucified Him, and thereby filled 
 up the guilt which their fathers had incurred by shedding 
 the blood of the Prophets. Further, he would have to 
 acknowledge that not only his " hereditary customs," but 
 even the Law — the awful fiery Law which he believed 
 to have _ been delivered by Grod Himself from the 
 shrouded summit of Sinai — was destined, in all the facts 
 which he regarded as most distinctive, to be superseded 
 by the loftier and more spiritual revelation of this cruci- 
 fied Messiah. Lastly, he would have to resign without a 
 murmur those exclusive privileges, that religious haughti- 
 ness by which he avenged himself on the insults of his 
 adversaries, while he regarded Grod as being " a respecter 
 of persons," and himself as the special favourite of Heaven. 
 And fear would be mingled with hatred. Under 
 certain conditions, in the secrecy of Oriental seraglios, in 
 the back-stairs intercourse of courts and ffyneecea, in safe 
 places like the harem of Abennerig-and the audience-room 
 of Helen of Adiabene, with Mary of Palmyra, or Pulvia, 
 the wife of Saturninus, or Poppsea in the Golden House,^ 
 a Jew was glad enough to gain the ear of an influential 
 proselyte, and the more moderate Jews were fuUy content 
 in such cases with general conformity. They found it easy 
 to devour widows' houses and make long prayers. But 
 they were well aware that every widely successful attempt 
 to induce Grentile proselytes to practise the outward cere- 
 monies of their religion would be fraught with the extremest 
 
 " Jos. ^nM.jdii. 9, §1; 11, §3; 15, §4; xviii. 3, §5; xx. 2, §4; B.J.'± 
 17, 10 ; c. Ap. ii. 39 ; Tac. Ami. ii. 85 ; ff. t. 6 ; Hor. Sat. I. iv. 142 ; Dion. 
 Cass, xxx-rii. 17, &c. ; Juv. Sat. yi. 646. See too Derenbonrg, Falesime^ 
 p. 223, seg. 
 
DirFIOTJLTIES WITH JEWS. 329 
 
 peril to their communities/ and would lead in every city 
 of the Empire to a renewal of such scenes as those of 
 which Alexandria had lately been the witness. It is pro- 
 bable that they would have checked any impolitic zeal on 
 the part of even an orthodox Eabbi ; but it filled them 
 with fury to see it displayed by one who, as a schismatic, 
 incurred a deadlier odium than the most corrupted of the 
 heathen. To them a Paul was even more hateful than a 
 Flaccus, and Paul was all the more hateful because he had 
 once been Saul. And that this audacious pervert should not 
 ' only preach, but preach to the heathen ; and preach to the 
 heathen a doctrine which proposed to place him on a level 
 with the Jew ; and, worse still, to place him on this level 
 without any acceptance on his part of the customs without 
 which a Jew could hardly be regarded as a Jew at all — 
 this thought filled them with a rage which year after year 
 was all but fatal to the life of Paul, as for long years 
 together it was entirely fatal to his happiness and peace. ^ 
 
 Yet even supposing these obstacles to be surmounted, 
 supposing that the missionaries were successful in con- 
 verting their own countrymen, and so were enabled, 
 by means of the "Proselytes of the Gate," to obtain 
 their first point of contact through the synagogue 
 with the heathen world, might it not seem after all 
 as if their difficulties had then first begun ? What 
 hopes could they possibly entertain of making even 
 the slightest impression on that vast weltering mass of 
 idolatry and corruption? Now and then, perhaps, they. 
 
 * As early as B.C. 139 Jews had been expelled from Eome for admitting 
 proselytes to the Sabbath (Mommsen, Bom. Gesch. ii. 429). On the wider 
 spread of Sabbatism even among heathens, see Jos. c. Ap. ii. 11, §29. There 
 appear to be some traces of the Jews taking pains annually to secure one 
 proselyte (evo Trpo(H\\tnov, Matt, xxiii. 15), to typify the salvability of-' thee 
 Gi«ntiles (Taylor, Pwke Abhoth, p. 36). 
 
 ' See Excursus XIIL, " Burdens laid on Proselytes." 
 
330 THE LH^B AOT) "WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 might will the heart of some gentle woman, sick to death 
 of the cruelty and depravity of which she was forced to be 
 a daily witness ; here and there, perhaps, of some slave, 
 oppressed and ignorant, and eager to find a refuge from 
 the intolerable indignities of ancient servitude ; — but even 
 if they . could hope for this, how far had they then 
 advanced in the conversion of Heathendom, with aU its 
 splendid worldUness and ghttering fascination ? 
 
 Tor to the mass of the heathen, as I have said, their 
 very persons were hateful from the mere fact that they 
 were Jews.^ And so far from escaping this hatred, the 
 missionaries were certain to be doubly hated as Christian 
 Jews. For during the first century of Christianity, the 
 ancients never condescended to inquire what was the dis- 
 tinction between a Jew and a Christian.^ To them a 
 Christian was only a more dangerous, a more superstitious, 
 a more outrageously intolerable Jew, who added to the follies 
 of the Jew the yet more inexplicable folly of adoring a 
 crucified malefactor. It is to the supposed turbulence of 
 One whom he ignorantly calls Chrestus, and imagines to 
 have been stiU living, that Suetonius attributes the riots 
 which cost the Jews their expulsion from Eome. The 
 stolid' endurance of agony by the Christians under persecu- 
 tion woke a sort of astonished admiration ; ^ but even Pliny, 
 though his candid account of the Christians in Bithynia 
 refutes his own epithets, could only call Christianity " a 
 distorted and outrageous superstition;" and Tacitus and 
 Suetonius, using the substantive, only qualify it by the 
 severer epithets of " deadly," " pernicious," and " new." * 
 
 ^ See Exoursns XrV., " Hatred of the Jews in Classical Antiquity." 
 
 ' In Dio (Ixvii. 12—14) the Christian (P) martyr AcUins Glabrio is called a Jew. 
 
 ' Marc. Aurel. xi. 3 ; Mart. x. 25 ; Epict. Dissert, iv. 8. 
 
 ■* Plin. Ep. X. 97, " superstitionem pravam et immodicam ; " Tao. Ann. xv. 
 44, " exitiabili s superstitio ; " Suet. Nero. 16, " novae et maleficae snperstitionis." 
 See Excursus XV., " Judgments of Early Pagan Writers on Christianity." 
 
DIFFICULTIES WITH HEATHENS. 331 
 
 Tlie heathen world into which, " as lamhs among 
 wolves," the Apostles were going forth, was at that 
 moment in its worst condition. The western regions, 
 towards which the course of missions took its way, were 
 prevalently Greek and Eoman; but it was a conquered 
 Grreece and a corrupted Eome. It was a Grreece which had 
 lost its genius and retained its falsity, a Eome which 
 had lost its simplicity and retained its coarseness. It was 
 Greece in her lowest stage of seducer and parasite ; it 
 was Eome at the epoch of her most gorgeous gluttonies 
 and her most gilded rottenness. The heart of the Eoman 
 Empire under the Caesars was " a fen of stagnant waters." 
 Csesarism has found its modern defenders, and even a 
 Tiberius has had his eulogists among the admirers of 
 despotic power; but no defence can silence the damning 
 evidence' of patent facts. No advocacy can silence the 
 awful indictment which St. Paul writes to the inhabitants 
 of the imperial city.^ If such things were done in the green 
 tree, what was done in the dry ? What was the condition 
 of the thistles, if this was the code of the forest-trees ? If. 
 St. John in the Apocalypse describes Eome as the harlot 
 city which had made the nations drunk with the cup of 
 the wine of her fornications, he uses language no whit 
 severer than that of Seneca, who speaks of Eome as a 
 cesspool of iniquity;^ or than that of Juvenal, who 
 pictures her as a filthy sewer, into which have flowed the 
 abominable dregs of every Achaean and Syrian stream.^ 
 Crushed under the ignominies inflicted on her by the 
 despotism of madmen and monsters;* corrupted by the 
 pollutions of the stage, and hardened by the cruelties of 
 
 » See Friedlander, SiUmgesch. Boms. B. v. Denis, Idees Morales dans 
 VAntiquite, ii. 218—236. 
 
 ' Cf . Sail. Cat. xixvii. 5, " Hi Romam sicut in sentinam confluxenmt." 
 
 ' Jnv. iii. 62 ; Tac. Ann. xv. 44. 
 
 ♦ Of. Tac. Arm. ii. 85 ; iv. 56, 56; Suet. Tib. 35 ; Ov. Fast. ii. 497, seq. 
 
332 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PATIL. 
 
 the amphitheatre; swarming with parasites, impostors, 
 poisoners, and the vilest slaves ; without any serious 
 religion; without any public education; terrorised by 
 insolent soldiers and pauperised mobs, the world's 
 capital presents at this period a picture unparalleled 
 for shame and misery in the annals of the world. 
 But, reduced as it was to torpor under the night-mare 
 of an absolutism which it neither could nor would 
 shake off, the Eoman world had sought its solace in 
 superstition, in sensuality, or in Stoicism. The superstition 
 mainly consisted in the adoption of cunning systems of 
 priestcraft, impassioned rituals, horrible expiations bor- 
 rowed from the degrading mythologies of Egypt or from 
 the sensual religions of Galatia and Phrygia.^ So rife were 
 these, and so dangerous to morality and order, that long 
 before this age the Senate had vainly attempted* the sup- 
 pression of the rites offered to Sabazius, to Isis, and to 
 Serapis.^ The jingling of sistra, and the cracked voices of 
 beardless Galli, were familiar in every Eoman town.^ The 
 sensuality was probably more shameful, and more shame- 
 less, than has ever been heard of in history. And amid 
 this seething corruption, it was the few alone who 
 retained the virtue and simplicity of the old family 
 life and worship. The Stoicism in which the greater and 
 more suffering spirits of the epoch — a Cremutius Cordus, 
 a Thrasea Paetus, an Helvidius Priscus, an Annaeus Cor- 
 
 ' Such were the taurobolies and kriolbolies — hideous blood baths. 
 
 ^ Valerius Maximus (I. iii. 3) relates that when the Senate had ordered 
 the demolition of a Serapeum at Eome (A.U.C. 535), no workman could be 
 induced to obey the order, and the Consul had himself to burst open the door 
 with an axe (see, too, Liv. xxxix. 8 — 18 ; Oio. De Legg. ii. 8 ; Dion. Halic, 
 ii. 20 ; Dio Cass. xl. 47 ; Tert. Ajiol. 6 ; AdA). Nat. i. 10, quoted by Renan, 
 Les Apotres, p. 316, and for Isis worship, Appul. Meiam. id. 
 
 ^ Firmicius Matsmus, in the days of Constantino, did not think it worth 
 while to refute Greek and Roman mythology (De Errore Frofanae BeUg.\ 
 but only the rites of Isis, Mithras, Oybele, &c. 
 
STOICISM. 333 
 
 natus, a Musonius Eufus, a Barea Soraniis — found refuge, 
 \! as noble and heroic, but hard and unnatural. He who 
 would estimate the reaction of man's nobler instincts 
 against the profligacy of Pagan life — he who would judge 
 to what heights the Spirit of Grod can aid those who un- 
 consciously seek Him, and to what depths the powers of 
 evil can degrade their willing votaries — must bridge over 
 the guK which separates a Petronius and an Appuleius 
 from the sweetness and dignity of " minds naturally 
 Christian," like those of an Epictetus and an Aurelius. 
 He who would further estimate the priceless services 
 which Christianity can still render even to souls the most 
 naturally exalted, must once more compare the chill, the 
 sadness, the painful tension, the haughty exclusiveness, 
 the despairing pride of Stoicism with the warmth, the 
 glow, the radiant hope, the unbounded tenderness, the free 
 natural emotion, the active charities, the peaceful, infinite 
 contentment of Christiauity as it shines forth with all 
 its living and breathing sympathies in the Epistles of 
 St. Paul. 
 
 And this diiference between Stoicism and Christianity 
 is reflected in the lives of their disciples. While the 
 last genuine representatives of Roman statesmanship and 
 Eoman virtue were thinking it a grand thing to hold aloof 
 from the flatteries into which the other senators plunged 
 with such headlong baseness — while they were being re- 
 garded as models of heroism for such acts as rising and 
 walking out of the senate when some more than usually 
 contemptible flattery was being proposed — while they were 
 thus eating away their own hearts in the consciousness of 
 an ineffectual protest, and flnding it difficult to keep even 
 their own souls from " the contagion of the world's slow 
 stain'' — ^two Jews of obscure name, of no position, without 
 rank, without wealth, without influence, without either 
 
334 THE LIFE AOT) WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 literary, political, or military genius, without any culture 
 but such as a Eoman noble would have despised as useless 
 and grotesque — but mighty in the strength of a sacred 
 cause, and irresistible in the zeal of a conscious inspira- 
 tion — set forth unnoticed on the first of those journeys 
 which were destined to convert the world. For He who 
 made and loved the world, and knew the needs of the 
 world which He died to save, had sent them forth ; and 
 if .He had sent them forth without any apparent means 
 for the fulfilment of His great design, it was because He 
 willed to choose " the fooUsh things of the world to con- 
 found the wise, and the weak things to confound the 
 mighty, and things which are not to bring to nought 
 things which are, that no flesh should glory in His 
 presence." ^ 
 
 Vast, then, as was the task before them, and hedged 
 around by apparently insuperable difficulties, the elders of 
 the Church of Antioch were convinced that Barnabas and 
 Saul had indeed been summoned on a Divine mission, and 
 that they dared no longer delay the distinct manifestation 
 of the will of the Spirit. They held one more special 
 prayer and fast,^ laid on the heads of their two great 
 brethren the hands of consecration, and sent them on their 
 way. Already, in his vision, Paul had been predestined to 
 be an Apostle of the Grentiles;^ henceforth, after this 
 solemn ordination, he receives the title of an Apostle in 
 its more special significance.* For a time, as in his Epistles 
 to the Thessalonians, he modestly abstains from himself 
 adopting it; but when his name was vilified, when his 
 
 > 1 Cor. i. 27, 28. 
 
 Acts Xiii. 3, V7]ffTei(ravTes • • ■ 'irpoa'ev^d/ifvou 
 
 Acts xxvi, 17, i^aipo{/fM€v6s ffe 4k tov \aov Kol rwv IBv&v cJs offj ^yht c\ 
 kiroffriWu. 
 
 * Acts xiv. 4 14 (cf . John XTii. 18 ; Heb. iii. 1). 
 
THE APOSTLE. 335 
 
 teaching was thwarted, when his authority was impugned, 
 he not only adopted it,^ but maintained his independent 
 position as a teacher, and his right to be regarded as in 
 nowise inferior to the very chiefest of the Twelve. 
 
 ^ Except in the few purely private lines wMch he wrote to Philemon, and 
 in the letter to bis beloved Pbilippiaos who needed no assertion of his claim. 
 
THE FIEST MISSIONAET JOTJRNBT. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 CYPEUS. 
 
 Ti \4yeis ', leal TIav\os iipo^eiTo KtvB^yovs ; *£^oj8e7to Kal a^6Spa 4Bedo{iceu El yitp 
 KoJ nav\os ?y iW &v0p<Dvos fiv . . . El 7etp oix iipo$eno Tola Kaprepla rh Tohs 
 KtvSivovs (f>4peiv f 'Eydi yap Kal ^la rovro ahrhv Bav^dQta Hri (pofioi/iepos fcal abx ^t\us 
 ^o^o^/ievos aXA^ Kal Tpe/Muv Tohs ttivdii'ovs Sicfc iravThs ^Spa^e ffTftpavoinevos Koi Trayraxov 
 ri K'fipvy/i.a ffireipiav. — Chetsost. 0pp. X. 44, ed. Montfauoon. 
 
 " The travelled ambassador of Christ, who snatched Christianity from the 
 hands of a local faction, and turned it to a universal faith, whose powerful 
 word shook all the gods from Cyprus to Gibraltar, who turned the tide of 
 history and thought, giving us the organisation of Christendom for the legions 
 of Home, and for Zeno and Epicurus, Augustine, Eckhart, and Luther." — 
 Maetineaxt, Sours of Thought, p. 88. 
 
 " Sent forth by the Holy Spirit" — more conscious in- 
 struments, perhaps, of Grod's will than has ever been the 
 case before or since, and starting on a journey more 
 memorable in its issues than any which had ever been 
 undertaken by man — Saul and Barnabas, accoinpanied 
 by their more youthful attendant, John Mark, started on 
 their way. What thoughts were in their minds as they 
 turned their backs on the street Sing6n, where they had 
 preached with such acceptance and success ? There were 
 myriads of heathen and thousands of Jews in that gay 
 voluptuous city who had not accepted Christianity ; but 
 the two Apostles were summoned to other work. They 
 passed between the theatre and the amphitheatre,^ 
 
 ' See the elaborate plans and pictures of ancieut and modem Antioch in 
 Mr. Lewin's St. Paul, i., pp. 92—95. 
 
TO SELEUOIA, 337 
 
 crossed the main thoroughfare of the city with its trees 
 and statues and colonnades, passed the Eoman sentries 
 who guarded the residence of the Legate of Syria in 
 the old palace of the .Seleucidse, crossed the bridge over 
 the Orontes, and leaving the grove of Daphne on their 
 right upon the further bank of the river, made their way, 
 through the oleanders and other flowering shrubs which 
 form a gorgeous border to its purple rocks, along the six- 
 teen miles which separated them from the port of Seleucia. 
 History has contemptuously obliterated from her annals 
 the names of countless kings who have set forth from 
 their capitals for the scourge or conquest of nations at 
 the head of armies, and with aU the pomp and circumstance 
 of glorious war ; but centuries after those conquerors are 
 in their turn forgotten whom she still deigns to com- 
 memorate, she wiU preserve in the grateful memory of 
 mankind the names of these two poor Jews, who started 
 on foot, staff in hand, with little, perhaps, or nothing in 
 their scrip but the few dates that suffice to satisfy the 
 hunger of the Eastern traveller. 
 
 From Antioch they might have made their way to 
 Tarsus. But Paul had in all probability preached already 
 in his native Cilicia,' and as Barnabas was by birth a 
 Cypriote, they bent their voyage thitherward. It was 
 towards the west, towards Chittim and the Isles of 
 the Grentiles, that the course of missions naturally 
 tended. All land routes were more or less dangerous 
 and difficult. Eoads were, with few exceptions, bad; 
 vehicles were cumbrous and expensive; robbers were 
 numerous and insolent. But the total suppression of 
 piracy by Pompey had rendered the Mediterranean safe, 
 and in the growth of navigation it had become "the 
 
 • Gal. i. 21; Acts ix. 30 J si. 25. That there were churches in Oilida 
 appears from Acts xt. 41. 
 W 
 
338 THE LITE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 marriage-ring of nations."^ Along the eastern coast 
 of Asia Minor the Jews had long been scattered in num- 
 bers far exceeding those to be found there at the present 
 day; and while the extension of the Greek language 
 furnished an easy means of communication, the power of 
 Eoman law, which dominated over the remotest provinces 
 of the Empire, afforded the missionaries a free scope and 
 a fair protection: Accordingly they descended the rocky 
 stairs which led down to the port of Seleucia,^ and 
 from one of its two piers embarked on a vessel which 
 was bound for Cyprus. And thus began "the great 
 Christian Odyssey."' "The Apostolic barque has spread 
 her sails; the wind breathes low, and only aspires to 
 bear upon its wings the words of Jesus. If Rome has 
 but too good reason to complain of the dregs of moral 
 contamination which the Syrian Orontes poured forth to 
 mingle with her yeUow Tiber, on this occasion, at any 
 rate, the Syrian river made ample amends by speeding on 
 their. way with its seaward current these messengers of 
 peace and love. 
 
 As they sail south-westward over the hundred miles of 
 that blue sea which one of them was destined so many 
 times to traverse — ^the sea which four times wrecked him 
 with its unregardful storms, and tossed him for a night 
 : and a day on its restless billows ; as they sit at the prow 
 .and cast their wistful gaze towards the hills which over- 
 shadow the scene of their future labours, — or, resting 
 at the stem, not without a glance of disgust at its 
 
 1 See some good remarks in Benan, Les Apotres, p. 280, seq. ; and for aa 
 ■ exhaustive treatment, Herzfeld, Gesch. d.judischen Handels. 
 
 " Polyb. V. 59. 
 
 " Renan, Les Apotres, p. 386 ; cf . St. Paul, p. 13, " Oe fut la seconde po&ie 
 'du Christianisme. Le lae de Tib&iade et les barques de pSoheurs avaient 
 ifourni la premiere. Maintenant un souffle plus puissaali des aspirations vera 
 tJesttecres plus lointunes nous entralne en haute mer." 
 
A MISSIONARY'S LIFE. 339 
 
 heathen images, look back on the rocky cone of Mount 
 Casius, "on which three centuries later smoked the last 
 pagan sacrifice," ^ they must have felt a deep emotion at 
 the thought that now for the first time the Faith, on 
 which depended the hopes of the world, was starting for 
 fresh regions from its native Syria. Little did St. Paul 
 know how trying in its apparent failures, how terrible in 
 its real hardships, was the future which lay before him ! 
 That future — the fire of the furnace in which the fine 
 gold of his heroic spirit was to be purged from every 
 speck of dross — was mercifully hidden from himj though 
 in its broad outlines he niust have been but too well able 
 to conjecture something of its trials. But had he fore- 
 seen (3,11 that was before him — had he foreseen the scourg- 
 ings, the flagellations, the stoning, the shipwrecks,^ the 
 incessant toUings on foot along intolerable and dangerous 
 roads, the dangers from swollen rivers and rushing water- 
 courses, the dangers from mountain brigands, the dangers 
 from Jews, from Gentiles, from false Christians in city 
 and wilderness and sea, — the frantic crowds that nearly 
 tore him to pieces, the weary nights, the chill, naked, 
 thirsty, famine-stricken days, the incessant wearing re- 
 sponsibility, the chronic disease and weakness, — all the 
 outrages, all the insults, all the agitating bursts of indig- 
 nation against those who put stumbling-blocks in the 
 paths of the weak,^ the severe imprisonments, the inces- 
 sant death, and all ended by desertion, failure, lonehness, 
 chains, condemnation, the chilly dungeon,* the nameless 
 martyrdom — had he foreseen all this, could he have borne 
 it ? His human spirit might indeed have shrunk at aU 
 
 * El Djebel el AkrJi, "the.fcaM mountain" (Chesney, Evphrat. i. 386; 
 Amm. Marcell. xxii. 14, § 8 ; Julian, Misop. 361). 
 
 « 2 Cor. xi. 23—33. 
 
 * 2 Cor. xi. 29, ris a-Kca/SaXiCerai, Koi oi)K iyii irvpov^ioi. 
 
 * Clem. Brom. JE^. ad loo. i. 5. 
 
 W 2 
 
340 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PATTL, 
 
 the eflEbrts and the agonies which lay before him — greater 
 probably than have ever fallen to the lot of man; yet 
 even at this' early phase of his missionary career I doubt 
 not that the hero's heart would have boldly uttered, " I 
 hold not my life dear unto myself," and the faith of the 
 Christian would have enabled him to say, " I can do all 
 things through Christ that strengtheneth me." 
 
 Yet to all human judgment how ill qualified, physi- 
 cally, was the Apostle for the vast and perilous work which 
 lay before him. The strongest athlete might weU have 
 quailed as he thought of the toil, the sleeplessness, the 
 manual labour, the mental anxiety. The most imposing 
 orator might have trembled at the thought of facing so 
 many hostile' potentates and raging crowds. The finest 
 moral courage might have entreated to be spared the 
 combined opposition alike of false friends and furious 
 enemies. But Paul was no Milo, no Demosthenes, no 
 Scipio Africanus ; he was physically infirm, constitu- 
 tionally nervous, painfully sensitive. His bodily presence 
 was weak, his speech despised, his mind often over- 
 whelmed with fear. But over the feeble body and 
 shrinking soul dominated a spirit so dauntless that he 
 was ready all his life long to brave torture, to confront 
 mobs, to harangue tribunals, to quail as little before 
 frowning tyrants as before stormy seas. He might have 
 addressed his ailing body in the words of the great hero 
 as he rode into the thick of battle, " Aha, you tremble ! 
 but you would tremble far more if you knew whither I 
 meant to take you to-day." ^ 
 
 The concurrent testimony of tradition, and the oldest 
 attempts at representation, enable us to summon up 
 before us the aspect of the man. A modern writer, who 
 'Cannot conceal the bitter dislike which mingles with his 
 
 Marshal Turenne. 
 
BODY AND SPIRIT. 341 
 
 unwilling admiration, is probably not far wrong in 
 characterising bim as a small and ugly Jew.^ Tou looked 
 on a man wbo was buffeted by an angel of Satan. And 
 yet when you spoke to bim ; wben tbe prejudice inspired 
 by his look and manner bad been overcome ; wben, at 
 moments of inspiring passion or yearning tenderness, the 
 soul beamed out of that pale, distressful countenance ; 
 when with kindling enthusiasm the man forgot his 
 appearance and his infirmity, and revealed himself in all 
 the grandeur of bis heroic force j when triumphing over 
 weakness he scathed his enemies with terrible invective, 
 or rose as it were upon the wings of prophecy to inspire 
 with consolation the souls of those he loved — then, indeed, 
 you saw what manner of man he was. It was Paid 
 seated, as it were, on sunlit heights, and pouring forth 
 tbe glorious paean in honour of Christian love; it was 
 Paul withstanding Peter to the face because be was con- 
 demned; it was Paul delivering to Satan the insolent 
 offender of Corinth ; it was Paul exposing with sharp yet 
 polished irony the inflated pretensions of a woidd-be 
 wisdom ; it was Paul rolling over the subterranean plots 
 of Judaisers the thunders of his moral indignation; it 
 was Paul blinding Elymas with the terror of his pas- 
 sionate reproof; it was Paul taking command, as it were, 
 of the two hundred and seventy souls in the driven 
 dismantled bulk, and by tbe simple authority of natural 
 pre-eminence laying his injunctions on the centurion and 
 the Eoman soldiers whose captive he was; it was Paul 
 swaying the mob v-'ith the motion of his hand on the 
 steps of Antonia; it was Paul making even a Felix 
 tremble ; it was Paul exchanging high courtesies in tones 
 of equality with governors and kings ; it was Paul " fight- 
 ing with wild beasts " at Ephesus, and facing " the lion " 
 
 > Even Luther described St. Paul as " ein armes diirres Mannlein -vrie 
 anser PhiUppus " (Melancthon), 
 
342 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST, PAUL. 
 
 alone at Eome. When you saw him and heard him, 
 then you forgot that the treasure was hid in an earthen 
 vessel ; out of the shattered pitcher there blazed upon the 
 darknegs a hidden lamp which flashed terror upon his 
 enemies, and shone like a guiding star to friends. 
 
 So that, if ugliness, and fear and trembling, and iQ- 
 health,-' and the knowledge that he belonged to a hated 
 sect, and was preaching a despised foolishness — if these 
 were terrible drawbacks, they were yet more than counter- 
 balanced by the possession of unequalled gifts. Among 
 his slighter outward advantages were a thorough training 
 in the culture of his own nation, a good mastery of Greek, 
 the knowledge of a trade by which he could support 
 himself, and familiarity with the habits of men of every 
 class and nation, derived from long residence both in 
 Jewish and Gentile cities. As widower and childless, 
 he was unencumbered by any domestic ties, and could 
 only sufier an individual anguish without risking those 
 who depended on him. Lastly, the possession of the 
 Eoman citizenship, though inadequate to protect him 
 against provincial tumults, and though he probably 
 waived the appeal to it among his own countrymen, yet 
 stood him in good stead in more than one dangerous crisis. 
 But these would have been less than nothing without the 
 possession of other and far higher gifts. Such were the 
 astonishing endurance which no trials could exhaust, and 
 which enabled the most physically weak of the Apostles ^ 
 to become the most ceaselessly active ; the high conviction 
 that God had called him to a special Apostolate " to make 
 the GentUes obedient by word and deed; "^ the "enthusiasm 
 
 1 See 2 Cor. X. 10; Gal iv. 13 ; ICor.ii. 3; 2 0or.iT. 7; TiLSj xL6! 
 zii. passim. 
 
 " 'A<r9eyris is tlie key-note of 2 Cor. siii, 3— 8« 
 • Rom. XV. 18. 
 
GIFTS OP ST. PAUL. 343 
 
 of liTimanity," wMcli made him ready to associate, for 
 their souls' sakes, whether with men who had once heen 
 thieves and drmikards, or with sweet, innocent, and 
 gentle women ;^ the courtesy which made him equally 
 at home among slaves and among kings ; the power of 
 style which rose or fell with the occasion, sometimes 
 condescending to the humblest colloquialism, sometimes 
 rising to the most impassioned eloquence j the clearness 
 of insight which always kept one end in view, and 
 sacrificed all minor points to attain it ; ^ the total emanci- 
 pation from that slavery to trifles which is the charac- 
 teristic of small minds, and is ever petrifying religion 
 into formulas, or frittering it away into ceremonial; the 
 spirit of concession ; the tact of management ; the 
 willingness to hear and forbear, descend and condescend ; 
 the tolerance of men's prejudices; the contented accept- 
 ance of less than was his due. — And there were in the 
 soul of Paul qualities more precious for his life's work 
 than even these. There was the tenderness for his con- 
 verts which makes his words ever sound as though he 
 were ready to break into sobs as he thinks on the one 
 hand of their affection, on the other of their ingrati- 
 tude;^ there was the conviction which makes him anti- 
 cipate the very fiat of the throne of judgment,* and vehe- 
 mently to exclaim that if an angel were to preach a dif- 
 ferent gospel it would be false;* there was the missionary 
 restlessness so often found in the great pioneers of salva- 
 tion, which drives him from city to city and continent to 
 continent in the cause of God; there was the ardent 
 and imaginative impulse which made it the very poetry 
 of his life to found churches among the Gentiles as the 
 
 « 1 Cor. Ti. 9—11. * 1 Oor. ix. 19. 
 
 » 1 Thess. ii. 7, 11; Gal. iv. 19; 1 Oor. iv. 15; Plulein. 10. 
 * Rom. ii. 16. * GaL i. 8. 
 
344 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 first messenger of the Gospel of peace ;^ and last, but 
 perhaps most important o£ all, there was the perfect faith, 
 the absolute self-sacrifice, self-obliteration, self-annihila- 
 tion, which rendered him willing, nay glad, to pour out 
 his whole life as a libation — to be led in triumph from 
 city to city as a slave and a captive at the chariot- wheels 
 of Christ. 
 
 The immense personal ascendency of St. Paul has 
 almost effaced the recollection of the fellow-workers to 
 whose co-operation he owed so much; but we must not 
 forget that throughout the perilous initiatives of this 
 great work, he had Barnabas ever at his side, to guide 
 him by his calm wisdom, and support him by his steady 
 dignity. Barnabas, the friend of his youth, perhaps the 
 school-fellow of his studies, — who had taken him by the 
 hand ; who had drawn him from his obscure retirement ; 
 who had laboured with him a^ Antioch ; who had been 
 his fellow-almoner at Jerusalem — was stUl sharing his 
 diflficulties, and never envied or murmured when he saw 
 himself being gradually subjugated by the powerful indi- 
 viduality of a younger convert. To us Barnabas must 
 always be a less memorable figure than Paul, but let us 
 not forget that up to this time he had held a higher 
 rank, and wielded a more authoritative influence. "As a 
 Levite, as a prophet, as one who for the needs of the 
 community had cheerfuUy sacrificed his earthly goods, 
 as one who enjoyed to a very high degree the confidence 
 of the Apostles, Barnabas, in these early days, was 
 enabled to lend to St. Paul's conceptions a weight which 
 they could hardly otherwise have won. It is only 
 when the work has actually begun that Barnabas seems 
 naturally to sink to a subordinate position. No sooner 
 
 > Rom. X. 18; xv.lSj Gal. i. 16; lOor.i.1; iillO; ix. 16 ; 2 Oor. xi. 2. 
 
'JOHN MARK. 345 
 
 have they left Salarliis than the very order of the names 
 is altered. Sergius Paulus sends for "Barnabas and 
 Saul," but it is Saul who instantly comes to the front to 
 meet ,the opposition of Elymas; it is "Paul and his 
 company" who sail from Paphos to Perga; it is Paul who 
 answers the appeal to speak at Antioch in Pisidia ; it is 
 Paul who is stoned at Lystra; and thenceforth it is 
 " Paul and Barnabas " throughout the rest o^ the history, 
 except in the circular missive from James and the Church 
 at Jerusalem.^ 
 
 Nor must we altogether lose sight of the younger of 
 the three voyagers — John, whose surname was Mark, 
 who went with them in the capacity of their minister, 
 corresponding, perhaps, in part to our notion of a deacon.^ 
 The presence of an active attendant, who could make all 
 arrangements and inquiries, would be almost necessary to 
 a sufferer like Paul. If Barnabas shared with Paul the 
 reluctance to administer in person the rite of baptism,' we 
 may suppose that this was one of the functions in which 
 Mark would help them. Nor was it an unimportant cir- 
 cumstance to both of them that Mark, as the avowed friend 
 and jorofeye of Peter, would have been unlikely to share in 
 any mission which did not command the entire approval 
 of his illustrious leader. In this and many other ways, 
 now as at the close of his life, Paul doubtless felt that 
 Mark was, or could be, " profitable to him for ministry." 
 His nature imperiously demanded the solace of com- 
 panionship; without this he found his work intolerable, 
 
 ' Acts XT. 25 ; and Acts xiv. 14, where Barnabas is taken for the superior 
 deity. 
 
 ' Acts xiii. 5, iwnpirris. In Lnfce iv. 20 the irrnpi-rns is the Chazzan of the 
 Synagogue. Mark, like Barnabas, may have been connected with the tribe 
 of Levi; on the name KoKdfioSiiervXos and traditions abont him, see Ewald, 
 Geseh. vi. 445. 
 
 » rOor. i. 13—17. 
 
346 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 and himself the victim of paralysing depression.* The 
 principles which he adopted, his determination that 
 under no circumstances would he he oppressive to his 
 converts, the missionary boldness which constantly led him 
 into such scenes of danger as none but a man could face, 
 deprived him of that resource of female society — a sister, 
 a wife — which other Apostles enjoyed, and which has been 
 found so conducive to the usefabiess of even such devoted 
 missionaries as Adoniram Judson or Charles Mackenzie. 
 But Paul was a missionary of the type which has been 
 reproduced in Francis Xavier or Coleridge Patteson j and 
 whatever he may have been in the past, he was now, at 
 any rate, a lonely man. 
 
 Such were the -three humble Christian emissaries whose 
 barque, bending its prow to the south-west, sailed towards 
 the mountains of Cyprus, and, leaving the long pro- 
 montory of Dinaretum on the right, sailed into the bay 
 of Salamis. The scene must have been very famiUar to 
 Barnabas. Before them lay the flourishing commercial 
 town, conspicuous for its temple of the Salaminian Jupiter, 
 which tradition assigned to Teucer, son of Telamon. 
 Beyond the temple there stretched away to the circle of 
 enclosing hills a rich plain, watered by the abundant 
 streams of the Pediaeus. The site of the town, which 
 our recent acquisition of the island has rendered so 
 familiar, is now marked by a few ruins about four miles to 
 the north of the modem Famagosta. The ancient town 
 never entirely recovered the frightful injuries which it 
 underwent, first from an insurrection of the Jews in the 
 reign of Trajan, and afterwards from an earthquake. But 
 
 > 1 Thess. iii. 1 ; 2 Oor. ii. 13 ; Phil. u. 19, 20 ; 2 Tim. It. 11. It has been 
 said that St. Paul " had a thousand friends, and loved each as his avra sonl, 
 and seemed to lire a thousand lives in them, and to die a thousand deaths 
 when he must quit them." 
 
CYPRUS. 347 
 
 when the Apostles stepped ashore, upon one of the ancient 
 piers of which the ruins are still visible, it was a busy 
 and important place, and we cannot doubt that Barnabas 
 would find many to greet him in his old home. Doubt- 
 less, too, there would be some to whom their visit was 
 pecidiarly welcome, because, ever since the persecution of 
 Stephen, Cyprus had been connected with the spread of 
 Christianity.-^ 
 
 That Barnabas had had a considerable voice in thus 
 repaying to his native island the service which it had 
 rendered to Antioch,^ may be conjectured from the fact 
 that subsequently, when he had parted from Paul, he 
 and Mark once more chose it as the scene of their mis- 
 sionary labours. After this first visit, Paul, often as he 
 passed in sight of it, seems never to have landed there, 
 dishking, perhaps, to build on other men's foundations; 
 nor does he allude to Cyprus or to other Cypriotes in any 
 of his Epistles. Whether there be any truth or not in 
 the legend which says that Barnabas was martyred in the 
 reign of Nero, and buried near Salamis, it is quite fitting 
 that the church and grotto near it should be dedicated to 
 him. 
 
 But apart from any facihties which may have been 
 derived from his connexion with the island, it was 
 without doubt an excellent place to form a starting- 
 point for the evangelisation of the world. One of the 
 largest islands in the Mediterranean, possessed of a fertile 
 soil, varied in physical formation, and within easy reach 
 of the three great continents, it had been marked out by 
 nature as a convenient centre for extensive traffic. The 
 trade in natural products — chiefly metals and wine — 
 together with the fact that Augustus had farmed the 
 
 » Acts xxL 16. • Acts xi. 20. 
 
348 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 copper-mines to Herod the Great, had attracted a large 
 Jewish population. So vast, indeed, were their numbers, 
 that in the. reign of Trajan (a.d. 116) they rose upon the 
 native inhabitants, under a certain Artemio, and slew 
 240,000 of them in one terrible massacre. The revolt 
 was suppressed by Hadrian with awful severity, and after 
 that time no Jew might set foot upon the shore of Cyprus 
 on pain of death. ^ 
 
 Of their work at Salamis we are told nothing, except 
 that "they continued preaching the word of God in the 
 synagogues of the Jews."^ It appears from this that 
 Salamis was one of the towns where the Jews* quarter 
 was sufficiently populous to maintain several synagogues j 
 and if the Apostles came in contact with the heathen 
 at all, it would only be with proselytes. But the 
 notices of this part of their journey are scant, nor is 
 any indication given of the length of their stay in" 
 Cyprus. Any work . among the Gentiles was doubtless 
 hindered by the apotheosis of sensuality for which the 
 island was noted. The contact of Greeks with Phoenicians 
 had caused a fusion between the subtle voluptuousness of 
 the Hellenic race and the more burning passion of the Phoe^ 
 nicians and other Orientals ; and the maritime population 
 who touched at the island from every civilised country 
 were ready learners in the school of degradation. Yenus 
 was the presiding goddess ; and as she received from this 
 fact her name of Cypris, so she was most commonly 
 alluded to in the poets as the Paphian, Amathusian, or 
 IdaHan, from her temples in various parts of the island. 
 
 ' Strabo, xiv. 682 ; Tac. S. ii. 2, 4 ; Jos; Anlt. xiii. 10, § 4 ; svi. 4, § 5 ; xvii. 
 12, §§ 1, 2 ; B. 7. ii. 7, § 2 ; Phao, Leg., p. 587 ; Milman, Hist, of J^s, iii. 111. 
 For its ancient history see Meursins, 0pp. iii ; for its modem condition, now bo 
 interesting to iis, see General Cesnola's Cyprus. 
 
 ' Acts xiii. 5, KaTiiyyth\ay. 
 
WORSHIP OP APHRODITB. 849 
 
 Site was 
 
 "Idalian Aphrodite, beautiful, 
 Fresh as the foam, new bathed in Paphian -wbIIs." 
 
 It was hitlierward tliat site came as Aplirodite Anadyomene, 
 when 
 
 " From the sea 
 She rose and floated in her pearly sheU, 
 A laughing girL" 
 
 It was "by these " purple island sides " that she first 
 " Fleeted a double light in air and wave." 
 
 Yet in the Paphian temple, where no blood was offered, 
 where her immemorial shrine, famous even in the days of 
 Homer,^ breathed from a hundred altars the odour of 
 perpetual incense," and where kings and emperors turned 
 aside to do her homage, the image which was enshrined in 
 her adytum was no exquisite female figure sculptured by 
 the hand of a Pheidias or a Scopas, but a coarse truncated 
 cone of white marble* — a sort of Asherah — such as might 
 naturally serve as the phallic symbol of the Assyrian and 
 Sidonian deity from whom this form of nature-worship 
 was derived.* And as her temples had the right of asylum 
 — a right which was certain to crowd their vicinity 
 with criminals of every variety — ^we might have conjec- 
 tured, apart from direct testimony,^ that the worship was 
 to the last degree debasing; that the Paphian divinity 
 
 » Horn. 0*. 8, 362. * Tag. M^. i. 417. 
 
 ' As it was white (r% Sc trfoi^a. ei« &» euniinus SXAv Tfi J) rupofilSi \fvK$) 
 there c«unot be much donbt that it was of marble, though Madmus Tjr. adds 
 4 Si a^^ iymtnu (Diss. 8, 8). " Apud Cyprios Venus in luodnm uubilid, Tel, 
 nt qnidaia volnnt, Metae, ooKtnr" (Serv. ad .Mi. i. 724). 
 
 * Tac. fl". ii. 3; Strabo, siv. 683; Athen. xv. 18. The crescent and slar 
 represented on ccdns as adorning the front of the Temple are perha^ a trace 
 of the Fhcnioian origin of the worship, and of the connexion bettreeu the 
 Paphian Yenus aad the Fhoeuician Asherah (Movers. PHm. 607). The sun, at 
 Emesa, had a dmilar itonftSh «xw"> (Herodian. v. 3), a sort of jBair^iov iairtrts. 
 Hodeb of it were sold (kruKpirtar nrt6i^uawr. Athen. zy. 18). 
 
S50 THE LIFE A^HB WORK OP ST. PAXIL. 
 
 was no Aphrodite Ourania,^ but the lowest kind of Aphro- 
 dite Pandemos ; that her worship was simply the prosti- 
 tution of religion to the excuse of lust. Nor is it strange 
 that under such circumstances there should be deadly- 
 opposition between the Jews and the Greek or Phoenician 
 inhabitants, such as existed of old between the Jews and 
 Canaanites. The mutual hatred thus engendered culmi- 
 nated in the internecine war which so soon broke out 
 between the rival populations ; it may have been one of 
 the reasons why in Cyprus we read of no preaching to 
 the heathen. 
 
 After their residence in Salamis the three missionaries 
 traversed the whole island.^ It is about a hundred miles 
 in length from Salamis to New Paphos ; and they 
 probably followed a main road along the coast, diverging 
 to places like Citium, the birthplace of Zeno the Stoic; 
 Amathus, one of the shrines of Venus ; and any towns 
 where they would find the little Ghettos, whose conver- 
 sion to the faith was. their prime object. But not one 
 incident of their journey is preserved for us until they 
 reached the town of Paphos. By this name is intended, 
 as the narrative shows, not the old and famous Paphos, 
 the modern Kuklia, to which wanton pilgrimages were 
 yearly made in honour of the old shrine so "famous- 
 infamous" for many ages, but Nea-Paphos,® the modern 
 Baffa, now a decayed and mouldering village, but then a 
 
 ^ The Virgin Mary is adored by Cypriotes under iihe name Aphroditissa ! 
 (Lohber, Cyprus, p. 105.) 
 
 ' Acts xiii. 6, Sie\B6vTes ii Shriv r^v inja-or, tt, A, B, 0, D, E. In omitting 
 Sxrii/ our version follows G, H. 
 
 ' " The dance, music, and song of the sacred processions of 3,000 years 
 ago have been replaced by the coo-coo-vaie of the owl, and wild cries of othe? 
 night-birds, and the piteous bark of famished dogs, left behind by no less 
 famished masters, to roam the Oriental village in search of carrion. This is 
 the Paphos of to-day " (Cesnola's Cyprus, p. 216). 
 
SUPERSTITION OP THE AGE. 351 
 
 bustling haven, and the residence of the Eoman Proconsul 
 Sergius Paulus.^ 
 
 It does not in any way impugn the claim of Sergius 
 Paulus to he regarded as a person of intelligence that he 
 had with him, apparently residing in his house, a Jewish 
 impostor named Bar-Jesus, who had arrogated to himself 
 the complimentary title of Elymas, the TJlemah, or Wizard.^ 
 A notorious infidel like Philippe Egalitd, though in other 
 respects a man of abihty, could yet try to presage his fate 
 by the sort of X3up-augury involved in examining the 
 grounds of coffee (KvXiKOfidvreia ; cf. Gen. xliv. 5). A belief 
 in some personal Power, the arbiter of man's destiny, above 
 and beyond himself, is a primary necessity of the human 
 mind. Mankind can never dispense with this belief, 
 however superfluous, in certain cases, and for a time, it 
 may seem to be to the individual. The noble Eomans who 
 had lost all firm hold on the national religion felt them- 
 selves driven by a kind of instinctive necessity to get 
 such a connexion with the unseen world as could be fur- 
 nished them by the mysticism of Oriental quacks. A 
 Marius had resorted to the prognostications of the Jewess 
 Martha. At this particular epoch augurs, haruspices, 
 Babylonians, mathematici, astrologers, magians, sooth- 
 sayers, casters of horoscopes, fortune-tellers, ventriloquists, 
 dream-interpreters,^ flocked to Eome in such multitudes, 
 and acquired such vogue, as to attract the indignant 
 notice of both satirists and historians. A few of them 
 — ^Uke. ApoUonius of Tyana, and at a later period, 
 Alexander of Abonoteichos, and the cynic Peregrinus — 
 
 1 See ExcursusXTI., " The Proconsulate of Sergius Paulus." 
 * Renan, however, says, " &m ou sage .... mot arabe dont le pluriel 
 est oulema. Le mot n'existe ni en h^breu ni en aramden; ce qui rend fort 
 douteuse cette ^tymologie d'%mas " (St. Paul, p. 16). Ewaid thinks he was 
 . a, Nabathaean((JescA. vi. 453). 
 
 » Jut. iii. 27. " Angur, schoenobates, mediens, magus." 
 
352 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 attracted universal attention. There was scarcely a 
 Eoman family ttat did not keep or consult its own fore- 
 teller of the future ; and Juvenal describes the Emperor 
 Tiberius as seated " with a herd of Chaldaeans" on his rock 
 at Capri.^ Nothing would be more natural than that an 
 intelligent and inquiring Eoman, in the ennui of the 
 smallest of the provinces, and finding himself amid a mixed 
 population, half of Phoenician origin, and devoted to 
 strange forms of religion, should have amused his leisure 
 by inquiries into the bizarre superstitions by which he was 
 surrounded.*^ The prevalence of earthquakes in Cjrprus 
 would be likely to give to the minds of the residents that 
 gloomy and credulous tinge which is often found in 
 countries liable to such terrible inflictions ; and New 
 Paphos had been devastated by an earthquake sufficiently 
 recent ^ to have left a deep impression. Perhaps from this, 
 perhaps from other causes, Bar- Jesus had acquired unusual 
 influence ; but it is an additional confirmation of the a^fcu- 
 racy of St. Luke — one of those remote and incidental, and 
 therefore unsuspected, confirmations which so often occur to 
 establish the veracity of the sacred writers — that we find 
 Cyprus to have been specially famous for its schools of 
 religious imposture, of which one was professedly Jewish. 
 Simon Magus was iij all probability an inhabitant of 
 Citium.* There is a most singular passage of Pliny, 
 which, when we combine it with his reference to a 
 Sergius Paulus, may be regarded as a confused echo 
 in the mind of the Eoman litt&ateur of these very 
 
 1 Tae. ff. V. 3 ; Hor. Sai. I. ii. 1 ; Od. I. xi. 2 ; Juv. Sat. iii. 42, 60 j -n. 
 643, 553, 562; x. 93; Suet. Kft. 36, 69; Aid. GeU. i. 9; Jos. .4»i«. viii. 2 ; 
 xx.6,§l; 5./.-vi.5,§l. Compare Matt. xxiv. 23,24; ActsTm.9j XTi. 16; 
 six. 19 ; 2 Tim. iii. 13 {yhrfs) ; Rev. xix. 20. 
 
 2 See Jos. Anit. xx. 7, § 2. 
 
 ' In the reign of Augustus (Die. Cass. ]iv. 23). 
 « 8v^a, p. 260. 
 
BAR-JB^US. S53 
 
 events, heard from the very Proconsul abont whom 
 we are at present reading. He tells ns that there were 
 at Paphos two schools of soothsayers, one of which pro- 
 fessed connexion with Moses, Jamnes, and Jotapes, who 
 were Jews, and a much more recent Cyprian one.^ To this 
 school Bar-Jesus must have belonged, and Pliny's allusion 
 throws once more a singular light on the fidelity of the 
 careful Evangelist.* 
 
 The same feelings which had induced Sergius Paulus 
 to domicile 'the Jewish sorcerer in the proconsular resi- 
 dence would naturally induce him to send for the new 
 teachers, whose mission had evidently attracted attention 
 by that loving earnestness which differed so widely from 
 the contemptuous neutrality of the synagogue. But the 
 position of soothsayer to a Roman Proconsul — even 
 though it could .only last a year^ — ^was too distinguished 
 and too lucrative to abandon without a struggle. Elymas 
 met the Apostles in open controversy, and spared 
 neither argument nor insult in his endeavour to per- 
 suade Sergius of the absurdity of the new faith. Instantly 
 Saul — and this is the moment seized by the historian to 
 tell us that he was also called by the name of Paul, 
 which henceforth he exclusively uses — came to the front 
 to bear the full force of the sorcerer's opposition. A 
 less convinced or a less courageous man might well have 
 shrunk from individual collision with a personage who 
 evidently occupied a position of high consideration in the 
 immediate household of the noble Roman. But to a spirit 
 
 ' Tac H. T. 3. Plin. M. N. m. 2, 6, " Est et alia faciio a Mose et Jamne 
 et Jotape Jadaeis pendens, sed nrnltis millibns post Zoroastiem. Tardo 
 reeentior est Cypria." In Jamnes and Jotapes there seems to be some dim 
 oonfosion of supposed Jews Trith the traditional Egyptian magicians Jannes 
 and Jambres (2 Tim. iiL 8). 
 
 ' Lnke i. 3, aKpipSs icafii)Ko\ov6jiK6Ti. 
 
 * TAa Cassias tells ns that these senatorial appointments were HtriiiTuu koX 
 kkiiptn el Qiii. 13}. 
 X 
 
354 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 like St. Paul's, while there could be infinite compassion 
 for ignorance, infinite sympathy with infirmity, infinite 
 tenderness towards penitence, there could, on the other 
 hand, he no compromise with imposture, no tolerajnce for 
 cupidity, no truce with Canaan. He stood up, as it were, 
 in a flame of fire, his soul burning with inspired indigna- 
 tion, against a man whose cowardice, greed, and worthless- 
 ness he saw and wished to expose. Fixing on the false 
 prophet and sorcerer that earnest gaze which was perhaps 
 rendered more conspicuous by his imperfefct sight,^ he 
 exclaimed, " full of all guile and all villainy, thou son of 
 the devil,^ thou foe of all righteousness, cease, wilt thou, thy 
 perversion of the Lord's straight paths." And then, per- 
 ceiving the terror produced on the mind of the unmasked 
 hypocrite by this bold and blighting invective, he suddenly 
 added, " And now, see, the Lord's hand is upon thee, and 
 thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a time."^ The 
 denunciation instantly took effect ; the sorcerer felt in a 
 moment that his impostures were annihilated, that he 
 stood in the presence of an avenging justice. A mist 
 swam before his eyes, followed by total darkness, and 
 groping with outstretched hands he began to seek for 
 some one to lead and guide him. 
 
 Nor was it strange that a display of spiritual power 
 so startling and so irresistible should produce a strong 
 
 1 Of. Acts xxiii. 1. 
 
 ' Possibly in allusion to his name Bar-Jesus — as though he had said, 
 " called the son of the salvation of Jehovah, but really the son of the devil, 
 and the enemy of aU righteousness." For SLap6\os of. John viii. 44. 
 The reading of the Peshito Bar-Shuma, "son of a wound" or "son of a 
 name," is hard to account for, unless it be by euphemism (Castell, Lex , 
 Syr. s. v.). 
 
 ' Acts xiii. 11, &XP' naipov, literally, •' until an opportunity," or, as we 
 should say, "for the present." "Sciebat Apostolus, sui memor exempli, de 
 tenebris ooulorum, mentis posse resurgere ad lucem ; " Bede,— following the 
 hint of St. Chrysostom that o4 ko\iI(ovtos ^v rb priiui. iiW' iirurTpitporTos. 
 
CHANGE OF NAME. 355 
 
 conviction on the mind of tlie Proconsul.^ How far his 
 consequent belief was deep-seated or otherwise we have 
 no evidence which would enable us to judge. But the 
 silence of St. Luke would seem to indicate that he was 
 not baptised, and we can hardly look on him as a deep 
 and lifelong convert, since otherwise we should, in the 
 rarity of great men in the Christian community, have as 
 certainly heard of him in their records as we hear of the 
 very few who at this period — like Flavins Clemens or 
 riavia Domitilla — joined the Church from the ranks of 
 the noble or the mighty. 
 
 The question has been often asked why it is at this 
 point in the narrative that the name Saul is finally 
 replaced by the name Paul.^ The old answer supplied by 
 St. Jerome, that he took the name as a trophy of his 
 conversion of Sergius Paulus, has long and deservedly 
 been abandoned ; there would have been in it an element 
 of vulgarity impossible to St. Paul. Nor is there any- 
 thing to urge in favour of the fancy that he took the 
 name as a token of his humility, to signify that he was 
 "the least of the Apostles."^ It is much more probable 
 that he had either possessed from the first an alternative 
 name for facility of intercourse among the heathen, or 
 
 * Acts xiii. 12. 
 
 * "A primo ecclesiae spolio Proc. Serg. Paulo Tictoriae suae trophaea 
 retulit, erexitque vexillum nt Paulus a Saulo vocaretur " (Jer. ad Philem. 1). 
 In the Toldoth Jeshu the name is connected with ^»b, " he worked." If so, both i 
 words heing passive participles, the change would be like a change from . 
 " sought " to " wrought ; " and I cannot help thinking that the true explana- 
 tion may lie here. Heinriehs explains SavKos Se, i koI IIoSAos " der awcA, so wie ■ 
 der Proconsul, ebenfaUs Paulus Hess." 
 
 ^ Paulus, a contraction of Pauxillus, means " least." " Paulus enim parvus " ' 
 (Aug. Serm. clxix.). " Non ob aliud, quantum mihi videtur hoc nomen elegit 
 nisi ut se ostenderet tamquam minimum Apostolorum " (Aug. De Spir. et Lit. 
 xii.). With his usual exuberance of fancy he contrasts the " little " Saul of 
 Benjamin, with the tall persecuting king. But in Conf . viii. 4 he leans to the 
 other theory, "Ipse minimus Apostolorum tuorum, &c. . . . Paulus vocari. 
 amavit ob tarn magnae in^igne victoriae." 
 
 X 2 
 
356 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 that this Eoman. designation may point to his posses- 
 sion of the Eoman franchise, and perhaps to some hond 
 of association between his father or grandfather and the 
 ^milian family, who bore the cognomen of Paulus. If 
 he adopted the name on the present occasion it may 
 have been because it was to a slight extent alliterative 
 with his Hebrew name Shaul, which would, in its Grecised 
 form, be represented by Saulos; but that was a form 
 which he could not use in intercourse with the Greeks, 
 owing to the fact that the word in Greek would 
 be a sort of slang term for " uppish," or wanton. 
 The mere changing of his name was so little unusual 
 that it had been from the earliest ages a custom 
 among his countrymen. Joseph had been known to the 
 Egyptians as Zaphnath Paaneah ; Daniel to the Assyrians 
 as Belteshazzar ; Hadassah to the Persians as Esther; 
 Jesus, HiUel, Onias, Joseph, Tarpho to the Greeks as 
 Jason, Pollio, Menelas, Hegesippus, and Trypho. When 
 not assonant the name was sometimes a translation, as 
 Peter is of Cephas, and Didymus of Thomas. Sometimes, 
 however, this name for use among the Gentiles was due 
 to accidental relations, as when Josephus took the prse- 
 nomen of Elavius in honour of Vespasian. Of this we 
 have other instances, in the Acts of the Apostles, in the 
 persons of John and Joses, who were known by the Latin 
 designations of Marcus and Justus. In Paul's case, how- 
 ever, as ancient Christian writers have 'pointed out, the 
 change of name marks also a total change in aU the con- 
 ditions of his life. "Paul suffers what Saul had inflicted; 
 Saul stoned, and Paul was stoned ; Saul inflicted scourgings 
 on Christians, and Paul, five times received forty stripes 
 save one ; Saul hunted the Church of God, Paid was let 
 down in a basket ; Saul bound, Paul was bound." ^ 
 ' Ap. Aug. A^emd. 8erm. 204. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 ANTIOCH IN PISIDIA. 
 
 " Eespondebit tibi Evangelica tuba, Doctor Gentium, vas aurenm in toto 
 srbe resplendens." — Jbr. Adv. Pelag. Dial. iii. p. 545. 
 
 Having now traversed Cyprus, "Paul and his com- 
 pany" — ^to use the expression by which St. Luke so 
 briefly jntimates that the whole force of the mission 
 was now identified with one man — weighed anchor from 
 Paphos for Perga in Pamphylia. Whether they chose 
 Perga as their destination in accordance with any pre- 
 conceived plan, or whether it was a part of " God's 
 unseen Providence by men nicknamed chance," we do 
 not know. It was not easy for an ancient traveller to 
 go exactly in what direction he liked, and he was obHged, 
 in the circumscribed navigation of those days, to be 
 guided in his movements by the accident of finding vessels 
 which were bound for particular ports.^ Now between 
 Paphos, the political capital of Cyprus, and Perga, the 
 capital of Pamphylia, there was in that day a constant 
 intercourse, as would probably still be the case between 
 Satalia and the western port of Cyprus but for the 
 dangerous character of the now neglected harbour of 
 Baffa. .For Perga, then, the missionaries embarked. 
 They sailed into the deep bight of Attaleia, and up the 
 broad, and in those days navigable, stream of the Cestrus, 
 
 ' See the chapter on ancient modes of travel in Friedlander, Sittengesch. 
 Borm. 
 
358 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL, 
 
 and anchored under the cliffs, which were crowned by the 
 a'di'opolis of the bright Greek city and the marble piUars 
 of its celebrated Temple of Artemis. 
 
 But at Perga they made no stay, and their visit 
 was only marked by a single but disheartening inci- 
 dent. This was the desertion by John Mark of the 
 mission cause ; " separating from them, he returned to 
 Jerusalem." The causes which led him thus to look back 
 after he had put his hand to the plough are not mentioned, 
 but it is evident that to the ardent soul of-JPaul, at any 
 rate, they appeared blameworthy, for we shall see that he 
 subsequently refused the companionship of one who had 
 shown such deficient resolution.-^ It is, however, but too 
 easy to conjecture the mixed motives by which Mark 
 was actuated. He was young. The novelty of the 
 work had worn off. Its hardships, even under the favour- 
 able circumstances in Cyprus, had not been slight. 
 His mother was at Jerusalem, perhaps alone, perhaps 
 exposed to persecution. It may be, too, that the young 
 man saw and resented the growing ascendency of Paul 
 over his cousin Barnabas. And besides all this, Mark, 
 bred up in the very bosom of the Church at Jerusalem, 
 may have felt serious misgivings about the tendency of 
 that liberal theology, that broad universalism of proffered 
 admission into the Church, which seemed to throw into 
 the background the immemorial sanctity, not only of the 
 oral but even of the written Law. Such may have been 
 the yearnings, the misgivings, the half-unconscious 
 jealousies and resentments which filled his mind, and 
 whatever may have been the qualms of conscience which " 
 might otherwise have troubled his desertion of the sacred 
 task, these excuses and arguments for doing so must 
 
 * Acts XT. 38. 
 
MARK'S WITHDRAWAIj, 359 
 
 have met with, a powerful ally in the circumstances which 
 were evidently hefore them. 
 
 For as Mark gazed on the mighty chain of Taurus, 
 and remembered that they were now about to pene,trate 
 countries of shifting languages, of unsettled government, 
 of semi-barbarous populations, of strangely mingled wor- 
 ships, the brigand fastnesses of Pamphylians, Selgenses, 
 Pisidians, Lycaonians, Isaurians, Cilicians, Cliti, Homoda- 
 nenses,^ he may not have been sorry to conceal dislike to 
 the task on which he had entered under the plea of 
 filial duty. At the time his defection must have been 
 to Paul, even more than to Barnabas, a positive mis- 
 fortune. 'Barnabas, though he clung to his friend and 
 fellow-labourer with entire whole-heartedness, must yet 
 have missed the genial brightness, the graphic utterance, 
 the quick spirit of observation with which his cousin re- 
 Ueved the sombre absorption of Paul in his immediate 
 purpose ; and Paul, who ever loved the personal services 
 of younger companions, must have been a little em- 
 bittered, as daily worries became more trying in the 
 absence of a vigorous comrade. There must have been 
 in his heart a feeling of indignation against one who 
 forsook them at the very moment when he could least 
 be replaced, and when the difficulties which he could 
 so greatly have lightened began to assume their most 
 formidable shape. 
 
 So Mark left them, and the Apostles at once made 
 their way towards the interior. Although we are not 
 told of any synagogue at Perga, yet, since they preached 
 there on their return journey, there must have been some 
 special reason for their now leaving the place. This 
 reason has been found in the probability that they 
 
 1 Strabo, xii. 6, 7 ; Euseb. E. K iii. 23. See Lewin, i. 123. 
 
360 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATTL. 
 
 reached the town towards the middle of spring,^ when the 
 entire population of the cities on the plain and sea-coast 
 are in the hahit of moving inland to the yailahs, or, as 
 they would be called in Switzerland, " aljps" or mountain 
 pastures, which enable them to escape the fierce and 
 malarious heat of the lower regions. '^ It would be useless 
 to preach in Perga at the very time that its main popu- 
 lation were deserting it ; and any of the numerous cara- 
 vans or family-migrations, which were filling the roads 
 and passes with mules and camels and herds of cattle, 
 would furnish the Apostles with company and protection. 
 Without such escort it would have been imprudent, if not 
 impossible, for them to make their way by those dangerous 
 roads where it is probable that the snow-drifts still lay in 
 many places, and they might often find the bridges 
 shattered and swept away by the sudden spates of rushing 
 streams. 
 
 The few modern travellers who have visited these parts 
 of Asia Minor have furnished us with minute and pic- 
 turesque descriptions of the abrupt stone-paved ascents ; 
 the sarcophagi and sculptured tombs among the projecting 
 rocks; the narrowing valleys through which the rivers, 
 descend, and over which frown precipices perforated with 
 many caves ; the sudden bursts of magnificent prospect in 
 which you gaze " from the rocky steps of the throne of 
 winter upon the rich and verdant plain of summer, with 
 the blue sea in the distance ;" the constant changes of 
 climate ; the zones of vegetation through which the 
 traveller ascends ; the gleam of numberless cascades 
 caught here and there amid the dark pine groves that 
 
 1 Con. and Howson, i. 177, who quote Spratt and Forbes, Travels in 
 Lycia, i. 48, 242, 248 ; Fellows, Lycia, 238. 
 
 " A striking description of such a migration among the Kirghiz Tartars 
 may be found in Mr. Atkinson's Travels. 
 
SCENES m ASIA MINQB. 361 
 
 clotlie the lower slopes ; the thickets of pomegranate and 
 oleander that mantle the river-beds; the wild flowers 
 that enamel the grass with their rich inlay ; the 
 countless flocks of cattle grazing over pastures whose 
 interminable expanses are only broken by the goat's- 
 hair huts of the shepherd, made to this day of the 
 same material as that by the manufacture of which 
 St. Paul earned his daily bread. And when the 
 traveller has emerged on the vast central plateau of Asia 
 Minor they describe the enchanting beauty of the fresh 
 and salt water lakes by which the road often runs for 
 miles; the tortoises that sun themselves in the shallow 
 pools ; the flights of wild swans which now fill the air with 
 rushing wings, and now "rufile their pure cold plumes" 
 upon the waters ; the storks that stand for hours patiently 
 fishing in the swampy pools. Such must have been the 
 sights which everywhere greeted the eyes of Paul and 
 Barnabas as they made their way from Perga to the 
 Pisidian Antioch. They would have fiUed a modern 
 missionary with rapture, and the feelings of gratitude and 
 adoration with which a Martyn or a Heber would have 
 " climbed by these sunbeams to the Father of Lights " 
 would have gone far to belp them in the endurance of 
 their hard and perilous journeys. Mungo Park, in a 
 touching passage, has described how his soul, fainting 
 within him to the very point of death, was revived by 
 seeing amid the scant herbage of the desert a single 
 tuft of emerald moss, with its delicate filaments and amber 
 spores; and the journals of those whose feet in recent 
 days have been beautifal upon the mountains over which 
 they carried the message of peace, abound in passages 
 delightfully descriptive of , the scenes through which they 
 passed, and which they regarded as aisle after aisle in the 
 magnificent temple of the one true God. But, as we 
 
362 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 have already noticed, of no such feeling is there a single 
 
 trace in the writings of the Apostle or of his historian. 
 
 The love of natural scenery, which to moderns is a 
 
 source of delight so contiuuous and so intense, was little 
 
 known to the ancients in general, and iu spite of a few 
 
 poetic exceptions, was known perhaps to the Semites of 
 
 that age least of all.^ How often did Paul climb the 
 
 mountain passes of the Taurus ; how often had he seen 
 
 Olympus 
 
 " Soaring snow-clad tLrough its native sky ; " 
 
 how often had he passed on foot by " the great rivers 
 that move like God's eternity ;" how often had his barque 
 furrowed the blue waters of thfe ^gean, among those 
 
 " Sprinkled isles, 
 Lily on lily, ■which o'erlace the sea, 
 And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps Greece I " 
 
 But all these scenes of glory and loveliness left no im- 
 pression upon his mind, or have at least left no trace 
 upon his page.^ "We might pity the loss which he 
 thus suffered, and regret the ineffectualness of a source 
 of consolation which would otherwise have been ever 
 at hand, were it not that to St. Paul such consolations 
 were needless. The soul that lived in heaven,^ the 
 thoughts which were fuU of immortality, the conviction 
 that the Lord was at hand, the yearning for the souls for 
 
 ' St. Paul was eminently a homo desideriorum ; a man who, like all the 
 best Jews, lived in the hopes of the future (Bom. viii. 24 ; xv. 4 ; Tit. ii. 
 13, &o.). 
 
 ^ There are some excellent remarks on this subject in Priedlander. 
 Bittengesch. Boms. vii. 5, 3. He shows that the ancients rather noticed 
 details than general effects. They never aUude to twilight colours, or the 
 blue of distant hills, or aerial perspective. Landscape painting, the culture 
 of exotic plants, and the poetry of natural history have developed those 
 feelings in the modems (Humboldt's Cosmos, ii.). 
 
 3 Phil. iii. 20 ; Eph. ii. 6, &c. 
 
INDIFFERENCE TO SCENERY. 363 
 
 wliicli Christ died — made up to Mcci for all besides. God 
 would have granted all other consolations had he needed 
 them ; but the steps which were ever on the golden streets 
 of the New Jerusalem trod heedlessly over the volcanic 
 soil of a world treasured up with the stores of fire which 
 should hereafter reduce it to ashes.^ The goblet which 
 was full of the new wine of the kingdom of heaven had no 
 room in it for the fruit of the vine of even those earthly 
 pleasures which are of all others the most innocent, the 
 most universal, and the most blest. 
 
 Nor must we fail to see that there was an advantage 
 as well as a disadvantage in this absorption. If St. Paul 
 never alludes to the transcendent beauties of the lands 
 through which he travelled, so neither does one word 
 escape him about the recurrent annoyances, the perpetual 
 minor discomforts and vexations of travel. The journals 
 of modern wanderers tell us of the drenching rains, the 
 glaring heats, the terrible fatigues, the incessant publicity, 
 the stings of insects, the blinding storms of dust, the 
 trying changes of season, the scarcity and badness of pro- 
 visions. But to Paul all these trivial burdens, which 
 often, nevertheless, require more heroism for their patient 
 endurance than those more serious perils which summon 
 up all our fortitude for their conquest or resistance, were 
 as nothing. He felt the tedium and the miseries of travel 
 as little as he cared for its rewards. AU these things had 
 no bearing on his main purpose ; they belonged to the 
 indifierent things of life. 
 
 And so the Apostles made their way up the vaUey 
 of the Oestrus, passed along the eastern shore of the large 
 and beautiful lake Eyerdir, and after a journey of «ome 
 forty leagues, which probably occupied about a week, they 
 
 I 2 Fet. iii. 7. 
 
364 THE LIFE AND WORK: OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 arrived at the flourisHng commercial town of Antioch 
 in Pisidia, or Antioctia Csesarea. We learn from Strabo 
 that it had been founded by the Magnetes, re-founded by 
 Seleucns, and subsequently made a Eoman colony, with 
 free municipal government, by Augustus. The centrality 
 of its position on roads which communicated southwards 
 with Perga and Attaleia, westwards with Apamea, north- 
 wards with the great towns of Galatia, and eastwards with 
 Iconium and the Cilician gates, made it a great coinmer- 
 cial emporium for the trade of Asia Minor in wood, oil, 
 skins, goat's hair, and Angola wool. Its true position — 
 for it had long been confused with Ak-sher, the ancient 
 Philomelium — was discovered by Mr. Arundell in 1833.-' 
 Conspicuous among its ruins are the remains of a noble 
 aqueduct, which shows its former importance. Its coins 
 are chiefly' remarkable for the prominence given on the 
 one hand to its colonial privileges, and on the other to its 
 very ancient worship of the moon as a masculine divinity 
 under the title of Men Archaios. This worship had in 
 former days been very flourishing, and the temple of 
 Men had been thronged with Hieroduli, who lived on its 
 estates and revenues. Strabo tells us that, some seventy 
 years before this time, on the death of King Amyntas, to 
 whom Pisidia had been assigned by Mark Antony, this 
 temple had been abolished ; but though the worship may 
 have been entirely shorn of its ancient splendour, it 
 probably stUl lingered among the ignorant and aboriginal 
 population. 
 
 But the message of the Apostles was not in the first 
 instance addressed to the native Pisidians, nor to the 
 
 • It is near the insignificant modem town of Jalobatz, and its identity is 
 rendered certain by coins and inscriptions. (See Arundell, Asia Minor, 
 cli. xii. ; Hamilton, Besearchea m A)iia Minor, i., cL xxvii.; iu Con. and Hows, 
 i. 182.) 
 
JEWISH SYNAGOGUES. 365 
 
 Grreeks, who formed the second stratum of the popula- 
 tion, nor to the Romans, who were the latest occupants, 
 but primarily to the Jews who had come thither with 
 the stream of Latin immigration, which secured them 
 equal privileges with the other inhabitants. Doubtless . 
 the first care of the Apostles — and this was the work in 
 which Mark might have been specially useful — ^was to 
 repair to the " strangers' rooms " attached to the syna- 
 gogue, and then to find convenient lodgings in the Jews' 
 quarter, and to provide means of securing a sale for the 
 cilicium, by the weaving of which Paul honourably lived. 
 The trade only occupied his hands, without interrupting 
 either his meditations or his speech, and we may reason- . 
 ably suppose that not a few of the converts who loved him 
 best-, were won rather by the teaching and conversations 
 of the quiet rooms where he sat busily at work, than by 
 the more tumultuous and interrupted harangues in the 
 public synagogues. 
 
 But the mission of Paul and Barnabas was not meant 
 for the few alone. They always made a point of visiting 
 the synagogue on the Sabbath Day, and seizing any 
 opportunity that ofiered itself to address the congrega- 
 tion. The visit to Antioch in Pisidia is rendered inte- 
 resting by the scenes which led to the first sermon of 
 St. Paul of which the record has been preserved. 
 
 The town possessed but a single synagogue, which 
 must, therefore, have been a large one. The ai-range- 
 ments were no dbubt almost identical with those which 
 exist in the present . day throughout the East. As they 
 entered the low, square, unadorned building, differing 
 from Gentile places of worship by its total absence 
 of interior sculpture, they would see on one side the 
 lattice-work partition, behind which sat a crowd of veiled 
 and silent women. In front of these would be the 
 
366 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 reader's desk, and in its immediate neighbourhood, facing 
 the rest' of the congregation, those chief seats which 
 Eabbis and Pharisees were so eager to secure. The 
 Kihleh, or sacred direction towards which all prayer 
 was offered, was Jerusalem; and on that side would be 
 the curtain, behind which was the ark containing the 
 sacred roUs.^ Paul, as a former Sanhedrist, and Barnabas, 
 as a Levite, and both o£ them as men of superior Jewish 
 education, might fairly have claimed to sit in the chairs 
 or benches set apart for the elders. But perhaps they 
 had been told what their Lord had said on the subject, 
 and took their seats among the ordinary worshippers.® 
 
 Each as he entered' covered his head with his Talliih, 
 and the prayers began. They were read by the Sheliach, 
 or " angel of the synagogue," ^ who stood among the stand- 
 ing congregation. The language employed was probably 
 Grreek. Hebrew had long been to the Jews a learned 
 language, understood only by the few, and in remote 
 places, like Antioch of Pisidia, known possibly to only one 
 or two. In spite of the stiff conservatism of a few 
 Eabbis, the Jews as a nation had the good sense to 
 see that it would be useless to utter prayers unless they 
 were " understanded of the people."* After the prayers 
 followed the First Lesson, or Parashah, and this, owing 
 to the sanctity which the Jews attached to the very 
 sounds and letters of Scripture, was read in Hebrew, 
 but was translated or paraphrased verse by verse by 
 the Meturgeman, or interpreter. The Chazzdn, or clerk of 
 the synagogue, took the Thorah-roM from the ark, and 
 handed it to the reader. By the side of the reader 
 
 1 na'n. 
 
 2 Matt, xxiii. 6, ipwrowafleSpfoi, pinp. Philo makes frequent allusions to 
 the order and arrangements of synagogue- worship at this period. • 
 
 * Berachoih, f. 3, 1 j Sota, f. 21, 1. 
 
■WORSHIP OF THE SmTAGOGHB. 367 
 
 stood the interpreter, unless lie performed that function 
 for himself, as could he easily done, since the Septuagint 
 version was now universally disseminated. After the 
 Parashah, was read the short Haphtarah, or what we 
 should call the Second Lesson, from the Prophets, the 
 translation into the vernacular heing given at the end of 
 every three verses. After this followed the Midrash, the 
 exposition or sermon. It was not delivered by one set 
 minister, hut, as at the present day any distinguished 
 stranger who happens to he present is asked by way of 
 compliment to read the T/ioraA, so ia those days the 
 Bosh Aa-KemsetA might ask any one to preach who 
 seemed likely to do so with profit to the worshippers.^ 
 
 Accordingly on this occasion when the HapAtaraA and 
 ParasAaA were ended, the Bailajim — ^the "men of leisure" 
 who managed the affairs of the synagogue, and corre- 
 sponded to our churchwardens — sent the CAa^zan to ask 
 the strangers if they had any word of exhortation to 
 the people. Some rumour that they were preachers of 
 a new and remarkable doctrine must already have spread 
 in the little Jewish community, and it wjas evidently 
 expected that they would be called upon. Paul instantly 
 accepted the invitation.* Usually a Jewish preacher sat 
 down during the delivery of his sermon,^ as is freely done 
 by Eoman Catholics abroad ; but Paul, instead of going 
 to the pulpit, seems merely to have risen in his place, and 
 with uplifted arm and beckoning finger* — in the attitude 
 
 1 ii)MkA9&v Si 4 irpcir/SiTBTos mil tSv Soynirvr ^uretpiraTos Sti>\4yenu (PMo, 
 Quod Omn. Prob. 12). Dr. Fraiikl, in his Jews in {he East, tells us that he 
 was constantiy called upon to perform this function. Full details of synagogue 
 worship may belonnd in Maimonides, Jad Sacheeaka (JTifcfc. TephiL viii. 
 10—12), and s. r. Haphtarah and Synagogue in Kitto's Cyclopaedia, by Dr. 
 
 GinsbuTg. 
 
 * "We can hardly imagine that he showed the feigned reluctance inculcated 
 by the labbis (BeracWtt, 34, 1). 
 
 •Luke IT. 20. « C£.ActsxiL17; xn.40; xrri.1. 
 
368 THE LIFE AND WOHK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 of one who, however much he may sometimes have been 
 oppressed by nervous hesitancy, is proved by the addresses 
 which have been preserved to us, to have been in moments 
 of emotion and excitement a bold orator — he spoke to the 
 expectant throng. 
 
 The sermon in most instances, as in the case of our 
 Lord's address at Nazareth, would naturally take the form 
 of a Midrash on what the congregation had just heard 
 in one or other of the two lessons. Such seems to have 
 been the line taken by St. Paul in this his first recorded 
 sermon. The occurrence of two words in this brief 
 address, of which one is a most unusual form,^ and the 
 other is employed in a most unusual meaning,^ and the 
 fact that these two words are found respectively in the 
 first of Deuteronomy and the first of Isaiah, combined 
 with the circumstance that the historical part of St. Paul's 
 sermon turns on the subject alluded to in the first 
 of these chapters, and the promise of free remission is 
 directly suggested by the other, would make it extremely 
 probable that those were the two chapters which he 
 had just heard read. His sermon in fact, or rather 
 the heads of it, which can alone be given in the brief 
 summary of St. Luke,^ is exactly the kind of masterly 
 combination and application of these two Scripture lessons 
 of the day which we should expect from such a preacher. 
 
 ' Acts xiii. 18j IrpoipoipSprirey (A, 0, E), " carried them as a man carries 
 Ms little son." LXX., Deut. i. 31 ; cf . Ex. xix. 4 ; Isa. Ixiii. 9 ; Am. ii. lOj 
 &e. He is not here reproaching them, but only speaking of God's mercy to 
 them. The word also occurs in 2 Mace. tii. 27. 
 
 ' Acts xiii. 17, Stpua-ev, in the sense of "he brought them up " (Isa. i. 2)j 
 •whereas elsewhere it means "elevated" or "raised up" (Lukei. 52 ; 2 Oor. xi. 7). 
 In verse 19 he uses KaTeKKripovi/niirev (x, A, B, C, D, B, G, H, &o.) in the 
 rare sense of " divided as an inheritance " (where our text follows the correc- 
 tion, KOTtK\7)po5oT7j<r«i'), as vo. Dcut. 1. 38. 
 
 ' It should not be forgotten that no single address of St. Paul in the ActB 
 would take more than five minutes in delivery. 
 
PAEA.SHAH AND HAPHTARAH. d69 
 
 And "yvlien turning to tlie Jewish Lectionary, and bearing 
 in mind its extreme antiquity, we find that these two 
 very lessons are combined as the Parashah and Haphtarah 
 of the same Sabbath, we see an almost convincing proof 
 that those were the two lessons which had been read on 
 that Sabbath Day in the synagogue of Antioch more than 
 1,800 years ago.^ Here again we find another minute 
 and most unsuspected trace of the close faithfulness of 
 St. Luke's narrative, as well as an incidental proof that 
 St. Paul spoke in Greek. The latter point, however, 
 hardly needs proof. Greek was at that time the language 
 of the civilised world to an extent far greater than French 
 is the common language of the Continent. It is quite 
 certain that all the Jews would have understood it; it 
 is very doubtful whether more than a few of them would 
 have understood the Pisidian dialect; it is to the last 
 degree improbable that Paul knew anything of Pisidian ; 
 and that he suddenly acquired it by the gift of tongues, 
 can only be regarded as an exploded fancy due to an 
 erroneous interpretation. 
 
 St. Paul's sermon is not only interesting as a sign of 
 the more or less extemporaneous tact with which he 
 utilised the scriptural impressions which were last and 
 freshest in the minds of his audience, but far more as a 
 specimen of the facts and arguments which he urged in 
 his first addresses to mixed congregations of Jews and 
 Proselytes. The numerous and exclusively Pauline 
 expressions* in which it abounds, show that either notes 
 
 ' They are read on the Sabbath which, from the first ■word of the chapter 
 in Isaiah, is called the Sabbath Sazon. In the present list of Jewish lessons, 
 Dent. i. — iii. 22 and la. i. 1 — 22, stand forty-fourth in order under the 
 Masoretio title of n'ln. This brilliant conjecture is due to Bengel. 
 
 '^ See (in the Greek) Acts xiii. 25 compared with xx. 24; 2 Tim. iv. 7 ; 26 
 with XX. 32 ; 27 with xxiv. 21 ; 39 with Rom. vi. 7 ; 39 with Rom. v. 9, Gal. iii. 
 II, and others, in Alford's references. Compare, too, the thoughts and ex- 
 pressions of 33, 34 with Rom. i. 4, yi. 9 ; and 39 with Rom. viii. 3, Gal. iii. II. 
 
 T 
 
370 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 of it must have been preserved by some Antloclieiie 
 Christian, or that he must himself have furnished an 
 outline of it to St. Luke.^ It is further important as aa 
 indication that even at this early period of his career Paul 
 had been led by the Spirit of God, if not to the full com- 
 prehension, at least to the germ, of those truths which 
 he afterwards developed with such magnificent force and 
 overwhelming earnestness. The doctrine of justification 
 by faith, and of the inutility of the works of the law 
 to procure remission of sins, lie clearly involved in this 
 brief but striking sermon, which also gives us some 
 insight into Paul's method of applying Scripture ; into his 
 adoption of the current chronology of his nation;'' and, 
 
 * Perhaps a better hypothesis is that in general outline the three main 
 sections of it (Acts xiii. 16 — 22, 23 — 31, 32 — 41) may have been often repeated. 
 (Ewald, vi. 658.) 
 
 ^ For instance, in verse 20 he mates' the period of the Judges last 450 
 years. It is true that here the best uncial MSS. transpose the ereiri 
 TfTpaKoaiots KoJ irivri\icoina to the previous verse (n. A, B, 0, and the Coptic, 
 Sahidic, and Armenian versions). But this is exactly one of the instances in 
 which the " paradiplomatic " evidence entirely outweighs that of the' MSS. 
 For the reading of the text is found in E, G, H, and many other MSS.; and 
 while we see an obvious reason why it should have been altered, we see none 
 why the other reading should have been tampered with. The case 
 stands thus. The chronology which gives a period of 450 years to the 
 Judges is in direct contradiction to 1 Kings vi. 1, which makes the fourth 
 year of Solomon's reign fall in the 480th year after the Exodus. Why, then, 
 do modem editors adopt it in spite of the oldest uncials ? Not, as Bishop 
 "Wordsworth says, out of " arbitrary caprice," or " to gratify a morbid appetite 
 of scepticism by contradictions invented by itself, and imputed to Holy Writ," 
 or "an inordinate love of discovering discrepancies in Holy Scripture;" but 
 for reasons, of which he must surely have been aware — ^viz., because (1) the 
 . same erroneous chronology is also found in Josephus {Antt. viii. 3, § 1, and 
 potentially in xx. 10, § 1), and is, therefore, obviously the current one among 
 the Jews ; and was current (2) because it is the exact period given hy the 
 addition of the vague and often synchronous periods given in the Booh of 
 Judges itself. And (3) even if we accept the corrected reading— which can 
 only be done in the teeth of the rule, " Difaciliori lectioni praestat ardua"— 
 we only create fresh chronological difficulties. On such subjects the know- 
 ledge of St. Paul and the Apostles never professes to be more than the 
 knowledge of their time. To attribute to them a miraculous superiority to 
 
A GREAT SBRMOlSr. 371 
 
 lastly, into the effects wliich had been produced upon 
 his mind by the speeches he had heard from St. Peter and 
 from St. Stephen. From the latter of these he borrows 
 his use of what may be called the historic method ; from 
 the former, the remarkable Messianic argument for the 
 Eesurrection which he founds on a passage in the Second 
 Psalm.^ 
 
 Beginning with a courteous address to the Jews and 
 Proselytes, and bespeaking their earnest attention, he 
 touched first on that providence of God in the history of 
 Israel of which they had just been reminded in the 
 Haphtarah. He had chosen them, had nurtured them 
 in Egypt, had delivered them from its bondage, had 
 carried them like a nursing father in the wilderness, had 
 driven out seven nations of Canaan before them, had 
 governed them by judges for 450 years, and then for 
 forty years, as tradition said, had granted them for 
 their king one whom — with an allusion to his own 
 name and tribe which is inimitably natural — ^he calls 
 " Saul, the son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin." 
 Then fusing three separate passages of scriptural encomium 
 on David into one general quotation (13-32) he announces 
 the central truth which it was his mission to preach : 
 that, of David's seed, God had raised up according to His 
 promise One who, as His very name signified, was a 
 Saviour, and to whom the great acknowledged prophet, 
 John the Baptist, had borne direct witness. It was true 
 
 the notions of their day in subjects within the reach of man's unaided re- 
 search, is an error which all the greatest modern theologians have rightly- 
 repudiated as pregnant with mischief. Similarly, in verse 33, iv r$ itpirip 
 ^a\/ji.^, though only found in D, is undoubtedly the right reading, as against 
 SevT4p(f, which is found in k and .the other uncials, which is simply a correc- 
 tion, because the quotation is from Psalm ii. 7 ; and it was overlooked that 
 among the Jews in St. Paul's time the Second Psalm was regarded as the 
 First, the First being " an introduction to the Psalter." 
 
 * Compare Acts jdii. 35 — 37 with St. Peter's speech in Acts ii. 27. 
 
 Y 2 
 
372 THE LITE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 that the ralers of Jerusalem — and on this painful side of 
 the subject hie dwells but lightly — ^had, less from deliberate 
 wickedness than from ignorance, put Him to death, thereby- 
 fulfilling the direct prophecies of Scripture. But — and 
 this was the great fact on which he relied to remove the 
 terrible offence of the Cross — God had raised Him from 
 THE DEAD (23-31). This was an historic objective fact, to 
 which, as a fact tested by their living senses, many could 
 bear witness. And lest they should hesitate about this 
 testimony, he proceeded to show that it was in accordance 
 with all those prophecies which had been for centuries the 
 most inspiring part of their nation's faith. The Eesur- 
 rection to which they testified was the highest fulfilment 
 of the Psalm in which Grod had addressed David as His 
 son. And there were two special passages which fore- 
 shadowed this great truth. One was in Isaiah, where 
 the Prophet had promised to God's true children the 
 holy, the sure, mercies of David ; the other was that on 
 which St. Peter had dwelt in his speech at Pentecost — 
 the confident hope expressed in that Michtam or " Golden 
 Psalm" — ^that God would not leave his soul in hell, or 
 suffer His holy one to see corruption. More must have 
 been involved in that yearning conviction than could 
 possibly affect David himself. He had died, he had seen 
 corruption; but He of the seed of David whom God 
 had raised — of Him alone was it true that His soul was 
 not left in the unseen world, and His flesh had not seen 
 corruption. What they had to preach, then, was forgive- 
 ness of sins through Him. In the Mosaic Law — and 
 once more Paul touched but lightly, and in language least 
 likely to cause offence, upon this dangerous ground — 
 remission of sins was not to be found; but there was 
 not only remission, but justification, for all who believed 
 in Jesus. A quotation from Habakkuk formed the 
 
A GREAT SERMON. 373 
 
 striking peroration of a sermon which had been thus 
 weighted with awful truths and startling testimony. It 
 warned them that however startling that testimony might 
 be, yet if they disbelieved it as their fathers had dis- 
 believed the threat of Chaldean retribution, the contempt 
 of insolent derision might be followed by the astonishment 
 of annihilating doom (32-41). ^ 
 
 Thus, from the standpoint of those who heard him — 
 commenting on the passages which had just sounded in 
 their ears — appealing to the prophecies in which they 
 believed — quoting, or alluding to, the Scriptures which 
 they held so sacred — relying on the history to which 
 they clung with such fond affection, and pouring his 
 flood of light on those " dark speeches upon the harp " 
 which had hitherto wanted their true explanation — ^thus 
 mingling courtesy and warning, the promises of the past 
 and their fulfilment in the present' — thus drowning the 
 dark horror which lay in the thought of a crucified 
 Messiah in the dawning light of His resurrection — did 
 St. Paul weave together argument, appeal, and testimony 
 to convince them of the new and mighty hope which he 
 proffered, and to foreshadow that which was so difficult 
 for them to accept — the doing away of the old as that 
 which, having received its divine fulfilment, must now be 
 reg&rded as ineffectual symbol and obsolete shadow, that 
 in Christ aU things might become new.^ 
 
 * Acts xiii. 41, " ye despisers " corresponds to " among the heathen " in 
 the original of Hab. i. 5, because the LXX. which St. Paul here quotes seems 
 to have read onj^a (bogedim), " arrogantes," for D'iaa (haggoim), by one of the 
 numberless instances of variant readings in the Hebrew of which the Greek 
 version affords so striking a proof. 
 
 ' Paul speaks slightingly of his own eloquence ; but we see by the 
 recorded specimens of his sermons to barbarians in Fisidia, to philosophers 
 at Athens, and to Jews at Jerusalem, how powerful was his method ; and we 
 are sure that there must also have been the " vividus vultns, vividae manus, 
 vividi oculi, denique omnia vivida." 
 
374 THE LIFE AOT) WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 It was not surprising that a discourse so powerful 
 should produce a deep effect. Even the Jews were pro- 
 foundly impressed. As they streamed out of the syna- 
 gogue, Jew and Gentile alike ^ hegged that the same 
 topics might be dwelt on in the discourse of the next 
 Sabbath J ^ and after the entire breaking up of the congre- 
 gation, many both of the Jews and of the Proselytes of 
 the Gate followed Paul and Barnabas for the purpose of 
 further inquiry and conversation. Both at that time and • 
 during the week the Apostles did all they could to widen 
 the knowledge of these inquirers, and to confirm their 
 nascent faith.^ Meanwhile the tidings of the great sermon 
 spread through the city. On the following Sabbath a vast- 
 crowd, of all ranks, nationalities, and classes, thronged the 
 doors of the synagogue. Immediately the haughty exclu- 
 siveness of the Jews took the alarm. They were jealous 
 that a single address of this dubious stranger, with his 
 suspicious innovations, should have produced a greater 
 effect than their years of proselytism. They were indig- 
 nant that one who seemed to have suddenly dropped down 
 among them from the snows of Taurus with an astonish- 
 ing gospel should, at a touch, thrill every heart with the 
 electric sympathy of love, and achieve more by one message 
 of free salvation than they had achieved in a century by 
 raising a prickly hedge around the exclusive sanctity of 
 their Law. Paul — iagain the chief speaker — no longer 
 met with attentive and eager listeners; he was inter- 
 
 ' Acts xiii. 42. The E.Y. lias " the Gentiles besought ;" but rek ISnj is an 
 idle gloss, not found in k, A, B, C, D, B, &o. 
 
 ' fis TO fifTu^i ffdpfiarov. The use of /ieT«|f) for "next following" has 
 puzzled commentators, and led them to such erroneous renderings as "for 
 the intervening week;" but it is found in late Greek (Jos. B. J. v. 4, § 2; 
 c. Ap. i. 21; Plut. Inst. Lac. 42), and is a mere extension of the classical 
 Greek idiom. (See my Brief Greek Syntax, § 82, iv.) 
 
 ' Acts xiii. 43, "urged them to abide by the grace of God;" cf. xx. 24, 
 The expression is thoroughly Pauline. (1 Cor. xv, 10 j 2 Cor. vi. 1, &o.) 
 
TURNING TO THE GENTILES. 375* 
 
 rupted again and again by flat contradiction and injurious 
 taunts.^ At last both the Apostles saw that the time 
 was come to put an end to the scene, and to cease a form 
 of ministration which only 'led to excited recriminations. 
 Summoning up all their courage — and few acts are more 
 courageous than the unflinching announcement of a most 
 distasteful intention to an infuriated audience — they ex- 
 claimed that now they had done their duty, and discharged 
 their consciences towards their own countrymen. They 
 had made to them the ofier of eternal life, and that offer 
 had been disdainfully repudiated.^ " Lo ! you may be 
 astonished and indignant, but now we turn to the Gren- 
 tiles. In doing so we do but fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah, 
 who said of our Lord that He was ordained for a Light of 
 the Gentiles, and for salvation to the ends of the earth." 
 
 Gladly and gratefully did the Gentiles welcome the 
 mission which now "to them exclusively made free offer of 
 all, and more than all, the blessings of Judaism without 
 its burdens. All who, by the grace of God, decided to 
 range themselves in the ranks of those who desired 
 eternal life* accepted the faith. More and more widely* 
 the word of the Lord began to spread. But the Jews 
 were too powerful to be easily defeated. They counted 
 among their proselytes a large number of women, of whom 
 some were of high rank.^ Their commercial ability had 
 
 ^ Acts xiii. 45, 5>'TtA.f7oi'. 
 
 * Acts xiii. 46, o6k Il^Iovs Kpivtre lauroiis t5» tuttntov f«5j. 
 
 ' 8<ro4 ?(rov rtrayiiivoi eU (. ai. Those only ■will find in this expression a 
 hard Galvinism wlio overlook the half-middle usage of the participle which 
 is fbund in xx. 13 (ef. ii. 47) and in Philo. In a Oalvinistic sense, moreover, 
 the words are in direct antinomy with xiii. 46. The E. V. followed Tyndale, 
 but the B/hemish "pre-ordained " is even stronger. The close juxtaposition of 
 the two phrases shows the danger of building unscriptural systems on the 
 altered perspective of isolated expressions, 
 
 * Acts xiii. 49, Sie^eptTo. 
 
 ' Jos. B. J. ii. 20, § 2 ; cf. Strab. vii. 2 ; Sirai/res t3j ieuriiaiixovias i,pxnyo^' 
 o&ii'Tai rhs yufaiKas; cf. Juv. Sat. vi. 542. In Fs. Ixviii. 11, " The Lord gave the 
 
•376 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 also secured them friends among the leading people 
 of the city, who were the municipal Boman authorities. 
 Tolerant of every legalised religion, the Eomans had 
 a profound distaste for religious embroilments, and so 
 long as the Jews behaved peaceably, were quite willing 
 to afford them protection. Knowing. that aU had gone 
 smoothly till these new-comers had appeared, they were 
 readily induced to look on them with dislike, especially 
 since they were viewed with disfavour by the ladies of 
 their families.^ They joined in the clamour against the 
 Apostles, and succeeded in getting them banished out of 
 their boundaries. The Apostles shook off their feet the 
 deep dust of the parched roads in testimony against 
 them,^ and passed on to Iconium, where they would be 
 under a different jurisdiction.' But the departure did 
 not destroy the infant Church which they had founded. 
 It might have been expected that they would leave gloom 
 and despondency among their discouraged converts; but 
 it was not so. They left behind them the joy of a new 
 hope, the inspiration of a new faith, the outpouring of 
 the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who had learnt of 
 the heavenly promise. 
 
 word : great was tie company of the preachers " (lit. " the female messengers," 
 EuaTT'eA.nrrpfai, L!X!X.), fantastic commentators of the literalist type find in the 
 fact that niitaan is feminine, an indication of the prominent agency of women 
 in the spread of the Gospel. 
 
 1 airaX 8« /cal rohs HiiSpas vpoKoKoSvTai (Strabo, Z.C.). For the indtilgenoe of 
 the Romans towards the Jews in the provinces, Renan refers to Jos. Antt. 
 xiT. 10, § 11 ; xvi. 6, §§ 2, 4, 6, 7 ; Oic. pro Flaceo, 28, &c. 
 
 2 Matt. X. 14. 
 
 ' Antioch was a Roman colony, under the general jurisdiction of the 
 Propraetor of Galatia. Icouium was nsder a local tetruoh. (Plin. H. Nt 
 V. 27.) 
 
CHAPTEE XXI. 
 
 THE CLOSE OP THE JOTJRNET. 
 'Awurroi yiip AvKoaiifs ij kcH 'Apurrori\7is iiaprvpet — SCHOL. in S. iv. 88. 
 
 "When they persecute you in this city, flee ye to another," 
 our Lord had said to His twelve Apostles when He sent 
 them forth as lambs among wolves.^ Expelled from An- 
 tioch,^ the Apostles obeyed this injunction. They might 
 have crossed the Paroreian range to PhilomeHum, and 
 so have made their way westwards to Synnada and the 
 Phrygian cities, or eastwards to Laodicea. What circum- 
 stances determined their course we cannot tell, but they 
 kept to the south of the Paroreia, and, following a well- 
 traversed road, made their way to the pleasant city of 
 Icouium. For a distance of about sixty miles the road 
 ran south-westwards over bleak plains, scoured by wild 
 asses and grazed by countless herds of sheep, until it 
 reaches the green oasis on which stands the city of 
 Iconium.' It is the city so famous through the Middle 
 Ages, under the name of Konieh, as the capital of the 
 Sultans of Eoum, and the scene of the romantic siege 
 by (xodfrey of Bouillon. Here, on the edge of an inter- 
 minable steppe, and nearly encircled by snow-clad hills, 
 they had entered the district of Lycaonia, and found 
 
 * Matt. X. 25. 
 
 * Acta xiii. 51, iUP'^ov ainoht. 
 
 * Strabo, zii. 6. Mentioned in Zen. Anal. L 2, 19; Gic. ad Fam. iii. 8; 
 T. 20 ; xr. 4, as lying at the intersection of important roads between Ephesua 
 and Tarsus, &c. 
 
378 THE LITE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 themselves in the capital city of an independent tetrarcliy. 
 The diversity of political governments which at this time 
 prevailed in Asia Minor was so far an advantage to the 
 Apostles, that it rendered them more ahle to escape from 
 one jurisdiction to another. Their ejection from Antioch 
 must have received the sanction of the colonial authori- 
 ties, who were under the Propraetor of Gralatia; but 
 at Iconium they were beyond the Propraetor's province, 
 in a district which, in the reign of Augustus, belonged 
 to the robber-chief Amyntas, and was still an independent 
 tetrarchy of fourteen towns.^ 
 
 Doubtless, as at Antioch, their first care would be to 
 secure a lodging among their fellow-countrymen, and the 
 means of earning their daily subsistence. On the Sabbath 
 they entered as usual the one synagogue which suflBced 
 the Jewish population. Invitations to speak were at first 
 never wanting, and they preached with a fervour which 
 won many converts both among Jews and proselytes. 
 The Batlanim, indeed, and the Euler of the Synagogue 
 appear to have been against them, but at first their oppo- 
 sition was in some way obviated.^ Some of the Jews, 
 however, stirred up the minds of the Gentiles against 
 them.^ Over the Proselytes of the Gate the Apostles 
 would be likely to gain a strong influence. It would 
 not be easy to shake their interest in such teaching, or 
 their gratitude to those who were sacrificing all that 
 
 1 Plin. N.S. V. 25. Some doubt seems to rest on this, from the existence 
 of a coin of the reign of Nero in which it is called Claadiconiiun, and of a 
 coin of Gallienus in which it is called a colony; but the adoption of the name 
 of Claudius may have been gratuitous flattery, and the privilege conceded long 
 afterwards. 
 
 ^ Although not authentic, there may be some basis of tradition in the 
 reading of D and (in part) Syr. marg., of Se a.pxi<rvviyuyoi r&v 'lovialuv koI ol 
 &pXoyTei TVS (Tvvayuyris liri\yayov ainms Siayfihv kot& tSk SmuIiiiv . , . , i Si icipios 
 ^Suicev Taxii elp'livrii', 
 
 ' TIlis seems to be suggested by the contrast of 'EM^ray in Terse 1 with 
 ievwv in verse 2. 
 
TROUBLES AT lOONIUM. 379 
 
 made life dear to their desire to proclaim it. But when 
 Jewish indignation was kindled, when the synagogue 
 hecame the weekly scene of furious contentions,^ it would 
 be easy enough to persuade the Gentile inhabitants of 
 the city that these emissaries, who had already been ejected 
 from Antioch, were dangerous incendiaries, who every- 
 where disturbed the peace of cities. In spite, however, 
 of these gathering storms the Apostles held their ground, 
 and their courage was supported by the evident blessing 
 which was attending their labour. So long as they 
 were able not only to sway the souls of their auditors, but 
 to testify the power of their mission by signs and wonders, 
 they felt that it was not the time to yield to opposition. 
 Their stay, therefore, was prolonged, and the whole 
 population of the city was split into two factions — the 
 one -consisting of their enemies, the other of their sup- 
 porters. At length the spirit of faction grew so hot that 
 the leaders of the hostile party of Jews and Gentiles made 
 
 1 Benan compares the ioiimey of the Apostles from Ghetto to Ghetto to 
 those of the Arab Ibn Batoutah, and the mediseval traveller Benjamin of 
 Tudela. A more recent analogy may be found in Dr. Frankl's Jems in the 
 Hiut. The reception of these Christian teachers by remote communities of 
 Jews has been exactly reproduced in modem times by the bursts of infuriated 
 curses, excommunications, mobs, and stone-throwings with which modem 
 Jews have received missionaries in some of their larger Moldavian com- 
 munities. Here is the description of one such scene by a missionary:— 
 " Fearful excommuuications were issued in the synagogue, pronouncing most 
 terrible judgments on any Jew holding communication with us; or who, on 
 receiving any of our pubUcations, did not at once consign them to the flames. 
 The stir and commotion were so great that I and my brother missionaries 
 were obliged to hold a consultation, whether we should face the opposition or 
 fly from the town. We resolved to remain and face the danger in the name 
 of God, and the next day being Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, we went out 
 with a stock of oar publications. When we got near the synagogue we were 
 driven away by a yelling, cursing, blaspheming crowd, who literally darkened 
 the air with the stones they threw at us. We were in the 'greatest danger of 
 being kUled. Ultimately, however, we faced them, and by dint of argument 
 and remonstrance gained a hearing." [Speech of the Bev, M. WoVcenberg ai 
 Salisbwy, August 8, 1876.) 
 
380 THE LIFE AOT) WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 a plot to murder tte Apostles.^ Of this they got'timely 
 notice, and once more took flight. Leaving the tetrarchy 
 of Iconium, they still pursued the great main road, and 
 made their way some forty miles into the district of 
 Antiochus IV., King of Gommagene, and to the little 
 town of Lystra in Lycaonia. 
 
 The site of Lystra has never heen made out with 
 perfect certainty, hut there is good reason to helieve that 
 it was at a place now known as Bin Bir Kilisseh, or 
 the Thousand and One Churches, — once the see of a 
 bishop, and crowded with the ruins of sacred buildings. 
 It lies in the northern hollows of the huge isolated mass 
 of an extinct volcano, " rising like a giant from a plaia 
 level as the sea."^ It is called the Kara Dagh, or 
 Black Mountain, and is stiU the haunt of dangerous 
 robbers. 
 
 Both at Lystra and in the neighbouring hamlets 
 the Apostles seem to have preached with success, and 
 to have stayed for some little time. On one occasion 
 Paul noticed among his auditors a man who had been 
 a .cripple from his birth. His evident eagerness* marked 
 him out to the quick insight of the Apostle as one 
 on whom a work of power could he wrought. It is 
 evident on the face of the narrative that it was not every 
 cripple or every sufferer that Paul would have attempted 
 to heal ; it was only such as, so to speak, met half-way 
 the exertion of spiritual power by their own ardent 
 faith. Fixing his eyes on him, Paul raised his voice to 
 
 ' The Acta FauU et Theclae, of wMch the scene is laid at Iconium, are so 
 purely apocryphal as hardly to deserve notice. They are' printed in Grabe, 
 Spicileg. 1 ; Tischendorf , Acta Apost. Apoer. p. 40. Tertullian says that a 
 presbyter in Asia was deposed for having forged the story out of love for 
 Paul (Be Bapt. 17) ; St. Jerome adds that it was St. John who deposed him. 
 
 ^ Kinneir, Travels in Karamania, p. 212. 
 
 ^ Acts xiv. 9, fiKovi TOW Tlaihov AaAovvTOi. 
 
AT LTSTRA, 381 
 
 its full compass, and cried — " Eise on tty feet upriglit." 
 Thrilled with a divine power, the man sprang up ; he 
 began to walk. The crowd who were present at the 
 -preachings, which seem on this occasion to have 
 heen in the open air, were witnesses of the miracle, 
 and reverting in their excitement, perhaps from a sense 
 of awe, to their rude native Lycaonian dialect^ — just 
 as a Welsh crowd, after being excited to an over- 
 powering degree by the English discourse of some great 
 Methodist, might express its emotions in Welsh — they 
 cried : ' The gods have come down to us in the likeness 
 of men. The tall and venerable one is Zeus ; the other, 
 the younger and shorter one, who speaks so powerfully, 
 is Hermes.'^ Ignorant of the native dialect, the Apostles 
 did not know what the crowd were saying,' and with- 
 drew to their lodging. But meanwhile the startling 
 rumour had spread. Lycaonia was a remote region where 
 still lingered the simple faith in the old mythologies.* Not 
 only were there points of resemblance in Central Asia 
 between their own legends and the beliefs of the Jews,^ 
 but this region was rendered famous as the scene of more 
 than one legendary epiphany, of which the most celebrated 
 
 ' JablonsM, in Ms monograph Be Lingud Lycaonia:, concluded that it was 
 a corrupt Assyrian, and therefore Semitic dialect; Guhling, that it was Greek, 
 corrupted with Syriac. The only Lycaonian, word we know is Sf\Peia, which 
 means " a juniper," as we find in Steph. Byzant. 
 
 ' It is hardly worth while to produce classical quotation to show that 
 Hermes was the god of eloquence (Hor. Od. i. 10 ; Macrob. Saturn, i. 8). Hence 
 his epithet Ao'yios {Orph. Symn. xxvii. 6). " Quo didicit culte lingua fayente 
 loqni " (Ov. F. v. 665). 
 
 ' See Chrysost. Som. xxx. The notion of St. Jerome, that the power of 
 the Apostles to speak to the Lycaonians in their own language was one of the 
 reasons why the people took them for gods, is utterly baseless. 
 
 * Some remarkable proofs are given by DoUinger (Judenth. u. S&denth. 
 bk. Tiii. 2, § b). 
 
 ° For instance, the sort of dim tradition of the Deltage at Apamea 
 Eibdtos. 
 
382 THE LIFE AOT) WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 — recorded in the beautiful tale of Philemon and Baucis' 
 — was said to have occurred in this very neighbourhood. 
 Unsophisticated by the prevalent disbelief, giving ready 
 credence to all tales of marvel, and showing intense respect 
 for any who seemed invested with special sacredness,* the 
 Lycaonians eagerly accepted the suggestion that they were 
 once more favoured by a visit from the old gods, to whom 
 in a faithless age they had still been faithful. And this 
 being so, they at least would not be guilty either of the 
 impious scepticism which had ended in the transformation 
 into a wolf of their eponymous prince Lycaon, or of the 
 inhospitable carelessness which for all except one aged 
 couple had forfeited what might have been a source of 
 boundless blessings. Before the gate of the town was a 
 Temple of Zeus, their guardian deity. The Priest of 
 Zeus rose to the occasion. While the Apostles remained 
 in entire ignorance of his proceedings he had procured 
 buUs and garlands, and now, accompanied by festive 
 crowds, came to the gates to do them sacrifice.^ Paul 
 , and Barnabas were the last to hear that they were 
 about to be the centres of an idolatrous worship, but 
 when they did hear it they, with their sensitive concep- 
 tions of the awful majesty of the one true Grod, were 
 horror-stricken to an extent which a Grentile could hardly 
 have understood.* Eending their garments, they sprang 
 
 ' Ov. Met. viii. 626, seqq.; Fast. v. 495; Dio. Ohrysost. Orai. xxxiii. 
 408. On the common notion of these epiphanies, see Hom. Od. xvi. 484; 
 Hes. Ojjp. e< D. 247 ; Cat. Ixv. 384. 
 
 ' Tyana, the birthplace of the contemporary thaumaturge, Apollonius, 
 who was everywhere received with so deep a reverence, is not far to the east 
 of Lystra and Derbe. 
 
 3 Probably the gates of the house, of. xii. 13, Jul. Poll. Onomast. i. 8, 77 
 (ef. Virg. Eel. iii. 487; Tert. De Cor. Mil. x.). 
 
 * Menexenus, the physician of Alexander, claimed to be a god, as did 
 Alexander of Abonoteichus, to say nothing of the Divi Cmsares. — 'EJeiriJStio-oi', 
 tt. A, B, C, D, B, &c. Bai-nabas is put first because he is most reverenced as 
 Zeus Poliouchos. In the story of Baucis and Philemon the miracle at'once 
 led to a sacrifice. 
 
PROTEST OF THE APOSTLES. 383 
 
 out with loud cries among tlie multitude, expostulating 
 with them, imploring them to believe that they were but 
 ordinary mortals like themselves, and that it was the 
 very object of their mission to turn them from these empty 
 idolatries to the one living and true Grod, who made the 
 heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and all that in them, 
 is. And so, as they gradually gained more of the ear of 
 the multitude, they explained that during past generations 
 Grod had, as it were, suffered all the heathen to walk in 
 their own ways,^ and had not given them special revela- 
 tions ; and yet even in those days He had not left Himself 
 without witness by the mercies which He then sent, as 
 He sends them now, "by giving us from heaven rains 
 and fruitful seasons, by fiUing our hearts with food and 
 gladness." 
 
 Such was the strong yet kindly and sympathetic 
 protest uttered by the Apostles against the frank super- 
 stition of these simple Lycaonians. Ijt was no time 
 now, in the urgency of the moment, to preach Christ 
 to them, the sole object being to divert them from 
 an idolatrous sacrifice, and to show the futile character 
 of the polytheism of which such sacrifices formed a part. 
 Paul, who was evidently the chief speaker, does this 
 with that inspired tact-which can always vary its utterances 
 with the needs of the moment. No one can read the 
 speech without once more perceiving , its subtle and 
 inimitable coincidence with his thoughts and expressions.® 
 
 * Acts xiT. 16. irivra rh Hvri. 
 
 * Compare xiv. 1-5, hirh tSuthiv tSk iiarimv liruTTpe<j>eiv M @ihv (uvra with 1 
 Thess. i, 9, 4Tre<rTpe<\iaTe wphs Tim &ebv 4iri tSv eiSiiKav, k.t.A.., and the anar- 
 throus ®fhp fai/TB with Rom. ix. 26, &c. Compare too the very remarkable 
 expression and thought of ver. 16 with the speech at Athens, xvii. 30, Bom. i. 
 20, ii. 15, &c., and yer. 17 with Bom. i. 19, 20. The readings "us" and 
 "ov/r hearts" {tiiuv and rifiai', A, B, G, H, and the Coptic and Ethiopian 
 versions) are not certain, since these are exactly points in which diplomatic 
 
384 THE LIFE AOT) WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 The rhythmic conclusion is not unaccordant with the 
 style o£ his most elevated moods ; and besides the appro- 
 priate appeal to Grod's natural gifts in a town not in itself 
 unhappily situated, but surrounded by a waterless and 
 treeless plain, we may naturally suppose that the " filling 
 our hearts with food and gladness " was suggested by the 
 garlands and festive pomp which accompanied the bulls on 
 which the people would afterwards have made their com- 
 mon banquet. Nor do I think it impossible that the words 
 may be an echo of lyric songs ^ sung as the procession 
 made its way to the gates. To use them in a truer and 
 loftier connexion would be in exact accord with the 
 happy power of seizing an argument which St. Paul 
 showed when he turned into the text of his sermon at 
 Athens the vague inscription to the Unknown God. 
 
 But the Lystrenians did not like to be baulked of their 
 holiday and of their banquet; and those who had been 
 most prominent in proclaiming the new epiphany of 
 Zeus and Hermes were probably not a little ashamed. 
 M. Eenan is right in the remark that the ancient heathen 
 had no conception of a miracle as the evidence of a 
 doctrine. If, then, the Apostles could work a miracle, 
 and yet indisputably disclaim all notion of being gods in 
 disguise, what were they, and what became of their 
 miracle? The Lycaonians, in the sulky revulsion of 
 their feelings, and with a somewhat uneasy sense that 
 they had put themselves into a ridiculous position, were 
 
 evidence can liardly be decisive ; but they are snrely much more in St. Panl's 
 manner, and Ulnstrate the large sympathy vrith vrhieh he was always ready to 
 become all things to aU men, and therefore to Gentiles to speak as though he 
 too were a Gentile. 
 
 1 Mr. Humphry in loc. not unnaturally took this for the fragment of 
 some lyric song, and though most editors have rejected his conjecture, I think 
 that its apparent improbability may partly be remored by the suggestion in 
 tte text {infra, Excursus III., p. 630). 
 
PAUL IS STONED. 386 
 
 incliTied to avenge their error on those who had inno- 
 cently caused it. They were a faithless and fickle race, 
 liable, heyond the common wont of mobs, to sudden gusts 
 of feeling and impulse.^ In their disappointment they 
 would be inclined to assume that if these two mysterious 
 strangers were not gods they were despicable Jews ; and 
 if their miracle was not a sign of • their divinity, it 
 belonged to the malefic arts of which they may well have 
 heard from Eoman visitors. And on the arrival of the 
 Jews of Antioch and Iconium at Lystra, with the express 
 purpose of buzzing their envenomed slanders into the ears 
 of these country people, the mob were only too ripe for a 
 tumult. They stoned Paul and, when they thought he 
 was dead, dragged him outside their city gates, leaving 
 him, perhaps, iu front of the very Temple of Jupiter to 
 which they had been about to conduct him as an incarna- 
 tion of their patron deity. But Paul was not dead. 
 This had not "been a Jewish stoning, conducted with fatal 
 deliberateness, but a sudden riot, in which the mode of 
 attack may have been due to accident. Paul, liable at 
 all times to the swoons which accompany nervous organi- 
 sations, had been stunned, but not killed ; and while the 
 disciples stood in an agonised group around what they 
 thought to be his corpse, he recovered his conscious- 
 ness, and raised himself from the ground. The mob mean- 
 while had dispersed; and perhaps in disguise, or under 
 cover of evening — for all these details were as nothing to • 
 Paul, and are not preserved by his biographer — ^he re- 
 entered the little city. 
 
 Was it m the house of Eunice and Lois that he 
 
 ' Commenting on the treachery of Pandarns,in H. iv. 88 — 92, the Sehol&Bt- 
 qnotes the testimony of Aristotle to the nntrastworthy character of tiie 
 Lycaonians ; and see Cie. Epp. ad Att. v. 21, &c., who speaks of the natives - 
 of these regions with great contempt. 
 
386 THE LIFE MSB WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 found tlie sweet repose and tender ministrations which 
 he would need more than ever after an experience so 
 frightful? If Lystra was thus the scene of one of his 
 intensesb sufferings, and one which, lightly as it is 
 dwelt upon, probably left on his already enfeebled con- 
 stitution its lifelong traces, it also brought him, by the 
 merciful providence of God, its own immense com- 
 pensation. For it was at Lystra that he converted the 
 son of Eunice, then perhaps a boy of fifteen,^ for whom 
 he conceived that deep affection which breathes through 
 every line of the Epistles addressed to him. This was 
 the Timotheus whom he chose as the companion of his 
 future journeys, whom he sent on his most confidential 
 messages, to whom he entrusted the oversight of his most 
 important churches, whom he summoned as the consola- 
 tion of his last imprisonment, whom he always regarded as 
 the son in the faith who was nearest and dearest to his 
 heart. If Luke had been with St. Paul ifi. this his first 
 journey, he would probably have mentioned a circum- 
 stance which the Apostle doubtless regarded as one of 
 Grod's best blessings, an^ as one which would help to 
 obliterate in a feeling of thankfalness even the bitter 
 memories of Lystra.^ But we who, from scattered allu- 
 sions, can see that it was here and now that St. Paul 
 first met with the gentlest and dearest of all his converts, 
 may dwell with pleasure on the thought that Timotheus 
 stood weeping in that group of disciples who surrounded 
 the bleeding missionary, whose hearts glowed with amaze- 
 ment and thankfulness when they saw him recover, who 
 perhaps helped to convey him secretly to his mother's 
 house, and there, it may be, not only bound his wounds, 
 
 1 This cam hardly he regarded as in any way douhtf ul if we compare 1 Tim. 
 . 2, 18 and 2 Tim. ii. 1 with Acts xvi. 1. 
 
 2 2 Tim. iii. 11. 
 
ANOTHER FLIGHT. 387 
 
 but also read to him in the dark and suffering hours 
 some of the precious words of those Scriptures iu which 
 from a child he had been trained. 
 
 But after so severe a warning it was scarcely safe to 
 linger even for a single day ia a town where they had 
 suffered such brutal violence. Even if the passion of 
 the mob had exhausted itself, the malignity of the Jews 
 was not so likely to be appeased. Once more the only 
 safety seemed to be in. flight ; once more they took refuge 
 in another province. From Lystra ia Lycaonia they 
 started, under the grey shades of morning, while the 
 city was yet asleep, for the town of Derbe,^ which was 
 twenty miles distant, in the district of Isaurica. It is 
 grievous to. think of one who had been so cruelly treated 
 forced to make his way for twenty miles with his life in 
 his hand, and still all battered and bleeding from the 
 horrible attack of the day before. But if the dark and 
 rocky summit of Kara Dagh, the white .distant snows 
 of Mount ^gaeus,^ and the silver expanse of the "White 
 Lake had little power to delight his wearied eyes, or 
 calm his agitated spirit, we may be sure that He was 
 with him whom once he had persecuted, but for whose 
 sake he was now ready to suffer all ; and that from hour 
 
 ' It appears from the evidence of coins compared with Dio Cass. lis. 8 
 that hoth Derbe and Lystra were under Antiochns TV. of Commagene 
 (Eckhel, iii. 255 ; Lewin, Fasti Sacri, p. 250). If the inference be 
 correct they conld not, even in a political sense, he called "Churches of 
 Galatia." 
 
 * The site of Derbe is still doubtful. Strabo (xii. 6) calls it a <t>p<jipioi> 
 laavfiis koI \i/i'^i/, where it has long been seen that the true reading must be 
 ACytti^, and if so the lake must be Ak Ghieul, or the " White Lake." Near this 
 place Hamilton found a plaoe called Divle, which would be an easy metathesis 
 for the name AtXfiela, by which the town was sometimes called ; but another 
 site much more to the north, where he found the ruins of an Acropolis, seema 
 more likely. This, which is the site marked in Kiepert's map, answers the 
 requirements of Strabo, xii. 6, since it is on the confines of Isaurica and 
 Cappadocia, on a lake, and not far from Laranda (Karawan). See Lewin, i, IKL 
 
 z 2 
 
388 THE LIFE AND "WORK OE ST. PAUL. 
 
 to hour, as lie toiled feebly and wearily along from the 
 cruel and fickle city, " God's consolations increased upon 
 his soul with, the gentleness of a sea that caresses the 
 shore it covers." 
 
 At Derbe they were suffered to rest unmolested. It 
 may be that the Jews were ignorant that Paul was yet 
 alive. That secret, pregnant with danger to the safety 
 of the Apostle, would be profoundly kept by the little 
 band of Lystrenian disciples. At any rate, to Derbe the 
 Jews did not follow him with their interminable hate. 
 The name of Derbe is omitted from the mention of places 
 where he reminds Timothy that he had suiFered afflictions 
 and persecutions. His work seems to have been happy 
 and successful, crowned with the conversion of those 
 disciples whom he ever regarded as "his hope and joy 
 and crown of rejoicing." Here, too, he gained one more 
 friend in Gains of Derbe, who afterwards accompanied 
 him on his last visit to Jerusalem.^ 
 
 And now that they were so near to Cybistra (the 
 modern Bregli), through which a few stages would have 
 brought them to the Cilician gates, and so through Tarsus 
 to Antioch, it might have been assumed that this would 
 have been the route of their return. Why did they not 
 take it ? There may be truth in the ingenious sugges- 
 tion of Mr. Lewin,^ " that the road — as is sometimes still 
 the case — had been rendered impassable by the waters of 
 Ak Ghieul, swollen by the melting of the winter snows, 
 and that the way through the mountains was too uncertain 
 and insecure."' But they may have had no other reason 
 
 * Acts XX. 4. Tlie Gains of six. 29 was a Macedonian, and of Rom. xvi. 
 23 and 1 Oor. i. 14 a Corinthian. 
 
 " Referring to Hamilton {Resea/rchea, ii, 313), who found the road from 
 Eregli impassable from this cause. 
 
 3 Strabo, XII. Ti. 2— 5j Taja. Arm. iii. 48 ; xii. 55 ; Oic. od AU. v. 20, 
 5. &c. 
 
OOlirPrBMING THE OHUECHES. 389 
 
 than their sense of what was needed by the infant 
 Churches which they had founded. Accordingly they 
 went back, over the wild and dusty plain, the twenty 
 miles from Derbe to Lystra, the forty miles from Lystra 
 to Iconium, the sixty miles from Iconium to Antioch. 
 It may well be supposed that it needed no slight heroism 
 to face once more the dangers that might befall them. 
 But they had learnt the meaning of their Lord's saying, 
 " He who is nea,r Me is near the fire." Precautions of secrecy 
 they doubtless took, and cheerfuUy faced the degrading 
 necessity of guarded movements, and of entering cities, 
 perhaps in disguise, perhaps only at late nightfall and early 
 dawn. The Christians had early to learn those secret trysts 
 and midnight gatherings and private watchwords by which 
 alone they could elude the fury of their enemies. But 
 the Apostles accomplished their purpose. They made 
 their way back in safety, everywhere confirming the 
 disciples, exhorting thein to constancy, preparing them 
 for the certainty and convincing them of the blessing of 
 the tribulations through which we must enter the kingdom 
 of Grod.^ And as some organisation was necessary to 
 secure the guidance and unity of these little bodies of 
 converts, they held solemn . meetings, at which, with 
 prayer and fasting, they appointed elders,^ before they 
 bestowed on them a last blessing and farewell. In this 
 manner they passed through Lycaonia, Iconium, and 
 Pisidia, and so into Pamphylia ; and since on their first 
 jom-ney they had been unable to preach in Perga, they 
 did so now. Possibly they found no ship ready to sail 
 down the Cestrus to their destination. They therefore 
 made their way sixteen miles overland to the flourishing 
 
 1 Acts xiv. 22. The V«s ™*y ™ply * general Cliristiaii sentiment. It 
 cannot in this connexion be reljed on as showing the presence of St. Luke. 
 
 2 Acts xiv. 23, xeipoToi'^a-oi^cs is perfectly general, as in 2 Cor. viii. 19. 
 
390 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUIj. 
 
 seaport of Attaleia, at the moutli of the Katarrhaktes, 
 which at that time found its way to the sea over a range 
 of cliffs in floods of foaming waterfall ; and from thence — 
 for they never seem to have lingered among the fleeting 
 and mongrel populations of these seaport towns — ^they took 
 ship to Seleucia, saw once more the steep cone of Mount 
 Casius, climbed the slopes of Coryphaeus, and made their 
 way under the pleasant shade of ilex, and myrtle, and 
 arbutus, on the banks of the Orontes, until once more 
 they crossed the well-known bridge, and saw the grim 
 head of Charon staring over the street Singdn, in which 
 neighbourhood the little Christian community were 
 prepared to welcome them with keen interest and 
 unbounded love. 
 
 So ended the first mission journey of the Apostle Paul 
 — the first flight as it were of the eagle, which was soon 
 to soar with yet bolder wing, in yet wider circles, among 
 yet more raging storms. "We have followed him by the 
 brief notices of St. Luke, but we have no means of deciding 
 either the exact date of the journey, or its exact dura- 
 tion. It is only when the crises in the history of the 
 early Church synchronise with events of secular history, 
 that wfe can ever with certainty ascertain the date to 
 which they should be assigned.^ We have seen that Paul 
 and Barnabas visited Jerusalem about the time of Herod 
 Agrippa's death, and this took place in April A.D. 44. 
 After this they retm-ned to Antioch, and the next thing 
 we are told about them is their obedience to the spiritual 
 intimation which marked them out as Evangelists to the 
 heathen. It is reasonable to believe, therefore, that they 
 spent about a year at Antioch, since they could not easily 
 find vessels to convey them from place to place except 
 
 ' See Chronological Excursus, i/nfra, ii. 
 
DATE OF THE JOURNET. 391 
 
 in the montlis during wlicli the sea was regarded as open. 
 Now navigation with the ancients hegan with the rising 
 of the Pleiades, that is, in the month of March ; and we 
 may assume with fair prohahility that March, A.D. 45, is 
 the date at which they hegan their evangelising labours. 
 Beyond this all must be conjecture. They do not seem 
 to have spent more than a month or two in Cyprus ; ^ at 
 Antioch in Pisidia their stay was certainly brief. At 
 Iconium they remained "a considerable time;" but at 
 Lystra again, and at Derbe, and on their return tour, and 
 at Perga and Attaleia, the narrative impHes no long 
 residence. Taking into account the time consumed in 
 travelling, we are hardly at liberty to suppose that the 
 first circuit occupied much more than a year, and they 
 may have returned to the Syrian Antioch in the late 
 spring of A.D. 46.* 
 
 * Acts HT. 3, beophw xp^iw- This may mean anjthing, from amontli or two, 
 np to a year or more. It is a phrase of freqaent occurrence in St. Lnke (see 
 Acts viii 11 ; zxviL 9; Luke viiL 27 ; u. 9). 
 
 ' That Antioch in Pisidia, Iconinm, Derbe, and Lystra were not the 
 (ihniches of Galatia, as has been suggested by BBttger {Beitrage, i 28, sq.), 
 BenaUiHansrath, and others, is surely demoustrable. Galatia had two meanings 
 —the first ethnographical, the second political. The ethnographic use was the 
 popular and the all but uniTersal one. It meant that small central district of 
 Asia Minor, about 200 miles in length, which was occupied by the three Gallic 
 tribes — the Trocmi, the Tolistobogii, the Tectosages — with the three capitals, 
 TaTium, Pesanus, and Ancyra. Politically it meant a " department," an 
 "admintetratiTB group," a mere agglomeration of districts thrown into loose 
 cohesion by political accidents. In this political meaning the Soman prox-ince 
 of Galatiia was based on the kingdom of. Amyntas (Dio Cass. liii. 26), a 
 wealthy grarier and freebooter, who had receixed from Mark Antony the 
 kii^^om of Pisidia, and by subsequent additions had become possessed of 
 Gralatia Proper, Lycaouia, parts of Pamphylia, and Cilicia Aspera. On his 
 death Tarious chaises occurred, but when Paul and Barnabas were on their 
 first journey Pamphylia was under a propraetor; Iconium was a separate 
 tetrarchy; Lystra and Derbe belonged to Antiochus IV. of Commageue. 
 Galatia, Pisidia north of the Paroreia, and the greater part of Lycaonia 
 formed the Boman proTince of Galatia. But eren if we grant that St. Paul 
 and St. Luke might have used the word Galatia in its artificial sense, eren 
 then Antioch of Pi^dia appears to be the only town mentioned in this circuit 
 
392 THE LIFE AJSTD WORK OP ST. PAUL 
 
 But brief as was the period occupied, the consequences 
 were immense. For though Paul returned from this 
 journey a shattered man— though twenty years afterwards, 
 through a vista of severe afflictions, he still looks back, as 
 though they had happened but yesterday, to the " perse- 
 cutions, afflictions, which came upon him at Antioch, at 
 Iconium, at Lystra ; what persecutions he endured, and 
 yet from all the Lord delivered him "^ — ^though the 
 journeyings and violence, and incessant menace to life, 
 which has tried even men of such iron nerves as Oliver 
 Cromwell, had rendered him more liable than ever to fits 
 of acute suffering and intense depression,^ yet, in spite of 
 aU, he returned with the mission-hunger in his heart; 
 
 which is actually in the Roman province. This alone seems sufficient to 
 disprove the hypothesis that in the first journey we have a narrative of the 
 founding of the Galatian Church. Further, as far as St. Luke is concerned, 
 it would be a confused method, unlike his careful accuracy, to use the words 
 Pisidia, Lycaonia, Pamphylia, and later in his narrative Mysia, and other 
 districts in their geographical sense, and then suddenly, without any notice, 
 to Use Galatia in Acts xvi. in its political sense, especially as this political 
 sense was shifting and meaningless. It can hardly be supposed that since he 
 must hundreds of times have heard St. Paul mention the churches of Galatia, 
 he should, if these were the churches of Galatia, never drop a hint of the 
 fact, and, ignoring the Roman province altogether, talk of Antioch "of 
 Pisidia," and Lystra and Derbe, " cities of .Lycaonia." I should be quite 
 content to rest an absolute rejection of the hypothesis on these considerations, 
 as well as on the confusion which it introduces into the chronology of St. Paul's 
 life. The few arguments advanced in favour of this view — e.g., the allusion 
 to Bariiabas in Galatians ii. 1 — are wholly inadequate to support it against 
 the many counter improbabilities. Indeed, almost the only serious considera- ' 
 tion urged in its favour — namely, the very cursory mention in Acts xvi. 6 of 
 what we learn from the Epistle was the founding of a most important body 
 of churches — is nullified by the certainty which meets us at every step that 
 the Acts does not furnish us with a complete biography. In other in- 
 stances also — as in the case of the churches in Syria and Cilicia — ^he leaves 
 us in doubt about the time and manner of their first evangelisation. The 
 other form of this theory, which sees the founding of the Galatian churches 
 in the words wal tV Teplxapop (Acts xiv. 6), escapes some of these objections, 
 but offers far greater difficulties than the common belief which sees the 
 evangelisation of Galatia in the cursory allusion of Acts xvi. 6. 
 > 2 Tim. iii. 11. » Gal. i. 10 ; vi. 17. 
 
KEW OONTlOTIONa 393 
 
 witli the determination more strongly formed tlian ever 
 to preach the word, and be instant in season and out of 
 season ; with the fixed conviction that the work and 
 destiny in life to which Grod had specially called him was 
 to be the Apostle of the heathen.^ 
 
 That conviction had been brought unalterably home 
 to his soul by the experience of every town at which 
 they had preached. Up to a certain point, and that point 
 not very far within the threshold of his subject, the 
 Jews were willing to give him a hearing ; but when 
 they began to perceive that the Grospel was universal — 
 that it preached a God to whom a son of Abraham 
 t/as no whit dearer than any one in any nation 
 who feared Him and loved righteousness — that it 
 gave, in fact, to the title of " son of Abraham" a sig- 
 nificance so purely metaphorical as to ignore all special 
 privilege of blood — their anger burnt like flame. It was 
 the scorn and indignation of the elder brother against the 
 returning prodigal, and his refusal to enjoy privileges 
 which henceforth he must share with others.^ The deep- 
 seated pride of the Jews rose in arms. Who were these 
 obscure innovators who dared to run counter to the 
 cherished hopes and traditional glories of weU-nigh 
 twenty centuries? Who were these daring heretics, 
 who, in the name of a faith which all the Eabbis had 
 rejected, were thus proclaiming to the Gentiles the 
 abandonment of all exclusive claim to every promise and 
 
 > 1 Cor. ix. 21 ; Gal. t. 11 ; Eom. xt. 16 ; Eph. iii. 6, &c. 
 
 ' The Babbis who spoke in truer and more liberal tones were rare. We 
 find, indeed, in Berachoth, f. 34, 2, a remarkable explanation of the verse 
 " Peace, peace to him that is far ofB, and to him that is near," which amounts 
 to an admission that penitents and prodigals are dearer to God (as being hero 
 addressed first) than Pharisees and elder brothers ; bat it is the penitents of 
 Israel who are contemplated, just as some of the Fathers held out hopes to 
 Catholics and Christians (merely on the ground of that privilege) which they 
 denied to others. (Jer. in Isa. Ixvi. 16, in Eph. iv. 12, &c.) 
 
394 THE LIFE AlTD WORK OF ST. PAUL, 
 
 every privilege wliicli generations of their fathers had held 
 most dear ? 
 
 But this was not all. To abandon privileges was 
 unpatriotic enough ; but what true Jew, what observer of 
 the Halacliah, could estimate the atrocity of apostatising 
 from principles? Had not Jews done enough, by freely 
 admitting into their synagogues the Proselytes of the 
 Grate? Did they not even offer to regard as a son of 
 Israel every Grentile who would accept the covenant rite 
 of circumcision, and promise full allegiance to the Written 
 and Oral Law? But the new teachers, especially Paul, 
 seemed to use language which, pressed /to its logical con- 
 clusion, could only be interpreted as an utterly slighting 
 estimate of the old traditions, nay, even of the sacred rite 
 of circumcision. It is true, perhaps, that they had never 
 openly recommended the suppression of this rite ; but it 
 was clear that it occupied a subordinate place in their 
 minds, and that they were disinclined to make between 
 their Jewish and Gentile converts the immensity of 
 difference which separated a Proselyte of Righteousness 
 from a Proselyte of the Gate. 
 
 It is very possible that it was only the events of 
 this journey which finally matured the views of St. 
 Paul on this important subject. The ordinary laws 
 of nature had not been reversed in his case, and 
 as he grew in grace and in the knowledge of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, so his own Epistles,^ though each 
 has its own divine purpose, undoubtedly display the kind 
 of difference in his way of developing the truth which we 
 should ordinarily attribute to growth of mind. And it is 
 observable that St. Paul, when taunted by his opponents 
 
 ' 2 Cor. T. 16 ; 1 Cor. xiii. 9 — 12. Bengal says that when the Epistles are 
 arranged chronologically, " inc/remenimim a^ostoli spirituale cogtiosoitu/r" 
 (p. 583). 
 
WIDENING VIEWS. , 396 
 
 with having once been a preacher of circumcision, does not 
 meet the taunt by a denial, but merely by saying that at 
 any rate his persecutions are a sign that now that time is 
 over. In fact, he simply thrusts aside the allusion to 
 the past by language which should render impossible any 
 doubts as to his sentiments in the present. In the same 
 way, in an earlier part of his Epistle,-^ he anticipates the 
 charge of being a time-server — a charge which he knew 
 to be false in spirit, while yet the malignity of slander 
 might find some justification of it in his broad indifference 
 to trifles — not by any attempt to explain his former line of 
 action, but by an outburst of strong denunciation which 
 none could mistake for men-pleasing or over-persuasiveness. 
 Indeed, in the second chapter of the Galatians, St. Paul 
 seems distinctly to imply two things. The one is that it 
 was the treacherous espionage of false brethren that first 
 made him regard the question as one of capital importance ; 
 the other that his views on the subject were at that time 
 so far from being final, that it was with a certain amount 
 of misgiving as to the practical decision that he went up 
 to the consultation at Jerusalem. It was the result of 
 this interview — ^the discovery that James and Kephas had 
 nothiiig to contribute to any further solution of the 
 subject — which first made him determined to resist to the 
 utmost the imposition of the yoke on Gentiles, and to 
 follow the line which he had generally taken. But he had 
 learnt from this journey that nothing but the wisdom of 
 Grod annihilating human foolishness, nothing but the 
 gracious Spirit of Grod breaking the iron sinew in the neck of 
 carnal obstinacy, could lead the Jews to accept the truths 
 he preached. Paul saw that the husbandmen in charge of 
 the vineyard would never be brought to confess that they 
 
 > Gal. i. 10. 
 
396 THE LIFE AND WORK: OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 had slain tlie Heir as they had slain well-nigh all who 
 went before Him. Though He had come first to His own 
 possessions, His own people refused to receive Him.^ 
 Israel after the flesh would not condescend from their 
 haughty self-satisfaction to accept the free gift of eternal 
 life. 
 
 And, therefore, he was now more than ever convinced 
 that his work would lie mainly among the Grentiles. It 
 may be that the fury and contempt of the Jews kindled in 
 him too dangerously for the natural man — kindled in him 
 in spite of all tender yearnings and relentings — too strong 
 an indignation, too fiery a resentment. It may be that 
 he felt how much more adapted others were than himself 
 to deal with these ; others whose aflB.nities with them were 
 stronger, whose insight into the inevitable future was less 
 clear. The Grentiles were evidently prepared to receive 
 the Grospel. For these other sheep of Grod evidently the 
 fulness of time had come. To those among them who 
 were disposed for eternal life the doctrine of a free salva- 
 tion through the Son of Grod was infinitely acceptable. 
 Not a few of them had found in the Jewish teaching at 
 least an approach to ease.^ But the acceptance of 
 Judaism could only be accompKshed at the cost of a heavy 
 sacrifice. Even to become a "Proselyte of the Gate" 
 subjected a man to much that was distasteful; but to 
 become a Proselyte of the Gate was nothing. It was 
 represented by all the sterner bigots of Judaism as a step 
 so insignificant as to be nearly worthless. And yet how 
 
 ' John i. 11, eis Tc^ iSia . , , ot {Sioi. 
 
 ^ Further than the outermost pale of Judaism they could not approach. 
 Religious thoughtfulness in a Gentile was a crime, " A Gentile who studies 
 the Law (beyond the seven Noaohian precepts) is guilty of death; " for it is 
 said (Deut. xxxiii. 4) " Moses commanded us a Law, even the inheritance of 
 the congregation of Jacob ; " but not of Gentiles (and, theaefore, Bashi adds 
 it is ro&fcerj/ for a Gentile to study the Law). {8anhedrin,i. 59,1.) This is 
 embodied by Maimonides, Big. Hilohoth Menachin, x. 9. 
 
THE APOSTLE OP THE GENTILES. 397 
 
 could any man. stoop to tliat wbicli conld alone make Mm 
 a Proselyte of Eighteousness, and by elevating him to 
 ttis rank, place on him a load of observances wbich were 
 dead both in the spirit and in the letter, and which yet 
 would most effectually make his life a burden, and separate 
 him — not morally, but externally — from aU which he 
 had loved and valued most?^ The sacrifices which an 
 African convert has to make by abandoning polygamy — 
 which a Brahmin has to make by sacrificing caste — are but 
 a small measure of what a Grentile had to sufier if he made 
 himself a Jew. How eagerly then would such an inquirer 
 embrace a faith which, while it offered him a purer 
 morality, and a richer hope for the future, and a greater 
 strength for the present, and a more absolute remission for 
 the past, offered him these priceless boons unaccompanied 
 by the degradation of circumcision and the hourly worry 
 of distinctions between meats ! Stoicism might confront 
 him with the barren inefiiciency of " the categorical impera- 
 tive ; " the Gospel offered him, as a force which needed no 
 supplement, the Spirit of the living Christ. Tes, St. Paul 
 felt that the Grentiles could not refuse the proffered 
 salvation. He himself might only live to see the green 
 blade, or at best to gather a few weak ears, but hereafter 
 he was confident that the full harvest would be reaped. 
 Henceforth he knew himself to be essentially the Apostle 
 of the Gentiles, and to that high calling he was glad to 
 sacrifice his life. 
 
 1 "A Gentile who offers to submit to all the words of the Law except one 
 is not received." Rabbi Jose Ben Rabbi Jehudah said, " Even if he rejects 
 one of the Ealachdth of the Scribes " {Bechordth, f. 30, 2). 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 'EKeiBfpos hv ix wii/Tay, itaaiv i/iavThv 'EAOTAHSA, JVo Toiif vKttovas KepS^ivin-^ 
 1 OOE. ix. 19. ^ 
 
 The first step of Paul and Barnabas on their arrival at 
 Antiocli had been to summon a meeting of the Church, 
 and give a report of their mission and its success, dwelling 
 specially on the proof which it aflforded that God had 
 how opened to the Gentiles "a door of faith." God 
 Himself had, by His direct blessing, shown that the 
 dauntless experiment of a mission to the heathen was in 
 accordance with His will. 
 
 For some time the two Apostles continued to rest 
 from their toils and perils amid the peaceful ministra- 
 tions of the new metropolis of Christianity. But it is 
 not intended that unbroken peace should ever in this world 
 continue for long to be' the lot of man. The Church soon 
 began to be troubled hy a controversy which was not only 
 of pressing importance, but which seemed likely to 
 endanger the entire destiny of the Christian faith. 
 
 Jewish and Gentile converts were living side by side 
 at Antioch, waiving the differences of view and habit 
 which sprang from their previous training, and united 
 heart and soul in the bonds of a common love for their 
 common Lord. Had they entered into doubtful dispu- 
 tations,^ they would soon have found themselves face to 
 
 ^ BiOm. XIT. 1, li)) els Siaiepl<rtis SiaKoyKruSv. 
 
FALSE BRETHREN. 399 
 
 face with. proHems which it was difficult to solve ; but 
 they preferred to dwell only on those infinite spiritual 
 privileges of which they regarded themselves as equal 
 sharers. 
 
 Into this bright fraternal community came the stealthy 
 sidelong intrusion of certain personages from Judaea,' who, 
 for a time, profoundly disturbed the peace of the Church. 
 Pharisees scarcely emancipated from their Pharisaism — 
 Jews still in bondage to their narrowest preconceptions — 
 brethren to whom the sacred name of brethren could 
 barely be conceded^ — they insinuated themselves into 
 the Church in the petty spirit of jealousy and espionage,^ 
 not with any high aims, but with the object of betraying 
 the citadel of liberty, and reducing the free Christians 
 of Antioch to their own bondage. St. Luke, true to his 
 conciliatory purpose, merely speaks of them as " certain 
 from Judsea ; " but St. Paul, in the heat of indignant 
 controversy, and writing under a more intense impression 
 of their mischievous influence, vehemently calls them 
 "the false brethren secretly introduced."* But though, 
 throughout their allusions to this most memorable episode 
 in the history of early Christianity, the Apostle and the 
 Evangelist are writing from different points of view, they 
 
 1 Gral. ii. 4, irapeirrfiMoy ; cf. Jude 4, irapeKriivaav, "sneaked in." 
 
 ' This is expressly stated in the margin of the later Syriac version, and in 
 two cursive MSS. 8, 137. Epiphanius says that " their leaders were Cerinthus, 
 the subsequent Gnostic opponent of St. John, and ' Ebion ' " [Saer. 28, 30). 
 But Ebion is a mere " mythical eponymus " (Mansel, Gnostic Her. 125; Tert. 
 Be praescr. Haerei. 33). Ebionite is an epithet (Epiphan. Haer. xxx.), and 
 means "poor" (Orig. c. Gels. ii. 1; Neander, Gh. Hist. ii. 14). 
 
 ' Gal. ii. 4, KaraiTKomia-ai. I suppose that the title nnoio {moomhah) — one 
 authorised by a diploma to give decisions — ^ould have been technically 
 claimed by these visitors. 
 
 * Gal. ii. 4, rohs irapeurdKrovs iffevSaB4\(povs, " falsos et superinductioios 
 fratres" (Tert. ad/v. Marc. t. 3). The strongly indignant meaning of 
 itapttaiyeiv may be seen in 2 Pet. ii. 1, " false teachers who shall privily bring 
 in {itapttirdioviny) heresies of perdition." 
 
400 THE LITE AJSD WOBK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 aro in complete accordance as regards tlie main facts. 
 The combination of the details which they separately 
 furnish enables us to reproduce the most important circum- 
 stances of a contest which decided for ever the futuLre of 
 the Gentile Church.' 
 
 These brethren in name, but aliens in heart, came 
 with a hard, plausible, ready-made dogma — one of those 
 shibboleths in which formalists dehght, and which usually 
 involve the death-blow of spiritual religion. It de- 
 manded obedience to the Law of Moses, especially the 
 immediate acceptance of circumcision^ as its most 
 typical rite; and it denied the possibihty of salvation 
 on any other terms. It is possible that hitherto St. 
 Paul may have regarded circumcision as a rule for Jews, 
 and a charitable concession on the part of Grentiles. On 
 these aspects of the question he was waiting for the 
 light of Grod, which came to him in the rapid course of 
 circumstances, as it came to the whole world in the fall 
 of Jerusalem. But even among the Jews of the day, 
 the more sensible and the more enlightened had seen 
 that for a pious Gentile a mere external mutilation 
 could not possibly be essential. Ananias, who had the 
 honour of converting the royal family of Adiabene, had 
 distinctly advised Izates that it was not desirable to risk 
 his crown by external compliance to a needless rite.^ It 
 
 • The addition in D and the margin of the Syriao, koI t^ tflei Mainretoj 
 7repiirdTj)T€, and in the Constttutiones Apostolicae, koI toii iBetriv oli SieriifoTo, 
 though not genuine, yet show what was felt to be implied. 
 
 ^ Acts XT. 1, ircpiT/tTje^TE, " be once circumcised ; " k, A, B, 0, D. 
 Even Josephus (see next note) seems to think that the horrible death of Apion 
 was a punishment in kind ftr his ridicule of circumcision (c. Ap. ii. 14). 
 Prom this anecdote we can measure the courage of St. Paul, and the intense 
 hatred which his views excited. 
 
 5 Josephus, as a liberal Pharisee, held the same view {Anit. xx. 2 ; Yit. 23, 
 31). The Talmud mentions a certain AMles (whom some identify with AquUa, 
 the Greek translator of the Bible) as having submitted to circumcision, and ~ 
 
PROSELYTES. 401 
 
 was only when men like Eleazar — fierce and narrow 
 HteraKsts of the school of Shammai — intervened, that 
 Proselytes of the Grate were taught that their faith and 
 their holiness were valueless unless they assumed the. 
 badge of Proselytes of Eighteousness.^ Izates and Mono- 
 bazus, as was sure to be the case with timid and super- 
 stitious natures, had risked all to meet the views of these 
 uncompromising zealots, just as from baser motives Aziz, 
 King of Emesa, and Polemo of Cilicia had yielded in 
 order to win the hands of the wealthy and beautiful prin- 
 cesses of the house of Herod.^ But it was quite certain 
 that such an acceptance of Mosaism would continue to 
 be, as it always had be§n, extremely exceptional ; and 
 Paul saw that if Christianity was to be degraded into 
 the mere superiinposition of a belief in Christ as the 
 Jewish Messiah upon the self-satisfaction of Shammaite 
 fanaticism,^ or even on the mere menace of the Law, 
 it was not' possible, it was not even desirable, that it 
 should continue to exist. The force of habit might, in one 
 who had been born a Jew, freshen with the new wine of 
 
 also a Boman senator {AVhoda Zara, 10; Hamburger, 8.«.~"Beschneiduiig"). 
 The Boman Metilius saved his life by accepting circumcision (Jos. B. J. ii. 
 17, § 10). Antoninus /or6a(?e it in the case of Gentile proselytes (Gieseler, i., 
 § 38). 
 
 ' "So great is circumcision," said Babbi [Jehuda Hakkadosh], "that but 
 for it the Holy One, blessed be He^, would not have created the world; for it 
 is said (Jer. xxxiii. 25), ' But for My covenant [i.e., circumcision] I would not 
 have made day and night, and the ordinance cf heaven and earth'" (Nedarim, 
 f. 31, 2). " Abraham was not called ' perfect' till ho was circumcised. It is as 
 great as all the other commandments " (Exod. xxxiv. 27), {Id. t. 32, 1). It was 
 one of the laws in the case of which the Jews preferred death to disobedience 
 (Shdbhath; f . 130, 1). The " good Mng " in Pseudo-Barmh (§§ 61, 66) is one 
 who does not allow the existence of an uncircumoised person on the earth. 
 
 ' Izates and Monabazus would have been called " lion-proselytes," and Aziz 
 and Polemo " Shechemite proselytes." 
 
 ' "How many laws have you?" asked a Gentile of Shammai. "Two," 
 said Shammai, "the written and the oral." "I believe the former," said the- 
 Gentile, " not the latter ; accept me as a proselyte on condition of learning the 
 written law only." Shammai ejected him with a curae {Shoibbath, f . 31, 1). 
 
 A A 
 
402 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 the Gospel tlie old ceremonialism wMch had run to the 
 lees of Eabbinic tradition. In Jerusalem a Christian 
 might not be sensible of the loss he suffered by chaining 
 his new Hfe to the corpse of meaningless halacMih ; but 
 in Antioch, at any rate, and stiU more in the new mission- 
 fields of Asia, such bondage could never be allowed. 
 
 We can imagine the indignant grief with which St. 
 Paul watched this continuous, this systematic^ attempt to 
 undo all that had been done, and to render impossible all 
 farther progress. Was the living and life-giving spirit 
 to be thus sacrificed to the dead letter ? Were these new 
 Pharisees to compass sea and land to make one proselyte, 
 only that they might add the, pride of the Jew to the 
 vice of the Grentile, and make him ten times more narrow 
 than themselves? Was the superstitious adoration of 
 dead ordinances to dominate over the heaven-sent liberty 
 of the children of God ? If Moses had, under Divine 
 guidance, imposed upon a nation of sensual and stiff- 
 necked slaves not only a moral law of which Christ 
 Himself had indefinitely deepened the obKgation, but also 
 the crushing yoke of " statutes which were not good, and ordi- 
 nances whereby they could not live,"^ was this yoke — now 
 that it had been abolished, now that it had become partly 
 impossible and mostly meaningless — to be disastrously 
 imposed on necks for which .its only effect would be to 
 madden or to gall ?^ Was a Titus, young, and manly, 
 and free, and pure, with the love of Christ burning like 
 a fire on the altar of his soul, to be held at arm's length 
 ,by some unregenerate Pharisee, who while he wore broad 
 tephillin, and tsitsith with exactly the right number of 
 
 • Acts rv. 1, ihiituTKov. 
 
 -» lEzek. XX. 25. 
 
 ' " Circumeidere genitalia iostituere vi diverntate noictmlmr," says 
 Tacitus {M. V. 5), and adds it is an aggravation, "Transgressi in morem 
 eomm idem usarpaut." 
 
THE PRINCIPLE AT STAKE. 403 
 
 threads and knots, was yet an utter stranger to the love 
 of Christ, and ignorant as a child of His free salvation? 
 "Were Christians, who were all brethren, all a chosen 
 generation and a royal priesthood, to be treated by Jews, 
 who had ino merit beyond the very dubious merit of 
 being Jews, as though they were unclean creatures with 
 whom it was not even fit to eat ? The Jews freely in- 
 dulged in language of contemptuous superiority towards 
 the proselytes, but was such language to be for one 
 moment tolerated in the brotherhood of Christ?^ 
 
 It is easy to understand in what a flame of fire Paul 
 must often have stood up to urge these questions during 
 the passionate debates which immediately arose. ^ It may 
 be imagined with what eager interest the Gentile prose- 
 lytes would await the result of a controversy which was 
 to decide whether it was enough that they should bring 
 forth the fruits of the Spirit — ^love, joy, peace, long- 
 suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, tem- 
 perance — or whether they must also stick up mezusoth 
 on their houses, and submit to a concision, and abstain 
 .from the free purchases of the market, and not touch per- 
 fectly harmless kinds of food, and petrify one day out of 
 every seven with a rigidity of small and conventionalised 
 observances. To us it may seem amazing that the utter- 
 ances of the prophets were not sufficient to show that 
 the essence of religion is faith; not outward service ; and 
 that so far from requiring petty accuracies of posture, 
 and dress, and food, what the Lord requires of us is 
 
 ' Here is a specimen of the language of Jewish Rabbis towards proselytes : 
 "Proselytes and those who sport with children [the meaning is dubious] delay 
 the coming of the Messiah. As for proselytes it is explained by Rabh Ohelbo's 
 remark, that they are as injurious to Israel as a scab (since in Isa. xiv. 1 it is 
 said, ' strangers 'w« he jomed to them (inaoji), and nnao means 'a scab'); 
 because, said Rashi, they are not up to the precepts, and cause calamities to 
 Israel " {Niddah, f . 13. 2). " Acts xv. 2. 
 
 A A 2 
 
404 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 that we should do justice, and love mercy, and wait 
 humbly with our God.^ But the Judaisers had tra- 
 dition, authority, and the Pentateuch on their side, and 
 the paralysis of custom rendered many Jewish converts 
 incapable of resisting conclusions which yet they felt to 
 be false. So far as they were trae Christians at all, they 
 could not but feel that the end of the commandment was 
 love ont of a good heart and a pure conscience, and faith 
 unfeigned ; but when their opponents flourished in their 
 faces the Thorah-roUs, and asked them whether they dared 
 to despise the immemorial sanctities of Sinai, or diminish 
 the obligation of laws uttered by Moses amid its burning 
 glow, the ordinary Jew and the ordinary Grentile were 
 perplexed. On these points the words of Jesus had been 
 but a beam in the darkness, certain indeed to grow, but 
 as yet only shining amid deep midnight. They did not 
 yet understand that Christ's fulfilment of the Law was its 
 abrogation, and that to maintain the type in the presence 
 of the antit3rpe was to hold up superfluous candles to the 
 sun. From this imminent peril of absorption in exclu- 
 sive ritual one man saved the Church, and that man was 
 Paul. With all the force of his argument, with aU the 
 weight of his authority, he affirmed and insisted that the 
 Gentile converts should remain in the free conditions under 
 which they had first accepted the faith of Christ.^ 
 
 When there appeared likely to be no end to the 
 
 ■dispute,^ it became necessary to refer it, to the decision 
 
 of ■ the Church at Jerusalem, and especially of those 
 
 Apostles who had lived with the living Jesus. It is 
 
 > Mic. yi. 8 ; Deut. x. 12; Hos. vi. 6 j 1 Sam. xv. 22. 
 
 " Comp. MS. D, l\eyev ykp i TlavKos fifveiv ovtus KiBas Marfvaav SiitrxvptCifiifyos. 
 
 ' The expressions of Acts xv. 2, yevofievris olv crTiafms hcX (rufriT^ircaij owk oxiynh 
 •K.T-K; are very strong. StcJo-u is " insurrection" (Mark xr. 7 ; Luke xsiii. 19), 
 I For o-uf^Ttjffii see Acts yi. 9 ; xxviii. 29 ; Mark ix. 14. 
 
DEMAJn) FOE A DECISION. 403 
 
 far from improbaTsle that this plan was urged^-nay, 
 demanded — by the Judaisers themselves/ who must have 
 been well aware that the majority of that Church looked 
 with alarm and suspicion on what they regarded as anti- 
 Judaic innovations. There may even have been a certain 
 insolence (which accounts for the almost irritable language 
 of St. Paul long afterwards) in their manner of parading 
 the immensely superior authority of living witnesses of the 
 life of Jesus hke James and Kaphas. They doubtless 
 represented the deputation to Jerusalem as a necessary 
 act of submission, a going up of Paul and Barnabas to be 
 judged by the Jerusalem synod.^ At this period Paul 
 would not openly repudiate the paraded superiority of 
 the Twelve Apostles. When he says to the Galatians 
 that "he consulted them about the Gospel he was 
 preaching, lest he might be, or had been, running to no 
 purpose," he shows that at this period he had not arrived 
 at the quite unshaken conviction, which made him subse- 
 quently say that " whether he or an angel from heaven 
 preached any other gospel, let him be anathema."^ In 
 
 ^ As is again asserted in D, itap'liyyeiKav airois t0 TlaiKif koI t$ Bapvafii} 
 Kai Ttffiy £a\oi5 iwa^OiViiv irpbs robs Sinoffr6\ovSi k.t.X. , birus KpiBcdfftv hr* avToTs irepX 
 70V ^tiT^naros Toirov, 
 
 ' See tKe previous extract from D. 
 
 ' I have here assumed without hesitation that the visit to Jerusalem of 
 Gal. ii. 1 — 10, though there mentioned as though it were a second visit, was 
 identical with that of Acts xv., and therefore was in reality his third visit. 
 There are in the Acts of the Apostles ^e visits of St. Paul to Jerusalem — ^viz., 
 (1) after his conversion (ix. 26); (2) with the Antiochene contribution (xi. 30) ; 
 (3) to consult the Apostles about the necessity of circumcision for the 
 Gren tiles (xv. 2) ; (4) after his second fnissionary journey (xviii. 22) ; (5) before 
 Ms imprisonment at Caesarea (xxi.). Now this visit of Gal. ii. could not 
 possibly have been the first; nor, as is proved by Gal. ii. 7, as well as by the 
 whole chronology of his life, could it have been the second; nor, as we see 
 from the presence of Barnabas (comp. Gal. ii. 1 with Acts xv. 39), could it 
 have been the fowrth ; for no one can assume that it was, without accusing 
 St. Paul of disingenuous suppression when he spoke to the Galatians of this 
 sole intercourse 'which he had had with the Apostles; and that it was not 
 the fifth is quite decisively proved by Gal. ii. 11. By the exhaustive method, 
 
406 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 point of fact it was at this interview tliat he learnt that 
 his own insight and authority were fully equal to those of 
 the Apostles who were in Christ before him ; that they had 
 nothing to tell him and nothing to add to him ; that, on 
 the contrary, there were spheres of work which belonged 
 rather to him than to them, and in which they stood to 
 him in the position of learners;^ that Jesus had fulfilled 
 His own promise that it was better for His children that 
 He should go away, because His communion with them 
 by the gift of His Holy Spirit was closer and more abso- 
 lute than by His actual presence. But even now Paul 
 must have chafed to submit the decision of truths which 
 
 therefore, we see that the visit dwelt on in Gal. ii. must have been the third,. 
 It would, indeed, be conceivable that it was some visit not recorded by the 
 anthor of the Acts if there were any reason whatever for such a supposition ; 
 but when we consider how impossible it was that such a visit should have 
 occurred without the knowledge of St. Luke, and how eminently the facts of 
 it accorded with the views which he wished to further, and how difficult it is 
 to find any other occasion on which such a visit would have been natural, we 
 have no valid reason for adopting such an hypothesis. Nor, indeed, can 
 anything be much clearer than the identity of circumstances in the visits 
 thus described. In the two narratives the same people go up at the same 
 time, from the same place, for the same object, in consequence of the 
 same interference by the same agitators, and with the same results. Against 
 the absolute certainty of the conclusion that the visits described were one 
 and the same there is nothing whatever to set but trivial differences of 
 detail, every one of which is accounted for in the text. As for St. Paul's 
 non-allusion to the so-called " decree," it is sufficiently explained by its 
 local, partial, temporary — and, so far as principles were concerned, 
 indecisive— character; by the fact that the Galatians were not asMng for 
 concessions, but seeking bondage; and by the Apostle's determination not 
 to settle such questions by subordinating his Apostolic independence to 
 any authority which could be described as either " of man or by man," by any- 
 thing, in short, except the principles revealed by the Spirit of God Himself. 
 Prof. Jowett {Gal. i. 263) speaks of the unbroken image of harmony presented 
 by the narrative of the Acts contrasted with the tone of Gal. ii. 2 — 6 ; but 
 " an unbroken image of harmony " is not very accordant with the troWii au^lrntau 
 of Acts XV. 7, which is an obvious continuation of the tniais Koi f^Tijirij o4k 
 oKifTi of ver. 2. The extent to which the Acts " casts the veil of time over the 
 differences of the Apostles " seems to me to be often exaggerated. 
 1 Gal.ii.7— 9. 
 
THE DELEGATES. 407 
 
 he felt to be true to any human authority. But for 
 one circumstance he must have felt like an able Eoman 
 Catholic bishop — a Strossmeyer or a Dupanloup — who 
 has to await a decision respecting tenets which he deems 
 irrefragable, from a Pope in all respects his inferior in 
 abUity and in enlightenment. That circumstance was the 
 inward voice, the; spiritual intimation which revealed to 
 him that this course was wise and necessary. St. Luke, 
 of course, tells the external side of the event, which was 
 that Paul went by desire of the Church of Antioch ; but 
 St. Paul himself, omitting this as irrelevant tc) his pur- 
 pose, or regarding it as an expression of the wiU of 
 Heaven, tells his converts that he went up "by reve- 
 lation." From Paul also we learn the interesting cir- 
 cumstance that among those who accompanied himseH 
 and Barnabas was Titus, perhaps a Cretan Grentile whom 
 he had converted at Cyprus during his first journey.-^ 
 Paul took him as a Gentile representative of his own 
 converts, a living pledge and witness that uncircumcised 
 Grreeks, seeing that they were equal partakers of the gift 
 of the Holy Ghost, were not to be treated as dogs and 
 outcasts. The declared approval of God was not to be 
 set aside for the fantastic demands of man, and the 
 supercilious tolerance or undisguised contempt of Jews 
 for proselytes was at once a crime and an ignorance when 
 displayed towards a brother in the faith. 
 
 Alike the commencement and the course of their 
 overland journey was cheered by open sympathy with 
 their views. Prom Antioch they were honourably 
 escorted on their way; and as they passed through 
 Berytus, Tyre, Sidon, and Samaria, narrating to the 
 Churches the conversion of the Gentiles, they — like 
 
 > Ewftld, Gesch. -ri. 456. 
 
408 THE LITE AUD WORK OF ST. PAl^i. 
 
 Luther on his way to the Diet of Worms — were en- 
 couraged by unanimous expressions of approval and joy. 
 On arriving at Jerusalem they were received by the 
 Apostles and elders, and narrated to them the story of 
 their preaching and its results, together with the inevit- 
 able question to which it had given rise. It was on this 
 occasion apparently that some of the Christian Pharisees 
 at once got up, and broadly insisted' on the moral neces- 
 sity of Mosaism and circumcision, implying, therefore, 
 a direct censure of the principles on which Paul and 
 Barnabas had conducted their mission.^ The question 
 thus stated by the opposing parties was far too grave to. 
 be decided by any immediate vote ; the deliberate judg- 
 ment of the Chm-ch on so momentous a problem could 
 only be pronounced at a subsequent meeting. Paul used 
 the interval with his usual sagacity and power. Know- 
 ing how liable to a thousand varying accidents are the 
 decisions arrived at by promiscuous assemblies — ^fearing 
 lest the voice of a mixed gathering might only express 
 the collective incapacity or the collective prejudice — he 
 endeavoured to win over the leaders of the Church by a 
 private statement of the Gospel which he preached. Those 
 leaders were, he tells us, at this time, James,^ who is' men- 
 tioned first because of his position as head of the Church 
 at Jerusalem, and Peter and John. These he so entirely 
 succeeded in gaining over to his cause — he showed to them 
 with such unanswerable force that they could not insist on 
 making Grentile Christians into orthodox Jews without 
 incurring the tremendous responsibility of damming up 
 for ever the free river of the grace of Q-od — that they 
 
 ' The irapei^x^ria-av ivh t^j iKK\ri(rias of Acts XT. 4 implies a preliminary 
 meeting distinct from the trvrlix^vrAv t6 of ver. 6. 
 
 " Not here characterised as " the Lord's brother," because James, the son ol 
 Zebedee, was dead, and James, the son of Alphseus, was an Apostle of whom 
 notliing is kuowOk 
 
THE THREE. 409 
 
 resigned to his judgment the mission to the Grentiles. 
 Eminent as they were in their own spheres, great as was 
 their force of character, mal-ked as was their individuality, 
 they could not resist the personal ascendency of Paul.^ 
 In the presence of one whose whole nature evinced the 
 intensity of his inspired conviction, they felt that they 
 could not assume the position of superiors or guides.^ 
 Whatever may have heen their original prejudices, these 
 noble-hearted men allowed neither their private predilec- 
 tions nor any fibre of natural jealousy to deter their 
 acknowledgment of their great fellow- workers. They 
 gave to Paul and Barnabas the right hands of fellow- 
 ship, and acknowledged them as Apostles to the Gentiles. 
 One touching request alone they made. The Church of 
 Jerusalem had been plunged from the first in abject 
 poverty. It had sufiered perhaps from the temporary 
 experiment of communism ; it had sufiered certainly from 
 the humble rank of its first converts, the persecutions 
 which they had endured, and the chronic famine to 
 which their city was liable. Paul and Barnabas were 
 working in wealthy Antioch, and were likely to travel 
 among Gentiles, who, if not rich, were amply supplied 
 with the means of livelihood. Would they forget Jeru- 
 salem ? Would they suffer those to starve who had 
 walked with Jesus by the Lake of Galilee, and sat 
 beside His feet when He preached the Serinon on the 
 Mount ? Already once they had brought from Antioch 
 the deeply acceptable Chctlukaf which in the fiercest 
 moment of famine and persecution had as much relieved 
 the brethren as the royal bounties of Helena had sus- 
 tained the Jews. Surely they would not let religious 
 differences prevent them from aiding the hunger-bitten 
 
 > See John rvi. 7. « G«L ii. 7, XUmts; 9, tvivra. » nj^'jn 
 
410 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL, 
 
 Churcli? It might be that they had been treated by 
 Jerusalem Christians of the Pharisaic party with surrep- 
 titious opposition and undisguised dislike, but surely this 
 would not weigh with them for a moment. The three 
 heads of the afflicted Church begged the missionaries 
 to the luxurious world " that they would remember the 
 poor." It was a request in every respect agreeable to 
 the tender and sympathetic heart of Paul.^ Apart from 
 all urging, he had already shown spontaneous earnestness ^ 
 in this holy work of compassion, and now that it came 
 to him as a sort of request, by way of acknowledging 
 the full recognition which was being conceded to him, 
 he was only too glad to have such means of showing 
 that, while he would not yield an inch of essential truth, 
 he would make any amount of sacrifice in the cause of 
 charity. Thenceforth Paul threw himself into the plan 
 of collecting alms for the poor saints at Jerusalem with 
 characteristic eagerness. There was scarcely a Church or 
 a nation that he visited which he did not press for con- 
 tributions, and the Galatians themselves could recall the 
 systematic plan of collection which he had urged upon 
 their notice.* In the very hottest moment of displeasure 
 against those who at any rate represented themselves as 
 emissaries of James, he never once relaxed his kindly 
 efforts to prove to the Church, which more than all 
 others suspected and thwarted him, that even theological 
 differences, with all their exasperating bitterness, had not 
 dulled the generous sensibility of a heart which, by many 
 
 ' Gal. ii. 10, % /cat itrwoiiaaa airh tovto irotrjiriu ; lit., " whicb also I was eager 
 to do at once that very thing." " Quod etiam soUicitns fui hoe ipsum faeere." 
 (Vvdg.) 
 
 " Acts xi. 29. 
 
 ' 1 Oor. x7i. 3 ; cf . 2 Oor. viii., ix. ; Bom. xv. 27. Even many years after 
 we find St. Fatd still most heartUy fulfilling this part of the mutual compact 
 (Acts XXXV, 17). Fhrygia alone seems to haVe contributed nothing. 
 
ST. PAUL AND TBB THREE. 411 
 
 a daily affliction, had learnt to tlirob with sympathy for 
 the afflicted. 
 
 One part, then, of his mission to Jerusalem was ful- 
 filled when the Lord's brother, and he to whom He had 
 assigned " the keys of the kingdom of heaven," and he 
 who had leaned his head at the Last Supper upon His 
 breast, had yielded to him their friendly acknowledg- 
 ment. It is on this that he chiefly dwells to the 
 Galatians. In their Churches brawling Judaisers had 
 dared to impugn his commission and disparage his teach- 
 ing, on the asserted authority of the mother Church and 
 its bishop. It was Paul's object to prove to them that 
 his sacred independence had been acknowledged by the 
 very men who were now thrust into antagonism with 
 his sentiments. There may be in his language a little 
 sense of wrong ; but, on the other hand, no candid reader 
 can fail to see that a fair summary of the antagonism 
 to which he alludes is this — " Separation, not opposition ; 
 antagonism of the followers rather than of the leaders ; 
 personal antipathy of the Judaisers to St. Paul rather 
 than of St. Paul to the Twelve." ^ 
 
 But St. Luke is dealing with another side of this 
 visit. To him the authority of Paul was not a sub- 
 ject of doubt, nor was it seriously questioned by those for 
 whom he wrote ; but with the teacldng of Paul it was 
 far different, and it was Luke's object to show that the 
 main principles involved, so far from being dangerous, had 
 received the formal sanction of the older Apostles. That 
 there was a severe struggle he does not attempt to conceal, 
 but he quotes an authentic document to prove that it ended 
 triumphantly in favour of the Apostle of the Gentiles. 
 
 ' Jowett, JSomang, &c., i. 326. In this essay, and that of Dr. Lightfoot on 
 " St. Paul and the Three" {Gal. 276—346), the reader will find the facts fairly 
 appreciated and carefully stated. 
 
412 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 A concrete form was given to tWs debate by the pre- 
 sence of Titus as one of Paul's companions. Around this 
 young man arose, it is evident, a wild clamour of contro-, 
 versy. The Judaisers insisted that he should be circum- 
 cised. So long as he remained uncircumcised they refused 
 to eat with him, or to regard him as in any true sense a 
 brother. They may even have been indignant with Paul 
 for his free companionship with this Gentile, as they had 
 previously been with Peter for sharing the hospitality of 
 Cornelius. The Agapse were disturbed with these conten- 
 tions, and with them the celebration of the Holy Com- 
 munion. Alike Titus and Paul must have had a troubled 
 time amid this storm of conflicting opinions, urged with 
 the rancorous intensity which Jews always display when 
 their religious fanaticism is aroused.^ Even after the lapse 
 of five or six years St. Paul cannot speak of this episode 
 in his life without an agitation which affects his language 
 to so extraordinary a degree as to render uncertain to us 
 the result, of which doubtless the Gralatians were aware, 
 but about which we should be glad to have more complete 
 certainty. The question is, did Paul, in this particular 
 instance, yield oi" not ? In other words, was Titus circum- 
 cised ? In the case of Timothy, Paul avowedly took into 
 account his Jewish parentage on the mother's side,' and 
 therefore circumcised him as a Jew, and not as a Gentile, 
 because otherwise it would have been impossible to secure 
 his admission among Jews. Even this might be enough 
 to give rise to the charges of inconsistency with which we 
 know him to have been assailed. But if he had indeed 
 bowed to the storm in the case of Titus — if he, the firmest 
 champion of Christian uncircumcision, the foremost 
 preacher of the truth that in Christ Jesus neither circum- 
 
 ^ The date of the "Council" at Jerusalem is about A.D, 61; that of the 
 Epistle to the Galatians about A.D. 58. 
 
WAS TITUS CIRCUMCISED P 413 
 
 cision was anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which 
 worketh by love, had still allowed an adult Gentile convert 
 to submit to a Jewish rite which had no meaning except as 
 an acknowledgment that he was bound to keep the Mosaic 
 Law — then, indeed, he might be charged with having 
 sacrificed the very point at issue. He might of course 
 urge that he had only done it for the moment by way of 
 peace, because otherwise the very life of Titus would have 
 been endangered, or because his pi;esence in the Holy City 
 might otherwise have caused false rumours and terrible 
 riots, as the presence of Trophimus^ did in later years. 
 He might say, "I circumcised Titus only because there 
 was no other chance of getting the question reasonably 
 discussed j" but if he yielded at all, however noble and 
 charitable may have, been his motives, he gave to his 
 opponents a handle against him which assuredly they did 
 not fail to use. 
 
 Now that he was most vehemently urged to take this 
 step is clear, and perhaps the extraordinary convulsiveness 
 of his expressions is only due to the memory of all that he 
 must have undergone in that bitter struggle.* In holding 
 
 * This element of the decision has been universally overlooked. Gentiles 
 of course there were in Jerusalem, but for a Jew deliberately to introduce an 
 uncircumcised Ceutile as a full partaker of aU religious riies in a Judceo- 
 Christian community was a terribly dangerous experiment. If all the power 
 and influence of Josephns could hardly save from massacre two illustrious 
 and highly-connected Qentiles who had fled to him for refuge — although there 
 was no pretence of extending to them any religious privileges — ^becAuse the 
 multitude said that " they ought not to be suffered to live if they would not 
 diange their religion to tiie religion of those to whom they fled for safety " 
 (Vit. 31), how could Paul answer for the life of Titus ? 
 
 = This is the view of Dr. Lightfoot {Oal, p. 102), who says, " The 
 oounsels of the Apostles of the circumcision are the hidden rock on whicli the 
 grammar of the sentence is wrecked;" and "the sensible undercurrent of 
 feeling, the broken grammar of the sentence, the obvious tenour of particular 
 plirases, all convey the impi-ession that, though the final victory was complete, it 
 was not attained without a struggle, in which St. Paul miuntained, at one time 
 almost angle-handed, the cause of Gentile freedom." I give my reason after- 
 
414 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 out to the last he had, doubtless, been forced to encounter 
 the pressure of nearly the whole body of the Church at 
 Jerusalem, including almost certainly all who were living 
 of the twelve Apostles, and their three leaders. Perhaps 
 even Barnabas himself might, as afterwards, have lost aJl 
 firm grasp of truths which seemed sufficiently clear when 
 he was working with Paul alone on the wild uplands of 
 Lycaonia. Certainly St. Paul's moral courage triumphed 
 over the severest test, if he had the firmness and fortitude 
 to hold out against this mass of influence. It would have 
 been far bolder than Whitefield standing before a conclave 
 of Bishops, or Luther pleading his cause at Eome. As 
 far as courage was concerned, it is certain that no fear 
 would ever have induced him to give way ; but might he 
 not have yielded ad interim, and as a charitable concession, 
 in order to secure a permanent result ? 
 
 Let us consider, in all its roughness, his own language. 
 "Then," he says, "fourteen years after,^ I again went 
 up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking with me also 
 Titus. ^ Now, I went up in accordance with a reve- 
 lation, and I referred to them' the Gospel which I am 
 preaching among the Gentiles — privately, however, to 
 those of repute, lest perchance I am now running,* 
 
 ■wards for adopting a difEerent conclnsion. The sense of a complete victory 
 contemplated years afterwards would hardly produce all this agitation. It 
 would have been alluded to with the calm modesty of conscious strength. 
 Not so an error of judgment involving serious consequences though actuated 
 by the best motives. If Titus was not circumcised, why does not Paul plainly 
 say so ? 
 
 ^ Gal. ii. 1 — 6. Fourteen years after his first visit. The " about " of the 
 B.V. should be omitted. 
 
 ' And some others, whom, however, he could hardly be said to " take with 
 him " (Acts XV. 2). 
 
 ' hveeiiiriv aiiTois, " communicated " or " referred to them" — not " placed in 
 their hands " (cf. Acts xxv. 14). Tertullian says " ad patrodniwm, Petri, &o.," 
 which is too strong. 
 
 * I take Tp^x" as an indie., but it may be the subjunctive, as in 1 ThesB. 
 iii. 5, and for the metaphor Phil. ii. 16. 
 
ST. PAUL'S STATEMENT. 415 
 
 or even had run, to no purpose.^ But not even Titus, 
 who was with me, Grreek though he was, was obliged to 
 be circumcised; but [he was only circumcised ?] because of 
 the stealthily-introduced false brethren — people who came 
 secretly in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ 
 Jesus, in order that they shall ^ utterly enslave us, [(to 
 whom) not even]^ for an hour did we yield hy way of sub- 
 
 ' Dr. Lightfoot takes this to mean "that my past and present labours 
 might not be thwarted by opposition or misunderstanding." So Theophylact, 
 ad loo., Hva nil trriais yiiniTai KoX tva &pdf rh iTKilpSaKov. The context seeuis to me 
 to show that it implies a desire on St. Patd's part to know whether anything 
 valid could be urged against his own personal conTiction. And so Tert. adv. 
 Marc. i. 20 ; v. 3 ; iv. 2. The admission of the possibility of a misgiving as 
 to the practical issue only adds strength to the subsequent confirmation. 
 To St. Paul's uncertainty or momentary hesitation I would compare that of 
 St. John the Baptist (Matt. xi. 3). 
 
 2 icaraSouKdtrovin (x, A, B, C, D, E). I have literally translated the bold 
 solecism, which was not unknown to ^ellenistie Greek, and by which it gains 
 in Tividness (of. iv. 17, VvA fijAouTe). 
 
 ' In the insertion, omission, or variation of these two words oTs oliSc the 
 MSS. and quotations become as agitated and uncertain as the style of the writer. 
 If we could'beUeve that the word oiSc — "not even" — was spurious it would 
 then, I think, be obvious that St. Paul meant to say, " Owing to these false 
 brethren I did, it is true, make a temporary concession (vphs &pav), but only 
 with a view of ultimately securing iov you a permanent liberty " (Sta/ifli^ 
 irphs 6/iSs) ; " ostendens," as TertuUian says, "propter quid fecerit quod neo 
 fecisset nee ostendisset, si illud propter quod fecit non accidisset " [adv. Marc. 
 v. 3). But admittedly the evidence of the manuscripts is in favour of retaining 
 the negative, though it is omitted by Irenseus, is absent from many Latin copies, 
 is declared on the doubtful authority of Victorinus to have been absent from 
 the majority of Latin and Greek manuscripts, and is asserted by Tertullian 
 to have been fraudulently introduced by the heretic Marcion. Surely the 
 uncertainty which attaches to it, joined to the fact that even its retention by 
 no means excludes the supposition that Paul, to his own great subsequent 
 regret, had given way under protest while the debate was pending, are argu- 
 ments in favour of this having been the case. If this view be right it would 
 give a far deeper significance to such passages as Gal. i. 10 j iv. 11. In that case 
 his vacillation was an error of policy, which we have no more reason to believe 
 was impossible in his case than a moral error was in that of St. Peter at Antioch ; 
 but it would have been an error of practical judgment, not of unsettled prin- 
 ciple ; an error of noble self-abnegation, not of timid complaisance. Andsurely 
 St. Paul would have been the very last of men to claim immunity from the 
 possibility of error. " The fulness of divine gifts," says Dr. Newman, " did 
 not tend to destroy what is human in him, but to spiritualise and perfect it." 
 
416 THE LIFE AOT) WORK OF ST. PAUL, 
 
 mission — in order that the truth of the Gospel may remain 
 entirely with you;^ from those, however, who are reputed' 
 to be something — whatever they were^ makes no matter 
 to me — God accepts no man's face — well, to me those in 
 repute added nothing." Such is a literal translation of 
 his actual words in this extraordinary sentence; and he 
 then proceeds to narrate the acknowledgment of the Three, 
 that his authority was in no sense disparate with theirs ; 
 nay, that in dealing with the Gentiles he was to be re- 
 garded as specially endowed with Divine guidance. 
 
 But does he mean that, " I never for a moment yielded 
 and circumcised Titus, in spite of the enormous pressure 
 which was put upon me ? " or does he mean, " I admit — 
 grieved as I am to admit it — ^that in the case of Titus I 
 did yield. Titus was circumcised, but not under compul- 
 sion. I yielded, but not out of submission. The conces- 
 sion which I made — vast as it was, mistaken as it may 
 have been — was not an abandonment of principle, but a 
 stretch of charity ? " 
 
 It must be remembered that Paul " cared for ideas, not 
 for forms;" the fact that circumcision was a matter in 
 itself indifferent— the admitted truth that men could be 
 saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by that 
 alone — may have induced him, under strong pressure,* to 
 concede that the rite should be performed — with the same 
 kind of half -contemptuous indifference to the exaggeration 
 of trifles which makes him say to the Galatians in a burst 
 of bitter irony, " I wish that, while they are about it, 
 
 ' Stttfiehri* 
 
 * SoKovvres, " seem," not " seemed," as in E.V. 
 
 3 Benan and others see in this a covert allusion to the former disbelief of 
 James ; this is utterly unlikely, seeing that the reference is also to Peter and 
 John. It means, rather, "however great their former privilege in nearness to 
 the living Christ" (of. 2 Oor. vi. 16). Indeed, it is better to join the ttotc to 
 the iii-o7oi, " qualeBCtmque." 
 
 * Acts XV. 10. 
 
REASONS FOE YIELDING. " 417 
 
 these Judaisers, who mate so much of circumcision, 
 would go a- little farther still and make themselves 
 altogether like your priests of Agdistis." ^ When Paul 
 took on him the Nazarite vow, when he circumcised 
 Timothy,*^ he did it out of a generous desire to re- 
 move all needless causes of offence, and not to let his 
 work be hindered by a stiff refusal to give way in things 
 unimportant. We know that it was his avowed principle 
 to become all things to all men, if so be he might win 
 some. His soul was too large to stickle about matters of 
 no moment. Can we not imagine that in the wild strife 
 of tongues which inade Jerusalem hateful so long as the 
 uncircumcised Titus was moving among the members of 
 the Church, Paul might have got tip and said, " I have 
 come here to secure a decision about a matter 9f vast 
 moment. If the presence of Titus looks to you Hke an 
 offensive assertion of foregone conclusions — well, it is only 
 an individual instance — and while the question is still un* 
 decided, I will have him circumcised, and we shall then be 
 able to proceed more calmly to the consideration of the 
 general question?" Might he not have regarded this as a 
 case ia which it was advisable " reculerpour mieuse sauter ?" 
 and to his own friends who shared his sentiments might 
 he not have said, "What does it matter in this particular 
 instance ? It can mean nothing. Titus himself is generous 
 enough to wish it for the sake of peace; he fuUy un* 
 derstands that he is merely yielding to a violent pre- 
 judice. It may be most useful to him in securing future 
 admission to Jewish assemblies. To him, to us, it will be 
 regarded as 'concision,' not ' circumcisiSn ; ' an outward 
 observance submitted to from voluntary good nature ; not 
 by any means a solemn precedent, or a significant rite?'* 
 
 » Gal. T. 12 (in the Gieek). 'Acts xvi. a 
 
 B B 
 
4,1b THE LIFE AND WORK Or ST. PAUL. 
 
 And would not Titus have also urged the Apostle not to 
 be deterred by any consideration for him ? Might he not 
 naturally have said, " I am grieved that there should be 
 all this uproar and heart-burning on my account, and I 
 am quite willing to allay it by becoming a proselyte of 
 righteousness ? " If Titus took this generous line, Paul's 
 reluctance to take advantage of his generosity might have 
 been increased, and yet an additional argument would 
 have been supplied to his opponents. " Moses," they 
 would have said, "commanded circumcision; we cannot 
 let this Gentile sit at our Agapse without it ; he is him- 
 self, much to his credit, quite ready to consent to it ; why 
 do you persist in troubling our Israel by your refusal to 
 consent ? " 
 
 For whatever may be urged against tliis view, I can- 
 not imagine why, if Paul did nof yield, he should use 
 language so ambiguous, so involved, that whether we 
 retain the negative or not his language has still led 
 many — as it did in the earliest ages of the Church — to 
 believe that he did the very thing which he is generally 
 supposed to be denying. Nothing could have been easier 
 or pleasanter than to say, "I did not circumcise Titus, 
 though every possible effort was made to force me to do 
 so. My not doing so — even at Jerusalem, even at the 
 beginning of the whole controversy, even at the head- 
 quarters of the Juds30-Christian tyranny, even in the 
 face of the, evident wish of the Apostles — proves, once 
 for aU, both my independence and my consistency," But 
 it was immensely more difficult to explain why he really 
 had given way in that important instance. It may be 
 that Titus was by his side while he penned this very para- 
 graph, and, if so, it would be to Paul a yet more bitter 
 reminder of a concession which, more than aught else, 
 had been quoted to prove his subjection and his insincerity. 
 
OVBBEULED FOR GOOD. 419 
 
 He is therefore so anxious to show why he did it, and what 
 were not his motives, that ultimately he unconsciously 
 omits to say it in so many words at all.^ And if, after 
 the decision of the meeting, and the battle which he had 
 fought, Paul still thought it advisable to circumcise 
 Timothy merely to avoid offending the Jews whom he 
 was ahoat to visit, would not the same motives work 
 with him at this earlier period when he saw how the 
 presence of Titus threw the whole Church into confiision ? 
 If the false inferences which might he deduced from 
 the concession were greater in the case of a pure-blooded 
 G-entile, on the other hand the necessity for diminishing 
 offence was also more pressing, and the obhgatoriness of 
 circumcision had at that time been less seriously impugned. 
 And it is even doubtful whether such a course was not 
 overruled for good. But for this step would it, for in- 
 stance, have been possible for Titus to be overseer of the 
 Church of Crete ? Would any circumcised Jew have tole- 
 rated at this epoch the " episcopate " of an uncircumcised 
 Gentile? I have dwelt long upon this incident because, 
 if I am right, there are few events in the biography of 
 St. Paul more illustrative alike of his own character and of 
 the circumstances of his day. He would rather have died, 
 would rather have suffered a schism between the Church of 
 Jerusalem and the Churches of her Grentile converts, than 
 admit that there could be no salvation out of the pale of 
 
 • " Cette transaction coflta beanconp a Paul, et la phrase dans laqnelle fl 
 en parle est nne des plus originales qa'il ait ecrites. Le mot qui Ini co&te 
 semble ne pouroir conler de 8a plmne. La phrase an premier conp d'oeil 
 parait dire que Titus ne fut pas eirconcis, tandis qu'elle impliqne qu'il le fut " 
 (Benan, Bt. Paul, p. 92). It need hardly he said that there is no question 
 of gappression here, because I assume that the fact was perfectly well known. 
 We find a similar characteristic of style and character in Bom. ix. Baur, 
 on the other hand (but on very insufficient grounds), thinks that " nothing 
 can be more absurd." Tet it was the view of Tertullian (c. Mare. v. 3), and 
 Baur equally disbelieves the erpressly asserted drcumdsion of Timothy. 
 
 B B 2 
 
420 THE LIFE AITD WORK Or ST. PAUL. 
 
 Mosaism. In this or tliat instance lie was ready enough 
 — perhaps, in the largeness of his heart, too ready for his 
 own peace — to go almost any length rather than bring 
 himself and, what was infinitely more dear to him, the 
 Gospel with which he had been entrusted, into collision 
 with the adamantine walls of Pharisaic bigotry. But he 
 always let it be understood that his principle remained 
 intact — that Christ had in every sense abolished the curse 
 of the Law — that, except in its universal moral precepts, 
 it was no longer binding on the Grentiles — ^that the " tra- 
 ditions of the fathers " had for them no further signifi- 
 cance. He intended at all costs, by almost unlimited 
 concession in the case of individuals, by unflinching re- 
 sistance when principles were endangered, to establish, as 
 far at any rate as the Gentiles were concerned, the truth 
 that Christ had obliterated the handwriting in force 
 against us, and taken it out of the way, nailing the torn 
 fragments of its decrees to His cross. -^ 
 
 And so the great debate came on. The Apostles — at 
 any rate, their leaders — had to a great extent been won 
 over in private conferences ; the opponents had be^ par- 
 tially silenced by a personal concession. Paul must have 
 looked forward with breathless interest to the result of 
 the meeting which should decide whether Jerusalem was 
 stUl to be the metropolis of the Faith, or whether she 
 was to be abandoned to the isolation of unprogressive 
 literalism, while the Gospel of Christ started on a new 
 career from Antioch and from the West. One thing 
 only must not be. She must not swathe the daily- 
 strengthening youth of Christianity in the dusty cere- 
 ments of an abolished systeip ; she must not make 
 Christianity a religion of washings and cleansings, of 
 times and seasons, of meats and drinks, but a religion of 
 
 ^ Ool. iL 14 
 
CHARGES AJSTD COUNTER-CHARGES. 421 
 
 holiness and of tlie heart — a religion in which men might 
 eat or not as they pleased, and might regard every day 
 as alike sacred, so that they strove with all their power 
 to revealin their lives a love to man springing out of 
 the root of love to God. 
 
 We are not surprised to hear that there was much 
 eager and passionate debate.^ Doubtless, as in all similar 
 gatherings of the phurch to settle disputed questions, 
 there weire mutual recriminations and misunderstandings, 
 iastances of untenable argument,' of inaccurate language, 
 of confused conceptions. The Holy Spirit, indeed, was 
 among them then, as now, in all gatherings of faithful 
 Christian men : He was with them to guide and to 
 inspire. But neither then nor now — as we see by 
 the clearest evidence of the New Testament then, and 
 as we see by daily experience now — did His influence 
 work to the miraculous extinction of human differences, 
 or obliteration of human imperfections. Those who 
 supported the cause of Paul rendered themselves liable 
 to those charges, so terrible to a Jew, of laxness, of 
 irreligion, of apostasy, of unpatriotism, of not being 
 believers in revealed truth. Was not Moses inspired? 
 Was the Sacred Pentateuch to be reduced to a dead 
 letter ? Were all the curses of Ebal to be braved ? Were 
 the Thorah-roUs to be flung contemptuously into the Dead 
 Sea? On the other hand, those who maintained the 
 necessity of circumcision and of obedience to the Law, 
 laid themselves open to the fatal question, " If the Law 
 is essential to salvation, what, then, has been the work 
 of Christ?" 
 
 But when the subject had been amply discussed, 
 Peter arose.*^ Which side he would take could be hardly 
 
 * See on this dissension Hooker, Eccl. Pol. iv., xi. 
 
 « On the views of St. John, see Excursus XVn., "St. John and St. Panl." 
 
422 THE LIFE A3SD WORK OF ST. PAUIi. 
 
 doubtful. He had, in fact, already braved and over- 
 borne the brunt of a similar opposition. But an excep- 
 tional instance was felt to be a very different thing 
 from a universal rule. It was true that Peter did not 
 now stand alone, but found th« moral support, which 
 was so necessary to him, in the calm dignity of Barnabas 
 and the fervid genius of Paul. But in all other respects 
 his task was even more difficult than it had been before, 
 and, rising to the occasion, he spoke with corresponding 
 boldness and force.* His speech was in accordance with 
 the practical, forthright, non-argumentative turn of his 
 mind. Pilled with energetic conviction by the logic of 
 facts, he reminded them how, long ago,® the question had 
 been practically settled. Grod had selected him to win over 
 the first little body of converts from the Gentile world; and 
 the gift of the Spirit to them had showed that they were 
 cleansed by faith. To lay on them the burden of the Law 
 — a burden to the daily life which it surrounded with 
 unpractical and often all but impracticable observances — 
 a burden to the conscience because it created a sense of 
 obligation of which it could neither inspire the fulfilment 
 nor remedy the shortcoming — a burden which had there- 
 fore been found intolerable both by their fathers and them- 
 selves' — was simply to tempt God by hindering His 
 manifest purposes, and resisting His manifest will. In 
 one doctrine all present were agreed ; * it was that alike 
 
 ' Acts IT. 7 — ^11. Again -we have to notice the interesting circumstance 
 that in this brief speech the language is distinctly Fetrine. Such minute marks 
 of authenticity are wholly beyond the reach of a forger. 
 
 ' The expression aip' ruiepSiv Spx"'"" would naturally refer to the tipxii of the 
 Gospel (cf. xi. 15 ; xxi. 16; Phil. iv. 16). But if the conversion of Cornelius 
 took place during the " rest " procured for the Church by the absorption of the 
 Jews in their attempt to rebut the mad impiety of Gaius, A.D. 40, that was 
 not twelve years before this time. 
 
 ' Gal. y. 3. The Law was a (vyhy Sov\4ias, the Gospel a (vyhs xcW^'i * 
 ^opjloy i\a^^6v (Matt. xi. 29, 30). * Of. Acts xi. 17. 
 
THE DEBATE. 423 
 
 the Jews and the Gentile converts should he saved only 
 by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. The inference 
 then was obvious, that they were not and could not be 
 saved by the works of the Law. In the observance of 
 those works the Jews, on whom they were originally en- 
 joined, might naturally persevere till fresh light came; 
 but these hereditary customs had never been addressed to 
 the Gentiles, and, since they were unnecessary to salvation, 
 they must obviously be to the Gentiles not burdensome 
 only, but a positive stumbling-block. 
 
 The weight of Peter's dignity had produced silence in 
 the assembly. The excitement was now so far calmed 
 that Paul and Barnabas were at least listened to without 
 interruptions. Barnabas— who, in the Jewish Church, stiU 
 retained his precedence, and who was as acceptable to the 
 audience from his past liberality as Paul was unacceptable 
 from his former persecutions — spoke first ; but both he and 
 Paul' seem to have abstained from arguing the question. 
 All the arguments had been urged at private conferences 
 when words could be deliberately considered. They were 
 not there to impress their own views, but to hear those of 
 the Apostles and of the Church they governed. Barnabas 
 never seems to have been prominent in debate, and Paul 
 was too wise to discuss theological differences before a pro- 
 miscuous audience. They confined themselves, therefore, 
 to a simple history of their mission, dwelling especially 
 on those " signs and wonders " wrought by their hands 
 among the Gentiles, which were a convincing proof that, 
 though they might not win the approval of man, they 
 had all along enjoyed the blessing of God. 
 
 Then rose James. Every one present must have felt 
 that the practical decision of the Church — Paul must have 
 felt that, humanly speaking, the future of Christianity — 
 depended on his words. A sense of awe clung about him 
 
424 THE LIFE AND -WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 and all lie said and did. Clothed with, a mysterious anci 
 indefinable dignity as "the brother of the Lord," that 
 dignity and mystery were enhanced by his bearing, dress, 
 manner of life, and entire appearance. Tradition, as em- 
 bodied in an Ebionite romance, and derived from thence 
 by Hegesippus,^ represents him as wearing no wool, but 
 clothed in fine white linen from head to foot, and — either 
 from some priestly element in his genealogy, or to symbo- 
 lise his " episcopate " at Jerusalem — as wearing on his fore- 
 head the petalon, or golden plate of High-priesthood.^ It is 
 said that he was so holy, and so highly esteemed by the 
 whole Jewish people, that he alone was allowed, like the 
 High Priest, to enter the Holy Place; that he lived a 
 celibate^ and ascetic life ; that he spent long hours alone 
 in the Temple praying for the people, till his knees became 
 hard and callous as those of the camel ; that he had the 
 power of working miracles ; that the rain fell in accord- 
 ance with his prayers ; that it was owing to his merits 
 that Grod's impending wrath was averted from the JeAvish 
 nation; that he received the title of " the Just " and 
 Obliam, or " Rampart of the People ; " and that he was 
 shadowed forth in the images of the prophets.* Some of 
 
 ' " The Ascent of James." The narrative of Hegesippus is quoted at length 
 by Eusebius, S. E. ii. 23. Other, passages which relate to him are Epiphan. 
 Haer. Ixxviii. 7, 13, 14 ; Jer. JDe Vir. Illustr. 2 ; Oomm. in iGal. i. 19. 
 
 " Epiphan. Haer. xxix. 4. The same story is told of St. John, on the 
 authority of Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus (Euseb. H. E. iii. 31 ; v. 24). 
 Either Polycrates has taken literally some metaphorical allusion, or John really 
 did sometimes adopt a symbol of Christian High-priesthood. The former 
 seems the more probable supposition. 
 
 • This is rendered doubtful by 1 Cor. ix. 6, unless he was an exception 
 to the other Desposyni. 
 
 * Dan. i, 8, 12 ; Tob. i. 11, 12. lis ol 'irpo(pfiTat STjXoOiri wepl airoB (Heges. 
 uhi swpr.). This, perhaps, refers to Isa. iii. 10. If he be the Jacob of Kephar 
 Seohaniah he is indeed regarded as a Mim, yet he is represented as having 
 various dealings with orthodox Rabbis (Gratz, Onoatic. u. Jvdaism, p. 25). The 
 name Oblias, n;''.J^n, is explained by Hausrath to meaii " Jehovah my chain," 
 
JAMES. 425 
 
 these details must be purely imaginative ; but legends, as 
 has well been said, are like the clouds that gather upon the 
 mountain summits, and show the height and take the 
 shapes of the peaks about which they cling. We may 
 readily believe that he was a Nazarite, perhaps even an 
 ascetic — one who, by the past affinities of his character, was 
 bound rather to Banus, and John Baptist, and the strict 
 communities of the Essenes, than to the disciples of One 
 who came eating and drinking, pouring on social life the 
 brightness of His holy joy, attending the banquet of the 
 Pharisee at Capernaum, and the feast of the bridegroom 
 at Cana, not shrinking from the tears with which Mary of 
 Magdala or the perfumes with which Mary of Bethany 
 embathed his feet. 
 
 Such was the man who now rose to speak, with the 
 long locks of the ISTazarite streaming over his white robe, 
 and with all the sternness of aspect which can hardly have 
 failed to characterise one who was so rigid in his con- 
 victions, so uncompromising in his judgments, so incisive 
 in his speech. The importance of his opinion lay in the 
 certainty that it could hardly fail to be, at least nominally, 
 adopted by the multitude, among whom he exercised an 
 authority, purely local indeed and limited, but within 
 those limits superior even to that of Peter. The most 
 fanatical of bigots could hardly refuse to be bound by the 
 judgment of one who was to the very depth of his being 
 a loyal Jew ; to whom even unconverted Jews looked up 
 with reverence ; to whom the " Law," which neither St. 
 Peter nor St. John so much as mention in their Epistles, 
 was so entirely the most prominent conception that he 
 does not once mention the GJospel, and only alludes to it 
 
 iriih aUndon to the liTazarite tow. Hitrig {Kl. Propheten) thicks the name 
 may refur to the staff, o^iin, in Zech. xi. 7. Is it possible that the name may 
 be some confusion of Jhh {earn, "&ther of the people ? " 
 
426 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 under tlie aspect of a law, thougli as " tlie perfect la^^ of 
 Hberty."^ 
 
 His speecli — ^whicli, as in so many other instances, 
 bears internal marks of authenticity^ — ^was thoroughly 
 Judaic in tone, and yet showed that the private arguments 
 of the Apostles of the Gentiles had not been thrown away 
 on a mind which, if in comparison with the mind of a Paul, 
 and even of a Peter, it was somewhat stern and narrow, was 
 yet the mind of a remarkable and holy man who would not 
 struggle against the guidance of the Holy Spirit of Grod. 
 Peter, in one of those impetuous outbursts of generous 
 conviction which carried him beyond his ordinary self, had 
 dauntlessly laid down broad principles which are, perhaps, 
 the echo of thoughts which Paul had impressed upon his 
 mind. It would have been too much to expect that James 
 would speak with equal breadth and boldness. Had he 
 done so, we should have felt at once that he was using 
 language unlike himself, unlike all that we know of him, 
 unlike the language of his qwn Epistle. But though his 
 speech is as. different from St. Peter's as possible — though 
 it proposed restrictions where he had indicated liberty — it 
 yet went farther than could have been hoped ; farther 
 than bigots either liked or cordially accepted ; and, above 
 all, it conceded the main point at issue in implying that 
 circumcision and the ceremonial law were, as a whole, 
 non-essential for the Grentiles. 
 
 Requesting their attention, he reminded them that 
 Symeon^ — as, using the Hebrew form of the name, he 
 characteristically calls his brother Apostle — had narrated to 
 them the Divine intimations which led to the call of the 
 Gentiles, and this he shows was in accordance with ancient 
 
 > James i. 25 ; ii. 12. 
 
 ' ^.g., " on whom my name has been called ;" cf . James ii. 7. 
 
 ' As in 2 Peter i. 1. This is "the last mention of Peter in the Acts. 
 
SPEECH OF JAMES. 427 
 
 prophecy, and, therefore, "with. IKvine fore-ordinatioii.^ 
 But ohviously — ^this was patent to all Jews alike — the 
 Grentiles wonld never accept the whole Mosaic Law. TTis 
 authoritative decision,^ therefore, took the form of " a 
 concession and a reserve." He proposed to release the 
 converted Gentiles from all hut four restrictions — which 
 helonged to what was called the Noachian dispensation * — 
 ahstinence, namely, from things polluted hy being offered 
 to idols,* Mid from fornication, and from anything 
 strangled, and from blood.* "For," he adds, in words 
 which are pregnant with more than one significance, 
 " Moses from of old hath preachers in the synagogues in 
 every city, being read every Sabbath day." By this 
 addition he prohahly meant to imply that since Moses was 
 universally read in synagogues attended both hy Jews 
 and hy Gentile converts, we will tell the Grentiles that this 
 Law which they hear read is not universally binding on 
 them, but only so far as charity to the Jew requires ; and 
 we wiU tell the Jews that we have no desire to abrogate 
 ^ them that Law to whose ordinances they hear a weekly 
 witness. 
 
 One of the most remarkable points in this speech is the 
 
 > Amos ix. 11, 12. The ime leading here, among nmnberless divergeuees, 
 seems to ha TtworA n' miros (», B, G), " it lias lieen known of old." James 
 aflinni^ vhat A''")T">p^"*T'«y^, ^w^ ^■^■s sf«)««h i« unt freo frtrni diffienltiea. (See 
 Banr. PomL L 124.) 
 
 * ^ Kfiuwrlnit heinis (aHjprimiis inter pares. (See Acts xr. 6 ; xxL 25.) 
 ' See CSen. is. 4 
 
 * Acts XT. 20, oAiOT^fura rar ftSA*Mr= ciSvX^Arra (tct. 29; xxi. 25) 
 *AXiffyc4= jra<iI,"toiedeemiritIiUood" (Dan-LS; MaL L7). We are told 
 fhat ilie Jews in the days of Antiochns were leady to die lather than aSiiA*. 
 tv/rmr iMwyeitatui. 
 
 ^ These two lestoetions are piaeiiealfy identical, the -wruerk bdng enljr £ar- 
 ludden because the j necessaiity inrolTed the eating of the Uood. A^ cannot 
 mean "the shedding of Uood" — homieide, as some of the ^theis siqipased. 
 On "things sbran^ed" and "Uood," see T^xt .^L iz.; Sehottgen, Ear. 
 Eebr. im loe. ; Ealisch on Cieii. ix. 4^ 
 
428 THE LIFE AMD WORK OF ST. PAUL, 
 
 argument deduced from tlie prophecy of Amos, wMcli was 
 primarily meant as a prophecy of the restoration of Israel 
 from captivity, but which St. James, with a large insight 
 into the ever-widening horizons of prophecy, appHes to 
 the ideal restoration, the reception of Jehovah as their 
 conunon Father by the great family of man. In the re- 
 building of the ruined tabernacle of David he sees the 
 upraising' of the Chiu'ch of Christ as an ideal temple to 
 which the GentUes also shall be joined. Nor is it a 
 little striking that in adducing this prophecy he quotes, 
 not the Hebrew, but mainly the Septuagint.-^ The Grreek 
 differs essentially from the Hebrew, and differs from it in 
 the essence of the interpretation, which lies not only in 
 the ideal transference from the Temple to the Church, but 
 in dii'ect reference to the Grentiles — viz. : 
 
 " TAat the residue of men might seek after the Lord, 
 and all the Grentiles upon whom My name is called, saith 
 the Lord." 
 
 But the Hebrew says, much less appositely to the 
 purpose of the speaker, 
 
 " Tliat they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all 
 the heathen upon whom My name is called, saith the 
 Lord." 
 
 The difference is due to one of those numberless and 
 often extraordinary variations of the original text of which 
 the Septuagint is so decisive a proof, and which makes 
 that version so interesting a study .^ This application of 
 James may be regarded as implicitly involved even in 
 the Hebrew, and is yet more directly supported by other 
 passages ; ^ but the fact that here and elsewhere the New 
 
 1 irapevoxKetv (ver, 19) ocours only in the LXX. 
 
 ^ The LXX. seems clearly to have read din {adam), " man," for D^itJ 
 (fidorn). Dr. Davidson, Sacr. Hermen., p. 462, goes so far as to suppose that 
 the Jews have here altered the Hebrew text. 
 
 ^ E.g., Ps. hssxvi. 9; xxii. 31; di. 18; Isa.xliii. 7. 
 
THE DECISION. 429 
 
 Testament writers quote and argue from the imdeniably 
 variant renderings of tte Septuagint, quoting them from 
 memory, and often differing in actual words both from 
 these and from the Hebrew, shows how utterly removed 
 was their deep reverence for Scripture from any -supersti- 
 tion about the literal dictation of mere words or letters. 
 
 The debate was now at an end, for all the leaders had 
 spoken. The objections had been silenced ; the voice of 
 the chief elder had pronounced the authoritative conclu- 
 sion. It only remained to make that conclusion known 
 to those who were immediately concerned. The Apostles 
 and Elders and the whole Church therefore ratified the 
 decision, and selected two of their own body, men of high 
 repute — Judas Barsabbas and Silas -^ — to accompany the 
 emissaries from the Church of Antioch on their return, 
 and to be pledges for the genuineness of their written com- 
 munication. The letter which they sent embodied their re- 
 solutions, and ran as follows : — " The Apostles and Elders ^ 
 and brethren to the brethren from the Gentiles in Antioch 
 
 ' The Silas of Acts is, of course, the Silvanus — ^the name being Bomanised 
 for convenience— of the Epistles (1 Thess. i. 1 ; 2 Thess. i. 1), and perhaps 
 of 1 Pet. T. 12. He is not mentioned in the Acts after the first visit of 
 St. Paul to Corinth, and in undesigned coincidence with this his name dis- 
 appears in the superscription of the Epistles after that time. (See Wordsworth, 
 
 Phil. 1.1.) 
 
 2 Although KoX ol is omitted (», A, B, 0, the Vulgate and Armenian versions, 
 Irenseus, and Origen, and the koI by D), I still believe them to be genuine. 
 The diplomatic evidence seems indeed to be against them, the weight of the 
 above Uncials, &c., being superior to that of E, G, H, the majority of Cursives, 
 and the Syriac, Coptic, and ^thiopic versions. But-objection to the apparent 
 parity assigned to the brethren might have led, even in early days, to their 
 omission, while if not genuine it is not easy to see why they should have been 
 inserted. They also agree better with ver. 22, "with the whole Church," and 
 ver. 24, " going out from, among us." The importance of the reading is 
 shown by its bearing on such debates as the admission of laymen into ecclesi- 
 asiScal conferences, &c. Wordsworth quotes from Beveridge, Codex Cano- 
 nvm, Vindicaiiis, p. 20, the rule " Laici adjudidv/m de doctrma out disciplina 
 EededasUoaferendum nunquam admisd swnt." 
 
430 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUIi. 
 
 and Syria and Cilicia, greeting.^ Since we heard that 
 some who went out from among us troubled you with 
 statements, subverting® your souls, who received no injunc- 
 tion from us,^ we met together, and decided to select men 
 and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and 
 Paul,* persons^ who have given up their lives for the name 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ.® We have therefore commis- 
 sioned Judas and Silas to make in person the same an- 
 nouncement to you by word of mouth — namely, that it is 
 our decision, under the guidance of the Holy Grhost,'' to lay 
 no further burden^ upon you beyond these necessary things : 
 to abstain from things offered to idols, and from blood, 
 and from strangled, and from fornication, in keeping your- 
 selves from which it shall be well with you. Farewell." * 
 It will be observed that throughout this account I have 
 avoided the terms " Council " and " decree." It is only by 
 an unwarrantable extension of terms that the meeting of 
 
 ■ ' x^'pf"' lit-> "rejoice." It is a curious circumstance that the Greek 
 salutation — for the Hebrew salutation would be DiW, " Peace " — is only found 
 in the letter of a Gentile, Claudius Lysias (xxiii. 26), and in the letter of him 
 who must have taken a main part in drawing up this letter (James i. 1). 
 
 ^ avaaKeviQoinis, lit., " digging up from the foundations" (Thuc. iy. 116). 
 
 5 This disavowal is complete, and yet whole romances about counter-missions 
 in direct opposition to St. Paul, and organised by James, are securely built 
 on the expression in Gal. ii. 12, ti>/4s 47rb 'IokiS^ou, though it js very little 
 stronger than the tikcs KanxiSvres i.ir)> t^s 'loviaias of XT. 1, and not so strong 
 as the Tiyes ti fiiiSv i^e\06vTes here. 
 
 * In order, of course, that no possible suspicion might attach to the letter 
 as an expression of their real sentiments. 
 
 ' I have expressed the difEerence of ivSpas and hvBpdmovs, but the only dif- 
 ference intended is that the latter expression is more generic, 
 
 ° They were martyrs at least in will (Alf.). 
 
 ' Of. Ex. xiv. 31 ; 1 Sam. xii. 18. Hence the " Sancto Spiiitu snggerente," 
 commonly prefixed to decrees of Councils. 
 
 ' This word (of. ver. 10) seems to show the hand of Peter (cf . Rev. ii. 24). 
 
 ' D, followed by some versions, and'many Cursives, has the cnrious addition, 
 "and whatsoever. ye do not wish to be done to yourselves, do not to another. 
 Farewell, walking in the Holy Spirit." "With these minimMm requirements, 
 intended to put Gentiles on the footing of Proselytes of the Gate, compare. 
 Lev. xvii. 8 — 16 ; xviii. 26. 
 
NOT A "COUNCIL.'' 431 
 
 tlie Cliurcli of Jenisalem can be called a " CoTincil," and 
 the word connotes a totally different order of conceptions 
 to those that were prevalent at that early time. The 
 so-caUed Council of Jerusalem in no way resembled the 
 General Councils of the Church, either in its history, its 
 constitution, or its object. It was not a convention of 
 ordain,ed delegates, but a meeting of the entire Church 
 of Jerusalem to receive a deputation from the Church of 
 Antioch. Even Paul and Barnabas seem to have had no 
 vote ia the decision, though the votes of a promiscuous 
 body could certainly not be more enlightened than theirs, 
 nor was their allegiance due in any way to James. The 
 Church of Jerusalem might out of respect be consulted, 
 but it had no claim to superiority, no abstract prerogative 
 to bind its decisions on the free Church of God.^ The 
 "decree" of the "Council" was little more than the wise 
 recommendation of a single synod, addressed to a parti- 
 cular district, and possessing only a temporary validity.^ 
 It was, in fact, a local concordat. Little or no attention 
 has been paid by the universal Church to two of its 
 restrictions; a third, not many years after, was twice 
 discussed and settled by Paul, on the same general 
 principles, but with a by no means identical conclusion.^ 
 The concession which it made to the Gentiles, in not 
 insisting on the necessity of circumcision, was equally 
 treated as a dead letter by the Judaising party, and cost 
 Paul the severest battle of his lifetime to maintain. If 
 this circular letter is to be regarded as a binding and final 
 decree, and if the meeting of a single Church, not by 
 delegates but in the person of all its members, is to be 
 
 * See Article xxi. Pope Benedict XIV. says, " Speeiem, quandam et 
 imaginem Synodi in praedicta congregatione eminere" (De Synod, i. 1 — 6 ; op 
 Denton, Acts ii. 82). 
 
 a Hooker, Eccl. Pol. IV. xi. 5. ' Kom. xiv. ; 1 Cor. viiL 
 
432 THE LIFE AND WORK OE ST. PATTL. 
 
 regarded as a Council, never was tlie decision of a Council 
 less appealed to, and never was a decree regarded as so 
 entirely inoperative alike by those wlio repudiated the 
 validity of its concessions,^ and by those who discussed, as 
 though they were stOl an open question, no less than three 
 of its four restrictions.^ 
 
 The letter came to the Churches like a message of peace. 
 Its very limitation was, at the time, the best proof of its in- 
 spired wisdom. Considering the then state of the Church, no 
 decision could have more clearly evinced the guidance of the 
 Holy Spirit of Grod.^ It was all the more valuable because 
 there were so many questions which it left unsolved. The 
 heads of the Church admitted — and that was something 
 — ^that circumcision was non-essential to Gentiles, and they 
 may seem to have indulged in an extreme liberality in 
 not pressing the distinction between clean and unclean 
 meats, and, above aU, in not insisting on the abstinence 
 from the flesh of swine. By these concessions they un- 
 doubtedly removed great difl&culties from the path of 
 Gentile converts. But, after aU, a multitude of most 
 pressing questions remained, and left an opening for each 
 party to hold almost exactly the same opinions as before. 
 A Gentile was not to be compelled to circumcision and 
 
 1 Gal. iii. 1 ; v. 2, and passim,. It is astonisMng to find that even Justin 
 declares the eating of efSu>\ieuTa to be as bad as idolatry, and will hold no 
 intercourse with those who do it {Dial. c. Tryph. 35) ; but the reason was 
 that by that time (as in the days of the Maccabees) it had been adopted by 
 the heathen as a test of apostasy. And compare 1 Gor. x. 20, 21. (Bitschl, 
 Alt. Kath. Kirch 310, 2nd ed.) 
 
 ' St. Paul discusses the question of meats ofEered to idols without the 
 remotest reference to this decree, and the Western Ghurch have never held 
 themselves bound to abstain " from things strangled," and from blood (Aug. 
 c. Faust, xxxii. 13). St. Paul's silence about the decree when he writes to the 
 Romans perhaps rises from its provisional and partial character. It was only 
 addressed to the Gentile converts of " Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia." 
 
 ' " lis virent que le seul moyen d'^chapper aux grands questions est de ne 
 pas les rgsondre . . . de laisser les probl^mes s'oser et mourir faute de raisou 
 d'etre"(Renaii, S<. P. 93). 
 
QUESTIONS LEFT UNDECIDED, 433 
 
 Mosaism. Good; but migM it not be infinitely better 
 for him to accept them ? Migbt there not have been 
 in tbe minds of Jewish Christians, as in those of later 
 Eabbis, a belief that " even if Gentiles observe the seven 
 Noachian precepts, they do not receive the same reward as 
 Israelites?"^ It is, at any rate, clear that neither now 
 nor afterwards did the Judaisers admit Paul's dogmatic 
 principles, as subsequently stated to the Galatians and 
 Bomans. Probably they regarded him, at the best, as 
 the Ananias for future Eleazers.^ Above all, the burning 
 question of social relations Temained untouched. Titus 
 had been circumcised as the only condition on which the 
 members of the Church at Jerusalem woTild let him move 
 on an equal footing among themselves. It was all very 
 well for them to decide with more or less indifference about 
 " choots learets" " the outer world," " people elsewhere," 
 "those afar,"^ as though they could much more easily 
 contemplate the toleration of uncircumcised Christians, 
 provided that they were out of sight and out of mind in 
 distant cities ; but a Jew was a Jew, even if he lived in 
 the wilds of Isauria or the burnt plains of Phrygia ; and 
 how did this decision at Jerusalem help him to face the 
 practical question, " Am I, or am I not, to share a common 
 table with, to submit to the daily contact of people that 
 eat freely of that which no true Jew can think of without 
 a thrill of horror — the unclean beast?" 
 
 These were the questions which, after all, could only 
 be left to the solution of time. The prejudices of fifteen 
 centuries could not be removed in a day. Alike the more 
 enlightened and the more bigoted of Jews and Gentiles 
 continued to think very much as they had thought before, 
 
 * Ahhoda Zara, f. 3, 1. 
 » See Pfleiderer, ii. 13. 
 » Acts iL 39, ol e« luutpir i CoL iv. 5, ot f^. 
 
 C 
 
iSi THE LIFE AND ■WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 antil tlie darkness of prejudice was scattered by the broaden- 
 ing ligbt of history and of reason. 
 
 The genuineness of this cyclical letter is evinced by 
 its extreme naturalness. A religious romancist could not 
 possibly have invented anything which left so much un- 
 solved. And this genuineness also accounts for the startling 
 appearance of a grave moral crime among things so purely 
 ceremonial as particular kinds of food. There is pro- 
 bably no other period in the history of the world at which 
 the Apostles would have found it needful to tell their 
 Gentile converts to abstain from fornication, as well as 
 from things offered to idols, things strangled, and blood. 
 The first of these four prohibitions was perfectly in- 
 telligible, because it must have been often necessary for 
 a Grentile Christian to prove to his Jewish brethren that 
 he had no hankering after the " abominable idolatries " 
 which he had so recently abandoned. The two next pro- 
 hibitions were desirable as a concession to the indefinable 
 horror with which the Jews and many other Eastern 
 ' races regarded the eating of the blood, which they con- 
 sidered to be " the very life."^ But only at such a period 
 as this could a moral pollution have been placed on even 
 apparently the same footing as matters of purely national 
 prejudice. That the reading is correct,^ and that the 
 
 > GeiL ix. •i ; Lev. xvii. 14. So too Koran, Sur. v. 4 See Bahr, Symbolik, 
 ii. 207. On the other hand, " the blood " was a special delicacy to the 
 heathen (Horn. Od. iii. 470; xviii. 44; Ov. Met. xii. 154) ; and hence "things 
 strangled" were with them a common article of food. Rutilius calls the 
 Jew, " Humanis animal dissociale cibis " (It. i. 384). Even this restriction 
 involved a most inconvenient necessity for never eating any meat but hosher, 
 i.e., meat prepared by Jewish butchers in special accordance with the laws of 
 slaughtering (nis'nw). It would more or less necessitate what would be, to a 
 Gentile at any rate, most repellent — the " cophinus foenumqne supellex " 
 (Juv. Sat. iii. 14), which were, for these reasons, the peculiarity of the Jew 
 (Sidon. Ep. vii. 6). 
 
 2 There is not the faintest atom of probability in Bentley's conjecture of 
 ir<if)Kcia. At the same time, it must be noted as an extraordinary stretch of 
 
THE PROHIBITIONS. 435^ 
 
 thing forbidden is the sin of fornication,^ not idolatry, 
 or mixed marriages, or marriages between blood relations 
 (1 Cor. V. 1), or second marriages (1 Tim. iii. 2), or any of 
 the other explanations in which an astonished exegesis 
 has taken refuge, must be regarded as certain. How, 
 then, can the fact be accounted for ? Only by the bound- 
 less profligacy of heathendom ; only by the stern purity of 
 Christian inorals. The Jews, as a nation, were probably 
 the purest among all the races of mankind ; yet even they 
 did not regard this sin as being the moral crime which 
 Christianity teaches us to consider it j^ and they Hved in 
 the midst of a world which regarded it as so completely 
 a matter of indifference that Socrates has no censure 
 for it,^ and Cicero declares that no Pagan moralist had 
 ever dreamt of meeting it with an absolute prohibition.''' 
 
 liberality on the part of the Judaisers not to require the abstention from 
 swine's flesh by their Gentile brethren ('louSaios Barrov Uv ivoBtivoi ^ xo'P"'"' 
 ipiyoi, Sext. Emp. Tao. S. V. 4; Sen. Up. 108, 22; Macroh. Sat. ii. 4). 
 This abstinence was common in the East (Dio. Cass. Ixxix. 11). 
 
 ' The notion that iropyela can mean things sold (iripiniitt) in the market after 
 idol feasts is also utterly untenable. See the question examined by Baur, 
 Paul. i. 146, seq. Besides, the four prohibitions correspond to those attributed 
 to Peter in Ps. Clem. Horn. vii. 4, where /i{j kKaBAprm /SioSk — Topvtia. 
 
 ' In point of fact the Jews probably regarded the other three things with 
 infinitely greater horror than this. The practice even of their own Rabbis, 
 though veiled under certain decent forms, was far looser than it should have 
 been, as is proved by passages in the Talmud {CUttm, f. 90 j Joma, f. 18, 2 ; 
 Selden, Ux. Eehr. iii. 17). 
 
 ' Xen. Mem. iii. 13. 
 
 * This passage is remarkable as coming from one of the purest of all 
 ancient writers (Oie. pro Cael. xx. ; ef. Ter. Adelph. i. 2, 21). The elder Cato 
 was regarded as a model of stern Roman virtue, yet what would be thought 
 in Christian days tof a man who spoke and acted as he did P (Hor. Sat. i. 
 2, 31.) If Cato could so regard the sin, what must have been the vulgar 
 estimate of it ? Nor must it be forgotten that the letter was addressed to 
 Jews and Gentiles alike familiar with an epoch in which, as indeed for many 
 previous centuries, this crime, and crimes yet more heinous, formed a recognised 
 part of the religious worship of certain divinities (cf. Baruch vi. 43 ; Strabo, 
 viii. 6) ; and in which the pages of writers who reek with stains like these 
 formed a part of the current literature. Few circumstances can show more 
 clearly the change which Christianity has wrought. But to every reader of 
 
 c c 2 
 
436 THE LIFE AJSJD "WORK: OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 What is it that has made the difference in the aspect 
 which sensuality wears to the ancient and to the modem 
 conscience? I have no hesitation in answering that 
 the reason is to be found. in the purity which every page 
 of the New Testament breathes and inspires, and specially 
 in the words of our Blessed Lord, and in the argu- 
 ments of St. Paul. If the blush of modesty on youthful 
 cheeks is a holy thing, if it be fatal alike to individuals 
 and to nations "to bum away in mad waste" the most 
 precious gifts of life, if debauchery be a curse and stain 
 which more than any other has eaten into the heart of 
 human happiness, then the saintly benefactor to -whose 
 spirituality we owe the inestimable boon of having im- 
 pressed these truths upon the youth of every Christian 
 land is he who — taught by the Spirit of the Lord — showed 
 more clearly, more calmly, more convincingly than any 
 human being has ever shown, the true heinousness, the 
 debasing tendency, the infusive virulence of sins which, 
 through tbe body, strike their venom and infix their 
 cancer into the soul ; of sins which have this peculiar 
 sinfulness — that they not only destroy the peace and 
 endanger the salvation of the soul which is responsible for 
 itself, but also the souls of others, which., in consequence 
 of the sinner's guilty influence, may remain impenitent, 
 yet for the sake of whicb, no less than for his own, 
 Christ died. 
 
 the letter the immediate link of connexion between tlta\69vTa and iropvtta 
 would be but too obvious. Farther, it ehonld be steadUj observed that the 
 allusions — stem yet tender, nncompromising yet merciful — of St. Paul's own 
 Epistles to the prevalence of this sin, show most decidedly that if conversion 
 at once revealed to Christians its tme heinonsnesa, it often failed to shield 
 .them against temptation to its commission. 
 
CHAPTEE XXm. 
 
 B». PETER AND ST. PAUL AT ANTIOCH. 
 
 *Bepu»ti epulis, discreti cnbiHbiis.'* — Tac H. t. 5. 
 
 " At us EeoIesU est sanetk, Pitties sunt saaeti Bene ; sed Ecdesia qiuin- 
 libet saneta tamen cogitnr dkere Bemitte nolo^ peccata nosha. Sie Fabvs 
 qnamlibet saneti per reDussionem peceatonun salTati suai." — Ltithsb, Ccnmn. 
 ON OalOLL 
 
 Such, then, was the result of the appeal upon which the 
 Judaisers had insisted ; and so fat as the main issue was 
 concerned the Judaisers had heen defeated. The Apostles, 
 in almost indignantly repudiating the daim of these men 
 to express their opinions, had given them a rehuflf. They 
 had intimated their dislike that the peace of Churches 
 should be thus agitated, and had declared that circumcision 
 was not to he demanded firom the GrentUes. It needed 
 but a small power of logic to see that, Christianity being 
 what it was, the decision at least implied that converts, 
 whether Jews or Grentiles, were to bear and forbesur, and 
 to meet together as equals in all religious and social 
 gatheriDgs. The return of the delegates was therefore 
 hailed with joy in Antioch, and the presence of able and 
 enlightened teachers like Jndas and Silas, who reaUy 
 were what the Pharisaic party had falsely claimed to be — 
 the direct exponents of the views of the Apostles — diffused 
 a general sense of unii^-smd confidence. After a brief 
 stay, these two emissaries returned to Jerusalem.^ On 
 
 * 1%e tn» leading is not w^ rate 'Anvr^Ams, as in oar Torsion, bat "to 
 Oiose n&o sent ^Bm" {nfks nis inm(%«m» minis— tt. A, B, C^ D)b 
 
438 THE LITB AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 Silas, however, the spell of Paul's greatness had been so 
 powerfully exercised that he came back to Antioch, and 
 threw in his lot for some time with the great Apostle of 
 the Gentiles.^ 
 
 Paul, in fact, by the intensity of his convictions, the 
 enlightenment of his understanding, the singleness of his 
 purpose, had made himself completely master of the situa- 
 tion. He had come to the very forefront in the guidance 
 of the Church. The future of Christianity rested with 
 the GrentHes, and to the Grentiles the acts and writings of 
 Paul were to be of greater importance than those of all 
 the other Apostles. His Apostolate had been decisively 
 recognised. He had met Peter and John, and even the 
 awe-inspiring brother of the Lord, in conference, and 
 found himself so completely their equal in the gifts of 
 the Holy Ghost, that it was impossible for them to resist 
 his credentials. He had greatly enlarged their horizon, 
 and they had added nothing to him. He had returned 
 from Jerusalem more than ever conscious of himself, 
 conscious of his own power, clear in his future purposes. 
 He inspired into the Church of Antioch his own convic- 
 tions with a force which no one could resist. 
 
 But since the letter from Jerusalem suggested so 
 many iaquiries, and laid down no universal priaciple, 
 it was inevitable that serious complications should 
 subsequently arise. A scene shortly occurred which 
 tested to the extremest . degree the intellectual firm- 
 ness and moral courage of St. Paul. St. Peter seems 
 about this time to have begun that course of vdder 
 
 ^ The reading of our version, Ter. 84, " N'otwithstanding it pleased Silas to 
 abide there still," is the pragmatic gloss of a few MSS., to which D adds yucicoi 
 Be 'loilBas iTropeieri. It is not foond in N, A, B, Gt, E, H. Of course, either 
 this fact or the return of Silas is implied by ver. 40, but the separate insertion 
 of it is exactly one of those triyialities which ancient writers are far less apt 
 than moderns to record. 
 
PETER AT ANTIOCH. 439 
 
 journeys whicli, little as we know of them, carried him in 
 some way or other to his final martyrdom at Eome. We 
 do not again hear of his presence at Jerusalem. John 
 contiaued there in all probability for many years, and 
 Peter may have felt his presence needless; nor is it 
 unlikely that, as Peter dwelt on the wider views which he 
 had learnt from intercourse with his brother Apostle, he 
 may have found himself less able to sympathise with the 
 more Judaic Christianity of James. At any rate, we find 
 him not long after this period at Antioch, and there so 
 frankly adopting the views of St. Paul, that he not only 
 extended to all Gentiles the free intercourse which he 
 had long ago interchanged with Cornelius, but seems 
 in other and more marked ways to have laid aside the 
 burden of Judaism.^ Paul could not but have rejoiced 
 at this public proof that the views of the Apostle of 
 the circumcision were, on this momentous subject, iden- 
 tical with his own. But this happiness was destined to 
 be seriously distm'bed. As the peace of the Church 
 of Antioch had been previously troubled by "certain 
 which came down from Jerusalem," so it was now broken 
 by the arrival of "certain from James." Up to this 
 time, in the Agapse of Antioch, the distinction of Jew 
 and Grentile had been merged in a common Christianity, 
 and this equal brotherhood had been countenanced by 
 the presence of the Apostle who had lived from earliest 
 disqipleship in the closest intercourse with Christ. But 
 now a cloud suddenly came over this frank intercourse.' 
 Under the influence of timidity, the plastic nature of 
 Peter, susceptible as it always was to the impress of the 
 
 ' Gal. ii. 14, idviKus kqX oix 'lovSaiKcis (gs. Kothing definite can be made of 
 the tradition that St. Peter was first Bishop of Antioch. 
 
 ' If the reading ?xfle» in Gal. ii. 12 were right it could only poiat to James 
 himself; but this would have been a fact which tradition could not have 
 forgotten, and James seems never to have left Jerusalem. 
 
440 THE LIFE AlTD WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 moment, began to assume a new aspect. His attitude to 
 the Gentile converts was altered. "He began to draw 
 away and separate himseH," in order not to offend the 
 rigid adherents of the Lord's brother.^ It is not said 
 that they claimed any direct authority, or were armed with 
 any express commission ; but they were strict Jews, who, 
 however much they might tolerate the non-observance 
 of the Law by G-entUes, looked with suspicion — perhaps 
 almost with horror — on any Jew who repudiated obliga- 
 tions which, for him at any rate, they regarded as stringent 
 and sacred.^ A false shame, a fear of what these men 
 might say, dislike to face a censure which would acquire 
 force from those accumulated years of habit which the 
 vision of Joppa had modified, but not neutralised — perhaps 
 too a bitter recollection of all he had gone through on a 
 former occasion when he "had gone in unto men uncir- 
 cumcised and eaten with them" — led Peter into downright 
 hypocrisy.® Without any acknowledged change of view, 
 without a word of public explanation, he suddenly changed 
 his course of life, and it was almost inevitable that the 
 other Jewish Christians should foUow this weak and 
 vacillating example. The Apostle who " seemed to be a 
 pillar" proved to be a " reed shaken with the wind."* To 
 the grief and shame of Paul, even Barnabas^ — Barnabas, 
 his fellow-worker in the Churches of the Gentiles— even 
 
 ' Gai. ii. 12, inriartKKtv /cal i<p^pi(tv iavr6v, 
 
 ' How anxious James was to conciliate the inflammable multitude who 
 were " zealous for the Law " Is apparent from Acts xxi. 24. 
 
 ^ The forger of the letter of Peter to James, printed at the head of the 
 Clementine SomiUes, deeply resents the expression, § 2. But St. Peter's 
 " hypocrisy " consisted in " having implied an objection which he did not really 
 feel, or which his previous custom did not justify" (Jowett, Gal. i. 246). It is 
 idle to say that this shows the non-existence of the " decree j " that, as I have 
 shown, left the question of intercourse with the Gentiles entirely undefined. 
 
 * See Hausrath, p. 252. "Boldness and timidity — first boldness, then 
 timidity— were the characteristics of his nature" (Jowett, i. 243). See also 
 Excui-sus XVIL, " St. John and St. PauJ." 
 
PETEE'S DEFECTION". 441 
 
 Barnabas, wlio had stood side by side with him to plead for 
 the liberty of the GentUes at Jerusalem, was swept away 
 by the flood of inconsistency, and in remembering that he 
 was a Levite forgot that he was a Christian. In fact, a 
 strong Jewish reaction set in. There was no question of 
 charity here, but a question of principle. To eat with 
 the Gentiles, to live as do the Gentiles, was for a Jew 
 either right or wrong. Interpreted in the light of those 
 truths which lay at the very bases of the Gospel, it was 
 right ; and if the Church was to be one and indivisible, 
 the agreement that the Gentiles were not to put on the 
 yoke of Mosaism seemed to imply that they were not to 
 lose status by declining to do so. But to shilly-shally on 
 the matter, to act in one way to-day and in a different 
 way to-morrow, to let the question of friendly inter- 
 course depend on the presence or absence of people who 
 were supposed to represent the stern personality of 
 James, could not under any circumstances be right. 
 It was monstrous that the uncircumcised Gentile con- 
 vert was at one time to be treated as a brother, and at 
 another to be shunned as though he were a Pariah. This 
 was an uncertain, underhand sort of procedure, which 
 St. Paul could not for a moment sanction. He could 
 not stand by to see the triumph of the Phaiisaic party 
 over the indecision of men like Peter and Barnabas. For 
 the moral weakness which succumbs to impulse he had 
 the deepest tenderness, but he never permitted himself 
 to maintain a truce with the interested selfishness which, 
 at a moment's notice, would sacrifice a duty to avoid an 
 inconvenience. Paul saw at a glance that Kephas ^ (and 
 the Hebrew name seemed best to suit the Hebraic defec- 
 tion) was wrong — wrong inteUectuaUy, if not morally— 
 
 > Q«].ii.ll,K?.(>aj(».,A,B,0). 
 
442 THE LIFE Am) WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 and that lie was mainly responsible for the wrong into 
 which the others had been betrayed by his iexample. 
 He did not, therefore, hesitate to withstand him to the 
 face. It was no occasion for private remonstrance ; the 
 reproof must be as pubhc as the wrong, or the whole 
 cause might be permanently imperilled. Perhaps few 
 things demand a firmer resolution than the open 
 blame of those who in age and position are superior to 
 ourselves. For one who had been a fierce persecutor of 
 Christians to rebuke one who had lived in daily inter- 
 course with Christ was a very hard task. It was still 
 more painful to involve Barnabas and other friends in the 
 same censure ; but that was what duty demanded, and 
 duty was a thing from which Paul never shrank. 
 
 Eising' at some pubhc gathering of the Church, at 
 which both Jews and Gentiles were present, he pointedly 
 addressed Peter in language well calculated to show 
 him that he stood condemned.^ " If thou," he said 
 before them aU, " being a bom Jew, art living Grentile 
 fashion and not Jew fashion, how^ "canst thou try' to 
 compel the Gentiles to Judaise?"* So far his language 
 complained of his brother Apostle's inconsistency rather 
 than of his present conduct. It was intended to reveal 
 the inconsistency which Peter had wished to hide. It 
 directly charged hiiii with having done the very thing 
 
 ' Gal. ii. 11, Kareyvairixivos ^v. This is the word which gives such bitter 
 ofEence to the forger of the Clementine Homilies, xvii. 18, 19. " Thou didst 
 withstand me as an opponent (ivdvnos li,vee<rTiiKd,s /toi) ... If thou caUest me 
 condemned {leaTeyvuiriievos) thou accusest God who revealed Christ to me," 
 &c., and much more to the same effect. 
 
 ' Gal. ii. 14. The wrong aspirate in abx louSolnffli may be a Cilicism. But 
 surely the editors should give us (ouSai'/cSs. The ^<^' IXirfSi of the best MSS. 
 in 1 Cor. ix. 10 is supported by the occurrence of 4A.jrls in inscriptions. 
 
 * hi/ayKiCfts, " are by your present conduct practically obliging." " He was 
 half a Gentile, and wanted to make the Gentiles altogether Jews" (Jowett, 
 Galat i. 244). 
 
PETEE BEBUKED. 443 
 
 which his present withdrawal from Gentile communion 
 was meant to veil. " You have heen living as a Gentile 
 Christian in the midst of Gentile Christians; you may- 
 alter your Hne at this moment, but such has heen your 
 deliberate conduct. Now if it is unnecessary for you, a 
 bom Jew, to keep the Law, how can it be necessary, even 
 as a counsel of perfection, that the Gentiles should do 
 so? Tet it must be necessary, or at least desirable, if, short 
 of this, you do not even consider the Gentiles worthy of 
 your daily intercourse. If your present separation means 
 that you consider it to be a contamination to eat with 
 them, you are practically forcing them to be like you 
 in all respects. Be it so, if such is your view; but let 
 that view be clearly understood. The Church must not 
 be deceived as to what your example has been. If 
 indeed that conduct was wrong, then say so, and 
 let us know your reasons; but if that conduct was 
 not wrong, then it concedes the entire equality and 
 liberty which in the name of Christ we claim for our 
 Gentile brethren, and you have left yourself no further 
 right to cast a doubt on this by your present behaviour." 
 It has been the opinion of some that St. Paul's actual 
 speech to Peter ended with this question, and that the 
 rest of the chapter is an argument addressed to the 
 Galatians. But though, in his eager writing, St. Paul 
 may unconsciously pass from what he said in the assembly 
 at Antioch to the argument which he addressed to apos- 
 tatising converts in Galatia, yet he can hardly have 
 thrown away the opportunity of impressing his clear 
 convictions on this subject upon Peter and the Church of 
 Antioch. He wished to drive home the sole legitimate 
 and logical consequence of the points already estab- 
 lished; and we can scarcely doubt that he used on 
 this occasion some of those striking arguments which 
 
4M THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 we shall subsequently examine in the Epistle to the 
 Galatians.^ 
 
 They all turn on the great truth over which the 
 Holy Spirit had now given him so firm a grasp — 
 the truth of Justification by Faith alone. If no 
 man could see salvation save by means of faith, and on 
 account of Christ's mercy, then even for the Jew the Law 
 was superfluous. The Jew, however, might, on grounds 
 of national patriotism, blamelessly continue the obser- 
 vances which were ancient and venerable,* provided that 
 he did not trust in them. But the Grentile was in no 
 way bound by them, and to treat him as an inferior 
 because of this immunity was to act in contradiction to 
 the first principles of Christian faith. The contrasted 
 views of St. Paul and of the Judaists were here brought 
 into distinct collision, and thereby into the fuU light on 
 which depended their solution. Faith without the Law, 
 said the Judaists, means a state of Gentile " sinfulness." 
 Faith with the Law, replied St. Paul, means that Christ 
 has died in vain.^ Among good and holy men love would 
 
 ' See on Gal. ii. 15 — 21, infra, ii., p. 147. 
 
 ' See some admirable remarks on the subject in Angnstine, J^. Ixxm. 
 He argues that, after the revelatioii of faith in Christ, the ordinances of the 
 Law had lost their life ; but that just as the bodies of the dead ought to be 
 honourably conducted, with no feigned honour, but with real solemnity to 
 the tomb, and not to be at once deserted to the abuse of enemies or the 
 attacks of dogs — so there was need that the respect for the Mosaic Law 
 should not be instantly or rudely flung aside. But, he says, that eyen for a 
 Jewish Christian to observe what could stiU be observed of the Law after 
 it had been abrogated by God's own purpose in the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 would be to act the part, not of one who honours the dead, but of one who 
 tears out of their resting-places the buried ashes of the slain. 
 
 ' Holstern, Protestantenbibel, 729. This dissension — if dissension it could 
 be called — ^between the two great Apostles will shock those only who, in 
 defiance of all Scripture, persist in regarding the Apostles as specimens of 
 supernatural perfection. Of course, the errors of good men, even if they be 
 mere errors of timidity on one side and vehemence on the other, will always 
 expose them to the taunts of infidels. But when Celsus talks of the Apostles 
 
EFFECTS OF THE REBUKE. 445 
 
 still lie the girdle of perfectness ; but when the contro- 
 versy waxed fierce between inspired conviction on the one 
 side, and designing particularism on the other, hard terms 
 were used. " Tour principle is a nullification of Moses, 
 of inspiration, of religion itself," said the Judaists; "it 
 is downright rationahsm; it is rank apostasy." "Tour 
 Gospel," replied the Apostle, " is no Gospel at all ; it is 
 the abnegation of the Gospel ; it is a bondage to carnal 
 rudiments ; it is a denial of Christ." 
 
 A reproof is intolerable when it is administered out 
 of pride or hatred, but the wounds of a friend are better 
 at all times than the precious balms of an enemy that 
 break the head. We are not told the immediate effect 
 of Paul's words upon Peter and Barnabas, and in the 
 case of the latter we may fear that; even if unconsciously, 
 they may have tended, since human nature is very frail 
 and weak, to exasperate the subsequent quarrel by a sense 
 of previous difference. But if Peter's weakness was in 
 exact accordance with all we know of his character, so 
 too would be the rebound of a noble nature which restored 
 
 " inTeighing against each other so shameftilly in their quarrels," he is g^lty 
 — so far as the New Testament account of the Apostles is concerned — of 
 gross calumny (flp. Orig. c. Gels. v. 64). The " blot of error," of which 
 Porphyry accused St. Peter, shows only that he was human, and neither 
 Gospels nor Epistles attempt to conceal his weaknesses. The " petulance of 
 language" with which he charges St. Paul finds no justification in the stem 
 and solemn tone of this rebuke; and to deduce from this dispute "the lie 
 of a pretended decree " is a mere abuse of argument. We may set aside at 
 once, not without a feeling of shame and sorrow, the suggestion (Clem. Alex. 
 ap. Euseb. JB". -E, i. 12) that this Kephas was not St. Peter, but one of the 
 Seventy ; and the monstrous fancy — monstrous, though stated by no less a 
 man than Origen (op. Jer. ^p. cxii.), and adopted by no less a man than 
 Chrysostom {ad he.), and for a time by Jerome — that the whole was a scene 
 acted between the two Apostles for a doctiinal purpose ! As if such dis- 
 simulation woidd not have been infinitely more discreditable to them than a 
 temporary disagreement in conduct ! The way in which St. Peter bore the 
 rebuke, and forgave and loved him who administered it, is ten-thousandfold 
 more to his honour than the momentary inconsistency is to his disgrace. 
 
446 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 him at once to strength. The needle of the compass may 
 tremble and be deflected, but yet it is its nature to point 
 true to the north ; and if Peter was sometimes swept 
 aside from perfectness by gusts of impulse and tempta- 
 tion ; if after being the first to confess Christ's divinity 
 he is the first to treat Him with presumption; if at 
 one moment he becomes His disciple, and at another 
 bids Him depart because he is himself a sinful man; 
 if now he plunges into, the sea all faith, and now sinks 
 into the waves aU fear; if now single-handed he draws 
 the sword for His Master against a multitude, and now 
 denies Him with curses at the question of a servant- 
 maid — ^we are not surprised to find that one who on 
 occasion could be the boldest champion of Gentile equality 
 was suddenly tempted by fear of man to betray the cause 
 which he had helped to win.' But the best proof that 
 he regretted his weakness, and was too noble-hearted to 
 bear any grudge, is seen in the terms of honour and 
 affection in which he speaks of Paul and his Epistles.^ 
 It is still more clearly shown by his adopting the very 
 thoughts and arguments of Paul, and in his reference, 
 while writing among others to the Galatians, to the very 
 words of the Epistle in which his own conduct stood so 
 strongly condemned.' The legend which is commemo- 
 rated in the little Church of " Domine quo vadis " near 
 Eome, is another interesting proof either that this ten- 
 dency to vacillation in Peter's actions was well understood 
 in Christian antiquity, or that he continued to the last 
 to be the same Peter — " consistently inconsistent," as he 
 
 ' At sncli an epoch of transition it was ineTitable that charges of in- 
 consistency should be freely bandied about on both sides, and with a certftin 
 amount of plausibility. Of. Gal. vi. 13. 
 
 » 2 Pet. iii. 16. 
 
 ' Comp. 1 Pet. ii. 16, 17 with Gal. t. 1, 13, 14, and 1 Pet. ii. 24 with » 
 passage of this very remonstrance (Gal. iL 20). 
 
ANGER OF THE JUDAISERS. 447 
 
 has most liappily been called — ^Kable to weakness and 
 error, but ever ready to confess himself in the wrong, and 
 to repent, and to amend : — 
 
 "And as the •water-lily starts and slides 
 Upon the level in little puffs of wind, 
 Though anchored to the bottom — such was he." 
 
 But while to a simple and lofty soul like that of Peter 
 there might almost be something of joy in the frank 
 acknowledgment of error and the crushing down of all 
 anger against the younger, and, at that period, far less 
 celebrated man who had publicly denounced him, such was 
 by no means the case with the many adherents who chose 
 to elevate him into the head of a faction.^ What may 
 have been the particular tenets of the Kephas-party at 
 Corinth, we have no means for deciding, and the only 
 thing which we can imagine likely was that their views 
 were identical with those of the least heretical Ebionites, 
 who held the Mosaic Law to be binding, in its entirety 
 on all Jews. Whatever may have been the action of 
 James, or of those who assumed his authority,^ neither 
 
 • " And I of Elephas ; " but when Paul again refers to the parties, with 
 the delicate consideration of true nobleness, he omits the name of Kephas. 
 
 ' The minute accounts of a counter-mission vnwugurated by James are 
 nothing more or less than an immense romance built on a single slight 
 expression (tivos Inrh 'laxiifiov), apphcable only with any certainty to the 
 one occasion to which it is referred. In Gal. ii. 12; iv. 16; 1 Oor. i. 12; 
 ix. 1, 3, 7; 2 Cor. iii. 1; x. 7; Phil. i. 15, 17, we see the traces of a continuous 
 opposition to St. Paul by a party which, in the nature of things, must have 
 had its head-quarters in Jerusalem ; and of course the leaders at Jerusalem 
 could not remain wholly uninfluenced by the tone of thought around them, 
 and the views which were in the very atmosphere which they daily breathed. 
 Yet they publicly disavowed the obtrusive members of their community 
 (Acts XV. 24), and towards St. Paul personally they always, as far as we 
 know, showed the most perfect courtesy and kindness, and to them personally 
 he never utters one single disrespectful or unfraternal word. There is not 
 a trace of that stem or bitter tone of controversy between them and him 
 which we find interchanged by Bernard and Abelard, Luther and Erasmus, 
 P&flon and Bossuet, Wesley and Whitefield. He always, speaks of them 
 with gentleness and respect (1 Oor. ix. 5 j Eph. iii. 6, &c.). 
 
448 THE LIFE AND WORK QF ST. PAUL. 
 
 ■ 
 
 in the New Testament, nor in the earliest Cliristian 
 writings, is there any trace o£ enmity between Paul 
 and Peter, or of radical opposition between their views. ^ 
 The notion that there was, has simply grown np from 
 the pernicious habit of an over-ingenious criticism which 
 "neglects plain facts and dwells on doubtful allusions." 
 Critics of this school have eagerly seized upon the Cle- 
 mentines — a malignant and cowardly Ebionite forgery of 
 uncertain date — as furnishing the real clue to the New 
 Testament history, while they deliberately ignore and set 
 aside authority incomparably more weighty. Thus the 
 silence^ of Justin Martyr ahout the name and writings 
 of St. Paul is interpreted into direct hostility, while 
 the allusions of the genuine Clement, which indicate the 
 unanimity between the Apostles, are sacrificed to the 
 covert attacks of the forger who assumes his name. But 
 St. Paul's whole argument turns, not on the supposition 
 that he is setting up a counter-gospel to the other 
 Apostles, but on Peter's temporary treason tb Ms own 
 faith, his ovM convictions, Jiis own habitual professions ; ' 
 and all subsequent facts prove that the two Apostles held 
 each other in the highest mutual esteem ; they were 
 lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death they were 
 not divided.* 
 
 Thus, then, thanks to St. Paul, the hattle was again 
 
 * Even the Praedicatio Pawli (preserved in Cyprian, JDe BehbptisTnate) 
 implies that they were reconciled at Borne before their martyrdom, "postremo 
 in nrbe, quasi tunc primum, invicem sibi esse cognitos." 
 
 ' On the explanation of this silence, which does not, however, exclude 
 apparent allusions, see "Westcott, Canon., p. 135 ; Lightfoot, Gal., p. 310. 
 Who can suppose that Justin's yiy4<r$e 6s iyii 8ti xayii iiiiti' is ififts {Cohort, ad 
 Graec, p. 40) bears only an accidental resemblance to GaL iv. 12 ? 
 
 ' Maurice, Unity, 497. 
 
 * See Excursus XVIII., "The Attacks on St. Paul in the Clementines." In 
 the Bomish Church the commemoration of St. Paul is never separated from 
 that of St. Peter. On the feast-days set apart to each saint, the other ia 
 invariably honoured in the most prominent way. 
 
QUARREL WITH BARNABAS. 449 
 
 won, and the Judaisers, who were so anxious to steer 
 the little ship of the Church to certain wreck and ruin 
 on the rocks of national bigotry, could no longer claim 
 the sanction of the relapsing Peter. But no sooner 
 was all smooth in the Church of Antioch than the old 
 mission-hunger seized the heart of Paul, and urged him 
 with nohle restlessness from the semblance of inactivity. 
 Going to his former comrade Barnabas, he said, " Come, 
 let us re-traverse our old ground, and see for ourselves 
 how our brethren are in every city in which we preached 
 the word of the Lord." Barnabas readily acceded to the 
 proposal, but suggested that they should take with them 
 his cousin Mark.^ But to this Paul at once objected. 
 The young man who had suddenly gone away home from 
 Pamphylia, and left themi when it was too late to get any 
 other companion, to face the difficulties and dangers of 
 the journey alone, Paul did not think it right to take 
 with them. Neither would give way; neither put in 
 practice the exquisite and humble Christian lesson of 
 putting up with less than his due. A quarrel rose 
 between these two faithful servants of Grod as bitter as 
 it was deplorable,^ and the only hope of peace under such 
 circumstances lay in mutual separation. They parted, 
 and they suffered for their common fault. They parted 
 to forgive each other indeed, and to love and honour each 
 other, and speak of each other hereafter with affection 
 and respect, but never to work together again ; never to 
 help each other and the cause of Grod by the union of 
 
 > The true reading of Acts xv. 37 is i0oi\ero, m, A, B, C, E, Syr., Copt. 
 JEih., &c. (Vulg. Volebat). The word is characteristically mild compaired 
 with the equally characteristic Tehemence of the ^|tou . . . nh oi St. Paul. 
 
 * Notice the emphatic tone of the original in Acts xv. 39. The word 
 rapoiviriihs {=" exacerhatio," "provocation") implies the interchange of sharp 
 language ; hut it also implies a temporary ebullition, not a permanent quarrel. 
 Elsewhere it only occurs in Heb. x. 24; Deut. xxix. 28 (LXX.). 
 
 D D 
 
450 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 their several gifts; never to share with one another in 
 the glory o£ Churches won to Christ from the heathen ; 
 and in all probability to rue, in the regret of lifelong 
 memories, the self-wiU, the want of mutual con- 
 cession, the unspoken soft answer which turneth away 
 wrath, which, in a few bitter moments, too late repented 
 of, robbed them both of the inestimable solace of a 
 friend. 
 
 Which was right ? which was wrong ? "We are not 
 careful to apportion between them the sad measure of 
 blame,^ or to dwell on the weaknesses which marred the 
 perfection of men who have left the legacy of bright 
 examples to aU the world. In the mere matter of judg- 
 ment each was partly right, each partly wrong ;^ their 
 error lay in the persistency which did not admit of mutual 
 accommodation. Each was like himself. St. Barnabas may 
 have sufEered himseK too strongly to be influenced by 
 partiality for a relative; St. Paul by the memory of per- 
 sonal indignation. Barnabas may have erred on the side 
 of leniency; Paul on the side of sternness. St. Paul's 
 was so far the worst fault, yet the very fault may have 
 risen from his loftier ideal.' There was a " severe earnest- 
 ness " about him, a sort of intense whole-heartedness, 
 which could make no allowance whatever for one who, at 
 the very point at which dangers began to thicken, deserted 
 a great and sacred work. Mark had put his hand to the 
 plough, and had looked back ; and, conscious of the serious 
 hindrance which would arise from a second defection, con- 
 scious of the lofty qualities which were essential to any 
 one who was honoured with such Divine responsibihties, 
 
 * " Yiderint ii qxii de Apostolis judicant ; mihi non tarn bene est, immo 
 non tarn maid est, ut Apostolos committam " (Tert. De Praeacr. 24). 
 
 ^ Faulus severior, Barnabas clementior ; uterqne in suo sensn abundat ; et 
 tamen dissensio habet aliquid humana« fragilitatis " (Jer- Adv. Pelag. ii. 522), 
 
 ' 'O navKos ^^i)Tei rh Sixiuov, i Bapi/dPas rb (piAiyBfuvof (Ghiys.). 
 
BARNABAS. 451 
 
 St. Paiil miglit fairly have argued that a cause must not be 
 risked out of tenderness for a person.-^ Barnabas, on the 
 other hand, might have urged that it was most unlikely 
 that one who' was now willing to face the work again, 
 should again voluntarily abandon it, and he might fairly 
 have asked whether "one failure was to stamp a life- 
 time. Both persisted, and both suffered. Paul went his 
 way, and many a time, in the stormy and agitated days 
 which followed, must he have sorely missed, amid the 
 provoking of all men and the strife of tongues, the repose 
 and generosity which breathed through the life and cha- 
 racter of the Son of Exhortation. Barnabas went his 
 way, and, dissevered from the grandeur and vehemence of 
 Paul, passed into comparative obscurity, in which, so far 
 from sharing the immortal gratitude which embalms the 
 memory of his colleague, his name is never heard again, 
 except in the isolated allusions of the letters of his 
 friend. , 
 
 For their friendship was not broken. Barnabas did 
 not become a Judaiser, or in any way discountenance the 
 work of Paul. The Epistle which passed by his name 
 is spurious,^ but its tendency is anti- Judaic, which would 
 not have been the case if, after the dispute at Antioch, 
 he had permanently sided with the anti-Pauline faction. 
 In the Acts of the Apostles he is not again mentioned. 
 "Whether he confined his mission-work to his native 
 island, whither he almost immediately sailed with Mark, 
 or whether, as seems to be implied by the allusion in the 
 Epistle to the Corinthians, he extended 'it more widely, 
 he certainly continued to work on tTie same principles 
 as before, taking with him no female companion, and 
 
 ' Prov. XXV. 19. 
 
 * It is examined and rejected, among ofliers, by Hefele, Bom BendsoJvt. d. 
 Ap. Barnabas (Tiibingen, 1840). 
 
 D D 2 
 
452 THE LIFE AM) "WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 accepting nothing from the Clmrclies to whicli lie 
 preached.^ 
 
 And though, so far as they erred, the Apostles suf- 
 fered for their error, Grod overruled evil for good. Hence- 
 forth they were engaged in two spheres of mission action 
 instead of one, and henceforth also the bearing and the 
 views of Paul were more free and vigorous, less shacHed 
 by associations, less liable to reaction. Hitherto his 
 position in the Church of Jerusalem had depended much 
 upon the countenance of Barnabas. Henceforth he had 
 to stand alone, to depend solely on himself and his own 
 Apostohc dignity, and to rely on no favourable reception 
 for his views, except such as he won by the force of right 
 and reason, and by the large benefits which accrued to 
 the Church of Jerusalem from the alms which he collected 
 from Grentile Churches. 
 
 And Mark also profited by the difference of which he 
 was the unhappy cause. If the lenient partiality of one 
 Apostle still kept open for him the missionary career, the 
 stern judgment of the other must have helped to make 
 him a more earnest man. AU that we henceforth know 
 of him shows alike his great gifts and his self-denying 
 energy. In his Grospel he has reflected for us with 
 admirable vividness the knowledge and experience of his 
 friend and master St. Peter, to whom, in his later years, 
 he stood in the same relation that Timothy occupied 
 
 1 1 Cor. ix. 6 ; Gal. ii. 9. It has been inferred from the mention of Mark 
 as known to the Churches of Bithynia, Pontus, Cappadocia, Galatia (1 Pet. 
 i. 1 ; T. 13), and Colossse (Col. iv. 10), and his presence long afterwards in 
 Asia Minor (2 Tim. iv. 11), that, if he continued to accompany his cousin 
 Barnabas, Asia Minor, and especially its eastern parts, may have been the 
 scene of their labours (Lewin, i. 165). The allusion in Col. iv, 10 has been 
 taken to imply that by that time (A.D. 63) Barnabas was no longer Hving. 
 Nothing certain is known about the place, manner, or time of his death. Tho 
 Acta et Passio Barnabae m Cypro is apocryphal. St. Mark is said to have 
 been martyred at Alexandria. 
 
ST. MAEE. 453 
 
 towards St. Paul.^ But even St. Paul saw good cause 
 not only to modify his unfavourable opinion, but to 
 invite him again as a fellow-labourer.^ He urges the 
 Colossians to give him a kindly welcome,^ and even writes 
 to Timothy an express request that he would bring him 
 to Eome to solace his last imprisonment, because he had 
 found him — ^that which he had once failed to be — " profit- 
 able to him for ministry."* 
 
 » 1 Pet. T. 13. « Philem. 24. 
 
 * C6L It. 10. * 2 Tuu. It. 11, as SuucoyUm. 
 
CHAPTEE XXIV. 
 
 BEGINNING OF THE SECOND MISSIONAET JOTJENBT : PAUL 
 IN 6ALATIA. 
 
 "Come, let ns get up early to the Tmeyards; let us see if the Tines 
 flourish." — Oant. vii. 12. 
 
 The significant silence, as to any. public sympathy for 
 Barnabas and Mark, together with the prominent mention 
 of it in the case of Paul, seems to show that the Church 
 of Antioch in general considered that St. Paul was ia 
 the right. Another indication of the same fact is that 
 SUas consented to become his companion. Hitherto 
 Silas had been so closely identified with the Church of 
 Jerusalem that he had been one of the emissaries chosen 
 to confirm the genuineness of the circular letter, and in 
 the last notice of him which occurs in Scripture we find 
 him still in the company of St. Peter, who sends him 
 from Babylon wi'tih a letter to some of the very Churches 
 which he had visited with St. Paul.^ Btts adhesion to 
 the principles of St. Paul, in spite of the close bonds 
 which united him with the Jewish Christians, is a 
 sufficient proof that he was a man of large nature; 
 and as a recognised prophet of Jerusalem and Antioch, 
 his companionship went far to fill up the void left in 
 the mission by the departure of Barnabas. His name 
 Silvanus,^ and the fact that he, too, seems to have been a 
 Poman citizen,' may perhaps show that he had some 
 
 ' 1 Pet. V. 12. The identity cannot, however, be regarded as certain, 
 ' Silas may be of Semitic origin, Josephua mentions four Orientals of the 
 name (Kreniel, p. 78). 
 » Acts X7i. 20, 37. 
 
Deaa 
 Sea.' 
 
 New York : E. P. Duttoa & Co. 
 
 Eaw4"Wo"Iler 
 
m 
 
THE SECOND JOUENET. 455 
 
 connexion with tte Grentile world, to wHch, therefore, 
 he would be a more acceptable Evangelist. In every 
 respect it was a happy Providence which provided St. 
 Paul with so valuable a companion. And as they started 
 on a second great journey, carrying with them the hopes 
 and fortunes of Christianity, they were specially com- 
 mended by the brethren to the grace of God. 
 
 St. Paul's first object was to confirm the Churches 
 which he had alheady founded. Such a confirmation of 
 proselytes was an ordinary Jewish conception,^ and after 
 the vacillations of opinion which had occurred even at 
 Antioch, Paul would be naturally anxious to know whether 
 the infant communities continued to prosper, though they 
 were harassed by persecutions from without, and Hable 
 to perversion from within. Accordingly he began his 
 mission by visiting the Churches of Syria and Cilicia. 
 It is probable that he passed along the eastern coast of the 
 Gulf of Issus, and through the Syrian and Amanid Gates 
 to the towns of Alexandria and Issus. ^ There the road 
 turned westward, and led through Mopsuestia and Adana 
 to Tarsus. Prom Tarsus three routes were open to him — 
 one running along the shore of the Mediterranean to the 
 CiUcian Seleucia, and then turning inland through the 
 Lycaonian Laranda to Derbe ; the other a narrow and un- 
 frequented path through the mountains of Isauria; the 
 third, which in aU probability he chose as the safest, the 
 most frequented, and the most expeditious, through the 
 famous Cihcian Gates,^ which led direct to Tyana, and then 
 turning south-westward ran to Cybistra, and so to Derbe, 
 along the southern shore of Lake Ak Ghieul.* And if, 
 
 ' See Schleusner, s.v. imipiQa. 
 
 ' The Syrian gates are now called the Pass of Beylan; the Amanid Gates 
 are the Eara-Kapu. 
 
 ' Now the Kii ek-Boghaz. 
 
 * For further geographical details, see Con. and Howson, ch. -viii., and 
 
456 
 
 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PATJL. 
 
 indeed, Paul and Silas took this route and passed tlirough 
 the narrow gorge under its frowning cliffs of limestone, 
 clothed here and there with pine and cedar, which to the 
 Crusaders presented an appearance so terrible that they 
 christened it the Gates of Judas, how far must they 
 have been from imagining, in their wildest dreams, that 
 their footsteps — ^the footsteps of two obscure and perse- 
 cuted Jews — ^would lead to the traversing of that pass 
 centuries afterwards by kings and their armies. How 
 
 THE CODNIBT BOUND TABSUB. 
 
 little did they dream that those warriors, representing 
 the haughtiest chivalry of Europe, would hold the name 
 of Jews in utter execration, but would be sworn to rescue 
 the traditional tomb of that Christ whom they acknow- 
 ledged as their Saviour, from the hands of a mighty people 
 who also recognised Him as a Prophet, though they did 
 not believe Him to be Divine ! 
 
 Whatever road was taken by Paul and Silas, they must 
 
 Lewin, ch. x. It is htuniliating to tMnk that the roads in St. Paul's day 
 •were incomparably better, and better kept, than they are at this moment, 
 when the mere debris of them suffice for peoples lang^hing under the 
 ■withering atrophy of Turkish rule. 
 
TIMOTHEUS. 457 
 
 have been their own messengers, and announced their 
 own arrivai. And we can well imagine the surprise, 
 the emotion, the delight of the Christians in the Httle 
 Isauric town, when they suddenly recognised the well- 
 known figure of the missionary, who, arriving in the 
 opposite direction, with the wounds of the cruel stonings 
 fresh upon him, had first taught them the faith of Christ. 
 Can we not also imagine the uneasiness which, during 
 this visitation of the Churches which he loved so well, 
 must often have invaded the heart of Paul, when almost 
 the first question with which he must have been greeted 
 on all sides would be, "And where is Barnabas?" For 
 Barnabas was a man bom to be respected and loved ; and 
 since Silas — ^great as may have been his gifts of utterance, 
 and high as were his credentials ^ — would come among 
 them as a perfect stranger, whom they could not welcome 
 with equal heartiness, we may be sure that if Paul erred 
 in that sad dissension, he must have been reminded of it, 
 and have had cause to regret it at every turn. 
 
 From Derbe once more they passed to Lystra. 
 Only one incident of their visit is told us, but it 
 happily affected all the future of the great Apostle. 
 In his former visit he had converted the young Timo- 
 theus, and it was in the house of the boy's mother 
 Eunice,^ and his grandmother Lois, that he and Silas 
 were probably received. These two pious women were 
 Jewesses who had now accepted the Christian faith. 
 The marriage of Eunice with a Grreek,^ and the non-cir- 
 
 ' VfO(irl\ri)s (Acts XT. 32). 
 
 ' The name Eunice being purely Greek might seem to indicate previous 
 association with Grentiles. 
 
 ' At the same time, mixed marriages were far less strictly forbidden to 
 women than to men. DrusiUa and Berenice mairied Grentile princes, but 
 compelled them first to accept circumcision. The omission of the covenant 
 rite in the case of Timothy may have been owing to the veto of the child's 
 Greek father. 
 
458 THE LIFE AOT) ■WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 cumcision of lier son, indicate an absence of strict 
 Judaism wMcli, since it was not inconsistent with " un- 
 feigned faitli," must have made them more ready to 
 receive the Gospel; and Paul himself bears witness to 
 their earnest sincerity, and to the careful training in the 
 Scriptures which they had given to their child. 
 
 We are led to suppose that Eimice was a widow, and if 
 so she showed a beautiful spirit of self-sacrifice in parting 
 with her only son. The youthful Timothy is one of the 
 best known and most lovable of that little circle of com- 
 panions and followers — chiefly Gentile converts — ^who are 
 henceforth associated with the wanderings of St. Paul. Of 
 the many whom Paul loved, none were dearer to him than 
 the young disciple of Lystra. Himself without wife or 
 child, he adopted Timothy, and regarded him as a son in 
 aU affectionate nearness. " To Timothy, my son ;" " my 
 true son in the faith" — such are the terms in which he 
 addresses him ; ^ and he reminds the Philippians how well • 
 they knew " that, as a son with a father, he had slaved with 
 him for the Gospel."^ And slight as are the touches 
 which enable us to realise the character of the young 
 Lystrenian, they are aU wonderfully graphic and consis- 
 tent. He was so blameless in character that both in his 
 native Lystra and in Iconium the brethren bore warm and 
 willing testimony to his worth.^ In spite of a shyness 
 
 ' ITim. i. 2, 18; 2 Tim, ii. 2. 
 
 ° Phil. ii. 22, iSoi\e\i<rev fls rh (iayyi\iov. 
 
 ^ Whether Timothy belonged to Lystra or to Derbe is a matter of small 
 importance, but that in point of fact he did belong to Lystra seems so clear 
 from a comparison of Acts xvi. 1, 2 j xx. 4 ; and 2 Tim. iii. 11, that it is strange 
 there should have been so much useless controversy on the subject. The 
 notion that "Gains " in Acts xx. 4 could not be " of Derbe," because there is 
 a Gains of Macedonia in xix. 29 (who may or may not be the Gains of Bom. 
 xvi. 23 ; 1 Cor. i. 14), is like arguing that there could not be a Mr. Smith of 
 Monmouth and another Mr. Smith of Yorkshire; and the transference on this 
 ground of the epithet ^ep^aios to Tijiti$deas in the absence of all STidence of 
 MSS. is mere frivolity. 
 
TIMOTHEUS. 459 
 
 and timiclity whicli were increased by Ms yonthfulness,^ lie 
 was so entirely united in heart and sonl witli tlie Apostle 
 tliat among liis numerous friends and companions lie 
 found no one so genuine, so entirely unselfisli, so sin- 
 cerely devoted to the furtherance of the cause of Christ.^ 
 He was, in fact, more than any other the alter ego of the 
 Apostle. Their knowledge of each other was mutual;^ 
 and one whose yearning and often lacerated heart had 
 such deep need of a kindred spirit on which to lean 
 for sympathy, and whose distressing infirmities rendered 
 necessary to him the personal services of some afiectionate 
 companion, must have regarded the devoted tenderness 
 of Timothy as a special gift of Grod to save him from 
 being crushed by overmuch sorrow. And yet, much as 
 Paul loved him, he loved his Churches more ; and if 
 any Church needs warning or guidance, or Paul himself 
 desires to know how it prospers, Timothy is required 
 to overcome his shrinking modesty,* to console the per- 
 secuted Churches of Macedonia,^ or face the conceited tur- 
 bulence of Corinth,* or to be the overseer of the Church of 
 Ephesus,'' with its many troubles from without and from 
 within. In fact, no name is so closely associated with St. 
 Paul's as that of Timothy. Not only were two Epistles 
 addressed to him, but he is associated with St. Patd in the 
 superscription of five ; ^ he was with the Apostle during 
 great part of his second missionary journey;' he was 
 with him at Bphesus;^° he accompanied him in his last 
 
 ' Acts xvi. 2. 
 
 ' Phil. ii. 20, ohZiva yhp ^X" Jo'i5<("'X'"'i ^o-tis yvrifftas ri irepl 4/iSv /lepi/ai^irer oi ' 
 Tcfa/Ter yap rk tavrSii' fjiToBcny, oii T«t 'IijffoS XpicrroO, 
 
 ' 2 Tim. iii. 10, 2i Si iropi)KoA.oi'/9n/«Ji /tow rf SiSa<rKa\lif, rp li/yay^ ic.t.\. 
 
 • 1 Cor. iv. 17 J xvi. 10, i46pas. 
 
 • Acts xix. 22 ; 1 Thess. iii. 2 ; Phil. ii. 18—20. 
 
 • 1 Oor. xvi. 10. 
 
 ' 1 Tim. i. 3. « 1, 2 Thess., 2 Oor., Phil., OoL 
 
 » Acts xvi. 3 ; xvii. 14 ; xviii. 5. '* 1 Oor. iv. 17 ; xvi. 10. 
 
460 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 voyage to Jerusalem;^ he helped to comfort Lis first 
 imprisonment at Eome ; ^ he is urged, in the Second 
 Epistle addressed to him, to hasten from Ephesns, to 
 hring with him the cloak, hooks, and parchments which 
 St. Paul had left with Carpus at Troas, and to join him 
 in his second imprisonment hefore it is too late to see him 
 alive. ^ Some sixteen years had elapsed between the days 
 when Paul toot? Timothy as his companion at Lystra,* 
 and the days when, in the weary desolation of his impri- 
 soned age, he writes once more to this heloved disciple." 
 Tet even at this latter date St. Paul addresses him as 
 though he were the same youth who had first accompanied 
 him to the hallowed work. "To him," says Hausrath, 
 "as to the Christian Achilles, the Timotheus-legend attri- 
 butes eternal youth ; " this being, according to the writer, 
 one of the signs that the two pastoral Epistles addressed to 
 Timothy were the work of a writer in the second century.® 
 But surely it is obvious that if Timothy, when St. Paul first 
 won him over to the faith of Christ, was not more than 
 sixteen or seventeen years old, he would be stiU far short 
 of the prime of life when the Second Epistle was addressed 
 to him ; and that, even if he were older, there is no more 
 familiar experience than an old man's momentary forget- 
 fulness that those whom he has known as boys have grown 
 up to full manhood.'' 
 
 > Acts XX. 4 » PhU. ii. 18—20. » 2 Tim. It. 9, 13. 
 
 * Circ. A.D. 51. . » Circ. A.D. 66. 
 
 ° Hausrath, p. 259. He admits that they "contain important historic 
 indications." 
 
 ' It has always been recognised as a most natural touch in Tennyson's 
 poem, " The Grandmother," that she speaks of her old sons as though they 
 were still lads. But even if Timothens had reached the age of forty by the time 
 he was appointed " Bishop " of Ephesus, there would be nothing incongruous 
 in saying to him, KnSels irov rrjs verfrriTos Kwraippovfira (1 Tim. iv. 12), or fis 
 Si veuTipLKus Iiri9u/i(as tpevyt (2 Tim. ii. 22), especially ajs these were written not 
 many years after the fufi tis oiv alirhv iioveev^trp of 1 Oor. xn. 11. 
 
TraOTHEXJS. 461 
 
 This was the youth whose companionship Paul now 
 secured. Young as he was, the quick eye of Paul saw 
 in him the spirit of loving and fearful duty — read the 
 indications of one of those simple, faithful natures which 
 combine the glow of courage with the bloom of modesty. 
 "When Jesus had sent forth His disciples He had sent them 
 forth two and two ; but this was only in their own native 
 land. It was a very different thing to travel in all 
 weathers, through the blinding dust and burning heat of 
 the plains of Lycaonia, and over the black volcanic crags 
 and shelterless mountain ranges of Asia. He had suffered 
 from the departure of Mark in Pisidia, and henceforth we 
 never find him without at least two associates — at this 
 time Silas and Timothy ; afterwards Titus and Timothy in 
 Macedonia and Achaia, and Luke and Axistarchus in his 
 journey to Eome. 
 
 It may surprise us- that the first step he took was to 
 circumcise Timothy ; and that since the rite might be per- 
 formed by any Israelite, he did it with his own hands.^ 
 We have, indeed, seen that he was in all probability driven 
 to circumcise the Gentile Titus ; but we are not told of 
 any pressure put upon him to perform the same rite for 
 Timothy, who, though the son of a Jewess, had grown up 
 without it. Nothing is more certain than that, in St. 
 Paul's opinion, circumcision was valueless. His conduct, 
 therefore, can only be regarded as a second concession to,- 
 or rather a prevention and anticipation of, prejudices so 
 strong that they might otherwise have rendered his work 
 impossible. St. Luke says that it was done " on account 
 of the Jews in those regions ; for they all knew that his 
 father was a Greek." Now, if this was generally known, 
 whereas it was not so widely known that his mother was a- 
 
 * By none, however, eascepf an Israelite {Ahhoda Zara, f..27^i). 
 
462 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATIL. 
 
 Jewess, St. Paul felt that Timothy would everywhere be 
 looked upon as an uncircumcised Gentile, and as such 
 no Jew would eat with him, and it would be hopeless to 
 attempt to employ him as a preacher of the Messiah in the 
 synagogues, which they always visited as the beginning 
 of their labours. If, On the other hand, it were known 
 that he was by birth a Jewish boy — since the rule was 
 that nationality went by the mother's side ^ — an uncir- 
 cumcised Jew would be in every Grhetto an object of 
 execration. If, then, Timothy was to be ordained to the 
 work of the ministry, his circumcision was indispensable 
 to his usefulness, and his Jewish parentage was sufficient 
 to deprive the act of the dangerous significance which 
 might much more easily be attached to it in the case of 
 Tdtus. Obviously, too, it was better that Paul should do 
 it spontaneously than that it should receive a factitious 
 importance by being once more extorted from him in spite 
 of protest. He did it, not in order to please himself, but 
 that he might condescend to the infirmities of the weak.^ 
 
 The circumcision was followed by a formal ordination. 
 The whole Church was assembled; the youth made the 
 public profession of his faith ;^ the elders and Paul himself 
 solemnly laid their hands upon his head;* the prophetic 
 voices which had marked him out for a great work^ were 
 confirmed by those wh® now charged him with the high 
 duties which lay before him, and at the same time warned 
 
 ' "Partus seqmtur Tentrem" is the rale of the Talmud (Bechoroth, 
 1, 4, &c. ; "Wetst. ad loc). If the Jews knew that his mother was a Jewess, 
 and yet that he had not received the " seal of the covenant," they would 
 have treated Mm as a mamser. (See Ewald, AUerth- 257-) 
 
 « Rom. XV. 1 ; 1 Cor. ix. 20. 
 
 ^ 1 Tim. vi. 12, i)iio\6yiiiras ttiv koK^v inoKaylav iviiriov iroAXSi' /lapripav. 
 
 * 1 Tim. iv. 14, rh xip'c/ia i eS6dii aoi Sict irpo</>7jT^ios /uereL iniBiirfas rSiv X^iP''" 
 ToC irpe(r$vTfplov', 2 Tim. i. 6, 8 (k Tijs iiri0e(rea>s t&v x^'P"'' /»!'<'• 
 
 ' 1 Tim. i. 18, xara Tcks irpoayoiiras inX a'k Trpoijntrilas. Oompore the happy 
 
 prognostications of Staupitz ahout the work of Lather. 
 
PHRTGIA. 463 
 
 Mm of the dangers which those duties involved;^ the grace 
 of the Holy Spirit descended like a flame into his heart.^ 
 and the gentle hoy of Lystra was henceforth the conse- 
 crated companion of toils and wanderings, of which the 
 issue was the destined conversion of the world. 
 
 The mission opened with every circumstance of en- 
 couragement. The threefold cord of this ministry was 
 not quickly hroten. At each city which they visited they 
 announced the decisions arrived at by the Apostles and 
 elders at Jerusalem,^ and the Churches were strengthened 
 in the faith, and grew in numbers daily. 
 
 In this way they traversed "the Phrygian and 
 Galatian district."* There has been much speculation 
 as to the towns of Phrygia at which, they rested, but 
 in the absolute silence of St. Luke, and in the extreme 
 looseness of the term "Phrygian," we cannot be sure 
 that St. Paul preached in a single town of the region 
 which is usually included under that term. That he" 
 did not found any church seems clear from the absence 
 of allusion to any Phrygian community in the New 
 Testament. The conjecture that he travelled on this 
 occasion to the far distant Colossse is most improbable, 
 even if it be not excluded by the obvious inference 
 from his own language.® All that we can reasonably 
 suppose is that after leaving Iconium he proceeded 
 
 * 1 Tim, i. 18, Iva (TTpareirt iv airats tV ko\V arpwrilav ; cf. ir. 14 ; vi. 12. 
 
 * 2 Tim. i. 6, &va(uTruphv {= "to fan into fresh flame," Kvplar robs HvSpcucas 
 ^vffuv, Suid. J (ripoSp6Tepov rh irup 4pyiCf<r0at, Theophyl.) rb x<ip"fl^ tow 0eoS, 8 itrriy 
 if <ro), K.T.^. I 
 
 * In a loose way eten Ajitioch and leonimn might be regarded as Churches 
 of Gilicia, Tarsus (as appears from coins, Le>rin, i. 171) being regarded as a 
 capital of Lycaonia, Isauria, and even of Oaria. Further, the circular letter had 
 been drawn up with more or less express reference to what had taken place in 
 these Churches (Acts xr. 12). 
 
 * The true reading is tV ipvyiav kbI FeAoTJuV X<^P<"' («» ■^> B. 0, D). 
 
 * Ool. i.4, 6, 7i iLL 
 
464 THE LIFE AOT) "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 to Antiocli in Pisidia — since there could be no reason 
 why lie should neglect to confirm the Church which he 
 had founded there — and then crossed the ridge of the 
 Paroreia to Philomeliuni, from which it would have 
 been possible for him either to take the main road to 
 the great Phrygian town of Synnada, and then turn 
 north-eastwards to Pessinus,-or else to enter Gralatia by 
 a shorter and less frequented route which did not run 
 through any Phrygian town of the slightest importance. 
 It does "not seem to have been any part of St. Paul's 
 plan to evangelise Phrygia. Perhaps he may have ori- 
 giually intended to make his way by the road through 
 Apamea, to Colossse and Laodicea, and to go down 
 the valley of the Mseander to Ephesus. But if so, this 
 intention was hindered by the guidance of the Holy 
 Spirit.^ Such providential hindrances to a course which 
 seemed so obvious may well have been mysterious to 
 St. Paul; but they appear less so to us when, view- 
 ing them in the light of history, we see that otherwise 
 the Epistle to the Galatians might never have been 
 written, and that thus the whole course of Christian 
 theology might have been entirely changed. 
 
 Of any work in Phrygia, therefore, there was nothiug 
 to narrate;^ but we may well deplore St. Luke's non- 
 acquaintance with the details of that visit to Gralatia, 
 
 ' It will be seen that li&ke the clause Ka>Xu8eWes, k.t.x. (Acts xvi. 6) retro- 
 spectively — i.e., as the reason assigned for their divergence into the Phrygian 
 and Galatian district. If they entertained the design of preaching in Asia — i.e., 
 in Lydia — ^the natural road to it would have been from Antioch of Pisidia, and it 
 is hardly likely that they would have intentionally tamed aside to the semi- 
 barbarous regions of Phrygia and Galatia first ; indeed, we have St. Paul's 
 own express admission (Gal. iv. 13) that his evangelisation of Galatia was the 
 result of an accidental sickness. The permission to preach in Asia was only 
 delayed (Acts xix. 10). 
 
 2 That some converts were made, is implied by Acts xviii. 23. The absence 
 of a definite Phrygian Church is seen in the silence about any collection there. 
 
THE GATiATIAKS. 465 
 
 wMch were deeply interesting and important, and of 
 which we are now left to discover the incidents by 
 piecing the fragmentary notices and allusions of the 
 Epistle. 
 
 "We may suppose that on finding it impossible to 
 preach at this time in the great cities of Lydian Asia,^ 
 St. Paul and his companions next determined to make 
 their way to the numerous Jewish communities on the 
 shores of the Euxine. They seem to have had no inten- 
 tion to preach among a people so new to them, and 
 apparently so little promising, as the Galatians. But 
 God had other designs for them ; they were detained in 
 , Galatia, and their stay was attended with very memor- 
 able results. 
 
 St. Luke, who uses the ordinary geographical term, 
 must undoubtedly have meant by the term Galatia that 
 central district of the Asian peninsula^ which was in- 
 habited by a people knoivn to the ancient world under 
 the names of Celts, Galatians, Gauls, and (more recently) 
 GaUo-Greeks. Their history was briefly this. When 
 the vast tide of Aryan migration began to set to the 
 westward from the valleys of the Oxus and the plains 
 of Turkestan, the Celtic family was among the earliest 
 that streamed away from their native seats.^ They 
 gradually occupied a great part of the centre and west 
 . of Europe, and various tribes of the family were swept 
 hither and thither by different currents, as they met with 
 
 1 " Asia" in the Acts (cf. OatuU. xlvi. 5) seems always to mean the region 
 round the old "Asian meadow " of Homer (17. ii. 461) — i-e., the entire valley 
 and plain of the Cayster — i.e., Lydia. Every one of "the seven churches 
 which are in Asia " (Bev. i. — iii.) is Lydian. 
 
 ^ The term Asia Minor b first used by Orosius in the fourth century 
 (Ores. i. 2). 
 
 ' On the Celtic migrations, see the author's Farmlies of Speech, 2nd ed. 
 (reprinted in Language and Languages), p. 329. 
 
 B E 
 
466 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAtTL. 
 
 special obstacles to their unimpeded progress. One of 
 their Brennuses,^ four centuries before the Christian era, 
 inflicted on Eome its deepest humiliation. Another, 
 one hundred and eleven years later,^ filled Worthem Grreece 
 with terror and rapine, and when his hordes were driven 
 back by the storms and portents which seconded the 
 determined stand of the Greeks at Delphi, they joined 
 another body under Leonnorius and Lutarius,^ struggled 
 across the Hellespont in the best way they could, and 
 triumphantly established themselves in the western regions 
 of Asia Minor. But their exactions soon roused an op- 
 position which led to an effectual curbing of their power, 
 and they were gradually confined in the central region 
 
 • B.C. 390. The word Brennus is a Latinised form of the title which 
 is preserved in the Welsh hrenin, "king." 
 
 2 B.C. 279. 
 
 ' Liv. xxxviji. 16. These names — Celtic words of obscure origin ynih 
 Latin terminations — are eagerly seized on by German travellers and com- 
 mentators, and identified with Leonard and Lothair (Luther), in order to 
 prove that the people of Galatia were not Celts, but Teutons. Why both 
 French and Germans should be so eager to claim affinities with these not very 
 creditable Galatians I cannot say;' but meanwhile it must be regarded as 
 certain that the Galatse were Celts, and not only Celts, but Cymric Celts. 
 The only other arguments, besides these two names, adduced by Wieseler and 
 other German vrriters are — (1) The name Germanopolis — a late and hideous 
 hybrid which, at the best, only points to the settlement of some Teutonic 
 community among the Gauls ; (2) the tribe of Teutobodiaci, about whom we 
 know too litfle to say what the name means ; and (3) the assertion of St. 
 Jerome that the Galatians (whom he had personally visited) spoke a language 
 like the people o^ Treves (Jer. in Ep. Gal. ii. praef.). This argument, how- 
 ever, tells precisely in the opposite direction, since the expressions of Caesar 
 and Tacitus decisively prove that the Treveri were Gauls (Tac. Arm. i. 43, 
 H. iv. 71; CsBs. B. G. ii. 4, &c.), though they aped Teutonic peculiarities 
 (Caes. B. G. viii. 25 ; Tac. Germ. 28). Every trait of their character, every 
 certain phenomenon of their language, every proved fact of their history, 
 shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Galatse, or Gauls, were not 
 Slavs, nor Teutons, but Celts ; and it is most probable that the names Galatse 
 and Celtaa are etymologically identical. The ingenuity which elaborately 
 sets itself to overthrow accepted and demonstrated conclusions leads to endless 
 waste of time and space. Any who are curious to see more on the subject 
 will find it in. the Excursus of Dr. Lightfoot's Galatia/ni, pp. 229 — 240. 
 
THE GALATIANS. 467 
 
 which is partly traversed by the valleys of the San- 
 garius and the Halys. Here we find them in three 
 tribes, of which each had its own capital. Bordering on 
 Phrygia were the Tolistobogii, with their capital Pes- 
 sinus; in the centre the Tectosages, with their capital 
 Ancyra ; and to the eastward, bordering on Pontus, were 
 the Trocmi, with their capital Tavium.^ Originally the 
 three tribes were each divided into four tetrarchies, but 
 at length they were united (B.C. 65) under Deiotarus, 
 tetrarch of the Tolistobogii, the Egbert of Galatian 
 history.^ The Romans under Cn. ManHus Vulso had 
 conquered them ia B.C. 189,^ but had left them nomi- 
 nally independent; and in B.C. 36 Mark Antony made 
 Amyntas king. On his death, in B.C. 25, Galatia was 
 joined to Lycaonia and part of Pisidia, and made a 
 Eoman province; and since it was one of the Imperial 
 provinces, it was governed by a Propraetor. This was 
 its political condition when Paul entered Pessinus, which, 
 though one of the capitals, lies on the extreme frontier, 
 and at that time called itself Sebaste of the Tolistobogii.* 
 The providential cause which led to St. Paul's stay in 
 the country was, as he himself tells us, a severe attack of 
 illness : and the manner in which he alludes to it gives us 
 reason to infer that it was a fresh access of agony from that 
 " stake in the flesh " which I believe to have been acute 
 ophthalmia, accompanied, as it often is, by violent cere- 
 
 ■ Tolistobogii, or Tolosatobogii, seems to combine the elements of Tolosa 
 (Toulonse) and Boii. The etymologies of Tectosages (who also occur in 
 Aquitaine, Cses. B. G. vi. 24; Strabo, p. 187) and Trocmi are uncertain. 
 Other towns of the Galats were Abrostola, Amorium, Tolosoehorion, towns of 
 the Tolistobogii; Corbeus and Aspona, of the Tectosages; Mithradatium and 
 Danala, of the Trocmi. 
 
 ^ Strabo, p. 567, 
 
 ' Liv. xxxviii. 12. "Si jam degeneres sunt; mixti et GaUograeci vere, 
 quod appellantur." 
 
 * It is now a mere heap of rnina, 
 
 B E 2 
 
468 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 bral disturbance.^ In Ms letter to his Gralatian converts lie 
 makes a toucliing appeal, wHcli in modem phraseology 
 might run as follows :^ — " Become as I am, brethren, I 
 beseech you" {i.e., free from the yoke of external 
 and useless ordinances), "for I, too, made myself as you 
 are.* Jew that I was, I placed myself on the level 
 of you Grentiles, and now I want you to stand with 
 me on that same level, instead of trying to make 
 yourselves Jews. I do not wish to speatk by way of 
 complaint about you. Tou never did me apj personal 
 wrong.* Nay, you know that when I preached the 
 Grospel among you, on my first visit, it was in conse- 
 quence of an attack of sickness, which detained me in the 
 midst of a journey ; you could not, therefore, feel any 
 gratitude to me as though I had come with the express 
 purpose of preaching to you; and besides, at that time 
 
 1 On tMs subject see infra, Excnrsns XL, " The Stake in the Flesh." 
 
 2 Gal. iv. 12 — 14. This passage may serve to Olustrate the neoessiiy 
 of a new English Tersion founded on better readings. Thus in verse 12, 
 the "he" of our version should be rendered "become;" and the "I am as 
 you are" should be "I became;" the "have not injjired" should be "did 
 not injure," since the tense is an aorist, not a perfect, and the allusion 
 is to some fact which we do not know. In verse 13, the Se ought not to be 
 left unnoticed; "through infirmity of the flesh" is a positive mistake (since 
 this would require Si' aaBevilas, per) for " on account of an attack of illness," 
 as in Thuc. vi. 102 ; t& Trpinpov probably means "the former time," not " at 
 the first." In verse 14 the best reading is not rbv Trapaaiiiv n<m, but top t. viiuv 
 (n, a, B, C, D, F, G, &e., and " faoiliori lectioni praestat ardua ") ; and 
 ^lETTTuffoTc is stronger than " rejected." In verse 15, toB, not n'j, is probably 
 the right reading, and ^k should certainly be omitted — and the meaning is not 
 " where is the blessedness ye spake of," but " your self -congratulation on my 
 arrival among you ; " the hv should certainly be omitted with ^Jsipijore, as it 
 makes the Greek idiom far more vivid, although inadmissible in English 
 (cf . John XV. 22 ; xix. 11). In verse 16 the Sffrt draws a conclusion, " so that," 
 which is suddenly and delicately changed into a question, " have I ? " instead 
 of " I have." It is only by studying the intensely characteristic Greek of 
 St. Paul that we are able, as it were, to lay our hands on his breast and fed 
 every beat of his heart. 
 
 3 Gal.ii. 17; lOor. ix. 21. 
 
 * Cf. 2 Cor. ii. 5, oix ifik \e\iiniKtw, 
 
THE GALATIAN8. ' 469 
 
 weak, agonised "with pain, liable to fits of delirinm, witli 
 my eyes red and ulcerated by that disease by which it 
 pleases Grod to let Satan buffet me, you might well 
 have been tempted to regard me as a deplorable object. 
 My whole appearance must have been a trial to you — a 
 temptation to you to reject me. But you did not ; you 
 were very kind to me. You might have treated me with 
 contemptuous indifference;^ you might have regarded me 
 with positive loathing;^ but instead of this you honoured, 
 you loved me, you received me as though I were an 
 angel — nay, even as though I were the Lord of angels, 
 as though I were even He whom I preached unto you. 
 How glad you were to see me ! How eagerly you con- 
 gratulated yourselves and me on the blessed accident — 
 nay, rather, on the blessed providence of God, which had 
 detained me amongst you!* So generous, so affectionate 
 were you towards me, that I bear you witness that to aid 
 me as I sat in misery in the darkened rooms, unable to 
 bear even a ray. of light without excruciating pain, you 
 would, if that could have helped me, have plucked out 
 your eyes and given them to me." * 
 
 * Cf . 2 Cor.x. 10. His bodily presence is &<r0eviis, and his speech IJouSerijjueyoj. 
 
 * Lit., " Te did not despise nor loathe your temptation in my flesh;" one 
 of the nobly careless expressions of a writer who is swayed by emotion, not 
 by grammar. It means " Tou did not loathe," &c., " me, though my bodily 
 aspect was a temptation to you." " Grandis tentatio discipulis, si magister 
 infirmetnr " (Primas.). On the possible connexion of iieirriffaTi with epilepsy 
 see infra, p. 657). It would be most accurately explained by ophthalmia. 
 
 ' The sufEerings of St. Paul from travels when in a prostrate condition of 
 body have been aptly compared by Dean Howson to those of St. Chrysostom 
 and Henry Martyn Ln Fontus. They both lie buried at Tocat (Comana). 
 (0. and H. i. 295.) 
 
 * No one disputes that this in itself may be a metaphorical expression for 
 any severe sacrifice, as in Cat. Ixxxii. : — 
 
 "Quinti si tibi vis oculos debere Catullum, 
 Aut aliud si quid carius est oculis." 
 But how incomparably more vivid and striking, and how much more germana 
 to the occasion, does the expression become if it was an attack of ophthalmia 
 from which Paul was suffering 1 
 
470 THE LITE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 Notlimg is more natural tlian that the traversing of 
 vast distances over the burning plains and freezing 
 mountain passes of Asia Minor — the constant changes of 
 cKmate, the severe bodily fatigue, the storms of fine and 
 blinding dust, the bites and stings of- insects, the coarse- 
 ness and scantness of daily fare — ^should have brought 
 on a return of his malady to one whose health was so 
 shattered as that of Paul. And doubtless it was the 
 anguish and despair arising from the contemplation of 
 his own heartrending condition, which added to his teach- 
 ing that intensity, that victorious earnestness, which made 
 it so all-prevailing with the warm-hearted Gaid.s.-' If 
 they were ready to receive him as Christ Jesus, it was 
 because Christ Jesus was the Alpha and the Omega, 
 the beginning and the end of all his teaching to them. 
 And hence, in his appeal to their sense of shame; he 
 uses one of his own inimitably picturesque words to say, 
 "Senseless Galatians, what evil eye bewitched you?^ 
 before whose eyes, to avert them from such evil glances, 
 I painted as it were visibly and large the picture of Jesus 
 Christ crucified."". 
 
 ' No doubt the Galatians with whom ho had to deal were not the Gallio 
 peasants who were despised and ignorant (" paene servorum loco habentur," 
 Gees. B. G. id. 13) ; but the GaUo-grasci, the more cultivated and Hellenised 
 Galli of the towns. (Long in Diet. Geogr. s.v.) 
 
 » Gal. iii. 1. Omit rf 4\7)fl€(? ftjj neieeaBai with K, A, B,"5), E, P, G, &c., 
 and Iv viuv with N, A, B, 0. 
 
 ^ Gal. iii. 1, ots KOT* otp6a\fioijs 'Jrjtrovs Xpitrrbs Trpoeypd^ 4ffravpafi4ifos, It is 
 true that irpoypiipuv is elsewhere always used in the sense of "to write 
 before" (Rom. xr. 5; Bph. iii. 3), and not "to post" or "placard" (Ar. 
 Av. 450), eyen in Hellenistic and late Greek (1 Mace. x. 36 ; Jude 4 ; Justin, 
 Apol. ii. 52; B) ; but the sense and the context here seem- to show that 
 St. Paul used it — as we often find modern compounds used — ^in a different 
 sense {TrpoeCo>lp<"l>'fi^n). The large picture of Jesus Christ crucified was 
 set up before the mental vision of these spiritual children of Galatia 
 (" Dicitnr fascinus proprie infantibua nocere " — Primas.) to avert their 
 wandering glances from the dangerous witchery (ti's A/iSi ifidiTKavtv) of 
 the evil eye (p»1, Prov. xxiii. 6; Ecclus. xiv. 6, &o.; jSetirKoi'oi, .ffllian. 
 
QXJIOK CONVERSION. 471 
 
 But ihe zealous readiness of tlie Galatians, tlieir im- 
 pulsive affection, the demonstrative delight with which 
 they accepted the new teaching, was not solely due to 
 the pity which mingled with the admiration inspired hy 
 the new teacher. It may have been due, in some small 
 measure, to the affinities presented by the new religion 
 to the loftiest and noblest parts of their old beliefs ; and 
 at any rate, being naturally of a religious turn of mind,^ 
 they may have been in the first instance attracted by 
 the hearing of a doctrine which promised atonement in 
 consequence of a shedding of blood. But far more 
 than this, the quick conversion of the Galatians was 
 due to the mighty outpouring of the Spirit which 
 followed Paul's preaching, and to the new powers^ which 
 were wrought in his converts by their admission 
 iato the Church. But while these were the results 
 among the truer converts, there must have also been 
 many whose ready adhesion was due to that quick rest- 
 lessness, that eager longing for change, which charac- 
 terised them,' as it characterised the kindred family of 
 Greeks with which they were at this time largely 
 mingled. It was the too quick springing of the good 
 
 If. A. i. 53), We may be reminded of the hnge emblazoned banner with 
 which Augustine and his monks caught the eye of Bthelbert at Canter- 
 bury. 
 
 * "Natio est onmis , GaUorum admodmn dedita religionibus " (Oses. 
 B. G. Ti. 16). 
 
 ' GfJ. iii. 6, ^irixopijvSv (= abundantly supplying ; cf. Phil. i. 19 ; 
 2 Pet. i. 5) ifuy rh irvfvua koI ivfpyav Swdfteis h b\itv. The latter clause may 
 undoubtedly mean "working miracles among you;" but the parallels of 
 1 Cor. xii. 10 i Matt. xiv. 2, seem to show that it means "working powers 
 w you." See, too, Isa. xxtI. 12 ; Heb. xiii. 21. Irepyrifia means, as Bishop 
 Andrewes says, " a work inwroyight in us." In 1 Cor. xii. 10 the " operations 
 of powers " are distinguished from the " gifts of healings." 
 
 ' CiBsar complains of their " mobilitas," " levitas," and " infirmitas animi," 
 and says, " in consiliis capiendis mobiles et noyis plernmque rebus studentes " 
 (B. G. ii. 1 ; iv. 5 ; iii. 10 ; and LIt, x. 28). 
 
472 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PATJIi. 
 
 seed on poor and stallow soil ; it was the sudden flaming 
 of fire among natures as light, as brittle, as inflammable , , , 
 as straw. The modification of an old religion, the hearty 
 adoption of a new one, the combination of an antique 
 worship with one which was absolutely recent, and as 
 unlike it as is possible to conceive, had already been 
 illustrated in Galatian history. As Celts they had 
 brought with them into Asia their old Druidism, with its 
 haughty priestcraft, and cruel expiations.^ Yet they 
 had already incorporated with this the wild nature- 
 worship of Agdistis or Cybele, the mother of the gods. 
 They believed that the black stone which had fallen 
 from heaven was her image, and for centuries after it 
 had been carried off to Eome^ they continued to revere 
 her venerable temple, to give alms to her raving eunuchs, 
 to teU of the vengeance which she had inflicted on the 
 hapless Atys, and to regard the pine groves of Diudymus 
 T^th awe.^ But yet, while this Phrygian cult was 
 flourishing at Pessinus, and commanding the services of 
 its hosts of mutilated priests, and whUe at Tavium the 
 main object of worship was a colossal bronze Zeus of the 
 ordinary Greek ty^e,* at Ancyra, on the other hand, was 
 established the Eoman deification of the Emperor Augus- 
 tus, to whom a temple of white marble, still existing in. 
 ruins, had been buUt by the common contributions of 
 
 ' Strabo, xii. 6, p. 567, who tells us that they met in council at Diyne- 
 metum, or " Oak-shrine " {drw cf. SpSs, and nemed, "temple"), as Vememetnm 
 :=" Great-shrine " (Tenant. Forttm. i. 9), and Augustonemetmn = " Augustus- 
 shrine." 
 
 = B.C. 204 See Liv. xxix. 10, 11. The name of the town was dubiously 
 connected with TIea-eTv. (Herodian. i. 11.) 
 
 ^ Liv. xxxviii. 18 : Strabo, p. 489 ; Diod. Sic. iii. 58. Julian found the 
 worship of Cybele still languishing on at Pessinus in A.D. 363, and made a 
 futile attempt to galvanise it into life (Amm. Marc. xxii. 9). The lucrative 
 features in the worship of Cybele — the sale of oracles and collection of alma 
 — may have had their attraction for the avaricious Gauls. 
 
 * Strabo, xii. 5. The very site of Tavium is unknown. 
 
GALATIAK RELIGIONS, 473 
 
 Asia.* Paul must have seen, still fresh and unbroken, the 
 celebrated Monumentum Ancyranum, the wiU of Augustus 
 engraved on the marble of -the temple, and copied 
 from the inscription set up by his own command upon 
 bronze tablets in front of his mausoleum; but while 
 he may have glanced at it with interest, and read 
 with stiU deeper pleasure on one of the piUars the 
 decree in which the Emperor had rewarded the friendli- 
 ness of the Jews by a grant of religious immunity,^ he 
 must have thought with some pity and indignation of 
 the frivolity of spirit which could thus readily combine 
 the oldest and the newest of idolatrous aberrations — 
 the sincere and savage orgies ■ of Dindymene with the 
 debasing flattery of an astute intriguer — the passionate 
 abandonment to maddening religious impulse, and the 
 calculating adoration of political success. In point of 
 fact, the three capitals of the three tribes furnished data 
 for an epitome of their history, and of their character. In 
 passing from Pessinus to Ancyra and Tavium the Apostle 
 saw specimens of cults curiously obsolete side by side 
 with others which were ridiculously new. He passed 
 from Phrygian nature-worship through Greek mytho- 
 logy to Eoman conventionalism. He could not but have 
 regarded this as a bad sign, and he would have seen 
 a sad illustration of the poorer qualities which led to his 
 own enthusiastic reception, if he could have read the 
 description in a Greek rhetorician long afterwards of the 
 Galatians being so eager to seize upon what was new, 
 that if they did but get a glimpse of the cloak of a philo- 
 
 1 Ancyra — ^then called Sebaste Tectosagum, in honour of Augustus — is 
 now the flourishing commercial town of Angora. The Baulos-Dagh — Paul- 
 Mountain — ^near Angora still reminds the traveller of St. Paul's visit to these 
 cities, which is also rendered more probable by their having been early 
 episcopal sees. 
 
 * Jos. AiM. xvi 6, § 2. On Oeesar-worship see Tac. Ami. iv. 55, 56. 
 
474 THE LITE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 soplier, they caugM liold of and clung to it at once, as 
 steel filings do to a magnet.^ In fact, as lie liad bitter 
 cause to learn afterwards, the religious views of the Gauls • 
 were more or less a reflex of the impressions of the 
 moment, and their favourite sentiments the echo of the 
 language used by the last comer. But on his first visit 
 their faults aU seemed to be in the background. Their 
 tendencies to revelries and rivalries, to drunkenness and 
 avarice, to vanity and boasting, to cabals and fits of rage, 
 were in abeyance,^ — checked i£ not mastered by the power- 
 ful influence of their new faith, and in some instances, 
 we may hope, cured altogether by the grace of the Holy 
 Spirit of God. AU that he saw was their eagerness and 
 affection, their absence of prejudice, and willingness to 
 learn — aU that vivacity and warmheartedness which were 
 redeeming points in their Celtic character.* 
 
 How long he was detained among them by his illness 
 we are not told, but it was long enough to found several 
 churches, one perhaps in each of the three capitals, 
 and it may be in some of the minor towns. His success 
 was clearly among the Gauls ; and in the absence of all 
 personal salutations in his Epistle, we cannot teU whether 
 any of the aboriginal Phrygians, or Greek settlers, or of 
 
 ' Themistiua, Or. xxiii., p. 299 ; ap. Wetstein in GaL i. 6. «cil rpt$i»ylo¥ 
 
 Taptvpavfvros iKKpefiavrai evdbs Qtrirsp rrjs \iOov ret (TiS^pio. 
 
 ' Gal. T. 7, 15, 21, 26. Diodorus Sioulus says that they were so exces- 
 sively dmnkeii (xdroivoi xaB' ulr«f>;3o^^c) that they drenched themselves with 
 the raw wine ^ported by merchants, and drank with snch violent eager- 
 ness as either to stupefy themselves to sleep or enrage themselves to madness 
 (v. 26; cf. Ammian. Marc. xv. 12). He also calls them "extravagantly 
 avaricious" (v. 27; Liv. xxxviii. 27) and testifies to their disorderly and 
 gesticulative fits of rage (v. 31 ; Ammian. Marc. I.e.). 
 
 ^ The vitality of traits of character in many races is extraordinary, and 
 every one wiU. recognise some of these Otitic peculiarities in the Welsh, and 
 others in the Irish. Ancient testimonies to their weaknesses and vices have 
 often been collected, but the brighter features which existed then, as they do 
 BtiU, are chiefly witnessed to by St. FauL 
 
JEWISH COinrERTS, 475 
 
 the Eoman governing class, embraced the faith. But 
 though he is avowedly writing to those who had been 
 Gentiles and idolaters/ there must have been a con- 
 siderable number of converts from the large Jewish popu- 
 lation^ which had been attracted to Galatia by its fertihty, 
 its thriving commerce, and the privileges which secured 
 them the free exerqise of their religion. These Jews, and 
 their visitors from Jerusalem, as we shall see hereafter, 
 proved to be a dangerous element in the infant Church. 
 
 The success of this unintended mission may have 
 detained St. Paul for a little time even after his con- 
 valescence ; and as he retraced his journey from Tavium 
 to Pessinus he would have had the opportunity which he 
 always desired of confirming his recent converts in the 
 faith. Prom Pessinus the missionaries went towards 
 Mysia, and laid their plans to pass on to the numerous 
 and wealthy cities of western Bithynia, at that time a sena- 
 torial province. But once more their plans, in some way 
 unknown to us, were divinely overruled. The " Spirit of 
 Jesus"* did not suffer them to enter a country which was 
 
 ' Gal. iv. 8 ; v. 2 ; vi. 12, &c. On tlie other hand, iv. 9 has been quoted 
 (Jowett, i. 187) as " an almost explicit statement that they were Jews ; " this 
 is not, however, necessarily the case. Doubtless, writing to a church in which 
 there were both Jews and Gentiles, St. Paul may use expresigions which are 
 sometimes more appropriate to one class, sometimes to the other, but " the 
 weak and beggarly elements " to which the converts are retwning may include 
 Gentile as well as Jewish ritualisms; and some of them may have passed 
 through both phases. 
 
 ^ St. Peter in addressing the Diaspora of Galatia and other districts (1 
 Pet. i. 1) must have had Jews as well as Gentiles in view. The frequency of 
 Old Testament quotations and illustrations in the Epistle to the Galatians is 
 perhaps a proof that not a few of the converts had been originally proselytes. 
 Otherwise it would be impossible to account for the fact that " in none of 
 St. Paul's Epistles has the cast of the reasoning a more Jewish character" 
 (Jowett, i. 186). Gal. iii. 27, 28 may allude to the existence of converts from 
 both classes. 
 
 ^ Acts xvi. 7. This SiraJ \ey6iifvov, which is the undoubtedly correct reading 
 (k, a, B, C, D, E, and many versions and Fathers), perhaps indicates that St. 
 Luke is here using some document which furnished hina with brief notes of 
 
476 THE LIFE AND WORK OF, ST. PATH/. 
 
 destined indeed to be early converted, but not by them, 
 and wbicb plays a prominent part in the history of early 
 Christianity.^ Once more divinely thwarted in the fulfil- 
 ment of their designs, they made no attempt to preach 
 in Mysia,^ which in its bleak and thinly populated uplands 
 offered but few opportunities for evangelisation, but 
 pressed on directly to Troas, where an event awaited them 
 of immense importance, which was sufficient to explain 
 the purpose of Him who had shaped the ends which they 
 themselves had so differently rough-heivn. 
 
 From the slopes of Ida,' Paul and Silvanus with their 
 young attendant descended the ravine which separated 
 the mountain from the port and colony. They were on 
 classic ground. Every step they took revealed scenes to 
 which the best and brightesFpoetry of Greece had given 
 an immortal interest. As they emerged from the pine 
 groves of the many-fountained hill, with its exquisite 
 legend of (Enone and her love, they saw beneath them the 
 " Kinging plains of windy Troy," 
 
 where the great heroes of early legend had so often 
 
 " Drunk delight of battle witli their peers." 
 
 But if they had ever heard of 
 
 " The face that launched a thousand ships, 
 And sacked the topmost towers of Ilion," 
 
 or looked with any interest on the Simois and the Sca- 
 
 this part of Paul's journeys. The remarkable fact that in the Mlioque con- 
 troversy neither side appealed to this expression shows how early the text 
 had been altered by the copyists. 
 
 ' See Pliny's letter to Trajan (x. 97), when he was Proconsul of Bithynia, 
 asking advice how to deal with the Christians. 
 
 2 This mustlbe the meaning of ■ir,afe\iivres { — i.(ph'rts, "neglecting"). It 
 cannot be translated " passing through," which would be Si«A.9<!vTfs, though a 
 glance at the map will show that they must have passed through Mysia with- 
 out stopping. The absence of synagogues and the remote, unknown character 
 of the region account for this. ^ Acts xvi. 8, Kardprimai, 
 
ALEXANDRIA TROAS. 477 
 
 mander, and the huge barrows of Ajax and Aehilles, 
 they do not allude to them. Their minds were fuU of 
 other thoughts. 
 
 The town at which they now arrived had been founded 
 by the successors of Alexander, and had been elevated into 
 a colony with the Jus Italicmn. This privilege had been 
 granted to the inhabitants solely because of the romantic 
 interest which the Eomans took in the legendary cradle of 
 their greatness, an interest which almost induced Constan- 
 tine to fix there, instead of, at Byzantium, the capital of 
 the Eastern Empire. Of any preaching in Alexandria 
 Troas nothing is told us. On three separate occasions at 
 least St. Paul visited it.^ It was there that Carpus lived, 
 who was probably his host, and he found it a place pecu- 
 liarly adapted for the favourable reception of the Grospel.^ 
 On this occasion, however, his stay was very short,^ be- 
 cause he was divinely commanded to other work. 
 
 St. Paul had now been labouring for many years 
 among Syrians, Cilicians, and the mingled races of Asia 
 Minor ; but during that missionary activity he had been 
 at Eoman colonies like Antioch in Pisidia, and must have 
 been thrown very frequently into the society of Greeks 
 and Latins. He was himself a Eoman citizen, and the 
 constant allusions of his Epistles show that he, like St. 
 Luke, must have been struck with admiration for the 
 order, the discipline, the dignity, the reverence for law 
 which characterised the Eomans, and especially for the 
 bravery, the determination, the hardy spirit of self-denial 
 which actuated the Eoman soldier.* He teUs us, later in 
 
 ' Acts XX. 1, 2, compared with 2 Cor. ii. 12; 1 Oor. xtI. 5— 9j and Acts 
 XX. 6 ; and 2 Tim. iv. 13. 
 
 ' 2 Oor. ii. 12. 
 
 ' Acts xvi. 10, «i«e'tt>s iCtiriiffatiiy implies tliat they took the first ship which 
 they coiQd find for a voyage to Macedonia. 
 
 * This is shown by the many military and agonistic metaphors in MS Epistles. 
 
478 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 his life, how frequently his thoughts had turned towards 
 Eome itself,^ and as he hrooded on the divinely indicated 
 future of Christianity, we cannot doubt that Vhile wan- 
 dering round the then busy but now land-locked and 
 desolate harbour of Troas, he had thrown many a wistful 
 glance towards the hills of Imbros and Samothrace ; and 
 perhaps when on some clear evening the colossal peak of 
 Athos was visible, it seemed like some vast angel who 
 beckoned him to carry the good tidings to the west. The 
 Spirit of Jesus had guided him hitherto in his journey,' 
 had prevented him from preaching in the old and famous 
 cities of Asia, had forbidden him to enter Bithynia, had 
 driven the stake deeper into his flesh, that he might 
 preach the word among the Gauls. Anxiously must he 
 have awaited further guidance ; — and it came. In the 
 night a Macedonian soldier^ stood before him, exhorting 
 him vdth these words, "Cross over into Macedonia and 
 help us." When morning dawned Paul narrated the 
 vision to his companions,' " and immediately we sought," 
 says the narrator, who here, for the first time, appears as 
 the companion of the Apostle, " to go forth into Mace- 
 donia, inferring that the Lord has called us to preach the 
 Grospel to them." With such brevity and simplicity is the 
 incident related which of all others was the most important 
 in introducing the Gospel of Christ to the most advanced 
 and active races of the world, and among them to those races 
 in whose hands its future destinies must inevitably rest. 
 
 '' Acts xix. 21 ; cf . Bom. i. 13 — " Oftentimes I purposed to come to yon j " 
 XV. 23 — " I have had a great desire these many years to come to you." These 
 passages -were written from Achaia — probably from Corinth — six or seven 
 years after this date. 
 
 " The iviip and the lo-Tiij, and the instant recognition that it was a 
 Macedonian, perhaps imply this. It is called an Hpana, which is used of 
 impressions more distinct than those of dreams. Acts x. 3, if ipinari fmiepSs, 
 Matt. xvii. 9 (the Transfiguration). 
 
 ^ D. $teyepBeU oiv Sir)yliiraTo rh ipapia injup (Acts XvL 10). 
 
ST. LTJKB. 479 
 
 The other incident of this visit to the Troas is the 
 meeting of Paul with Luke, the author of the Acts of 
 the Apostles and the Grospel. This meeting is indicated 
 witli profound modesty hj the sudden use of the pronoikn 
 i"'we ; " but even without this the vivid accuracy of 
 detail in the narrative which immediately ensues, is in 
 such striking contrast with the meagreness of much that 
 has gone before, that we should have been driven to 
 conjecture the presence of the writer on board the little 
 vessel that now slipped its bawsers from one of the granite 
 columns which we still see lying prostrate on the lonely 
 shores of the harbour of Troas. 
 
 And this meeting was a happy one for Paul ; for, of all 
 the fellow-workers with whom he was thrown, Timotheus 
 alone was dearer to him than Luke. From the appear- 
 ance and disappearance of the first personal pronoun in the 
 subsequent chapters of the Acts,-^ we see that he accom- 
 panied St. Paul to Philippi, and rejoined him there some 
 seven years afterwards, never again to part with him so 
 long as we are able to pursue his history. How deeply 
 St. Paul was attached to him appears in the title " the be- 
 loved physician ; " how entire was his fidehty is seen in 
 the touching notice, "Only Luke is with me." He shared 
 his journeys, his dangers, his shipwreck; he shared and 
 cheered his long imprisonments, first at Csesarea, then at 
 Eome. More than all, he became the biographer of the 
 Great Apostle, and to his allegiance, to his ability, to his 
 accurate preservation of facts, is due nearly aU that we 
 
 1 The "we" begins in Acts xvi.lO; it ends when Paul leares Philippi, 
 xvii. 1. It is resumed at Philippi at the close of tte third missionary 
 ionmey, sx. 6, and continues till the arrival at Jerusalem, xxi. 18. It again 
 appears in xxvii. 1, and continues throughout the journey to Borne. Luke 
 was also with the Apostle during his first (Ool. iv. 14 ; Philem.24) and second 
 imprisonments (2 Tim. iv. 11). It is far from certain that 2 Cor. fiii. 18 
 refers to him. 
 
480 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 know o£ one wlio laboured more abundantly tban aU the 
 Apostles, and to wbom, more than to any of them, the cause 
 of Christ is indebted for its stability and its dissemination. 
 Of Luke himself, beyond what we learn of his move- 
 ments and of his character from his own writings, we know 
 but little. There is no reason to reject the unanimous 
 tradition that he was by birth an Antiochene,^ and it is 
 clear from St. Paul's allusions that he was a Gentile 
 convert, and that he had not been circumcised.^ That he 
 was a close observer, a careful narrator, a man of culti- 
 vated intellect, and possessed of a good Greek style,* we 
 see from his two books; and they also reveal to us a 
 character gentle and manly, sympathetic and self-denying. 
 The incidental allusion of St. Palul shows us that he was a 
 physician, and this allusion is singularly confirmed by his 
 own turns of phrase.* The rank of a physician in those 
 
 ' Euseb. S. E. iii. 4 ; Jer. De Virr. Illustr. Such allusions as "Nicolas, a 
 proselyte of Antioch," and the mention of Christians important there, but 
 otherwise unknown, lend probability to this tradition (cf. xi. 20 ; xiii. 1, &o.). 
 If we could attach any importance to the reading of D in Acts xi. 28 
 {avviinpaiJLuevav S^ f)iiwv), it would show that Luke had been at Antioch 
 during the year when Paul and Barnabas were working there before the famine. 
 The name Lucas is an abbreviation of Lucanus, as Silas of Silvanns ; but the 
 notion that they were the same person is preposterous. 
 
 = Col. iv. 10, 11, 14. 
 
 5 As an incidental confirmation that he was a Gentile, Bishop Wordsworth 
 (on 1 Thess. ii. 9) notices that he says " day and night " (Acts ix. 24), whereas 
 when he is reporting the speeches of St. Paul (Acts xx. 31 ; xxvi 7, in the 
 Qreelc) he, like St. Paul himself (1 Thess. iii. 10; 2 Thess. iii. 8 ; 1 Tim. v. 5, 
 &c.), always says " night and day," in accordance with the Jewish notion that 
 the night preceded the day. A. more decisive indication that Luke was a 
 Gentile is Acts i. 19, rp I'S/? StaAiKTif a^rwi/, slipped into St. Peter's speech. 
 " Lucas, medicus Antiochensis, ut scripta ejus indicant " (Jer.). 
 
 * See a highly ingenious paper by Dr. Plumptre on St. Luke and St. Paul 
 {The Eo^oaitor, No. xx., Aug., 1876). He quotes the following indications of 
 medical knowledge : — The combination of feverish attacks with dysentery (Acts 
 (xxviii. 8), and the use of rifij) in the sense (P) of honorarium ; $iireis and a-tpvph 
 in Acts iii. 7 (cf . Hippocrates, p. 637) ; the incrustation caused by ophthalmia 
 (Acts ix. 18); tKOTaais (Acts X. 9, 10) ; o-K»A7)if(i)3p(uToi(Actsxii.23); "Physician, 
 heal thyself," only in Liike iv. 23; ep6ii$ot (Luke zxii. 44), && 
 
LUKE A PHTSICIAIT. 481 
 
 days was not in any respect so high, as now it is, and 
 does not at all exclude the possibility that St. Luke 
 may have been a freedman ; but on this and all else 
 which concerns him Scripture and tradition leave us 
 entirely uninformed. That he was familiar with naval 
 matters is strikingly shown in his account of the ship- 
 wreck, and it has even been conjectured that he exercised 
 his art in the huge and crowded merchant vessels which 
 were incessantly coasting "from point to point of the 
 Mediterranean.-^ Two inferences, at any rate, arise from 
 the way in which his name is introduced : one that he had 
 already made the acquaintance of St. Paul, perhaps at 
 Antioch ; the other that, though he had some special con- 
 nection with PhUippi and Troas, his subsequent close 
 attachment to the Apostle in his journeys and imprison- 
 ments may have arisen from a desire to give him the 
 benefit of medical skill and attention in his frequent 
 attacks of sickness.^ The lingering remains of that illness 
 which prostrated St. Paul in Galatia may have furnished 
 the first reason why it became necessary for Luke to 
 accompany him, and so to begin the fraternal compardon- 
 ship which must have been one of the richest blessings of 
 a sorely troubled Hfe. 
 
 ' Smith, Voy. and Shipwreck, p. 15, who shows that St. Luke's nautical 
 knowledge is at once accurate and vmprofessional. 
 
 * Dr. Plumptre {vM supra) tries to show that the intercourse of Luke, the 
 Physician, left its traces on St. Paul's own language and tone of thought — 
 e.g., the frequent use of iyiaivu (1 Tim. i. 10 ; vi 3, &c., in eight places), which 
 is found three times in St. Luke, and not in the other Grospels ; voaS (1 Tim, 
 vi 4) ; yiyyfiaiva (2 Tim. ii. 17) ; Tt/0o'i» (1 Tim. iiL 6 ; vi. 4, &C.) ; KCKain-npiairfifVot 
 (1 Tim. iv. 2); Kirt,eipi(voi (2 Tim. iv. 3); Hippoer., p. 444; yvfivMla (1 Tim. 
 iv. 8) ; iTTiJ/ioxoi (1 Tim. v. 23) ; the anti-ascetic advice of Col. ii. 23 (which 
 means that " ascetic rules have no value in relation to hodily fulness " — i.e., are 
 no remedy against its consequences in disordered passions) ; Karwroixii (Phil, 
 iii. 2) ; aKifioKa (Phil. iii. 8, &c.). The facts are cnrioua and noticeable, even if 
 they will not fully bear out the. inference. 
 
 V V 
 
CHEISTIANITY IN MACEDONIA. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXV. 
 
 PHILIPPI. 
 
 "The day is short; the work abniidaiit ; the laboxu-erB are remiss; tlis 
 reward is great ; the master presses." — Fibee Abh6th, iL 
 
 So with their hearts full of the high hopes inspired hy the 
 consciousness that they were being led hy the Spirit of 
 God, the two Apostles, with Luke and Timotheus, set sail 
 from the port of Troas. As the south wind sped them 
 fast upon their destined course, they may have seen a 
 fresh sign that He was with them who causes the east 
 wind to blow in the heavens, and by His power brings in 
 the south wind.^ Owing to this favourable breeze, they 
 traversed in two days the distance which, occupied five 
 days when they returned.* On the first day they ran past 
 Tenedos and Imbros straight for Samothrace, and an- 
 chored for the night to leeward of it. Did Paul as he 
 gazed by starUght, or at early dawn, on the towering 
 peak which overshadows that ancient island, think at all 
 of its immemorial mysteries, or talk to his companions 
 about the Cabiri, or question any of the Greek or Eoman 
 
 ' See Con. and Hows. i. 305. The description of the voyage by St. Luke, 
 however brief, is, aa osual, demonstrably accurate in the minutest pariicnkrs. 
 > Acts zz. 6. 
 
TOTAGE TO MACEDONIA. 483 
 
 sailors about tlte strange names of Axioclieros, AxIocHer- 
 sos, and Axiochersa ? We would gladly know, but we 
 have no data to belp us, and it is strongly probable 
 tbat to all sucb secondary incidents he was habitually 
 indifferent. 
 
 On the next day, still scudding before the wind,^ they 
 passed the mouth of the famous Strymon; saUed north- 
 ward of Thasos amid the scenes so full to us of the memory 
 ,of Thucydides ; gazed for the first time on the " gold- 
 veined crags " of Pangaeus ; saw a rocky promontory, and 
 on it a busy seaport, over which towered the marble 
 Maiden Chamber of Diana ; and so, anchoring in the 
 roadstead, set foot — :three of them for the first time — on 
 European soil. The town was !Neapolis, in Thrace — the 
 modern ICavala — which served as the port of the Mace-, 
 donian Philippi. Here St. Paul did not linger. As at 
 Seleucia, and Attaleia, and Perga, and Peiraeus, and 
 Cenchrese, he seemed to regard the port as being merely 
 a starting-point for the inland town.^ Accordingly, 
 he at once left NeapoHs by the western gate and took the 
 Egnatian road, which, after skirting the shore for a 
 short distance, turns northward over a narrow pass of 
 Mount Pangaeus, and so winds down into a green 
 delicious plain, — with a marsh on one side where herds 
 of large-horned buffaloes wallowed among the reeds, and 
 with meadows on the other side, which repaid the snows 
 of Hsemus, gathered in the freshening waters of the 
 Zygactes, with the bloom and odour of the hundred-petal 
 rose. At a distance of about seven miles they would 
 begin to pass through the tombs that bordered the road- 
 
 ' St. Liike most accurately omits the fieuSpo/ffiffaufv of the second day's 
 voyage ; a S.S.E. wind — ^and such are prevalent at times in this part of the 
 iSlgeon-^would speed them direct to Samothrace, but not quite in so straight 
 .a course from Samothrace to Neapolis, 
 
 » T, supra, p. 390. 
 
 P F 2 
 
484 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL.' 
 
 sides in the neighbourhood of all ancient cities, and one 
 mile further brought them to Philippi, whose Acropolis 
 had long been visible on the summit of its precipitous and 
 towering hiU.^ 
 
 The city of Philippi was a monumental record of two 
 vast empires. It had once been an obscure place, called 
 Krenides from its streams and springs ; but Philip, the 
 father of Alexander, had made it a frontier town, to 
 protect Macedonia from the Thracians, and had helped to 
 establish his power by the extremely profitable working 
 of its neighbouring gold mines. Augustus, proud of the 
 victory over Brutus and Cassius, — ^won at the foot of 
 the hiU on which it stands, and on the summit of which 
 Cassius had committed. suicide, — elevated it to the rank of 
 a colony, which made it, as St. Luke calls it, if not the 
 first yet certainly " a first city of that district of 
 Mace-donia." ^ And this, probably, was why St. Paul went 
 directly to it. When Perseus, the last successor of 
 Alexander, had been routed at Pydna (June 22, B.C. 168), 
 Macedonia had been reduced to a Eoman province in four 
 divisions. These, iu accordance with the astute and 
 machiavellic policy of Eome, were kept distinct from each 
 other by differences of privilege and isolation of interests 
 which tended to foster mutual jealousies. Beginning 
 
 ' Appian, iv. 105. On the site of it is a small Tnrtisli village, called 
 Filibedjik. 
 
 2 The ;full title, " Colonia Augusta Julia Viotrix PhUippensium," i& found 
 on inscriptions (Miss. Archeol., p. 18). A great deal has been written about 
 jJTis IittI irpiirri t^s ncplios rr/s McuceSovtas ir6\is KoXavta. A favourite explanation 
 is that it means " the first city of Macedonia they came to," regarding NeapoHs 
 as being technically in Thrace. Both parts of the explanation are most im- 
 probable ; if irptiTii only meant " the first they came to," it would be a frivolous 
 remark, and would require the article and the imperfect tense ; andNeapolis,as 
 the port of Philippi, was certainly regarded as a Macedonian town. Ilfx^ii is 
 justifiable politically — for Philippi, though not the capital of Macedonia Prima, 
 was certainly more important than Amphipolis. Bp. Wordsworth makes it 
 mean " the chief city of the frontier of Macedonia" (of. Ezek. xlv. 7). 
 
MACEDONIA. 483 
 
 eastwards at the river N"estus, Macedonia Prima reached to 
 the Strymon ; Macedonia Secunda, to the Axius ; Mace- 
 donia Tertia, to the Peneus ; and Macedonia Quarta, to 
 Ulyricum and Epirus.^ The capitals of these divisions 
 respectively were Amphipolis, Thessalonica, — at which the 
 Proconsul of the entire province fixed his residence, — PeUa, 
 and Pelagonia. It is a very reasonable conjecture that 
 Paul, in answer to the appeal of the Vision, had originally 
 intended to visit — as, perhaps, he idtimately did visit — all 
 four capitals. But AmphipoHs, in spite of its historic 
 celebrity had sunk into comparative insignificance, and the 
 proud colonial privileges of PhiHppi made it in reality the 
 more important town. 
 
 On the insignia of Eoman citizenship which here met 
 his gaze on every side — ^the S.P.Q.E., the far-famed 
 legionary eagles, the panoply of the Roman soldiers which 
 he was hereafter so closely to describe, the two statues 
 of Augustus, one in the paludament of an Imperator, one 
 ia the semi-nude cincture of a divinity — Paul could not 
 have failed to gaze with curiosity; and as they passed 
 up the Egnatian road which divided the city, they must 
 have looked at the figures of tutelary deities rudely scratched 
 upon the rock, which showed that the old mythology was 
 still nominally accepted. Can we suppose that they 
 were elevated so far above the sense of humour as not to 
 smile with their comrade Silvanus as they passed the 
 temple dedicated to the rustic god whose name he bore, 
 and saw the images of the old man, 
 
 " So surfeit-swollen, so old, and so profane,*' 
 
 whom the rural population of Italy, from whom these 
 
 ' lav. xIt. 1&— 29. We cannot be enre that these diyisions were still 
 retuned. 
 
486 THE LIFE AKD WORK OF ST. PAUL, 
 
 colonists had been drawn, -worsliipped witli offerings of 
 fruit and swine ? 
 
 They had arrived in the middle of the week, and 
 their first care, as usual, was to provide for their own 
 lodging and independent maintenance, to which Liike would 
 doubtless be able to contribute by the exercise of his art. 
 They might have expected to find a Jewish community 
 sheltering itself under the wings of the Eoman eagle ; but 
 if so they were disappointed. PhUippi was a military 
 and agricultural, not a commercial town, and the Jews 
 were so few that they did not even possess a synagogue. 
 If during those days they made any attempt to preach, 
 it could only have been in the privacy of their rooms, 
 for when the Sabbath came they were not even sure that 
 the town could boast of a proseucTia, or prayer-house.^ 
 They knew enough, however, of the habits of the Jews 
 to feel sure that if there were one, it would be on the 
 river-bank outside the city. So they made their way 
 through the gate,^ along the ancient causeway which led^ 
 directly to the Grangites,^ and under the triumphal arch 
 which commemorated the great victory of Philippi ninety-; 
 four years before.* That victory had finally decided the' 
 prevalence of the imperial system, which was fraught 
 Mrith, such vast consequences for the world. In" pass- 
 ing to the banks of tl.e river the missionaries were on 
 the very ground on which the battle had been fought, 
 and near which the camps of Brutus and Cassius had 
 stood, separated by the river from the army of Octavianus 
 and Antony. 
 
 ' Acts XTi. 13. This is the sense which I extract from the Tarions read' 
 ings of «, B (?), 0, D, and from the versions. 
 ^ Acts xvi. 13, tt^atji, n, a, B, 0, D, &c. 
 ° Perhaps from the same root as Ganges (Bienan, p 1^). 
 * Called Kiemer {Miss. ArcheoL, p. 118). 
 
LTDIA. ■ 487 
 
 But when they reached the poor open-air proseuchd} 
 straage to say they only found a few women assembled 
 there. It was clearly no time for formal orations. They 
 simply sat down, and entered into conversation with the 
 little group.^ Their words were blessed. Among the 
 women sat a Lydian proselytess, a native of the city 
 of Thyatira, who had there belonged to the guild of 
 dyers.^ The luxurious extravagance of the age created 
 a large demand for purple in the market of Eome, and 
 Lydia found room for her profitable trade among the 
 citizens at Philippi. As she sat listening, the arrow of 
 conviction pierced her heart. She accepted the faith, and 
 was baptised with her slaves and children.* One happy 
 fruit her conversion at once bore, for she used hospitality 
 without grudging. " If you have judged me," she said, 
 " to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house, and stay 
 there." To accede to the request, modestly as it was 
 urged, was not in accordance with the principles which 
 the great Apostle had laid down to guide his conduct. 
 Fully acknowledging the right of every missionary of the 
 faith be to maintained by those to whom he ministered, 
 and even to travel about with a wife, or an attendant 
 deaconess, he had yet not only foregone this right, but 
 begged as a personal favour that it. might not be pressed 
 upon him, because he valued that proof of his sincerity 
 
 " 'Proieuclme were circular-shaped enclosures open to the air (Epiphan. 
 Bofir. Ixxx. 1), often -built on the. sea-shore or by rivers (Phil, m Flaco. 14; 
 Jos. AiOt. xiv. 10, 23; Tert. ad JVa<. i. 13 ; Juv. Sat. iii. 12), for the facility 
 of the frequent ablutions Vhich Jewish worship required. 
 
 ' Acts xvL 13j ^An\oB/tEc ; 14, tois \a\ovii4vois.. 
 
 ' The proyince of Lydia was famous for the art of dyeing in purple (Hom. 
 n. iv. 141 ; Claud. Bapt. Proserp. i. 270; Strabo,. xiii. 4, 14). Sir G. Wheler 
 found an inscription at Thyatira mentioning " the dyers " {ol fiiu^us). 
 
 * Acts xvi. 14, ^Kovev . . . Sflivoiiiv. How unlike invention is the narrative 
 that, summoned by a vision to Macedonia/ his first and most important convert 
 is a woman of the Asia in which the Spirit had forbidden him to preach ! ^ 
 
488 THE LIFE AOT WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 which was furnislied by the gratuitous character of his 
 ministry. Lydia, however, would not be refused, and 
 she was so evidently one of those generous natures who 
 have learnt how far more blessed it is to give than to 
 receive, that' Paul did not feel it right to persist in his 
 refusal-. The trade of Lydia was a profitable one, and in 
 her wealth, joined to the affection which he cherished for 
 the Church of Philippi beyond aU other Churches, we 
 see the probable reason why he made other Churches 
 jealous by accepting pecuniary aid from his Philippian 
 converts, and from them alone. ^ 
 
 There is some evidence that, among the Macedonians, 
 women occupied a more independent position, and were 
 held in higher honour, than in other parts of the world.^ 
 In his Epistle to the Phihppians St. Paul makes 
 prominent mentioli of two ladies, Euodia and Syntyche, 
 who were well known in the Christian community, 
 although unhappily they could not agree with each other.' 
 The part that women played in the dissemination of the 
 Grospel can hardly be exaggerated, and unless it was a 
 mere accident that only women were assembled in the 
 proseucha on the first Sabbath at Philippi, we must 
 suppose that not a few of the male converts mentioned 
 shortly afterwards^ were originally won over by their 
 influence. The only converts who are mentioned by 
 name are Epaphroditus, for whom both Paul and the 
 Philippian Church seem to have felt a deep regard ; 
 
 Clemens, and Syzygus, or "yokefellow,"" whom Paul 
 
 « 
 
 ' 1 Thess. ii. 5, 7, 9; twice in Thessaloiuca, PhiL iv. 16; once in Athens, 
 2 Cor. xi. 9 ; once in Borne, Phil. iv. 10. 
 
 2 See Lightfoot, Philip., p. 55. ' 
 
 8 Phil. iv. 2. 4 Acts rvi. 40. 
 
 ' It is true that the name does not occur elsewhere, but I cannot for a 
 moment believe with Clemens Alex. [Strom, iii. 6, § 53) and Epiphaoius 
 (Jff, E. iii. 30) that the -wori^i^vye means " wife." Lydia is not mentioned in 
 
PHILIPPIAN CONVERTS. 489 
 
 addresses in a playful paronomasia, and entreats him to 
 help the evangelising toils — the joint wresthngs for the 
 , Gospel — of Euodia and Syntyche.. But besides these 
 there were other unnamed feUow-workers to whom St. 
 Paul hears the high testimony that " their names were in 
 the book of life." 
 
 Very encouraging and very happy must these weeks 
 at Philippi have been, resulting, as they did, in the 
 founding of a Church, to whose members he finds it 
 needful to give but few warnings, and against whom 
 he does not utter a word of blame. The almost total 
 absence of Jews meant an almost total absence of persecu- 
 tion. The Philippians were heart-whole in their Christian 
 faith. St. Paul's entire Epistle to them breathes of joy, 
 affection, and gratitude. He seems to remember that he 
 is writing to a colony, and a military colony — a colony of 
 Eoman "athletes." He reminds them of a citizenship 
 loftier and more ennobling than that of Rome ; ^ he calls 
 Epaphxoditus not only his fellow-worker, but also his 
 feUow-soldier, one who had stood shoulder to shoulder 
 with him in the new Macedonian phalanx, which was 
 to join as of old in an advance to the conquest of the 
 world. He derives his metaphorical expressions from the 
 wrestling-ground and the race.^ Alike St. Paul and 
 St. Luke seem to rejoice in the strong, manly Eoman 
 nature of these converts, of whom many were slaves and 
 freedmen, but of whom a large number had been soldiers, 
 drawn from various -parts of Italy in the civil wars — men 
 
 the Epistle, nnless the name of this Lydian lady was Euodia or Syntyche. 
 She may have died, or have returned to her native city in the intervening 
 years. She most assuredly would have been named if the Epistle had been a 
 forgery. 
 
 ' Phil. i. 27, iro\iT(ie(ree ; iii. 20, troKirfV/jta. 
 
 " Phil. i. 27, ari\Kere ; iii. 12, Sk^ko) ; 14, iv\ rh Ppafieiov ; iv. 3, <ruvl\eK-i\(rav \ 
 i. 27, avvaShovtiTcs ; iii. 16, t^i aiirf crotx^iv. 
 
490 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 of- the hardy Marsian and Pelignian stock — ^trained in ,the 
 stern, strong discipline of the Eoman legions, and un- 
 sophisticated by the debilitating Hellenism of a mongrel 
 population. St. Paul loved them more and honoured them 
 more than he did the dreamy, superstitious Ephesians, 
 the fickle, impulsive Gauls, or the conceited, factious 
 Achaians. In writing to Thessalonica and Philippi he 
 had to deal with men of a larger mould and manlier 
 mind — more true and more tender than the men of 
 Corinth, with their boastful ignorance which took itself 
 for knowlege, or the men of Asia, with their volupr. 
 tuous mysticisms and ceremonial pettiness. He was now 
 thrown for the first time among a race which has been 
 called the soundest part of the ancient world,^ a race 
 which shone forth like torches in narrow and winding 
 streets, like stars that beamed their light and life in the 
 dark firmament — blameless children of God amid the 
 dwarfed and tortuous meanness of a degenerate race.^ 
 
 Their stay in this fruitful field of labour was cut short 
 hj an unforeseen circumstance, which thwarted the greed 
 of a few interested persons, and enlisted against Paul 
 and Silas the passions of the mob. For there is this 
 characteristic difference between the persecutions of Jews 
 and Gentiles — that the former were always stirred up by 
 religious fanaticism, the latter by personal and political 
 interests which were accidentally involved in reKgious 
 questions. Hitherto the Apostles had laboured without 
 interruption, chiefly because the Jews in the place, if there 
 were any at aU, were few and uninfluential ; but one day, 
 as they were on their way to the proseucha, they were met 
 by a slave -girl, who, having that excitable, perhaps 
 epileptic diathesis which was the qualification of the 
 
 > See the excellent remarks o£ Hausrath, p. 281, seqq. 
 » Phil. u. 16. 
 
THE PYTHONESS. 491 
 
 Pythonesses of Delphi, was announced to he possessed by 
 a Python spirit.^ Nothing was less understood in 
 antiquity than these obscure phases of mental excitation, 
 and the strange flashes of sense, and even sometimes of 
 genius, out of the glooni of a perturbed intellect, were 
 regarded as inspired and prophetic utterances. As a 
 fortune-teller and diviner, this poor girl was held in high 
 esteem by the credulous vulgar of the town.^ A slave could 
 possess no property, except such peculium as his mteter 
 allowed him, and the fee for consulting this unofficial 
 Pythoness was a lucrative source of income to the people 
 who owned her. To a poor afflicted girl like this, whose 
 infirmities had encircled her with superstitious reverence, 
 more freedom would be allowed than would have been 
 granted, even in Philippi, to ordinary females in the little 
 town; and she would be likely — especially if she were 
 of Jewish birth — to hear fragments of information ?ibout 
 Paul and his teaching. They impressed themselves on her 
 
 ' Acts xvi. 16, nvtviM niittivu (k, A, B, C, D, &c.). The corresponding Old 
 Testament expression is a^« 06ft.. (Lev. xx. 6). It points to the use of Tentrilo- 
 quism, as I have shown, s.v. "Divination," in Smith, BM. Diet. At this period, 
 and long before, people of this .class — ^usually women' — ^were regarded as pro- 
 phetesses, inspired by the Pythian ApoUo (TrvSoKriwrgf). Hence they were called 
 nvBSives, and EupuicAeTs, from an ancient soothsayer named Eurycles and lYyatr- 
 rplfivBoi, from the convulsive heavings, and the speaking as out of the dejpths 
 of the stomach, which accompanied their fits (Sophocles /Fr., arepviiiavTis). 
 See Plutarch, De Defect. Orac. 9; Galen, Gloss. Hippocr. ('Eyyaffrpiiiveoi- 01 
 KCKAcKT/tcVov ToS (TTiijaaTOS ((jJeTycJ/Mci/ot Sia to SoKiiv ix t^s ycurrphs <p8iyyc(r6at.) 
 
 Hesych s. v. Schol. ad Ar. Ye»p. 1019, and TertuUian.^poZ. 23, who dis- 
 tinctly defines them as people " qui de Deo pati existimantur, qui anhelando 
 praefantur." Neander quotes from Ellis the interesting fact that the Priest 
 of Obct, in the Society Isles, found himself unable to reproduce his former cou- 
 vnlsive ecstasies of supposed inspiration, after his conversion to Christianity 
 {Plantg., p. 176). 
 
 2 We know that "an idol is nothing in the world," and therefore the 
 expression that this girl had " a spirit of Pytho " is only an adoption of the 
 current. Pagan phraseology about her. Hippocrates attributed epileptic 
 diseases to possession by Apollo, Oybele, Poseidon, &o., De Morho 8aer. (0 
 md H. i. 321). 
 
492 THE LIFE AND ■WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 imagination, and on meeting tlie men of wliom slie had 
 heard such, solemn things, she turned round^ and followed 
 them towards the river, repeatedly calling out — ^perhaps 
 in the very phrases which she had heard used of them — 
 " These people are slaves of the Most High God, and they 
 are announcing to us the way of salvation."^ This might 
 he tolerated once or twice, ' but at last it became too 
 serious a hindrance of their sacred duties to be any longer 
 enduTed in silence. 
 
 In an outburst of pity and indignation^ — pity for the 
 sufferer, indignation at this daily annoyance — Paul sud- 
 denly turned round, and addressing the Pytho by whom 
 the girl was believed to be possessed, said, "I enjoin 
 thee, in the name of Jesus Christ, to go out of her." The 
 effect was instantaneous. The calm authoritative exorcism 
 restored the broken harmony of her being. No more 
 paroxysms could be expected of her ; nor the wild un- 
 natural screaming utterances, so shrill and unearthly that 
 they might very naturally be taken for Sibylline frenzies. 
 Her masters ceased to expect anything from her oracles. 
 Their hope of further gain "went out" with the spirit.* A 
 piece of property so rare that it could only be possessed 
 by a sort of joint ownership was rendered entirely value- 
 less. 
 
 Thus the slave-masters were touched in their pockets, 
 and it filled them with fury. They could hardly, in- 
 deed, go before the magistrates and teU. them that Paul 
 by a single word had exorcised a powerful demon ; but 
 they were determined to have vengeance somehow or 
 
 ' Acts xvi. 16, iiravT^o-oi ; 17, KOTBKoXou9^ero(ro. 
 
 » Slaves ; cf . Acts iv. 29 ; Kom. i. 1 ; Tit. i. 1. 
 
 5 Acts XTi. 18, SmirovTiSels. The same word is used of the strong threats 
 of the priests at the teaching of the Apostles in Jerusalem (Acts iv. 2). 
 
 * Acts xvi. 19, fiijASe)/ ri ^\irl5 Tris ipyaalas air&v. The use of the same 
 word after the ^KAflei/ {rh iryfvua) airfi rri &pif is perhaps intentionaL 
 
THE "PR^TORS." 493 
 
 other, and, in a Roman colony oomposed originally of 
 discharged Antonian soldiers, and now occupied partly 
 by their descendants, partly by enfranchised freedmen 
 from Italy,^ it was easy to raise a clamour against one or 
 two isolated Jews. It was the more easy because the 
 Philippians might have heard the news of disturbances 
 and riots at Eome, which provoked the decree of Claudius 
 banishing all Jews from the city.^ They determined 
 to seize this opportunity, and avail themselves of a 
 similar plea.^ They suddenly arrested Paul and Silas, 
 and dragged them before the sitting magistrates.* These 
 seem to have relegated the matter to the duumviri^ who 
 were the chief authorities of the colony, and who, apiag 
 the manners and the titles of Imperial Eome, had the 
 impertinence to call themselves " Praetors." * Leading 
 
 1 This is proved by the inscriptions found at Philippi, which record the 
 donors to the Temple of Silvanitis, nearly all of whom are slaves or freedmen 
 {MisB. Archeel., p. 75). . 
 
 2 Acts xviii. 2 ; Suet. Clavd. 25. See Ewald, vi. 488. 
 
 ^ Judaism was a reUgio lidta, but anything like active proselytism was 
 liable to stern suppression. See Paul. Sentent, 21; Serv. Virg. ^n. viii. 
 187; and the remarkable advice of Maecenas to Augustus to dislike and 
 punish all religious innovators (to!is Se ^evl^ovrds t( irefl airb \jh fleioi/] Kal /ilaet 
 Koi K6\a(e. Dio, Cass. vii. 36). " Quoties," says Livy, " hoc patrum avorumque 
 aetate negotium est nt sacra externa fieri vetarent, sacrificulos vatesque 
 fore, oirco, urbe prohiberent " (Liv. xxxix. 16). 
 
 * Possibly the aediles (Miss. Areheol., p. 71). 
 
 ^ Acts xvi. 19, eXXKvffar irpbs tV li^yophv iirl robs Apxiivras ; 20, koI 
 vpoirayayivTis butoJts tois arpaTityoXsi^ The different verbs — of which the 
 second is so much milder — and the different titles surely imply what is said in 
 the text. 
 
 ' Acts xvi. 20. aTpariiyiis is the Greek version of the originally nulitary 
 title "Prsetor;" and it was also a Greet title in vogue for the chief magis- 
 trates in little cities (Ar. Polit. vii. 8). The fashion seems to have been set 
 in, Italy, where Cicero, a hundred years before this time, notices with amuse- 
 ment the " capiditas " which had led the Oapuan Duumviri to arrogate to 
 themselves the title of " Praetors," and he supposes that they wUl soon have 
 the impudence fei call themselves "Consuls." He notices also that their 
 " lictors " carried not mere staves (bacilU), but actual bundles of rods with 
 axes inside them {fasces) as at Rome {Be Leg. Agrar. 34). The name 
 siradigo lingered on in some cities till modern days (Wetst. m loc). 
 
494 THE LITE AMD WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 tieir prisoners into tlie presence of these " Prsetors," they 
 exclaimed, " These fellows are utterly troubling our city, 
 being mere Jews ; and they are preaching customs which 
 it is not lawful for us, who are Romans, to accept or to 
 practise."^ The mob knew the real state of the case, and 
 sympathised with the owners of the slave girl, feeling 
 much as the Gadarenes felt towards One whose healing of 
 a demoniac had interfered with their gains. In the minds 
 of the Greeks and Eomans there was always, as we have 
 seen, a latent spark of abhorrence against the Jews. 
 These sweepings of the Agora vehemently sided with the 
 accusers, and the provincial duumvirs, all the more dan- 
 gerous from being pranked out in the usurped peacock- 
 plumes of "praetorian" dignity, assumed that the mob 
 must be right, or at any rate that people who were Jews 
 must be so far wrong as to deserve whatever they might 
 get. They were not sorry at so cheap a cost to gratify 
 the Eroman conceit of a city which. coxdd boast that its 
 citizens belonged to the Voltinian tribe.* It was another 
 
 proof that — 
 
 " Man, proud man, 
 Dressed in a little brief authority, 
 Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven 
 As makes the angels weep, who, with our spleens, 
 Would all themselves laugh mortaL" 
 
 Paul and SUas had not here to do with the haughty 
 impartiality and supercilious knowledge which guided the 
 decisions of a GalHo, but with the " justice's justice " of 
 the Vibiuses and Ploruses who at this time fretted their 
 
 ' Actsxvi. 20, 'I<n)Soroi4iro()xoiTei;21,Pcii/io(oij oZiri. Since neither "exorcism" 
 
 nor "Judaism " (though they regarded Judaea as a "suspiciosa et maledica 
 
 civitas," Cic. •pro Flaee. 28, and generally teterrima, Tac. H. v. 8) were 
 
 cognisable offences, the slave-owners have to take lefoge in an undefined 
 
 ^diarge of innovating proselytlsm. 
 
 ' Misa. Aroheol., p. 40. 
 
THE APOSTLES SCOURGED. 495 
 
 little hour on the narrow stage of Philippi. Conscious 
 of their Eoman citizenship, they could not have expected 
 so astotmding a result of their act of mercj, as that their 
 political franchise should be ignored, and they themselves, 
 •after condemnation without trial, ignomiaiously hurried 
 off into the punishments reserved, for the very meanest 
 malefactors.^ Such, however, was the issue of the hearing. 
 Their Prsetorships would imitate the divine Claudius, and 
 wreak on these wandering Israelites a share of the 
 punishment which the misdeeds of their countrymen 
 had brought upon them at Rome. As the proceedings 
 were doubtless in Latin, with which Paul and Silas had 
 little or no acquaintance, and in legal formulae and pro- 
 cedures of which they were ignorant, they either • had 
 no time to plead their citizenship until they were actually 
 in the hands of the lictors,^ or, if they . had, their 
 voices were drowned in the cries of the colonists. 
 •Before they could utter one word in their own defence, 
 the sentence — " summovete, lictores, despoliate, verberate " — 
 was uttered; the Apostles were seized; their garments 
 were rudely torn off their backs ;^ they were hurried off 
 and tied by their hands to the palm, or whipping-post in 
 the forum ; and whether they vainly called out in Greek 
 to their infuriated enemies, " We are Eoman citizens," or, 
 which is far more likely, bore their frightful punishment 
 in that grand silence which, in moments of high spiritual 
 
 ' The Jews, who were so infamously treated by Flaccus, felt this, as Paul 
 himself did (1 Thess. ii. 2, iPpiir64vTes, &s otSare, iv *ihiinrots), to be a severe 
 aggravation of their sufferings (Philo, in Flace. 10, oi/c«r«^voi /uio-Tifii/ oTj Heos 
 Tohs KaKavpywv irovriporiirovs irpoTnjXaKiieff^Oi). 
 
 * Perhaps Paul's language in verse 20 is generic. If so he would be most 
 nnlikdy to plead a privilege which would protect himself alone. 
 
 ' On this tearing ofB of the garments see Liv. viii. 32 ; Tae. H. iv. 27 ; 
 Val. Max. ii. 7, 8; Dion. Halic. is. 39. The verbs used are scindere, spoliare, 
 hkcerare (also the technical word for the laceration of the back by the rods), 
 wtfuanai^^tui showing that it was done with violence and contumely. 
 
496 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 rapture, makes pain itself seem painless ^ — in that forum of 
 whict ruins still remain, in tte sight of the lowest dregs of 
 a provincial outpost, and of their own pitjdng friends, they 
 endxired, at the hands of these low lictors, those outrages, 
 blows, strokes, weals, the pangs and butchery, the extreme 
 disgrace and infamy, the unjust infliction of which even 
 a hard-headed and hard-hearted Gentile could not describe 
 without something of pathos and indignation.^ It was 
 the first of three such scourgings with the rods of Roman 
 lictors which Paul endured, and it is needless to dwell 
 even for one moment on its dangerous and lacerating 
 anguish. We, in these modern days, cannot read without 
 a shudder even of the flogging of some brutal garotter, 
 and our blood would run cold with unspeakable horror 
 if one such incident, or anything which remotely resembled 
 it, had occurred in the Life of a Henry Martyn or a 
 Coleridge Patteson. But such horrors occurred eight 
 times at least in the story of one whose frame was more 
 frail with years of suffering than that of our English 
 missionaries, and in whose life these pangs were but such 
 a drop in the ocean of his endurance, that, of the eight 
 occasions on which he underwent these horrible scourgings, 
 this alone has been deemed worthy of even passing com- 
 memoration.* 
 
 ■ A much lower exaltation than that of the Apostle's would rob anguish of 
 half its sting (of. Oic. m Verr. ii. v. 62, " Ha« se commemoratione oivitatis 
 omnia verbera depulsurum, cruciatumque a corpore deieoturum arbitrabatur "). 
 
 ^ Oato op. Aul. Gell. x. 3. 
 
 ' The five Jewish scourgings were probably submitted to without any 
 protest («. swpra, p. 41.). From a fourth nearly consummated beating with 
 thongs (?) he did protect himself by his political privilege (Acts xxii. 25). Both 
 that case and this show how easUy, in the midst of a tumult, a Roman citizen 
 might fail to make his claim heard or understood ; and the instance mentioned 
 by Oicero, who teUs how remorselessly Verres scourged a citizen of Messana, 
 though " inter dolorem crepitumqae plagarum," he kept exclaiming " Civis 
 Momanus sum," shows that in the provinces the insolence of power would 
 Bometimes deride the daim of those who were little likely to find an oppor* 
 
THE DTHSTGEON. 497 
 
 'Not was tMs all. After seeing tliat a scourging of 
 extreme, severity had been inflicted, the Duumvirs, with 
 the same monstrous violation of all law, flung Paul 
 and Silas into prison, and gave the jailer special orders 
 to keep them safely. Impressed by this injunction with 
 the belief that his prisoners must have been guilty of 
 something very heinous, and determined to make assur- 
 ance doubly sure, the jailer not only thrust them into the 
 dank, dark, loathsome recesses of the inner prison, but 
 also secured their feet into " the wood." " The wood " 
 was an instrument of torture used in many countries, 
 and resembling our " stocks," or rather the happily obso- 
 lete "pillory," in having five holes — four for the wrists 
 and ankles, and one for the neck.-^ The jailer in this 
 instance only secured their feet ; but we cannot be sur- 
 prised that the memory of this suffering lingered long 
 years afterwards in the mind of St. Paul, when we try 
 to imagine what a poor sufferer, with the rankling sense 
 of gross injustice in his soul, would feel who — having 
 but recently recovered from a trying sickness — after re- 
 ceiving a long and frightful flagellation as the sequel of 
 a violent and agitated scene, was thrust away out of the 
 
 tunity of enforcing it (Oic. In Verr. i. 47 ; t. 62, &c.). Moreover the reverence 
 for the privilege must have been much weakened by the shameless sale of 
 it to freedmen, &c., by Messalina Dio. Cass. Ix., p. 676 ; cf. Tac. S. 12). 
 Further than this, it would be quite easy to stretch the law so far as to make 
 it appear that they had forfeited the privilege by crime. At any rate it 
 is certain that under the Empire not citizens only, but even senators, were 
 scourged, tortured, and put to death, without the slightest protection from the 
 Porcian and Valerian, laws (Tac. E. i. 6 ; ii. 10, &c.). And although Paul 
 willingly — nay, gladly — endured the inevitable trials which came before him 
 in the performance of duty (2 Gor. xi. 23), I do not believe that he would have 
 accepted anguish or injustice which he had a perfect right to escape. 
 
 ' Acts xvi. 24, ii\av or woSokAkv (cf. Job xiii. 27). In Latin nervus. It 
 had five holes, and is hence called veinf<riptyyov (Schol. Ar. Uq. 1046 ; cf. Poll. 
 viii^72; Plaui Cop*- iii- 79 i Euseb. ff. Jf. tL 39 ; Job xiii. 27; sxxiii. Uj Jer. 
 xxix. 26). 
 
 Q a 
 
498 THE LIFE AOT3 WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 jeers of tlie mob into a stifling and ligttless prison, and 
 sat there tkrougli the long hours of the night with his 
 feet in such durance as to render it impossible except in 
 some constrained position to find sleep on the foul bare 
 tloor.^ 
 
 Tet over all this complication of miseries^ the souls 
 of Paul and Silas rose in triumph. With heroic 
 cheerfulness they solaced the long black hours of mid- 
 night with prayer and hymns.* To every Jew as to 
 every Christian, the Psalms of David furnished an in- 
 exhaustible storehouse of sacred song. That night the 
 prison was wakeful. It may be that, as is usually the 
 case, there was some awful hush and heat in the air — a 
 premonition of the coming catastrophe ; but, be that as 
 it may, the criminals of the Philippian prison were 
 listening to the sacred songs of the two among them, 
 who deserving nothing had suffered most. " The prison," 
 it has been said, " became an Odeum ; " and the guilty 
 listened with envy and admiration to the " songs in the 
 night," with which God inspired the innocent. Never, 
 probably, had such a scene occurred before in the world's 
 history, and this perfect triumph of the spirit of peace 
 and joy over shame and agony was an omen of what 
 Christianity would afterwards effect. And while they 
 sang, and while the prisoners listened, perhaps to verses 
 
 ' If by the TvXlianwm, at Borne we may judge of other prisons— 
 and it seems that the name was generic for the lowest or inmost prison, 
 even of proTincial towns (Appul. Met. vs.. 183 ; C. and H. i. 326) — ^there 
 is reason to fear that it must have been a very horrible place. And, indeed, 
 what must ancient Pagan provincial prisons have been at the best, when we 
 bear ia mind what EngUsh and Christian and London prisons were not fifty 
 years ago ? 
 
 2 " The leg feels nothing in the stocks," says Tertullian, " when the soul is 
 in heaven ; though the body is held fast, to the spirit all is open." Chris- 
 tian endurance was sneered at as " sheer obstinacy." In a Fagau it would 
 have been extolled as magnificent heroism. 
 
THE BAETHQUAKB. 499 
 
 whicli "out of the deeps " called on Jehovah, or " fled to 
 Him before the morning watch," or sang — 
 
 "The plowers plowed upon, my back and made long furrows, 
 But the righteous Lord hath hewn the snares of the ungodly in 
 pieces " — 
 
 or triumphantly told how God had "burst the gates 
 of brass, and smitten the bars of iron in sunder "— 
 suddenly there was felt a great shock of earthquake, 
 which rocked the very foundations of the prison. The 
 prison doors were burst open ; the prisoners' chains were 
 loosed from the staples in the wall.^ Startled from sleep, 
 and catching sight of the prison doors standing open, the 
 jailer instantly drew his sword, and was on the point of 
 killing himself, thinking that his prisoners had escaped, 
 and knowing that he would have to answer for their 
 production with his life.^ Suicide was the common refuge 
 of the day against disaster, and might have been regarded 
 at Philippi as an act not only natural but heroic.^ Paul, 
 however, observed his purpose, and, always perfectly self- 
 possessed even in the midst of danger, called out to him 
 in a loud voice, " Do thyself no harm, for we are all 
 here." The entire combination of circumstances — the 
 earthquake, the shock of sudden terror, the revulsion of 
 joy which diverted his intention of suicide, the serene 
 endurance and calm forgiVeness of his prisoners — all 
 melted the man's heart. Demanding lights, he sprang 
 into the inner prison, and flung himself, in a tremor of 
 agitation, at the feet of Paul and Silas. Then, releasing 
 their feet from the stocks, and leading them out of their 
 dark recess, he exclaimed, "Lords (Kvpiot), what must I 
 do to be saved?" His mode of address showed deep 
 
 > Acts xvi. 26. 
 
 * See the Dig. De eustodAa et exMhitione reorwm, xlyiii., iii. 12 and 16. 
 
 » Sen. De Frov. ii. 6; Mp. 58; Diog. Laert. vii. 130; Oic. Be Fin. i. 15, &o. 
 
 G G 2 
 
500 THE LIFE AND "WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 reverence. His question echoed the expression of the 
 demoniac.^ And the Apostles answered him partly in the 
 terms which he had used, " Believe," they said, " on the 
 Lord {Kvpiov) Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and 
 thy house." Deeply impressed, the man at once as- 
 sembled his household in a little congregation, and, worn 
 and weary and suffering as they were, Paul and SUas 
 spoke to them of Him by whom they were to find 
 salvation.^ Then the jailer, pitying their condition, 
 washed their bruised backs, and immediately afterwards 
 was, with his whole house, baptised in the faith.^ AU 
 this seems to have taken place in the prison precincts. 
 Not till then did they think of food or rest. Leading 
 them upstairs into his house, he set a table before them, 
 and in that high hour of visitation from the Living God, 
 though he had but heard words and been told of a hope 
 to come, he and his whole house felt that flow of elevated 
 joy which sprang naturally from a new and inspiring 
 faith.* 
 
 Day dawned, and the duumvirs were troubled. 
 Whether they had felt the earthquake,^ and been alarmed 
 lest these " slaves of the Most High God " should be 
 something more than the poor Jewish wanderers that 
 they seemed to be, or whether the startling events of the 
 
 ' Acts xvi. 17, ABb;/ (Torripias ; ver. 30, Xva iraiflS, 
 ' Acts XTl. 33, iv eKelvji Tp &pa. 
 
 ' ''E\oua-cv Kol i\oieri, "he washed and was washed," says Chrysostom. For 
 the bearing of the expression oi airov iravris (Acts xvi. 33), and 6 ol/tos out^s 
 (ver. 15), of. xviii. 8 ; 1 Cor. i. 16, on infant baptism, see Coleridge, Aids to 
 Reflection. The Church of England wisely makes no direct use of this aign- 
 ment in Art. xxyii. But though Bengel's remark, " Quis credat in tot 
 familiis nullum fuisse infantem ? " is not decisive, the rest of his observation 
 "Et Judaeos oircumcidendis, Gentiles lustrandis Ulis assuetos, non etiam 
 obtulisse iUos baptismo ? " has much weight. 
 
 * Acts xvi. 34,^7'a\\iaTo, impf. C, D various versions, &o. Katroi ivSin Ijy 
 ftXAa p'tinara n6vov Kol iXiriSes xpiJiTTaf. 
 
 ^ In Acts xvi. 36, D adds ivanviiaSivTes rhv a-eur/ibv rhy yeyoyira. 
 
LIBERATED. 501 
 
 night had reached their ears — ^they had at any rate 
 become heartily ashamed of their tumultuary injustice. 
 They felt it incumbent on them to hush up the whole 
 matter, and get rid as quickly as possible of these 
 awkward prisoners. Accordingly, they sent their lictors, 
 no longer to use their rods in outrageous violation of 
 justice, but to "set those people free." The jailer 
 hurried to Paul with the message of peaceful Hbera- 
 tion, which no doubt he thought would be heartily wel- 
 comed. But Paul felt that at least some reparation must 
 be offered for an intolerable wrong, and that, for the sake 
 of others i£ not for his own, these provincial justices must 
 be taught a lesson not to be so ready to prostitute their 
 authority at the howling of a mob. Sending for the 
 Ectors themselves, he sternly said, in a sentence of which 
 every word was telling, " After beating us publicly uncon- 
 demned, Eomans though we are by right, they flung us 
 into prison ; and now they are for casting us out secretly. 
 No such thing. Let them come in person, and conduct 
 us out,"^ The lictors took back the message to the 
 " Praetors," and it filled them with no small alarm. They 
 had been hurried by ignorance, prejudice, and pride of 
 office into glaring offences against the Eoman law.** They 
 had condemned two Roman citizens without giving them 
 their chartered right to a fair trial;' and, on condemning 
 them, had further outraged the birthright and privilege of 
 
 1 Acts xvi. 37. The 'fanalovs {mdpxovras is perhaps an allusion to the in- 
 solent 'louSaioi iTripxovTes and Pojjuoiow oZffiv of the accusers (ver. 21). See the 
 Lex Cornelia, Bid. ofAntt., p. 638 ; Paulus, Instt., let. iv. ; Be mcuriis, § 8. 
 
 ^ Zeller starts (HilgenfeU's Zeiiseh. 1864, p. 103) the amazing theory that 
 tins is a reproduction of the stoiy found in Lucian's Toxaris (27—34), 
 about a Greek medical student named AntiphUus, who is imprisoned in 
 Egypt with his servant on a false charge of theft from a temple. Krenkel 
 ([p. 221) characterises it as " a subtle conjecture " that the narrative of the Acts 
 18 an imitation of this story. And this is criticism ! 
 
 3 oic. ift Verr. ii. 1, 9 ; Plant. Cwrml. t. 3, 16 j Tac. E. 1, 6. 
 
502 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 citizenstip by having ttem bound and scourged ; and they 
 had thus violated the Porcian law^ in the presence of" the 
 entire mob of the forum, and in sight of sOme at least 
 who would be perfectly able to take the matter up and 
 report their conduct in high quarters. Their worships 
 had simply flagellated in public the law and majesty of 
 Eome.^ They did not at all like the notion of being 
 themselves summoned before the Proconsul's court to 
 answer for their flagrant illegality; so, trusting to the 
 placability of the Jewish character as regards mere per- 
 sonal wrongs, they came in person, accompanied, says one 
 manuscript, by many friends.' Entreating the pardon 
 of their prisoners, they urged them, with reiterated 
 requests, to leave the city, excusing themselves on the 
 plea that they had mistaken their true character, and 
 pleading that, if they stayed, there might be another 
 ebullition of pubHc anger.* Paul and Silas, however, were 
 courageous men, and had no intention to give any colour 
 of justice to the treatment they had received by sneaking 
 out of the city. From the prison they went straight to 
 the house of Lydia ; nor was it till they had seen the 
 assembled brethren, and given them their last exhortation, 
 that they turned their backs on the beautiful scenes where 
 a hopeful work had been rudely ended by their first expe- 
 rience of Grentile persecution.' But, in accordance with a 
 frequent custom of St. Paul,* they left Luke behind them.' 
 
 ' Cic. pro Bahir. 3. 
 
 ' " Faoinus est vinciri civem Bomannm, scelus Terberari," Cic. in Verr. 
 V. 66. 
 
 ' Acts Xvi. 39, D, irapayivoiihoi fitrh <pi\uv iroA\Si» els riiv ifivKaietiJi. 
 
 * All this is intrinsically probable, otherwise I would not, of course, insert 
 it on the sole and fantastic authority of D, emivrfs 'Hytiiria-aiiev rh xaff iiias Jfri 
 fffTf 6,p5pts SUaioi, &e., and ;ur|ir(jT6 Trd\iv irvffTpatpaaiv iiiuv iiriKpiiovTa KaSf v,uw>>. 
 
 5 Of. xvii. 14; XTiii. 19; Titus i. 5; 2 Tim. iv. 20. 
 
 " The third person is resumed in Acts xvii. 1, and the first persou only 
 recurs in Acts xx. 5. 
 
ST, LUKE IN PHILIPPI. 603 
 
 Perliaps at PMlippi he tad found favourable opportunities 
 fop the exercise of his art, and he could at the same time 
 guide and strengthen the little band of PhiHppian coii- 
 verts, before whom days and years of bitter persecution 
 were still in store.^ 
 
 * Phil. i. 28 — 30. Although here and there the Apostles won a convert of 
 higher rant, it was their glory that their followers wore mainly the babes and 
 sucklings of human intellect — not many wise, not many noble, not many rich, 
 but the weak things of the world. " Philosophy," says Voltaire, " was never 
 meant for the people. The canaille of to-day resembles in everything the 
 canaille of the last 4,000 years. We have never cared to enlighten cobblers 
 and maid-servants. That is the teorh of Apostles." Yes ; and it yrm the 
 work of Christ. 
 
CHAPTEE XXVI. 
 
 THESSALONICA AND BEROEA. 
 
 KvrinoyeieTe -^vtp ASe^(f ol riir Kiirov ^yiMV Koi rhv n6xBov (1 Thess. ii. 9), 
 "In oppidum devinm Beroeam profugisti " (Oic. in Fis. 36). 
 
 Leaving PL.ilip.pi, witli its mingled memories of suffering 
 and happiness, Paul and Silvanns and Timothens took an 
 easy day's journey of about tkree-and-tHrty miles to tlie 
 beautiful town of Ampbipolis. It lies to tbe south of a 
 splendid lake, under sheltering hills, three miles from the 
 sea, and on the edge of a plain of boundless fertility. The 
 strength of its natural position, nearly encircled by a great 
 bend of the river, the mines which were near it, and the 
 neighbouring forests, which furnished to the Athenian 
 navy so many pines, fit 
 
 " To be the mast 
 Of some great Ammiral," 
 
 made it a position of high importance during the Pelo- 
 ponnesian wars. If St. Paul had ever read Herodotus he 
 may have thought with horror of the human sacrifice of 
 Xerxes^ — the burial alive at this place of nine youths and 
 nine maidens ; and if he had read Thucydides — ^which is 
 excessively doubtful, in spite of a certain analogy between 
 their forms of expression — ^he would have gazed with 
 peculiar interest on the sepulchral mound of Brasidas, 
 and the hoUowing of the stones in the way-worn city 
 
 > Hdt. Tii. 114. 
 
THEIE JOURNET. 605 
 
 street wMct stowed tte feet of men and horses under 
 the gate, and warned Kleon that a sally was intended.-' 
 If he could read Livy, which is by no means probable, he 
 wolild recall the fact that in this town Paulus ^milius^ — 
 one of the family from whom his own father or grand- 
 father may have derived his name — ^had here proclaimed, 
 ia the name of Eome, that Macedonia should be free. But 
 aU this was little or nothing to the Jewish missionaries. 
 At Amphipolis there was no synagogue, and therefore no 
 ready means of addressing either Jews or Gentiles.* They 
 therefore proceeded the next day thirty miles farther, 
 through scenery of surpassing loveliness, along the 
 Strymonic GuU, through the wooded pass of Aulon, 
 where St. Paul may have looked at the tomb of 
 Euripides, and along the shores of Lake Bolbe to 
 Apollonia. Here again they rested for a night, and 
 the next day, pursuing their journey across the neck 
 of the piomontory of Ohalcidice, and leaving Olynthus 
 and Potidaea, with their heart-stirring memories, far to 
 the south, they advanced nearly forty miles farther to the 
 far-famed town of Thessalonica, the capital of all Mace- 
 donia, and though a free city,* the residence of the Eoman 
 Proconsul. 
 
 Its position on the Egnatian road, commanding the 
 entrance to two great inland districts, and at the head of 
 the Thermaic Gulf, had made it an important seat of 
 commerce. Since the days when Oassander had re-founded 
 it, and changed its name from Therma to Thessalonica in 
 honour of his wife, who was a daughter of Philip of 
 Macedon, it had always been a flourishing city, with many 
 
 ' Thuc. iv. 103—107, t. 6—11. 
 « Liv. xlv. 30. 
 
 ' Tke town had become so insignificant that Strabo does not even 
 mention it. 
 
 < Plin. a". 2V. iv. 17. 
 
506 THE LIFE AIO) WOEK OF ST. PATIL, 
 
 historic associations. Here Cicero liad spent Ms days of 
 melanclioly exile. ^ Here a triumphal arch, stiU standing, 
 commemorates the victory o£ Octavianus and Antony at 
 Philippi. From hence, as with the blast of a trumpet, 
 not only in St. Paul's days,^ but for centuries afterwards, 
 the Word of Grod sounded forth among the neighbouring 
 tribes. Here Theodosius was guilty of that cruel mas- 
 sacre, for which St. Ambrose, with heroic faithfulness, 
 kept him for eight months from the cathedral of Milan. 
 Here its good and learned Bishop Eustathius wrote those 
 scholia on Homer, which place him in the first rank of 
 ancient commentators. It received the title of " the 
 orthodox city," because it was for centuries a bulwark 
 of Christendom, but it was taken by Amurath II. in 
 1430. Saloniki is still a great commercial port of 70,000 
 inhabitants, of whom nearly one-third are Jews; and 
 the outrage of Mohammedan fanaticism which has brought 
 its name into recent prominence is but the beginning of 
 events which wiU yet change the map and the destinies 
 of Southern Europe. 
 
 At this city — blighted now by the curse of Islam, but 
 stiU beautiful on the slopes of its vine-clad hiUs, with 
 Pelion and Olympus full in view — the missionaries rested, 
 for here was the one Jewish synagogue which sufficed 
 for the entire district.* After securing the means of 
 earning their daily bread, which was no easy matter, 
 they found a lodging in the house of a Jew, who had 
 Grsecised the common name of Jesus into Jasoii.* Even 
 
 ' Oic. "Pro. Plcmc. 41. 
 
 ' 1 Thess. i. 8, ef^xi™'- 
 
 " Acts xvii. 1. v ffvpayayii is probably the right reading, thoTigh the fi is 
 •wanting ia n, A, B, D. In any case it is evidently meant that there was but 
 one synagogue, and tradition still points out the mosque — once the Church of 
 St. Demetrius, which is supposed to stand upon its site. There are now 
 nearly forty Jewish synagogues in SaloniM. * Kom. xvi. 21 (?). 
 
AT TKBSSAIONIOA. 507 
 
 if their quarters were gratuitously allowed them, St. 
 Paul, accepting no further aid, was forced to daily and 
 nightly labour of the severest description^ to provide 
 himself with the small pittance which alone sufficed his 
 wants. Even this was not sufficient. Poor as he was — 
 for if he ever possessed any private means he had now 
 lost them alP — the expenses of the journey from Philippi 
 had probably left him and his companions nearly penni- 
 less, and but for the timely liberality of the Philippians 
 it would have fared hardly with the Apostle, and he might 
 even have been left without means to pursue his further 
 journeys.* There is no contradiction between the two 
 contributions from Philippi and the Apostle's account 
 of his manual labours; for there is nothing to show 
 ' that he only stayed in Thessalonica a little more than 
 three weeks.* In addition to the fact that the second 
 contribution would be partly wanted for his new 
 journeys, we find that at this time a famine was 
 raging, which caused the price of wheat to rise to six 
 times its usual rate.® However much this famine may 
 have enhanced the difficulties of St. Paul and his com- 
 panions, it must have confirmed him in the purpose of 
 placing the motives of his ministry above suspicion by 
 making it absolutely gratuitous. Such disinterestedness 
 added much to the strength of his position, especially 
 in the " deep poverty " which must have prevailed in 
 such times among the low-born proselytes of a despised 
 
 '. 1 Thesfl, li. 9, wktAs yhp koI rifiipas lpya(6iievoi, vphs rb nh imPaprjffal tiko 
 ilt&v, K.T,\. 
 
 * Fhil. iii. 8, rck iroi/ro i^Tinui8r]V. 
 
 ' Phil. iv. 15, 16. 
 
 * He can hardly have faUed to stay much longer, for Philippi was a 
 hundred miles from Thessalonica, and it would take time for news to travel 
 and the to-and-fro journey to be made. 
 
 * Pointed out by Mr. Lewin, Fasti Saeri, p. 290; St. Paul, i. 231. 
 
508 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL, 
 
 religion. If St. Paul did not refuse the contributions from 
 Philippi, it was because tbey came spontaneously, at an 
 hour of bitter need, from those who could spare the 
 money, and who, as he well knew, would be pained by 
 any refusal of their proffered aid. Yet all who knew him 
 knew well that the aid came unsought, and that, as far as 
 Paul's own personal life was concerned, he was utterly 
 indifferent to privations, and set the example of an un- 
 flinching endui-ance rendered easy by a perfect trust in Grod.^ 
 For three Sabbaths in. succession he went to the 
 synagogue, and argued with the Jews. It might well 
 have been that the outrage at Philippi, and its still 
 lingering effects, would have damped his zeal, and made 
 hiTn shrink from another persecution. But, fresh as he 
 was from such pain and peril, he carried on his discus- 
 sions v\dth undiminished force and courage,^ explaining the 
 prophecies, and proving from them that the Messiah was 
 to suffer, and to rise from the dead, and' that "this is' 
 the Messiah, Jesus, whom I am preaching to you." ^ The 
 sjmagogue audience was mainly composed of Jews, and 
 of these some were convinced and joined the Church.* 
 Conspicuous among them for his subsequent devo- 
 tion, and all the more conspicuous as being almost the 
 only warmly-attached convert whom St. Paul won from 
 the ranks of " the circumcision," was Aristarchus, the 
 sharer of St. Paul's perils^ from mob-violence at Ephesus, 
 
 1 Pha. iv. 11, 12. 
 
 ' 1 Tliess. ii. 2, itra^pnaiaaifniv. Acts rviL 2, iiexiytro aiirois. The teaching 
 of the synagogue admitted of discussions and replies (John vi. 25, &e.) ; as it 
 does to this day in the Rabbinic synagogues. 
 
 * Acts xvii. 3, Stayoiyojv itai TrapariBefieyos^ 
 
 * One of these was Seoundus (Acts xx. 4), and, perhaps, a Gains (xix. 29). 
 The names aro common enough, but it is a curious coincidence to find them, as 
 ■well as the name Sosipater, inscribed among the Politarclis on the triumphal 
 arch of Thessalonica. 
 
 * Acts xix. 29 ; XX. 4; 061. iv. 10, <rvvaixiid\<»Tos ; PhUem. 24 
 
THESSAIiONIAN CONVERTS. 609 
 
 of his visit to Jenisalem, of Ms voyage and sMpwreck, 
 and of his last imprisonment. A. larger number, how- 
 ever, of proselytes and of Greeks accepted the faith,^ 
 and not a few wOmen, of whom some were in a leading 
 position. This inveterate obstinacy of the Jews, contrast- 
 ing sadly with the ready conversion of the Grentiles, and 
 especially of women, who in all ages have been more 
 remarkable than men for religious earnestness, is a 
 phenomenon which constantly recurs in the early his- 
 tory of Christianity. Nor is this wholly to be wondered 
 at. The Jew was at least in possession of a religion, 
 which had raised him to a height of moral superiority 
 above his Grentile contemporaries ; but the Gentile of 
 this day had no rehgion at all worth speaking of. If 
 the Jew had more and more mistaken the shell of cere- 
 monialism for the precious truths of which that cere- 
 monialism was but the integument, he was at least 
 conscious that there were deiep truths which lay en- 
 phrined behind the rites and observances which he so 
 fanatically cherished. But on what deep truths could 
 the Greek woman rest, if her life were pure, and if her 
 thoughts had been elevated above the ignorant domesti- 
 cism which was the only recognised virtue of her sex? 
 What comfort was there for her in the cold grey eyes 
 of Athene, or the stereotyped smile of the volup- 
 tuous Aphrodite? And when the Thessalonian Greek 
 raised his eyes to the dispeopled heaven of the Olympus, 
 which towered over the blue gulf on which his city 
 stood — when his imagination could no longer place the 
 throne of Zeus, and the session of his mighty deities, 
 on that dazzHng summit where Cicero had remarked 
 
 > In Acts xvii. 4, even if there be insnflficient MSB. evidence in f avonr of the 
 reading rSy re (repofiipJ k al 'Ewlivav (A, D, Vvdg., Copt.), yet the Epistles 
 prove decidedly that Gentiles predominated among the converts. 
 
510 THE LIFE ANH WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 with pattetic irony that he saw nothing but snow 
 and ice — ^what compensation could he find for the void 
 left in his heart by a dead religion?^ By adopting 
 circumcision he might become, as it were, a Helot of 
 Judaism; and to such a sacrifice he was not tempted. 
 But the Grospel which Paul preached had no esoteric 
 doctriues, and no supercilious exclusions, and no repellent 
 ceremonials ; it came with a Divine Example and a free 
 gift to all, and that free gift involved all that was most 
 precious to the troubled and despondent soul. No wonder, 
 then, that the Church of Thessalonica was mainly 
 Gentile, as is proved by the distinct language of St. Paul,^ 
 and the total absence of any Old Testament aUusion 
 ia the two Epistles. In the three weeks of synagogue 
 preaching, St. Paul had confined his argument to Scrip- 
 ture; but to Gentile converts of only a few months' 
 standing such arguments would have been unintelligible, 
 and they were needless to those who had believed on the 
 personal testimony to a risen Christ. 
 
 After mentioning the first three Sabbaths, St. Luke 
 furnishes us with no further details of the stay at 
 Thessalonica. But we can trace several interesting facts 
 about their further residence from the personal allusions of 
 St. Paul's Epistles. The First Epistle to the Thessalonians 
 — the earliest of all his letters which have come down to 
 us — ^was written within a month or two of his departure. 
 We trace in it the tone of sadness and the yearning for a 
 brighter future which were natural to one whose habitual 
 life at this time was that of a hated and hunted outcast. 
 We see that the infant Church was remarkable for a faith- 
 
 ' "Subversae Deorum arae, lares a qmbnsdam in publicum abjecti" (Suet. 
 Calig. 6). " Plnres nusquam jam Deos nllos interpretabantor " (Plin. Epp. yi. 
 gO; svpra, p. 28). 
 
 « IThess. i. 9; ii. 14. 
 
ST. PATJL AT THESSALONIOA. 611 
 
 fulness, love, and patience wMcli made it famous as a model 
 church in all Macedonia and Achaia.^ It shone all the 
 more brightly from the fierce afflictions which from the 
 first encompassed the brethren, but failed either to quench 
 their constancy or dim their joy,^ St. Paul dwells much 
 on his own bearing and example among them; the boldness 
 which he showed in spite of present opposition and past 
 persecutions ; the total absence of all delusive promises in a. 
 teaching which plainly warned them that to be near Christ 
 was to be near the fire;^ the conviction wrought by the 
 present power of the Holy Spirit testif5dng to his words; * 
 the simplicity and sincerity which enabled him to appeal to 
 them as witnesses that his Grospel was not stained by the 
 faintest touch of deceitful flattery, or guilty motive, or 
 vain-glorious self-Seeking;* the independence which he had 
 inaintained;® the self-sacrificing tenderness which he had 
 showed; the incessant severity of his industry;''' the 
 blameless purity of his Kfe ; the individual solicitude of 
 his instructions.^ And this high example had produced 
 its natural effects, for they had embraced his teaching 
 with passionate whole-heartedness as a divine message,^ 
 and inspired him , with an affection which made their 
 image ever present to his imagination, though imtoward 
 hindrances had foiled a twice-repeated attempt to visit 
 them again. 
 
 The Epistle also throws light on that special feature of 
 St. Paul's teaching which was ultimately made the ground 
 for the attack upon him. His sufferings had naturally, 
 
 > 1 These, i. 2, 3, 6—8. 
 
 * 2 Thess. i. 4, 5; 1 Thess. ii. 14; i. 6. 
 
 ' 1 Thess. iii. 4, " "We told you before that we should suffer tribulatioQ." 
 I lyyhs not iyybs rod irvpis (saying of OUT Lord. Orig. nom. in Jerem, 
 iii. 778). 
 
 * Id. ii. 1, 2. 6 Id. i. 6. • Id. m 3—6.. 
 » Id. IL 6 ; 2 Thfiss. iii. 8—10. • Id. iL 9. » M ii, 13. 
 
612 THE LIFE AND "WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 turned his thougMs to the future ; tlie cruelty of man tad 
 tended to fix his faith yet more fervently on the help of 
 God ; the wickedness of earthly rulers, and the prevalence 
 of earthly wrongs, had combined with circumstances on 
 which we shall touch hereafter, to fill his teaching with the 
 hopes and prophecies of a new kingdom and a returning 
 King. His expectation of the rapid revelation of that 
 Second Advent had been a theme of encouragement under 
 incessant afflictions. 
 
 Few indeed were the untroubled periods of ministry in 
 the life of St. Paul. The jealousy and hatred which had 
 chased him from city to city of Pisidia and Lycaonia pur- 
 sued him here. The Jews from first to last — the Jews 
 for whom he felt in his inmost heart so tender an affection 
 — were destined to be the plague and misery of his suffer- 
 ing life. At Antioch and Jerusalem, Jews nominally 
 within the fold of Christ opposed his teaching and em- 
 bittered his days ; in all other cities it was the Jews who 
 contradicted and blasphemed the holy name which he was 
 preaching. In the planting of his Churches he had to fear 
 their deadly opposition; in the watering of them, their 
 yet, more deadly fraternity. The Jews who hated Christ 
 sought his life; the Jews who professed to love Him 
 undermined his efforts. The one faction endangered his 
 existence, the other ruined his peace. Never, till death 
 released him, was he wholly free from their violent con- 
 spiracies or their insidious calumnies. Without, they 
 sprang up6n him at every opportunity like a pack of wolves ; 
 within, they hid themselves iu sheep's clothing to worry 
 and tear his flocks. And at Thessalonica he had yet a 
 new form of persecution against which to contend. It 
 was not purely Jewish as in Palestine, or purely Grentile 
 as at Philippi, or combined as at Iconium, but was simply 
 a brutal assault of the mob, hounded on by Jews in the 
 
A RIOT. , 513 
 
 background. Jealous,^ as usual, that the abhorred preach- 
 ing of a crucified Messiah should in a few weeks have won 
 a greater multitude of adherents than they had won during 
 many years to the doctrines of Moses — ^furious, above all, 
 to see themselves deprived of the resources, the reverence, 
 and the adhesion of leading women — they formed an 
 unholy alliance with the lowest dregs of the Thessalonian 
 populace. Owing to the dishonour in which manual 
 pursuits were held in ancient days,^ every large city had a 
 superfluous population of worthless , idlers — clients who 
 lived on the doles of the wealthy, flatterers who fawned at 
 the feet of the 'influential, the lazzaroni of streets, mere 
 loafers and loiterers, the hangers-on of forum,' the 
 claqueurs of law-courts, the scum that gathered about the 
 shallowest outmost waves of civilisation. Hiring the 
 assistance of these roughs and scoundrels,* the Jews dis- 
 turbed the peace of the city by a fanatical riot, and incited 
 the mob to attack the house of Jason, in order to bring 
 the Apostles before the popular Assembly. But Paul had 
 received timely warning, and he and his companions were 
 in. safe concealment. Foiled in this object, they seized 
 Jason and one or two others whom they recognised as 
 Christians, and dragged them before the Politarchs,^ or 
 presiding magistrates of the free city of Thessalonica. 
 
 ' This is sufficiently obvions, whether we read f7;\(4(ro»Tes in Acts xvii. 5 
 (A, B, E, and many Tsrsions) or not. 
 
 2 " Uliberates autem et sordid! quaestus mercenariorum onmiumqne quo- 
 rum operae non artes sunt; est enim ipsa merces auctoramentum servitutis" 
 (Oic. He Off. i. 42). 
 
 ' Suhrostrani (Cic. Epp. Fam. -viii. 1, 2), Suhhasilicani {Plant. Capt. iv 
 2, 35), turha forends. "Lewd" (A. S. Lcewedre) means (1) lay, (2) ignorant, 
 ■ f3) bad. 
 
 * Acts XTii.,5, tSv iyopaluv HvSpas Tivctj iroviipahs. Cf. Ar. Eg. 181; Sen. 
 Be Bmef. 7. 
 
 ' This name is unknown to classical literature. It would have furnished 
 fine scope for the suspicious ingenuity of Baur and Zeller, had it not been for- 
 tunately preserved as the title of the Thessalonian magistrates on a still legible 
 
 H H 
 
514 THE LIFE AJSTD WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 " These fellows," they shouted, " these seditious agitators 
 of the civilised world ^ have found their way here also. 
 Jason has received them. The whole set of them ought 
 to he punished on a crimen majestatis, for they go in 
 the teeth of Caesar's decrees, and say that there is 
 a different king, namely Jesus." ^ But the mob did 
 not altogether succeed in carrying their point. In deal- 
 ing with the seven Politarchs, under the very shadow 
 of the proconsular residence, they were dealing with 
 people of much higher position, and much more imbued 
 with the Eoman sense of law, than the provincial duumviri 
 of Philippi. Neither the magistrates nor the general 
 multitude of the city liked the aspect of affairs. It was 
 on the face of it too ludicrous to suppose that hard-working 
 artisans like Jason and his friends could be seriously con- 
 templating revolutionary measures, or could, be really 
 guilty of laesa majestas? A very short hearing sufficed to 
 
 inscription over the triumphal arch at Thessalonica, known as the Tarddr gate 
 (Bbckh. Inser. 1967). This arch was recently destroyed, but the fragments 
 were saved by our Consul, and were brought to the British Museum in 1876. 
 There are seven, and among them the names of Sosipater, Gains, and Secundns. 
 There are no soi-disant arpaTnyol or jiafiSoixoi in the Urhs Jjibera Thes- 
 salonica, as there were at the colony Philippi, but there was a Sijuos and 
 
 Tro\tTdpxott, 
 
 ^ The expression shows how widely Christianity was spreading, and 
 perhaps alludes to the recent events at Rome, which may have been a sufficient 
 reason for the Jews themselves to keep rather in the background, and incite 
 the Gentiles to get the Apostles expelled. 
 
 ^ The half truth, which made this accusation all the more of a lie, is seen 
 in St. Paul's preaching of the Second Advent (1, 2 Thess. passim) and the 
 kingdom of Christ (1 Thess. ii. 12 ; 2 Thess. i. 5), and not impossibly in some 
 distortion of what he had told them of i Kcnsxav and rh Karix'" (2 Thess. ii. 
 6, 7). The "nee Caesaribus honor" jb one of the complaints of Tacitus 
 against the Jews (Hist. v. 5). 
 
 ^ We see in the pages of Tacitus that it was the endless elasticity of this 
 charge — the crimen 'majestatis — which made it so terrible an engine of tyranny 
 (Ann. iii. 38). The facts here mentioned strikingly illustrate' this. Any one 
 who chose to turn delator might thus crush an obscure Jew as easily as he 
 could crush a powerful noble. 
 
ESCAPE PROM THESSALONIOA. 515 
 
 show them that this was some religious opinion entertained 
 by a few poor people, and so far from taking strong 
 measures or inflicting any punishment, they contented 
 themselves with making Jason and the others give some 
 pecuniary security ^ that they would keep the peace, and 
 so dismissed them. But this was a sufficient sign that for 
 the present further mission work would be impossible. No 
 magistrates like the presence of even an innocently dis- 
 turbing element in their jurisdiction, and if Paul and Silas 
 were brought in person before them, they might not 
 escape so easily. Nor, in the defective police regulations 
 of antiquity, was it at all certain that the moderation of 
 the magistrates would be an efficient protection to two 
 poor Jews from the hatred and violence of a mob. In any 
 case it is probable that they would be unwilling to run the 
 risk of impoverishing Jason and their other friends by 
 causing a forfeiture of the scant and much-needed earnings 
 which they had been obliged to pledge. The brethren, 
 therefore, devised means to secure the escape of Paul and 
 Silas by night. It is not impossible that Timotheus stayed 
 among them for a tirne, to teach and organise the Church, 
 and to add those last exhortations which should nerve 
 them to bear up against the persecutions of many years. ^ 
 For ill the Church of the Thessalonians, which was in some 
 respects the fairest gain of his mission, St. Paul felt an 
 intense solicitude, manifested by the watchful care with 
 which he guarded its interests.^ 
 
 ' Acts xvii. 9, \a$iin-es rh tKovSv sonnds Kke a translation of the Latin 
 phrase " Satisdatione accepts." Cf. Lev. xxv. 26 (LXX.). It was the Jewish 
 sense that the Romans loved justice which made them aU the more readily accept 
 their yoke (Jos. Anit. xvii. 9, § 4, and 13, § 1; B. J. vi. 6, § 2 ; Dio Cass, xxxvi. 
 p. 37). Titus upbraided them with all the generous favours which they had 
 received from Rome (Jos. B. J. vi. 2, § 4). 
 
 ^ I agree with Alford in thinking that ihe mention of Timothy in the 
 superscription of both Epistles, and his mission to them from Athens, prove 
 that he was with St. Paul during this visit, * 1 Thess. ii. 18. 
 
 H H 2 
 
616 THE LIFE AJSTD "WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 When niglit had fallen over the tumnlt which had 
 heen surging through the streets of Thessalonica, news 
 of the issue of the trial before the Politarchs was brought 
 to Paul and SUas in their concealment. The dawn might 
 easily witness a still more dangerous outbreak, and they 
 therefore planned an immediate escape. They gathered 
 together their few poor possessions, and under the cover 
 of darkness stole through the silent and deserted streets 
 under the triumphal Arch of Augustus, and through the 
 western gate. Whither should they now turn? From 
 PhiUppi, the virtual capital of Macedonia Prima, they had 
 been driven to Thessalonica, the capital of Macedonia Se- 
 cunda. An accidental collision with GentUe interests had 
 cost them flagellation, putrage, and imprisonment in the 
 colony ; the fury of Jewish hatred had imperilled their lives, 
 and caused trouble and loss to their friends in the free 
 city. Should they now make their way to Pella, the famous 
 birthplace of the young Greek who had subdued the 
 world, and whose genius had left an indelible impress 
 on the social and political conditions which they every- 
 where encountered? To do this would be obviously 
 useless. The Jewish synagogues of the dispersion were 
 in close connexion with each other, and the watchword 
 would now be evidently given to hound the fugitives 
 from place to place, and especially to silence Paul as the 
 arch-apostate who was persuading all men everywhere, as 
 they calumniously asserted, to forsake the Law of Moses. 
 Another and less frequented road would lead them to 
 a comparatively unimportant town, which lay off the 
 main route, in which their presence might, for a time at 
 any rate, remain unsuspected. Striking off from the 
 great Via Egnatia to one which took a more southerly 
 direction, the two fugitives made their way through the 
 darkness. A night escape of .at least fifty miles*, along 
 
ARRIVAL AT BEECEA. 617 
 
 an unknown road, involving the dangers of pursuit and 
 the crossing of large and frequently flooded rivers like 
 the Axius, the Echidorus, the Lydias, and some of the 
 numerous affluents of the HaHacmon, is passed over with 
 a single word. Can we wonder a,t the absence of all 
 allusion to the beauties, delights, and associations of 
 travel in the case of one whose travels were not only 
 the laborious journeys, beset with incessant hardships, of 
 a sickly Jewish artisan, but also those of one whose life 
 m its endless trials was a spectacle unto the universe, 
 to angels and to men ? ^ 
 
 The town which they had in view as a place of refuge 
 was Beroea,^ and their motive in going there receives 
 striking and unexpected illustration from a passage of 
 Cicero. In his passionate philippic against Piso he says 
 to him that after his gross maladministration of Mace- 
 donia, he was so unpopular that he had to slink into 
 Thessalonica incognito, and by night ;^ and that from 
 thence, unable to bear the concert of wailers, and the 
 hurricane of complaints, he left the main road and fled 
 to the out-of-the-way tovm of Bercea. We cannot 
 doubt that this comparatively secluded position was the 
 reason why Paul and Silas chose it as safer - than the 
 more famous and frequented Pella. 
 
 And as they traversed the pleasant streets of the town — 
 
 " dewy," like those of Tivoli, " with twinkhng rivulets " — 
 
 it must have been with sinking hearts, in spite of all their 
 
 courage and constancy, that Paul and Silas once more made 
 
 their way, as their first duty, into the synagogue of the 
 
 Jews. But if the life of the Christian missionary has its 
 
 own breadths of gloom, it also has its lights, and after all 
 
 ' 1 Cor. iv. 9. 
 
 * Beroea is perhaps a Macedonian corruption for Pheroea (cf . Bft<T»oi for 
 *^\ijr7ros). It is now called Kara Pheria. 
 
 3 Oic. in Pis. 36. Adduced by Wetstein ad he. 
 
518 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 the storms which, they had encountered they were cheered 
 in their heaviness hy a most encouraging reception. The 
 Jews of this synagogue were less obstinate, less sophisticated, 
 than those whom St. Paul ever found elsewhere. When 
 he had urged upon them those arguments from the 
 Psalms, and from Isaiah, and from Habatkuk, about a 
 Messiah who was to die, and suffer, and rise again, and 
 about faith as the sole means of justification, the Jews, 
 instead of turning upon him as soon as they understood 
 the full scope and logical conclusions of his arguments, 
 proved themselves to be "nobler"^ than those of Thes- 
 salonica — more gegierous, more simple, more sincere and 
 truth-loving. Instead of angrily rejecting this new 
 Gospel, they daily and diligently searched the Scriptures 
 to judge Paul's arguments and references by the word 
 and the testimony. The result was that many Jews 
 believed, as well as Greeks — men and women of the more 
 respectable classes. They must have spent some weeks 
 of calm among these open-minded Beroeans, for twice 
 during the stay St. Paul conceived the design of going 
 back to his beloved Thessalonians. Untoward obstacles 
 prevented this,^ and so heavily did the interests of the 
 persecuted Church rest on his mind that either from 
 Bercea, or subsequently from Athens, he sent Timothy 
 to inquire into and report their state. One permanent 
 friend, both to St. Paul and to Christianity, was gained 
 in the person of Sopater, of Bercea. 
 
 But it would have been too much to hope that all 
 should be thus open to conviction, and the news was soon 
 unfavourably reported to the Synagogue of Thessalonica. 
 
 ' Acts xTii. 11, ftiyei'4irTepoi. The expression is interesting as an instance 
 of (iyevTis, used (as in modern times) in a secondary and moral sense. The 
 best comment on it is the " Nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus." 
 
 ' 1 Thess. ii. 18. 
 
ESCAPE EROM BERCEA. 519 
 
 The hated name of Paul acted like a spark on their in- 
 flammable rage, and they instantly despatched emissaries 
 to stir up storms among the mob of Bercea.^ Once more 
 Paul received timely notice from some faithful friend. 
 It was impossible to face this persistent and organised 
 outburst of hatred which was now pursuing him from 
 city to city. And since it was clear that Paul, and not 
 Silas, was the main object of persecution, it was arranged 
 that, while Paul made good his escape, Silas and Timothy 
 — who may have joined his companions during their resi- 
 dence at Beroea — should stay to set in order all that was 
 wanting, and water the good seed which had begun to 
 spring. 
 
 And so — once more in his normal condition of a fugi- 
 tive — St. Paul left Beroea. He was not alone, and either 
 from the weakness of his eyesight or from his liability to 
 epilepsy, all his movements were guided by others. " The 
 brethren " sent him away to go seawards,^ and there can 
 be little doubt that they led him sixteen miles to the 
 colony of Dium,^ whence he sailed for Athens. That he 
 did not proceed by land seems certain. It was the longer, 
 the more expensive, the more dangefous, and the more 
 fatiguing route. If St. Paul was so little .able to make 
 his way alone that, even by the sea route, some of the 
 Beroean brethren were obliged ,to accompany him till 
 they left him safe in lodgings at Athens, it is clear 
 that by the land route their difficulties, to say nothing of 
 
 * Acts xvii. 13, iraKeiofTts robs ^x^owi. 
 
 ' Acts xvii. 14, Sis ivl TJif BiKairaav is a mere pleonastic phrase for " in the 
 direction of the sea" (Strabo, xvi. 2, &c.). *E«s, the reading of m, A, B, E, 
 and other variations of the text, seem to have arisen from the comparative 
 rarity of the expression. The notion that he only made a feint of going to 
 the sea, and then turned landwards to foil pursuit, arises from an erroneous 
 interpretation of the phrase. 
 
 ' Perhaps to Alorus or Methone. (Renan, St. Paul, p. 166, quoting 
 Strabo, viL, pp. 20, 22; Leake, iii. 435.) 
 
520 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 the danger of pursuit, would have been much increased. 
 The silence of St. Luke as to any single town visited 
 on the journey is conclusive,^ and we must suppose that 
 some time in autumn, St. Paul embarked on the stormy 
 waves of the Mediterranean, and saw the multitudinous 
 and snowy peaks of Olympus melt into the distant blue. 
 He sailed along shores of which every hill and promon- 
 tory is voiceful with heroic memories ; past Ossa and 
 Pelion, past the coast of Thermopylae, along the shores of 
 Euboea,^ round the " marbled steep " of Sunium, where 
 the white Temple still stood entire, imtil his eye caught 
 the weU-known glimpse of the crest and spear-head of 
 Athene Promachos on the Acropolis,^ — the helm was 
 turned, and, entering a lovely harbour, his ship dropped 
 anchor in full sight of the Parthenon and the Propylsea. 
 
 ' The addition of H, TraprjKStv Sh tj)i> 0e(r<ra\iai/ ^k»X^0i; yiip ctj miroht 
 icijpiJjoj rhv \6yor, throws no light on the question. 
 
 ' Whether St. Paul sailed down the Euripus or to the east of EalxBS 
 uncertain. The former route was the more common. 
 
 ' Pansan. Attic, i. 28, 2; Herod, t. 77. 
 
Mok WMh 
 
 OHEISTIANITY IN ACHAIA. ' 
 
 'O ral \mapiA Koi loareipavot koI ioiStfioi 
 
 'EWiSas tptiaiia, K\ttva\ 'ASwai, Saifiivioy mroTddpov. — ^PlITD, Ft. 47. 
 ToiovToi/ ahrois ''Apeos t6Pov\oy irdyoy 
 iyii (Tuy^Sii x96viov ivff, '6s oIik i^ 
 
 Toiaia-S' o\^tos rpS" 4/toD vaieiy ir(<\e».— SoPH. CEd. Col. 947. 
 noS vvv rrjs 'ZWiSos S tv<I>os ; iroD twv 'ABnivav rh 6voiia ; iroO ruv <j>i\oiT6(puy i 
 MJpos'; i hnrh Ta^iKaias, 6 &irb BTjGtratSat ^ &ypotKos trdvrwv iKeivav nepteyeyeTO, 
 
 Ohets. Horn. iv. in Act. iii. (Ojap. ix, 38, ed. Moutfaucon). 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVII. 
 
 ST. PAUL AT ATHENS. 
 
 "Immortal Greece, dear land of glorious lays, 
 Lo, here the UnknoTvn God of thine unconscious praise." — ^Keble. 
 
 Athens ! — ^with what a thrill of delight has many a modem 
 traveller been filled as, for the first time, he stepped upon 
 that classic land ! With what an eager gaze has he 
 scanned the scenery and outline of that city 
 
 -" on the ^gean shore, 
 
 Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil, 
 Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts 
 And eloquence." 
 
 As he approached the Acropolis what a throng of 
 brilliant scenes has passed across his memory ; what pro- 
 cessions of grand and heroic and beautiful figures have 
 swept across the stage of his imagination ! As he treads 
 upon Attic ground he is in " the Holy Land of the Ideal ; " 
 
522 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 he has reached the most sacred shrine of the "fair 
 humanities" of Paganism. It was at Athens that the. 
 human form, sedulously trained, attained its most ex- 
 quisite and winning beauty; there that human freedom 
 put forth its most splendid power; there that human 
 intellect displayed its utmost subtlety and grace ; there 
 that Art reached to its most consummate perfection; 
 there that Poetry uttered alike its sweetest and its sub- 
 limest strains ; there that Philosophy attuned to the most 
 perfect music of human expression its loftiest and deepest 
 thoughts. Had it been possible for the world by its own 
 wisdom to know Grod ; had it been in the power of man to 
 turn iuto bread the stones of the wilderness ; had perma- 
 nent happiness lain within the grasp of sense, or been among 
 the rewards of culture ; had it been granted to man's un- 
 aided power to win salvation by the gifts and qualities 
 of his own nature, and to make for himself a new Paradise 
 in lieu of that lost Eden, before whose gate stm waves 
 the fiery sword of the Cherubim, — then such ends would 
 have been achieved at Athens in the day of her glory. 
 No one who has been nurtured iu the glorious lore of 
 that gay and radiant city, and has owed some of his 
 best training to the hours spent in reading the history and 
 mastering the literature of its many noble sons, can ever 
 visit it without deep emotions of gratitude, interest, and 
 love.^ 
 
 And St. Paul must have known at least something 
 of the city in whose language he spoke, and with whose 
 vpriters he was not wholly unfamiliar. The notion that 
 he was a finished classical scholar is, indeed, as we have 
 
 ^ We read the sentiments of Cicero, Sulpicius, Germanicus, Pliny, Apol- 
 lonius, &e., in Cic. Ep. ad Quint, fratr. i 1 ; Ejap. Fam. iv. 5 j ad Att. v. 10 j 
 vi. 1 ; Tac. Arm. ii. 63 ; Plin. Up. -yiii. 24 ; Philostr. Vit. Apoll. v. 41 ; Benan, 
 St. PomI, 167; but, as he adds, "Paul belonged to another world; his Holy 
 Land was elsewhere. " 
 
ALONE AT ATHENS. 523 
 
 shown already, a mere delusion ; and the absence from his 
 Epistles of every historical reference proves that, like the vast 
 mass of his countrymen, he was indifferent to the history 
 of the heathen, though profoundly versed in the history 
 of Israel. He was, indeed, no less liberal and cosmopolitan 
 ^nay, in the best sense,far more so — than the most advanced 
 Hellenist, the most cultivated Hagadist of his day. Yet he 
 looked at "the wisdom of Javan" as something altogether 
 evanescent and subsidiary — an outcome of very partial en- 
 lightenment, far from pure, and yet graciously conceded to 
 the ages of ignorance. It was with no thrill of rapture, 
 no loyal recognition of grace and greatness, that Paul 
 landed at Phalerum or Peirseus, and saw the crowning 
 edifices of the Acropolis, as it towered over the wilder- 
 ness of meaner temples, stand out in their white lustre 
 against the clear blue sky. On the contrary, a feeling 
 of depression, a fainting of the heart, an inward unrest 
 and agitation, seems at once to have taken possession 
 of his susceptible and ardent temperament; above 
 all, a sense of loneliness which imperiously claimed the 
 solace of that beloved companionship which alone ren- 
 dered his labours possible, or sustained him amid the 
 daily infirmities of his troubled life. As he bade farewell 
 to the faithful Bercean brethren who had watched over 
 his journey, and had been to him in the place of eyes,. 
 the one message that he impresses on them is urgently 
 to enjoin Silas and Timotheus to come to him at once 
 with aU possible speed. In the words of St. Luke we 
 still seem to catch an echo of the yearning earnestness 
 which shows us that solitude ^ — and above all solitude in 
 such a place — was the one trial which he found it the 
 most difficult to bear. 
 
 1 Acts xvii. 15, XaPivTts tvTO\iiy irp^i Tbi/ 3l\av Kal fhv Ti/uffleoi' &« &s 
 nixiirTa IhSaxriv irphs ainff/. 
 
524 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 But even if Ms two friends were able instantly to set 
 out for Athens, a full week must, at the lowest compu- 
 tation, inevitably elapse before Silas could reach him 
 from Bercea, and a still longer period before Timothy 
 could come from Thessalonica ; and during those days of 
 weary and restless longing there was little that he 
 could do. It is probable that, when first he was guided 
 by his friends to his humble lodging, he would have 
 had little heart to notice the sights and sounds of 
 those heathen streets, though, as he walked through the 
 ruins of the long walls of Themistocles to the Peiraic 
 gate, one of the brethren, more quick-eyed than himself, 
 may have pointed out to him the altars bearing the in- 
 scription, '^rJV/25'TOIS 0BOI5',^ which about the same 
 time attracted the notice of ApoUonius of Tyana, and 
 were observed fifty years afterwards by the traveller Pau- 
 sanias, as he followed the same road.^ But when the 
 brethren had left him — having no opportunity during 
 that brief stay to labour with his own hands — ^he relieved 
 his melancholy tedium by wandering hither and thither, 
 with a curiosity^ largely mingled with grief and indig- 
 nation.* 
 
 The country had been desolated by the Roman 
 dominion, but the city still retained some of its ancient 
 glories. No Secundus Carinas had as yet laid his greedy 
 and tainted hand on the unrivalled statues of the Athens 
 of Phidias. It was the multitude of these statues in a 
 city where, as Petronius says,* it was more easy to meet 
 
 ' Pausan. I. i. 4 ; Hesych. s. v., 'Ayvarts Beol ; v. infra, p. 11. 
 
 ' They lay on the road between the Phalerie port and the city, and Si. 
 Panl may possibly have landed at Phalerum, the nearest though not the most 
 frequented harbour for vessels sailing from Macedonia. 
 
 ^ Acts xvii. 23, Siepxof^^fos koI avaQewpoiv ra ffefiafffiara tfuav, 
 
 ^ Id. 16, vapm^iveTO rb irvcv/ua airov. Cf. 1 Gor. xiii. 5, oi irapa{^veTai| "iS 
 hot ejcasperated." 
 
 * Patron. Sat. 17. * 
 
ATHENIAliT STATUES. 625 
 
 a god than a man, which chiefly absorbed St. Paul's atten- 
 tion. He might glance with passing interest at the long 
 colonnades of shops glitteripg with wares from every port 
 in the ^gean ; but similar scenes had not been unfamiliar 
 to him in Tarsus, and Antioch, and Thessalonica. He 
 might stroll into the Stoa Pcecile, and there peer at the 
 paintings, still bright and fresh, of Homeric councils of 
 which he probably knew nothing, and of those Athenian 
 battles about which, not even excepting Marathon,^ there 
 is no evidence that he felt any interest. The vast enlarge- 
 ment of his spiritual horizon would not have brought 
 with it any increase of secular knowledge, and if Paul 
 stood in these respects on the level of even the GramaHels 
 of his day, he knew little or nothing of Hellenic story.^ 
 And for the same reason he would have been indifferent 
 to the innumerable busts of Greeks of every degree of 
 eminence, from Solon and Epimenides down to recent 
 Sophists and Cosmetae, and stiU more indifferent to the 
 venal intrusions which Athenian servility had conceded to 
 Eoman self-importance. A glance would have been more 
 than enough for Grreek statues decapitated to furnish 
 figures for Eoman heads, or pedestals from which the 
 original hero had been displaced to make room for the 
 portly bulk and bloated physiognomy of some modern 
 Proconsul. Some Jew might, take a certain pride in 
 
 ' Mr. Martineau, after remarking that modem lives of St. Paul hare 'been 
 too snach of the nature of " illustrative guide-books, so instructive, that by 
 far the greatest part of their information would have been new to St. Paul 
 himself," adds that " in the vicinity of Salamis or Marathon he \, ould probably 
 recall the past no more than a Brahmin would in travelling over the fields of 
 Edgehill or Marston Moor " {Studies in Christianity, p. 417). 
 
 ' Nothing in the Talmud is more amazing than the total absence of the 
 geographic, chronological, and historic spirit. A genuine Jew of that 
 Pharisaic class in the midst of which St. Paul had been trained, cared more 
 for some pedantically minute Haldcha, about the threads in a Tsitsith, than 
 for all the Pagan history in the world. 
 
526 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 pointing out to tim tte statues of Hyrcanus, tlie As- 
 monsean Higli Priest, and of that beautiful Berenice before 
 wbom he little thought that he should one day plead his 
 cause.^ But his chief notice would be directed to the 
 bewildering multiplicity of temples, and to the number- 
 less " idols " which rose on every side. Athens was the 
 city of statues. There were statues of Phidias, and 
 Myron, and Lysicles, and statues without number of the 
 tasteless and mechanical copyists of that dead period of 
 the Empire ; statues of antiquity as venerable as the 
 olive-wood Ath^n^ which had fallen from heaven, and 
 statues of yesterday ; statues colossal and diminutive ; 
 statues equestrian, and erect, and seated ; statues agonistic 
 and contemplative, solitary and combined, plain and 
 coloured; statues of wood, and earthenware, and stone, 
 and marble, and bronze, and ivory and gold, in every 
 attitude, and in all possible combinations ; stautes starting 
 from every cave, and standing like lines of sentinels in 
 every street.^ There were more statues in Athens, says 
 Pausanias, than in all the rest of Greece put together, 
 and their number would be all the more startling, and 
 even shocking, to St. Paul, because, dui-ing the long 
 youthful years of his study at Jerusalem, he had never 
 seen so much as one representation of the human form, 
 and had been trained to regard it as apostasy to give the 
 faintest sanction to such violations of Grod's express com- 
 mand.' His earlier Hellenistic training, his natural large- 
 heartedness, his subsequent familiarity with Grentile life, 
 above all, the entire change of his views respecting the 
 universality and permanence of the Mosaic Law, had 
 indeed indefinitely widened for him the shrunken horizon 
 
 ' Jos. Antt. xiv. 8, § 6. 
 
 ' "Athenae simulacra Deomm hominnmque haJbentes omni genere ot 
 materiae et artium insignia " (Liv. xlv. 27). 
 
"IDOLA AlITIQUORTrM.'' 527 
 
 of Jewish intolerance. But any sense of the dignity and 
 beauty of Pagan art was impossible to one wbo had been 
 trained in the schools of the Rabbis.^ There was nothing 
 in his education which enabled him to admire the simple 
 grandeur of the Propylaea, the severe beauty of the Par- 
 thenon, the massive proportions of the Theseum, the 
 exquisite elegance of the Temple of the Wingless Victory. 
 Prom the nude grace and sinewy strength of the youth- 
 ful processions portrayed on frieze or entablature, he 
 would have turned away with something of impatience, if 
 not with something even of disgust. When the tutor of 
 Charles the Fifth, the good Cardinal of Tortosa, ascended 
 the Papal throne under the title of Adrian the Sixth, and 
 his attendants conducted him to the Vatican to show him 
 its splendid treasures of matchless statuary, his sole 
 remark, in those uncouth accents which excited so much 
 hatred and ridicule in his worthless subjects, was 
 
 /'Sunt idola antiquorum!"^ 
 
 It was made a scoff and a jeSt against him, and doubt- 
 less, in a Pontiff of the sixteenth century, it shows 
 an intensity of the Hebraising spirit singularly unsoftened 
 by any tinge of Hellenic culture. But, as has been ad- 
 mitted even by writers of the most refined aesthetic sym- 
 pathies, the old Grerman Pope was more than half right. 
 At any rate, the sort of repugnance which dictated his 
 disparaging remark would have been not only natural, but 
 inevitable, in a Pharisee in the capital of Judaism and 
 under the very shadow of the Temple of the Most High. 
 We who have learnt to see God in all that is refined and 
 
 ' The reader will recall the censure passed on Gamaliel for having merely 
 entered a bath in which was a statue of Aphrodite {mfra, p. 645). 
 
 » He walled np, and never entered, the Belvedere (Symonds, Benaissance, 
 p. 377). 
 
628 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 beautiful; whom His love has lifted above the perils 
 of an extinct paganism ; whom His own word has taught 
 to recognise sunbeams from the Fountain of Light in 
 every grace of true art and every glow of poetic inspira- 
 tion, may thankfully admire the exquisite creations of 
 ancient genius ; — but had Paul done so he could not have 
 been the Paul he was. "The prejudices of the icono- 
 clastic Jew," says Eenan, with bitter injustice, " blinded 
 him ; he took these incomparable images for idols. ' His 
 spirit,' says his biographer, 'was embittered within him 
 when he saw the city ^lled vnth idols' Ah, beautiful and 
 chaste images ; true gods and true goddesses, tremble ! 
 See the man who will raise the hammer against you. 
 The fatal word has been pronounced : you are idols. The 
 mistake of this ugly little Jew will be your death-warrant." ^ 
 Yes, their death-warrant as false gods and false god- 
 desses, as " gods of the heathen " which " are but idols,"^ 
 but not their death-warrant to us as works of art ; not their 
 death-warrant as the imaginative creations of a divinely 
 given faculty; not their death-warrant as echoes from within 
 of that outward beauty which is a gift of God ; not in any 
 sense their death-warrant as standing for anything which 
 is valuable to mankind. Christianity only discouraged 
 Art so long as Art was the handmaid of idolatry and vice ; 
 the moment this danger ceased she inspired and ennobled 
 Art. It is all very well for sentimentalists to sigh 
 over "the beauty that was Greece, and the glory that 
 was Eome ; " but Paganism had a very ragged edge, and 
 
 ' Si. Paul, p. 172. The word KareiSaKov is, however, St. Luke's, not 
 St. Paul's. 
 
 ^ " The pagan worship of beauty . . . had ennobled art and corrupted 
 nature ; extracted wonders from the quarries of Pentelicus, and horrors from 
 the populace of Rome and Corinth ; perfected the marbles of the temple, 
 and degraded the humanity of the worshipper. Heathenism had wrought 
 'into monstrous combination physical beauty and moral deformity" (Martinean, 
 .Sov/rs of Thought, p. 306), 
 
ART AND VICE. 529 
 
 it was this that Paul daily witnessed. Paganism, at 
 its best, was a form assumed by natural religion, and 
 had a power and life of its own ; but, alas ! it had not 
 in it enough salt of solid morality to save its own 
 power and life from corruption. St. Paul needed no 
 mere historical induction to convince him that the loftiest 
 heights of culture are compatible with the lowest abysses 
 of depravity, and that a shrine of consummate beauty could 
 be a sink of utter infamy. Nay, more, he knew by per- 
 sonal observation, what we may only be led to conjecture 
 by thoughtful comparison, that there was no slight con- 
 nexion between the superficial brightness and the hidden 
 putrescence; that the flowers which yielded the intoxicating 
 honey of ancient art were poisoned flowers ; that the per- 
 fectness of sculpture might have been impossible without 
 the nude athleticism which ministered to vice. For one 
 who placed the sublime of manhood in perfect obedience to 
 the moral law, for one to whom purity and self-control 
 were elements of the only supreme ideal, it was, in - that 
 age, impossible to love, impossible to regard even with 
 complacence, an Art which was avowedly the handmaid 
 of Idolatry, and covertly the patroness of shame. Our 
 regret for the extinguished brilliancy, of Athens will be 
 less keen when we bear in mind that, more than any other 
 city, she has been the corruptress of the world. She 
 kindled the altars of her genius with unhallowed incense, , 
 and fed them with strange fires. Better by far the- 
 sacred Philistinism — if Philistinism it were — ^for which i 
 this beautiful harlot had no interest, and no charm, than' 
 the veiled apostasy which longs to recall her witchcraft- 
 and to replenish the cup of her abomination. Better 
 the uncompromising Hebraism which asks what concord' 
 hath Christ with Belial and. the Temple of God with idols, 
 than tKe corrupt Hellenism which, under pretenoe of 
 I I 
 
530 THE LIFE AISTO WORK OF ST. PAUL, 
 
 artistic sensibility or archseological information, has left 
 its deep taint on modern literature, and seems to be 
 never bappy unless it is raking amid the embers of for- 
 gotten lusts. 
 
 Nor was Paul likely to be overpowered by tbe sense 
 of Athenian greatness. Even if his knowledge of past 
 history were more profound than we imagina it to have 
 been, yet the Greece that he now saw was but a shadow 
 and a corpse — " Greece, but Hving Greece no more." ^ 
 She was but trading on the memory of achievements not 
 her own ; she was but repeating with dead lips the echo 
 of old philosophies which had never been suflBcient to 
 satisfy the yearnings of the world. Her splendour was 
 no longer an innate effulgence, but a lingering reflex. 
 Centuries had elapsed since all that was grand and 
 heroic in her history had " gone glimmering down 
 the dream of things that were ; " and now she was 
 the weak and contemptuously tolerated dependent of an 
 alien barbarism,^ puffed up by the empty recollection of 
 a fame to which she contributed nothing, and retaining no 
 heritage of the past except its monuments, its decrepitude, 
 and its corruption. Among the things which he saw at 
 Athens there were few which Paul could naturally admire. 
 
 1 See Apollonius, J/p. Ixx. (ubisupr.). 'EWnves oUaOt Suv ovoniQtaBiu . . . d*A 
 vfiap ye oiiSl Tct ofd/xara fieyei rois ttoWois, aW* iirh v4as rafjrrjs evSat/xovias (the 
 patronage of Rome), ctTro\w\eKO(ri ra Tav trpoySvtov ffifi^oKa, 
 
 ^ The nominal freedom of Athens had been spared by successive con- 
 querors. Though she had always been on the defeated side with Mithri- 
 dates, Pompey, Brutus and Cassias, and Anthony, yet the Roman Emperors 
 left her the contemptuous boon of an unfettered loquacity. This was her 
 lowest period. "She was no longer the city of Theseus ; she was not yet the 
 city of Hadrian '' (Renan, p. 178). About this very time the city was visited 
 by the thaumaturgist ApoUonius, and, according to Philostratus, the estimate 
 which he formed of the city was most unfavourable . . . oii nevovTis'ZKKiives 
 'ivas 5c oil fiivovTcs iyii ^pao'iii, Vepay iro^bs ovScU 'ABrivaios . . . i K(iXa| irapit toTs 
 ir^Kais, & ffVKOipiivT'rjs vph toSu vuKuy, 6 fiaffTpoTrhs vph Toav fiaKpwv reix&fi ^ 
 irapaffiTos vph riis Movvvxiiis Kai irph rov n«ipaioS, i) Sths Si oiS^ "iaivutv ^x^' (flE9' 
 Philostr. ed. Clear, ii 406.) 
 
THE INSOEIPTIOK 531 
 
 He would indeed have read with interest the moral inscrip- 
 tions on the Hermse which were presented to her citizens 
 by the tyrant Hipparchus,^ and would have looked with 
 something of sympathy on such altars as those to Modesty 
 and. to Piety. But, amoiig the many altars visible in 
 every street, there was one by which he lingered, with 
 special attention, and of which he read with the deepest 
 emotion the ancient inscription — 
 
 ArNnsTnieEni. 
 
 " To the unknown God."* 
 
 The better-known altars, of which the inscriptions were in 
 the plural, and which merely borte witness to the catho- 
 licity of Paganism, would have had less interest for him. 
 It is merely one of the self-confident assertions which are 
 too characteristic of Jerome^ that St. Paul misquoted the 
 singular for the plural. The inscription to which he called 
 attention on the 'Areopagus was evidently an ancient one, 
 and one which he had observed on a single altar.* 
 Whether that altar was one of those which Epimenides had 
 advised the Athenians to build to whatever god it might 
 be, — Tw irpoa-qKovri 6e& — wherever the black and white 
 
 ' Such as Mi/^^a ToS 'Imr^px'"' Vreix^ Stxata <j>povSy, or Mvrina riS" 'lirwdpxov 
 Itii <pi\ov i^airira. 
 
 ' This, and not "to an unknown Grod," is the right rendering. 
 
 ' "Inscriptio arae non ita eratut Paulus aiseruitlgnoioDeo ; sed ita; Diis 
 Asiae et Europae et Af ricae, Diis ignotis et peregrinis. Verum quia Paulus non 
 pluribus Diis ignotis indigebat sed nno tantum ignoto Deo, singnlari verbo 
 usus est." Jer. ad Tit. i. 12 (see Biscoe, p. 210). 
 
 * Acts xvii. 23, 0uij.hv $ iinydypairro. The fact that Pausanias {Attic, i. 1), 
 Philostratus {Vit. Apollon. vi. 3), and others (Diog. La«rt. i. x. 110, &o:), 
 mention altars, liyviia-Tuv Sai/iipav, does not of course prove that there was 
 no altar with the singular inscription ; nor, indeed, is it certain that these 
 words may not mean altars on each of which was an iascription, 'Ayviiartf 6e$, 
 as Winer understands them. Dr. Plumptre favours the view that it means " to 
 the Unknowable God ; " and compares it with the famous inscription on the 
 veil of Isis, and the Mithraic inscription found on an altar at Ostia, " Signum 
 indf^ehensibilis Dei," and 1 Oor. i. 21. 
 
 I I 2 
 
632 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 slieep lay down, which he told them to loose from the 
 Areopagus ; or one dedicated to some god whose name had 
 in course of time become obliterated and forgotten ;^ or one 
 which the Athenians had erected under some visitation of 
 which they could not identify the source ^ — was to St. Paul 
 a matter of indifference. It is not in the least likely that 
 he supposed the altar to have been intended as a recogni- 
 tion of that Jehovah* who seemed so mysterious to the 
 Gentile world. He regarded it as a proof of the confessed 
 inadequacy, the unsatisfied aspirations, of heathendom. 
 He saw in it, or liked to read into it, the acknowledgment 
 of some divinity after whom they yearned, but to the 
 knowledge of whom they had been unable to attain ; and 
 this was He whom he felt it to be his own mission to 
 make known. It was with this thought that he consoled 
 his restless loneliness in that uncongenial city; it was 
 this thought which rekindled his natural ardour as he 
 wandered through its idol-crowded streets.* 
 
 His work among the Jews was slight. He discoursed,® 
 indeed, not unfrequently with them and their proselytes 
 in the synagogue or meeting-room^ which they frequented; 
 
 1 Eichhorn. ' Chrysostom. 
 
 ' Called by the Gentiles i wAyKpvijios (Just. Mart. Pa/raenei. ad Graecos, 38 ; 
 Apol. iii 10 ; Philo, Leg. § 44). 
 
 * Acts XTu. 16. And yet his high originality was shown in the fact that 
 he did not, like his race in general, yent his indignation in insults, " Gens con- 
 tumelia numinnm insignis" (Plin. S. N. xiii. 9 ; Cic. p. Mace. § 67). Claudius, 
 in confirming their privileges, warned them, /i); tAj tSv i.Wav IBvSv SeunSaiinovlas 
 i^oueeviCfi' (Jos. Antt. xix. 5, 3). KarelSaAov means " fuU of idols," not as in 
 the E.V., " wholly given to idolatry ; " " non simulaeris dedita, sed simulacris 
 referta" {Herm. ad Vig. p. 638) ef. icaTiiiiire\os, KariSei/Spos. The word receives 
 most interesting illustration from Wetstein, from whom all succeeding commen- 
 tators have freely borrowed, 
 
 ' Acts xvii. 17, Sif\iyeTo, not " disputed," but " conversed." 
 
 ° No trace of any building which could have been a synagogue has been 
 found at Athens. It has been inferred from passages in the Talmud that Jews 
 were numerous in Athens ; but these passages apply to a much later period, 
 and in any case the Talmud is perfectly worthless as a direct historic guid,o. ;, 
 
IN THE AGORA. 533 
 
 bid; it is probable tliat tb.ey were few in number, and we 
 find no traces either of tbe teaching wliich be addressed 
 to them or of the manner in which they received it. It 
 was in the market-place of Athens — the very Agora in 
 which Socrates had adopted the same conversational 
 method of instruction four centuries^ before him — ^that he 
 displayed his chief activity in a manner which he seems 
 nowhere else to have adopted, by conversing daily and 
 publicly with all comers. His presence and his message 
 soon attracted attention. Athens had been in all ages a 
 city of idlers, and even in her prime her citizens had been 
 nicknamed Gapenians,^ from the mixture of eager curiosity 
 and inveterate loquacity which even then had been their 
 conspicuous characteristics. Their greatest orator had 
 hurled at them the reproach that, instead of flinging them- 
 selves into timely and vigorous action in defence of their 
 endangered liberties, they were for ever gadding about 
 asking for the very latest news;^ and St. Luke — every 
 incidental allusion of whose brief narrative bears the mark 
 of truthfulness and knowledge — repeats the same charac- 
 teristic under the altered circumstances of their present 
 adversity. Even the foreign residents caught the infec- 
 tion, and the Agora buzzed with inquiring chatter at this 
 late and decadent epoch no less loudly than in the days of 
 Pericles or of Plato. 
 
 Among the throng of curious listeners, some of the 
 Athenian philosophers were sure, sooner or later, to be 
 
 > Socrates died B.C. 399. 
 
 s Kfxvfuot, At. Hg., 1262. Demades said that the crest of Athens ought 
 to he a great tongue. "Alexander qui quod cuique optimum est eripuit 
 Lacedaemona servire jubet, Athenas taeere" (Sen. J?p. 94; see Demosth. 
 Phil, iv.) rriv Tr6\iv Unavrcs tZv "EK\T]i/es iiroKaii^ivovaiv as (pi\6\oyis re fartv 
 it«i iroKvKoyos (Plat. Legg. i. 11). 
 
 3 Kvuvhipov (of. Matt. xiii. 52). " Nova statim sordebant, noviora quaere- 
 bantur " (Bengel). Gill says that a similar question «nn rra was common in 
 the Eabbinic schools (Bammidibar Bdbba, f . 212, 4). 
 
634 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 seen. The Stoa Poecile, whidi Zeno liad made his school, 
 and from which the Stoics derived their name, ran along 
 one side of the Agora, and not far distant were the gardens 
 of Epicurus. Besides the adherents of these two philoso- 
 phical schools, there were Academics who followed Plato, 
 and Peripatetics who claimed the authority of Aristotle, 
 and Eclectics of every shade.^ The whole city, indeed, was 
 not unlike one of our University towns at the deadest 
 and least productive epochs of their past. It was full of 
 professors, rhetors, tutors, argners, discoursers, lecturers, 
 grammarians, pedagogues, and gymnasts of every descrip- 
 tion ; and among all these Sophists and Sophronists there 
 was not one who displayed the least particle of originality 
 or force. Conforming sceptics lived in hypocritical union 
 with atheist priests, and there was not even sufficient 
 earnestness to arouse any antagonism between the empty 
 negations of a verbal philosophy and the hollow profes- 
 sion of a dead religion.^ And of this undistinguished 
 throng of dilettanti pretenders to wisdom, not a single 
 name emerges out of the obscurity. Their so-called phi- 
 losophy had become little better than a jingle of phrases'* — 
 the languid repetition of effete watchwords — the unintel- 
 ligent echo of empty formulae. It was in a condition of 
 even deeper decadence than it had been when Cicero, on 
 
 ' " From whose month issued forth 
 
 Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools 
 
 Of Academics old and new, with those 
 
 Sumamed Peripatetics, and the school 
 
 Epicurean, and the Stoic SBTCire." (Milton, Par. Beg.) 
 
 ' See Renan, St. Paul, p. 186, who refers to Cic. ad Fam. xvi. 21 ; Ludao, 
 Dial. Mart. xx. 5 ; Philostr. Apollon. iv. 17. 
 
 ' ^iKixro^ia 'Ewfivav \6yaiy}fi6(pos. TertuUian asks, "Quid simile philosophus 
 et Ohristianus?" (Tert. Apol. 46) ; but Paul, catholic and liberal to all truth, 
 would have haUed the truths which it was given to Greek philosophers to 
 see (Clem. Alex. Strom, vi. 8, § 65, and passim). x(>l<r'Vl ■^/•is 9toaififuai ylveru 
 wpoTraiSela Tir oi(ra [Id. i. 6, § 28 ; Aug. De Civ. Dei, ii. 7). 
 
STOICS AND EPICUREANS. 535 
 
 visiting Athens, declared its philosophy to he all a mere 
 chaos — avco Kara — upside down.^ Epicureans there were, 
 still maintaining the dictum of their master that the 
 highest good was pleasure ; and Stoics asserting that 
 the highest good was virtue ; hut of these Epicureans 
 some had forgotten the belief that the best source of 
 pleasure lay in virtue, and of these Stoics some contented 
 themselves with their theoretic opinion with little care for 
 its practical illustration. With the better side of both 
 systems Paul would have felt much sympathy, but the 
 defects and degeneracies of the two systems rose from the 
 two evil sources to which all man's sins and miseries are 
 mainly due — namely, sensuality and pride. It is true 
 indeed that — 
 
 "When Epicurus to the -world had taught 
 That pleasure was the chiefest good. 
 His life he to his doctrines brought, 
 And in a garden's shade that sovran pleasure sought j 
 Whoever a true Epicure -would be, 
 May- there find cheap and virtuous luxury." 
 
 But the famous garden where Epicurus himself lived in 
 modest abstinence® soon degenerated into a scene of 
 profligacy, and his definition of pleasure, as consisting 
 in the absence of physical pain or mental perturbation 
 (arapa^la), had led to an ideal of life which was at once 
 effeminate and selfish. He had misplaced the centre of 
 
 ' We can the better estimate this after reading such a book as Schneider's 
 Christliche Kldnge aus dem Griech. und Som. Classikem (1865). The iade- 
 pendence, cheerfulness, royalty, -wealth of the true Christian rec^l the 
 Stoic " kingliness," mripiceia. — ^the very -word which St. Paul often uses 
 (2 Cor. ix. 8; Phil. iv. 11—18; 1 Cor. iv. 8—10, &o., compared -with Oic. Be 
 Fin. iii. 22; Hor. Sat. i.— iii., 124—136; Sen. Ejp. Mor. ix), But what a 
 difference is there between these apparent resemblances when we loot at 
 the Stoic and Christian doctrines — ^i. in their real significance ; and ii in 
 their sarronndlngs. 
 
 " Jut. Sat. xiii. 172 ; xiv. 319. 
 
536 THE LIFE AKD "WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 gravity of the moral system, and his degenerate fol- 
 lowers, while they agreed with him in avowing that 
 pleasure should be the aim of mortal existence, selected 
 the nearer and coarser pleasures of the senses in preference 
 to the pleasures of the intellect or the approval of the 
 conscience. The sterner and loftier Epicureans of the 
 type of Lucretius and Cassius were rare ; the school was 
 more commonly represented by the base and vulgar Hed- 
 onists who took as their motto, " Let us eat and drink, for 
 to-morrow we die."^ On the other hand, their great Stoic 
 rivals had little reason to boast the efficacy of their nobler 
 theory. Aiming at the attainment of a complete supremacy 
 not only over their passions, but even over their circum- 
 stances — professing a fictitious indifference to every influ- 
 ence of pain or sorrow,^ standing 'proudly alone in their 
 unaided independence and self-asserted strength, the 
 Stoics, with their vaunted apathy, had stretched the power 
 of the will until it cracked and shrivelled under the un- 
 natural strain ; and this gave to their lives a consciousness 
 of insincerity which, in the worse sort of them, degraded 
 their philosophy into a cloak for every form of ambition 
 and iniquity, and which made the nobler souls among them 
 melancholy with a morbid egotism and an intense despair. 
 In their worst degeneracies Stoicism became the apotheosis 
 of suicide, and Epicureanism the glorification of lust.' 
 
 > Of. Eccles. V. 18; Wisd. ii. 7—9. • 
 
 ^ " There never was philosopher 
 
 Who yet could bear the toothache patiently." 
 
 * The ancient philosophers in the days of the Roman Empire (sV t^uvos 
 (Toijxii, Phoenicides ap. Memeke, Com. Fr. iv. 511 ; Lucian, Enn. 8 ; Lact. 
 Instt. iii. 25 ; Bactroperitae, Jer. in Matt. xi. 10, &c.) had as a body sunk to 
 much the same position as the lazy monks and begging friars of the Middle 
 Ages (see Sen. Ep. Mor. v. 1, 2 ; Tao. Ann. xvi. 32 ; Jut. iii. 116; Hor. Sat. 
 i. 3, 35, 133). The reproaches addressed to them by the Roman satirists 
 bear a close resemblance to those with which Chaucer lashed the mendicant 
 preachers, and Ubic von Hutten scathed the degenerate monks. 
 
PAUL AND THE PHILOSOPHERS. 537 
 
 How Paul dealt with the views and arguments of 
 these rival sects — respectively the Pharisees and the Sad- 
 ducees of the pagan world^ — we do not know. Perhaps 
 these philosophers considered it useless to discuss philo- 
 sophical distinctions with one whose formal logic was as 
 unHke that of Aristotle as it' is possible to imagine — 
 who had not the least acquaintance mth the techni- 
 caUties of philosophy, and whom they would despise as 
 a mere barbarous and untrained Jew. Perhaps he was 
 himself so eager to introduce to their notice the good 
 news of the Kingdom of Heaven, that with him aU ques- 
 tions as to "the moral standpoint were subordinate to the 
 reHgious truth from which he was convinced that morality 
 alone could spring. They may have wanted to argue about 
 the summum bonum ; but he wanted to preach Christ. At 
 any rate, when he came to address them he makes- no 
 allusion to the more popularly known points of contrast 
 between the schools of philosophy, but is entirely occupied 
 with the differences between their views aiid his own as 
 to the nature and attributes of the Divine. ' Even to the 
 philosophers who talked with him in the market-place^ the 
 subject-matter of his conve?sation had been neither plea- 
 sure nor virtue, but Jesus and the Eesurrection.* The 
 
 ' Josephus evidently saw the analogy between the Pharisees and the 
 Stoics (Jos. AnU. xiii. 1 , 5 ; xviii. 1, 2 ; B. J. ii. 8, § 2—14) ; and " Epicureans " 
 is a constant name for heretics, &c., in the Talmud. 
 
 ' When ApoUonius landed at the Peiraeus he is represented as finding 
 Athens very crowded and intensely hot. On his way to the city he met many 
 philosophers, some reading, some perorating, and some arguing, all of whom 
 greeted him. iropj/ei S^ owSels ourbc, kWa. ■tiK]a\fi.\i.tvoi Trdims iis e% 'A-iroWiivtos 
 ffwavecrTpeipovTS re Kal ii<rird(oVTO x«'p<"''''fs (Philostr. Vlt. IT. 17). 
 
 ' Acts xvii. 18. The word " virtue " occurs but once in St. Paul (PhO. 
 . iv. 8), and vSovii, in the classic sense only in Tit. iii. 3. The notion that the 
 philosophers took " the Resurrection" to be a new goddess Anastasis, though 
 adopted by Chrysostom, Theophylact, (Ecumenius, &c., and even in modem 
 times by Renan (" Plusieurs h ce qu'il paralt, prirent Anastasis pour un nom 
 de deesse, ct crurent que Jdsus at Anastasis dtaient quelque nouveau couple 
 
538 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 only resulb had been to create a certain amount of curio- 
 sity — a desire to liear a more connected statement of what 
 he had to say. But this curiosity barely emerged beyond 
 the stage of contempt. To some he was " apparently a 
 proclaimer of strange deities;"^ to others he was a mere 
 " sparrow," a mere " seed-pecker "^ — a " picker-up of 
 learning's crumbs," a victim of unoriginal hallucinations, 
 a retailer of second-hand scraps. The view of the majority 
 of these frivolous sciolists respecting one whose signifi- 
 cance for the world transcended that of all their schools 
 would have coincided nearly with that of 
 
 " Cleon the poet from the sprinkled isles," 
 
 which our poet gives in the following words : — 
 
 " And for the rest 
 I cannot tell thy messenger aright, 
 Where to deliver what he bears of thine, 
 To one called Paulus — we have heard his fame 
 Indeed, if Ohristus be not one with him — 
 I know not nor am troubled much to know. 
 Thou canst not think a mere barbarian Jew, 
 As Paulus proves to be, one circumcised, 
 Hath access to a secret shut from us ] 
 Thou wrongest our philosophy, O King, 
 In stooping to enquire of such an one. 
 As if his answer could impose at all. 
 
 rtivin que ces rSveurs orientaux yenaient prgcher," St. Paul, p. 190), seems to 
 me almost absurd. It would argue, as has been well said, either utter 
 obscurity in the preaching of St. Paul, or the most incredible stupidity in his 
 hearers. 
 
 ' It is almost impossible to suppose that St. Luke is not mentally referring 
 to the charge against Socrates, oSikcT Sto/cpar^s . . . Kaii'cb Sai/idi'ia tlff^epuv 
 (Xen. Mem. I. i.). 
 
 ^ tirepiLoXiyos, a seed-pecking bird, applied as a contemptuous nickname 
 to Athenian shoplifters and area sneaks (Eusteth. oA Od. v. 490), and then to 
 babblers who talked of things which they did not understand. It was the 
 very opprobrium which Demosthenes had launched against .fflschines (Pro 
 Corona, p. 269, ed. Beiske), Compare the terms gobemouche, engoulevent, &o. 
 
BEFORE THE , AREOPAGUS. 639 
 
 He -writetli, doth lie 1 wellj and he may -write ! 
 
 O, the Jew findeth scholars ! certain slaves, 
 
 Who touched on this same isle, preached him and Christ ; 
 
 And (as I gathered from a bystander) 
 
 Their doctnnes could be held by no sane man." ' 
 
 With, some hearers, however, amusement and curiosity 
 won the day. So far as they could understand him 
 he seemed to be announcing a new religion. The 
 crowd on the level space of the Agora rendered it 
 difficult for all to hear him, and as the Areopagus 
 would both furnish a convenient area for an harangue, 
 and as it was there that the court met which had the 
 cognizance of all matters affecting the State religion, 
 it was perhaps with some sense of burlesque that 
 they led him up the rock-hewn steps — which stiU exist — 
 to the level summit, and placed him on the " Stone of 
 Impudence," from which the defendants before the Areo- 
 pagus were wont to plead their cause .'^ Then, with a 
 politeness that sounds ironical, and was, perhaps, meant 
 by the volatile ringleaders of the scene as a sort of parody 
 of the judicial preliminaries, they began to question him 
 as in old days their ancestors had tried and condemned 
 Anaxagoras, Diagoras, Protagoras, and Socrates, on similar 
 acQusations.^ They said to him, " May we ascertain from 
 
 > Browning, Men and Women. 
 
 ' Acts xvii. 19, iTt\a$6nimi airov. It is quite a mistake to suppose that 
 any violence is intended. Of. is. 27. Pausanias (Attic, i. 28, 5) is our 
 authority for the \i9os 'AvatSilas. 
 
 ^ It was the express function of the Areopagus to take cognizance of the 
 mtroduction of MBera Upi. Many -writers hold that this -was a judicial pro- 
 ceeding, and Wordsworth that it might have been an AnaJcrisis ; and our 
 translators, from their marginal note, " it was the highest court m Athens," 
 probably shared the same vie-w. The narrative, however, gives a very different 
 impression. The Athenians were far less iu earnest about their religion 
 than Anytus and Meletus had been in the days of Socrates, and if this was 
 meant for a trial it could only have been by way of conscious parody, as I 
 have suggested. 
 
540 THE LIFE! AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 you wliat is tliis new doctrine about wliicli you have been 
 talking ? You are introducing some strange topic to our 
 hearing. We should like, then, to ascertain what these 
 things might mean? " And so the audience, keenly curious, 
 but brimming over with ill-suppressed contempt and mirth, 
 arranged themselves on the stone steps, and wherever they 
 could best hear what sort of novelties could be announced 
 by this strange preacher of a new faith. 
 
 But it was in no answering mood of levity that St. 
 Paul met their light inquiries. The " ugly little Jew," 
 who was the noblest of all Jews, was, perhaps, standing on 
 the very stone where had once stood the ugly Greek 
 who was the noblest of all Greeks, and was answering 
 the very same charge. And Socrates could jest even in 
 immediate peril of his Hfe ;' but St. Paul, though secure 
 in the tolerance of indifference, had all the solemnity of 
 his race, and was little inclined to share in any jest. 
 His was one of those temperaments which are too sad 
 and too serious for light humour ; one of those charac- 
 ters which are always and overwhelmingly in earnest. To 
 meet badinage by badinage was for him a thing im- 
 possible. A modern writer is probably correct when 
 he says that in ordinary society St. Paul would certainly 
 not have been regarded as an interesting companion. 
 On the other hand, he was too deeply convinced of his 
 own position as one to which he had been called by 
 the very voice and vision of his Saviour to be in the 
 least wounded by frivolous innuendos or disdainful 
 sneers. He was not overawed by the dignity of his 
 judicial listeners, or by the reputation of his philosophic 
 critics, or by the stem associations of the scene in the 
 midst of which he stood. Above him, to the height of one 
 hundred feet, towered the rock of the AcropoUs like the 
 vast altar of HeUas — that Acropolis which, was to the 
 
SPEECH OF ST. PAUL. 541 
 
 Greek what Mount Sion was to tlie Hebrew, the splendid 
 boss of tlie sMeld ringed by tbe concentric circles of 
 Atbens, Attica, Hellas, and tbe world.^ Beneath him was 
 that temple of the awful goddesses whose presence was 
 specially supposed to overshadow this solemn spot, and 
 the dread of whose name had been sufficient to prevent 
 Nero, stained as he was with the guilt of parricide, from 
 setting foot within the famous city.^ But Paul was as 
 Httle daunted by the terrors and splendour of Polytheism 
 in the seat of its grandest memorials and the court of its 
 most imposing jurisdiction, as he was by the fame of the 
 intellectual philosophy by whose living representatives he 
 was encompassed. He knew, and his listeners knew, that 
 their faith in these gay idolatries had vanished.^ He 
 knew, and his listeners knew, that their yearning after the 
 unseen was not to be satisfied either by the foreign super- 
 stitions which looked for their votaries in the ignorance 
 of the gynseceum, or by those hollow systems which 
 wholly failed to give peace even to the few. He was 
 standing under the blue dome of heaven,* a vaster and 
 diviner temple than any which man could rear. And, 
 therefore, it was with the deepest serioijsness, as well as 
 with the most undaunted composure, that he addressed 
 them: "Athenians!"® he said, standing forth amongst 
 them, with the earnest gaze and outstretched hand which 
 WIS his attitude when addressing a multitude, " I observe 
 
 1 Aristid. Panathen. i. 99 ; 0. and H. i. 383. 
 
 * The Semnae, or Eumenides. Suet. Ner. 34. 
 
 ' It is hard to conceivo the reality of a devotion which laughed at 
 the infamous gibes of Aristophanes against the national religion {Lyaisbr. 
 750). 
 
 * 'VvalBpioi iSixdCotno (Pollux. Tiii. 118). 
 
 ' 'Ai/Spes 'ABnvatoi, &c. It was the ordinary mode of beginning a speech, 
 and it seems -to be strangely regarded by the author of Siipematim-al Beli- 
 ffion, ilL 82, as a sign that these speeches are not genuino 
 
542 THE LIFE AOT) WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 that in every respect you are unusually religious."^ Their 
 attention would naturally be won, and even a certain 
 amount cJf personal kindliness towards the orator be en- 
 listed, by an exordium so courteous and so entirely in ac- 
 cordance with the favourable testimony which many writers 
 had borne to their city as the common altar and shrine 
 of Greece.^ "For," he continued, "in wandering through 
 your city, and gazing about me on the objects of your 
 devotion,^ I found among them* an altar on which had 
 been carved an inscription, " To the Unknown God." ® 
 That, then, which ye unconsciously® ^dore, that am I 
 
 ■ Acts ivii. 22, SfiiriSai/ioi'eo-Tepouj. "Quasi snperstitiores," Vulg. ; "some- 
 ■way religious," Hooker ; " very devout," Lardner ; " very much disposed to 
 the -worship of divine Beings," Whateley ; " Le plus religieux de peuples," 
 Benan; "exceedingly scrupulous in your religion," Humphry. The word is 
 used five times by Josephus, and always in a respectful sense, as it is in 
 Acts XXV. 19. Of the many unfortunate translations in this chapter "too 
 superstitious" {allzv, aherglauhisch, Luth.) is the most to be regretted. It at 
 once alters the key-note of the speech, which is one of entire conciliatoriness. 
 The value of it as a model for courteous polemics — a model quite as necessary 
 in these days as at any past period — is greatly impaired in the E. V. It is 
 possible to be "uncompromising" in opinions, without being violent in 
 language or uncharitable in temper. St. Paul, however, would not have 
 been likely to act contrary to the caution which struck Apollonius as neces- 
 sary — ffa^poveartpov kcCl rh irepl iriivruv ®sav e? Keynv Kt:^ Tovro 'AB-fivpat o5 Kol 
 ^yydtffTtav Saifiovajv ^wfiol ItSpvvrai (fhilostr. Vit. vi. 3). 
 
 2 g\T) Pw/ihs, Skii flS^o ®fo!s Kol iviSrina (Xen. De Rep. Athen. ; Alcib. ii. p. 97; 
 Pausan. Attic. 24). robs fia-ePea-TiiTovs t£v "Ewiiriiiv (Jos. c. Ap. ii. 11 ; Isocr. 
 Paneg. 33 ; Thuo. ii. 38 ; -aSlian, Va/r. Hist. v. 17 ; Pausan. xxiv. 3). When 
 Apollonius landed at Athens Philostratus says, rijv ixkv S)) irpiirriv iid\e^iv ^ireiSij 
 ^iKoSiras robs 'ASrivalovs (ISev, ivfp Upav 5ie\c'{oTo (Vit. vi. 2). ^i\6Beai iiiXuxra 
 vamav ciVf (Jul. Misopogon). 
 
 3 Not, as in E.T., "your devotions " (cf. Philostr.Fii. Apollon. iv. 19, p. 156). 
 * Kol. For livaBfaipav D reads ^iiUTopSv, perspiciens, d. The iTfyeypawro 
 
 implies permanence, and perhaps antiquity. 
 
 ' 3 . . . TovTo, N, A, B, D, with Origen and Jerome. Of. Hor. Epod. v. 1. 
 " At O Deorum quicquid in caelo regit ;" and the frequent piacular inscription, 
 " Sei Deo Sei Deae." The vague expression " the Divine" is common in 
 Greek writers. 
 
 ° Ver. 23, ayi/oovvra, not " ignorantly," which would have been unlike 
 Paul's urbanity, but " withmit knowing Who He is," with reference to iiyvicrrf 
 (cf. Kom. i. 20). The word eiire$eire also implies genuine piety. 
 
SPEECH OP ST. PAUL. 643 
 
 declaring unto you. The Grod who made the universe and 
 all things in it, He being the naturaP Lord of heaven and 
 earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands,^ nor is 
 He in need of anything^ so as to receive service* from 
 human hands, seeing that He is Himself the giver to all 
 of life and breath and aU things ; and He made of one 
 blood^ every nation of men to dwell on the whole face of 
 the earth, ordaining the immutable limits to the times 
 and extents of their habitation,® inspiring them thereby to 
 seek G-od, if after all they might grope in their darkness ' 
 and find Him, though, in reality,^ He is not far from 
 each one of us ; for in Him we live, and move, and are, 
 as some® also of your own poets have said — 
 
 " (We need Him all,) 
 For we are e'en His offspring." 
 
 » * Siripxoy- 
 
 ' An obvious reminiscence of the speech of Stephen (vii. 48 ; cf . Eurip. 
 Fragm. ap Clem. Alex. Strom. V. ii. 76). 
 
 ' A proposition to which the Epicureans would heartily assent. 
 * OepaireieTai, " is served," not " is worshipped," which is meaningless when 
 applied to "hands." It means by offerings at the altar, &c. (cf. H. i. 39, 
 elf iroT;^ Toi xop'f "t' ^irl vtiiiv ifv^a). 
 
 ' oV^BTos is, to say the least, dubious, being omitted in >* A, B, the Coptic, 
 and Sahidic versions, &c. On the other hand, as Meyer truly observes, 
 Mpdntov would have been a more natural gloss than oVJuotoj ; and the Jews 
 used to say that Adam was b''» ''» im, " the blood of the world." 
 « Job xii. 23. 
 
 ' ^i\Kwpav, to fumble, like a blind man, or one in the dark (Arist. Pan. 
 691 ; Gen. xxvii. 21 ; Isa. lis. 10 ; cf. Rom. i. 21, x. 6—8) :— 
 " I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope 
 And gather dust and chaff, and call 
 To -What I feel is Lord of all, 
 And faintly trust the larger Tao^e.'"— Tennyson. 
 
 ' He means to imply that the necessity for this groping was their own 
 f auMh-was due to thew withdrawal to a distance from God, not His withdrawal 
 . from them. ' 
 
 » The poet actually quoted is Aratus of Oilicia, perhaps of Tarsus, and 
 the line comes from the beginning of his iair6fieva -. — 
 TTiivTp 5s Albs KexpilM^" TiiiTfj 
 ToC ykp Ka\ -yeVoj iiT/iei/. 
 
 But ho says nrts, because the same sentiment, in almost the same words, is 
 
644 THE LIFE AKD 'WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 Since, then, we are the offspring of God, we ouglit not to 
 think that the Divine is like gold or silver or brass, the 
 graving of art and of man's genius." ^ 
 
 Condensed as this speech evidently is, let us pause for 
 an instant, before we give its conclusion, to notice the 
 consummate skill with which it was framed, the pregnant 
 meanings infused into its noble and powerful sentences. 
 Such skill was eminently necessary in addressing an 
 audience which attached a primary importance to rhetoric, 
 nor was it less necessary to utilise every moment during 
 which he could hope to retain the fugitive attention of 
 that versatile and superficial mob. To plunge into any 
 statements of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, or 
 to deal in that sort of defiance which is the weapon of 
 ig-norant fanaticism, would have been to ensure instant 
 failure ; and since his sole desire was to win his listeners 
 by reason and love, he aims at becoming as a heathen to 
 the heathen, as one without law to them without law, and 
 speaks at once with a large-hearted liberality which would 
 have horrified the Jews,, and a classic grace which 
 charmed th,e Gentiles. In expressions markedly courteous, 
 and with arguments exquisitely conciliatory, recognising 
 their piety towards their gods, and enforcing his views 
 by an' appeal to their own poets, he yet manages, with 
 the readiest power of adaptation, to indicate the funda- 
 mental errors of every class of his listeners. While 
 seeming to dwell only on points of agreement, he yet 
 
 found in Kleanthes, Hymn in Jov. 5, iit <roC yhp y4vos iaiitv, and it was, not 
 improbably, a noble common-place of other sacred and liturgical poems. Of. 
 Yirg. Georg. iv. 221 — 225. Bentley remarked that this chapter alone proves 
 "that St. Paul was a great master in all the learning of the Greeks" (Boyle 
 Lectures, iii.). This is a very great exaggei-ation. See Exc. III., p. 630 sq. 
 
 ' " Judaea gens Deum sine simulacro colit " (Varro, JFV. p. 229). Hence 
 the " Nil praeter nnbes et caeli numeu adorat " of Juv. xiv. 97 smd " Dedita 
 sacris Incerti Judaea Dei " of Luc. ii. 692 ; Tae. S. v. 6. 
 
HIS ARGUMENTS. 545 
 
 practically rebukes in every direction their natural and 
 intellectual self-complacency." Tlie happy Providence — 
 otters, but not St. Paul, might have said the happy 
 accident '—which had called his attention to the inscription 
 on the nameless altar, enabled him at once to claim them 
 as at least partial sHarers m the opiaions which he was 
 striving to enunciate. His Epicurean auditors believed 
 that the universe had resulted from a chance combination 
 of atoms ; he tells them that it was their Unknown God 
 who by His fiat had created the universe and all therein. 
 They believed that there were many gods, but that they 
 sat far away beside their thunder, careless of mankind ; he 
 told them that there was but one God, Lord of heaven and 
 earth. Around them arose a circle of temples as purely 
 beautiful as hands could make them — yet there, under the 
 very shadow of the Propylsea and the Parthenon, and with 
 aU those shrines of a hundred divinities in fuU view with 
 their pillared vestibules and their Pentelic marble, he tells 
 the multitude that this God who was One, not many, 
 dwelt not in their toU- wrought temples,' but in the 
 eternal temple of His own creation. But while he thus' 
 denies the Polytheism of the multitude, his words teU 
 with equal force against the Pantheism of the Stoic, and 
 
 ' Paul had that beautiful spirit of charity which sees the soul of good 
 even in things evil." Hostile as he was to selfish hedonism, and to hard 
 " apathy," he may yet have seen that there was a good side to the philosophy 
 hoth of Epicurus and Zeno, in so far as Epicurus taught " the happiness of a 
 cultivated and self -contented mind," and Zeno contributed to diffuse a lofty 
 morality. "Encore que les phUosophes soient les protecteurs de I'erreur 
 toutefois ils ont frappe li la porte de la verite. (Veritatis fores pulsant. Tert.) 
 S'ils ne sont pas entres dans son sanctuaire, s'ils n'ont pas eu le bonheur de le 
 voir et de I'adorer dans son temple, ils se sont quelquefois prisentes a ses 
 portiques, et lui ont rendu de loin quel que hommage" (Bossuet, Paneg, de St. 
 Catherine). 
 
 ' The word Tvxi? does not occur in the N.T. 
 
 ' 3 C!hron. vi. 33^ 33. ^oioi 5' av oiho? tektovoov Tt\a60Eti vito Je/iai to 
 Belov TcepijSdXoi roixoov icrvxcdi ; (Eur. wp. Clem. Alex. Strom. V. xi. 76;. 
 J J 
 
546 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 the practical Atheism of the Epicurean. While he thus 
 de-consecrated, as it were, the countless temples, the Stoics 
 would go thoroughly with him ; ^ when he said that Grod 
 needeth not our ritualisms, the Epicurean would almost 
 recognise the language of his own school ; ^ but, on the 
 other hand,, he laid the axe at the root of their most 
 cherished convictions when he added that Matter was no 
 eternal entity, and God no impersonal abstraction, and 
 Providence no mere stream of tendency without us, which, 
 like a flow of atoms, makes for this or that ; but that He 
 was at once the Creator and the Preserver, the living and 
 loving Lord of the material universe, and of all His children 
 in the great family of man, and of aU the nations, alike 
 Jew and Gentile, alike Greek and barbarian, which had 
 received from His decrees the hmits of their endurance and 
 of their domains. In this one pregnant sentence he also 
 showed the falsity of all autochthonous pretensions, and 
 national selE-glorifications, at the expense of others, as well 
 as of aU ancient notions about the local limitations of special 
 deities. The afflicted Jew at whom they were scoffing 
 belonged to a race as dear i;o Him as the beautiful Greek ; 
 and the barbarian was equally His care, as from His throne 
 He beholds all the dwellers upon earth. And when he 
 told them that God had given them the power to find Him, 
 and that they had but dimly groped after Him in the dark- 
 ness — and when he clenched by the well-known hemistich 
 of Aratus and Cleanthes (perhaps familiar to them at" their 
 solemn festivals) the truth that we are near and dear to 
 Him, the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand, 
 
 ' Seneca op. Lact. Instt. vi. 25, and Ep. Mor. xxh. 11. 
 
 > " Omnis enim per se DiTom natura necesse est 
 Immortali aevo summft cum pace fruatvir . . . 
 Ipsa mis pollens opiiuj, nihU indiga nostri." — Luor. ii. 650. 
 
 Of. Sen. Ep. 95, 47. St. Paul, however, more probably derived the sentiment 
 if from any source, from 2 Mace xiv. 35, or from Ps. 1. 11, 12 j Job. Hi, 11. 
 
HIS ARGUMENTS. 547 
 
 they would be prepared for the conclusion that all these 
 cunning effigies — at which he pointed as he spoke — all 
 these carved and molten and fictile images, were not and 
 could not be semblances of Him, and ought not to be wor- 
 shipped^ were they even as venerable as the " heaven-fallen 
 image " — ^the ^toTrere? ayaXfjLa — of their patron-goddess, or 
 glorious as the chryselephantine statue on which Phidias 
 had expended his best genius and Athens her richest 
 gifts. 
 
 Thus far, then, with a considerateness which avoided 
 all offence, and a power of reasoning and eloquence 
 to which they could not be insensible, he had demon- 
 strated the errors of his listeners mainly by contrasting 
 them with the counter-truths which it was his mission to 
 announce.*^ But lest the mere demonstration of error 
 should end only in indifference or despair, he desired to 
 teach the Stoic to substitute sympathy for apathy, and 
 humility for pride, and the confession of a weakness that 
 relied on Grod for the assertion of a self-dependence which 
 denied aU need of Him; and to lead the Epicurean to 
 prefer a spiritual peace to a sensual pleasure, and a living 
 Saviour to distant and indifferent gods. He proceeded, 
 therefore, to tell them that during long centuries of their 
 history Grod had overlooked or condoned^ this ignorance, 
 but that now the kingdom of heaven had come to them — 
 now He called them to repentance — ^now the day of judg- 
 
 * See for the Pagan view Cic. de Nat. Bear. i. 18. 
 
 * The Epicnrean notion of happiness as the result of coarser atoms was as 
 material as Paley's, who considers it to be " a certain state of the nervous 
 system in that part of the system in which we feel joy and grief . . - which 
 may be the upper region of the stomach or the fine net-work lining the whole 
 region of the praeeordia " (Moral Fhilos. ch. vi.)- 
 
 ' Ver. 30, (meptSiiv. "Winked at" is a somewhat unhappy colloquialism of 
 the E.V. (of. Eom. i. 24). It also occurs in Ecclus. xxx. 11. " Times of igno- 
 ranee " is a half -technical term, like the AxsAAa jahihyya for the time before 
 Mahomet, 
 
 J J 2 
 
548 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST, PAUL, 
 
 ment was proclaimed, a day in wliicli the world stould be 
 judged in rigtteonsness by One whom Grod liad thereto 
 appointed, even by that Jesus to whose work God had set 
 
 His seal by raising Hira from the dead 
 
 That was enough. A burst of coarse derision inter- 
 rupted his words.^ The Grreeks, the philosophers them- 
 selves, could listen with pleasure, even with something of 
 conviction, while he demonstrated the nullity of those 
 gods of the Acropolis at which even their fathers, four 
 centuries earlier, had not been afraid to jeer. But now 
 that he had got to a point at which he mixed up mere 
 Jewish matters and miracles with his predication — ^now 
 that he began to tell them of that Cross which was 
 to them foolishness, and of that Eesurrection from the 
 dead which was inconceivably alien to their habits of 
 behef — all interest was for them at an end. It was 
 as when a lunatic suddenly introduces a wild delusion 
 into the midst of otherwise sane and sensible remarks-. 
 The " strange gods " whom they fancied that he was 
 preaching became too fantastic even to .justify any further 
 inquiry. They did not deign to waste on such a topic 
 the leisure which was important for less extraordinary 
 gossip.^ They were not nearly serious enough in their 
 
 ' Acts xvii. 32. " The moment they heard the words ' resurrection of the 
 dead,' some began to jeer." 'Ex\eiaCoi', which occurs here only in the N.T., is a 
 very strong word. It means the expression of contempt by the lips, as 
 /ivKTTipl^w by the nostrils. It is used by Aquila in Prov. xiv. 9, for " Pools make 
 a mock at sin." Not that the ancients found anything ludicrous in the notion 
 of the resurrection of the soul ; it was the resurrection of the body which seemed 
 so childish to them. See Plin. N. H. vii. 65 ; Lucian, D^ Mori. Peregr. 13. The 
 heathen Oaecilius in Minucius Pelix [oct. 11, 34), says, "Oraculis fabnlas 
 adstruunt. Benasci se ferunt post mortem et cineres et favillae, et nescio 
 qua fiducia mendaciis invicem credunt." See Orig. c. Cels. v. 14 ; Arnob. ii. 
 13; 'Athenag. De Resurr. iii. 4; Tert. Be Cam. Christi, 15 ; &c. 
 
 " There is a sort of happy play of words in the evKaipow of Acts xvii. 21, 
 It is not a classical word, but implies that they were too busy to spare time 
 from the important occupation of gossiping. 
 
FAREWELL TO ATHENS. 549 
 
 own belief, nor did they consider this feeble wanderer 
 a sufficiently important person to make them care to 
 enforce against St. Paul that decree of the Areopagus 
 which had brought Socrates to the hemlock draught 
 in the prison almost in sight of them ; but they in- 
 stantly offered to the great missionary a contemptuous 
 toleration more fatal to progress than any antagonism. 
 As they began to stream away, some broke into open 
 mockery, while others, with polite irony, feeling that such 
 a speaker deserved at least a show of urbanity, said to him, 
 " Enough for one day. Perhaps some other time we will 
 listen to you again about Him." Bat even if they were 
 in earnest, the convenient season for their curiosity recurred 
 no more to them than it did afterwards to Felix.^ On that 
 hiU of Ares, before that throng, Paul spoke no more. ' He 
 went from the midst of them, sorry, it may be, for their 
 jeers, seeing through their spiritual incapacity, but con- 
 scious that in that city his public work, at least,, was over. 
 He eould brave opposition ; he was xliscouraged by indif- 
 ference. One dignified adherent, indeed, he found — but 
 one only'' — ^in Dionysius the Areopagite;^ and one more in 
 a woman — ^possibly a Jewess — whose very name is un- 
 , certain:* but at Athens he founded no church, to Athens 
 he wrote no epistle, and in Athens, often as. he passed 
 its neighbourhood, he never set foot again. St. Luke has 
 
 ' Acts xiiv. 25. 
 
 ' "Le pidagogue est le moins convertissable des hommes" (Renan, p. 199). 
 " C'est qu'il faut plus d'un miracle pour convertir i. rhumilite de la croix un 
 sage da siede " (Quesnel). 
 
 ' Christian tradition makes him a bishop and martyr (Euseb. if. B. iii. 4 ; 
 iv. 23; Niceph. iii. 11), and he is gradually developed into St. Denys of 
 France. The books attributed to him, On the Heavenly Hierarchy, On 
 the Divine Names, &e., are not earlier tha-n the fifth century. 
 
 * Arf;uo\is, "heifer," would be a name analogous to Dorcas, &c. ; Damaris 
 occurs nowhere else, and is probably a mere difEerence of pronunciation. It 
 can have nothing to do with Sd/iap, and has led to the conjecture that she 
 was a Syrian metic. Absolutely nothing is known about her. 
 
550 THE LITE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 no pompous falsehoods to tell us. St. Paul was despised and 
 ridiculed, and he does not for a moment attempt to repre- 
 sent it otherwise ; St. Paul's speech, so far as any immediate 
 effects were concerned, was an all but total failure, and St. 
 Luke does not conceal its ineffectiveness.^ He shows us 
 that the Apostle was exposed to the ridicule of indifferen- 
 tism, no less than to the persecutions of exasperated bigotry. 
 And yet his visit was not in vain. It had been to 
 him a very sad one. Even when Timotheus had come 
 to cheer his depression and brighten his solitude, he felt 
 so deep a yearning for his true and, tried converts at 
 Thessalonica, that, since they were still obliged to face 
 the storm of persecution, he had sacrificed his own feelings, 
 and sent him back to support and comfort that strugghng 
 Church.^ He left Athens as he had lived in it, a 
 despised and lonely man. And yet, as I have said, 
 his visit was not in vain. Many a deep thought in the 
 Epistle to the Romans may have risen from the Apostle's 
 reflections over the apparent failure at Athens. The 
 wave is flung back, and streams away in broken foam, 
 but the tide advances with irresistible majesty and 
 might. Little did those philosophers, in their self- 
 satisfied superiority, suppose that the trivial incident in 
 which they had condescended to take part was for 
 them the beginning of the end.^ Xerxes and his 
 
 ' Tet we are constantly asked to believe, by the very acute and impartial 
 criticism of sceptics, that St. Lnke is given to inventing the nanieb of illustrious 
 converts to do credit to St. Paul. If any one wiU compare Philostratns's 
 Life of Apollonius ■with the Acts of the Apostles he will soon learn to 
 appreciate the difference between the cloudy romance of a panegyrist and the 
 plain narrative of a truthful biographer. 
 
 ' As may be inferred from 1 Thess. iii. 2. Did Silas also join him at 
 Athens, and was he also sent back (to Beroea) ? The iintis is in favour of the 
 supposition, the n6voi is against it. 
 
 ' Benan alludes to the Edict of Justinian suppressing the Athenian chair 
 of Philosophy 474 years after. 
 
THE FUTURE OF ATHENS. ■ 651 
 
 Persians had encamped on the Areopagus, and devoted 
 to the flames the temples on the Acropolis on the very 
 grounds urged by St. Paul, " that the gods could not be 
 shut within walls, and that the whole universe was their 
 home aiid temple."^ Yet the sword and fire of Xerxes, and 
 all the millions of his vast host, have been utterly im- 
 potent in their effects, if we compare them to the results 
 which followed from the apparent failure of this poor and 
 insulted tent-maker. Of all who visit Athens, myriads 
 connect it with the name of Paul who never so much as 
 remember that, since the epoch of its glory, it has been 
 trodden by the feet of poets and conquerors and kings. 
 They think not of Cicero, or Virgil, or Grermanicus, but of 
 the wandering tent-maker. In all his seeming defeats 
 lay the hidden germ of certain victory. He founded no 
 church at Athens, but there — it may be under the 
 fostering charge of the converted Areopagite — a church 
 grew up. In the next century it furnished to the cause 
 of Christianity its martyr bishops and its eloquent 
 apologists.^ In the third centmry it flourished in peace 
 and purity. In the fourth century it was represented 
 at Nicaea, and the noble rhetoric of the two great 
 Christian friends "St. Basil and St. Grregory of Nazianzus 
 was trained in its Christian schools. Nor were many 
 centuries to elapse ere, unable to confront the pierced 
 hands which held a wooden Cross, its myriads of deities 
 had fled into the dimness of outworn creeds, and its 
 tutelary goddess, in spite of the flashing eyes which 
 Homer had commemorated, and the mighty spear which 
 had been moulded out of the trophies of Marathon, 
 resigned her 'maiden chamber to the honour of that 
 
 ' Oic. Legg. ii. 10. 
 
 ' Fublins, A.D. 179; Qoadratos, Enseb. S.II. iv. 23; Aristides, A.I>. 
 126 ; Athenagoras, ovre. a,d, 177> 
 
552 THE LIFE AND "WOBK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 meek Galilsean maiden who had lived under the roof 
 of the carpenter of Nazareth — ^the virgin mother of the 
 Lord.' 
 
 ' It was probably in the sixth century, when Justinian closed the schools 
 of philosophy, that the Parthenon was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and the 
 Theseum to St. George of Cappadocia. 
 
OHAPTEE XXVIII. 
 
 ST. PAUL AT COEINTH. 
 
 " Men, -women, rich and poor, in the cool hours 
 Shuffled their feet along the pavement white. 
 Companioned or alone ; while many a light 
 
 , Flared here and there from wealthy festivals. 
 And threw their moving shadows on the walls, 
 Or found them clustered in the corniced shade 
 Of some arched temple-door or dusky colonnade." 
 
 Keats, Lamia. 
 
 "Ecclesia Dei in Corintho : laetum et ingens paradoxon." 
 
 BengeIj, in 1 Cor. i. 2. 
 
 Unnoticed as he had entered it — nay, even more unno- 
 ticed, for he was now alone — St. Paul left Athens. So 
 little had this visit impressed him, that he only once 
 alludes to it, and though from the Acrocorinthus he might 
 often have heheld its famed Acropolis, he never felt the 
 smallest inclination to enter it again. This was his only 
 recorded experience of intercourse vsdth the Gentile Phari- 
 saism of a pompous philosophy. There was more hope of 
 raging Jews, more hope of ignorant harbarians, more hope 
 of degraded slaves, than of those who had become fools 
 because in their own conceit they were exceptionally wise ; 
 who were alienated by a spiritual ignorance born of moral 
 blindness; who, because conscience had lost its power 
 over them, had become vain in their imaginations, and 
 their foolish heart was darkened. 
 
 He sailed to Corinth, the then capital of Southern 
 Greece, which formed the Eoman province of Achaia. 
 
554 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 The poverty of liis condition, the desire to waste no time, 
 the greatness of his own infirmities, render it nearly- 
 certain that he did not make his way over those forty 
 miles of road which separate Athens from Corinth, and 
 which would have led him through Eleusis and Megara, 
 hut that he sailed direct, in about five hours, across the 
 Saronic hay, and dropped anchor under the low green 
 hills and pine-woods of Cenchrese. Thence he made his 
 way on foot along the valley of Hexamili, a distance of 
 some eight miles, to the city nestling under the huge 
 mass of its rocky citadel. Under the shadow of that 
 Acrocorinthus, which darkened alternately its double seas,^ 
 it was destined that St. Paul should spend nearly two busy 
 years of his eventful life. 
 
 It was not the ancient Corinth — the Corinth of Peri- 
 ander, or of Thucydides, or of Timoleon — that he was 
 now entering, but Colonia Julia, or Laus Juli Corinthus, 
 which had risen out of the desolate ruins of the older 
 city. When the Hegemony had, passed from Sparta and 
 Athens, Corinth occupied their place, and as the leader 
 of the Achaean league she was regarded as the light and 
 glory of Grreece. Flamininus, when the battle of Cynos- 
 cephalae had destroyed the hopes of Philip, proclaimed at 
 Corinth the independence of Hellas.^ But when the city 
 was taken by L. Mummius, B.C. 146, its inhabitants had 
 been massacred, its treasures carried off to adorn the 
 triumph of the conqueror, and the city itself devastated 
 and destroyed. For a hundred years it lay in total ruin, 
 and then Julius Caesar, keenly alive to thip beauty and 
 importance of its position, and desiring to call attention 
 to the goddess for whose worship it had been famous, and 
 whose descendant he professed to be, rebuilt it from its 
 
 > Stat. Theb. Til 106. * B.0. 196. 
 
COEINTH. 555 
 
 foundations, and peopled it with a colony of veterans and 
 freedmen.^ 
 
 It sprang almost instantly into fame and wealth- 
 Standing on the bridge of the double sea, its two 
 harbours — Lechseum on the Corinthian and Cenchrese on 
 the Saronic Gulf — instantly attracted the commerce of the 
 east and west. The Diolkos, or land-channel, over which 
 ships could be dragged across the Isthmus, was in constant 
 use, because it saved voyagers from the circumnavigation 
 of the dreaded promontory of Malea.^ Jews with a keen 
 eye to the profits of merchandise, Greeks attracted by 
 the reputation of the site and the glory of the great 
 Isthmian games, flocked to the protection of the Eoman 
 colony. The classic antiquities found amid the debris 
 of the conflagration, and the successful imitations to 
 which they led, were among the earliest branches of the 
 trade of the tovra. Splendid buildings, enriched with 
 ancient piUars of marble and porphyry, and adorned with 
 gold and silver, soon began to rise side by side with the 
 wretched huts of wood and straw which sheltered the 
 mass of the poorer population.' Commerce became more 
 and more active. Objects of luxury soon found their way 
 to the marts, which were visited by every nation of the 
 civilised world — Arabian balsam, Egyptian papyrus, Phoe- 
 nician dates, Libyan ivory, Babylonian carpets, CUician 
 goats-hair, Lycaonian wool, Phrygian slaves. With riches 
 came superficial refinement and literary tastes. The life 
 of the wealthier inhabitants was marked by self-indulgence 
 and intellectual restlessness, and the mass of the people, 
 even down to the slaves, were more or less affected by the 
 
 ' B.C. 44. Pansan. iL 1, 3 ; Plut. Goes. 67 ; Strabo, viii. 6. 
 
 = Cape Matapan. The Greeks had a proverb, Mo\^oi irepntxiuv iiri\deou 
 TBI/ oiVtSSe— as we might say, " Before sailing round Malea, make your will " 
 (Strab. TiiL p. 368). "Formidatiun Maleae caput" (Stat. Theb. ii. 33). 
 
 « 1 Cor. iii 12; Hausrath, p. 317. 
 
556 THE LIFE AND WOBK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 prevailing tendency. Corintli was the Vanity Pair of 
 tlie Eoman Empire, at once the London and_ the Paris of 
 the first century after Christ. 
 
 It was into the midst of this mongrel and hetero- 
 geneous population of Greek adventurers and Eoman 
 bourgeois, with a tainting infusion of Phoenicians — ^this 
 mass of Jews, ex-soldiers, philosophers, merchants, sailors, 
 freedmen,^ slaves, tradespeople, hucksters, and agents 
 of every form of vice — a colony "without aristocracy, 
 vrithout traditions, without well-established citizens" — 
 that the toilworn Jewish wanderer made his way. He 
 entered it as he had entered Athens — a stricken and lonely 
 worker ; but here he was lost even more entirely in the 
 low and careless crowd. Yet this was the city from 
 which and to whose inhabitants he was to write those 
 memorable letters which were to influence the latest 
 history of the world. How little we understand what is 
 going on around us! How little did the wealthy 
 magnates of Corinth suspect that the main historic 
 significance of their city during this epoch would be 
 centred in the disputes conducted in a petty synagogue, 
 and the thoughts written in a tent-maker's cell by that 
 bent and weary Jew, so solitary and so vrretched, so 
 stained with the dust of travel, so worn with the attacks 
 of sickness and persecution! How true it is that the 
 living world often knows nothing of its greatest men ! 
 
 For when we turn to the Epistles to the Thessa- 
 lonians and Corinthians, and trace the emotions which 
 during this period agitated the mind of the'Apostle, we 
 find him still suffering from weakness^ and anxiety, from 
 outward opposition and inward agonies. He reminds the 
 Thessalonians that he had prepared them for his tribula- 
 
 * 'E»o(kous toO &ircAcv9epiKov yevous ■rXeio'Tovs (Sirab, viii. 6). 
 
 ' Probably another attack of his malady (1 Oor. ii, 3). 
 
PAUL AT COEINTH. 557 
 
 tions and tteir own, and speaks toucMngly of tlie comfort 
 wMdi he had received from the news of their faith in 
 the midst of his afflictions.^ Had he possessed the 
 modern temperament he might often have been helped 
 to peace and calm as he climbed the steep Acrocorinthus 
 and gazed from its lofty summit on the two seas studded 
 with the white sails of nfany lands, or watched the glow 
 of sunset bathing in its soft lustre the widespread pageant 
 of islands and mountains, and groves of cypress and 
 pine. But all his interest lay in those crowded streets 
 where his Lord had much people, and in the varied 
 . human surroundings of his daily life. How deeply he was 
 impressed by these may be seen in the Corinthian Epistles. 
 His illustrations are there chiefly drawn from Grentile 
 customs — the wild-beast fights,^ which Athens would never 
 admit while she had an Altar to Pity ; the lovely stadium, 
 in which he had looked with sympathy on the grace and 
 strength and swiftness of many a youthful athlete-; the 
 race*. and the boxing-matches,* the insulting vanity of 
 Eoman triumph,^ the long hair of effeminate dandies,® 
 the tribunal of the Proconsul,'' the shows of the theatre,* 
 the fading garland of Isthmian pine.' 
 
 But there was one characteristic of heathen life which 
 would come home to him at Corinth with overwhelming 
 force, and fill his pure soul with infinite pain. It was 
 the gross immorality of a city conspicuous for its depravity 
 even amid ithe depraved cities of a dying heathenism.^" 
 Its very name had become a synonym for reckless de- 
 
 ' 1 Thess. iii. 4, 7. 
 
 2 1 Cor. XV. 32 ; Luoian Demonax, 57 ; Philostr. Apollon. iv. 22. 
 
 ' 1 Cor. ix. 24. 
 
 * Id. ver. 27. ° 1 Cor. xi. 14. * 1 Cor. iv. 9. 
 
 • 2 Cor. ii. 14—16. ' 2 Cor. v. 10. » 1 Cor. ix. 25. 
 
 '" Hesych. s. v. KopivBidCfaeai. Wetstein (the great source of classical 
 quotations in illustration of the New Testament, whose stores have teen 
 
558 THE LIFE AND WORK: OF ST.- PAUL. 
 
 bauchery. This abysmal profligacy of Corintb was due 
 partly to the influx of sailors, who made it a trysting- 
 place for the vices of every land, and partly to the vast 
 numerical superiority of the slaves, of which, two cen- 
 turies later, the city was said to contain many myriads.^ 
 And so far from acting as a check upon this headlong 
 immorality, religion had there taken under its immediate 
 protection the very pollutions which it was its highest 
 function to suppress. A thousand Hierodouloi were conse- 
 crated to the service of Impurity in the infamous Temple 
 of Aphrodite Pandemos. The Lais of old days, whose 
 tomb at Corinth had been marked by a sphinx with a 
 human head between her claws, had many shameless and 
 rapacious representatives. East and west mingled their 
 dregs of foulness in the new Gomorrah of classic culture,^ 
 and the orgies of the Paphian goddess were as notorious 
 as those of Isis or of Asherah. It was from this city and 
 amid its abandoned proletariate that the Apostle dictated 
 his frightful sketch of Paganism.^ It was to the converts 
 of this city that he addressed most frequently, and with 
 most solemn warning and burning indignation, his stern 
 prohibitions of sensual crime.* It was to converts drawn 
 from the reeking haunts of its slaves and artisans that 
 he writes that they too had once been sunk in the lowest 
 depths of sin and shame.' It is of this city that we 
 
 freely rifled by later authors) and others refer to Ar. Pint. 149 ; Hor. Upp. 
 I. xvii. 36 ; Athen. vii. 13 ; xiii. 21, 32, 54 ; Strabo, viii. 6, 20—21 ; xii. 3, 36 ; 
 Oic. De Bep. ii, 4 ; and Aristid. Or. III., p. 39, &c. 
 
 ^ On the numbers of slaves in ancient days, see Athenseus Ti. p. 275 (ed. 
 Casaubon). 
 
 2 Juv. yiii. 112 ; Hor. Up. I. xvii. 36 ; Strabo, viii. 6 ; Athen. xiii. p. 673, 
 ed. Casaubon. A reference to the immorality of the city may still lie 
 heard in the use of the word " Corinthians " for profligate idlers. 
 
 « Rom. i 21—32. 
 
 * 1 Cor. V. 1 ; vi. 9-20; x. 7, 8; 2 Oor. vi 14; viL 1. 
 
 * 1 Cor. vi. 9-11 ; 2 Cor. xii. 21. 
 
PAUL AT OORHirrH. 659 
 
 hear the sorrowful admission that in the world of heathen- 
 dom a pure life and an honest life was a thing well-nigh 
 unknown.^ All sins are hound together by subtle links 
 of affinity. Impurity was by no means the only vice for 
 which Corinth was notorious. It was a city of drunkards;^ 
 it was a city of extortioners and cheats. But the worse 
 the city, the deeper was the need for his labours, and 
 the greater was the probability that many in it would be 
 yearning for delivery from the bondage of corruption into 
 the glorious liberty of the children of God. 
 
 In such a place it was more than ever necessary that 
 St. Paul should not only set an example absolutely blame- 
 less, but that he should even abstain from things which 
 were perfectly admissible, if they should furnish a handle 
 to the enemies of Christ. And therefore, lest these 
 covetous shopkeepers and traders should be able to charge 
 him with seeking his own gain, he determined to accept 
 nothing at their hands. There seemed to be a fair chance 
 that he would be able to earn his bread by tent-making in 
 a port so universally frequented. In this respect he was 
 unusually fortunate. He found a Jew of Pontus, named 
 Aquila,^ who worked at this trade with his wife PriscUla. 
 
 « 1 Cor. T. 9, 10. 
 
 * Corinthians were usually introduced drunk on the stage (^lian. V. S. 
 iii. 15; Athen. x. 438, W. 137 ; 1 Oor. xi. 21 ; Hausrath, p. 323). 
 
 ' The Aquila, a Jew of Pontus, who translated the Old Testament into 
 Greek more literally than the LXX., lived more than half a century later, and 
 may conceivably have been a grandson of this Aquila. Pontius Aquila was a 
 noble Iloman name (Cic. ad Fam. x. 33 ; Suet. Jul. 78) ; but that Aquila may 
 have been a f reedman of that house, and that Luke has made a mistake in con- 
 necting him with Pontus, is without the shadow of probability (cf . Acts ii. 9 ; 
 1 Pet. i. 1). His real name may have been Onhelos (Deutsch, Lit. Mem., 
 p. 386), Hebraised from 'A/cuXos, or may have been ""D3, Latinised into Aquila ; 
 but those are mere valueless conjectures. He was a tent-maker, married to 
 an active and kind^ wife, who lived sometimes at Home, sometimes at 
 Goiinth, and sometimes at Ephesus (Acts xviii. 26 ; 1 Oor. xvi. 19 ; Bom. 
 rvi. 3 ; 2 Tim. iv. 19) ; and they were much beloved by St. Paul, and rendered 
 
660 THE LIFE AJSTD "WORK OF^ ST. PAUL. 
 
 As nothing is said either of their baptism or their conver- 
 sion, it is probable that they were already Christians, and . 
 Paul formed with them a lifelong friendship, to which 
 he owed many happy hours. This excellent couple were 
 at present living in Corinth in consequence of the decree 
 of Claudius, expelling all Jews from Rome. ' Tyrannous as 
 the measure was, it soon became a dead letter, and probably 
 caused but little inconvenience to these exiles, because the 
 nature of their trade seems to have made it desirable for 
 
 extraordinary services to the cause of Christianity. Priscilla was probaWy 
 the more energetic of the two, or she would not be mentioned first in Acts 
 xviii. 18, 26 ; Eom. xvi. 3 ; 2 Tim. iv. 19 (Ewald, vi., p. 489 ; Plumptre, BM. 
 Studies, p. 417). 
 
 ! In A.D. 52 the relations of Judsea to Rome began to be extremely 
 unsettled (Tac. Ann. xii. 54), and just as the Oauls and Celts were expelled 
 frojn Bome (A.D. 9) on receipt of the news about the loss of Varus and his 
 legions, so the Jews were now ordered to quit Rome. Suetonius says, 
 " Judaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit" {Claud. 25). 
 WTiether Chrestos was some unknown ringleader of tumxQt among the 
 immense Jewish population of Rome — so immense, that from their Qhetto 
 across the Tiber no less than 8,000 had petitioned against the succession of 
 Archelaus (Jos. Antt. xvii. 11, § 1) — or an ignorant misreading of the name of 
 Christ, cannot be ascertained. We know that Christianity was very early 
 introduced into Rome (Rom. xvi. 7 ; Acts xsviii. 14), and we know that 
 wherever it was introduced, Jewish tumults followed (Acts xvii. 13, xiv. 19 ; 
 xiil. 50), and that the Romans never took the trouble to draw any distinction 
 between Jews and Christians. It is, therefore, quite possible that these 
 incessant riots may have arisen in disputes about the Messiah. Dion Cassius, 
 indeed, corrects Suetonius, and says that the Jews were so numerous that 
 they could not ie expelled without danger, and that Claudius therefore con- 
 tented himself with closing their synagogues (Dion, Ix. 6). Perhaps the 
 decree was passed, but never really enforced ; and Aquila may have been 
 one of the Jews who obeyed it without difficulty for the reasons suggested in 
 the text. Nay, more, he may have been selected for special banishment as 
 a ringleader in the agitation, if, as some suppose, he and his wife were the 
 founders of Christianity at Rome. In any case its operation was brief, for 
 shortly afterwards we again find the Jews in vast numbers at Rome (Bom. 
 xvi. 3 ; Acts xxviii. 17). It is not at all impossible that the edict may have 
 been identical with, or a part of, that De Mathematicii Italid pellendis which 
 Tacitus mentions as atrox et irritum. Certainly that decree was passed 
 at this very period (Tac. Ann. xii. 52), and many of the Jews, addicted as 
 they were to all kinds of iniquities (Jos. Antt. xviii. 1), may easily have been 
 ■ classed with the Mathematici. (See Lewin, Fasti Sacri, 1774, 5.) 
 
TENT-MAKING. 661 
 
 them to move from place to place. At Cormth, as subse- 
 quently at Ephesus, Paul worked in their employ, and 
 shared in their profits. Those profits, imhappily, were 
 scanty. It was a time of general pressure, and though 
 the Apostle toiled night and day, all his exertions were 
 xmable to keep the wolf from the door.^ He knew what 
 it was to sufier, even from the pangs of hunger, but 
 not even when he was thus starving would he accept 
 assistance from his Achaian converts. He had come to 
 an absolute determination that, while willing to receive 
 necessary aid from churches which loved him, and which 
 he loved, he would forego at Corinth the support which he 
 considered to be the plain right of an Apostle, lest any 
 should say that he too, like the mass of traffickers around 
 him, did but seek his own gain.® Contentedly, therefore 
 — nay, even gladly, did he become a fellow-labourer with 
 the worthy pair who were both compatriots and brethren ; 
 and even when he was working hardest, he could still be 
 giving instruction to all who sought him. But now, as 
 ever, the rest of the Sabbath ftirnished him with his chief 
 opportunity. On that day he was always to be found in 
 the Jewish synagogue, and his weekly discourses produced 
 a deep impression both on Jews and Greeks. 
 
 But when the period of his solitude was ended by the ■ 
 arrival of Silas from Beroea, and Timotheus from Thessa^ 
 lonica, he was enabled to employ a yet more intense 
 activity. Not only did he find their presence a support, 
 hut they also cheered him by favourable intelligence, and' 
 brought him a contribution from the Philippians,^ which 
 alleviated his most pressing needs. Accordingly, thein- 
 arrival was followed by a fresh outburst of missionary, 
 
 » 2 Ow. xL 9; 1 Cor. iv. 11, 12; ix. 4. 
 
 * SeeAct8xi.34; 10or.ix.12j 2Cor.Tii2} 1 Tlie8s..iL.9j 2 The88.m.8* 
 »PhiLiv. 15; 2 0or.xi.9. 
 K E 
 
662 THE LITE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 zeal, and he bore witness witli a yet more impassioned 
 earnestness to his Master's cause.^ At this period 
 his preaching was mainly addressed to the Jews, and 
 the one object of it was to prove from Scripture the 
 Messiahship of Jesus.^ But with them he made no 
 further progress. Crispus, indeed, the governor of the 
 synagogue, had been converted with all his house ; and — 
 perhaps during the absence of his companions — Paul 
 abandoned his usual rule by baptising him with his own 
 hands .^ But, as a body, the Jews met him with an oppo- 
 sition which at last found expression in the sort of language 
 of which the Talmud furnishes some temble specimens.* 
 No further object could be served by endeavouring to con- 
 vince them, and at last he shook off the dust of his 
 garments, and calling them to witness that he was innocent 
 of their blood,* he announced that from that day forth he 
 should preach only to the Gentiles. 
 
 Already he had converted some Gentiles of humble 
 and probably of slavish origin, the first among these being 
 the household of Stephanas.® With Crispus and these 
 
 1 The undoubted reading of Acts xviii. 5 is aweix^ro r$ KSytf, " -was being 
 constrained by the word " (», A, B, D, E, G), not t^! irvcinart, as in E. V., " was 
 pressed in spirit." Of. for the word <ruyelxero, Luke xii. 60 ; 2 Oor. v. 14. 
 De Wette, &c., make it mean " was engrossed " (Vulg., instahat verba), but 
 less correctly. " Sensus est, majore vehemently fuisse impulsnm ut libere 
 palamqne de Christo dissereret" (Calvin), 
 
 2 1 Cor. xy. 3. 
 ' 1 Cor. i. 14 
 
 * Acts xviii. 6, hniraaironiviav , . . mil PKaa^juiivTiav. See JJifs of 
 Christ, ii. 452. 
 
 * Ezek. xxxiii. 4. 
 
 ^ 1 Cor. xvi. 15, "the firstfruits of Achaia" (in Bom. xvi. S the true 
 reading is " of Asia"). Eortunatus and Achaicns were probably slaves or 
 f reedmen, as were " Chloe's household " ; Quartus and Tertius — who had the 
 high honour of being the amanuensis of the Epistle to the Romans — were 
 probably, descendants of the Roman veterans who were the first colonists, 
 and may have been younger brothers of Secnudus. Lndus, Jason, and 
 Sosipater were Jews (Rom. xvi. 21). 
 
HIS PREAOHINa 663 
 
 faithful converts, lie migrated from the synagogue to a 
 room close by, which was placed at his disposal by a pro- 
 selyte of the name of Justus.^ In this room he continued 
 to preach for many months. The _ entire numbers of 
 the Corinthian converts . were probably small — to be 
 counted rather by scores than by hundreds. This is 
 certain, because otherwise they could not have met in a 
 single room in the small houses of the ancients, nor could 
 they have been all present at common meals. The minute 
 regulations about married women, widows, and virgins 
 seem to show that the female element of the little congre- 
 gation was large in proportion to the men, and it was even 
 necessary to lay down the rule that women were not to 
 teach or preach among them, though Priscilla and Phoebe 
 had been conspicuous for their services.^ And yet, small 
 as was the congregation, low as was the position of most 
 of them, vile as had been the antecedents of some, the 
 method and the topics of the Apostle's preaching had been 
 adopted with much anxiety. He was by no means at 
 home among these eager, intellectual, disputatious, 
 rhetoric-loving, sophisticated Greeks. They had none 
 of the frank simplicity of his Thessalonians, none of the 
 tender sympathy of his Philippians, none of the emotional 
 susceptibility of his Galatian converts. They were more 
 like the scoffing and self-satisfied Athenians. At Athens 
 he had adopted a poetic and finished style, and it had 
 almost wholly failed to make any deep impression. At 
 Corinth, accordingly, he adopted a -^yhoUy different method. 
 HI and timid, and so nervous that he sometimes trembled 
 while addressing them^ — ^conscious that his bodily presence 
 
 ' There is no sufficient ground for calling him Titius Justus on the 
 strength of B and one or two versidns ; it spems to be simply due to the 
 homceotelenton in oviJ/taTi. There is still less ground for identifying him 
 vrith Titus. 
 
 » Eom. xTi. 1, 2. • 1 Cor. ii. 3. 
 
 K E 2 
 
564 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 was mean in the judgment of these connoisseurs in beauty, 
 and his speech contemptible in the estimation of these 
 judges of eloquence^ — thinking, too, that he had little in 
 the way of earthly endowment, unless it were in his infir- 
 mities,^ he yet deliberately decided not to avoid, as he had! 
 done at Athens, the topic of the Cross.^ From Corinth he 
 could see the snowy summits of Parnassus and Helicon; 
 but he determined never again to adorn his teaching 
 witlf poetic quotations or persuasive words of human 
 wisdom,* but to trust solely to the simple and unadorned 
 grandeur of his message, and to the outpouring of the 
 Spirit by which he was sure that it would be accompanied. 
 There was, indeed, a wisdom in his words, but it was not 
 the wisdom of this world, nor the kind of wisdom after 
 which the Grreeks sought. It was a spiritual wisdom of 
 which he could merely reveal to them the elements — ^not 
 strong meat for the perfect, but milk as for babes in Christ. 
 He aimed at nothing but the clear, simple enuncia- 
 tion of the doctrine of Christ crucified.^ But what was 
 lacking in formal syllogism or powerful declamation was 
 more than supplied by power from on high. Paul had 
 determined that, if converts were won, they should be won, 
 not by human eloquence, but by Divine love. 'Nor was 
 he disappointed in thus trusting in Grod alone. Amid 
 all the sufferings which marked his stay among the 
 Achaians, he appeals to their personal knowledge that, 
 whatever they may have thought or said among themselves 
 about the weakness of his words, they could not at least 
 
 ^ 2 Cor. X. 1, 10. Luther, who seems to have entered into the very life of 
 St. Paul, calls him " Eiu armes diirres Mannlein vrie nnser Fhilippns " 
 (Melanothon). 
 
 » 2 Cor. xii. 5, 9. 
 
 ' 1 Oor. i. 23 J ii. 2. 
 
 ■• 1 Oor. ii. 1 — 5. ivSpmrli'Tis is a good explanatory gloss of A, 0, J, &c. 
 
 * lOor. i. 17; ii. 2; 2 Cor. i. 18. 
 
CORINTHIAN CONYBRTS. 565 
 
 deny the " si^s, and wonders, and powers" ^ whicli, by the 
 aid of the Spirit, were conspicuous in his acts. They must 
 have recalled many a scene in which, under the humble 
 roof of Justus, the fountains of the great deep of religious 
 feeling were broken up, the strange accents of "the 
 tongues" echoed through the thrilled assembly, and deeds 
 were wrought which showed to that little gathering of 
 believers that a Power higher than that of man was visibly 
 at work to convince and comfort them. And thus many 
 Corinthians — the Grentiles largely exceeding the Jews in 
 number — were admitted by baptism into the Church.^ 
 The majority of them were of the lowest rank, yet they 
 could number among them some of the wealthier inhabi- 
 tants, such as Gains, and perhaps Chloe, and even Erastus, 
 the chamberlain of the city. Nor was it in Corinth only 
 that Christians began to be converted. Paul, like "Wesley, 
 " regarded all the world as his parish," and it is little likely 
 that his restless zeal. would have made him stay for tiearly 
 two years within the city walls. We know that there was 
 a church at Cenchrese, whose deaconess afterwards "carried 
 under the folds of her robe the whole future of Christian 
 theology;"^ and saints were scattered in small commu- 
 nities throughout all Achaia.* 
 
 And yet, though God was thus giving the increase, 
 it must have required no small courage ia such a city 
 tb preach such a doctrine, and the very vicinity of the 
 synagogue to the house of Justus must have caused fre- 
 quent and painful collisions between the Jews and the- 
 little Christian community. Among all the sorrows to 
 which St. Paul alludes whenever he refers to this long 
 
 » 2 Cor. xii. 12. 
 
 * Acts xyiii. 8. 
 
 » Renan, p. 219. 
 
 * 2 Cor. i. 1 ; Rom. xvi. 1. The nearest Aohaian towns would be Lechaeum, 
 Schoenus, Cenchreae, Crommyon, Sicyon, Argos. 
 
566 THE LIFE AND WORK 0¥ ST. PAUL. 
 
 stay at Corintli, there is none that finds more bitter ex- 
 pression tlian Ms complaint of his fellow-countrymen. 
 He speaks of them to the Thessalonians in words of un- 
 usnal exasperation, saying that they pleased not God, and 
 were contrary to all men, and that by their attempts to 
 hinder the preaching to the Gentiles of the Christ whom 
 they had murdered, they had now filled up the measure 
 of their sins.'^ The rupture was open and decisive. If 
 they had excommunicated him, and he was filled with 
 such anger and despair when he thought of them, it is 
 certain that the struggle between them must have been 
 a constant source of anxiety and peril. This might even 
 have ended in Paul's withdrawal to new fields of labour 
 in utter despondency but for the support which again, as 
 often at his utmost need, he received from a heavenly 
 vision. The Lord whom he had seen on the road to 
 Damascus appeared to him at night, and said to him: 
 " Fear not, but speak, and hold not thy peace ; for I am 
 with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee ; for 
 I have much people in this city." 
 
 But at last the contest between the Jews and the 
 Christians came to a head. The Proconsul of Achaia* 
 ended his term of office, and the Proconsul appointed by 
 the emperor was Marcus Annaeus Novatus, who, having been 
 adopted by jthe friendly rhetorician Lucius Junius GalHo, 
 had taken the name of Lucius Junius Annseus Gallio, by 
 which he is generally known. Very difierent was the 
 estimate of Gallio by his contemporaries from the mis- 
 
 ' 1 Thess. ii. 14—16. 
 
 ^ The term Proconsul is historically exact. The Government of^ Achaia 
 had heen so incessantly changed that a mistake would have been excusable. 
 Achaia had been Proconsular under Augustus ; imperial, for a time, under 
 Tiberius (Tac. Ann. i. 76) ; Proconsular, after A.D. 44, under Claudius (Suet. 
 Claud. XXV.) ; free imder Nero (Suet. JVer. 24) ; and again Proconsular under 
 Vespasian (Suet. Veep. viii.). See svpra, p. 351, and Excursus XYIi 
 
GALLIC. 667 
 
 taken one which has made his name proverbial for indif- 
 ferentism in the Christian world. To the friends among 
 whom he habitually moved he was the most genial, the 
 most loveable of men. , The brother of Seneca, and the 
 uncle of Lucan, he was the most universally popular 
 member of that distinguished family. He was pre-emi- 
 nently endowed with that light and sweetness which are 
 signs of the utmost refinement, and " the sweet GraUio " 
 is the epithet by which he alone of t^ie ancients is con- 
 stantly designated.-^ " No mortal man is so sweet to any 
 single person as he is to all mankind,"^ wrote Seneca of 
 him. " Even those who love my brother Gallio to the 
 very utmost of their power yet do not love him enough,"^ 
 he says in another place. He was the very flower of 
 pagan courtesy and pagan culture — a Eoman with aU a 
 Eoman's dignity* and seriousness, and yet with all the 
 grace and versatility of a polished Grreek.^ 
 
 Such was the man on whose decision the fortunes of 
 Paul were to depend. Whoever the former Proconsul had 
 been, he had not been one with whom the Jews could 
 venture to trifle, nor had they once attempted to get rid 
 of their opponent by handing him over to the secular arm. 
 
 ' "Dnlcis Gallio" (Stat. 8ylv. ii. 7, 32). ^ See SeeTeers after God, 16—21. 
 I need not here recur to the foolish notion that Gallio sent some of St. Paul's 
 writings to his brother Seneca. On this see Aubertin, Seneque et St. Paul, 
 p. 117. Nor need I recur to the resemblance between the Boman philosopher 
 and the Apostle, which I have examined in Seekers after Ood, 174 — 183, and 
 which is fully treated by Dr. Lightfoot (Phil. pp. 268—331). 
 
 2 " Nemo mortalium nni tam dulcis est quam hie omnibus " (Sen. Quaest. 
 Nat. iv. praef. § 11). He dedicates to him his De Ira and Be Vita Beatd, and 
 alludes to him in Ep. cir. Consol. ad Helm. 16. 
 
 ^ " Gallionem, fratrem meum, quern nemo non parum amat etiam qpi amaf a 
 plus non potest " (Nat. Qu. iv. praef. § 10). 
 
 * Seneca (Ep. 104), in allusion to his high rank, playfully calls him "my 
 Lord Gallio." Ho committed suicide after the ruin of his family in the plot 
 against Nero, though his life had been spared (Tac. Ann. xv. 73; Dion Oass. 
 kii. 25; Euseb. Chron. ad A.U.C. 818). 
 
 " Dion Qasa. Ix. 35. ' 
 
568 THE LIFE AND 'WORK: OF ST, PAUL. 
 
 But now that a new Proconsul liad arrived, who was perhaps 
 unfamiliar with the duties of his office, and whose desire 
 for popularity at the beginning of his, government might 
 have made him complaisant to prosperous Jews, they 
 thought that they could with impunity excite a tumult. 
 They rose in a body, seized Paul, and dragged him before 
 the tesselated pavement on which was set the curule chair of 
 the Proconsul. It was evident that they had presumed 
 on his probable inexperience, and on his reputation for 
 mildness ; and, with all the turbulent clamour of their 
 race, they charged Paul with " persuading men to worship 
 God contrary to the Law." Though Claudius had ex- 
 pelled them from Rome, their religion was a religio 
 licita — i.e., it was licensed by the State; but the 
 religion of "this fellow," they urged, though it might 
 pass itself off under the name of Judaism, was not Judaism 
 at all — it was a spurious counterfeit of Judaism, which 
 had become a religio illicita by running counter to its 
 Mosaic Law.-' Such was the charge urged by a hubbub 
 of voices, and, as soon as it had become intelligible, Paul 
 was on the point of making his defence. But Gallio was 
 not going to trouble himself by listening to any defence. 
 He took no notice whatever of Paul, and, disregarding 
 him as completely as though he had been non-existent, 
 replied to the Jews by a contemptuous dismissal of them. 
 and their charge. With a thorough knowledge of, 
 and respect for, the established laws, but with a 
 genuinely Eoman indifference for conciliatory language, 
 and a more than Eoman haughtiness of demeanour 
 towards a people whom, like his brother, he probably 
 despised and detested, he stopped the proceedings with 
 
 ^ Hence though imfh, rhv v6iiov, ver. 13, means " contrary to the Jewish 
 law '' (cf . Ter. 15), it might ia this waj come nnder the cognisance of thfl 
 Boman law. 
 
GALLIO. 569 
 
 the remark that their accusation against St. Paul, as a 
 violator of any law, Mosaic or otherwise, which he could 
 recognise, was utterly baseless. " Had this been a matter 
 of civil wrong or moral outrage^ it would have been but 
 right for me to put up with you, and listen to these 
 charges of yours ; but if it be a number of questions^ about 
 an opinion, and about mere names, and your law, see to 
 it yourselves ; for a judge of these matters I do not choose 
 to be." Having thus, as we should say, quashed the in- 
 dictment, "my Lord Gallio" ordered his lictors to clear the 
 court. We may be sure they made short work of eject- 
 ing the frustrated but muttering mob, on whose disap- 
 pointed malignity, if his countenance at all reflected the 
 feelings expressed by his words, he must have been look- 
 ing down from his lofty tribunal with undisguised con- 
 tempt.^ It took the Romans nearly two centuries to learn 
 that Christianity was something infinitely more important 
 than the Jewish sect which they mistook it to be. It 
 would Have been better for them and for the world if they 
 had tried to get rid of this disdain, and to learn wherein 
 lay the secret power of a religion which they could 
 neither eradicate nor suppress. But while we regret this 
 unphilosophic disregard, let us at least do justice to Eoman 
 
 * Ter. 14, aSlKrifia, a legal injury ; pifSioipyriiia, a moral offence. 
 
 * foT^/toTo infr. A, B, D^, E, Coptic, SaMdic, Armenian, &c. " My lord's " 
 Roman disdain for the gens sceleratissima is heard in every accent. 
 
 ° Perhaps no passage of the ancient authors, full as they are of dislike to 
 the Jews (see infra, Excursus XIV.), expresses so undisguised a bitterness, oris 
 so thoroughly expressive of the way in which the Romans regarded this singular 
 people, as that in which Tacitus relates how Tiberius banished 4,000 freed- 
 men " infected with that superstition " into Sardinia, to keep .down the brigands 
 of that island, with the distinct hope that the unhealthy climate might help to 
 get rid of them — " et si, ob gravitatem caeli interissent, vile damnum " (Awn. 
 ii 85). Suetonius tells us, with yet more brutal indifference, that Tiberius, on 
 pretext of military service, scattered them among all the unhealthiest provinces, 
 banishing the rest on pain of being reduced to slavery (Suet. Tii. 36 ; Jos. 
 Antt. xviii. 3, § 5). 
 
570 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 impartiality. In Gallic, in Lysias, in Felix, in Festus, 
 in the centurion Julius, even in Pilate,^ different as were 
 tteir degrees of rectitude, we cannot but admire the 
 trained judicial insight with which they at once saw 
 through the subterranean injustice and virulent animosity 
 (ti the Jews in bringing false charges against innocent 
 men. Deep as was his ignorance of the issues which were 
 at stake, the conduct of Gallio was in accordance with 
 the strictest justice when "he drave them from his 
 judgment-seat." 
 
 But the scene did not end here. The volatile Greeks,' 
 though they had not dared to interfere until the decision 
 of the Proconsul had been announced, were now keenly 
 delighted to see how completely the malice of the Jews 
 had been foiled ; and since the highest authority had pro- 
 nounced the charge against St. Paul to be frivolous, they 
 seized the opportunity of executing a little Lynch law. 
 The ringleader of the Jewish faction had been a certain 
 Sosthenes, who may have succeeded Crispus in tte func- 
 tion of Ruler of the Synagogue, and whose zeal may have 
 been all the more violently stimulated by the defection of his 
 predecessor.^ Whether the Corinthians knew that St. Paul 
 was a Eoman citizen or not, they must at least have been 
 aware that he had separated from the synagogue, and that 
 many Gentiles espoused his views. They thought it in- 
 tolerable that Jews should try to trump up charges against 
 one who in some measure belonged to themselves. The 
 
 ^ Acts xxiii. 29 ; xxv. 19. The ignorant provincialism of the justices at 
 Philippi was of too low a type to understand Roman law. 
 
 ' Acts xviii. 17, xoj/tes. The oi "Ew-nves of D, E is a gloss, though a 
 correct one. If this Sosthenes is identical with the Sosthenes ofl Cor. i. 1, 
 he must have been subsequently converted ; but the na.me is a common one, 
 and it is hardly likely that two rulers of the synagogue would be converted in 
 succession. 
 
 ^ I give the view which seems to me the most probable, passing over massei 
 of idle conjectures. 
 
BEATING OF SOSTHENES, 571 
 
 opportunity to show these Jews what they thought of 
 them, and give them a lesson as to the way in which 
 they should behave in the future, was too tempting. 
 Accordingly they seized Sosthenes, and gave him a 
 beating in the actual basilica in. front of the tribunal, and 
 under the very eyes of the Proconsul. An ancient gloss 
 says that he pretended not to see what they were doing,^ 
 but the text implies that he looked on at the entire pro- 
 ceeding with unfeigned indifference. So long as they were 
 not guilty of any serious infraction of the peace, it was 
 nothing to him how they amused themselves. He had 
 been familiar with similar disturbances in Rome. The 
 Jews were everywhere a turbulent, fanatical race. What 
 was it to him if the Greek gamins liked to inflict a little 
 richly-deserved castigation ? It would be so much the 
 better if they taught this Sosthenes aad any number more 
 of these Jews a severe lesson. They would be more 
 likely (he thought) to keep order in future, and less 
 hkely to trouble him again with their meanness and 
 their malevolence, their riots and their rancours.^ 
 
 There is one thing that we cannot but deeply regret. 
 It is that GaUio's impatient sense of justice has deprived 
 us of another speech by St. Paul which, delivered under 
 such circumstances, and before such a judge, would have 
 been of the deepest interest. But Gallio dismissed the 
 whole scene from his mind as supremely unimportant. 
 Had he ever thought it worth alluding to, in any letter 
 to his brother Seneca, it would have been in some such 
 terms as these : — " I had scarcely arrived when the Jews 
 
 1 «r 
 
 "Tunc Gallio fingebat enim non videre " (MS. A). 
 » Paley {^Sor. Pmd.) points out the honesty with which St. Luke narrates 
 the supercilious indifBerence of great men to the circumstances which affected 
 the life of the Apostle. The " things," however, for which GaUio " did not 
 •care " were not " the things of the kingdom o£ heaven," but the beating of a 
 Jew by Greeks. 
 
572 THE LIFE AJSID "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 tried to play on my inexperience by dragging before me 
 one Paulus, wbo seems to be an adherent of Chrestus, or 
 Cbristus, of whom we heard something at Eome. I was 
 not going to be troubled with their malefic superstitions, 
 and ordered them to be turned out. The Greeks ac- 
 cordingly, who were favourable to Paulus, beat one of the 
 Jews in revenge for their malice. You would have 
 smiled, if you had been present, at these follies of the turha 
 forensis. Sed haec hactenus." 
 
 But the superficiality which judges only by externals 
 always brings its own retribution. It adores the mortal 
 and scorns the divinity; it welcomes the impostor and 
 turns the angel from its door. It forms its judgment 
 on trivial accidents, and ignores eternal realities. The 
 haughty, distinguished, and cultivated' Gallio, brother of 
 Seneca, Proconsul of Achaia, the most popular man and 
 the most eminent litterateur of his day, would have been to 
 the last degree amazed had any one told him that so paltry 
 an occurrence would be for ever recorded in history ; that 
 it would be the only scene in his life in which posterity 
 would feel a moment's interest ; that he would owe to it 
 any immortality he possesses ; that he would for all time 
 be mainly judged of by the glimpse we get of him on that 
 particular morning ; that he had flung away the greatest 
 opportunity of his life when he closed the lips of the 
 haggard Jewish prisoner whom his decision rescued from 
 the clutches of his countrymen; that a correspondence 
 between that Jew Shaul, or Paulus, and his great brother 
 Seneca, would be forged and would go down to posterity;^ 
 
 ' No one in these days doubts that the letters of St. Paul and Seneca 
 (Fleury, Bt. Paul and Senhque, ii. 300 ; Aubertin, Seneque et 8t. Paul, 409 ; 
 Lightfoot, Phil. 327 ; Boissier, La Beligion Bomaine, ii. 52 — 104) are 
 spurious. On the real explanation of the resemblances between the two, see 
 Seekers after God, p. 270, sg., and jaassim. It will there be seen how small 
 ground there is for Tertullian's expression " Seneca sa^e noster." 
 
PAUL Aim GAIilO. 573 
 
 that it would be believed for centuries that that wretched 
 prisoner had converted the splendid philosopher to his 
 own "execrable superstition," and that Seneca had borrowed 
 from him the finest sentiments of his writings ; that for- 
 all future ages that bent, ophthalmic, nervous, unknown 
 Jew, against whom all other Jews seemed for some incon- 
 ceivably foolish reason to be so infuriated, would be 
 regarded as transcendently more important than his deified 
 Emperors and immortal Stoics ; that the " parcel of ques- 
 tions " about a mere opinion, and names, and a matter of 
 Jewish law, which he had so disdainfully refused to hear, 
 should hereafter become the most prominent of all ques- 
 tions to the whole civilised world. 
 
 And Paul may have suspected many of these facts as 
 little as " the sweet Grallio " did. Sick at heart with this 
 fresh outrage, and perhaps musing sadly on the utterance 
 of his Master that He came not to send peace on earth 
 but a sword, he made his way back from the Bema of the 
 great Proconsul to the little congregation in the room of 
 Justus, or to his lodging in the squalid shop of AquiLa 
 and PriscUla. 
 
CHAPTEE XXrX. 
 
 THE riKST EPISTLE TO THE THESSAL0NIAN8. 
 " Ergo latet nltimns dies nt obserrenttir omnes dies." — AtTQ. 
 
 At some period during Ms stay in Corinth, and probably 
 before Ms arrest by the Jews early in the year 53, or at 
 the close o£ A.D. 52, an event had taken place of immense 
 significance in the life of the Aposile and in the history of 
 the Christian faith. He had, written to the Thessalonians 
 a letter which may possibly have been the first he 
 wrote to any Christian chm-ch,^ and which certainly is the 
 earliest of those that have come down to us. He had begun, 
 therefore, that new form of activity which has produced 
 eflPects so memorable to all generations of the Christian 
 world. 
 
 We have already seen that Paul had left Timotheus in 
 Macedonia, had been joined by him in Athens, and had 
 once more parted from him, though with deep reluctance 
 and at great self-sacrifice, because his heart yearned for 
 his Thessalonian converts, and he had been twice prevented 
 
 * I only put this as a possibility. It vrUl be seen hereafter (see 1 Cor. 
 V. 9 ; 2 Cor. I. 9) that I regard it as certain that St. Paul wrote other letters, 
 of which some — ^perhaps many — have perished ; and it is difficult to believe that 
 (for instance) he wrote no word of thanks to the Fhilippians for the contribu- 
 tions which they had twice sent to him at Thessalonica, or that he wrote 
 nothing to the Thessalonians themselves when he sent Timothy to them from 
 Athens. Does not the whole style of these Epistles show that they could not 
 have been the first specimens of their kind ? We cannot be surprised that, 
 amid the disorders of the times, letters written on furtive materials should 
 have perished, especially as many of them may have been wholly u'udoctrinal. 
 In 2 Thess. iii. 17 could St. Paul say S ian (rniieloy iv vdap imaro^, if he iad 
 only written tme ? 
 
EPISTLES. 575 
 
 from carrying out his earnest desire to visit them once 
 more. After/doing all that he could to comfort and 
 support thein ,in their many trials, Timotheus had returned, 
 in company "vpith Silas, to Corinth, and doubtless there the 
 Apostle had talked with them long and earnestly about 
 the friends and brethren who had been won to Christ in 
 the Macedonian city. There was deep cause for thank- 
 fulness in their general condition, but there was some need 
 for advice and consolation. Paul could not send Timothy 
 again. There was other work to be done. , Other 
 Churches required his own personal services. Nor could 
 he spare the companions of his toils in the midst of a 
 city which demanded his whole energy and strength. But 
 since he could neither come to the Thessalonians him- 
 self, nor send them back his truest and dearest fellow- 
 workers, he would at least write to them, and let his letter 
 supply, as far as possible, the void created by his absence. 
 It was a very happy Providence which inspired him with 
 this thought. 1+ would come quite naturally to hira, 
 because it had been a custom in all ages for Jewish com- 
 munities to' correspond with each other by means of 
 travelling deputations, and because the prodigious develop- 
 ment of intercourse between the chief cities of Italy, 
 Greece, and Asia rendered it easy to send one or other of 
 the brethren as the bearer of his missives. And epistolary 
 correspondence was the very form which was of all others 
 the best adapted to the Apostle's individuality. It suited 
 the impetuosity of emotion which could not have been 
 fettered down to the composition of formal treatises. It 
 could be taken up or dropped according to the necessities 
 of the occasion or the feelings of the writer. It permitted 
 of a freedom of expression which was far more intense and 
 far more natural to the Apostle than the regular syllo- 
 gisms and rounded periods of a book. It admitted some- 
 
676 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 thing of the tenderness and sometMng of the famiKarity 
 of personal intercourse. Into no other literary form could 
 he have infused that intensity which made a Christian 
 scholar truly say of him that he alone of writers seems to 
 have written, not with fingers and pen and ink, but with 
 his very heart, his very feelings, the unbared palpitations of 
 his inmost being ; ^ which made Jerome say that in his 
 writings the words were all so many thunders ; ^ which 
 made Luther say that his expressions were like living 
 creatures with hands and feet. The theological import- 
 ance of this consideration is immense, and has, to the deep 
 injury of the Church, been too much neglected. Theolo- 
 gians have treated the language of St. Paul as though he 
 wrote every word with the accuracy of a dialectician, with 
 the scrupulous precision of a school-man, with the rigid for- 
 mality of a philosophic dogmatist. His Epistles as a whole, 
 with their insoluble antinomies, resist this impossible and 
 injurious method of dealiiig with them as absolutely as 
 does the Sermon on the Mount. The' epistolary form is 
 eminently spontaneous, personal, flexible, emotional. A 
 dictated epistle is like a conversation taken down in short- 
 hand. In one word, it best enabled Paul to be himself, 
 and to recall most vividly to the minds of his spiritual 
 children the tender, suffering, inspired, desponding, terrible, 
 impassioned, huhible, uncompromising teacher, who had 
 first won them to become imitators^ of himself and of the 
 Lord, and to turn from hollow ritualisms or dead idols to 
 serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son 
 from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus 
 who delivereth us from the coming wrath. 
 
 ' Casanbon, Adversaria ap. Wolf. p. 135. 
 * Jer. ad Pammach. Ep. 48. 
 
 ' 1 Thess. i. 6, /iiymiTal, not " followers," as in E.V. See Escnrsns I., on 
 " The Style of St. Paul as Illustrative of his Character," p. 619, sq. 
 
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. ' 577 
 
 And one cause of this vivid freshness of style which 
 he imparted to his Epistles was the fact that they were, 
 with few if any exceptions, not deeply premeditated, not 
 scholastically regular, but that they came fresh and 
 burning from the heart in all the passionate sincerity of 
 its most immediate feelings. He would even wwte a letter 
 in the glow of excited feeling, and then wait with intense 
 anxiety for news of the manner of its reception, half 
 regretting, or more than half regretting, that he had ever 
 sent it.^ Had he written more formally he would never 
 have moved as he has moved the heart of the world. Take 
 away from the Epistles of St. Paul the traces of passion, 
 the invective, the yearning affection, the wrathful denun- 
 ciation, the bitter sarcasm, the distressful boasting, the 
 rapid interrogatives, the affectionate entreaties, the 
 frank colloquialisms, the personal details — those marks 
 of his own personality on every page which have been 
 ignorantly and absurdly characterised as intense egotism 
 — and they would never have been, as they are, next 
 to the Psalms of David, the dearest treasures of Christian 
 devotion; — next to the four Grospels the most cherished 
 text-books of Christian faith. "We cannot but love a man 
 whose absolute sincerity enables us to feel the very beat- 
 ings of his heart ; who knows not how to wear that mask of 
 reticence and Pharisaism which enables others to use speech 
 only to conceal their thoughts ; who, if he smites under 
 the fifth rib, will smite openly and without a deceitful 
 kiss ; who has fair blows but no precious balms that 
 break the head ; who has the feelings of a man, the lan- 
 guage of a man, the love, the hate, the scorn, the indigna- 
 tion of a man ; who is no envious cynic, no calumnious 
 detractor, no ingenious polisher of plausible hypocrisies, no 
 
 > 2 Cor. Tii. 8. 
 L L 
 
578 THE LIFE AOT) WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 mecliamcal repeater o£ worn-out sHblDoleths, but who will, 
 if need be, seize bis pen with a burst of tears to speak 
 out the very thing he thinks ; ^ who, in the accents of 
 utter truthfulness alike to friend and to enemy, can 
 argue, and denounce, and expose, and plead, and pity, and 
 forgive; to whose triumphant faith and transcendent 
 influence has been due in no small measure that fear- 
 less and glad enthusiasm which pervaded the life of the 
 early Church. 
 
 And thus, when Timothy had told him all that he had 
 observed among the brethren of Thessalonica, we may feel 
 quite sure that, while his heart was full of fresh solicitude, 
 he would write to guide and comfort them,^ and that 
 many days would not elapse before he had dictated the 
 opening words : — 
 
 " Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus to the Church* of 
 the Thessalonians in God the Father and our Lord 
 
 » 2 Cor. ii. 4 
 
 2 That the external evidence to the genuineness of the Epistles to the 
 Thessalonians is amply sufficient may be seen in Alf ord, iii., Prolegom. ; 
 DaTidson, Introduct. i. 19 — 28 ; Westcott, On the Canon, 68, n., 168, &c. The 
 internal evidence derived from style, &c., is overwhelming (Jowett, i. 15 — 26). 
 The counter-arguments of Kern, Schrader, Baur, &c., founded, as usual, 
 alike on divergences and coincidences, on real similarities and supposed dis- 
 crepancies, on asserted references and imaginary contradictions to the Acts, 
 are silently met in the text. They carry no conviction with them, and have 
 found few followers; Baur (Paul, ii. 85 — 97), to a great extent, furnishing 
 positive arguments against his own conclusion. (See Liinemann, Br. an die 
 Thessal. 10 — 15.) Grotius, Ewald, Baur,, Bunsen, Davidson, &c., consider 
 that the First Epistle is really the second ; but the hypothesis is against external 
 and internal evidence, is wholly needless, and creates obvious difficulties. It 
 would require many volumes to enter into all these discussions for every 
 Epistle ; but though I have no space for that here, I have respectfully and 
 impartially considered the difficulties raised, and in many cases shown inci- 
 dentally my grounds for disregarding them. One most inimitable mark of 
 genuineness is the general resemblance of tone between the Epistle and that 
 ■written ten years later to the other chief Macedonian Church — ^Philippi. (See 
 Lightfoot in Smith's Bibl, Diet) 
 
 ^ So in 1, 2 Thess., 1, 2 Cor., and Gal But in the other Epistles tom 
 
EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIAJSTS. 579 
 
 Jesus Christ, grace to you, and peace [from God our 
 Father and the Lord Jesus Christ^]. " 
 
 This opeiiing address is in itself an interesting illus- 
 tration of St. Paul's character. Though his letters are 
 absolutely his own, yet with that shrinking from personal 
 prominence which we often trace in him, he associates 
 with himself in the introduction not only the dignified 
 Silas,® but even the youthful Timothy j^ and in these his 
 earlier, though not in his later Epistles, constantly uses 
 " we " for " I." By " we " he does not mean to imply 
 that the words are conjointly those of his two fellow- 
 labourers, since he adopts the expression even when he 
 can only be speaking of his indiAddual self j* but he is 
 actuated by that sort of modesty, traceable in the lan- 
 guage and literature of all nations, which dislikes the 
 needlessly frequent prominence of the first personal pro- 
 noun.® In his letters to all other Churches, except to 
 the Philippians, to whom the designation was needless, 
 he calls himself Paul an Apostle, but he does not use the 
 title directly ^ to the Thessalonians, because his claim to 
 it in its more special sense had not yet been challenged by 
 insidious Judaisers.'' In his five earlier Epistles he always 
 
 ^ This addition is probably spurious. It belongs to 2 Thess. i. 2, and was 
 added because the greeting is so short. As we have now reached St. Paul's 
 first Epistle I must refer the reader to the Excursus which gives the Uncial 
 lEannsoripts of the Epistles, infra. Excursus II. 
 ' » Acts XV. 22, 32, 34 
 
 • Silas and Timothy are associated with him in 2 Thess. ; Sosthenes in 
 1 Cor. ; Timothy in 2 Cor., Phil., Col., and Philem. Paul writes in his own 
 
 ' nam^ 6nly to the Romans and Laodiceans, which Churches he had not personally 
 visited. Origen says that the concurrence of Paul and SUas flashed put the 
 lightning of these Epistles {Horn. v. in Jerem. 588 6). 
 
 < In 1 Thess. iii. 2, 6, and in Phil. ii. 19, Timothy is spoken of, though 
 associated with Paul in the greeting. 1 Thess. ii. 18, " we . . even I Paul." 
 
 ' " We " is chiefly characteristic of 1, 2 Thess. In 2 Thess. the only 
 passage which relapses into "I" is ii. 5. 
 
 • See 1 Thess. ii. 6. 
 
 1 It would have been inappropriate in the private note to PhUemon. 
 
 1 L 2 
 
580 THE LIFE AKD WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 addresses " the Church ; " in his later Epistles " the 
 Saints," and the reason for this is not clear ;^ but to all 
 Churches alike he repeats this opening salutation, " Grace 
 and peace." ^ It is a beautiful and remarkable blending 
 of the salutations of the Jew and the Grreek, the East 
 and the West, with their predominant ideals of calm 
 and brightness. The solemn greeting of the Jew was 
 Shal6m, " Peace be to you ; " the lighter greeting 
 of the Greek was xa'P"", " Eejoice ; " the Church of 
 Christ — ^possessed of a joy that defied tribulation, heir to 
 a Peace that passeth understanding — not only combined 
 the two salutations, but infused into both a deeper and 
 more spiritual significance.^ 
 
 After this salutation* he opens his letter with that 
 
 * Another slight peculiarity is that in his first two Epistles he says "the 
 Church of the Thessalonians;" whereas in the next three he prefers the expres- 
 sion " the Church in" such and such a city. This may be a mere trifle. 
 
 ^ In his Pastoral Epistles he adds the word l\eos, " mercy." We may thus 
 sum up the peculiarities of the salutations : — i. " An Apostle," in all except 
 Philem. and Phil. ii. "To the Church," in 1, 2 Thess., 1, 2 Cor., GaL 
 iii. "To the Church o/ the," 1, 2 Thess.; but " to the Church which is m," 
 1, 2 Cor., Gal. In all other Epistles, " To the saints." It. " Grace and 
 peace," in all but the Pastoral Epistles, which have " Grace, mercy, and peace." 
 
 3 Xipis, quae est principium omnis boni ; fipivni, quae est finale bonorum 
 omnium (Thos. Aquin.). 
 
 * The Epistle, which is' mainly personal and practical, may be analysed as 
 follows: — ^I. i. — iii. Historical; II. iv. — v. Hortatory; each ending with a 
 prayer. (I.) i. 1. Brief greeting, i. 2 — 10. Thanksgiving for their conver- 
 sion and holiness, ii. 1 — 12. Appeal to them as to the character of his 
 ministry, ii. 13 — 16. Renewed expression of thanksgiving for their constancy 
 under persecutions, and bitter complaint of the Jews. ii. 17 — iii. 10. His 
 personal feelings towards them, and the visit of Timothy, iii. 11 — 13. His' 
 prayer for them. (II.) iv. 1 — 8. Warning against impurity, iv. 9 — 10. Ex- 
 hortation to brotherly love ; and 11, 12, honourable diligence, iv. 13 — ^v. 11. 
 The only doctrinal part of the Epistle, iv. 13 — 18. Consolation about the 
 dead. v. 1 — 11. Duty of watchfulness, since the Lord's advent is near, and 
 the time uncertain, v. 12 — 15. Their duties to one another. 16 — 22. Spiritual 
 exhortations. 23, 24. His prayer for them. 25 — 28. Last words and blessing. 
 The Epistle is characterised by simplicity of style, and the absence of con- 
 troversy and of developed doctrine. Its keynote is " hope," as the keynote of 
 ,the Epistle to the Philippians is "joy." 
 
THE THAITZSGIYING, 581 
 
 expression of thankfulness on their behalf which he ad- 
 dresses even to the Corinthians, whose deeds were so sad 
 a contrast to their ideal title of saints, and which is never 
 wanting, except in the burning letter to the apostatising 
 Galatians. So invariable is this characteristic of his mind 
 and style that it has acquired a technical description, and 
 Grerman writers call it the Dankmgung of the Epistles.^ 
 It was no mere insincere compliment or rhetorical artifice. 
 Those to whom he wrote, however much they might sink 
 below their true ideal, were still converts, were a Church, 
 were saints, were brethren. There might be weak, there 
 might be false, there might be sinful members among 
 them, but as a body they were washed and sanctified 
 and justified, and the life of even those who were un- 
 worthy of their high vocation yet presented a favourable 
 contrast to the lives of the heathen around them. But 
 the expression of thankfulness on behalf of the Thessa- 
 lonians is peculiarly fuU and earnest. It is an overflow 
 of heartfelt gratitude, as indeed the special characteristic 
 of the letter is its sweetness.^ St. Paul tells them that 
 he is always giving thanks to God for them aU, men- 
 tioning them in his prayers, filled with the ever-present 
 memory of the activity of their faith, the energy of their 
 love, the patience of their hope.^ He reminds them of 
 the power and fulness and spiritual unction which had 
 
 • Ewald, Die Sendschreiben des Ap. Paulus, 19, 39, &c. It may perhaps 
 be urged that some of these peculiarities may be due to the ordioary stereo- 
 typed formula of correspondence in the humbler classes. Thus, in papyrus 
 rolls of the British Museum (edited for the Trustees by J. Porshall), we find 
 such phrases as rfj; Hv S>s to!s BeoTs lixoit-evri SiariXa, and even, apparently, croi 
 Sib, irovrbs /tvflav iroioi/ievoi. But St. Paul's incessant variations show how little 
 he was inclined to mere formulae. 
 
 ' " Habet haec Epistola meram quandam dulcedinem " (Bengel). 
 
 ' Of. Gal. V. 6. Thus in the very first lines which we possess from his 
 pen we meet with his fundamental trilogy of Christian virtues — faith, hope, 
 love. Of. V. 8 i Col. i. 4; Eph. i. 15, 18 ; iii. 17, 18, 20, &c. See Reuss, Tlieol. 
 Chret. ii. 240. 
 
582 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 accompanied tiis preaching of the Gospel, and how they 
 had become^ imitators^ of him and of Christ with such 
 spiritual gladness in the midst of . such deep affliction' 
 that they had become models to all the Churches of 
 Northern and Southern Greece, and their faith had been 
 as a trumpet-blast* through all the Mediterranean coasts. 
 So universally was their belief in God known and spread 
 abroad, that there was no need for St. Paul or his com- 
 panions to tell how they had worked at Thessalonica, 
 because every one had heard of their conversion from 
 idolatry to belief in the very and living God,* and to 
 the waiting for the return of that risen Saviour who 
 delivereth us from the coming wrath.^ 
 
 ' St. Paul, lite many emotional and impressible - writers, is constantly 
 haunted by the same word, which he then repeats again and again — 5iTij 
 ixKovovTeffffi yefUTdtTTj &/i^iirc\i}Tai hKoiovnffiyi, He uses the verb ylvofiai no less 
 tliau eight times, although, as Bishop BUicott points out, it only occurs twelve 
 times in aU the rest of the Now Testament, except in quotations from the 
 LXX. "Un mot I'obsede, il le ram&ne dansune page a toutpropos. Ce n'est 
 pas de la st^iilitd : c'est de la contention de I'esprit et une complete insouciance 
 de la correction du style " (Renan, p. 233). «_ 
 
 s /ti/i7)Tal, E.V. "followers." 
 
 5 i. 6. The reader will notice the exquisite originality of conception in the 
 words iv Bxltf/ei iroW^ /lerii x'V^^ Xlvei/iaros 'Aylov. It is no rhetorical oxymoron, 
 but the sign of a new aeon in the world's history. 
 
 * i. 8, ^f^xi'"''"- ^* ^"■^ ffaKiriyyos Xa/iirphi' Tixoirrris (Theoph.). Admitting for 
 the warmth of feeling which dictated the expression, it suggests no difficulty 
 when we remember that a year may have elapsed since his -visit, and that 
 Thessalonica was "posita in gremio imperii Romani" (Cic), and stood " on a 
 level with Corinth and Bphesus in its share of the commerce of the Levant." 
 
 ' i. 10, 'A\Tieiv^ (1 John V. 20). Zam as contrasted with dead men and 
 idols (Wisd. xiv. 15; Gal. iv. 8), which are mere elilim, " nullities" (Lev. xix. 4), 
 and hdbhdUm, "vapours." The expression shows that the Thessalonian Church 
 was mainly composed of Gentiles, which accords with Acts xvii. 4, if we read 
 Kol 'zwiivav (supra, p. 509). If we omit xol there is still no contradiction, for 
 ibviously many Gentiles, especially women, were converted, and even the 
 proselytes had once been idolaters. 
 
 ' Not as in E. V., " who delivered {fiv6iievov) us from the wrath to come" 
 {ipxo/ieviiis, not fieWoiiTTis). The deliverance is continuous ("Christus nos 
 semel fxvrpiaaro semper ^itrai "— Bengel) ; the wrath works as a normal law 
 (i. 1-10). 
 
APPEAL AGAINST CALUMNIES. 583 
 
 He appeals to them, therefore, as to unimpeacliable 
 witnesses of the earnestness of his visit to them, and of 
 the boldness with which he had faced the dangers of 
 Thessalonica, after such recent and painful experience 
 of the outrages of Philippi. It has been evident, even 
 through these opening sentences of thanksgiving, that 
 there is in his words an undercurrent of allusion to some 
 who would, if they could, have given a very' different 
 account of his conduct and motives..^ These appeals. to 
 their knowledge of the life and character and behaviour 
 of Paul and his two feUow-missionaries would have been 
 needless if they had never been impugned. But it is easy 
 to understand that alike the Jews in their eagerness to 
 win back the few members of the synagogue who had 
 joined the brethren, and the Grentiles vexed at the silent 
 rebuke against their own sins, would whisper calumnies 
 about the new teachers, and try to infuse into others their 
 own suspicions. The cities of that age swarmed with 
 every kind and denomination of quack and impostor. 
 Might not these three poor Jews — ^that silent and digni- 
 fied elder, the shy, gentle youth, and the short enthusiast of 
 mean aspect — might they not be only a new variety of the 
 genus goh — ^like the wandering Galli and worshippers 
 of Isis, or Chaldaei, or Mathematici, or priests of 
 Mithras ? ^ Were they not a somewhat suspicious-look- 
 ing trio? What was their secret object? Was it with 
 sinister motives that they gathered into their communities 
 these widows and maidens ? Were they not surreptitiously 
 
 * 1 Thess. ii. 5, 9. These phrases are not a'vjonnted for by contrast with 
 heathen deceptions. The i/uv rdis irtimiovtnv of verse 10 means "though 
 others did not so regard our conduct." 
 
 ' Hansrath, p. 300; /ta'yji /col y6riTis (Theoph.); ii 3, eV S6K<f (2 Cor. ii. 17 ; 
 
 It. 2 ; xi. 13). Iuea6ap<ria may only mean " impure motives " (e.g., covetousness ; 
 
 cf. 2 Cor. 3d. 8; 1 Tim. iii. 8 ; T^tus i. 7) ; " Unlanterkeit, Beimischung men- 
 
 , schlicher Begehmisse" (Ewald) ; Terse 6, irXeoi/fJ/o (Acts xx. 33; 1 Cor. ix. 15 ; 
 
 2 Cor. xii. 14). 
 
584 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 trying tb get hold of money? or miglit it not be their 
 own exaltation at which they were aiming ? — Now there 
 were some charges and attacks which, in after days, as 
 we shall see, fiUed Paul with bitter indignation; but 
 insinuations of this nature he can afford to answer very 
 calmly. Such calximnies were too preposterous to be 
 harmful ; such innuendos too malevolent to be believed. 
 In order to disprove them he had but to appeal at once 
 to notorious facts ; and, indeed, no elaborate disproof was 
 needed, for his Thessalonian friends knew, and God was 
 witness,^ that there had been no deceit, no uncleanness, 
 no base motives, no secret avarice, no desire to win 
 favour, no fawning flattery in the exhortations of the 
 missionaries. They had come, not for selfishness, but for 
 sacrifice ; not for glory, btlt to pour out their hearts' ten- 
 derness, and spend their very lives for the sake of their 
 converts,^ cherishing them as tenderly^ as a nursing mother 
 fosters her children in her warm bosom,* yet waiving their 
 own rights, and taking nothing whatever from them, nor 
 laying the smallest burden upon them.* The brethren 
 knew that while they were preaching they regarded their 
 mission as a glorious privilege ; * and because their one 
 desire was to please Grod, they endured and laboured'' 
 night and day * to win their own bread, setting blameless 
 
 » ] Thess. ii. 5. 
 
 ^ ii. 8, leg, S/jnipd/iemi, K, A, B, 0, D, B, F, G, "clinging to you;" 
 TrpoarStSf/ievoi (Theoph.) j ipTix^ffo' ifiay (CEcumen.). 
 
 ^ ii. 7, ^irioi, found also in 2 Tim. ii. 24. The viimoi of •«, B, 0, D, F, G, is 
 an oltvious instance of mere homoeoteleuton. 
 
 * ii. 7, edKmi. 
 
 5 if $apei eli/oi, " oneri esse " (Vulg.). It may mean to be dictatorial 
 (iroA Kris kiroKavaai ti/*?j— Ohrys.), but see verse 9 ; 2 Cor. xi. 9 ; xii. 16 ; 
 2 Thess. iii. 8. 
 
 * ii. 4, ScSoici/u£(r/ie9o. 
 
 ' ii. 9, Kitioi, " active toil ; " idx9os, " steady endurance of toil." 
 ' St. Paul ases the ordinary Hebrew expression (iii. 10; 2 Thess. iii. 8, &o.), 
 which arose from the notion, found in an old border oath, that " God made 
 
DENHN'OIATION of jews. 585 
 
 examples of holiness towards God, and righteousness 
 towards men, and all the while exhorting their followers 
 one by one^ to live lives worthy of Grod and of the 
 kingdom of His Christ.^ - 
 
 And this was why, thank God, the Thessalonians had 
 accepted their preaching foi; what it was — a divine and 
 not a human message; and had borne suffering at the 
 hands of their Gentile neighbours with the same exem- 
 plary courage as the Churches of Judaea, who in Hke 
 manner had been persecuted by the Jews. And here Paul, 
 as he so constantly does, "goes off at n word!' The mere 
 incidental mention of Jews makes him digress to denounce 
 them, writing as he did in the very heat of those conflicts 
 which ended in his indignant withdrawal from their syna- 
 gogue at Corinth, and recalling the manner in which these 
 murderers of the Lord and of the Prophets,^ displeasing* to 
 God and the common enemies of man,® chased him from city 
 
 the earth in six days and seven nights." Hence too the term vvxSiiti.epov. St. 
 Luke, writing in his own person, says " day and night " (Acts ix. 24). The 
 fact that there were wealthy and distinguished women among the proselytes 
 (Acts xvii. 4) made this self-denial the more striking. 
 
 ' ii. 11, iva fKaaToy i/iSr. Ohrysostom says, Pd$ai iv roaoirif nfJiiei uriSha 
 vapaXivclv ; but probably the Christians in Thessalonica would have made an 
 exceedingly small modem parish. 
 
 = ii. 1—12. 
 
 ' Omit ISiovs, H, A, B, D, &c. " 8uos adjectio est haeretiei" {i.e., of 
 Marcion) — Tert. adv. Marc. v. 15. 
 
 * nil &peiTK6yTui'. The M, though " the prevailing New Testament combina- 
 tion with the participle " (Ellicott), is slightly less severe than if he had used 
 ' obic, 
 
 5 The momentary exacerbation against the Jews in the mind of St. Paul 
 must have been unusually intense to wring from him such words as these. 
 We almost seem to catch the echo of the strong condemnation uttered against 
 them by Gentiles as a God-detested race, who hated all men (" odivm generis 
 hrnnani" — Tac. Jff. v. 6 ; Juv. Sat. xiv. 100), and such a view of them (which 
 Liinemann here fails to overthrow) must have caused a deep pang to one who 
 remained at heart a genuine patriot. (See Eom. ix. 1 — 5.) But the triumph 
 of the Jews over the impious attempts of Caligula had caused a great recru- 
 descence of fanaticism among them. 
 
586 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 to city, and tried to prevent his mission to the Gentiles. 
 And it is thus, he 'says, that they are always filling up 
 the measure of guilt, and the wrath came upon them 
 to the end — potentially overtook them — in that sudden 
 consummation of their sins. Their Very sin, he seems to 
 say, in hindering the proclamation of the Grospel, was itself 
 their punishment; their wrath against Christ was Grod's 
 wrath against them ; their dementation wotdd be, and was, 
 their doom.-^ 
 
 And having been thus diverted by his feeling of indig- 
 nation against them from the topic of self-defence — on 
 which, indeed, nothing more was necessary to be said — ^he 
 goes on to tell them that regarding them as his glory 
 and joy and crown of boasting^ at the coming of Christ — 
 feeling, in his absence from them, like a father bereaved of 
 his children* — he had twice purposed to come to them, and 
 had twice been hindered by Satan.* He had, however, 
 
 * ii. 14 — 16. Baur, in arguing that this could only have been written 
 after the destruction of Jerusalem, mates a double mistake. First, he takes 
 iipBacrev in the sense of sipSaKey (like the E. V. " has come "), which is the 
 erroneous gloss of B, D ; and secondly, he does not see the ethical conception 
 ■which I have here tried to bring out. The wrath of God found its full con- 
 summation in the fulness of their criminality (Matt, xxrii. 25) ; the fiat of 
 their doom had then gone forth. It was not finally consummated tUl the fall 
 of Jerusalem, eighteen years later, but signs were already obvious that its 
 execution would not long be delayed. To the prescient eye of St. Paul the 
 commencing troubles in Palestine — and the recent expulsion of the Jews 
 from Home — would be ample to justify his expression. In the true prophetic 
 spirit he regards the inevitable as the actual. It is possible, too, that St. Paul 
 may be alluding to the great discourse of Christ (Matt. xxiiL 37 — 39 ; xxiv. 
 6, 16 ; cf . Rom. i. 18 ; Dan. ix. 24). 
 
 2 Ezek. xvi. 12 (LXX.). 
 
 ^ ii. 17, i.Top<l)avi(rBcvres i,^' i/iSv. 
 
 * Once apparently at Beroea, once at Athens. The Satanic hindrance may 
 have been in Beroea Jewish persecutions, in Athens feeble health. (Cf . Rom. 
 XV. 22.) He is writing to Grentile converts, to whom it will be observed that he 
 does not adduce, in either Epistle, a single quotation from the Old Testament, 
 with which they could have been as yet but little familiar ; but the immediate 
 reference of trials, sickness, and hindrances to Satan is found to this day in 
 
FIRST EPISTLE TO -THE THESSALONIANS. 587 
 
 done the next best thing he could. He had parted from 
 Timothy in Athens, and sent him to prevent them from 
 succumbing^ to those fierce afflictions, of the certainty of 
 which they had been faithfully forewarned; and to ascertain 
 their faith, as shown by the dubious result of too definite 
 temptations.^ When Timothy rejoined him at Corinth, 
 the news which he had brought back was so reassuring — 
 he was able to give so good an account of their faith, and 
 love, and steadfastness, and affection — that it had cheered 
 the Apostle in the midst of his own heavy afHictions, and 
 been to him like a fresh spring of life. No thanks to 
 God could be too hearty for this blessing, and it added 
 intensity to his prayer that Grod would yet enable him to 
 come and see them, and to perfect all deficiencies of their 
 faith. He concludes this historic or personal section of 
 his Epistle with the fervent prayer that Grod would 
 deepen the spirit of love which already prevailed among 
 them, and so enable them to stand before Him in blameless 
 holiness at the coming of our Lord Jesus with aU His saints.^ 
 
 all Oriental forms of speeeh. Even in the Bible the t.erm Satan is sometimes 
 applied to " any adversary " or " opposing influence " (cf . ] Ohron. xxi. 1 with 
 2 Sam. xxiv. 1). " The devil," i Stdfio\os, as distinguished from unclean spirits, 
 Saifi6vta, is only used by St. Paul in Eph. iv. 27 : vi. 11 ; and three times in 
 the letters to Timothy. Where he regarded the hindrance as Satanic he 
 carries out his purpose another time, biit where it is a divine prohibition 
 (Acts xvi. 6, 7) he finally gives it up. Acts xxi. 4 is only an apparent 
 exception. 
 
 . * He here uses the metaphor aaiveaBcu, derived from the fawning cowardice 
 of frightened animals ; elsewhere he uses the metaphor ariKKfaBat, " to furl 
 the saUs in a high wind." He calls Timothy " a fellow-worker with God " 
 ((Ttivipyhv ToC 0eoC, D), an expression only altered in the MSS. because of its 
 boldness (1 Cor. iii. 9 ; 2 Cor. vi. 1). 
 
 2 iii. 5, M '"»» iirdpaaiv . . . Koi tiy Kevhv yivtirai,. 
 
 ' ii. 17— r-iii. 13. Parousia occurs six times in these two Epistles, and only 
 besides in-1 Oor. xv. 23. The word "advent " is said to occur first in Tert. 
 De Besv/rrect. 24. 'Fbe " saints " seems to be a reference, not to angels 
 (Ps. Ixxxix. 7 ; Matt. xvi. 27 ; Jude 14, &c.), because St. Paul does not use 
 this term of angels Qtedoihtm, Ps. cxxxii. 7), but to those mentioned in iv. 16 ; 
 lOor. vi. 2. 
 
588 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 From these earnest and loving messages te turns to 
 ilie practical part of his letter. He beseeches^ and exhorts 
 them not to be stationary, but to advance more and more 
 in that Christian course which he had marked out for 
 them. And then he enters on those special injunctions 
 which he knewto be mpst needful. First and foremost 
 he puts the high virtue of purity. These converts had 
 but recently been called out o£ a heathenism which looked 
 very lightly on the sins of the flesh. The mastery over 
 lifelong habits of corruption was not, to be won in a day. 
 They were still in danger of relapsing into sensual crime. 
 It was necessary to remind them that, however small 
 might be the censure which Gentiles attached to forni- 
 cation,^ and even to yet darker and deadlier sins,^ they were 
 in direct opposition to the command, and would immediately 
 deserve the retribution of that Grod whose wiU was their 
 sanctification, and who laid on them the duty, however 
 difficult, of acquiring a secure and tranquil mastery over 
 their body and its lusts.* If then any one among them 
 
 1 4paraiiey, as in v. 12 ; 2 Thess. ii. 1 ; only elsewhere to Ms other Mace- 
 donian Church (PhC iv. 3). 
 
 2 Gic. ^ro CaeUo,4S; Hor. Sai. L ii. 32 ; Ter.Adel^h.l.u.21; Jer.J^.77; 
 Aug. Be Civ. Dei. xiv. 18. 
 
 ^ Vei". 7, ov , . . itrl aKa6ap(r£t^ dW' iv ayiufffi^, 
 
 * iv. 4. The exact meaning of eiSfVoi fica<Trov i/uSv rh iavroS ff/icCos KTu&9m, 
 K.T\., must remain uncertain. It is wrongly translated in the E.V. "that 
 every one of you should know how to possess his vessel," &c., for icratrBat is " to 
 acquire." I have given what would be a very fine and forcible meaning of the 
 words, but it cannot be regarded as certain that a-icevot means " body "(of. 2 Oor. 
 iv. 7, Chrys., Theoph, (Bcumen., Theod., Tert., and most modems). P- regard 
 it, however, as by far the most probable interpretation (cf . 1 Sam. xxi. 6 j 
 2 Oor. iv. 7). So i776«)i' is used for " body " in Philo, and vas in Latin writers 
 (see Cic. T. Disp. i. 22 ; Lucr. iii. 44). Theodore of Mopsuestia and Augustine 
 make it mean " his own wife ; " and then it would be a recommendation to 
 the spirit of chastity at once preserved and continued in a holy marriage (Heb. 
 iii. 4). This view has been recently adopted by De Wette, Schott, &o., as it was 
 by Aquinas and Estius. In favour of it are the Hebrew '^? for wife (see 
 Rabbinic instances in Schoettgen, Hor. Hehr., ad he.), and the phrase KTuo-flat 
 yvi/iuKa (Ecdus. xxxvi. 29 ; cf. Eph. v. 28 ; 1 Oor. vii. 2 ; 1 Pet. iii. 7). But 
 
FiRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIAM-S. 589 
 
 professed to despise these precepts as though they were 
 merely those of the Apostle, he must now be reminded 
 that he was thereby despising, not any human teacher, but 
 Grod, who called them, not for uncleanliness, but in sancti- 
 fication,^ and by giving them His Holy Spirit, not only 
 deepened the duty, but also inspired them with the power 
 to sanctify His Temple in their hearts.^ 
 
 The next Christian virtue of which he speaks is 
 brotherly love. He feels it unnecessary to do so,^ for God 
 Himself had taught them both to recognise that duty and 
 to put it in practice, not only towards the members of their 
 own church, but towards all Macedonian Christians (vs. 
 9, 10). 
 
 Further, they should make it their ambition to be 
 quiet,* working with their own hands,* and not to meddle 
 with others, and not to rely on the assistance of others, 
 but to present to the outer world a spectacle of honourable 
 and active independence (vs. 11, 12). 
 
 ■would the Thessaloniana, whose women held a much higher and freer position 
 than Oriental women, have been aware of this somewhat repvdsive Orien- 
 talism ? "Would the use of it have been worthy of St. Paul's refinement P 
 and is he not, as Theodoret observes, speaking to celibates and to women as 
 well as to men ? 
 
 1 Leg. SlSovTa, H, B, D, B, F, G. 
 
 ' iv. 1 — 8. The dark warning of iv. 6 is lost in the E. V., because, though 
 it woidd be but too intelligible to Pagan converts, St. Paul veils it under the 
 delicate euphemisms, the honesta aposiopesis, familiar to his sensitive refine- 
 ment (of. 1 Cor. V. 1, 2; 2 Cor. vii. 11, &c.; Eph. v. 3, 12). At any rate, 
 the Greek commentators, who would here be most likely to see his meaning, 
 take him to mean not only adultery, but yet deeper abysses of wickedness. 
 It cannot be "business," which would be rots vpdynairtv. (See Dollinger, 
 Judenth. u. Heidenth.) 
 
 ^ This sort of irapdheirfits (or praeteritio), noticed here by Theophylact, is a 
 rhetorical figure characteristic of St. Paul's kindliness (see v. 1 ; 2 Cor. ix. 1 ; 
 Philem. 19). But the phrase also implies that it is easier to teach Christian 
 virtue than to eradicate habitual vice. 
 
 * One of St. haul's happy turns of expression {oxymoron, Bom. xii. 11 ; 
 cf. Isa. xxs. 7). 
 
 * This shows that the Thessalonian converts were mainly artisans. 
 
590 THE LIFE AND WORK: OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 And now, by these moral exhortations, by thus recall- 
 ing them from over-eschatological excitement to the quiet 
 fulfilment of the personal duties which lay nearest at hand, 
 he has prepared the way for the removal of a serious doubt 
 which had troubled some of them. Since he left therd 
 there had been deaths in the little community, and these 
 deaths had been regarded by some of the survivors with a 
 peculiar despondency. They had been taught again and 
 again to hope for, to look unto, the coming of Christ. 
 That blessed Presence was to be for them the solution of aU 
 perplexities, the righting of all wrongs, the consolation for 
 all sufferings. What the hopes of the birth of the Messiah 
 had been to the Jew, that the hope of His return with 
 all His saints was to the early Christian. And it was 
 natural that such a topic should be prominent in the 
 addresses to a church which, from its very foundation, had 
 been, and for years continued to be, peculiarly afflicted.^ 
 What, then, was' to be said about those who had died, and 
 therefore had not seen the promise of Christ's coming? 
 What could be said of those whose life had ended like 
 the common life of men — no wrongs righted, no miseries 
 consoled ? Had not they been beguiled of their promise, 
 disappointed in their hope, deceived, even, as to the event 
 on which they had fixed their faith ? And if they, why 
 not others? If the dead were thus frustrated in their 
 expectation, why might not the living be ? St. Paul has 
 already given them the advice which would prevent them 
 from brooding too much on that one uncertain moment of 
 Christ's coming. He has bidden them be pure, and loving, 
 and diligent, and live their daily lives in simple honour 
 and faithfulness. He would have eminently approved the 
 quiet good sense of that president of the Puritan assembly, 
 
 ^ 2 Oor. TiL 5. 
 
FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIAKS. • 691 
 
 wlio, when a dense darkness came on, and some one pro- 
 posed that they should adjourn because it might be the 
 beginning of the Day of Judgment, proposed rather that 
 candles should be lighted, because if it was to be the 
 Day of Judgment, they could not be found better employed 
 than in the quiet transaction of duty. But Paul does not 
 leave his converts in their perplexity about their departed 
 friends. He tells them, in words which have comforted 
 millions of mourners since, not to sorrow as those that 
 have no hope,* for that "if we believe that Jesus died and 
 rose again, even so them also which had been laid asleep 
 by Jesus will God bring with Him."^ He even enters into 
 details. He tells them " by the word of the Lord"^ that 
 death would practically make no difference whatever- be- 
 tween the living and the dead, for that in the tremendous 
 " now" of the Day of Judgment* the Lord Himself should 
 descend from heaven with a cry of summons, with the voice 
 of the archangel,® and with 'the trump of God,® and that 
 
 ' That the Gentiles were at this time,,as a rule, despondent in their views 
 of death, in spite of dim hopes and splendid guesses, is certain. " Mortuus 
 nee ad Deos, neo ad homines acceptus est " {Corp. Inscr. i. 118 ; Boissier, 
 La Mel. Rom,, i. 304, seg.). See, for the more ancient Greek -view, .£sch. 
 Ev/men. 648, &c. The shade of Achilles says to Ulysses in Hades : — 
 
 " ' Talk not of reigning in this dolorous gloom, 
 Nor think vain words,' he cried, ' can ease my doom; 
 Better by far laboriously to bear 
 A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air, 
 Slave to the meanest hind that begs his bread. 
 Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead.' " 
 
 • IV. 14. If the Sia ToC 'l»7(roB he taten with Koifi-nSivTas, " laid asleep by 
 Jesus." Cf . Acts iii. 16; Eom. i. 8 ; v. 11 ; 2 Cor. i. 5, &c. 
 
 3 " Quasi Eo ipso loquente " (Beza). As this can hardly be referred to 
 Matt. xxiv. 31, and must be compared with the Hebrew phrase (1 Kings xx. 35, 
 &c.), we can only understand it either of a traditional utterance of Chi-ist or 
 a special revelation to the Apostle. Ewald, however, says {Sendschr. 48), 
 " Ans Christusworten die ihnen gewiss auch schriftlich vorlagen." 
 
 • Luther. 
 
 • Archangel only here and in Jud. 9. 
 
 • The imagery ia borrowed from Ex. six. 16. 
 
692 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 then the dead in Christ should rise first, and we who are 
 alive and remain^ be caught up to meet the Lord in the 
 air, and so be for ever with Him. "Wherefore," he 
 says, " comfort one another with these words." ® 
 
 But when should this be ? — after what period, at what 
 critical moment ? ^ That was a question which he need not 
 answer, because they themselves knew precisely* the only 
 answer which could be given, which was that the day of 
 the Lord should come as a thief in the night, overwhelm- 
 ing those that chose darkness with sudden destruction. 
 But they were not of the darkness, but children of light ; 
 so that, however suddenly it came, that day could not find 
 them unprepared.^ For which puipose let them be sober 
 and vigilant, like soldiers, armed with faith and love for a 
 breastplate, and the hope of salvation for a helmet ; ^ since 
 Grod had not appointed them for wrath, but to obtain sal- 
 vation tbrough Him who had died in order that they, 
 whether in life or in death, might live with Him for ever.'' 
 The Thessalonians are bidden to continue edifying and 
 comforting one another with these words. Did none of 
 them ask, "But what will become of the Jews? of the 
 heathen? of the sinners and backsliders among ourselves?" 
 Possibly they did. But here, and in the Romans, and in 
 the Corinthians, St. Paul either did not anticipate such 
 questions, or refused to answer them. Perhaps he had 
 
 1 These words ■will be explained infra. 
 
 ' iv. 13 — 18. These verses furnish one leading motive of the EpisUe. 
 
 ' V. 1, Trep] Se twv xpivtoy kcA tkv Katpav, 
 
 * v. 2, inpi/StSi. 
 
 • V. 4, A, B, read KXeWoj, which would he a slight change of metaphor. 
 " Weil der Dieb nur in und mit der Nacht kommt, vom Tage aber iiberrascht 
 wird " (Ewald). Cf. Matt. xxiv. 37 ; Rom. xiii. 11—14. 
 
 ' The germ of the powerful and beautiful figure of the Christian's panoply 
 which is elaborated in Eph. vi. 13 — 17; Rom. xiii 12. (Cf. Wisd. t. 18; 
 Bamch. v. 12). 
 
 ' V. 1— IL 
 
PRACTICAL ADYIOB. 593 
 
 heard tlie admirable Hebrew apopttliegin, " Learn to say, 
 '/ do not know.' " THs at least is certain, tbat with him 
 the idea of the resurrection is so closely connected with 
 that of faith, and hope, and moral regeneration, that when 
 he speaks of it he will speak of it mainly, indeed all but 
 exclusively, in connection with the resurrection of the 
 saints.-^ 
 
 To the thoughts suggested by St. Paul's treatment of 
 this weighty topic we shall revert immediately. He 
 ends the epistle with moral exhortations — all, doubtless, 
 suggestedby the needsof the Church — of extraordinary fresh- 
 ness, force, and beauty. There were traces of insubordina- 
 tion among them, and he bids them duly respect and love, 
 for their work's sake, the spiritual labourers and leaders of 
 their community,^ and to be at peace among themselves. 
 He further tells them — perhaps in these last verses 
 especially addressing the presbyters — ^to warn those unruly 
 bretWn who would not obey. There was despondency at 
 work among them, and he bids them " comfort the feeble- 
 minded, take the weak by the hand, be patient towards 
 all men." They were to avoid all retaliations, and seek 
 after all kindness^ (vs. 12 — 15). Then follow little arrow- 
 flights of inestimably precious exhortation. "Was depres- 
 sion stealing into their hearts? Let them meet it by 
 remembering that Grod's will for them in Christ. Jesus was 
 perpetual joy, unceasing prayer, universal thanksgiving. 
 Had there been any collisions of practice, and differences 
 of opinion, among the excited enthusiasts whose absorp- 
 tion in the expected return of Christ left them neither 
 energy nor wish to do their daily duties, while it made 
 
 1 Pfleiderer, i. 275 ; Rom. -vi. 23 ; 1 Cor. xv. 22, &o. See Reuss, Theol. Chret. 
 Ji. 214. 
 
 'These vague terms seem to show that the ecclesiastical organisation of 
 the Church was as yet very flexible. 
 
 » V. 15, contrast this with Soph. PhUoct. 679. 
 
 M M 
 
594 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 them also set very little store by tlie calmer utterances of 
 moral exhortation? Then, besides the exhortation to 
 peace, and the noble general rule to avoid every kind of 
 evil,^ he warns them that they should neither quench the 
 Spirit nor despise prophesyings — that is, neither to stifle 
 an impassioned inspiration nor to undervalue a calm 
 address^ — but to test all that was said to them, and hold 
 fast what was good.' 
 
 Then, once more, with the affirmation that God's faith- 
 fulness would grant the prayer, he prays that Grod would 
 sanctify them wholly, and preserve their bodies, their 
 wills and affections, their inmost souls,* blamelessly till 
 that coming of the Lord to which he has so often alluded. 
 He asks their prayers for himself; bids them salute all the 
 brethren with a holy kiss;^ adjures them by the Lord' 
 
 • Not " every appearance of evil " (E. V.), grand as such an exhortation 
 undoubtedly is. It may perhaps be " from every evil appearance," everything 
 which has an iU look : possibly it refers to bad yeVrj of spiritual teaching. 
 
 ' 1 Oor. xiv. 39. 
 
 ' Verses 16 — 21. What they needed was the StiKpurts irvev/xiTav (1 Cor. sii. 
 10 ; Heb. V. 14), and to be S6KiiiOt rpaire(tTat. 
 
 * V. 23, ffu/ia, " body ; " 'I'l'x^, the entire human life and faculties ; irvsSjiio 
 the divinely imbreathed spirit, the highest region of life. i\oTe\f!s, i\uiA7ipot 
 (James i. 4). Trench, Synon., p. 70. 
 
 ' The Tobs aSe\<poiis irivras must mean "one another," as in Bom. xvi. 16; 
 1 Oor.xvi. 20; 2 Cor. xiii. 12 ; 1 Pet. v. 14, unless these few concluding lines 
 are addressed specially to the elders. On the " kiss of charity " — an Oriental 
 custom — See Bingham, Antiq^. iii. 3, 3 ; Hooker, Pref. iv. 4. 
 
 ' The very strong adjuration may have been rendered necessary by 
 some of the difEerenoes between the converts and the leading members of 
 the community, at which the Apostle hints in v. 12 — 15. Some influential 
 persons, to whom the letter was first handed, might be inclined to suppress 
 any parts of it with which they disagreed, or which seemed to condemn 
 their views or conduct. Timothy may have brought the news that some 
 previous letter of the Apostle to this, or other cliurches, had not pro- 
 perly been made known. How easily such an interference was possible wa 
 see from 3 John 9, " I wrote to the Church, but Diotrephes, who loveth to 
 have the pre-eminence among them, receiveth us not" (see Ewald, Sendschr. 
 p. 51). Dionysius of Corinth deplores the falsification of his own letters 
 (Enseb. H. B. iv. 23). St. Paul generally asked for a prayer himself towards 
 the close of a letter (Bph. vi. 19; Col. iv. 3; 2 Thess. iii. 1). 
 
FINAL AUTHENTICATION. 595 
 
 that his letter be read to the entire community ; and so 
 concludes with his usual ending, " The grace of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ be with you. Amen."^ These last three 
 verses were probably written in his own hand. 
 
 It may easily be imagined with what rapture the 
 arrival of such a letter would be hailed by a young, perse- 
 cuted, and perplexed community; how many griefs it 
 would console ; how many doubts it would resolve ; how 
 much joy, and hope, and fresh enthusiasm it would inspire. 
 It could not but have been delightful in any case to be 
 comforted amid the storm of outward opposition, and to 
 be inspirited amid the misgivings of inward faithlessness, 
 by the words, of the beloved teacher whose gospel had 
 changed the whole current of their lives. It was much to 
 feel that, though absent from them in person, he was 
 present with them in heart,® praying for them, yearning 
 over them, himself cheered by the tidings of their con- 
 stancy; but it was even more to receive words which 
 would tend to heal the incipient disagreements of that 
 small and loving, but inexperienced, • and as yet but half- 
 organised community, and to hear the divinely authorita- 
 tive teaching which silenced their worst fears. And 
 
 ' This yvipitriia or badge of cognisance is found, mtli slight variations, at 
 the dose of all St. Paul's Epistles. Thus : — 
 
 (o) In 1 Thess. v. 28; 1 Oor. XTi. 23 we have, "The grace of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ be with yon," to which the word " all " is added in 2 Thess. iii. 
 18; Rom. xvi. 24; Phil. iv. 23. 
 
 (iS) In Philem. 26 ; Gal. vi. 18 we have, " The grace of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ be with your spirit " (" brethren," Gal.). 
 
 (7) In Col. iv. 18 ; 1 Tim. vi. 21 ; 2 Tim. iv. 22 we have the shortest form, 
 " Grace be with you " (thee), to which Titus iii. 15 adds " all." 
 
 (S) In Eph. vi. 24 we have the variation," Grace be with all them that love 
 the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity," and in 2 Cor. xiii. 14 alone the full 
 1 " Apostolic benediction." 
 
 The subscriptions added to the Epistles at a much later period are mostly 
 valueless (see Paley, Eorae Paulinae, chap. it.). 
 
 » 1 Thess. ii. 17. 
 M M 2 
 
696 THE LIFE AND "WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 further than this, if the words of St. Paul shine so 
 brightly to us through the indurated dust of our long 
 familiarity, how must they have sparkled for them in their 
 fresh originality, and with heaven's own light shining on 
 those oracular gems ! " Having received the word in much 
 affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost ■"'^ — ^that was no mere 
 artificial oxymoron, but an utterance which came from a 
 new world, of which they were the happy lords. " Jesus 
 which delivereth us from the coming wrath;"'' "Grod 
 who called you unto His kingdom and glory ;"^ "This is 
 the will of Grod, even your sanctification;"* "So shall 
 we ever be with the Lord;"^ "Ye are all the children of 
 the light and the children of the day;"* ".See that none 
 render CAril for evil unto any;"''' "Rejoice evermore."* 
 What illimitable hopes, what holy obligations, what golden 
 promises, what glorious responsibilities, what lofty ideals, 
 what reaches of morality beyond any which their greatest 
 writers had attained, what strange renovation of the whole 
 spirit and meaning of life, lay hidden for them in those 
 simple words ! * The brief Epistle brought home to them 
 
 M. 6. » ii. 12. 6 iv. 17. ^ v. 15. 
 
 2 i. 10. 1 iv. 3. « V. 5. 8 V. 16. 
 
 ' Baur {Paul, ii.), Kern {Tub. Zeitschr. 1839), Van der Vaier {Die heiden 
 Briefen aan de Thessal.), De Wette {Minleit.), Volkmar, Zeller, &c., and 
 the Tubingen school generally, except Hilgenf eld (Die Thessalonicherbriefe), 
 reject both Epistles to the Thessalonians as ungenuine, and Baur calls the 
 first Epistle a " mattes Nachwerk." I have carefully studied their arguments, 
 but they seem to me so sL'ght as to be scarcely deserving of serions 
 refutation. The difficulties which would be created by rejecting these 
 Epistles are ten times as formidable as any which they suggest. If an un- 
 biassed scholar, familiar with the subject, cannot /eeZ the heart of St. Paul 
 throbbing through every sentence of these Epistles, it is hardly likely that 
 argument will convince him. External evidence (Iren. Haer. v. 6, 1; Clem. 
 Alex. Paedag. i. p. 109, ed. Potter ; Tert. De Resurrect. Carnis, cap. 24), 
 though sufficiently strong, is scarcely even required. Not only Bunsen, 
 Ewald, &c., but even Hilgenf eld (1 c), Holtzmann (Thessalon. in Schenkel, 
 Bihel-lexihon), Pfleiderer {Paulinism,, 29), Hansrath, "Weisse, Schmidt, &c., 
 accept the first. 
 
ESCHATOLOGT. 597 
 
 the glad trutt. that they could use, for their daily wear, 
 that glory of thought which had only been attained by the 
 fewest and greatest spirits of their nation at their rarest 
 moments of inspiration ; and therewith that grandeur of 
 life which, in its perfect innocence towards God and man, 
 was even to these unknown. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact that in this Epistle St. Paul 
 alludes no less than four times to the coming of Christ,^ 
 and uses, to describe it, the word jjaroitsia — "presence" — 
 which also occurs in this sense in the second Epistle,^ but 
 in only one other passage of all his other Epistles.' 
 Whether, after the erroneous conclusions which the Thes- 
 salonians drew from this letter, -and the injurious effects 
 which this incessant prominence of eschatology produced 
 in their characters, he subsequently made it a less salient 
 feature of his own teaching, we cannot tell. Certain, 
 however, it is that the misinterpretation of his first letter, 
 and the reprehensible excitement and restlessness which 
 that misinterpretation produced,* necessitated the writing 
 of a second very shortly after he had received tidings of 
 these results.^ It is equally certain that, from this 
 ' time forward, the visible personal return of Christ and the 
 nearness of the end, which are the predominant topics in 
 the Pirst Epistle to the Thessalonians, sink into a far more 
 subordinate topic of reference ; and that, although St. 
 Paul's language in the letter was misunderstood, yet the 
 
 >ii. 19; iii. 13; iv. 15; t. 23. 
 
 « 2 Thess. ii. 1. 8. 
 
 * 1 Cor. XV. 23. 
 
 * We find in St. Paul's own words abundant proof that his teaching was 
 distorted and "slandered, and St. Peter gives us direct positive assurance that 
 such was the case (2 Pet. iii. 16). 
 
 » Tradition should have some weight, and jrphs eetrffoKoviKets & is the read, 
 ing of A, B, D, E, P, G. The internal evidences also, to some of which I 
 have called attention, seem to me decisive. 
 
698 THE LIFE AND WOKK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 misunderstanding was not a wilful but a perfectly natural 
 one; and tliat in his later letters lie anticipates his own 
 death, rather than the second Advent, as his mode of 
 meeting Christ. The divine and steady light of history 
 first made clear to the Church that our Lord's prophetic 
 warnings as to His return applied primarily to the close 
 of the Jewish dispensation, and the winding up of all the 
 past, and the inauguration of the last great aeon of God's 
 dealings with mankind. 
 
OHAPTEE XXX. 
 
 THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 
 "^eiyhp raira yeyeVfloi wparoy, 4w' oiiK evBdm rh t^Aoi."— Luke xxi. 9. 
 
 Many montlis could not have elapsed before the Apostle 
 heard that the Thessalonians, with all their merits and 
 virtues, were stiU, and even more than previously, hindered 
 in moral growth by eschatological enthusiasms. When he 
 wrote to them before, they were tempted to despond about 
 the death of friends, whom they supposed likely to be thus 
 deprived of part at least Of the precious hopes which were 
 their main, almost their sole, support in the fiery furnace 
 of aflEliction. The Apostle's clear assurance seems to have 
 removed all anxiety on this topic, but now they regarded 
 the immediate coming of Christ as a thing so cei;tain 
 that some of them were tempted to neglect his ex- 
 hortations, and to spend their lives in aimless religious 
 excitement.^ St. Paul felt how fatal would be such a 
 temperament to all Christian progress, and the main object 
 of his second letter was to control into calm, and shame 
 into diligence, the gossiping enthusiasm which fatally 
 tended towards irregularity and sloth. They were not to 
 desert the hard road of the present for the mirage which 
 
 ' The reader •will be struck with, the close analogy of this temptation to 
 that which did so much mischief among the Anabaptists and other sects in 
 the days of the Reformation. The Thessalonian Church may have had its 
 Oarlstadts whom St. Paul felt it necessary to warn, just as Luther fought, 
 with all the force of his manly sense, against the crudities of the religious 
 errors which had derived their impulse from a perversion of his own teaching. 
 
600 THE LIFE AJSTD WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 seemed to bring so close to them tlie green Edens of the 
 future; they were not to sacrifice the sacredness of im- 
 mediate duty for the dreamy sweetness of unrealised ex- 
 pectations. The Advent of Christ might be near at 
 hand; but it was noi; so instant as they had been led to 
 imagine from an erroneous view of what he had said, and 
 by mistaken reports — possibly even by written forgeries — 
 which ascribed to him words which he had never used, 
 and opinions which he had never held. 
 
 The expression on which the Apocalyptic fanaticism 
 of the less sensible Thessalonians seems to have fastened 
 was that which occurs in 1 Thess. iv. 1 5 — " We, which 
 are alive and remain to the presence of the Lord, shall 
 certainly not anticipate those that have fallen asleep." It 
 was not unnatural that they should 'interpret this to mean 
 that their teacher himself expected to survive until the 
 Epiphany of their Lord's presence.^ If so, it must be 
 very close at hand ; and again, if so, of what use were 
 the petty details of daily routine, the petty energies of 
 daily effort ? "Was it not enough to keep themselves alive 
 anyhow until the dawn of that near day, or the shadows 
 of that rapidly approaching night, which might be any 
 day or any night, on which all earthly interests should 
 be dissipated for ever as soon as the voice of God and the 
 trumpet of the dead should sound? 
 
 Kow, we ask, had this been the real meaning of the 
 words of St. Paul ? The question has been voluminously 
 and angrily debated. It has been made, in fact (and very 
 needlessly), the battle-ground as to the question of verbal 
 inspiration. S'ome have tried to maintain the desperate 
 and scarcely honest position that neither St. Paul nor the 
 Apostles generally had any expectation of the near visible 
 
A MISIHTTERPEBTATIOIS". , 601 
 
 advent of Christ; others tliat they were absolutely convinced 
 that it would take place in their own generation, and even 
 in their own lifetime. 
 
 Not in the interests of controversy, but in those of 
 truth, I will endeavour to prove that neither of these 
 extreme theses can be maintained. If the view of the 
 Thessalonians had been absolutely groundless, it would 
 have been easy for St. Paul to say to them, as modern 
 commentators have said for him, "You mistook my 
 general expression for a specific and individual one. "When 
 I said 'we which are alive and remain ' at the presence of 
 Christ, I did not mean either myself, or you, in particular, 
 but merely ' the living ' — the class to which we at pre- 
 sent belong — as opposed to the dead, about whose case I 
 was speaking to you.^ You are mistaken in supposing 
 that I meant to imply a conviction that before my own 
 death the Lord would reappear." Now, he does not 
 say this at all ; ^ he only teUs, them not to be drifted from 
 their moorings, not, as he expresses it, to be tossed from 
 their sound sense ^ by the supposition that he had spoken 
 of the actual instancy* of the day of the Lord. He. teUs 
 them plainly that certain events must occur before that 
 day came ; and these as certainly are events which pre- 
 cluded all possibility of the Second Advent taking place 
 for them to-morrow or the next day. But, on the other 
 hand, he does not tell them that the day of the Lord was 
 not near {eyyv<s). If he had done so he would have 
 robbed of their meaning the exhortations which had 
 formed the staple of his preaching at Thessalonica, as 
 
 ' 1 Thess. iv. 15. ^/leii . . . l oi nepl iavTod ^irlv — iXKh. rohs marohs \4yii 
 (Chrys). 
 
 ' It is never his method to explain away his Tiews hecanse they have been 
 perverted, but merely to bring them out in their full and proper meaning, 
 
 ^ /tJ) raxeas iraKivOrivai &irb ToS vohs (2 Thess. ii. 2). 
 
602 THE LIFE AND WOEK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 they constituted the only prominent doctrinal statement 
 of his First Epistle.^ If we are to judge of St. Paul's 
 views by his own language, and not by the preconceptions 
 of scholasticism, we can divine what would have been his 
 answer to the plain question, " Do you personally expect 
 to live till the return of Christ?" At tins period of his 
 life his answer would have been, " I cannot speak posi- 
 tively on the matter. I see clearly that, before His 
 return, certain things must take place ; but, on the whole, 
 I do expect it. But at a later period of his life he 
 would have said in substance, " It may be so ; I cannot 
 teU. On the whole, however, I no longer hope to 
 survive tiU that day ; nor does it seem to me of any im- 
 portance whether I do or not. At that day the quick 
 will have no advantage over the dead. What I now look 
 forward to, what I sometimes even yearn for, is my own 
 death. I know that when I die I shaU be with Christ, 
 and it is for that pathway into His presence that I am 
 now watching. In the earlier years of my conversion we 
 all anticipated a speedier development of Antichrist, a 
 speedier removal of the restraining power, a speedier 
 brightening of the clouds about the flaming feet of our 
 Saviour. That for which I now look is far more the 
 spiritual union with my Lord than His visible manifes- 
 tation. It may be, too, that He cometh in many ways. 
 If we ever mistook the nearer for the farther horizons of 
 His prophecy, it is but a part of that ignorance which, as 
 He Himself warned us, should, as regards the details of 
 this subject, be absolute and final. For said He not when 
 He was yet witli us, ' Of that day and that hour knoweth 
 
 * Ab Baur rightly observes [Paulus, ii. 94) : but to assume that therefore 
 the Epistle caimot be St. Paul's is to the last degree uncritical. Moreover, 
 though there are no other " dogmatic ideas " brought forward vrith very 
 special prominence, there are " dogmatic ideas" assvmied in every line. 
 
ESOHATOLOGT. 603 
 
 no man ; no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the 
 Son, but the Father'? But whether He come so soon 
 as we have expected, or not, yet in one form or another 
 assuredly now and ever ' the Lord is at hand ; ' and the 
 lesson of His coming is that which He also taught us, 
 and which w& have taught from Him — 'Take ye heed, 
 watch and pray, for ye know not when the time is.' " 
 
 That these were the views of St. Paul and of other 
 Apostles on " the crises and the periods " respecting 
 which, if they ventured to hold any definite opinion at 
 all, they could not hut, according to their Lord's own 
 warning, he liable to he mistaken, will, I think, be evi- 
 dent to all who will candidly weigh and compare with 
 themselves the passages to which I here refer.-^ 
 
 Now so far as the fall of Jerusalem and the passing of 
 doom upon the Jewish race was " a day of the Lord," so 
 far even the most literal acceptation of their words is in 
 close accordance with the actual results. Nor should this 
 remarkable coincidence be overlooked. OnJDecember 19th, 
 A.D. 69, the Capitoline Temple was burnt down in the 
 war between Vitellius and Vespasian, which Tacitus calls 
 the saddest and most shameful blow, and a sign of the 
 anger of the gods. On August 10, A.D. 70, a Eoman soldier 
 flung a brand within the Temple of Jerusalem. " Thus," 
 
 * Allusions to a near Advent, 1 Thess. i. 9, 10, " ye turned to God .... 
 to wait for His Soil from heaven ; " 1 Cor. L 7, " To wait for the coming of the 
 Lord Jesus" (of. 2 Thess. iii. 6) ; 1 Cor. xv. 51, " "We shall not all sleep, but 
 we shall all be changed " (cf. 1 Thess. iv. 15—17) ; James v. 8, 9, " The 
 
 coming of the Lord draweth nigh The judge standeth before the 
 
 door ; " 1 Pet. iv. 7, " The end of all things is at hand ; " 1 John ii. 18, " Even 
 now are there many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time ; " 
 Eev. xxii. 20, " Surely I come quickly." On the sayings of our Lord, on 
 which the expectation was perhaps founded (Matt. xxiv. 29, 30, 34), see my 
 Life of Christ, ii. 257 sq. On the other hand, if St. Paul contemplated the 
 possibility of being alive at the Day of the Lord, he also was aware that though 
 near, it would not be immediate (2 Cor. iv.l4 ; 2 Thess. ii. ; Rom. xi. 24—27), 
 and at a later period looked forward to his own death (Phil. L 20—^3). 
 
604 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 says Bollinger,-^ " within a few montlis the national sanC' 
 tuary of Eome and the Temple of God, the two most 
 important places of worship in the old world, owed their 
 destruction to Eoman soldiers — ^thoughtless instruments 
 of the decrees and judgment of a higher power. Ground 
 was to be cleared for the worship of God in spirit 
 and in truth. The heirs of the two temples, the Capito- 
 line and the Jewish — a handful of artisans, beggars, slaves, 
 and women — were dwelling at the time in some of the 
 obscure lanes and alleys of Eome ; and only two years 
 before, when they had first drawn public attention to 
 themselves, a number of them were sentenced to be burnt 
 alive in the imperial gardens, and others to be torn in 
 pieces by wild beasts." 
 
 We may, then, say briefly that the object of the Second 
 Epistle to the Thessalonians was partly to assure them that, 
 though St. Paul believed the day of the Lord to be near — 
 though he did not at aU exclude the possibility of their 
 living to witness it — ^yet it was not so instantaneous as in 
 the least to justify a" disruption of the ordinary duties of 
 life.^ He had as little meant positively to assert that he 
 would survive to the Advent when he said " we that are 
 alive," than he meant positively to assert that he should 
 die before it occurred, when, years afterwards, he wrote, 
 " He which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also 
 by Jesus."' That the "we" in these instances was generic 
 is obvious from the fact that he uses it of the dead and of 
 the living in the same Epistle, saying in one place, " We 
 
 ^ Jmdenth. u. Seidenth. ix. adf. 
 
 ' The dread of some immment world catastrophe, preluded by prodigies, 
 vas at this time universal (Tac. Ann. vi. 28; xii. 43, 64; xiv. 12, 22 ; xv. 22; 
 Hist. i. 3 ; Suet. Nero, 36, 39 ; Dion Cass. Ix. 35 ; Ixi. 16—18, &c.). Hausrath, 
 N. Zdigeech. ii. 108. Benau, L'Antechrist, p. 35 : " On ne parlait que d6 
 prodiges et de malheurs." 
 
 » 2 Oor. iv. 14. 
 
METHOD OF TKB EPISTLES. 605 
 
 ■iliall not all sleep," ^ and in another, " God will also raise up 
 us by His own power." ^ 
 
 On the nearness of the final Messianic Advent, the 
 Jewish and the Christian world were at one ; and even 
 the Heathen were in a state o£ restless anticipation. The 
 trials of the Apostle had naturally led him to dwell 
 on this topic both in his preaching at Thessalonica, 
 and in his earlier Epistle. His Second Epistle follows 
 the general outlines of the First, which indeed formed 
 a model for all the others. Nothing is more remark- 
 able than the way in which the Epistles combine a 
 singular uniformity of method with a rich exuberance of 
 detail.^ In this respect they are the reflex of a life in- 
 finitely varied in its adventiires, yet swayed by one simple 
 and supremely dominant idea. Except when special cir- 
 cumstances, as ' in the Epistles to the Corinthians, modify 
 his ordinary plan, his letters consist, as a rule, of six 
 parts, viz. : — i. a solemn salutation ; ii. an expression of 
 
 * 1 Cor. XT. 61, on the reading, v. mfra, ii, 
 
 ' 1 Cor. yi, 14. Here, as in so many cases, a passage of the Talmud 
 throws most valuable light on the opinions of St. Paul, -which, on such a 
 subject — where all special illumination was deliberately withdrawn — ^were 
 inevitably coloured by the tonej of opinion prevalent in his own nation : — 
 " ' When will Messiah come ? ' asked R. Joshua Ben Laive of Elijah the 
 Tishbite. ' Go and ask Himself.' ' Where is He ? ' 'At the gateway of 
 Rome.' ' How shalll know Him ?' ' He sits among the diseased poor.' (Rashi 
 quotes Isa. liii. 5.) ' AH the others change the bandages of their sores simgl- 
 taneously, but He changes them successively, lest, if called. His coming should i 
 be delayed.' R. Joshua Ben Laive went to, Him, and saluted Him with the ■ 
 words ' Peace be to thee, my Rabbi, my teacher.'- ' Peace be unto thee. Son ' 
 of Laive,' was the answer of Messiah. •' When -will the Master come P ' 
 asked the Rabbi. ' To-dat,' was the answer. By the time the Rabbi hadJ 
 finished "telling the story to Elijah, the sun had set. ' How P ' said the • 
 Rabbi ; ' He has not come ! Has He lied unto me ? ' ' No,' said Elijah, ' He ■ 
 meant " To-dat, ir tb -will hbab His voice " ' (Ps. xov. 7)." Sanhedrin, . 
 1 98. 1. This involves the same truth as the famous remark of St. Augustine, . 
 "Ergo latet ultimus dies, ut observentur omnes dies,'' which -was also. said by» 
 R. Eliezer. 
 
 • See Reuss, Theol. Chrei. ii. 11. 
 
606 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 thankfulness to God for His work among those to whom 
 he is writing; iii. a section devoted to religious doc- 
 'trine ; iv. a section devoted to practical exhortation ; v. a 
 section composed of personal details and greetings ; and, vi. 
 the final autograph benediction which served to mark the 
 authenticity of the Epistle. We have already noticed that 
 this is the general structure of the First Epistle, and it 
 win be observed no less in the subjoined outline of the 
 Second.^ 
 
 After the greeting, in which, as in the last Epistle, he 
 associates Silas and Timothy with himself,^ he thanks Grod 
 once more for the exceeding increase' of their faith, and 
 the abounding love which united them with one another, 
 which enabled him as well as others* to hold them up in 
 the Churches of God' as a model of faith and patience, and 
 
 ' L The greeting, 2 Thess. i. 1, 2. ii. The thantag^ving, or Eucharistio 
 section, mingled with topics of consolation derived from the coming of Christ, 
 i. 3 — 12. iii. The dogmatic portion, which, in this instance, is the remarkable 
 and indeed unique section about the Man of Sin, ii. 1 — 12; the thanksgiving 
 renewed with exhortations and ending in a prayer, ii. 13 — 17. iv. The 
 practical part, consisting of a request for their prayers (iii. 1 — 5). v. Exhorta- 
 tions, and messages, also ended by a prayer, iii. 6 — 16. vi. The autograph con- 
 clusion and benediction, iii. 17, 18. These divisions, however, are not rigid and 
 formal ; one section flows naturally into another, with no marked separation. 
 Each of the prayers (ii. 16 ; iii. 16) begins with the same words, Airis Si 6 
 Kipios. 
 
 2 This accurately marks the date of the letter, as having been written at . 
 Gorinth shortly after the former. Silas ceases to be a fellow-worker with 
 Paul, and apparently joins Peter, after the visit to Jerusalem at the close of 
 the two years' sojourn at Corinth. It is probable that the mental and religious 
 affinities of Silas were more closely in accordance with the old Apostles who 
 had sent him to Antioch than with St. Paul. 
 
 3 irrepavidvei. It is a part of St. Paul's emphatic style that he delights in 
 compounds of iirip, as mffoxh, virep\lav, iirepPiiWu, fnrepcKTrepiaaov, &c. 
 
 * 2 Thess. i. 4, ^iuSj avTois. 
 
 ' This is a strong argument against' Ewald's view that the Epistle was 
 written from Beroea; but it does not prove, as Chrysostom says, that a 
 considerable time must have elapsed. Writing from Corinth, there were 
 Churches both in Macedonia and Achaia to which St. Paul alludes. There 
 can be little doubt that the Epistle was written late in A.D. 53 or early in 
 A.D. 54 
 
CHRIST'S APPEARING. 607 
 
 that, too, Tinder special tribulations. Those tribulations, 
 he tells them, are an evidence that the present state of 
 things cannot be final ; that a time is coming when their 
 persecutors wiU be punished, and themselves have relaxa- 
 tion from endurance^ — which time wiU be at the Epiphany, 
 in Sinaitic splendour,^ of the Lord Jesus with his mighty 
 angels, to inflict retribution on the Gentile ignorance which 
 will not know Grod, and the disobedient obstinacy which 
 rejects the Grospel. That retribution shall be eternal cutting 
 off from the presence and glorious power of Christ'- when 
 He shall come to be glorified in His saints and to be wondered 
 at in all that believed in Him.* And that they may attain 
 to this glory, he prayed that G-od may count them worthy 
 of their caUing, and bring to fulfilment the goodness in 
 which they delight,® and the activity of their faith, both 
 
 * iveiriv. 
 
 * Ex. iii. 2; xix. 18; mv. 17; 2 Ohr. vii. 1, &c. k, A, K, L, have irvpX 
 ^Xoy6i. The comma should be after j&re, not, as in B. V., after " angels." 
 
 ' i. 9. It is clear that hrh here means " separation from," not " imme- 
 diately after," or " by." This is the only passage in all St. Paul's Epistles 
 where his eschatology even seems to touch on the future of the impenitent. 
 "When Ohrysostom triumphantly asks, " Where, then, are the Origenists ? 
 He calls the destruction aldviov ,• " his own remarks in other places show that 
 he could hardly have been unaware that this rhetoric of " oeconomy " might 
 sound convincing to the ignorant and the superficial, but had no bearing what- 
 ever on the serious views of Origen. Observe, i. SiSorai ixSlKriiriv (of. 2 Sam. 
 xxii. 48, LXX.) does not mean " take vengeance." ii. The fire is not penal fire, 
 but is the Sheohinah-glory of Advent (Dan. vii. 9 ; Ex. iii. 2). iii. Those 
 spoken of are not sinners in general, but wilful enemies and persecutors, iv. 
 The retribution is not " destruction," but " destruction- from-the-Presence of 
 the Lord," i.e., a cutting off from Beatific Vision, v. The " seonian exclu- 
 sion" of this passage takes place at Christ's First Advent, not at the 
 final Judgment Day. 
 
 * They will inspire wonder, because they will in that day reflect His 
 brightness. 
 
 ' i. 11, -irXiipiiar) eiioKltw i.ya9(atrvviis. Not as in E.T., " fulfil all the good 
 pleasure of his goodness," but " honestatis dulcedinem " — i.e., " honestatem, 
 qua recreemini." EuSok/o, indeed, is often referred to God (Eph. i. 5, 9, &o.) ; 
 but hyaeaaivri, used four times in St. Paul, is " moral and human goodness," 
 the classic xm<rr6Ti\s, It is borrowed from the LXX. (See Eed. ix. 18.) 
 
608 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 to the glory of their Lord and to their own glory, as 
 granted by, His grace.^ 
 
 Then follows the most remarkable section of the letter, 
 and the one for the sake of which it was evidently written. 
 He had, in his first letter, urged them to calmness and 
 diligence, but the eagerness of expectation, unwittingly 
 increased by his own words, had prevailed over his exhor- 
 tations, and it was now his wish to give them further and 
 more definite instruction on this great subject. This was 
 rendered more necessary by the fact that their hopes 
 had been fanned into vivid glow, partly by prophecies 
 which claimed to be inspired, and partly by words or 
 letters which professed to be stamped with his authority. 
 He writes, therefore, in language of which I have at- 
 tempted to preserve something of the obvious mystery 
 and reticence.^ 
 
 " Now we beseech you, brethren, touching^ the presence of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ and our gathering' to meet Him, that ye be not quickly 
 tossed from your state of mind,^ nor even be troubled either by spirit," 
 or by word, or by letter purporting to come from us,' as though the 
 
 1 2 Thess. i. 3—12. 
 
 ^ Neither this nor any other passage which I translate apart from the B.V. 
 is intended a? a specimen of desirable translation. I merely try to translate 
 in such terms as shall most easUy explain themselves to the modem reader, 
 while they reprodnce as closely as possible the form of the orignal. 
 
 ^ fiirep, not an adjuration in the New Testament, yet a little stronger 
 than irepl. 
 
 * An obvious allusion to 1 Thess. iv. 17. The Substantive imawayiey^ only 
 occurs in Heb. x. 25, but the verb in Matt, xxiii. 37 ; xxiv. 81, " as a hen 
 gathereth her chickens under her wings " (cf . John xi. 52). 
 
 ^ " Pro youre witte " (Wicl.) ; " from your sense " (Bhemish version). 
 
 ^ i.e., by utterance professing to be inspired. The " discerning of spirits," 
 or testing of what utterances were, and what were not, inspired, was one of 
 the most important xop^'f/«»'''o in the early Church. 
 
 ' The commentators from Chrysostom and Theodoret downwards are almost 
 unanimous in taking this to mean that a letter on these subjects had been 
 forged in St. Paul's name, and had increased the excitement of the Thessa^ 
 lonians. It seems to me that the requirements of the expression are fulfilled 
 
THE MAN OP Sm. 609 
 
 day of the Lord is here.' Let no one deceive you in antj way, 
 because' — unless the apostasy ' come first, and the man of sia be revealed,'' 
 the son of destruction,^ who opposeth," and exalteth himself above and 
 against every one who is called God,' or is an object of worship, so that 
 he enters and seats himself in the shrine of God,^ displaying himself 
 that he is God. Do you not recaU that, while I was still with you, I 
 used to tell you this? And now the restraining power — you know what 
 it is — which prevents his appearing — that he may appear in his own 
 due time [and not before]. For the mystery of the lawlessness is already 
 working, only he who restrains now — until he be got out of the way." 
 And then shall be revealed tjie lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall 
 destroy with the breath of His mouth, and shall annihilate with the 
 Epiphany of His presence ; ■"' whose presence is in accordance with the 
 energy of Satan in all power, and signs, and prodigies of falsehood, 
 and in all deceitfulness of iniquity for the ruin of those who are 
 perishing,^' because they received not the love of the truth that they 
 
 if we make the surely more probable supposition that some letter had been 
 dreulated among them — perhaps anonymous, perhaps with perfectly honest 
 itttentions — which professed to report his exact opinions, while in reality it 
 misunderstood them. 
 
 . ' This, rather than " is immediately imminent," seems to be the meaning 
 of hi<iTtt«.iV (Rom. viii. 38 ; Gal. i. 4, &C.). Tai\s yh.p irpo^iriTeiav iiroKptvifievoi 
 ^Xivuv rhv \abv us Ifiii] irapivros toC Kvpiov (Theod.). At any rate, the word 
 implies the closest possible proximity, rk ivtaTara means "things present." 
 (See Rom. viii. 38 ; 1 Cor. iu. 22.) 
 
 2 He purposely suppresses the discouraging words "the Lord wiU not 
 come." 
 
 ' Certainly not "the revolt of the Jews." 
 
 * The apocalypse of the Antichrist. 
 
 * Whose end is destruction (Phil. iii. 19; John xvii. 12). 
 
 * A human Satan or adversary (Renan, p. 255). 
 
 ' STrepatpi/ievos . . . iri, perhaps " exceedingly exalteth himself against." 
 ! Dan. xi. 36, speaking of AntiochusEpiphanes. 
 
 ' Kueiirai . . . fls. A eonstructio praegnems. (See my Brief Greeh 
 Syntax, § 89.) Omit i>s e^Sv, x, A, B, D, &c. valv stronger than Upiv, and 
 could only be naturally understood of the Jewish Temple. 
 
 » " Tantum qui nunc tenet (teneat) donee de medio fiat" (Tert. Be'Besur. 
 Cam. 25). I have attempted to preserve the unfinished clauses {anakolutha) 
 of the original, which are full of meaning. The i naTix"" may, however, be 
 merely misplaced by hyperbaton. 
 
 '" Isa. xi. 4 ; Wisd. xi. 20, 21. A rabbinic expression. " Prima adventus 
 ipsins emicatio (Bengel). 
 
 " I so render Tols iiroWu/ie'you because it is the dative of "disadvantage." 
 rho is probably spurious, being omitted in «, A, B, D, F, G. 
 
 N N 
 
610 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 might be saved. And, because of this, God is sending '■ them an 
 energy of error, so that they should believe the lie ' that all may be judged 
 •who believed not the truth, but took pleasure in unrighteousness." * 
 
 Of this strange but unquestionably genuine passage, 
 which, is nevertheless so unlike anything else in St. Paul's 
 Epistles, I shall speak immediately. He proceeds to teU 
 them that ikeir case, thank God, was very different from 
 that of these doomed dupes of Antichrist, seeing that Grod 
 had chosen and called them from the beginning* to sancti- 
 fication and salvation and glory.* He exhorts them there- 
 fore, to stand fast, and hold the teaching which they had 
 received from his words and his genuine letter, and prays 
 that our Lord Jesus Qhrist and God our Father may 
 comfort them and stablish them in all goodness.^ 
 
 Beginning the practical section of the Epistle, he 
 asks their prayers that the Gospel may have free course 
 
 ' Leq., TT^iiTrei, H, A, B, D, F, G. The " strong delusion " of the E.V. is 
 a happy expression ; it is penal blindness, judicial infatuation, the dementa- 
 tion before doom. 
 
 " 1 Tim: iv. 1,2. 
 
 3 2 Thess. ii. 1 — 12. In the E.Y. there are the following five or six 
 obvious errors, which I have corrected : — Ver. 1, {nrkp riis irapuvcrias, " by the 
 coming ; " ver. 2, iirb toS vohs, " in mind ; " iveariiKc, " is at hand " (which is 
 not strong enough, and contradicts " Maranatha," i Kiptos iyybs) ; ver. 3, 
 71 Airoo-Too-io, "a falling away;" ver. 4, W irdvra, k. t. \., " above aR, Sie.," 
 instead of " against every one," though this is perhaps defensible — Sis @fhy, 
 " as God," is probably spurious, not being found in n. A, B, D ; ver. 5, f A.e7oi', 
 " I told ; " ver. 11, r^ ij/eiiSti, "a lie ; " ver. 12, KpiBaa-i, " be damned." There 
 are also minor inaccura<?ies. But while calling attention to these, let me not 
 be supposed to speak with any feeling but admiration and gratitude of our 
 English version. It needs the revision which it is receiving, but it is magni- 
 ficent with all its defects ; and while those defects are far fewer than might 
 have been reasonably expected, there is incomparable merit in its incessant 
 felicity and noble rhythm. , 
 
 * cm' apxrjs (Eph. i. 4). B, F, G have hrapxiiv, " as a firstfruit ; " but this 
 was not a fact (Acts rvi.). 
 
 ' eij irepmoiiia-iv Ulifs, "to the obtaining of gloryj" ef. 1 Thess. t. 9; 
 Heb. X. 39. 
 
 « 2 Thess. ii. 13—17. 
 
SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIAJSTS. 611 
 
 among others as among them, and that he may be de- 
 . livered from perverse and wicked men ; ^ and expressing 
 his trust in Grod, and his confidence in them, prays that 
 the Lord may guide their hearts into the love of Grod and 
 the patience of Christ.® That patience was lacking to 
 some of them who, he had been told, were walking dis- 
 orderly, not following the precepts he had given, or the 
 example he had set. The rule he had given was that a 
 man who would not work had no right to eat, and the 
 example he had set, as they well knew, had been one of 
 order, manly self-dependence, strenuous diligence, in that 
 he had voluntarily abandoned even the plain right of 
 maintenance at their hands.^ 
 
 He therefore commands and exhorts* in the name of 
 Christ those who were irregular, and whose sole business was 
 to be busybodies,^ to be quiet and diligent, and earn their 
 own living ; and if, after the receipt of this letter, any one 
 refused obedience to his advice, they were to mark that man 
 by avoiding his company that he might be ashamed ; not, 
 however, considering him as an enemy, but admonishing 
 ' him as a brother. As for the rest, let them not be weary 
 Igin fair-doing;* and he again concludes with a prayer that 
 
 1 An allusiou to Ms struggles with the Jews at Corinth. "Synagogas 
 Judaeorum fontes perseeutionum " (Tert. Scorp. 10). iroiros only in Lnke 
 xxiii. 41, and Acts xxriii.' 6. 
 
 = i.e., a patience like His patience. The " patient waiting for Christ," 
 of the E.T., though partially sanctioned by Chrysostom and Theophylact, can 
 hardly be tenable, and they prefer the meaning here given. 
 
 * These injunctions are more emphatic, authoritative, and precise 
 
 than those of the Krst Epistle; another sign that this followed it. 
 
 ira(>o77£'A.A.(», SO much stronger than iparS, occurs four times in this Epistle 
 
 (iii. 4, 6, 10, 12), and only elsewhere, of his Epistles, in 1 Thess. iv. 11 ; 
 
 . ITim. tI. 13; lOor. vii. 10; xi. 17. 
 
 » 2 Thess. iii. 11, ovk IpyaCo/idvovs liWci ■Kcpiepya^oiiivovs (see infra, p. 629, 
 " The Rhetoric of St. Paul "). 
 
 » Ka\oiroiovvris, " beautiful conduct;" not exactly i.yaBov, "well-doing" (of. 
 
 2 Cor. viii. 21). 
 
 N N 2 
 
612 THE LIFE AND ■WORK OP ST. PAUL, 
 
 the Lord of Peace Himself may give them peace per- 
 petually, and in every way. The Lord be with them 
 all!^ 
 
 And having dictated so far — probably to his faithful 
 Timothy — the Apostle himself takes the pen, for the use of 
 which his weak sight so little fitted him, and bending over 
 the papyrus, writes : — 
 
 " The salutation of me Paul with my own hand, which 
 autograph salutation is the proof of genuineness in every 
 Epistle.^ This is how I write. The Grace of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ be with you all." ^ 
 
 Valuable to us, and to all time, as are the practical 
 exhortations of this brief Epistle, the distinctive cause for 
 its being written was the desire to dispel delusions about 
 the instantaneous appearance of Christ, which prevented 
 the weak and excitable from a due performance of their 
 duties, and so tended to diminish that respect for them 
 among the heathen which the blamelessness of the early 
 Christians was well calculated to inspire. To the Thes- 
 salonians the paragraph on this subject would have had 
 the profoundest interest. To ns it is less immediately 
 profitable, because no one has yet discovered, or ever wiU 
 discover, what was St. Paul's precise meaning ; or, in 
 other words, because neither in his time, nor since, have 
 any events as yet occurred which Christians have unani- 
 
 1 iii. 12—16. 
 
 2 iii. 17, 18. This emphatic autograph signature, not necessary in the 
 first letter, had been rendered necessary since that letter was written by the 
 credence given to the unauthorised communication alluded to in ii. 2. The 
 " every Epistle " shows that St. Paul meant henceforth to write to Churches 
 not unfreqnently. Of course, Epistles sent by accredited messengers {e.g., 
 2 Cor. and Phil.) would not need authentication. The ordinary conclusion of 
 letters was i^fxncree, " farewell." On this authenticating signature see Cic. aA 
 Att. viii. 1 ; Suet. Tib. 21, 32. 
 
 3 The " aU" is only found in 2 Cor., Eom., and Tit. (cf. Eph. vi. 24 and 
 Heb. xiii. 25), but was peculiarly impressive here, because his last words have 
 ibeen mainly those of censure. 
 
THE MAN OF Sm. 613 
 
 mously been able to regard as fulfilling the conditions 
 wbicb be lays down. "We need not, however, be dis- 
 tressed if this passage must be ranked with tbe very few 
 others in the New Testament which must remain to us in 
 the condition of insoluble enigmas. It was most impor- 
 tant for the Thessalonians to know that they did not need 
 to get up every morning with the awe-inspiring expecta- 
 tion that the sun might be darkened before it set, and the 
 air shattered by the archangelic trumpet, and all earthly 
 interests smitten into iadistinguishable ruin. So far St. 
 Paul's assurance was perfectly distinct. Nor, indeed, is 
 there any want of clearness in his language. The diffi- 
 culties of the passage arise exclusively from our inability 
 to explain it by subsequent events. But these one or two 
 obscure passages in no wise afiect the value of St. Paul's 
 writings .■■■ Since his one object is always edification, we 
 may be sure that subjects which are with him purely inci- 
 dental, which are obscurely hinted at, or only partially 
 worked out, and to which he scarcely ever afterwards recurs, 
 are non-essential parts of the central truths, to the dissemi- 
 nation of which he devoted his life. To the Messianic 
 surroundings of a Second personal Advent he barely again 
 alludes. He dwells ijaore and more on the mystic oneness 
 with Christ, less and less on His personal return. » He 
 speaks repeatedly of the indwelling presence of Christ, 
 and the believer's incorporation with Him, and hardly at 
 all of that visible meeting in the air which at this epoch 
 was most prominent in his thoughts.*^ 
 
 We may assume it as a canon of ordinary criticism that 
 a writer intends to be understood,^ and, as a rule, so writes 
 
 * See Reuss, Thiol. Chrit. n., p. 10. 
 
 » 1 Cor. viii. 6 j Gal. iii. 28; Bph. iv, 6, &e. 
 
 * " No man writes unintelligibly on purpose " (Palsy, Hor. Paulinae). He 
 acutely points out how the very obscurity of this passage furnishes one strong 
 
614 THE LIFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 as to be actually understood by those whom be addresses. 
 We have no difficulty in seeing tbat wbat St. Paul bere 
 says to the Tbessalonians is tbat Cbrist's return, bowever 
 near, was not so instantaneous as tbey tbougbt, because, 
 before it could occur, there must come "the apostasy," 
 which will find its personal and final development in the 
 apocalypse of " the man of sin " — a human Satan who 
 thrust himself into the temple of God and into rivalry 
 with Him. Then, with an air of mystery and secrecy 
 which reminds us of the Book of Daniel and the Eevela- 
 tion of St. John,^ and with a certain involved embarrass- 
 ment of language, he reminds them of his repeated oral 
 teachings about something, and some person,^ whose power 
 must first be removed before this mystery of iniquity could 
 achieve its personal and final development. They knew, 
 he says, what was " the check" to the full development of 
 this opposing iniquity, which was already working, and 
 would work, until the removal of " the checker." After 
 that removal, with power and lying portents winning the 
 adherence of those who were doomed to penal delusion, 
 the Lawless One should be manifested in a power which 
 the breath and brightness of Christ's Presence should 
 utterly annihilate. Between the saved, therefore, and the 
 Second Advent there lay two events — " the removal of the 
 restrainer," and the appearance of the Lawless One. The 
 
 argument for the genviinenesa of the Epistle, which I note by way of curiosity 
 that HUgenfeld regards as " a little Pauline Apocalypse of the last year of 
 Trajan" {Einleit 642). 
 
 ' These secrets and dim allusions (cf . Dan. xii. 10) current among the early 
 Christians (like the greeting and symbol 'x^"*). sai the riddles of the number 
 of the beast (666^Dp \n, Nero CsBsar : cf . Jos. B. J. vi. 5, 1 ; Suet. Ner. 40, 
 Vesp. 4 ; Tac. if. v. 13) in Eev. xiii. 18, and in the Sibylline books, ' were 
 necessitated by the dangers which surrounded them on every side. The 
 years which elapsed between the Epistle and the Apocalypse had made 
 the views of the Christians as to Antichrist much more definite (Benan 
 L'Antechrist, p. 157, &c.). 
 
 ' 2 Thess. ii. 6, 7, 6 KOTe'x»i'— rb Karixov, 
 
WHY OBSCURELY EXPRESSED. 615 
 
 destruction of iloLe lattei^ would be simultaneous with, the 
 event which they had so often been bidden to await with 
 longing expectation. 
 
 This is what St. Paul plainly says ; but how is it to be 
 explained ? and why is it so enigmatically expressed ? 
 
 The second question is easily answered. It is enigma- 
 tically expressed for two reasons — first, because all that is 
 enigmatical in it for us had been orally explained to the 
 Thessalonians, who would therefore clearly understand it ; 
 and secondly, because there was some obvious danger in 
 committing it to writing. This is in itself a sufficient 
 proof that he is referring to the Eoman Empire and 
 Emperor. The tone of St. Paul is exactly the same as 
 that of Josephus, when he explains the prophecy of 
 Daniel. AU Jews regarded the Fourth Empire as the 
 Eoman ; but when Josephus comes to the stone which is 
 to dash the image to pieces, he stops short, and says 
 that "he does not think proper to explain it,"^ — for the 
 obvious reason that it would have been politically dan- 
 gerous for him to do so. 
 
 N^ow this reason for reticence at once does away with 
 the conjecture that "the check," or "the checker," was 
 some distant power or person which did not for centuries 
 come on the horizon, even if we could otherwise adopt 
 the notion that St. Paul was uttering some far-off 
 vaticination of events which, though they might find their 
 fulfilment in distant centuries, could have no meaning for 
 the Thessalonians to whom he wrote. When a few Eoman 
 Catholic commentators say that the Eeformation was the 
 Apostasy; and Luther the Man of Sin, and the German 
 Empire " the check;" or when a mass of Protestant writers 
 • unhesitatingly identify the Pope with the Man of Sin— one 
 
 « See the instructive passage, Jos. Antt. x. 10, § 4. 
 
616 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL. 
 
 can only ask whether, apart from traditional exegesis, they 
 have really brought themselves to hold such a view ? If, 
 as we have seen, St. Paul undoubtedly held that the day 
 of the Lord was at hand, though not immediate, do they 
 really suppose, on the one hand, that St. Paul had any 
 conception of Luther? or, on the other, that the main 
 development of lawlessness, the main human representative 
 of the power of Satan, is the succession of the Popes? 
 Can any sane man of competent education seriously argue 
 that it is the Papacy which pre-eminently arrays itself in 
 superiority to, and antagonism against, every one who is 
 called Grod, or every object of worship ? ^ that its essential 
 characteristic marks are lawlessness, lying wonders, and 
 blasphemous self-exaltation? or that the annihilation, of 
 the Papacy — which has long been so physically and politi- 
 cally weak — " by the breath of His mouth and the bright- 
 ness of His coming," is to be one main result of Christ's 
 return ? Again, do they suppose that St. Paul had, during 
 his first visit, repeatedly revealed anything analogous to 
 the development of the Papacy — an event which, in their 
 sense of the word, can only be regarded as having taken 
 place many centuries afterwards — to the Thessalonians 
 who believed that the coming of Christ might take place 
 on any day, and who required two epistles to undeceive 
 them in the notion? If these suppositions do not sink 
 under the weight of their own intrinsic unreasonableness 
 let them in the name of calm sense and Christian charity 
 be consigned henceforth to the vast limbo of hypotheses 
 
 ' St. Paul's " Lawless One," and " Man of Sin," who is to be destroyed by 
 the advent of Christ must have some chronological analogy to St. John's Anti- 
 christ. Now St. John's Antichrist in the Epistles is mainly Gnostic heresy 
 (" omnis haereticus Antichristus " — Luther), and the denial that Jesns Christ 
 is come in the flesh (1 John iv. 3). In the Apocalypse it is Nero. In the 
 Old Testament Antichrist is Antiochus Epiphanes. What has this to do 
 either with the Papacy or with the Reformation P 
 
RBMAUK OF ST. ATJGUSTIBTB. 617 
 
 whicli time, by accumulated proofs, lias sliown to be 
 utterly untenable.^ 
 
 To tbat vast limbo of exploded exegesis — tbe vastest 
 and tbe dreariest tbat buman imagination bas con- 
 ceived — I bave no intention of adding a fresb conjecture. 
 Tbat " tbe cbeck " was tbe Eoman Empire, and " tbe 
 cbecker " tbe Eoman Emperor, may be regarded as 
 reasonably certain ; beyond tbis, all is uncertain con- 
 jecture. In tbe Excursus I sball merely mention, in the 
 briefest possible manner, as altogether doubtful, and most 
 of tbem as utterly valueless, tbe attempts bitberto made to 
 furnisb a definite explanation of tbe expressions used ; and 
 sball tben content myself witb pointing out, no less briefly, 
 tbe regions in wbicb we must look for illustrations to tbrow 
 sucb ligbt as is possible on tbe meaning of St. Paul.^ As 
 to tbe precise details, considering tbe utter want of 
 unanimity among Christian interpi'eters, I am content to 
 say, with St. Augustine, " I confess that I am entirely 
 ignorant what the Apostle meant." 
 
 * If it be urged that this was the yiew of Jewell and Hooker, Andrewes 
 and Sanderson, Sue., the answer is that the knowledge of the Church is not 
 Stationary or stereotyped. The Spirit of God is with her, and is ever leading 
 her to wider and fuller knowledge of the truth. Had those great men been 
 living now, they too would have enlarged many of their views ia accordance 
 with the advance now made in the interpretation of the Scripture. Few 
 can have less sympathy than I have with the distinctive specialities of the 
 Church of Rome ; but in spite of what we hold to be her many and most 
 serious errors she is, by the free acknowledgment of our own formulariei, 
 a Church, and a Christian Church, and has been pre-eminently a mother of 
 saints, and many of her Popes have been good, and noble, and holy men, and 
 vast benefactors of the world, and splendid maintamers of the Faith of Christ ; 
 and I refuse to regard them as " sons of perdition," or representatives of 
 blasphemy and lawlessness, or to consider the destruction of their line with 
 everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord as the one thing to be 
 looked forward to with joy at the coming of Him who we believe will welcome 
 many of them, and myriads of those who accept their rule, into the blessed 
 company of His redeemed. 
 
 2 See infra. Excursus I., vol. ii., " The Man of Sin." For the symbols em- 
 ployed, see Ezek. xxxviii. 16, 17 j Dan. vii. 10, 11, 23—26; xi. 31, 36. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 EXCUESUS I. (p. 26). 
 The Style op St, Paul as Illustrative op his Character. 
 
 The reader may be interested to see collected a very few of the varying 
 estimates of the style of the great Apostle : — 
 
 LoNGiNUS [Paul as master of the dogmatic style] — 
 
 Kopayls S' ^trrta \6yov TravThs kolL (ppovfffjLaros 
 'EWriviKoS Ajj/iosfleVrjs K.r-K. irpis rivTois TiauTuis i Tapffels 
 ivriva koI TrpSir^y (prifu irpoiffrdfieyov S6yiiaTOs i,yvjroSelKTov. 
 
 St. Chrtsostom [Patd a champion, and his Epistles a •waU of 
 adamant round the- Church] — 
 
 &a"7rep yae reixos ^^ aSdfiaVTOs KaraffKevaffB^y o^qj tAs 
 TrayraxoS Trjs o'lKov/ifyiis ixxKiiiirlas Tck roirov Teixl(fi ypd/i/iara' Ka) ' 
 KdBairip ris ipitrrebs yeyyaiSraTOS eiTTriKe k, t. \. (quoting 2 Cor. z. 6). 
 
 De Sacerdotio, 1, iv. 7. 
 
 St. Jerome [Paul's, vords thunders]. — "Paulimi proferam quem 
 quotiescunque lego, video mihi non verba audvre sed tomirtM . . . 
 Videntur quidem verba simplicis et quasi ianoCentis hominis et rusti- 
 cani et qui nee facere nee decHnare noverit insidias, sed quocunqtce 
 respexeris fulrnma swnt. Haeret in causd ; capit omne quod tetigerit ; 
 tergum vertit ut superet ; fugam simulat ut occidat " {Ep. ad Pamvmaoh. 
 68, 13). 
 
 Dante — 
 
 " Vidi due vecchi in abito dispaii 
 
 Ma pari in atto, ognuno onesto e soda 
 L' un ' si monstrava alcun de famigliari 
 Di quel sommo Ippocrate, che natura 
 AgU animali fe' ch' eUa ha piu cari. 
 Monstrava 1' altro * la contraria cura 
 
 ■ Bti Luke, " the ^lovaA. physieim" ^ St. FanL 
 
620 APPENDIX. 
 
 Con una spada lucida ed acuta ^ 
 Tal che di qua dal no mi fe' pattra. 
 
 184. 
 
 Andowi poi lo vas ef elezione ' 
 Per recamo conforto a quella Fede 
 Ch' 6 principio alia via di salyazione. 
 
 Inferno, ii. 28. 
 
 LuTHEH. — " Paulus meras flammas loquitur tamque vehementer 
 ardet ut incipiat etiam quasi Angelis maledicere " (in Gal. L). 
 
 " In S. Paulo und Jokanne ist eine sonderUclie fiirtreffliclie 
 Gewissheit und Pleroplioria; sie reden davon als sey es schon allbereit 
 vor Augen " (Tischreden, iv. 399 ; ed. Forstemann). 
 
 Bishop Herbert de Losinga. — "Certe, fratres, verba Pauli, non 
 verba tominis, sed aetieris tonitrua esse videntur " {Life and Sermons, 
 ii 309). 
 
 Erasmus [Paul's style like a thunderstorm]. — "Non est oujusvis 
 homuiis Paulinum pectus effiiigere; tonat, fulgurat, meras flammas 
 loquitur Paulus " (ad Col. iv. 1 6). 
 
 And again [Paid's rhetorical skill like the course of a stream}^ 
 " Sudatur ab eruditissimis viris in explicandis poetarum ac rhetorum 
 consUiis, at in hoc rhetore longe plus sudoris est ut deprehendas quid agat, 
 quo tendat, quid velit; adeo stropharum plenus est undique, absit 
 invidia verbis. Tanta vafrities est, non credas eundem hominem loqui. 
 Nunc ut turbidus quidam fons sensim ebuUit, mox torrentis in morem 
 ingenti fragore devolvitur, multa obiter secum rapiens, nunc placide 
 leniterque fluit, nunc late velut in lacum diffusus exspatiatur. Eursum 
 alicubi se condit ac diverse loco subitus emicat ; cum visum est miris 
 maeaiidris nunc has nunc illas lambit ripas, aliquoties procul digressus, 
 reciprocate flexu in sese redit " (Id. Paraph- Dedicat.). 
 
 Casauboit. — " lUe solus ex omnibus scriptoribus non mihi videtur 
 digitis, calamo, et atramento scripsisse, verum ipso corde, ipso affectu, 
 et denudat^ visceribus" (Adversaria, ap. Wolf., p. 135). 
 
 On the other hand, Calvin, after aUudiag to his anakolutha, 
 ellipses, &c., adds — " Quae sunt quidem orationis vitia sed quibus nihil 
 majestati decedit caelestis sapientise quae nobis per apostolum traditur. 
 Quin potius singulari Dei providentia factum est, ut svi contemptibili 
 verhorvm, humilitate altissima haec mysteria nobis traderentur, ut 
 
 •The Epistles. 
 
 * (TKevos 4K\oyris (Acts ix, 15}. For other allusions see Farad, zviii. 131, zzi. 119. 
 
THE STYLE OP ST. PATJL. 621 
 
 non humanae eloquentiae potentia, sed solei, spiritus efficacia niteretur 
 nostra fides." 
 
 Hemsterhusius [Character of St.Paiil's flo-wersof speech]. — "Eloquen- 
 tia ejus non in flosculis verborum et rationis calamistratae pigmentis , . . 
 Bed indolis excelsae notis et ponders rerum. ... In ejus epistolis nuUae 
 non exstant oratorum figurae, non illae quidem e rhetorum loculis et myro- 
 theciis depromptae . . . Verum afiectus animi coelesti ardore inflam- 
 matus haec scriptionis lumina sponte sub manum praevenientia 
 pergignebat." ^ 
 
 Reuss. — " Ordinairement il debute par des phrases on ne pent plus 
 embarrass^es. . . . Mais dfes qu'il a trouv6 la bonne veine, combien son 
 style n'est il pas le fidfele miroir de son individuality ! II est ni correct, 
 ni classique ; il lui manque la cadence sonore. Des antitheses paradox- 
 ales, des gradations pleines d'effet, des questions pressantes, des ex- 
 clamations passionn^es, des ironies qui terrassent 1' opposition, une vivacity, 
 enfin, qui ne permet aucun repos au lecteur, tout cela alterne aveo des 
 gpanchements naifs et touohants, qui achfevent de gagner le coeur " 
 (Thiol. Ghret. ii. 11). , 
 
 R. H. HuTTOiT. — " Who that has studied St. Paul at all has not 
 noticed the bold soaring dialectic -vrith which he rises from the forms of our 
 finite and earthly thought to the infinite and the spiritual life embodied in 
 them. What ease and swiftness and power of wing in this indignant 
 upward flight from the petty conflicts of the Corinthian Church ; the 
 upward flight which does not cease till the poor subjects of contention, 
 though he himself was one of them, seem lost like grains of sand beneath 
 the bending sky ! . . . The all but reckless prodigality of nature which 
 made St. Paul now and then use a stratagem, and now and then launch a 
 thunderbolt, in the fervour of his preaching, is the spring of all his finest 
 touches, as when he wishes himself accursed from Christ if it could save 
 his Jewish brethren " {Essays, 321 — 330). 
 
 The Author of " Saul of Tarsus."—" If he staggers under the gi-eat- 
 ness of his subject, if he is distracted by the infinity of the interests, 
 which he treats, if every word which rises to his lips suggests a host of 
 profound and large associations, if the care of all the Churches, gives 
 aUthe facts a varied but a real significance. . , Human speech must 
 be blamed for its poverty ; human experience, which has developed 
 speech, for its narrowness. His life was ever in his hand, his heart 
 was on his lips. The heart was often too great for the speech " (p. 229). 
 
 Maetinbau.— " What can be mOre free and buoyant, with all their 
 rariety, than his writings 1 Bnlliant, broken, impetuous as the moun- 
 * See next Excursus. 
 
622 APPENDIX. 
 
 tain torrent freshly filled, never smooth and calm bnt on the eve of some 
 bold leap, never vehement but to fill some receptacle of clearest peace, 
 they present everywhere the image of a vigorous joy. Beneath the forms 
 of 'their theosophic reasonings, and their hints of deep philosophy, there 
 may be heard a secret lyric strain of glorious praise, bursting at times 
 into open utterance, and asking others to join the chorus. . ' . . His 
 life -was a battle from which in intervals of :the good fight, his words 
 arose as the song of victory " {Hours of Thought, p. 156). 
 
 Peof. Jowett speaks of him as teaching his great doctrines " in 
 broken words and hesitating form of speech, with no beauly or comeliness 
 of style." 
 
 Bauk, after pointing out how the style is filled to overflowing 
 with the forms and elements of thought, and that thoughts not only 
 follow hard on thoughts, but that those thoughts succeed each other as 
 determinations and momenta of some one conception that is greater than 
 all of them, so that the thought unfolds itself, as it were, out of its own 
 depths, and determines itself by taking up its own momenta, adds : — 
 " Hence the peculiar stamp of the Apostle's language : it is distinguished 
 on the one hand for precision and compression ; on the other hand it is 
 marked by a harshness and roughness which suggests that the thought 
 is far too weighty for the language, and can scarcely find fit foi-m for 
 the superabundant matter it would fairly express" (Faul. iL 281). 
 
 Hatjsrath. — "Es est schwer diese Individualitat zu charakterisiren 
 in der sich Christliche Liebesfiille, rabbinischer Scharfsinn, und antike 
 Willenskraft so wunderbar mischen. Wie wogt, strSmt, drangt AUes 
 in Seinen Briefen. Welch ein Wechsel gluhender Ergusse und spitzer 
 Beweisfiihrungen ! Hier ilberwindet er das Heidenthum mit der 
 Liebesfiille Jesu. Dort knebelt er das Judenthum, mit dessen 
 Eigenen Giirtel rabbinischer Scriftbeiwise. Am wenigsten hat die 
 Phantasie Antheil an Seiner Innem Welt. Die Sprache ist oft hart und 
 herb weil nur die Gedanke sie -geboren hat. Die BUder die er braucht 
 sind meistens farblos. . . Das est die Schranke seines Geisteslebens. 
 Darin blieb er stets ein Rabbi " (Der Apostel Pauhis, 502). 
 
 E.ENAN [Paul's style like a conversation]. — " Le style epistolaire de 
 Paul est le plus personnel qu'il y ait jamais eu ; la langue y est si j'ose le 
 dire, broyle ; pas une phrase suivie. II est impossible de violer plus 
 audacieusement, je ne dis pas le g^nie de la langue grecque, mais la 
 logique du langage humain; on dirait une rapide conversation stiSno- 
 graphi^e et reproduite sans corrections. . . . Un mot I'obsMe. . . . 
 Ce n'est pas de la stfirilitl ; o'est de la contention de I'esprit et une 
 complete insouciance de la correction du style " {St. Paul, p. 232). 
 
THE STYLE OP ST, PAUL. 623 
 
 '\ 
 
 The less favourable of the above estimates shelter themselves in part 
 under the assertion that St. Patd recognised the popular and vulgar 
 character of his own style. But such passages as 2 Cor. xi. 6 do not bear 
 out these remarks. His language was not indeed of a class which would 
 have gained applause from pedantic purists and Atticising professors ; it 
 bears about the same relation to the Greek of Plato as the Latin of 
 Milton does to that of Cicero. But this fact constitutes its very life. 
 It is a style far too vivid, far too swayed and penetrated by personal 
 emotion, to have admitted of being polished into conformity with the 
 artificial standards and accuracies of the schools. It more closely 
 resembles the style of Thucydides than that of any other great writer of 
 antiquity.^ That many defects in it can be pointed out is certain ; but 
 then in one important point of view these defects are better than any 
 beauties, because they are due to Paul's individuality. In whole sec- 
 tions of his Epistle his very want of style is his style. His style, like 
 that of every great man, has the defects of its qualities. " Le style," 
 said Buffon, not (as he is usually quoted) c'est Vlwmrne, but " c'est de 
 I'homme."^ He has, as every great writer has, " le style de sa pens€e :" 
 he has the style of genius, if he has not the genius of style." 
 
 After quoting such remarkable and varied testimonies, it is needless 
 for me to write an essay on the Apostle's style. That he could when 
 he chose wield a style of remarkable finish and eloquence without 
 diminishing his natural intensity, is proved by the incessant assonances 
 and balances of clauses and expressions (parechesis, parisosis, paro- 
 moiosis) in such passages as 2 Cor. vi. 3 — 11. And yet such is his 
 noble carelessness of outward graces of style, and his' complete subordi- 
 nation of mere elegance of expression to the purpose of expressing his 
 exact thought, that he never shrinks, even in his grandest outbursts of 
 rhythmic eloquence, from the use of a word, however colloquial, which 
 expresses his exact shade of meaning.* 
 
 AU that has been written of the peculiarities of St. Paul's style may, 
 
 1 See some good remarks of Baur: — "Such passages as 1 Cor. iv. 12, 13; 
 vii. 29—31 ; 2 Cor. vi. 9, 10, have the true ring of Thucydides, not only in expres- 
 sion, hut in the style of the thought. The genuine dialectic- spirit appears in hoth, 
 
 in the love of antithesis and contrast, rising not unfrequentli/ to paradox With 
 
 hoth these men the ties of national particularism give way before the generalising 
 tendency of their thought, and cosmopolitanism takes the place of nationalism" 
 {Faul. ii. 281). He refers to Bauer's PUlologia Thucydideo-Faulina, 1773, which 1 
 have not seen. 
 
 " D'Alemhert, (Euvrea vi. 13. The " de " in Bufion's phrase occurs in later 
 editions. 
 
 * Grrimm, Correap., 1788. 
 
 * B^., ^aiilaa and trepireptitriu in 1 Cor. xiii. 3, 4 ; KartvipKnira, 2 Cor. xL 8; 
 iiK0K6'^vrai, Gal. v. 12. 
 
624 APPENDIX. 
 
 I think, be summed up in two words — Intense Individuality. His 
 style is himself. His natural temperament, and the circumstances 
 under which that temperament found its daily sphere of action ; hia 
 training, both Judaic and Hellenistic ; his conversion and sanctification, 
 permeating his whole life and thoughts — these united make up the 
 Paul we know. And each of these has exercised a marked influence on 
 his style. 
 
 1. The absorption in the one thought before him, which makes him 
 state without any qualification truths which, taken in the whole extent 
 of his words, seem mutually irreconcilable ; the dramatic, rapid, over- 
 whelming series of questions, which show, that in hia controversial 
 passages he is always mentally face to face with an 6bjection;' the 
 centrifugal force of mental activity, which drives him into incessant 
 digressions and goings off at a word, due to his vivid power of realisation ; 
 the centripetal force of imagination, which keeps all these digressions 
 under the control of one dominant thought;' the grand cotifusions of 
 metaphor;' the, vehemence which makes him love the most emphatic 
 compounds ; * the irony ' and sarcasm ; ' the chivalrously delicate cour- 
 tesy ; ' the overflowing sympathy with the Jew, the Pagan, the bar- 
 barian — with saint and sinner, king and slave, man and woman, young 
 and old ; ' the passion, which now makes his voice ring with indigna- 
 tion ' and now break with sobs ;'•' the accumulation and variation of 
 words, from a desire to set forth the truths which he is proclaiming in 
 every possible light ; " the emotional emphasis and personal references 
 of his style ; '^ the depressed humility passing into boundless exulta- 
 tion ;" — all these are due to his natv/ral tempera/merit, and the atmosphere 
 of controversy and opposition on the one hand, and deep affection on the 
 other, in which he worked. 
 
 2. The rhetorical figures, play of words, assonances, oxymora, anti- 
 theses, of his style, which are fully examined in the next Excursus ; the 
 
 ^ Rom. X. ; 2 Cor. vi., xi., and^ passim. 
 
 » 2 Cor. ii. 14—16 ; xii. 1—3, 12—16 ; Eph, iv. 8— H ; T. 12—16 ; and Paley, 
 Mor. Faulinae, vi. 3. 
 
 3 2 Cor. iii. 1 ; Col. ii. 6. 
 
 ' Especially compounds in iv\p. Supra, p. 606 
 
 " 1 Cor. iv. 8 ; 2 Cor. xi. 16 — 20, and passim. 
 
 ' Phil. iii. 2 ; Gal. iv. 17 ; v. 12, and passim. 
 
 ' 1 Cor. i. — iii. ; Philem. and Phil, passim ; Acts zzvL 29, In, 
 
 " Eom. i. iv., and all the Epistles .pasiim. 
 
 ' Galalians, Corinthians, Phil., 2 Tim.., passim, 
 
 ^^ All the Epistles passim. 
 
 '' All the Epistles passim. 
 
 '^ All the Epistles passim. 
 
 " 2 Cor. ii. U ; Eom. vii. 26, &o. 
 
RHETOEIO OF ST. PAUL. 625 
 
 constant ■widening of Tiis horizon ; ' the traceable influence of cities, and 
 even of personal companions, upon his vocabulary;' the references to 
 Hellenic life j » the method of quoting Scripture j the Eabbinic style of 
 exegesis, which have been already examined * — these are due to his 
 training at Tarsus and Jerusalem, his life at Corinth, Ephesus, and 
 Rome. 
 
 ^. The daring faith -which never dreads a difficulty; » the un- 
 solved antinomies, which, though unsolved, do not trouble him ; ' " the 
 bold soaring dialectics with which he rises from the forms of one finite 
 and earthly thought to the infinite and spiritual life embodied in 
 them ; " the " language of ecstasy," which was to him, as he meant it 
 to be to his converts, the language of the work-day world ; that " trans- 
 cendental-absurd," as it seems to the world, whidh was the very life 
 both of his conscience and intfeUect, and made him what he was ; the 
 way in which, as with one powerful sweep of the wing, he passes from 
 the pettiest earthly contentions to the spiritual and the infinite ; the 
 •' shrinking infirmity and self-contempt, hidden in a sort of aureole of 
 revelation, abundant beyond measure " ' — ^this was due to the fact that 
 his citizenship was in heaven, his life hid with Christ in God. 
 
 EXCURSUS II. (p. 26). 
 
 Rhetoric of St. Paul. 
 
 M. Renan, in describing the Greek of St. Paul as Hellenistic Greek: 
 charged with Hebraisms and Syriacisms which would ^ be scarcely 
 intelUgible to a cultivated reader of that period, says that if the Apostle • 
 had ever received even elementary lessons in grammar or rhetoric at 
 Tarsus, it is inconceivable that he would have written in the biaarre, 
 iacorrect, and non-Hellenic style of his letters. 
 
 Now, I do not think that St Paul would have made abou* his own 
 
 1 "Eo (ordine EpiBtolarvuu ohronologioo) constituto . . . inorementiiin.AEPBtoU- 
 Bpirituale) cognoscitur" (Bengal, ad £<m. i. 1). 
 » V. aupra, pp. 481, 623. 
 
 • See Excursus III. 
 
 ♦ See Excursus IV. 
 
 •. See Ep. to fiomans, paaaim. 
 
 « See vol. ii., Excursus, " The Antinomies of St. Paul." . „ ^^ , „^ 
 
 ' See 2 Cor. x.-xiii. pcuaim, and some exceUent remarks -mHottoa b Sitayi,,i. 
 
 826— 330. 
 
 O 
 
626 APPENDIX. 
 
 knowledge of Greek the same remarks as Josephua does, who tells ua 
 that he had taken great pains to master the learning of the Greeks and 
 the elements of the Greek language. St. Paul had picked up Greek 
 quite naturally in a Greek city, and I think that I have decisively 
 proved that he could not have possessed more than a partial and super- 
 ficial acquaintance with Greek literature. But I have little doubt that 
 he, like Josephus, would have said that he had so long accustomed him- 
 seK to speak Syriac that he could not pronounce Greek with suflBcient 
 exactness, and that the Jews did not encourage the careful endeavour 
 to obtain a polished Greek style, which they looked on as an accom- 
 plishment of slaves and freedmen.' Yet, after reading the subjoined 
 list of specimens from the syntaayis omata of St. Paul, few, I think, 
 will be able to resist the conviction that he had attended, while at 
 Tarsus, some elementary class of Greek rhetoric. I will here content 
 myself with brief references ; if the reader should feel interested in the 
 subject, I have gone further into it in the Expositor for 1879. 
 
 Figures (<rx^M"To) are divided by Greek and Latin rhetoricians into 
 Figures of Language {figwrae verhorum, elocutionis, Ke^eas), and Figures 
 of Thought (sententiae, Siavoias). They drew this distinction between 
 them — that figures of language disappear, for the most part, when the 
 words and their order are changed; whereas figures of thought still 
 survive.^ The distinction is superficial and unsatisfactory, and it would 
 perhaps be more to the point to divide figures into :^-L Those of colov/r, 
 dependent on the imagination ; as metaphor, simile, allegory, personifi- 
 cations, metonyms, catachresis, ifec. 2. Those of form, ranging over an 
 immense field, from the natural expression of passions, such as irony, 
 aposiopesis, erotesis, &c., down to mere elegancies of verbal ornament, and 
 variations of style (such as zeugma, &c.) or of order (such as chiasmos, 
 hysteron-proteron, <fec.). 3. Those oi sound, dependent on analogies of 
 words, resemblance of sounds, unconscious associations of ideas, &c., such 
 as alliteration, parisosis, paromoiosis, parechesis, paronomasia, oxymoron, 
 plays on names, &c. 
 
 1. On figures of Golowr I have already touched.' As specimens of 
 the two other classes in St. Paul's Epistles we may take the following— 
 referring to my Brief Greek Syntax, or to other books, for an explanation 
 of the technical terms : — 
 
 2. Figures of Form. 
 
 Chiasmus — a crosswise arrangement of words or clauses, as in 
 
 ' Sob. Antt. xx. 11, § 2. 
 
 ' So Aquila, Eutilius, &o., followinf? Cic. Jk Orat. 3. See Voss, Initt. Orat. 
 Y. 1 ; Glass, iPhilologia Sacra, p. 963, &c. 
 • Sv^ra, d., j>p. 17^11. 
 
EHBTOmO OF ST. PAUL. 627 
 
 Rom. iL 6, 10. (This figure is much more common in the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews.) A good instance is — 
 
 1 Cor. iiL 17, d ns rhv vcCbv rov 0eoB ^Belpet, ipBepei airhy i @e6s. 
 
 Ev/plwnmm,. 
 
 1 Cor. V. 1, 2, ?xe(i' . . . i rb ifr^ov TOVTO irotiiffas, 
 
 2 Cor. vii. 11, iy t^ irpiy/ian. 
 
 1 Ttess. iv. 6, supra, p. 589, 
 Litotes. 
 
 !BiOJn. i. 28, iroieiv r& nil KaBfiKovra. 
 
 Eph. V. 4, t4 o6k i,vl\Kovra. 
 
 1 Cor. xL 22, itraiv4irto hfias 4v To^ep; oitK iiraivSi, 
 
 PhUem. 18, el S^ n fiSUritre <re tj i^el\et. 
 
 Pnilem. 11, t6v Tori crot ixpriiTTOV. 
 
 Meiosis.^ Rom. iii. 9, oi irdvTas (comp. 1 Cor. xvi. 12). 
 
 1 Cor. L 29, Sttus fi^ Kavxfjo'Ti'^aL ira<ra cap^. 
 
 Rom. UL 20, i^ tpyuv v6fjuiv ob 5tKai(o6'ltffeTai iruffa ffdp^. 
 
 Antithesis, Pa/risosis, Paromoioais,' Paradox, Alliteration, Erotesis, 
 Epexergasia — all exhibited in such passages of deep emotion as 2 Cor. 
 vi, 3—16; xi 22—28; 1 Cor. ir. 8—11. 
 
 Epanaphora. 
 
 Phil. iv. 8, ira . . . Sffa , , . K. r. \. et rts, K, T. A. 
 
 Phil. ii. 1, ti-Tis . . . rfTj . . . K.T.K. 
 
 2 Cor. vii. 11, iWh .... iWli , , , k, r, \, 
 
 ,'[ Aposiopesis. 
 
 2 Thess. ii, vide supra, p. 609. 
 
 Propa/taitesis, Protherapeia, Captatio, Benevolentiae, &c. 
 
 The Thanksgiving at the beginning of every Epistle except the 
 
 « Galatians." 
 Rom. ix. 1 — 5. ^ 
 
 Acts xxiv. 10 (before Felix), and xxvi 2, 3, before Agrippa. 
 
 Ptwaleipsis (praeferita). f 
 
 Philem. 19, fi/o/t^ A^oj iroi. ' 
 
 1 Thess. iv. 9, ob xpe^o" ^Xe^e bfuy ypifeffBai (cf. V. 1 j 2 Cor. ix. 1). 
 
 Intentional Anakoluthon. 
 
 Gal. ii 6, i,ir}> 5i Tuv SoKoivrav ehal ti . . . 
 
 2 Thess. ii. 3, Sn liiv it'll ^Bv ^ ima-rcuria itparov , , . 
 2 Thess. ii 7, ii6yov i Karexay &pTi . . ■ 
 
 > These usages are, however, idiomatic (Winer, § 26). 
 ' Bee Arist. £het. iii. 9, 9. 
 
 o o 2 
 
628 APPENDIX. 
 
 (The Anakolutha of mere inadvertence, due to the eager rapidity of 
 thouglit, are incessant in St. Paul, as in Eom, ii 17 — 21 ; xvL 25 — 27, 
 (kc. &c.) 
 Climax. 
 
 Eom. V. 3—5. 
 
 Eom. viii. 29, 30. 
 
 Eom. X. 14, 15, &c. 
 
 Xeugma. 
 
 1 Cor. iii. 2, yciAo i/ias iv6Tiaa Kol ob iSpu/ia, 
 
 1 Tim. iv. 3, KaXvdvray ya/ieiy, iirexsffffoi fipaiidrmr. 
 
 Oxymoron. 
 
 2 Cor. vi." 9, eavuTovfievoi Kol iSob iajnei/ (being slain, yet behold 
 
 we live). 
 1 Tim. V. 6, fiSiro riivriKev (living she is dead). 
 Eom. L 20, rh. a6paTc atiToS . . . KnSoparai (His iinseen things are 
 
 clearly seen). 
 Eom. xii. 11, rp ffirouSf juj) oKvripoX (in haste not sluggish). 
 1 Thess. iv. 11, (pi\oTiixeTirBai iia-vxiC^'v (be ambitioiis to be qimt). 
 1 Thess. i 6, iv 9\(+« irowip iifrb, x<<f>" (joyous affliction). 
 
 1 Cor. viii. 10, oiVoSo^Tjfllio-ETai (ruinous edification). 
 Eom. i. 22, ^dtrKofrcs cTvai iroipol iiiwpivBriaav. 
 
 Eph. vi. 15, Gospel oi peace part of panoply of tear. 
 
 2 Cor. viii. 2, deep poverty abounding to wealth of liberality, 
 2 Cor. xii. 10, " "When I am weak, then I am strong." 
 
 It will be sufficient to make the merest reference to Anadiphsis 
 (Eom. ix. 30; Phil. iL 8); Upanodos (GaL ii. 16); Epamorthosis (Eom. 
 viii. 34 ; GaL ii. 20; iii. 4, ikc.) ; Asyndeton (1 Cor. xv. 43 ; 1 Tim. i. 17 ; 
 2 Tim. iii. 2—5, 10, 11, &c.) ; Antiptosis (Col. iv. 17 ; Gal. vL 1 ; iv. 11) ; 
 Hyperbaton (2 Thess. ii. 5, &c.) ; Alliteration (1 Cor. ii 13 ; 2 Cor. 
 viii. 22 ; ix. 8, &c.) ; Constflructio praegnans (2 Thess. ii. 4, <fec.) ; and 
 many minor figures. 
 
 3. Coming to figures of the third division — Sound — we find that 
 St. Paul makes most remarkable and frequent use of paronomasia. 
 
 U.g. (a) Paronomasia, dependent on the change of one or two letters':^ 
 Eom. i. 29, ^opvcfiii noviipiif . . . ipBivov, <^iyov, 
 Eom. 1. 30, ^ffwerovs, hffvvBirovs. 
 Eom. xi. 1 7, rives rQv K\i.Suv ilfK\ia6r)<rai>, 
 Cf. Heb. V. 8, ip.v3ev lup' &v liraSer. 
 
 1 See Cio. De Orat. ii. 63 ; Auot. ad Serenn, iv. 24 ; Quint. Imtt. Orat. ix. 
 3, 66, &c. An instance in our Prayer Book ia— "among all the changes and 
 chancea of this mortal life." 
 
EKETOEIO OP ST. PAUL. 629 
 
 (p) Paronomasia, dependent on a play of -words of similar sound or 
 derivation.' This is St. Paul's most frequent rhetorical figure : — 
 2 Cor. iii. 2, yivaaKofiivii Kol i,vaytva<rK0ii4yr}.^ 
 Horn. i. 28, o6/c iSoKi/iairav (they refused) . . . iZ6Kiiu>v vow (a 
 
 refuse mind). 
 Phil. iii. 2, 3, Kararonii (concision) . . . wepiro/ii] (circumcision). 
 
 xlom. ii. 1, Kpiviis . . • Kwraxpiveis. 
 
 1 Cor. xi. 29, seq., SioKpto-is . . . Kplfia . , . koti^kpijuo. 
 
 E.om. xiL 3, " Not to be higii-minded (6wep<ppoyeiv) above what we 
 ought to be minded {•^povitv), but to be minded so as to be 
 sober-minded " (aa^pove'iv). Cf. Thuc. ii. 62, oft ^povhiuvri iwmv 
 
 &W^ Kal Kwra^poviifiaTL. 
 
 1 Cor. vii. 31, xp'^/'ei'oi . • . Karaxp^li^yot. 
 4 2 Cor. vi. 10, ^x<"'''M . . . KardxavTes. 
 
 2 Cor. IV. 8, aTopoi/ieyot , , . e^anopoifieyou 
 
 2 Tim. iii. 4, (pi^Sovot . . . <pi\6etoi. 
 
 2 Thess. iii. 11, not busy (epyaCofievovs) but busybodies (vepi 
 
 epya^onivovs)? 
 
 1 Tim. V. 13, oft liovov S^ &pyaX, iA\k leal ireptepyot (female toilers in 
 
 the school of idleness). 
 
 Cornelius k Lapide and others have imagined a latent paronomasia 
 
 in 1 Cor. i. 23, 24. If St. Paul thought in Syriac it might be "To the 
 
 Jews a micsol, and to the Greeks a mashcal, but to those that are called 
 
 — Christ the secel of God." But this is probably a mere ingenious fancy.* 
 
 (y) A third class of paronomasias consists in plays on names, of which 
 
 we find three in St. Paul : — 
 
 Philem. 11, 'Or!\irinov . . . t,xpr]<trov.^ 
 Philem. 20, Nol, iyd <rov ivaiiaiv. 
 
 Phil. iv. 3, 'iiCvye yv1]ffK, " yoke-fello-w byname and yoke-feUow 
 by nature." ° 
 gt,. Jerome imagines another in Gal. i. 6, where he thinks that "ye are 
 being removed" (n^TariieaBe) is a play on the name Galatse and the 
 Hebrew G^aZctZ, "to roll." 
 
 Since, then, we find upwards of fifty specimens of upwards of thirty 
 
 ' A curious instance ooours in our E. V. of James i. 6, " He that wavereth is like 
 a wcm of tlie sea," where it does not occur in the original. 
 
 » Compare Acts viii. 30, and Basil's remark to the Emperor Julian, hviyvas oftic 
 ^I'oiy, El yip iyvas ovK to/ Kareyya^. 
 
 » So Domitius Afer, " Non agentes sed satagentes " (Quint, vi. 3, 64). 
 
 * G-lass, Philolog. Sacra, p. 959. 
 
 » V. infra, vol. ii., ad toe., where I have noticed the possible second paronomasia 
 in ixf-naroy, Uxp'^trov. ° V. mfra, ad he. 
 
630 APPENDIX. 
 
 Greek rietorical figures in St. Paul, and since they are far more 
 abundant in his Epistles than in other parts of the New Testament, and 
 some are found in him alone, may we not conclude that as a boy iu 
 Tarsus he had attended some elementary class in Greek rhetoric, 
 perhaps as a part of his education in the grammatical knowledge of the 
 language 1 Professional rhetoricians abounded in Tarsus, and if Paul's 
 father, seeing the brilliant capacity of his son, meant him for the school' 
 of Gamaliel, he may have thought that an elementary initiation into 
 Greek rhetoric might help to pave the way for his future distinction 
 among the Hillelites of Jerusalem ; since, as we see from the Talmud, 
 this kind of knowledge opened to some Kabbis a career of ambition. 
 If so, the lessons which the young Saul learnt were not thrown away, 
 though they were turned to very different objects than had been dreamt 
 of by one who intended his boy to be, like himself a Pharisee of 
 Pharisees and a Hebrew of Hebrews. 
 
 EXCUESUS IIL (p. 39). 
 
 The Classic Quotations and Allusions op St. Paul 
 
 1. Those who maintain the advanced classic cultm-e of St. Paul, rely on 
 the fact that he quotes from and alludes to Greek and Boman writers. 
 
 Three quotations are incessantly adduced. One is the hexameter 
 written by the Cretan poet Epimenides in such stem and contemptuous 
 depreciation of the character of his own countrymen — 
 
 KpiJTes del ^evffrai, iccucck 8r)pta, yaffTtpes &py(d.^ 
 ("Liars the Cretans aye, ill monsters, gluttonous idlers.") 
 
 Another is the half-hexameter in which he reminds his audience, in 
 the speech on the Areopagus, that certain also of their native poets had 
 said — 
 
 ToO y^p Kal y4vos iiT}x4v^ 
 (" For we are also his offspring.") 
 
 A third is the moral warning to the Corinthians— 
 
 iBelpovfftv fjBri xpio'i'tk d/iiXiai Kajed;* 
 (" Evil oommunicationa corrupt good manners ;") 
 
 or it may, perhaps, be more correctly rendered, 'fEvil associations 
 destroy excellent characters." 
 
 1 Tit. i. 12. » Acts xvii. 28. » 1 Cor. xv. 38. 
 
CLASSIC QUOTATIONS OF ST. PAUL. 631 
 
 N'o'w, if we look a little closer at these quotations, we shall see how 
 very little proof they furnish of anything more than the most superficial 
 acquaintance with Greek writers. The first of them is just such a 
 current national characterisation ^ as might pass everywhere from mouth 
 to mouth, and which St. Paul might very well repeat without having 
 read a line of the poem of Epimenides on Oracles, or Callimachus's 
 Hymn to Zeus, in. both of which it occurs.^ The second is a recognised 
 commonplace of heathen insight, to which many parallels might be 
 quoted, but which is found in Oleanthes ' nearly ia the form in which 
 St. Paul quotes it. The actual quotation is from one of those tedious 
 poems which were most in vogue at this period, the PluBnomena of 
 Aratus.' With the writings of this poet St. Paul may have become 
 acquainted, both because they are entirely harmless — which is more 
 than can be said of almost any other Pagan production which was 
 popular at that time — and because Aratus was a Cilician, and very 
 probably a Tarsian.* The third was one of those common sententious 
 pieces of morality which had passed into a proverb, and which in all 
 probability Menander, in his Thais, had appropriated from some lost 
 tragedy of Eu!ripides. St. Paul is far more likely to have heard it used 
 in common parlance, or to have seen it inscribed on one of the Hermse 
 at Tarsus or Athens, than to have read it in Menander, or even — as 
 Socrates' and Chrysostom seem to thiak — ia one of the Greek 
 tragedians. It is further remarkable about these quotations, first, that 
 all three of them were so current, they are found in at least two poets 
 each j and next, that two of them occur at the very beginning of Hymns 
 to Zeiis. If any collection of Hymns to Zeus was to be found on any 
 bookstall at Athens, it is exactly the kind of book into which St. Paul's 
 human sympathies may have induced him to dip in support of his 
 
 * See, as to the Cretans, Leonidas, Anthol. iii., p. 369 ; Polyt. vi. 47; Diod. Sic.j 
 xxxi. Fr.; Weatst. ad he. 
 
 2 Callim. Syrtm. in Jov., 8. Kp^rcs oel ■^fvarai, koI 70;^, nJ^jv Si fivo aeto KpTJres 
 iTocTifvavTO. See Chrysostom and Jerome ad Tit. i. 12. Moreover, the line had 
 originated one of the commonest syllogistic puzzles, called "the Liars." "Epi- 
 menides said that the Cretans were liars ; but Epimenides was a Cretan ; therefore 
 Epimenides was a liar ; therefore the Cretans were not Mars ; therefore Epimenides 
 was not a liar," &o. &o. (Diog. Laert. ii. 108.) It was invented by Eubulides ; of- 
 Cic. Div. ii. 4, " mentiens." 
 
 * Cleanthes, Symn. in Jov., 5. 
 
 * Aratus flourished about B.C. 270. His poems, considering that they only bear 
 a sort of dull resemblance to Thomson's Seasons, acquired astonishing popularity. 
 They were translated, among others, by Cicero, and by Csesar Germanious. 
 
 Buhle, Aratus, ii. 429. 
 
 * Siat, Ecc. iii. 16. 
 
632 APPENDIX 
 
 liberal and enlightened ^yiew that God had revealed Himself even to 
 the heathen, to a degree sufficient for their happiness and their salvation, 
 had they chosen to make use of the light they had.^ A third very 
 remarkable point is that in the quotation from Menander or Euripides, 
 whichever it may have been, the great majority of the best MSS. read 
 X/njiTTci, not xp^"^^ — a' reading which may therefore be regarded as 
 certainly genuine, since no one would have dreamt of altering the 
 correct metre, if it had been given in the original manuscript. Now if 
 such be the case, it seems to indicate that the ear of St. Paul was 
 unfamiliar with — or, which comes to the same thing, was indifferent to 
 — even so common a rhythm as that of the iambic verse. Our conclusion, 
 therefore, is that St. Paul's isolated quotations no more prove a study 
 of Greek literature than the quotation of such a national epigram as 
 
 " Inglese italianato, Diavolo incamato," 
 or of such a line as 
 
 " Lasciate ogni speranza voi oh' entrate,'' 
 
 would necessarily prove that an English writer was a proficient in the 
 literature of Italy, or had read the poems of Dante. St Paul was a 
 man of remarkable receptivity, and, as we have seen, an habitual 
 quoter. Except in Epistles intended for readers to whom Old Testar 
 ment quotations would have been unintelligible, he can hardly write 
 five sentences in succession without a Biblical reference. The utter 
 absence of any similar use of even the noblest of the classic writers, is a 
 proof either that he had intentionally neglected them, or that, at any 
 rate, they had left little or no mark on an intellect so sensitive to every 
 cognate influence. For that it was not only the Scriptures of the 
 Jewish canon which thus clung to his retentive memory, is apparent 
 from the free use which he makes of the Book of Wisdom, and perhaps 
 of other books of the Jewish Apocrypha.' It is also traceable in the 
 
 ^ Acts xiv. 17 ; xvii. 27 ; Eom. i. 20. 
 
 " n, A, B, D, B, P, Gr, &c., iaiiPelip rpayiKf. Clem. Alex. Strom. L 14, 59 ; 
 
 Meineke, Fr. Com., p. 75. 
 
 ' See Hausrath, p. 23. He compares 1 Cor. vi. 2 with Wisd. iii. 8, the image of 
 the Christian armour with Wisd. v. 17, the metaphor of the potter making one 
 vessel to honour and another to dishonour with "Wisd. xv. 7. The memorahle 
 thrice-repeated saying, "Neither circumcision is anything, nor uncircumcision " 
 (Gal. V. 6 ; vi. 15 ; 1 Cor. vii. 19), is hy Photius, Syncellus, and others said to be a 
 quotation from " Eevelation of Moses." Dr. Lightfoot (on Gal. vi. 17) shows that 
 there is some reason to doubt this, and says that " a sentiment which is the very 
 foundation of St. Paul's teaching was most unlikely to have been expressed in any 
 earlier Jewish writing ; and if it really occurred in the apocryphal work in 
 
CLASSIC QUOTATIONS OF ST. PAUL. 633 
 
 extent to ■which he is constantly haunted by a word,^ and in the new 
 and often rare expressions which are found in every one of the Epistles,' 
 and which show us a mind keenly susceptible to impressions derived 
 from the circumstances around him, and from the intercourse of those 
 among whom he was habitually thrown. 
 
 2. But though the Greek culture of Tarsus had little or no influence 
 on the current of the Apostle's thoughts, it would be a mistake to 
 suppose that it produced no influence at all on his life or on his style. 
 Besides thp direct quotations, there is more than one isolated passage 
 which may be the distant echo of classical reminiscences. Such, for 
 instance, is the apologue of the self-asserting members in 1 Cor. xiL, 
 which reminds us at once of the ingenious fable of Menenius Agrippa ;' 
 and the fearful metaphor of Rom. vii, 24, which has less probably been 
 held to refer to a true story of the family of Eegulus.^ Ajid it is far 
 from improbable that it was in some " class of rhetoric " at Tarsus that 
 the Apostle acquired the germs, at any rate, of that argumentative 
 habit of mind, that gift of ready extempore utterance, and that fond- 
 ness for chiasmus, paronomasia, paraleipsis, oxymoron, litotes, and other 
 rhetorical figures, which characterise his style.* It was there, too, that 
 he may have learnt that ready versatility, that social courtesy, that 
 large comprehensiveness, that wide experience and capacity for dealing 
 with varied interests and intricate matters of business, which made him, 
 in the high and good sense of the word, a true gentleman, a Christian 
 man of the world. He was, in heart and feeling, an ideal specimen of 
 what the Greeks called the Koxbs KiyoSos — "fair and good" — and his 
 intercourse with polished Greeks may have tended to brighten that 
 spirit of "entirely genuine Attic urbanity "« — a spirit more flexible 
 
 question, thia work must have been either written or interpolated after St. Paul's 
 time (See Liioke, Ofenb. d. Johan. i., p. 232)." The same must be said of the Book 
 of Wisdom on the ingenious hypothesis that it was written by ApoUos (Plumptre, 
 Expositor, i. 422, sq.). , . ^ . 
 
 1 e.g. ylvo/iat in 1 Thess. i. ; rh ivovpivia in Eph. i. ; x'^h" ^"^ X«/"s ^ ^^^^- ' 
 fij, yevoiro in Eom. ; ^u<n6a in 1 Cor. iv. ; Kouxoo-floj in 2 Cor. xi. ; irapo/caAe'd. in 
 2 Cor. i. ; \{nrri in 2 Cor. ii., &o. 
 
 a As, for instance, KaravapKia and ^/i^po.in 1 Cor. ; Tr\iipafia in the Epistles of 
 the Captivity; fiyijjs in the Pastoral Epistles, &o. 
 
 » Liv. ii. 32. There is also a remarkable parallel in Sen. JDe Ir&, ii. 31. 
 
 * The ^K is against this supposed reference. On the other hand, the '^periTca- 
 tharmata" and peripsma of 1 Cor. iv. 13 may be an aUusion to ancient piacular 
 offerings (». infra ad loc). . . , , , 
 
 » Rg., Chiasmus, Eom. ii. 7—10; Faronomasia, 2 Thess. m. 11 [tnfr. ad loo.) . 
 Paraleipsis, 1 Thess. iv. 9, v. 1; Oxymoron, Eom. i. 20, Philem. 11; Zitotes, 1 Cor. 
 • xi. 22, &c. (See Excursus II., " The Rhetoric of St. PauL") 
 
 ' Krenkel, p. 12. See Arist. M. Mor. ii. 9, 2. 
 
634 APPENDIX. 
 
 and more charming than natural Semitic dignity^-which breathes in 
 every line of the Epistle to Philemon. 
 
 3. It is a remarkable proof of this natural liberality that, in spite 
 of the burning hatred of idolatry which vre have already noticed, he is 
 yet capable of looking with sympathy, and even admiration, on some 
 of those nobler and more innocent aspects of heathen life which his 
 countrymen indiscriminately condemned.^ The hallowing of heathen 
 symbols, the use of metaphors derived from heathen life for the illus- 
 tration of Christian truths and Christian duties, is a very remarkable 
 feature of the style of St. Paul. There were few of the crimes of 
 Herod which the strict Pharisees had regarded with more undisguised 
 horror and hatred than his construction of a theatre at Csesarea ; yet 
 St. Paul quite freely, and without misgiving, adopting a metaphor 
 which would have caused a shudder to any Palestinian Pharisee, com- 
 pares the transient fashion of the world to the passing scene of a 
 theatrical display, and in other places turns the whole Universe intq a 
 theatre, on the stage of which were displayed the sufferings of the 
 Apostles as a spectacle to angels and to men.' We recognise, too, the 
 more liberal son of the Dispersion — ^the man whose thoughts have been 
 enlarged by travel and by intercourse with men of other training and 
 other race — in the apparently vivid sympathy with which St. Paul 
 draws some of his favourite metaphors from the vigorous contests of 
 the Grecian games.' Those games constituted the brightest, the most 
 innocently attractive feature of Hellenic life. During his long stay at 
 Ephesus and at Corinth he had doubtless witnessed those wrestling 
 bouts, those highly-skUled encounters of pugilism, those swift races to 
 win the fading garlands of laurel or pine, which, for some of his 
 heathen converts, and particularly for the younger among them, could 
 not at once have lost their charm. We can well imagine how some 
 young Ephesian or Corinthian might have pressed St. Paul to come 
 
 ' The Talmud a'bounds in passages which, utter nothing hut unmixed soom of 
 the Gentiles, even of their very virtues. In Babha Sathra,i. 10, 2, there is a 
 notable discussion on Prov. xiv. 34. It is rendered, " Eighteousneas exalteth a 
 nation, and the goodness of nations is sin." B. Eleazar explained it to mean, 
 " Kighteousness exalts Israel ; hut the goodness of other nations is sin, heing only 
 due to their self-exaltation." Eahhan Gamaliel said, " They were only good in 
 order to heap reproach on the shortcomings of Israel ;" and Eahbi Nechunya Ben 
 Hakanah punctuated the verse, " Righteousness exalteth a nation (Israel) and 
 goodness: but the nations, a ain-ofEering." This explanation was adopted hy 
 Bahhan Johanan Ben Zakkai. 
 
 ^ 1 Cor. vii. 31, wapiyei rh ffx?/"" toB K6<rfiov. 1 Cor. iv. 9, Siarpov iyniHiSiiner, 
 (Cf. Heh. X. 33, fleoTpif<iyne</oi.) 
 
 * 1 Cor. ix. 24 ; Phil. iii. 14 ; 1 Tim. vi. >12 ; 2 Tim. iv. 8 ; ii. 5 ; 1 Thesa. ii. 19. 
 
CLASSIC QUOTATIONS OP ST. PAUL. 
 
 635 
 
 with Mm and see the struggle and the race; and how, for one whose 
 sympathies were so vividly huma^, there would have been a thrilling 
 interest in the spectacle of those many myriads assembled in the vast 
 stadium— in the straining eyes and eager countenances and beating 
 hearts— in the breathless hush with which they listened to the pro- 
 clamations of the herald— in the wild-eyed charioteers bending over 
 theii- steeds, with the hair blown back from their glowing faces— in 
 the resounding acclamations with which they greeted the youthful 
 victor as he stepped forward with a blush to receive his prize. Would 
 these fair youths do so much, and suffer so much, to win a poor wither- 
 ing chaplet of pine and parsley, whose greenfiess had faded before the 
 Bun had set, and would they use no effort, make no struggle, to win a 
 crown of amaranth, a crown of righteousness which could not fade 
 away] And that, too, when here the victory of one was the shame 
 and disappointment of all the rest, while, in that other contest, each 
 and all might equally be victors, and the victory of each be a fresh 
 glory to all who were striving for the same high prize ?' And as such 
 thoughts passed through his mind there was no Judaic narrowness, 
 but a genial sympathy in his soul, and a readiness to admire whatever 
 was innocent and beautiful in human customs, when he wrote to his 
 converts of Corinth — " Know ye not that they which run iu a stadium 
 run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run that ye may grasp.^ 
 Now every one that striveth is temperate in all things ; they, however, 
 that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. 
 I, then, so run, not as uncertainly ; so box I, as one who beateth not 
 the air; but I bruise my body with blows and enslave it, lest per- 
 chance, after making proclamation to others, I myself should prove to 
 be a rejected combatant."' 
 
 4. But it was not only with Greek customs that St. Paul became 
 familiar during his residence at Tarsus. It is clear that he must also 
 have possessed some knowledge of Epman law. His thoughts often 
 have a juridical form. He speaks of the "earnest-money" of the 
 Spirit J of the laws of inheritance ; of legal minority ; of the rights of 
 wives and daughters.^ The privileges and the prestige conferred upon 
 
 * See a close parallel in Sen. 1^. Mor. Ixxriii. 16. 
 
 * KaroiKA^iire. Cf. Phil. ill. 12 — 14, Kara gKoirtiv . , , tw\ rh PpafieTon. 
 
 ' 1 Cor. ix. 24 — 27. Mkihos, vocabulum agoniaticam (Beng.; Fhilo, <?« Cheruh. 
 
 I ^2). On the temperate training of competitors, see Hot. A. JP. 412 ; Epict. 
 
 Mnehir. 36; Dissert, iii. IS; Teit. ad Martj 3. liipa Upetv is to fight a a-Kiaiuixia 
 
 • ff.e., make mere feints), (Eustath, ad II. xx. 446; Athen. 164, A, &c.; Yirg. JEn. 
 
 T. 876). Kripi^as, perhaps " heralding the laws of the contest " {^seh. Eum. 566). 
 
 * Gal. iii. 17, 18 ; iv. 1, 2; Bom.'vii. 2, &c. 
 
636 APPENDIX. 
 
 him by his rights of Civitas would have inevitably turned his thoughts 
 in this direction. The Laws of the Twelve Tables had defined the 
 authority which might be exercised by fathers over sons even after 
 they have come of age (patria potestas) in a manner which Gaius tells 
 us was pecidiar to Roman jurisprudence, with the single exception that 
 it also existed among the Gcdatm. If this means the Galatians it would 
 give peculiar significance to the illustration in Gal. iv. 1, which in any 
 case proves St. Paul's familiarity with Roman institutions which had 
 no existence among the Jews. So, too, we are told by Sir H. Maine 
 that "a true power of testation" was nowhere provided for in. the 
 Jewish Code of Laws, and«that the Romans "invented the wiU." Yet 
 to the rules of testamentary bequests, and their irrevocability in certain 
 cases, St. Paul seems to make an express allusion (Gal. iiL 15). Again, 
 he gives prominence to the Roman idea of artificial " adoption," even 
 to the extent of making an apparent reference to the fact that a son, 
 fully adopted, abandoned the domestic rites (sacra) of his own family, 
 and attached himself to those of his new parent (Gal. iv. 5 j Eph. i 5).^ 
 
 5. We may select one more passage — though in this case it involves 
 no admiration or sympathy — to show how accurately the customs of 
 the Pagan life had been observed by St. Paul in that varied experience 
 which made him, in the best sense, a citizen of the world. It is a 
 passage which, from the absence of this knowledge, has often been 
 entirely misunderstood. It occurs in 2 Cor. ii. 14 — 16 : "Now thanks 
 be to God, who always leadeth us everywhere in triumph ^ in Christ, 
 and who by us maketh manifest the odour of the knowledge of Him 
 in every place. Eor we are to God a sweet odour of Christ among 
 those who are being saved, and among those who are perishing. To 
 the latter we are an odour of death io death, to the former an odour 
 of life to life." • 
 
 Here, though the details of the metaphor are intricately involved 
 the general conception which was in the thoughts of the Apostle, and 
 swayed his expression, is derived from the customs of a Roman triumph. 
 
 ' These instances are pointed out by Dean Merivale, Boyle Lectures, and in St. 
 Faul at Rome, pp. 172 — 180. The passages of G-aius referred to are Instt. i. 55 (rf. 
 Caesar, B. G. yi. 19) and 189 ; Digests, xxvi. 3 ; hut I cannot pretend to say that 
 the conclusions formed are indisputable. 
 
 ^ The rendering of the E. V., " which always causes us to triumph in Christ," ia 
 both philologicaUy impossible (of. Col. ii. 15), and confuses the metaphor to suoh 
 an extent as to render it entirely unintelligible. St. Paul may weU have heard of 
 the famous triumph of Claudius over the Britons a few years before(A.D. 51), in 
 which Caractaous had walked as a prisoner (Bpia/t/Scuflefs), but "had passed froin 
 the ranks of the 'lost' to those of the 'saved' " (Tac. Ann. xiii. 36). (See Dr. 
 Flumptre, ad lot.) Cleopatra had proudly said, oi S/iia/iJSeue^cra/tai. 
 
CLASSIC QUOTATIONS OP ST. PAUL. 637 
 
 It -was one main feature of such "insulting vanities" that the chief 
 captives -were paraded before the victor's path, and s-weet odours were 
 burnt in the streets while his car climbed the Capitol.^ But when he 
 reached the foot of the Capitoline hill there was a fatal halt, which, in 
 the utter deadness of all sense of pity, might be a moment of fresh 
 exultation to the conqueror, but which was death to the captive ; for at 
 that spot the captives ceased to form any part of the procession, but 
 were led aside into the rocky vaults of the TuUianum, and strangled by 
 the executioner in those black and fetid depths. And thus the sweet 
 odours, which to the victor — a Marius or a Julius Caesar — and to the 
 spectators were a symbol of glory and success and happiness, were to 
 the wretched victims — a Jugurtha or a Vercingetorix — an odour of 
 death. Eeminded of this by his use of the words "leadeth us in 
 triumph," St. Paul for an instant fancies himself a captive before the 
 chariot of God — a captive in connexion with Christ ; and then another 
 passing fancy strikes him. The preachers of Christ are like that 
 burning incense whose perfume filled the triumphant streets,^ but they 
 were not an odour of life and hope to all. As light is light yet pains 
 the diseased eye, as honey is honey yet palls on the sated taste,' so the 
 odour retained its natural fragrance, although to many — through their 
 own sins and wilfulness — it might only breathe of death. The tidings • 
 of salvation were glad tidings, but to the guiltily hardened and 
 the wilfully impenitent they might prove to be tidings of wrath 
 and doom.* 
 
 Little, perhaps, did it occur to St. Paul as he wrote those words, 
 that the triumph of God, in which he was being led along from place to 
 place as a willing victim, might end for him also in the vaults of that 
 very TuUianum^ — the description of which must have been mingled 
 in his thoughts with the other details of the Roman pomp — and that if 
 not from the Mamertine, yet from some other Boman prison he would 
 only be dragged forth to die. 
 
 1 Dio Cass. Ixxiv. ; Hor. Od. iv. 2, 50 ; Hut. .Atil. p. 272. 
 
 * St. Paul rises superior to the vulgar prejudice of the Eahhis, who said that " a 
 man is a sinner who while walking in a part of a town inhaljited by idolaters inhales 
 purposely the odoiu: of incense offered up hy them" [SerachSth, f. 63, 1). 
 
 ' See Theophyl. ad loe. 
 , * Similarly the Eabbis spoke of the law as an " aroma of life to those who walk 
 on the right, an " aroma of death " to those on the left {Shabbath, i. 88, 2). 
 
 " The Tullianum is, according to old tradition, the scene of the last imprisonment, 
 before martyrdom, both of St. Peter and St. Paul. It was the rock-hewn lower 
 dungeon added by Servius Tullius to the career of Ancus Martins. Excavations 
 within the last few months prove that it was much larger than has been hitherto 
 supposed. 
 
638 APPENDIX. 
 
 EXOUESTJS rV. (p. 58). 
 
 St. Paul a Hagadist : St. Paul and Philo. 
 
 Theek are two large divisions of Eabbinic lore, wHcli may be classed 
 under the heads of HagadSth, or unrecorded legends, and HcdacMth, or 
 rules and precedents in explanation of dubious or undefined points of 
 legal observance.^ It is natural that there should be but few traces of 
 the latter in the -writings of one whose express object it was to deliver 
 the Gentiles from the intolerable burden of legal Judaism. But though 
 there is little trace of them in his writings, he himself expressly tells us 
 that he had once been enthusiastic in their observance.' " I was 
 making," he says to the Galatians, "continuous advance in Judaism 
 above many who were my equals in age in my own race, being very 
 exceedingly a zealot for the traditions handed down from my fathers." ' 
 And there are in the Epistles abundant signs that with the Hagadoih 
 he was extremely familiar, and that he constantly refers to them in 
 thought. Thus in 2 Tim. iii 8 he traditionally names Jannes and 
 Jambres, two of the Egyptian magicians who withstood Moses. He 
 adopted the current Jewish chronologies in Acts xiii. 20, 21. Ho 
 alludes to the notion that the Adam of G«n. i is the ideal or spiritual, 
 the Adam of Gen. ii. the concrete and sinful Adam.' The conception 
 of the last trumpet,^ of the giving of the Law at Sinai by angels,^ of 
 Satan as the god of this world and the prince of the power of the air,' 
 and of the celestial and infernal hierarchies,* are all ifecurrent in 
 Talmudio writings. "When, in 1 Cor. xL 10, he says that " a woman 
 
 ' I have tried fully to explain the nature of the Halaehah and the Hagadah in 
 the Expositor, Oototer, 1877. The former dealt mainly with the Pentateuch, the 
 latter with the Hagiographa. Dr. Deutsoh (Smith's Diet. ti. v. " Versions " says, 
 " If the Halachah used the Scriptural word as a last and most awful resort against 
 which there was no further appeal, the Hagadah used it as the golden nail on which 
 to hang its gorgeous tapestry. If the former was the iron hulwark round the 
 nationality of Israel, the latter was a maze of flowery walks within those fortress 
 walls." 
 
 s Gal. i. 14. 
 
 ' The irapiSoffts did not mean the written Law, but the Oral Law, the irirpia 
 ien of which Josephus speaks so much ; the germ, in fact, of the HalacMth of the 
 Mishna and Gremara. 
 
 * 1 Cor. XV. 47. This is also found in Fhilo, De Opif. Mund. i. 32. 
 
 » 1 Cor. XV. 62 ; 1 Thess. iv. 16, 
 
 » Gal. iii. 19. 
 
 1 Eph. ii, 2. 
 
 8 Eph. i. 21 , iii. 10 ; vii 12; CoL i. 16 ; u. 16. 
 
ST. PAUL A HAGADIST. 639 
 
 ought to have a veil ^ on her head becaiuse of the angels," there can, I 
 think, he no shadow of doubt in the unprejudiced mind of any reader 
 •who is familiar with those Jewish views of the subject in which St. Paul 
 had been trained, that he is referring to the common Rabbinic interpre- 
 tations of Gen. vL 2 (LXX. Cod. A, " the angels"), where the Targum, and, 
 indeed, all Jewish authorities down to the author of the Book of Enoch 
 (quoted in the Epistle of Jude)," attribute the Fall of the Angels to their 
 guilty love for earthly women. St. Paul could not have been unaware 
 of a notion which for many ages seems to have been engrained in the 
 Jewish mind'^a notion which is found over and over again in the 
 Talmud, and which is still so prevalent among Oriental Jews, as also 
 among Mohammedans,'' that they never allow their women to be 
 unveiled in public lest the Shedim, or evil spirits, should injure them 
 and others.' To this very day, for this very reason, Jewish women in 
 
 ' Such, however arrived at, or whatever he the special shade of thought ahout 
 the use of the word — which may he a mere provinoialisiu — is the ohvious meaning 
 of e^ovtrla in 1 Cor. xi. 10. St. Paul gives three reasons for his rule — (1) our 
 instinctive sense that an uncovered head, like a, shaven head, is a dishonour to 
 a woman, whose hair is a glory to her ; (2) the fact that woman's hair indicates her 
 Buhordinate position towards man, as nlan's covered head denotes his suhordinatiou 
 to God ; (3) " hecause of the angels." 
 
 2 2 Pet. ii. 4 ; Jude 6, 14. 
 
 ' The argument that of &yyc\oi is never used in the New Testament except for 
 good angels is quite valueless, for the faUen angels were supposed to have been good 
 angels until they fell, and, if they had fallen thus, there was nothing to show the 
 impossibility that others might similarly fall. This interpretation is given quite 
 unhesitatingly by Tertullian, de Virg. Vel. 7, "propter angelos, scilicet quos 
 legimus a Deo et coelo excidisse ob oonoupiscentiam feminarum." I have 
 thoroughly examined this point in a paper in the Bomiletic Quarterly of 1878, and 
 quoted many Rabbinic illustrations. {^Tanehuma, f. 61, 4 ; Abhoth of Eabbi 
 Nathan, o. 34.) 
 
 < See the very remarkable story of Khadijah, who discovers that it is really 
 Gabriel who has appeared to Mohammed by his flying away directly she takes off her 
 veil, "knowing from Waraka that a good angel must fly before the face of an 
 unveiled woman" (Weil, Mohmned, 48). (See Deaa Stanley's exhaustive note, 
 
 Cor. p. 187.) 
 
 « See Berachdth, f. 6, 1 : "Abba Benjamin says that if we had been suffered to 
 ■see them, no one would stand before the hurtful demons. Eav Huna that each of 
 us has 1,000 at his left and 10,000 at his right hand (Ps. xci. 7)," &o. &c. The 
 reason why Solomon's bed was guarded by sixty valiant men with drawn swords 
 was " because of fear in the night " (Cant. iii. 7, 8). '= Walk not alone at mght, 
 because Egrath, daughter of Machlath, walks about-she and 180,000 destroying 
 angels, and every one of them individually has permission to destroy" (Pesachim, 
 112, 2). They are called ruchin, ahedm, lilin, tiharim, &c. (Hamburger, a.v. 
 "Gespenster"). The only other view of the passage which seems to me even 
 possible (historically) is that of St. Chrysostom, "because good angels present at 
 Christian worship rejoice to see all things done decently and in good order. 
 
640 APPENDIX. 
 
 some Eastern cities ■wear an inconceivably hideous' headdress, called the 
 khalebl, so managed as to entirely conceal the hair. It exposes them to 
 derision and inconvenience, b^it is worn as a religious duty, " because of 
 the spirits." 
 
 Again, in Eom. iv. 5, 13, Paul evidently accepts the tradition, also 
 referred to by St. Stephen, that Abraham had begn an uncircumcised 
 idolater -when he first obeyed the call of God, and that he then received 
 a promise — unknown to the text of Scripture — " that he should be the 
 heir of the world." ^ In !Rom. ix. 9 it has been supposed, from the form 
 of his quotation, that he is alluding to the Kabbinic notion that Isa,ac 
 was created in the womb by a fiat of God; in GaL iv. 29 to the 
 Hagadah that Ishmael not only laughed, but jeered, insulted, and mis- 
 treated Isaac ;^ and in 2 Cor. xi 14 to the notion that the angel who 
 wrestled with Jacob was an evil angel assuming the semblance of an 
 Angel of Light. These three latter instances are slight and dubious ; 
 but there is a remarkable allusion to the smitten rock in the wilderness, 
 which in 1 Cor. x. 4 is called "a spiritual following rock." The 
 expression <;an have but one meaning. Among the many marveUoua 
 fancies which have been evolved from the thoughts of Jewish teachers, 
 occupied for centuries in the adoring and exclusive study of their sacred 
 books, was one to which they repeatedly recur, that the rock, from 
 which the water flowed, was round and like a swarm of bees, and rolled 
 itseK up and went with them in their journeys. When the Tabernacle 
 was pitched, the rock came and settled in its vestibule. Then came the 
 princes, and standing near it exclaimed, " Spring up, O well ; sing ye 
 unto it," ' and it sprang up. How are we to regard these strange 
 legends ? Can we suppose that wise and sensible Rabbis like HiUel and 
 Gamaliel took them literally ? There is no ground whatever for sup- 
 posing — indeed, it is essentially impossible — that any one could have 
 accepted, au pied de la lettre, all the fables of the Talmud, which are in 
 many instances both senseless and contradictory. Many of them were 
 doubtless" regarded as mere plays of pious fancy — mere ingenious 
 exercises of loving inference. Others were only an Oriental way of 
 suggesting mystic truths — were, in fact, intentional allegories. Others, 
 in their bi'oad outlines, were national traditions, which may often have 
 corresponded with fact, and which, at any rate, had passed into general 
 and unquestioned credence in ages little troubled by the spirit of 
 historical criticism.* Though St. Paul might quite naturally glance at, 
 
 * Kom. iv. 13. Of. Josh. xxiv. 15. 
 " Sanhedr. i. 89, 2. 
 
 ' Num. xxi. 17. 
 
 * Tlie EatMs themselves draw a distinction tetween passages which are to bo 
 accepted literally (BiDDn 'ri) and those which are meant to be " hyperbolical," in 
 
ST. PATJL A HAGADIST. 641 
 
 allude to, or even make use of some of these latter, it would be an utter 
 mistake to assume tliat he necessarily attached to them any objective 
 importance. If he alludes to the simplest and most reasonable of them, . 
 he does so ornamentally, incidentally, illustratively, and might in all 
 probability have attributed to them no value beyond their connexion 
 with loving reminiscences of "the things which he had- learnt in the 
 lecture-hall of Gamaliel, or in his old paternal home. In this very 
 passage of the Corinthians the word " following " (aKoXoieovans) is only a 
 graceful allusion to the least fantastic element of a legend capable of a 
 spiritual meaning ; and St. Paul, in the instant addition of the words 
 *' and this rock was Christ," shows how slight and casual is the reference 
 to the purely Hagadistic elements which, in the national consciousness, 
 had got mingled up with the great story of the wanderings in the 
 wUdemess.' Meanwhile — since it is the spiritual and not the material 
 rock which is prominent in the thoughts of St. Paul — is there any one 
 who holds so slavish and unscriptural a view of inspiration as to think 
 that such a transient allusion either demands our literal acceptance of 
 the fact alluded to, or, if we reject it, weakens the weight of apostolic 
 authority 1 If a modem religious writer glanced allusively at some 
 current legend of our own or of ancient history, would it be at once 
 assumed that he meant to support its historical certainty 1 If he quotes 
 Milton's line about Aaron's breastplate " ardent with gems oracular," is 
 he held to pledge himself to theEabbinic theory of the light- which moved 
 upon them ? Does any one think himself bound to a literal belief in seven 
 heavens, because St. Paul, in direct accordance with Jewish notions, tells 
 us that he was caught up into Paradise as far as the third 1 ' 
 
 There is one respect in which these traces of Judaic training are 
 specially interesting. ' They show the masterly good sense of the Apostle,', 
 and they show his inspired superiority to the influences" of his training.. 
 That he should sometimes resort to allegory is "reasonable and interesting; : 
 but when we study the use which he makes of the allegorising method s 
 
 ordinary Oriental fashion ('«an •mh), (Reland, Antt. Sebr., p. 140). It must further- 
 be remembered that much of the Talmud consistB of orj'ptographs which designedly 
 concealed meanings (puvayra avveToiaiv from " persecutors " and " heretics." Space 
 prevents any further treatment of these subjects here, but I may refer those who 
 are interested in them to my papers on the Halaoha and the Hagada, Talmudio 
 
 I', cryptographs, &o., in the Expositor for 1877. 
 
 ' ' ^ Seven such current national traditions are alluded to in St. Stephen's speech: 
 (See aupra, p. 163.) 
 
 > " 2 Cor. xii. 2, 4 ; Eph. iv. 10. Many other passages and expressions of St. Paul 
 find their illustration from the Talmud— «.()■. , 1 Cor. xv. 37, 45, yviivhv k6kkov ; Eph.. 
 ii. 14 (the Chel) ; 1 Cor. v. 2 {ardtsSth, " other lands") ; 2 Cor. ii. IB, oirjiii Bai/drov: 
 2 Cor. V. 2, 4ircvSi(raireat, &c. (See Meyer on these passages.); 
 
 P P 
 
642 APPENDIX. 
 
 in the case of Sarah and Hagar, we see at once its immense superiority 
 to the fantastic handling of the same facts by the learned Philo. How 
 much more soberly does St. Paul deal with the human and historic 
 elements of the story ; and how far more simple and natural are^fche con- 
 clusions which he derives from it ! Again, when he alludes to the 
 legends and traditions of his nation, how rational and how purely inci- 
 dental is his way of treating them ! Compare St. Paul with Philo, with 
 the Talmudists, with any of the Fathers in the firat three centuries, and 
 we can then more clearly recognise the chasm which separates the Apostle 
 from the very greatest writers both of his own nation and of the early 
 Christian Church. 
 
 The questioh as to whether St. Paul had or had not read Philo is not 
 easy to answer. Gfrorer's work on PhUo might seem a decisive proof 
 that he had done so. Undoubtedly many passages may be adduced 
 from the voluminous pamphlets of the eloquent Alexandrian which 
 might lead us to repeat the old remark that " either Paul Philonises, or 
 Philo is a Christian." Philo, like St. Paul, speaks of the Word of God 
 as the antitype of the manna, and the smitten rock, and the pillar of 
 cloud and fire ; and as a Mediator, and as begotten before the worlds, 
 and as the Heavenly Man. He speaks of the strife between the fleshly 
 and the rational soul ; of the assisting grace of God ; of the milk of 
 doctrine ; of seeing God as through a mirror ; of the true riches ; and of 
 the faith of Abraham. And, besides agreement in isolated phrases, 
 PhUo resembles St. Paul in his appeal to overwhelming revelations,' in 
 modes of citing and interpreting Scripture, in his use of allegory, in the 
 importance which he attaches to the spiritual over the carnal meaning 
 of ordinances, and in many other particulars. But when We look closer ■ 
 we see that many of these expressions and points of view were not 
 peculiar to Plulo. They were, so to speak, in the air. They fall under 
 the same category as the resemblances to Christian sentiments which may 
 be adduced from the writings of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus 
 Aurelius, and may therefore be explained as having been due rather to 
 the prevalent currents of moral and religious sentiment, than to any 
 imitation or conscious interchange of thought. And side by side with 
 these resemblances, the differences between Paul and PhUo are immense. 
 The cardinal conception of Philo is that of the. Logos, and it is one 
 which, in tJiis sense, is never used by St. Paul. St. Paul makes but one 
 or two distant and slighting allusions to the ancient Greek philosophy, 
 which PhUo regarded as of transcendent importance. St. Paul makes 
 but the most subordinate use of the allegoric method, which with Philo 
 
 1 JDe Cherubim, i. HZ. 
 
ST. PADIi AUD PHTLO. 643 
 
 Is all in all To PMo the Patriarclis become mere idealised virtues ; to 
 St Paul they are Kving men. Philo addre^es his esoteric eclecticism 
 to the illuminated few ; St Paul regards all alike as the equal childien 
 of a God who is no r^pecter of persons. Philo clings to the Jewish 
 ritualisms, though he gives them a mystic significance ; St Paul regards 
 them as abrogated for Gentiles, and non-essential even for Jews. Philo 
 still holds to the absolute superiority of the Jew over the Gentile ; St 
 Paul teach^ that in CJhrist Jesus there is neither Jew nor Gentila In 
 PUlo we see the impotence of Hellenising rationalism ; in St Paul the 
 power of spiritual truth. Philo explains and philosophises in every 
 direction; St Paul never recoils before a parados:, and leaves anti- 
 nomies unsolved side by side. Philo, like St Paul, speaks much of 
 fiith ; but the " &ith " of Philo is something far short of a transforming 
 principle,' while that of St I^aul is a regeneration of the whole nature 
 through mystic union with Christ The writings of PhUo are a collec- 
 tion of cold abstractions, those of St Paul a living spring of spiritual 
 wisdom. "Philo," says Professor Jowett, "was a Jew, St Paul a 
 Ghiistian. Philo an eclectic, St Paul spoke as the Spirit gave him 
 utterance. Philo was an Eastern mystic, St Pa\il preached the 
 lesurrection of the body. Philo was an idealiser, St Paul a spiritual- 
 iser of the Old T^^ament Philo was a philosopher, St Paul a 
 preacher ; the one taught a system for tie Jews, the other a universal 
 leli^on. The one may have guided a few more solitaries to the rocks 
 of the NUe, the other has changed the world. The one is a dead, un- 
 meaning literature, lingering amid the progress of mankind ; the other 
 has been a principle of life to the intellect as well as to the heart While 
 the one has ceased to exist, the other has survived, without decay, the 
 dianges in government and the revolutions in thought of 1,800 years." * 
 Of the Apocryphal books there was one at least with which St Paid 
 was almost certainly acquainted — namely, the Book of Wisdom. Xo 
 <me, I think, will question this who compares his views of idolatry, 
 and the manner in which he expresses them, with the chapters in which 
 that eloquent book pursues the worship of heathenism with a concen- 
 trated scorn hardly inferior to that of Isaiah ; or who will compare 
 together the passages to which I have referred in a former nota If 
 the books for which St Paul wrote from his last imprisonment were 
 •ny but sacred books, we may feel a tolerable confidence that the Book 
 of Wisdom was amn^g tiieir number.' 
 
 » HuIo's hi^est ddSnitioa of faith is "a Tittering ia aH things at the son], 
 lAich has cast itsdf for support on the Author of att flungs" {DtAtnimm, S. 39). 
 
 ' Samrnas, i. 416. 
 
 » Oomp. Bom. v. 12; xi. 82; 1 CJor. vL 2; 2 Cor. v. 4, &c, lespectively, with 
 Wisa.ii.24; xi. 23— 26; in, S; ix.l5.&c But see «»/»r«. p. 633. 
 
 p p 2 
 
644 APPENDIX. 
 
 EXCUESUS V. (p. 114). 
 
 Gamaliel and the School of Tubingen. 
 
 I SHALL not often turn aside to meet ■vrhat seem to me to be baseless 
 objections ; but as the name of G-amaliel will always be associated with ' 
 that of St. Paul, it may be worth while to do so for a moment in this 
 instance. It seems, then, to me that this accusation of St. Luke is 
 founded on a mass of errors.^ Gamaliel, like St. Paul, was a Pharisee, 
 the son of Pharisees, and it was doubtless his nobleness and candour of 
 disposition which impressed the Apostle with the better elements of 
 Pharisaism. The fiery zeal of a youthful Tarsian may have led him for 
 a time to adopt the more violent tone of the school of Shammai, and yet 
 might have been very far from obliterating the effects of previous 
 teaching. But, in point of fact, even a HUlel and a Gamaliel, in spite 
 of their general mildness, would have described themselves without 
 hesitation as " exceedingly zealous for the traditions of the fathers.'' 
 Their concessions to expediency were either concessions in their conduct 
 to the heathen, or concessions to necessity and the general interest." 
 The difference between the two Pharisaic schools was not nearly so wide 
 as that between the two great Jewish sects. The Pharisees were beyond 
 all question allied to the Zealots in political sympathies, while the 
 Sadducees had natural aifinities with the Herodians. In what we know 
 of Gamaliel, we trace a spirit, a tone, a point of view, which eriiinently 
 resembles that of his far greater pupil. His decision that soldiers in 
 war time, and all people engaged in works of mercy, duty, or necessity, 
 might be exempted from the more stringent Sabbatical traditions ; his 
 concession of rights of gleaning to the poorer brethren ; ' his direction 
 that the " Peace be with you '' should be addressed even to pagans on 
 their feast days * — are all exactly analogous to the known sentiments of 
 
 ' The precept of Gamaliel, " Get thee a teacher, eschew that which is doubtful, 
 and do not multiply uncertain tithes " [Pirke Aloth, 1, 15), might have emanated 
 from Shammai himself. In fact, the difference between the two schools existed far 
 more in infinitesimal details than in fundamental principles. 
 
 ^ DVi»n ]lp'n 'JDD, " for the good order of the world," Gittin, v. 5. (Derenbourg, 
 Palestine, p. 189.) It is difficult, however, to account for Gamaliel I. having a 
 figure engraved on his seal if that story belongs to him. 
 
 ' See Dr. Ginsburg, s. v., in Kitto's C^el., and Gratz, Oeseh. d. Juden, iii. 274, 
 8CL. ; Jost, Gesch. d. Judinthums, i. 281; Frankel, Hodegetiea in MUcknam, 57; 
 Derenbourg, Palestine, 239, sq. 
 
 ' In Jer. SeraehSth, ix. (Schwab, p. 169), there is a story that meeting a beautiful 
 Pagan woman he uttered to her the ShalSm alaikh. " Is it possible f " is the amazed 
 remark of the Gemara. " Did not E. Zeiia say, on the authority of B. JosS bar 
 
GAMALIEL AZSTD THE SCHOOL OF TtfBINGEN. 645 
 
 the Apostle ; -while the just, humane, and Uberal regulations which he. 
 laid down to prevent the unfairness of husbands towards divorced wives, 
 and of disobedient children towards their mothers, are identical ia spirit 
 to those which St. Paul applies to, similar subjects. The story that he, 
 bathed in a bath at Ptolemais which was adorned with a statue of 
 Aphrodite, and answered the reproaches of a mm with the remark that 
 the statue had evidently been made for the bath, and not the bath for 
 the statue, belongs not to him but to his grandson, :with whom, he is 
 perpetually confused.^ To the latter is also due the, wise and kindly 
 rule of burying the dead in simple white linen, instead of in costly 
 robes. Yet so close was the unity of doctrine which bound together 
 the successive hereditarjjr presidents of the school of Hillel, that we may 
 look on any anecdote of the younger Gamaliel as fairly illustrative of 
 the views of the elder ; and the argument ctf Gamaliel II., that, if he 
 were to be excluded from the enjoyment of every place which had been 
 defiled by the rights of idolatry, he would not be able to find any place 
 to live in at all, reminds us of more than one passage in St. Paul's 
 argument about meats offered to idols. We may therefore regard it as 
 a significant fact that, in spite of, these liberal principles, Gamaliel of 
 Jabne sanctioned the use of the " curse against heretics," ^ which is given 
 ■ twelfth in order in the Shemone Ezre.^ It is probable that his grand- 
 
 S. Hanina, and B. Ba or B. Hiya, on tlie autlioiity of B. Jochanan, that one ought 
 not to express admiration for Pagans?" (a rule hased on a sort of jeu des mots 
 derived from Deut. vii. 3). The answer is that Gamaliel only admired her as he 
 might have admired a heautiful hoi^se or camel, exclaiming that Jehovah had made 
 beautiful things in the universe. The Talmudist then proceeds to excuse Gamaliel 
 for the enormity of looking at a woman, on the ground that it could only have heen 
 unexpectedly in a narrow street. 
 
 1 Abhoda Zara, t. 44, 2. Conybeare and Ifcwson, Krenkel, Lewin, and others, 
 confuse the anecdotes of this Gamaliel [Sa-za&en, or " the Elder ") and Gamaliel 
 n., as also does Otho, Lex. Sabb., s. v. (JEtheridge, Sebr. lit., p. 45). 
 
 ^ D<3'Dn nD"a, Berach&th, f. 28, 2. Its first sentence is, " Let there be no hope to 
 them that apostatize from the true religion ; and let heretics (minim), how Many 
 soever they be, all perish as in a inoment." The actual author of this prayer was 
 Samuel j;he Little {Sa.hat6n). (Gratz, iv. 105, 434.) The notion that this Samuel 
 the Less (for his name is, perhaps, given to distinguish him from the prophet 
 ■Samuel: of. i niyas, as the title of Herod, life of Christ, i., p. 48, «.) has anything 
 to do with Saul (ShaAl being a contraction of iShamuel, and Paulus being supposed 
 to mean the little; Alting, Schilo, iv. 28 ; Basnage, Bk. III. i., pp. 12, 13) is an- 
 absurdity hardly worthy of passing notice. (Eisenmeng. Sntd. Judenth., ii. 107 ; 
 Buxtorf, Lex. Tahn., 1,201, 2,662; WoH, Bibl. Eebr., i. 1,119.) 
 
 ' In point of fact, there is a considerable amount of obscurity about this prayer. 
 The Shemone-ezre or amida is S, prayer recited after the Shema. It is named from 
 the " eighteen blessings," or sections, of which it is composed, and is recited three 
 times a day, or oftener on feast days. It actually contains nineteen sections, tha 
 
646 APPENDIX, 
 
 •father, who was equally liberal in many of Ms sentiments, -would yet 
 have been perfectly willing to authorise a similar prayer. His sense of 
 expediency was so little identical with any indiflference to pure Mosaism, 
 that when he died it was said that the purity and righteousness of 
 Pharisaism was removed, and the glory of the Law ceased.^ Neither, 
 then, in. St. Paul's original zeal for -the oral and written Law, nor in the 
 liberality of his subsequent views and decisions about Mosaic observ- 
 ances, do we find any reason whatever to doubt the statement of his 
 relation to Gamaliel, but on the contrary we find it confirmed by many 
 minute and, at first sight, counter indications. And as far as the 
 speech of Gamaliel is concerned, it seems probable that his toleration 
 would have had decided limits. As it is by no means clear that he did 
 not afterwards sanction the attempt to suppress the Christians, so it is 
 by no means improbable that up to this time even Saul of Tarsus, had 
 he been present at the debate, might have coincided with the half- 
 tolerant, but also half-contemptuous, views of his great teacher. 
 Although the Pharisees, in their deadly opposition to the Sadducees, 
 were always ready to look with satisfaction on that one part of 
 Christianity which rested on the belief in the Resurrection, the events 
 of the next few months greatly altered the general relations of the 
 Church, not only towards them, but also towards the entire body of 
 the Jewish people, of whom, up to this time, a great multitude had 
 welcomed its early manifestations with astonishment and joy. 
 
 12th, which is numbered 11 his, heing the celebrated Birkath ha-Minim, or prayer 
 against the minim, or heretics. Now, in Jer. JierachSth, ch. iv., § 3, we are 
 expressly told that this prayer was added to the Amida at Jabne, and therefore by 
 Gramaliel II. in the second century, long after the destruction of Jerusalem (Cahen, 
 Hist, de la Frihre, p. 30, sq. ; and Megillah, f. 17, 2). How this can be reconciled 
 with the asserted death of Samuel tj»e Little, before the destruction of Jerusalem, is 
 only one of the confusions and contradictions which meet us in every stage of 
 Talmudic literature. HaUel (quoted by Schwab) says that the prayer is sometimes 
 called " the Messing (by euphemism) of the Sadducees," and is intended as a protest 
 of the Pharisees against the mixture of temporising and severity by which the 
 Sadducees ruined their country. Chronology shows this to be futile. 
 
 ^ Sotak, f. 49, 1. He, or his grandson, are cited with high respect ior various 
 minute decisions in the BeracMth. (See Schwab's Traiti dea SeraehSth, pp. X, 
 11, 12, &o.) 
 
CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS. 647 
 
 EXCURSUS VI. (p. 165). 
 
 Capital Punishments : The Stoning op St. Stephen. 
 
 Generally speaking the Sanhedrin were not a sanguinary tribunal. 
 They shuddered at the necessity of bloodshed, and tried to obviate its 
 necessity by innumerable regulations. So great was their horror at 
 putting an Israelite to death, that any means of avoiding it seemed 
 desirable. Simeon Ben Shatach is the only conspicuous Rabbi who, for 
 his cruelty in deciding causes, is said "to have had hot hands." 
 Josephus expressly marks it as disgraceful to the Sadducees that, unlike 
 the rest of their nation, they were savage in their punishments. We 
 are told that if even once in seven years — Rabbi Eleazar Ben Azariah 
 went so for as to say that if once in seventy years — a Sanhedrin 
 inflicted capital punishment it deserved the opprobrious title of "san- 
 guinary."' The migration of the Sanhedrin forty years before the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, from their "Hall of Squares," which was 
 beside the great Court of the Temple to the Chanuj8th or "shops" 
 which were under two cedars on the Mount of Olives, is expressly 
 stated to have been due to their desire to get to a greater distance from 
 the sacred precincts, in order that they might not feel it so sternly 
 incumbent upon them to inflict the strict punishments of the Law.'' 
 But if, after strict and solemn voting, a man was condemned to any of 
 the four capital punishments, the utmost care was taken to remove from 
 the punishment all semblance of vindictive haste. In the case of a 
 convicted blasphemer the death assigned by the Law was stoning, and 
 in Leviticus it is ordained that the witnesses should lay their hands 
 upon his head, and all the congregation should stone him.' In Deutero- 
 nomy we read the further regulations that the hand of the witnesses 
 was first to be upon him* — and this horrible duty was one of the 
 deteiTents from false or frivolous accusation. But if we may accept the 
 authority of the Mishna, the process was an elaborate one. On pronun- 
 ciation of the sentence the condemned was handed over to the Shotertm 
 or Lictors of the Sanhedrin, and led to the place of execution. An 
 
 ' mtain, Maeeoth, f. 7, 1 ; Derenbouig, p. 201. 
 
 ' The Dini Kenaa&th or punitive decisions {AbhSda Zara, f. 8, 2 ; Shabbath, i. 15, 
 1). Kashi inferred from Deut. xvii. 10, that minor Sanhedrins outside Jerusalem 
 could not pronounce capital sentences {Dint Nephashoth) unless the greater Sanhedrin 
 was seated on the Temple Mount. 
 
 » Lev. xxiv. 14. 
 
 * Deut. xvii. 7. 
 
648 APPENDIX 
 
 official stood at the door of the Judgment HalP holding in his hand a 
 handkerchief; a second on horseback was stationed just in sight of the 
 first, and if, even at the last moment, any witness could testify to the 
 innocence of the condemned, the first shook his handkerchief, and the 
 second galloped at fuU speed to bring back the accused, who was himself 
 allowed to be led back as many as four or five times if he could adduce 
 a single solid proof in his own favour. Failing this he was led on with 
 a herald preceding him, who proclaimed his name, his crime, and the 
 witnesses on whose testimony he had been condemned. At ten paces' 
 distance from the place of death he was bidden to confess, because 
 Jewish no less than Roman law valued the certainty derived from the 
 " confitentem reum," and the Jews deduced from the story of Achan 
 that his punishment would, be, as regards the future world, a sufficiently 
 complete expiation of his crime.* A bitter draught containing a grain 
 of frankincense was then given him to stupefy his senses and take away 
 the edge of terror. At four cubits' distance from the fatal spot he was 
 stripped bare of his upper garments, and according to the older and 
 simpler plan of procedure was then stoned, the witnesses simultaneously 
 hurling the first stones.' But the later custom seems to have been more 
 elaborate. The place of execution * was twelve feet high, and one of the 
 witnesses flung the criminal down, back foremost, from the top, the 
 other immediately hurling a heavy stone upon his chest. If this failed to 
 produce death, all who were present joined in stoning him, and his body 
 was subsequently hung by the hands on a tree until the fall of evening, s 
 We may be quite sure that none of these elaborate prescriptions 
 were followed in the martyrdom of Stephen. He was murdered in one 
 of those sudden outbursts of fury to which on more than one occasion 
 the life of our Lord had been nearly sacrificed. 
 
 EXCURSUS Vn. (p. 166). 
 
 The Powkk op the Sanhedein to Inflict Death. 
 
 A QUESTION has often been raised how the Sanhedrin at this time 
 had the power of inflicting death at all ? The well-known passage of 
 
 ^ AH these particulars, except when otherwise stated, I derive from the tract 
 Sanhedrin of the Mishna, cap. vi. (Surenhus. ii., p. 234, seqq.) 
 » Tanchuma, i. 39, § 3 ; Sohottg. Sor. Eebr. ad Acts vii. 68. 
 ' Tanchuma, ubi eupr. ; Deut. xvii. 7. 
 
 * Called nVpon rra. 
 
 • Deut. xxi. 22, 23. 
 
POWER OF THE SA^raBDRm. 649 
 
 St. John, "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death," has been 
 asserted to be in direct contradiction to the narrative. The explanation 
 of that passage to mean "it is not lawful at the time of the feast" is 
 both phUologically and historically untenable, and there seems to be 
 little doubt that there is truth in the statement of the Talmud that 
 about forty years — a well-known vague term in Jewish writers — before 
 the fall of Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin had relinquished — it would be 
 truer to say, had been deprived of — the power of death.^ That depri- 
 vation was due to the direct interference of the Romans, who would not 
 extend the highest judicial functions to men so likely to abuse them for 
 seditious ends. It is, perhaps, only an attempt of the Rabbis to veil 
 their national humiliation, when they attribute the diminished glories • 
 of their " House of Judgment " to their own leniency ; to their re- 
 luctance to shed the blood of a descendant of Abraham ; to the con- 
 sequent increase of crimes ; and to the migration from the Hall of 
 Squares to the " Shops " of the Beni Hanan. But, on the other hand,, we 
 know the astute connivance which the Romans were always ready to 
 extend to acts which were due' to religious excitement and not to civil 
 rebellion.2 They rarely interfered with national superstitions. Even 
 Pilate, though by no means void of a sense of justice, had been quite 
 willing to hand over Jesus to any extreme of ecclesiastical vengeance, 
 provided only that the direct responsibility did not fall upon himself. 
 Further than this, there is every reason to believe that St. Stephen's 
 martyrdom finds its counterpart in the murder of James, the Lord's 
 brother. That was brought about by the younger Hanan during a High 
 Priesthood of only three months' duration, in which he seized his 
 opportunity, and availed himself of a brief interregnum which followed 
 on the death of Festus, and preceded the arrival of his successor 
 Albinus. It was at just such an interregnum that the death of Stephen 
 is believed to have taken place. Pontius Pilate had been sent to Rome 
 by his official phief, Vitellius, the Prsefect of Syria, to answer to the 
 Emperor for the complaints of cruelty and insult brought against him 
 by the inhabitants of every division of his Procuratorship. Before his 
 anival the Emperor Tiberius died. An event of this magnitude re- 
 laxed the sternness of government in every province of the Empire,^ 
 
 * Abhodah Zara, f. 8, 2. 
 
 2 The policy of Eome towards her Oriental subjects was a policy of contemptuous 
 tolerance in all matters that afEected the local cult. 
 
 > That there was at this very time a special desire to conciliate the Jews, who 
 had been so much exasperated by the cruelties of Pilate, is clear from the oircum- 
 Btance that VitelUus, after a magnificent reception at Jerusalem, had just restored 
 to the Jews the custody of the pontifical vestments, which since the days of Herod 
 
650 APPENDIX 
 
 and though Yitellius appointed Marcellus as a brief temporary locwn 
 tenens until the arrival of Marullus, who was appointed Procurator by 
 Gaius,^ the Sanhedria may have met while there was no Procurator at 
 all, and in any case would have found it easy to persuade a substitute 
 like Marcellus, or a new-comer like Marullus, that it would be useless to 
 inquire into a mere riot which had ended in the richly deserved punish- 
 ment of a blaspheming Hellenist. In short, we find that the possibility 
 of tumultuous outbreaks which might end in a death by stoning is 
 constantly recognised in the New Testament ; ^ and it would have been 
 easy for the Sanhedrin to represent the stoning of St. Stephen in such a 
 light 
 
 EXCURSUS Vm. (p. 179). 
 
 Damascus under Habeth. 
 
 Hareth was the father-in-law of Herod Antipas, and fi-om the day 
 when the weakness of that miserable prince had beguiled him into 
 his connexion, at once adulterous and incestuous, with Herodias, 
 his brother Philip's wife, Hareth had been the implacable foe of the 
 Tetrarch of GalUee. Their quarrel had ended in a battle, in which 
 the troops of Hareth won a signal victory. After this defeat, in 
 which the Jews saw a retribution for the murder of John the Baptist," 
 Antipas applied to the Empei-or Tiberius, who sent Vitellius to chastise 
 the audacious Emir who had dared to defeat an ally of Rome. 
 But when Vitellius had reached Jerusalem, he heard the news of the 
 death of Tiberius. The death of a Roman emperor often involved so 
 immense a change of policy, that Vitellius did not venture, without 
 fresh instructions, to renew the war. The details of what followed 
 have pot been preserved. That Hareth ventured to seize Damascus is 
 improbable. Vitellius was too vigorous a legate, and the Arab had 
 too wholesome a dread of imperial Rome, to venture on so daring an 
 
 the Great had heen kept in the Tower of Antonia (Jos. Antt. xv. 11, i ; xviii. 4, 2). 
 The privilege was again forfeited, and again restored to them hy Claudius, at the 
 request of Agrippa II. {id. xx. 1, 2). The power of inflicting minor punishments 
 seems always to have rested with the Jews, as it does with many religious oommuni- 
 ties of raias, even under the tyranny, of Turkish misrule (Renan, Zes Apotres, p. Hi). 
 
 1 Jos. Antt. xviii. 6, 10 (of. 4, 2). 
 
 2 John viii. 59 ; x. 31 — 33 ; Matt, xxiii. 37 ; Acta v. 26. See Orig. ad African. 
 § 14, opwd "Wordsworth. 
 
 * Jos. Antt. xviii. 5, § 1. 
 
SAUL m AHABIA, 651 
 
 act of rebellion. On the other hand, it is not impossible that the 
 Emperor Gains— who was fond of distributing kiagdoms among princes 
 whom he favoured, and whose mind was poisoned against Antipas by 
 his Mend and minion Agrippa I— should have given back to Hareth a 
 town which in old daiys had belonged to the Nabathsean dynasty." The 
 conjecture receives some independent confirmation. Coins of Damascus 
 are found which bear the image of Augustus, of Tiberius, and again of 
 Nero, but none which bear that of Gains or of Claudius. This would 
 lead us to infer that during these reigns Damascus was subject, to a local 
 Bway.s 
 
 BXCTJESUS IX. (p. 213). 
 Saul in Arabia. 
 
 Few geographical terms are more vaguely used by ancient writers 
 than "Arabia," and some have seen the explanation of St. Luke's 
 silence about the retirement of St. Paul, in the possibility that he may 
 scarcely have gone beyond the immediate region of Damascus. Justin 
 Martyr challenges Trypho to deny that Damascus "belongs and did 
 belong to Arabia, though now it has been assigned to what is called 
 Syrophoenicia." Some shadow of probability may be, perhaps, given to 
 the view that St. Paul did not travel far from Syria, because the Arabic 
 translator of the Epistle to the Galatians renders the clause in Gal. L 17, 
 &c., " Immediately I went to El Belka ; '' and in Gal. iv. 25, mistaldng 
 the meaning of the word o-uo-toix" (wliich means " answers to," " cor- 
 responds with," " falls under the same row with "), he says that " Mount 
 Sinai or El Belka is contiguous to Jerusalem."* But siace Sinai is 
 certainly not in the El Belka with which alone we have any acquaintance 
 — ^namely, the region to the north and east of the Dead Sea — this 
 curious version does not seem worthy of any further notice. Doubtless, 
 
 1 Thus in A.D. 38 lie gave Iturasa to Soheym ; Lesser Armenia to Cotys ; part 
 of Thrace to Ehsemetalces ; Pontius, &c., to Polemo 11. (Dio Cass. lix. 12). Keim 
 thinks that Aretas may have had a sort of partial jurisdiction in Damascus. 
 
 " Jos. Antt. xiii. 5, §§ 2, 3; "Wieseler, Chron. des Apost. Zeitalt. 174. 
 
 » Wieseler, ia his article on Aretas in Herzog's Enoycl., refers to Mionuet, p. 204, 
 as his authority for the existence of a coin of Aretas, which bears the date 101 (.A.D). 
 Now, if this date refer to the Pompeian era, the coin would belong to A.D. 37—38, 
 ahout the very time in which Saul's mission to Damascus took place. 
 
 * Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 81. 
 
652 APPENDIX 
 
 in the then disturbed and fluctuating relations between the Bomon 
 Empire and the various Eastern principalities, St. Paul might have 
 found himself far beyond the range of interruption by taking but a 
 short journey from the neighbourhood of Damascus. 
 
 But is it not more probable that when St. Paul speaks of his visit 
 to Arabia, he means Arabia in that Hebrew sense in which the word 
 would be understood by the majority of his readers? We cannot, 
 indeed, accept the proof of his familiarity with these regions which is 
 derived from the reading of our Received text, "for this Hagar is 
 Mount Sinai in Arabia," and from the supposition that Hagar was a 
 local name for the mountain itself. * For the true reading of that 
 verse seems to be, " for Sinai is a mountain in Arabia ; " and, as Dr. 
 Lightfoot has shown, there is no adequate authority for the assertion — 
 perhaps originally a mistake of St. Chrysostom — that Mount Sinai was 
 ever called Hagar. Moreover, it is doubtful whether, even by way of 
 allegoric paronomasia, St. Paul would have identified Haga/r, " a wan. 
 derer," with clwdjcur, " a stone ; " especially siace Philo, who also has an 
 allegory about Hagar and Sarah, had already extracted a moral meaning 
 from the correct derivation. But setting this ancient argument aside, 
 nothing can seem more natural than that St. Paul, possibly already 
 something of a fugitive, almost certainly a sufferer in health and mind, 
 driven by an imperious instinct to seek for solitude, should have turned 
 his lonely steps to a region where he would at once be safe, and 
 unburdened, and alone with God. 
 
 EXCURSUS X. (p. 221> 
 
 St. Paul's "Stake in the Flesh." 
 
 There are two main passages on which our inferences about the " stake 
 in the flesh" must be founded, and the impression which they leave is only 
 strengthened by more isolated allusions. These two passages, to give 
 them in their chronological order, are : 2 Cor. xii. 1 — 10^ and Gal. iv. j' 
 and I translate them in all their ruggedness, and the interchanges of 
 thought which render it almost impossible to explain the rapid transition 
 of their causal connexions. 
 
 * Gal. iv. 26, 
 
 * Written, not earlier tlian the autumn of A.D. 57. 
 
 * Written perhaps in the spring of A.D. 68. 
 
ST. PAUL'S "STAKE m THE FLESH." 653 
 
 I. The first of them runs as foDows : — ^After sho\ring that, hotrevei 
 veak and unworthy he may be, he has yet laboured and suffered more 
 than "the supepftre^minent Apostles," — a boastfiihiess the yery sem- 
 blance of -vhich he loathes, but which, again and again, he says h^ been 
 forced upon him by the intrigues and slanders of interested opponents — 
 he mentions his perilous escape from Damascus, which had made a deep 
 impression on his memory, and then continues : " Boasting, evidently, 
 is not expedient for me ; for I will come to visions and revelations of 
 the Lord.1 I know a man in Christ fourteen years ago — (whether in 
 the body I know not, or wheUier out of the body I know not : God 
 knoweth) — caught up, such a one as far as the third heaven. And 
 I know such a man — (whether in the body, or apart* from the body, 
 I know not: God knoweth) — that he was caught up into Paradise 
 aikd heard unutterable things which it is not lawful for man to speak. 
 About such a one I will boast; but abotit myself I will not boast 
 except in mine infirmities. For if I should wish to boast, I shaU not 
 be a fool, for I shall speak the truth ; but I forbear, that no one 
 may reckon about me more than what he seeth me or heareth any- 
 thing from me. And, that I may not be puffed up by this abundance of 
 revelations, there was given me a stake in the fiesh an angel of Satan,' 
 that it may buffet me that I may not be puffed up^ For this, thrice did 
 I entreat the Lord that it might depart from me. And He hath said 
 to me : My grace suflficeth for thee ; for power is being perfected in 
 weakness.* Most gladly, then, rather will I boast in my infirmities> 
 that the power of Christ may spread its tent over ma Therefore, I am 
 content in infirmities, in iEsnlts, in necessities, in persecutions, in dis- 
 tresses, for Christ's sake, for when I am weak then I am powerful."* 
 
 iL The other passage is GaL iv. 12 — 16. St. Paul has been 
 vehemently urging the Gralatians not to sink to the low level of their 
 previous bondage from the fteedom of the Gospel, and in the midst of 
 his reasonings and exhortations he inserts this tender appeal : — 
 
 " Become as I am, for I too have become as you, brethren, I beseech 
 you. In no respect did ye wrong me. Yea, ye know that because of 
 infirmity of the fl^h I preached to you the first time, and your tempta- 
 tion in my flesh* ye despised not nor loathed, but as an angel of God 
 
 » ThswBdingaf this verse jsestremely doubtful; ». injrm, ^ lee 
 
 * j(urU,B,I),B,Tflisikiam!SKWB^toiKn\)eeaa]t&Kiratothe4*T^<>£ the 
 
 pravious verse ^, F, 6). 
 » Of . 1 Got. t. 5. 
 « Qmitfu. (i^ A, B, D, F, G^ 
 ■ a Cor. m. 1—10. 
 
 • The true readiog is Ti» mfmriAr i/iAt ir if tmfid ^m*. 
 
654 APPENDIX. 
 
 ye received me, as Christ Jesus. What, then, -was your self-congratula- 
 tion ? For I bear you witness that, if possible, ye dug out your eyes ' 
 and gave them. me. So, have I become your enemy by telling you the 
 truth ? " 
 
 iii. The most prominent allusions to the same bodily afHiction are — 
 Gal. vi. 17: "Henceforth let no man trouble me, for I carry in my 
 body the brands of Jesus ; " ' 2 Cor. iv. 10 : " Always bearing about in 
 the body the putting to death of the Lord Jesus;" and perhaps 
 indirectly. Col. L 24 : " Now I rejoice' in my sufferings for you, and I 
 supplement in Christ's stead the deficiences of the affictions of Christ in 
 my flesh for His body which is the Church." When, too, we remember that 
 the word for " stake " is only a more contemptuous form of the word 
 for " cross," '' there may be a further allusion to this special trial in the 
 words, " I have been crucified with Christ." 5 
 
 a. Now, from the first of these passages we see that St. Paul, so far 
 from boasting of exceptional revelations, will only mention them because 
 they are connected with infii-mities so painful as to render it ridiculous 
 as well as sinful for him to boast at aU, vmless he might boast that his 
 very weakness was but a more signal proof of that strength of Christ 
 which had enabled him to do and to suffer more than the very ohiefest 
 Apostles. 
 
 (3. We gather that his trial was something agonising, or it would not be 
 called a stake in the flesh ; " mysterious in its nature, or it would not be 
 described as an angel of Satan ; intermittent, as is implied in the 
 word " buffet," and as is also apparent from various special paroxysms 
 to which St. Paid alludes ; and a direct consequence of, or at any rate 
 intimately connected with, his most exalted moments of revelation and 
 ecstasy. 
 
 y- From the second passage, we have the additional particulars, that it 
 was in consequence of some sharp attack of his malady that he had 
 been detained in Galatia ; that this malady was of such a nature as to 
 
 ' The omission of the &v (cf. John xix. 1 1 ; Matt. xxvi. 28) gives tax more yivid- 
 ness to the expression. (See my Brief Qreek Syntaas, § 137.) 
 
 * Leg. ToB 'IijiroB (all hut Uncials) . 
 
 * lieg. NS;' xf^P" (-*■> B, C). 
 
 * Lipsius De Gruce, i. 4. Hence tTKo\oirlCa = /TravpSa (cf. stipes). 
 
 " Gal. ii. 20, Xpitrrip truvetrTaipa/tai. This epistle is full of the " cross," and 
 was written with vivid repiniscenoe (at least) of the " stake." The allusion of 
 1 Thess. ii. 18, " but Satan hindered us," is too vague to be referred with any 
 special probability to this afSiction. 
 
 * 'AKoi/floi Koi <rK6\oirfS oSivas trrinaivovai SiA rh o|i (Artemid. iii. 33, Meyer); 
 (cf. Num. xxxiii. 55 ; Josh, xxiii. 13 ; Ezek. xxviii. 21 ; <rK6Ko\^ irtKpias, Hob. ii. 6 ; 
 LXX.). Hence perhaps the rendering " thorn." 
 
ST. PAUL'S "STAKE IN THE PLESH." 655 
 
 form an actual trial to the GaJatians, and naturaUjr dispose them to look 
 on him with contempt, if not with positive loathing ; but that they had 
 so completely triumphed over this feeling as to receive him with ahnost 
 divine respect, and that they had so congratulated themselves on his 
 visit as to have been ready, had it been possible, to dig out their very 
 eyes and give them to their suffering teacher. 
 
 S- The other references confirm these conclusions. In one of them we 
 learn that St. "Paul looked on his physical infirmities as sacred stigmata 
 by which Jesus had marked him out as His slave, that he might be 
 secured from molestation;! and in the others that he regarded his 
 ' living death as a sort of continuation of his Lord's crucifixion, aud a 
 .supplement to those sufferings for the sake of His Church, in which 
 Christ allowed His servants to participate by taking up their cross and 
 following after Him for the service of mankind.' 
 
 Now these passages at once exclude nine-tenths of the conjectures 
 . which have been so freely hazarded, and which could not have been 
 hazarded at all by those who had carefully considered the conditions of 
 the question. Many of these conjectures would not have even deserved 
 a passing mention if they had not, on the one hand, possessed a certain 
 archieological interest as belonging to the history of exegesis, and on the 
 other brought to light some fragments of old tradition, or pointed to 
 certain features in the character of the Apostle. 
 
 1. It is, for instance, abundantly clear that the stake in the flesh 
 was nothing of a spiritual nature. If we find such men as Jean 
 Gerson,^ and Luther, and Calvin more or less confidently deciding that 
 the expression alludes to high spiritual temptations, such as shrinkino' 
 from his duties as an Apostle, tormenting doubts, and stings of con- 
 science for the past, the decision is only interesting as a proof that these 
 great and holy men could so well sympathise with these painful hin- 
 drances. Yet such an explanation is wholly impossible. It is excluded 
 at once by the references to the infirmity as being of a physical de- 
 Bcription. It is excluded also by St. Paul's character, and by the 
 circumstances of his life. There is much in his Epistles about weariness 
 and sorrow, about fightings without and fears within, but there is not 
 the faintest trace that the fire of zeal burnt low, even at his moments of 
 deepest discouragement, on the altar of his heart. Nor could tor- 
 menting doubts have had much reality in the soul of one who had seen 
 
 -» Gal. vi. 17. 
 
 s 2 Cor. iv. 10 ; Col. i. 24 ; Phil. iii. 10 ; Gal. u. 20. 
 
 ' Perhaps the author, or part author, of the Imitatio Christi. (See Companiam o/ 
 the Devout Life, p. 8, sq.) 
 
656 APPENDIX. 
 
 the risen Christ, and to whom ■were constantly vouchsafed the Tivid 
 revelations wliich not only solved the problems, but even guided the 
 movements of his life.^ 
 
 2. And while we reject this view of some great Reformers, we must 
 reject quite as decidedly the fixed opinion of the most eminent Koman 
 Catholics. Vague expressions in St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and 
 Gregory the Great seem to have led to an opinion that the stake in the 
 flesh was some form of carnal temptation.^ This view, repeated by the 
 Venerable Bede, has been, continued through Aquinas, Bellarmine, 
 Cornelius k Lapide, and other Roman Catholic writers down to Van 
 Est in the sixteenth century, till it has become almost a stereotyped 
 part of the exegesis of the Roman Catholic Church. It is due to the 
 ambiguous rendering of " stake in the flesh," by gtimulvs carnis in the 
 Vulgate translation. Now, in this case also — ^though we may observe 
 with sorrowful interest that the struggles of ascetics to subdue by 
 unwise methods their carnal passions made them glad to believe that 
 even in the case of St. Paul such an infirmity was never whoUy 
 removed — we are nevertheless obliged on every ground to reject the 
 explanation. It in no way satisfies the general tenor of St. Paul's 
 expressions. It is not an infirmity of which by any possibility he could 
 boast. "We cannot conceive so revolting a stain on the character of the 
 Apostle as that which would be involved in the supposition that such 
 tendencies, if he had been cursed with them, should have so manifested 
 themselves as to be a hindrance to his ministry, and a source of loathing 
 to those who heard him. It is still more outrageous to imagine that 
 such criminal concupiscence would have been implanted or strengthened 
 in him as a counterpoise to the spiritual pride which might otherwise 
 have resulted from special revelations. But besides all this, it fixes on 
 the memory of the Apostle a weakness from which we may well believe 
 that he was most exceptionally free. It is true that in the Epistle to 
 the Romans he describes, in language of intense emotion, the struggle 
 in the soul between the good and the evil impulse — the Tetser ha-t6bh 
 and Tetser ha-rd of which he had heard so much in the Beth Midrash 
 of his education. But it is idle to imagine that a strife so multiform 
 must be referred to one only of its manifestations. And we judge that 
 St. Paul had very early subdued every motion of rebellious sensuality, 
 not only because no man who ever lived has uttered words of loftier 
 purity ; not only because upon his principles more than upon those of 
 any human moralist ha,ve been founded the very bases of Christian 
 abstinence ; not only because, to an extent unparalleled in literature, he 
 
 1 See Acts xvi. 7 ; xxi. 4 ; xxii. 17 ; Gal. ii. J, &c. 
 
 2 Greg. MoraJ,. x. 8, 315. See the authorities iu TiUemont, i. 222 (ed. 1693). 
 
ST. PAUL'S "STAKE Df THE FLESH." 657 
 
 has the high gift of being able to brand the shamelessness of impurity 
 without wounding the delicacy of Christian thought ; ^ but more than 
 this, because he is able to appeal to others that they should learn by 
 bis example how possible it was to live by the rule of a holy continence. 
 Admitting as he does to the Corinthians that it is better onqe for all to 
 marry than to be consumed by the slow inward fires of concupiscence,' 
 he yet says to the unmarried, "it is good for them to abide even as I," 
 and that "he would that all men were even as he himself." ° There 
 would be hypocrisy, and something worse than hypocrisy, ia such lan- 
 guage if the " stake in the flesh," which was still unremoved when he 
 wrote the Second Epistle, were that which this long succession of 
 commentators have supposed it to be.^ 
 
 3. It may, then, be regard,ed as certain that the stake in the flesh 
 was some physical malady ; for the fancy first mentioned by Chrysostom 
 and adopted by the Greek fathers, as well as by Hilary and Augustine, 
 that it means the opposition and persecution with which St. Paul met at 
 the hands of Judaists, and perhaps especially of one leader among them 
 who was "a thorn in his side,'" is too entirely at variance with the 
 conditions of the question to deserve further notice. But when, in our 
 anxiety to understand and sympathise as far as possible with the 
 Apostle's personality, we still ask what was this malady, we are left in 
 uncertainty. To omit the more futile conjectures, neither attacks of 
 headache nor earache mentioned traditionally by TertuUian and Jerome, 
 nor the stone which is the conjecture of Aquinas, present those features 
 of external repulsiveness to which the Apostle evidently alludes as the 
 concomitants of his trial. The only conjectures which have much in- 
 trinsic probability are those which suppose him to have suffered from 
 epilepsy or from ophthalmia. N 
 
 4. There is something to be said in favour of the view that it was 
 Epilepsy. It is painful ; it is recurrent ; it opposes an immense difficulty 
 to all exertion; it may at any time cause a temporary suspension of 
 
 * Rom. i. ; Eph. v. , &c. 
 
 ' 1 Cor. vii. 9, kpe7<r<roy ya/i^trai t) wpovtr$ai. 
 » 1 Cor. vii. 7, 8. 
 
 * It is difficult to telieve that 2 Cor. vii. 2 ; xi. 8 ; and 1 Thess.ii. 3 are intended i 
 to refute charges which had been even hrought against Paul himself. They may bej 
 intended to contrast his own conduct with that of other teachers, and indeed the ■ 
 first two passages do not necessarily refer to unchastity at all. The axaSapaia 
 
 • I Thess. ii. 3 is explained, even hy Chrysostom, of vile and juggling arts ; and' 
 Olshansen, Liinemann, Alford, Bllicott, and others all suppose it to refer primarily 
 to ala-xpoKepSeia and similar impure motives. 
 
 " A special person may be indicated in 2 Cor. x. 7, 10, 11, IS.;, si. 4j 2U ; ajid in • 
 GaL i. 9; iii. I; vi 7, 12. 
 
 Q Q 
 
658 APPENDIX. 
 
 ■work: it is intensely humiliating to the person -wLo suffers from it; it 
 exercises a repellent effect on those who -wifness its distressing manifes- 
 tations. Moreover, it was regarded in ancient days as supernatural in 
 its character, was surrounded with superstitious fancies, and was 
 directly connected by the Jews with demoniacal possession.' Further, 
 St. Paul himself connects his infirmity with his trances and visions, and 
 the soul of man is so constituted that any direct intercourse with the 
 unseen world — even, in a lower order, any deep absorption in religious 
 thought, or paroxysms of religious feeling — does tend to a violent dis- 
 turbance of the nervous organism." It would be specially certain to act 
 in this way in the case of one whose temperament was so emotional a^ 
 was that of St. Paul. It is not impossible that the prostration which 
 followed his conversion' may have been induced by the shock which 
 his system .received from his miraculous conversion on the road 
 to Damascus ; and that the recurrence of this shock, involving a . 
 chronic liability to its attacks, accompanied that second trance in the 
 Temple, which determined his future career as the Apostle of the 
 Gentiles. His third ecstasy happened fourteen years ' before he wrote 
 the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, and therefore at some period 
 during his second residence in Tai-sus. If we take the words, " thrice I 
 besought the Lord," literally, we may then further Wieve that it was at 
 each of these recurrences of anguish upon the renewals of special reve- 
 lations that he had made his most earnest entreaty to be delivered from 
 the buffets of this angel of Satan ; and that it was only during, or after, 
 his third and most memorable vision that his Lord pointed out to him 
 the meaning of the trial, and told him that, though it could not be 
 removed, he should be strengthened with grace sufficient to enable him 
 to bear it.* 
 
 1 Morbus Comitialis, Dio Caas. xlvi. 33 ; GelL xix. 2. In Wel^ it is called 
 gwialen Christi, " the rod of Chriat," and eUdyt bendigaid, " blessed disease." A 
 curious Celtic tradition to this effect is preserved in the old Irish name for epilepsy, 
 in galar Foil (Stokes, Old Irish Glossary, p. 120 ; Ano. Laws of Ireland, iii. 506), 
 Krenkel, in HUgenfeld's Zeitschr. xvi. (ii.) 233—244, notices the curious fact that the 
 evil omen of epilepsy was averted by spitting. Hence Plautus calls it the " morbus 
 qui sputatur " {Captiv. iii. 4, 15 ; of. Plin. ff. JV. x. 23, 33; xxviii. 4, 7). He connects 
 this with ^JeTTTuo-oTe (as though it meant "neither did ye spit") of Gal. iv. 14. 
 
 2 The trances of Sokrates, the fits of Mohammed, accompanied by foaming at 
 the mouth, and followed by the sleep of exhaustion, the faintings and ecstasies of 
 St. Bernard, St. Francis, and St. Catherine of Siena, have been adduped as parallels ' 
 (Hausrath, pp. 62 — 56). We may add the cases of George Fox, of Jacob Boehme, 
 of Swedenborg, &o. 
 
 > The " about " in the E. V. is interpolated. 
 
 • Compare the interesting parallels of Alfred and of St. Bernard. 
 
ST. PAUL'S "STAKE IN THE FLESH." 659 
 
 5. But even if this -was the actual " stake in the flesh," there is the 
 strongest reason to helieve that St. Paul suffered further from acute 
 OphtludTrda, which also fulfils in every particular the conditions of the 
 problem. This, too, would have the advantage of following the analogy 
 of God's dealings, by being a trial not arbitrarily inflicted, but one which 
 might have resulted naturally — or, to use the more exact term, let us 
 say, providentially — from the circumstances through which Paul had 
 passed. We know that he was physically blinded by the glare of light 
 which surrounded him when he saw the risen Lord. The whole cir- 
 cumstances of that event — the noonday journey under the fierce Syrian 
 sun, the blaze of light which outshone even that noonday brightness, 
 and the blindness which followed it — would have been most likely to 
 leave his eyes inflamed and weak. His stay in the desert and in 
 Damascus — regions notorious for the prevalence of this disease — ^would 
 have tended to develop the mischief when it had once been set up ; 
 and though we are never told in so many words that the Apostle 
 suffered from defective sight, there are yet so many undesigned coin- 
 cidences of allusion all pointing in this direction, that we may regard it as 
 an ascertained fact. Apart from the initial probability that eyes which had 
 once been so seriously afiected would be liable to subsequent attacks of 
 disease, we have the following indications : — (i.) When speaking of his 
 infirmity to the Galatians, St. Paul implies that it might well have 
 rendered him an object of loathing ; and this is pre-eminently the case 
 with acute ophthalmia. The most distressing objects, next to the 
 lepers, which the traveller wOl ever see in the East — those who will 
 most make him inclined to turn away his face with a shudder of pity 
 and almost involuntary disgust — are precisely those who are the victims 
 of this disease.^ (ii.) And this would give a deeper pathos and 
 meaning to the Apostle's testimony that the Galatians in the first flush 
 of their Gospel joy, when they looked on the preacher of those good 
 tidings as an angel of God, would, had it been possible, home dug out 
 tJmr eyes in order to place them at the sufferer's service, (iii.) The 
 term, " a stake in the flesh," would be most appropriate to such a 
 ; malady, because all who have been attacked with it know that the 
 image which it recalls most naturally is that of a sharp splinter run into 
 the eye." (iv.) Moreover, it would be extremely likely to cause 
 
 1 When Dr. Lightfoot, who rejects this theory, says that " St. Paul's language 
 impUes some more striking complaint," he is prohably thinking of the milder forms 
 of ophthalmia with which alone we are famiUar in England, and not of those 
 
 i virulent attacks which are but too common in Syria, and which make such terrible 
 havoc of the human countenance. » 
 
 2 AUord's remark that ophthalmic disorders are not usuaUy painful is singularly 
 
 mistaken. 
 
 Qq 3 
 
660 APPENDIX ^ 
 
 epileptic or other symptoms, since in severe attacks it is often accom- 
 panied by cerebral disturbance, (v.) In spite of the doubt ■which has 
 been recently thrown on the commonly accepted meaning of the ex- 
 pression which St. Paul uses to the Galatians, "Ye see iu what large 
 letters 'I write to you with my own hand," it must at any rate be 
 admitted that it suits well with the hypothesis of a condition which 
 rendered it painful and difficult to write at all. That this was St. 
 Paul's normal condition seems to result from his almost invariable 
 practice of employing an amanuensis, and only adding in autograph the 
 few last words of greeting or blessing, which were necessaiy for the 
 identification of his letters in an age in which religious forgeries were by 
 no means unknown, (vi.) It is obvious, too, that an ocular deformity, 
 caused as this had been, might well be compared to the brand fixed by a 
 master on his slave, (vii.) Lastly, there is no other reasonable ex- 
 planation of the circumstance that, when St. Paul had uttered an in- 
 dignant answer to the High Priest, and had been rebuked for it, he at 
 once frankly ofiered his apology by saying that " he had not recognised 
 the speaker to have been the High Priest." Now, considering the 
 position of the High Priest as Jfast of the Sanhedrin, seated at the end 
 of the hall, with the Ab Beth Din on one side of him, and the Chacha/m 
 on the other,^ it is almost inconceivable that Paul shoidd not have been 
 aware of his rank if he had not sufiered from defective sight. All 
 that his blurred vision took in was a white figure, nor did he see this 
 figure with sufficient clearness to be able to distinguish that the over- 
 bearing tyrant was no less a person than the High Priest himself.' 
 
 But if these conjectures are correct — and to me they seem to , be 
 almost certain — how immensely do they add to our conception of Paxd's 
 heroism ; how much do they heighten the astonishment and admiration 
 which we feel at all that he endured and all that he accomplished 
 This man, who almost single-handed carried the Gospel of Christ from 
 Damascus to Home, was so great a sufferer from inflammation of the 
 eyes that he was often pitiable to look upon ; was unable to write 
 except with pain, and in large letters ; was liable to attacks of severe" 
 ^ '^Ji accompanied at times with loss of consciousness. He was so 
 
 ^ Acts xxiii. 5. It is possible that the presence of Boman officials disturbed thia 
 order. 
 
 ' The expression " fixing an earnest gaze '" (irecfo-oj) has often been adduced as 
 yet another sign that St. Paul's eyesight was weak, and therefore that he had 
 acquired the intent stare so common in short-sighted people. This argument is, 
 however, untenable, since the word is a favourite one with St. Luke (Acts xiii. 9 ; 
 xxiii. 1) and is apj)Ked not only to St., Paul, but also to St. Peter, St. Stephen, and 
 even to whole bodies of men (Luke iv, 20 xxii. 56 ; Acts i. 10; ill. 2 — i ; vi. 16 ; 
 vii, 66). 
 
ON JEWISH SCOUEGINGS. 661 
 
 weak and ailin g that under circumstances of danger he was personally 
 helpless ; that he had to be passively conducted from place to place ; 
 that it was almost impossible for him, I mU not say only to preach, but 
 even to get through the ordinary routine of life without companions to 
 guide, and protect, and lead him by the hand,^ We can then see how 
 indispensable it was that St. Paul should have some " that ministered 
 unto Tnim ■ " how strongly he would feel the necessity of being always 
 accompanied upon his missions by faithful friends ; ' how much anguish 
 •' might lie in his remark that 5n his strong affection for the Thessalonians 
 he -was even ready for their sakes to part with his beloved Timotheus, 
 and to be left at Athens alone.^ How close, then, and how tender 
 would be the bond of mutual gratitude and affection which would 
 inevitably grow up under such circumstances between himself and the 
 little band of disciples by whom he was usually accompanied ! With 
 what deepened bitterness would he feel the cruelty of neglect and 
 ingratitude when, at his first answer, no man stood with him, but all 
 forsook him ! * 
 
 EXCUESTJS XL (p. 226). 
 Ok Jewish Scourgings. 
 
 Even a single Jewish scourging might well entitle any man to be 
 regarded as a martyr. Thirty-nine blows were inflicted, unless, indeed, 
 it was found that the strength of the patient was too much exhausted to 
 admit of his receiving the full number. Both of his hands were tied to 
 what is sometimes called a column, but which was in reality a stake a 
 cubit and a half high.* The pubUc officer then tore down his robe until 
 
 » Acts xvii. 14, rhv naC\oi/ IJoireVTEiXoc ot aSeH^ol ; 15, oi 5e KaBiffTivovTcs 
 (KoBiaravTis, B, G, H) t>,v naSAoc «7o7oy im 'ABnyZv. These phraees seem more 
 specific than those in Gen. xviii. 16 ; Rom. xv. 24 (irpoTre/i.pflfli'oi). 
 
 2 Mr. Lewin {St. Paul, i. 189, third edition) was, I helieve, the earUest to point 
 out that these passages hear on the question. They are not in themselves cor.clu- 
 give; hut when we find the same words used in Acts ix. 30 (to which Mr. Lewin 
 does not refer), when we may weU suppose that a fresh attack had followed a fresh 
 revelation, they not improhably point to some such state of thmgs as that which I 
 isve inferred. 
 
 » 1 Thess. iii. 1. 
 
 * 2 Tim. iv. 16. , 
 
 » Marble " columns," traditionally aaagned to this purpose, are shown among 
 the relics of Koman Catholic churches; e.j^.^the column of the flagellation m the 
 Cihurch of the Holy Sepulchre ; that of the scourging of St. Paul m S. Faolofuort 
 a Muri at Bome, &e. 
 
662 APPENDIX. 
 
 his breast was laid bare. The executioner stood on a stone behind the 
 criminal. The scourge consisted of two thongs, one of which was com- 
 posed of four strands of calf-skin, and one of two strands of ass's-skin, 
 which passed through a hole in a handle. The executioner, who was 
 ordinarily the Ghazzan of the synagogue, could thus shorten or lengthen 
 them at will, so as not to stiike too low.^ The prisoner bent to receive 
 the blows, which were inflicted with one hand, but with all the force of 
 the striker, thirteen on the breast, thirteen on the right, and thirteen on 
 the left shoulder. "While the punishment was going on, the chief judge 
 read aloud Deut. xxviiL 68, 59, " If thou wilt not observe to do all the 
 words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear 
 this glorious and fearful name, the Lord thy God ; then the Lord will 
 make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed." He then 
 read Deut. xxix. 9, " Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do 
 them, that ye may prosper in all ye do ; " and lastly, Ps. Ixxviii 38, 39, 
 " But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed 
 them not : yea, many a time turned He His anger away, and did not 
 stir up all His wrath." If the punishment was not over by the time that 
 these three passages were read, they were again repeated, and so timed 
 as to end exactly with the punishment itself. Meanwhile a second 
 judge numbered the blows, and a third before each blow exclaimed 
 " Hakhehu'' (strike him). All these particulars I take from the Treatise 
 on Punishments (ni3n, Makhdth) in the Mishna.' The severity of the 
 pain may best be estimated by the brief addition : " If tJie criminal die 
 under the infliction, the executioner is not accounted guilty unless he 
 gives by mistake a single blow too many, in which case he is banished." 
 These facts have an interest far deeper than archseological. They 
 not only show how awful were the trials which St. Paul had to endure, 
 if such as these were hardly counted worthy of narration amongst them, 
 but also they illustrate to a singular degree the minute scrupulosity 
 which reigned through all Jewish observances. If, for instance, only 
 thirty-nine blows were inflicted instead of forty, it was not only, as is 
 usually stated, to avoid the possibility of error in the counting, but also 
 (such at least is the reason assigned by Maimonides') because the Law 
 says, "in number, forty,"'' not "forty in number;" whence they con- 
 cluded that they might assign a smaller but not a larger number ; and, 
 perhaps, also because the word " thy brother " (I'nM) stands by Gematria 
 
 ^ This was not strictly in accordance with Deut. xxT. 2 ; Tjut it is strange to see 
 how traditional laxity was mingled by the Jews with unintelligent literalism. 
 2 See Snrenhusius, Miahna, vol. iv., p. 286, seqq. 
 ' Maimon. Sanhedr. 17 
 
 D'SaiN TDDM. 
 
ON JEWISH SCOURGINGS. 663 
 
 for tHrty-nine.* Another assigned reason is that the passage of the 
 Psalm (Ixxviii. 38, 39) which was recited on the occasion ends at verse 
 39. The scourge -was made partly of ox-hide, partly of ass's-hide, for 
 the astounding reasons that immediately after the passage in Deutero- 
 nomy which orders the infliction of scourging follows the verse, " Thou 
 shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn ;"" and that in 
 Isa. i. 3 we find, " The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's 
 crib ; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider." And 
 thus it was thought right that those who do know should punish him 
 who does not know !' The criminal was to receive only thirteen blows 
 on his breast, but twenty-six on his shoulders, because it was inferred 
 from Deut. xxv. 2 that it was only on the back that he was to be beaten, 
 " according to his fault," so that the back received a double number of 
 blows. The duty of reading aloud while the scourging continued was 
 also a minute inference from the words of Scripture.' 
 
 A person was liable to this penalty if he wilfully violated any of the 
 negative precepts of the Law, and inadvertently any of those which, if 
 deliberately transgressed, involved the threat of excision from among 
 the people," or "death by the visitation of God."' Under which of the 
 numerous offences for which this punishment was assigned Paul five 
 times suffered, is by no means easy to say. Looking through them all 
 as enumerated in the treatise MakMth,^ and as expanded by Mai- 
 monides,' I cannot find any of which the Apostle could possibly have 
 been guilty. .Where, however, the will to punish him existed, the 
 
 1 Gematria (Geomatria) was one of the Katbalistio methods of drawing inter- 
 pretations from the numerical value of letters. I have given many instances in 
 Sabbinic Exegesis {Expositor, May, 1877). Thus because hoih. Mashiach and nachash, 
 " serpent," numerically represent 358, they inferred that it was the Messiah who 
 would bruise the serpent's head, &o. 
 
 2 Deut. xxv. 4. 
 
 » So Maimonides and E. Ob. de Bartenorl, ap. Surenhus. I. e. 
 
 * Buxtorf, Synag., p. 523. See also Praef. Libr. de Abbrematuris. This was 
 one of the numerous instances in which the Jews were more legal than the Law 
 itself. Similarly they extended the Sabbath into a Little Sabbath, an hour before 
 and an hour after the true Sabbath. They were forbidden to have leaven in their 
 houses .during the Passover, and they abstained from even using the word. Being 
 forbidden swine's flesh, they avoid the word pig altogether, and caU the pig in« w, 
 dabhar acheer, "the other thing," &o. (Godwyn, Moses and Aaron, viii. 12.) These 
 are specimens of the "Aerf'^e of the Law." _ , „ 
 
 5 Deut. xxv. 4, rrnn mpl, "lunc colligimus plagas infigidebere inter legendum 
 (E. Ob. de Bartenora, ap. Surenhus. Miehna, iv. 290). 
 
 1 D'oiD 'Ta nn'a. 
 
 8 III., 1, 2, 3, 4. 
 
 » Silkoth Sanhedr. xviiL, zix. 
 
664 APPENDIX. 
 
 pretext would not long be wanting. His flagellation must have boen 
 that minor but still terrible punishment which was called " the legal 
 scourging" or the "scourging of forty,'" because the yet deadlier 
 flagellation with rods, which was called the Rabbinic, or the flagellation 
 of contumacy," was never inflicted within the limits of the Holy Land, 
 and is expressly stated to have been a beating to death. 
 ' When once am ofliender had been scourged this punishment was 
 considered to remove the danger of " cutting ofi'," ' and not only so, but 
 it was regarded as leaving no ignominy behind it. The humane expres- 
 sion of Moses that forty stripes were not to be exceeded " lest thy 
 brother seem vile unto thee," was interpreted to mean that when the 
 punishment was over the sufierer was " restored to his integrity.'' So 
 completely was this the case that even the High Priest himself might 
 ^be thus scourged, and afterwards be " restored to his noajesty." But 
 although it was assumed that he would sufier no ulterior injury, but 
 rather be sure to win an iaheritance in the future, yet, of course, if he 
 again offended he was again scourged.* It was even possible that for 
 one ofience, if it involved the disobedience to several negative precepts, 
 he might incur several consecutive scourgings, care being only taken 
 that he had sufficiently recovered from the first before the next was 
 inflicted. It is, therefore, by no means impossible, or even improbable, 
 that during those " many days " which Paul spent in Damascus in 
 trying to convince these passionate disputants, he may have incurred 
 this torture several times. 
 
 To have refused to undergo it by sheltering himself under the pri- 
 vilege of his Roman citizenship would have been to- incur excommu- 
 nication, and flnally to have cut himself off from admission iuto the 
 synagogues. 
 
 EXCURSUS XII. (p. 250). 
 
 Apotheosis of Roman Emperoes. 
 
 The early Emperors rather discouraged than stimulated this ten- 
 dency to flatter them by a premature apotheosis. If temples had been 
 buUt to them ia their lifetime, they had always teen to their " genius," 
 
 ' Mdlkooth, Mn'niMi, or D'MIH. 
 
 " ni"no. See Carpzov. App. Crit. , p. 589. The Greek Tv/iirayurnds. 
 
 * 2 Mace. iii. 35. 
 
 * They quoted Ley. xviii. 29 ; 2 Maoc. iii. 16. 
 
APOTHEOSIS OP EOMAK EMPERORS. 665 
 
 or had at least been associated — as at Athens — ^with the divinity of 
 Eome.^ Augustus, with these restrictions, had yielded to the earnest 
 entreaties of the people of Pergamos and Nioomedia, but had expressly 
 forbidden the Bouians to take any part in this new cult. The base ex-. 
 ample spread rapidly in the provinces, and though it is probable that in 
 secret Augustus was not displeased at so astonishing a proof of his own 
 power, he affected to smUe at it as a man of the world.' In th« frenzy 
 of flattery, which is the disease of despotisms, it was but too likely that 
 this deification of a living man would creep from the provinces into 
 Italy, and, in spite of the assertion of Dion Cassius, that in Italy no one 
 ventured to worship Augustus, it is certain from the Corpus Irv- 
 Bcriptiomxm that at his death there' had sprung up, either by his per- 
 mission or without his interference, priests of Augustus at Pompeii, 
 flamens at Prseneste, an Augusteum at Pisa, and a Csesareum at 
 Puteoli ; and this — ^though it was due far more to the religious degra- 
 dation of the age than to the phrenetic pride of the autocrat — was made 
 a source of bitter blame against him when he was dead. Even at 
 Rome,' though no temple rose to him till he was dead, yet we need go 
 no further than the poetry of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid,* to show that 
 he was commonly addressed as a deity (numen) and a god, and that 
 sacrifices were offered either to him or in his name ; and, as appears 
 from inscriptions, even at Rome, if they did not worship him directly, 
 they did so indirectly, by rearing altars to his virtues and his laws, and 
 by inserting his name among those of ancient deities in the songs of the 
 Arval brothers. After his death the worship was extended without 
 limit. He was known universally as the Divine Augustus, a phrase 
 which became as common as feu h roi.^ 
 
 1 Dion. li. 20 ; Suet. Aug. 52. Though, he knew that even Proconsuls had ia 
 the provinces been honom-ed with temples, yet in " nulla provinciA, nisi commtmi suo 
 Eomaegue nomine recepit." See the excellent chapter on " L'ApotMose Imp&iale," 
 in Boissier, Za BMgion Eomaine, i. 123 — 205. 
 
 '" Quintil. Imtt. Orat. vi. 3, 77. 
 
 • Tao. Ann. i. 10, "Nihil deorum honorihus relictum, cum se templis et effigie 
 numinum per flamines et sacerdotes coli veUet ; " Aural. Vict, de Casar. 1, 
 "Huicque, uti Deo, Eomae provinoiiaque omnibus, per urbes oeleberrimas vivo 
 mortuoque templa sacerdotes et collegia saoravere." This seems, however, to be a 
 positive mistake, though Pliny, -SToi. Bist. xii. 19, mentions a temple which Livia 
 erected to him after his death (Divo) on the Palatine. Suetonius, a very high 
 authority on such a subject, says that he most obstinately refused this honour 
 Eome when it was pressed upon him {Aug. 52, « In urbe quidem pertiuadflsime 
 abstirtuit hoc honore"). 
 
 * See Bentley's note on Hor. Epp. 11. i. 16 ; Virg. Mccl.i. 7 ; Georg. i. 42 ; Hor. 
 Od. i. 2, 41 ; iii. 5, 1 ; iv. 5, 16 ; Ov. Trist. u. 8, 9 ; iv. 9, 111. (Boissier, i. 153.) 
 
 » Tac. Ann. 1, 73, "Caelum decretum." 
 
666 APPENDIX, 
 
 Tiberius, for political reasons, patronised, and even to a certain 
 extent enforced, this new worship, but he also discouraged the ex- 
 travagance which endeavoured to extend divine honours to his living 
 self, and by doing so he at once gratified his undisguised cynicism and 
 showed his strong good sense. But the tendency to a.potheosis was in 
 his time firmly established. He was, as a matter of course, deified 
 alter his' death, and his panegyrist, Velleius Paterculus, teUs us a story 
 that when he was in the midst of a campaign among the Chauci, a 
 barbarian chief obtained permission to see him, and after crossing the 
 river in order to do so, gazed at him for a long time in silence, and 
 exclaiming that he had ' now seen the gods,^ asked to touch Mr hand, 
 and then pushed off his boat towards the opposite shore, gazing to the 
 last on the living deity. So rapidly did the disease of adulation grow 
 that, according to Suetonius, Domitian actually used to begin his letters 
 with the words " Dominus et Deus noster sic fieri jubet " — " Thus 
 orders our Lord and God, Domitian ! "* 
 
 EXCURSTJS XIII. (p. 329). 
 
 Burdens laid on Prosklttes, 
 
 We are told in the Talmud that if a Gentile wished to become a pro- 
 selyte he was asked his reasons for the wishj and informed that Israel is 
 now afiiicted, persecuted, and cast down with all kinds of sufferings. If 
 he replies that he knows it, and is not worthy to share in their suf- 
 ferings, he is admitted, but is told enough of the " light " and the 
 " heavy " precepts to warn him to desist in time if he is not sincere, 
 since, as Eabh Chelbo said, "proselytes are as injurious to Israel as a 
 scab." He is told about the rules respecting gleaning, and tithes, and 
 the penalties attached to any transgression of the Law, and is informed 
 that henceforth if he desecrates the Sabbath he is liable to death by 
 stoning. If he submits he is circumcised, and even circumcised a second 
 time, if there were any neglect or carelessness in the first performance 
 of the rite. After his recovery he is immersed without delay by way of 
 baptism, and two " disciples of the wise " stand by him, repeating some 
 of the "light "and "heavy" precepts.^ In fact, a Gentile could only 
 
 ' Yell. Patero. ii. 107, " Quos ante aadietam hodie vidi doos." 
 ' Suet. Somit. 13. » Tebhamoth, f. 47, 1. 
 
HATRED OF THE JEWS. 667 
 
 become a proselyte by submitting himself to the whole yoke of Rab- 
 bioism, the tyranny of archaic, puerile, and weai-isome halach6th which 
 year by year was laid more heavily on Jewish shoulders by the pedantry 
 of their theologio schools. It was the fault of the Jews that the 
 Gentiles usually concentrated their attention on mere transient Jewish 
 rites, and not on the eternal principles which God had revealed to them. 
 Can we be surprised at this when we find K Eleazar Ben Chasmah 
 saying that the rules about birds' nests {kinim), and the " uncleanli- 
 ness " of women (niddah) are essentials of the Law 1 ^ 
 
 EXCUESUS XIV, (p. 330). 
 
 Hatred of the Jews in Classical Antiquity. 
 
 It is at once curious and painful to perceive how strange was the mix- 
 ture of curiosity, disgust, and contempt, with which the Jews were re- 
 garded ia pagan antiquity. From Manetho the Egyptian priest, with 
 whom seems to have originated the calumny that they were a nation 
 of lepers,'' down to Annseus Florus, who brands them as an impious 
 race,' the references to them ia secular literature are a tissue of 
 absurd calumnies or biting sarcasms. Chseremon alludes to them as 
 unclean and polluted ;< Lysimachus, as diseased and unsocial;^ Diodorus 
 Siculus, as addicted to strange rites, and hostile to strangers ;' Apol- 
 lonius Molon, a Greek rhetorician of the time of Cicero, as "godless and 
 misanthropical;"' Cicero heaps scorn and indignation upon them in his 
 Oration for the extortionate and tyrannous Flaccus," and in that on the 
 
 1 Firke Abhoth, iii. 28. In partial defence of the Jews it may to said that 
 some were inclined to hecome proselytes to avoid military service (Tac. Ann. ii. 
 35 J Suet. Tib. 36 ; Jos. Antt. xviii. 3, 5), others were Shechemite proselytes 
 — i.e., to marry rich Jewesses [id. xvi., 7, 5 ; xx. 7, 2, 3), others were " Hon- 
 proselytes "— t.e., out of fear (2 Kings xvii. 26 ; Jos. B. J., ii. 17, 10). Herzog. 
 Seal. Enc, s. v. 
 
 2 Ap. Jos. c. Ap. i. 26. 
 
 ' Speaking of Pompey, Florus says, "Et vidit iUud grande impiae gentia 
 arcanum. 
 
 * Jos. e. Ap. i. 32. 
 1 Id. i. 34. 
 
 * Diod. Sic. xl. 
 
 ' Jos. e. Ap. ii. 14. 
 
 * Cic. pro. Flacco, xxriiL 
 
668 ' APPENDIX. 
 
 consular province's calls them " a race bom for slavery ; "* Horace sneers 
 at their proselytism, and their circumcision, and their Sabbaths ;' Seneca 
 calls them " a most abandoned race ; " ' Martial, besides odious allusions 
 to their national rite, pours his contempt on their poverty, their mendi- 
 cancy, their religion, and their low trade of selling sulphur matches and 
 buying broken glass, and he seems to-be the first to origiuate the 
 slander repeated by Sir Thomas Browne in his "Popular Errors;"* 
 Quifttilian, gentle as he was, yet admits a very bitter remark against 
 the Jews and Moses;* Lucan aUudes to their "uncertain Deity;"' 
 Petronius Arbiter seems to think, as did many of the ancients, that the 
 Jews did not abhor, but actually worshipped the pig ; ^ Tacitus, in his 
 History, reproaches them with gross sensuality, low cunniag, and strong 
 hatred of all nations but their own, and gives at full length, and with all 
 gravity, the preposterous story \about their veneration for the ass.* In 
 his Annals he speaks with equal horror and equal ignorance of Jews 
 and Christians, and considers that if the thousands of Jews who were , 
 deported to Sardinia died it would be a cheap loss ; ' Juvenal flings 
 scornful allusion at their squalor, beggary, turbulence, superstition, 
 cheatery; and idleness ; ^" Celsus abused them as jugglers and vaga- 
 bonds ; " Ammianus Marcellinus as " disgusting and noisy ; " ^^ RutiUus 
 Numatianus closes the long liue of angry slanderers by a burst of abuse, 
 in which he characterises Judsea as a "lying slave-cage."" Jeremiah 
 had bidden the Jews to seek the peace of, and to pray for, the city 
 
 ^ De Frov. Cons. v. 
 
 2 Hor. Sat. i. iv. 143 ; v. 100 ; ix. 69. 
 
 ' Ap. Aug. Se Cw. Dei. vii. 36, " Usgue eo sceleratissimae gentis consuetudo 
 convaluit [the Satbath] ut," &o. 
 
 * Mart. Ep. i. 42 ; xii. 30, 35, 57 ; iv. 4 ; vii. 82 ; xi. 94, i. 4. Cf. Stat. 8iU>. 
 i. 6. The relation of the Hdrods to the CsBsara had attracted a large shaxe of 
 attention to the Jews in the Imperial epoch. Pers. v. 179 — 184 ; Juv. vi. 167» 
 
 " JDe Jnstt. Orat. iii. 7. 
 
 ' Fharsal. ii. 693, "incerti Judaea Dei." 
 
 ' Satiric. Biichler, p. 221, " Judaeus licet et poreimm numen, adoret," &o. 
 (CfyPlut. Sijnop. iv. 6.) 
 
 8 Tao. Sist. V. 2 — 5 ; Diod. Sic. i. 28 ; Plut. Bynop. iv. 5. On this story see 
 Geiger, Judfn und Judenthum, Illustr. Monatsch d. Judenth, Oct., 1865. 
 
 " Ann.- XV. 44 ; ii. 85, " si ob gravitatem caeli interissent, vile damnum.'" (Cf. 
 Suet. Tit. 36 ; Jos. Antt. xviii. 3, 5 ; Philo, Leg. 24.) 
 
 lo Sat. vi. 642—647, 156—160 ; xiv. 96—107. See, for other allusions, id. iii. 
 13, 296. 
 
 '^ Ap. Orig. e. Gels, i, 33, ytrlfruv. 
 
 >2 Ammian. Marc. xxii. 5, "fetentes Judaei." (See "Gentilea" in Kitto.) 
 
 '' Itinerar. i. 3, 89. In the above quotations and references I have made free 
 use (with certain additions) of Dr. Gill's Notices of the Jews by Olaseie Authors see 
 also Meier's Judaioa, and the article of Geiger, above quoted). 
 
PAGAK -WEITERS ON CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 669 
 
 of their captivity, "foi; in the peace thereof shaU ye have peace.'" 
 Better had it been for the ancient Jevs if they had lived in the spirit 
 of that large advice. But the GentUes were well aware that in the 
 Jewish synagogues there was an exception to the dead uniformity of the 
 Eomish Empire, a;nd that they and their customs were there treated with 
 open and bitter scorn, which; they repaid tenfold.'' 
 
 EXCURSUS XV. (p. 330). 
 Jtidoments op Eaelt Pagan 'Wiiiters on Cheistianitt. 
 
 Suetonius (died ciro. A.D. 110). 
 
 "•Judaeos impulsore Clwesto assidue tumultuantes RomS, expulit" 
 Clcmd. 25).» 
 
 "Afflicti suppliciis Christian! genus hominum superstitionis novae 
 et maleficae " (Nero, 16). 
 
 " Percrebuerat Oriente toto vetus et constans opinio, esse in fatis, 
 ut 60 tempore, Judaea profecti rerum potirentur " {Yesp. 4). 
 
 Tacitus (Consul suffectus, A.D. 97). 
 
 " Ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos, et quaesitissimis poenis 
 affecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat. Auctor 
 ejus nominis Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pont. Pilatum 
 SuppKoio affectus est ; repressaque in praesens exitiabilis superstitio 
 rursum erumpebat non mode per Judaeam originem ejus mali, sed per 
 urbem etiam quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt cele- 
 branturque. Igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio 
 eorum miiltitudo ingens, haud perinde in crimine incendii quam odio 
 generis humani convicti sunt. Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut 
 ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent, aut crucibus affixi 
 aut flammandi, atque ubi defecisset dies, in usum noctumi luminis 
 urerentur . . . unde quamquam adversus sontes et novissima exempla 
 
 * Jer. xxix. 7. 
 
 * Ps. Heraclit. Ep. vii. ; Hausrath, JT. T. Gesch. ii. 79. Specimens of this scora 
 may be seen in Jos. c. Ap. ii. 34, 35. 
 
 3 According to Sulpio. Severus {Mist. Sacr. ii. 30), Titus decided that the Temple 
 should be destroyed that Christianity and Judaism might be eradicated together. 
 " Quippe has religiones, licet oontrarias sibi, iisdem tamen auctoribus profectas ; 
 Christianos ex Judaeis exstitisse ; radice sublatft, stirpem iaoUe perituram." This is 
 b,elieved by Bemays to be a quotatioa from Tacitus. 
 
670 APPENDIX. 
 
 meritos miseratio oriebatur tamquam non utilitate public! sed in 
 saevitiam unius absumerentur " {Ann. xv. 44). 
 
 Gentiles in the Letter of the Churches of Viemie and Lyons com- 
 plain, ic'cTji' riva. Kol /cau'V r\iuv iuriyavdi Bpi\a«eiav (op. Euseb."jff. E. V. 1). 
 
 Pliny the Younger (died circ. A.D. 117). 
 
 His famous letter to Trajan is too long for insertion. He aslra 
 whether he is to punish persons for simply being Christians, or for 
 crimes involved in the charge of being so (nomen ipsum, si Jlagitiis 
 careat, an flcogitia cohaerentia nomini). He says that he has punished 
 those who, after threat of punishment, still declared themselves Chris- 
 tians, because he considers that in any case their " inflexible obstinacy " 
 should be punished. Others equally infatuated (similis amentiae) he 
 determined to send to Rome, being Roman citizens. Having received 
 an anonymous accusation which inculpated many, he tested them, if they 
 denied the charge of being Christians, by making them call on the gods, 
 and ofier incense and wine to the Emperor's miage, and curse Christ. 
 If they did this he dismissed them, because he was told that no true 
 Christian would ever do it. Some said that they had long abjured 
 Christianity, but declared that the head and front of their " fault " or 
 " error " had simply been the custom of meeting before dawn, and 
 singing antiphons to Christ as a God, and binding themselves with 
 an oath ' not to steal, rob, commit adultery, break their word, or deny 
 the trust committed to them ; after ■<vhich they separated, meeting 
 again for a harmless meal — a custom which they had dropped after 
 Pliny's edict forbidding guilds. Scarcely crediting this strange account 
 of their innocent life, he had put two deaconesses (ex duabus anciUis 
 quae ministrae dicebantur) to the torture, but discovered nothing beyond 
 perverted and immoderate superstition {pravam, immodicam). He 
 therefore consults Trajan, because of the jnultitude of the accused, 
 ■who were of every age, rank, and sex, both in the city and in the 
 country. So widely had " the contagion of that wretched superstition " 
 spread that the temples were almost deserted, and there was scarcely 
 any one to buy the victims {Ep. x. 97). 
 
 To this letter Trajan briefly replies that the Christians are to be 
 punished if convicted, but not to be sought out ; to be pardoned if they 
 sacrifice, and not to be tried on anonymous accusations. 
 
 Epictetus (died A.D. 117). 
 
 " Then through madness it is/ possible for a man to be so disposed 
 towards these things" {i.e., to be indifierent to the "world), "and the 
 GalUseans through habit " {Dissert, iv. 7). 
 
 1 Interesting as the earliest Christian application of the word "Sacramont" 
 (Waterland On the Muchariat, i.). 
 
PROCONSULATE OF SERGIUS PATTLUS. 671 
 
 M. AuRELius Antoninus (4ied A.D. 180). 
 Speaking of readiness to die, lie says that it is noble, " so that it 
 comes from a man's own judgment, not from mere obstinacy (SiA i^ixV 
 irapdra^iv), as with the Christians, but considerately, and with dignity " 
 (_Euchew. xi 3). 
 
 LuciAN (died circ. A.D. 200). 
 His sneers and parodies of what he calls the eavixcun^i cotpla of the 
 
 Christians are to be found ia the Ver. Historia, I. 12, 30; 11. 4, 11 12 
 
 (Alexand. (Pseudomantis) xxv. 38). The Philopatris is not by Lucian, 
 but a hundred years later. 
 
 Galen, the great writer on Physic (died A.D. 200). 
 
 In his book, De different, puhwum, he alludes twice to the obstinacy 
 of Christians. 
 
 EXCURSUS XYI. (p. 351). 
 
 The Proconsulate of Sehgius Patjlus. 
 
 The title of " Proconsul "' given to this insular governor is one of 
 those minute touches of accuracy which occur on every page of the Acts 
 of the Apostles. 
 
 It might have been a serious difficulty that the name of Sergius 
 Paulus does not occur in the Fasti of the Consuls till long after this 
 period,'' but the difficulty vanishes when we find that the title of Pro- 
 consul was given to the Governor of a senatorial province, whatever 
 may have been his. previous rank.' But another and more serious diffi- 
 culty was once urged. There were two kinds of provinces, the imperial 
 and the senatorial, both of which were called Eparchies (^vapxlm). The 
 imperial were those to which the governors were sent by the Emperor, 
 because their circumstances involved the necessity of military command. 
 Augustus, under pretence of relieving the Senate from the burden of 
 the more disturbed provinces, had astutely reserved for- his personal ad- 
 ministration those regions of the empire where the presence of an army 
 was required. As the title Praetor (in Greek, STparnyhs, or general) 
 still retained some shadow of its old military significance, the Governors 
 
 1 E. V. "Deputy." 
 
 ' Serg. PauluB, consul aufEectus, A.D. 2], and another, Consul, A.D. 168. 
 > Dio Cass. liii. 13, koI ivdmir ovs Ko\?«r9oi piM 3ti Toils Sio robs vvarf vit6T<a 
 (ex-Consuls) d\\A /col roiis &\\ous rav IffTpaTiryriKSTav (ex-Praetors) K.r.A. 
 
672 APPENDIX. 
 
 of these provinces were called Propraetors, or * kvrtffTpan-rryoi, for ■which, 
 in the New Testament, the more general term 'Hyii^f is often used. 
 This Greek word for " Governor " serves as an equivalent both for 
 " Procurator " and also for Praeaes or Legatus, which was, for instance, 
 the ordinary designation of the Governor of Syria. These Praesides, 
 Legati, or Propraetors held their commands at the Emperor's pleasure, 
 and, especially in the reign of Tiberius, were often left for years undis- 
 turbed in their tenure of office. The Proconsuls, or ' kviiitaroi, on the 
 other hand, who were appointed by the Senate, only held their posts for 
 a single year. Now it appears from Strabo that when, in B.C. 27, 
 Augustus divided the provinces between himself and the Senate, Cyprus 
 was reserved as one of the imperial districts ((rTpoDj-yi/t^ tvapxia), and with 
 this Dion Cassius agrees.' Consequently even eminent writers Hke 
 Grotius thought that St, Luke had here fallen into an error; and 
 Baronius supposes that Cyprus must at this time have been an honorary 
 adjunct to the Proconsulship of Cilicia, while Grotius suggests that Greek 
 flattery might have often given to a Propraetor the more distinguished 
 title of Proconsul, and that St. Luke might have used it in accordance 
 with the common parlance. But a little more research has resulted in the 
 discovery that though Cyprus originally was an imperial province, and 
 ultimately reverted to the same condition, yet Augustus restored both it 
 and Gallia Narbonensis to the Senate in exchange for Dalmatia, because 
 he found that they did not need the presence of many soldiers.' And 
 to set the matter finally at rest, copper coins and inscriptions of this 
 very epoch have been found at Curium and Citium in which the title of 
 Proconsul is given to Cominius Proclus, Julius Cordus, and L. Annus 
 Bassus, who must have been immediate predecessors or successors of 
 Sergius Paulus.' 
 
 The name Sergius Paulus is itself interesting. Of this particular 
 Proconsul, indeed, we know nothing beyond the eulogy of the sacred 
 historian that he was a man of sense,* and that he was deeply impressed , 
 by the teaclung of St. PauL But Pliny the Elder, in his Natural His- 
 tory, three times refers to a Sergius Paulus as a person interested in 
 intelligent researches ; and it is not impossible that this Sergius Paulus 
 may be none other than our Cyprian ProconsuL* If so, the character 
 
 ' Dio Cags. liii. 12 ; Strabo, xiv. 685 ; Suet. Aug. 47. 
 
 ^ Dio CasB. Uii. 13, riiy Kirpov . . . r^ titfuf imituKtv ; liv. 4, vol otrttt 
 dyO^aroi icat is iKiiifa t& iQtn} -jrt^irtffBai f/p^avro. 
 
 ' Eckhel, iii. 84 ; Akerman, NumUm. lUutir., pp. 89, 42; Bceckh, Corp. Inter, 
 2631, 2632. 
 
 * Acts xiii. 7, &vip\ avvfTlf. The name of a Frocnnatil Panlus lia« been found on 
 an inscription at Soli (Cesnola, Cyprui, p. 495). 
 
 ' Plin. S. N. i. Pliny i« writing only twenty yean after this period. 
 
ST. JOHN AND ST. PATTL. 673 
 
 given Mm in one passing -wrord by St. Luke wiU te confirmed, and we 
 feel additional pleasure in tracing simUar characteristics in others of the 
 same name who may well have been his descendants ; for instance, in 
 the Sergius Paulus who, more than a hundred, years afterwards, receives 
 the encomium of the physician Galen for his eminence both as a theoretic 
 and a practical philosopher.' 
 
 EXCTTP.SUS XVII. (p. 440> 
 
 St. John asfd St. Paui.. 
 
 Of the three " seeming pillars," John appears to have taken no part 
 in the synod at Jerusalem, or if he did it was not sufficiently decisive to 
 be recorded. He belonged, it is clear, at this time to the Church of the 
 CSrcumcision, and, so far as we know, this was the only occasion on 
 which he was thrown into the society of St. Paid. But we have St. 
 Patd's express testimony — ru the only passage in which he is mentioned 
 in the Epistles — ^that he recognised his apostolate ; and the Apocalypse, 
 his eaxHest writing, so far from showing that irreconcilable hatred to the 
 doctrines of St, Paul which has been assumed on gi-ounds inconceivably 
 Mvolous, and repeated subsequently with extraordinary recklessness, 
 offers a close paraUeHsm to St. Paul's Epistles in thoughts and principles, 
 which is aU the more striking from the marked differences of tone and 
 expression. We are calmly assured, without even the condescension of 
 an attempted proof, that the " false Jew," the " false Apostle," the 
 " false prophet," the " Balaam," the " Jezebel," the " Nicolas," the " chief 
 of the synagogue of Satan," alluded to in the Apocalypse,^ are as indu- 
 bitably intended for St. Paul as are the savage allusions covertly made 
 to him under the name of Simon the Magician in the Pseudo^Clementines. 
 Now, on what basis is this conclusion founded ? Simply on the resem- 
 blance in tone of a spurious Ebionite romance (the Clementines) to the 
 phrases, " those whidi say they are Apostles and are not," " those which 
 say they are Jews and are not," and the allusions to some who held the 
 
 » Eenan, St. Paul, p. 15, who refers to Orelli, 2414, 4938. Galen, DeAnatom. 1 
 {apud ■Wetatain), axSphs tA irdvTa irpayrevam-os l'(i)70« re icnl \6yois rots 4y *iA.o(ro(^i'a. 
 
 a Eev. ii. 2, 6, 9, 14, IS, 20, 24 ; iii. 9. (See Renan. St. P., 302—305. who quietly 
 asserts this as if it were indisputable.) Tet St, Pai^ himself was the first to use this 
 very comparison with Balaam (1 Cor. x. 7, 8), and to denounce the extreme wicked- 
 ness of putting a stumhling-Uook before others (Kom. xiv. 21 ; 2 Cor. xi. 29). 
 
 R R 
 
674 APPENDIX. 
 
 doctrine of Balaam, and of " that ■woman Jezebel," ■wIlo tanght people 
 "to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols." It is 
 true that there were Judaisers who attacked St. Paul's claim to be an 
 Apostle ; but to assert that St. John was one of them is to give the 
 direct He to St.' Paul, while to class St. Paul with them " that say they 
 are Jews and are not " is to falsify the most notorious facts concerning 
 one who was a Pharisee of Pharisees, and a Hebrew of the Hebrews. 
 Again, to assert boldly that St. Paxil ever taught people to eat things 
 offered to idols, or anything which could be so described without the 
 grossest calumny, is a distinct contradiction of his own words, since he 
 expressly warned his converts not to do this] and assigns for his warning 
 the very reason that to do so would be "to cast a stumbling-block before 
 the children of Israel."^ In fact, though St. Paul would have denied 
 that to eat them was wrong in itself, his concessions on this point went 
 very little beyond those which are sauctioned in the Talmud itself.' Once 
 more, what conceivable excuse could there be for saying that St. Paul 
 ever taught men " to commit fornication V — a sin against which, whether 
 literally or metaphorically understood, he has urged considerations more 
 deeply seated, more likely to touch the heart, more likely to bind the 
 conscience, than all the other writers in the New Testament put together. 
 That even in earliest days there did spring up antinomian sects which 
 were guilty of such accursed teaching, we know from Church history, 
 and find traces even in the sacred writers ; and it is therefore probable 
 that the allusions of the Apocalypse are as literal as the Old Testament 
 analogies to which St. John no v less than St. Paul refers." That 
 " the fornication " of the Apocalypse means " mixed marriages " there 
 is not even a shadow of reason to believe, nor if it did would there 
 be any ground for saying that St. Paul encouraged them. Though he 
 used, on that as on all such topics, the language of wisdom and of 
 charity, the whole tendency of his teaching is to discourage them.' 
 Moreover, if Paul had been aimed at, and if St. John, the Apostle of 
 Love, really .had been the slanderous and rabid Judaiser which these 
 allusions would then imply, it is inconceivable that no word should be 
 said about the ppints respecting which, to a Judaiser, he must have 
 
 1 \ Cor. viii. 13 (of. x. 32). 
 
 ' Ketuihtth, i. 15, 1, which, almost iii the very language of St. Paul, lays down 
 the rule that if a man has hought meat, and is doubtful whether it is legally dean, 
 he must not eat it ; hut if he lights upon it accidentally, he may eat it without 
 further inquiry. Meat declared to he legally clean (tdhor) is stamped with a leaden 
 seal, on which is the word kashar ("lawful," KaBaphv). (I. Disraeli, Genius of 
 Judaism, p. 154.) 
 
 " 1 Cor. X. 7, 8. (See some excellent remarks in Lightfoot'a Gal., pp. 290, 335.) 
 
 * See especially 2 Cor. vi. 14. 
 
ST. PAUL. IN THE CLEMENTENES. 675 
 
 Beemed infinitely more assailable— nafnely, St. Paul's very low estimate 
 of circumcision, and his declared conviction that by the works of the 
 Law no man can be justified in God's sight. Now, in the Apocalypse 
 neither circumcision, nor the Law, nor Moses, nor oral tradition are 
 once so much as mentioned or alluded to, while redemption by the 
 blood of the Lamb, and the universality of that redemption as extend- 
 ing to "every kindred and tongue and people and nation,'" are 
 asserted as absolutely and unconditionally as they could have been 
 by Paul himself. Further, it needs but a casual study of St. John and 
 St. Paul to see that " Jesus Christ " is in both of them the divine secret 
 and the fundamental conception of aU Christianity. St. John at this 
 time was the more contemplative, the less prominently active, St. John 
 of the Gospels. " The hidden fires of his nature " had not yet " burst 
 out into a flame." Two incidents preserved for us in the Gospels had 
 indeed shown that those fires were there ;' but it was not till James the 
 Lord's brother, and Peter, and Paul himself had passed away that he 
 • became the bold and uncompromising leader whose counsels were as 
 oracles to the Asian Church. Nevertheless, we may be sure that St. 
 John was not found among the opponents of St. Paul. That opposition 
 is always connected with the adherents and the influence of James. 
 During the lifetime of Jesus James had not fully accepted His mission, 
 and seems only to have been converted by the Resurrection. He had 
 not therefore lived, as the other Apostles had lived, in daily contact with 
 the mind and influence of Jesus, and was in consequence more deeply 
 imbued with the beliefs of his early Jewish training, and less entirely 
 permeated in intellect by the breath of the new life. But Peter and 
 John, more than any living men, must have known what was the mind 
 of Christ We know that they were one in heart, and we may, be sure 
 that they who had gone together to visit and confirm the detested 
 Samaritans and witness their participation in the gifts of the Holy 
 Ghost, would be little likely to look with rabid jealousy on the equal 
 freedom of a yet wider extension of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 EXCTTRSUS XVm. (p. 448). 
 
 The Attacks on St. Paul in the Clemkntines. 
 
 'taxi Paul, in consequence of the death-blow which he gave to Jewish 
 Pharisaism, was pursued by a particular section of the Judseo-Christian 
 
 • Kev. V. 9 ; viL 9. * Luke ix. 34 ; Matt. xx. 21 
 
676 APPENDIX. • 
 
 .Church -witli Tmrolentmg opposition, is a matter of history. It needs 
 no further proof thaii the large sections in his Epistles which are 
 occupied -with arguments against Pharisaic or Gnostic Judaism, such 
 as had invaded the Churches of Corinth, Galatia, Colossse, and Crete. 
 But true though it is that he was obliged to contend in lifelong 
 struggle with a party, it is not true that he remained long unrecognised 
 by the Chuvch at large. The supposition that he was, has merely 
 originated from the exceptional literary activity of a single section 
 of Christian Ebionites. Dr. Lightfoot, in his essay on " St. Paul 
 and the Three," has shown, by patient and entirely candid in- 
 vestigation, that even the Church of Judsea was not exclusively anti- 
 Pauline, and that the anti-Pauline faction within it, so far from repre- 
 senting the tendencies of the whole Christian Church, did not even 
 represent the Christians of Palestine. The Christian Jews of the Holy 
 Land naturally continued, as a body,- to observe the Mosaic Law — as 
 was done by St. Paul himself so far as he could do so without compro- 
 mising the emancipation of the Gentiles — \intil the fall of Jerusalem 
 rendered all such observance a mere mockery and sham.' If the 
 Passover, the very central ordinance of Mosaism, was rendered simply 
 impossible, God had Himself demonstrated that the aeon of the Law 
 was closed. The withdrawal of the Church to Pella, caused by a 
 recollection of the warnings of Jesus, would look to the Jews like an 
 unpatriotic desertion of their cause ; and the frantic denunciations of 
 the Mins, which date from this epoch, were but signs of the gathering 
 detestation of Jew for Christian which culminated in the savage massacres 
 by Bar-cochba of those Christians who refused to .apostatise and 
 blaspheme. When the name of Jerusalem had given way to that of 
 .i^lia Capitolina, and Christians were allowed to live where no Jew 
 might set his foot, the Church of the new city became predominantly 
 Gentile, and was for the first time governed by a Gentile bishop.^ It is 
 not till after this period that we hear of two sects distinct from each 
 other, but often confused. These were the Nazarenes and the Ebionites. 
 The ISTAZ ARENES were not in any way hostile to the work and memory 
 of Paul, and they differed from other Christians only in holding that the 
 Law was still binding on Jewish converts. " The Testaments of the 
 Twelve Patriarchs " — a book which, whether written by a Nazarene or 
 not, expresses their general tenets so far as we can gather them — -jiot 
 only does not oppose the doctrines of St. Paul, but, 'though written 
 from the Judseo-Christian standpoint, puts into the mouth of Ben- 
 jamin a splendid eulogy of Paul, as one who is to arise from that 
 
 ' Gratz, Gesch. d.Juden, iv. 112. 
 
 » Marcus, B.C. 132. Just. Mart. ^pol. i. 31, p. 73. 
 
ST. PAUL IN THE CLEMENTINES. 677 
 
 tribe " beloved of tte Lord, listening to His voice, enlightening all the 
 Gentiles with new knowledge." The EBI0NITE8, on the other band— a 
 powerful and zealous sect — breathed the exact spirit of Paul's 
 Jndaisiug enemies, and the views of many of them became deeply 
 tinged with the Gnostic tendencies of the more advanced Essenes. To 
 this section of the Ebionites we owe the forgeries kuown as the 
 Clementine Homilies, the Clementine Recognitions, extant iu a Latin 
 paraphrase of Eiifinus,^ and a spurious letter of Peter to James. In 
 the Homilies St. Paul is surreptitiously attacked in the guise of Simon 
 Magus.^ The allusion to his reproof of St. Peter at Antioch is too 
 plain to be overlooked, and discredit is thrown on his doctrine, his 
 revelations, and his independent attitude towards James. In the letter 
 of St; Peter he is still more severely, though still covertly slandered, 
 as " the enemy " whose teaching was antinomian and absurd, and who 
 calumniously asserted that St. Peter held one view and sanctioned 
 another. In the Recognitions these attacks do not appear, but "the 
 enemy " sent by Caiaphas to arrest St. Peter at Antioch, and who 
 throws St. James down the Temple steps, is evidently meant for St. 
 Paul, and this notable story is believed to have been borrowed from a 
 prating fiction called the " Ascents of James,'' which is also the source 
 of the venomous calumny that Paul was a Gentile who had accepted 
 circumcision in hopes of marrying the High, Priest's daughter, and 
 had only apostatised from Mosaism when his hopes were disappointed.^ 
 
 It is on trash of this kind, at once feeble and virulent, at once 
 ' baseless and malignant, that some have based the belief that there was 
 deadly opposition between Paul and. the Twelve, and that his work was 
 not fully recognised till the close of the second century. ■ The fact, how- 
 ever, is that these Ebionite slanders and forgeries are representative 
 of none but an isolated sect. Justin lived in Samaria in the earlier half 
 of the second century, and shows no trace of these views. Hegesippus 
 was a Jewish Christian who travelled to Rome in the middle of the 
 second centtiry, visiting many Christian Churches ; and Eusebius, who 
 knew his writings, vouches for his perfect orthodoxy.* Such being, the 
 case, it is hardly even necessary to prove that the other churches, of the 
 second century were in no sense anti-Pauline. It may be true that for 
 
 ' And partly in Syriao. 
 
 2 The Englisli reader may see these passages translated in Baiir's First Three 
 Centuries, i. pp. 89 — 98. 
 
 " Epiphan. Haeres, xxx. 16. Eenan also refers to Massechta, QSrim, 1, ed. 
 KiroMieim. ■ , 
 
 * It is no disproof of this that he borrows the Ehionite account of St. James ; 
 ^nd his supposed condemnation of St. Paul for using the expression "Eye hath 
 not seen," &c., seems to rest on an entire misapprehension (Lightfoot, Gal., p. 3U). 
 
678 APPENDIX. 
 
 a short time there were t'wro sections — a Jewish and a Gentile^in the 
 Church of Eome, and even that each, section had its own bishop, the 
 possible successors respectively of the Apostles of the circumcision and 
 of the uncircumcision.' But if so, these two sections were, at the close 
 of the first century, united under the gentle and orthodox Clement ; and 
 even on the doubtful hypothesis that the Clementines had a Roman 
 origin, their indirectness — the cautious, subterranean, timid sort of way 
 in which they attack the great Apostle — is alone a decisive proof that 
 the forger could hy no means rely on the general sympathy of the 
 readers into whose hands his loritings fell. Ajid yet on this very 
 attenuated apex is buil-f the huge Laverted pyramid of inference, which 
 finally declai-es the Epistle of St. Jude to be a specimen of one of the 
 letters, breathing sanguinary hatred and atrocious falsehood, which axe 
 supposed to have been despatched from Jerusalem in the name of the 
 Apostles, and in the composition of which, " since James and Jude 
 probably could not speak Gregk," they probably employed Greek secre- 
 taries !* Let any one read the Epistle of St. Jude, and consider, verse 
 by verse, how it could be possibly applied to St. Paul, and how absolutely 
 such a theory contradicts every really authentic fact of his relation to 
 the Apostles, as well as the character and bearing of the Apostles them- 
 selves, and he will be able to estimate the validity of the criticism which 
 calmly represents as reasonable history this darkening fume of inferences 
 from the narrow aperture, of a worthless forgery. 
 
 • Some Buch fact may lie behind the remark of TertuUian that Clement was 
 ordained hishop hy St. Peter, whereas Irenseus. places Linus and Anencletua 
 before him. 
 
 ' Eenan, St. JPaul, p. 300. " En quittant Antioche les agents du parti hierosolo- 
 myte jurferent de houleverser les fondations de Paul, de detruire lea Eglises, de 
 reuverser ce qu'il avait edifie'avec tant de labeurs. H semble qu'a cette occasion 
 de nouvelles lettres furent expedites de Jerusalem, au nom des apotres. H se pent 
 m^me qu'viu exemplaire de oes lettres haineuses nous ait 6te conserve dans I'Epitre 
 de Jude, iihre de Jacques, et comme lui ' frere du Seigneur,' qui fait pai'tie du 
 canon," &c. The apparent array of authorities quoted in support of such inferences 
 has no real beaming on them, and upon examination dwindles into the narrow limits 
 indicated below. Nor does M. Eenan adduce a single proof, or anything remotely 
 resembling a proof, that by vopvfta the Apocalypse and the Epistle of Jude imply 
 the doctrine of St. Paul {id. p. 300), or that the relative moderation of Michael 
 (Jude 9) is contrasted with the impertinence of St. Paul (!), or, in fact, any other of 
 the utterly Wild conclusions into which he has exaggerated the perverted ingeliuity 
 of Tiibingen theorista. See further the Excursus on St. John and St. FauL